“This eliminates the idiots who have no questions—they just want to tell you what they think,” Mary now said. She was reading through the questions on the notecards and sorting them. “This also identifies the dolts who always ask, ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ They get their own pile, too—the never-to-be-answered pile,” Mary said. Before I went onstage, Mary told me, I would get to pick the questions I liked, and I could put them in the order I wanted to answer them. “I’m weeding out the whack jobs,” Mary Marinelli said.

The idea of weeding out the whack jobs interested Em; she and Nora were just hanging out in the greenroom with me before I went onstage. Em was reading through the questions on the notecards with Mary. I’d had to explain to Mary that Em was a pantomimist who actually didn’t talk. Mary had seen Nora and Em onstage at the Gallows; she’d wrongly assumed that Em’s nonspeaking role was just part of the act. Mary Marinelli had listened closely to what I told her about Em’s conscientious objection to speaking.

“Since you’re a full-time pantomimist—I mean, someone who has chosen a nonspeaking life—I’m wondering if you were a breastfed baby, or not,” Mary asked Em. It was hard to tell if this was a first-time breastfeeding question for Em, who took a moment to compose the requisite pantomime.

We all knew that Mary had been to the washroom several times. “Excuse me—I have to milk myself,” Mary had made a point of announcing each time, and she was forthcoming in telling us how the milking went when she came back from the washroom. “My left boob is outperforming the right one,” she would tell us with a heartfelt sigh. I couldn’t help sneaking a look at her underperforming right boob, and we could all imagine for ourselves—even in the greenroom—Mary’s misgivings about the electric breast pump. “One day they’ll make them more portable—the ones they make now are too big and bulky,” she complained. Mary was candid in confiding her fear of the electric pump to us. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to shut it off—it’ll just drain me to death,” Mary informed us.

The drained-to-death theme appeared to influence Em’s answer to the breastfeeding question. Until Em got to the gagging part, it was difficult to discern if she was the one doing the breastfeeding or the one who was being breastfed.

“If I had to guess, I would say that breastfeeding was a conflicted experience for Em,” Mary ventured to say. More like an entirely negative experience, I was thinking.

“Em says it’s a toss-up whether she or her mother would have been more grossed out by breastfeeding,” Nora told us. Em nodded; she went back to reading the notecards.

“I see,” Mary said; she was always saying this.