Lauren Groff - Fates and Furies

OLIVIA: Nowhere. And nothing. I don’t have any parents, Mrs. Dutton.

LADYBIRD: Nonsense. Everybody’s got parents. You sprung out of somebody’s head? I am sorry, but Minerva you are not. Now, you may not like your parents, the Good Lord knows I do not like mine, but you have them, for sure.

OLIVIA: I’m an orphan.

LADYBIRD: Orphan. Nobody wanted to adopt you? Beauty like you? I do not believe this. Of course, you must’ve been a sullen girl. Oh, yes. I can see you were quite a sullen girl. Difficult. Too smart for your own good.

OLIVIA [ After a long pause. ]: Joseph’s taking a really long time.

LADYBIRD: Boy’s vain. Staring in the mirror making faces, looking at his pretty hairdo. [ They both laugh. ] In any event, you clearly do not want to talk about it, which I do not blame you for. Sore wound, I’m sure it is, darling. Family being the most important thing in the world. The most important. Why, it’s your family that tells you who you are. Without a family, you’re a nobody.

[ Olivia, startled, raises her eyes. Ladybird is looking at her, smiling broadly. ]

OLIVIA: I’m not a nobody.

LADYBIRD: Darling, I don’t wish to offend, but I have come to doubt that very much. You’re pretty, sure, but you don’t have much to offer a boy like Joey. And yes, he’s in love, but he’s a lover. You don’t have to worry about him having a broken heart. He’ll have a new girl in minutes. You can just skedaddle. Save us both some time. Let him find someone a little more apropos.

OLIVIA [ Slowly. ]: Apropos. You mean a girl with a rich family? That’s funny because, Mrs. Dutton, I have a family. They’re rich as kings.

LADYBIRD: You a liar? Because you are either lying now or you were lying when you said you were an orphan. Either way, I haven’t believed a word out of your mouth since you got here.

JOSEPH [ Comes out, smiling brightly, whistling. ]: Hello, beauties.

OLIVIA: I never lie, Mrs. Dutton. I’m a pathological truth-teller. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to play some tennis with my little hubby here. [ Grins. ]

JOSEPH: Olivia!

LADYBIRD [ Standing. ]: Your. Your what, your hubby? Hubby? Husband? Joseph!

“Cuts a little close to the quick,” Mathilde said, looking up. She wore sadness at the corners of her mouth.

“You’ll meet my mother someday,” Lotto said. “Just want you to be prepared. She still asks when I’m going to settle down with a nice girl.”

“Ouch,” Mathilde said. She looked at him over the table, coffee and bagel, half eaten. “Pathological truth-teller?”

He looked at her. Waited.

“Okay,” she conceded.

GACY, 2003

“‘What would possess the young playwright Lancelot Satterwhite, whose only real talents, thus far, have shown themselves to be a kind of wild reimagining of the Southern experience, to write a play glorifying John Wayne Gacy, the pedophile serial-murdering clown? As if the wooden dialogue, the awful a cappella songs Gacy sings, and the graphic scenes of murder and mayhem weren’t bad enough, the audience leaves after three hours with an overwhelming question: Why? Not only extremely bad, this play is in extremely bad taste. Perhaps this is a nod to Satterwhite’s betters, or some sort of homage to Sweeney Todd , but, sad to say, Lancelot Satterwhite is no Stephen Sondheim and he never will be,’” Mathilde read.

She tossed the newspaper down.

“You guessed it. Phoebe fucking Delmar,” she said.

“All the rest of them loved it,” he said. “Normally, I feel some sort of shame with a bad review. But this chick is so off base I don’t even care.”

“I think the play is funny,” Mathilde said.

“It is funny,” Lotto said. “The whole audience was cracking up.”

“Phoebe Delmar. Five plays, five pans. The woman knows nothing,” Mathilde said.

They looked at each other, started to smile.

“Write another,” he said. “I know.”

GRIMOIRE, 2005

“You’re a genius,” she said, putting the manuscript down.

“So do me,” he said.

“Gladly,” she said.

HAMLIN IN WINTER, 2006

Sallie, Rachel, and Rachel’s new husband came up for the opening night. Husband? A man? Where was Elizabeth? Mathilde and Lotto held hands in the taxi going to brunch, communicating, not speaking.

The husband chitter-chattered like a squirrel. “Affable dimwit” was Mathilde’s assessment later.

“Illiterate snake” was Lotto’s. “What is she doing? I thought she was a lesbian. I loved Elizabeth. Elizabeth had gorgeous breasts. Where did she pick this meth-head up?”

“Just because he has a tattoo on his neck doesn’t mean he’s a meth-head,” Mathilde said. She thought for a moment. “I think.”

They had the story over eggs Benedict. Rachel had had a bad year after college. She had so much energy her hands darted like hummingbirds from plate to utensil to glass to hair to lap, without cease.

“You don’t get married at twenty-three because you had a bad year,” Lotto said.

“Why do you get married at twenty-three, Lotto?” Rachel said. “Pray tell.”

“Touché,” Mathilde murmured. Lotto looked at her. “Actually, we were twenty-two,” she said.

Anyway, as she had said, Rachel had had a bad year. Elizabeth broke up with her because of something Rachel had done. Whatever it was, it was bad enough that Rachel flushed a brighter red and the husband squeezed her knee under the table. She came home to the beach so Sallie could take care of her. Pete here worked at Marineland.

“Are you a scientist, Pete?” Mathilde said.

“No, but I feed the dolphins,” he said.

Pete was exactly right at exactly the right time, Rachel said. Oh, and she was going to law school, and if Lotto didn’t mind, she’d take over the trust when she was done.

“Did Muvva cut you off, too?” Lotto said. “Poor lady. Denied the huge, frothy celebration she’d so longed for. She wouldn’t have known who to invite and wouldn’t have attended anyway, but she would have delighted in planning. Muttonchop sleeves for you, Rachel. A cake like Chichén Itzá. Flower girls in hoopskirts. Her whole Yankee family getting sunburnt and internally combusting with envy. I wouldn’t be surprised if she changed the beneficiary of the trust to a schizoid pit-bull rescue or something.”

There was a pause. Sallie winced and busied herself with her napkin. “She didn’t cut me off,” Rachel said quietly.

A long silence. Lotto blinked the sting away.

“But I had to sign a prenup. I only get two mil,” Pete said, making a comically sad face, and they all looked down into their Bloody Marys, and he blushed and said, “I meant if something bad happens. Nothing’s happening, baby,” and Rachel gave a tiny nod.

He would prove a temporary embarrassment; in six months, Elizabeth, of the great, soft boobs, the cat’s-eye glasses, the pale hair and skin, would be back for good.

At the theater, Lotto watched his aunt and sister. Ten minutes in, when their mascara started running, he sighed and relaxed and passed a hand over his face.

After all the curtain calls and congratulations and hugs and the speech he gave to his actors, who loved him, loved him, it was plain from the way they looked at him, Mathilde at last snuck Lotto out the back door to the bar where she’d had the assistant take his family.

Sallie leapt up, burst into tears, hung on his neck. Rachel hugged him fiercely around the waist. Pete darted in here and there to pat Lotto on his arms. Sallie said in his ear, “I had no idea, my sweet, how much you wanted babies.”

He looked at her surprised. “ That is what you got from this? That I want kids?”