Linda Rosenkrantz: Talk

EMILY: You were with him a lot more this summer.

MARSHA: Let’s not compare; you’re both terribly close to me.

EMILY: Yeah, okay.

MARSHA: But in the end, do I really give a shit about either of you? Do I give a shit about anything? I don’t think I do. I had just described the feeling I had for Tim, getting so overwhelmed with emotion when he forgave me, and Merrill Johnston said what was that, just sham feeling? I said I brought it up because it was so rare for me to have such a big feeling. I said maybe it’s because I spend my time with people like Sick Joan, who goes to a psychotic extreme, and Emily, who goes to a neurotic extreme of feeling, feeling, feeling; maybe only by comparison with them don’t I feel.

EMILY: You definitely have a problem with feeling.

MARSHA: That’s a pretty big problem.

EMILY: I think it’s very healthy that you’re worried about this.

MARSHA: Then after telling him I had no feelings, I came home and burst into tears.

EMILY: Darling, we know that you have feelings, you’re a very complicated person. But you did have a very positive summer in certain respects.

MARSHA: The whole purpose of the summer was to write a book.

EMILY: And you did that.

MARSHA: I wrote the book and everything I missed in the summer as well as everything I gained was because of it. I set the summer up so that I could be out of bed at seven o’clock every morning. I set it up so I wouldn’t meet a lot of distracting people, even though he admitted there weren’t any people to meet.

EMILY: Merrill Johnston admitted that?

MARSHA: Yeah, I said can you name one available man and he said no.

EMILY: My sister thinks I’ll be married with children within the year.

MARSHA: How many children?

EMILY: So does Joan, they both really think I’m going to be married.

MARSHA: You know we’re getting right back into the Zeke season. Last year at this time he was making pumpkin faces here for Hallowe’en.

EMILY: And I was off in my whirl.

MARSHA: Zeke is an empty bucket.

EMILY: A seedless raisin.

MARSHA: A bottomless pit.

EMILY: Oh, she’s wearing one slipper red and one slipper green. Is that typical? We’re back where we started; when you were packing you were wearing one red and one green.

MARSHA: Was I really?

EMILY: Of course, I was hysterical over it. You know you can tell all about everything just by looking at these fucking photographs of the summer. First of all, my tongue is sticking out on every picture.

MARSHA: So is Tim’s. But you want to see pure symbolism? Look, here are my two best friends laughing and talking, and I’m all alone between them.

EMILY: All Antonionied up.

MARSHA: All Antonionied up.

EMILY: It’s so sad. Okay, honya, the fricassee’s ready. Do you want to dole out the dish or shall I?