"Chug-a-chug-a-choo-choo!" "Chug-a-chug-a-choo-choo!" "Chug-a-chug-a-choo-choo!" "Chug-a-chug-a-choo-choo!" "Ally!" "Ally, stop dragging Geoffrey!" "We don't play like that." "Relax, Ma." "That's how Debra took me down the aisle." "Raymond, aren't you concerned?" "Girls shouldn't be dragging boys around like that." "They were just playing, Marie." "It's okay." "That's right." "We're feminists." "Really, Raymond, I would think you of all people wouldn't want your daughter to bully boys." "What are you talking about?" "Seventh grade, Tammy Gellis gave you that black eye." "Oh my God." "I forgot all about that." "Agirl beatyou up?" "Agirl named Tammy?" "Tammy socked him and then took away his RC Cola." "Oh." "He was so scared to go back to school, he didn't even want to ride the bus." " Okay, Ma, all right." " Oh, poor Raymond." "Oh, that Tammy sounds like a mean little girl." "For your information, she wasn't so little, okay?" "Her nickname was Tank." "Yeah, right." "She sued the town to play football." "I don't get it." "How did my mom know about that?" "I never told anyone about Tammy Gellis." "Only way my mom could have found out about it is if she read my journal or something." "You kept a diary?" "Oh my gosh." "I didn't know that." "That is so sweet." "It wasn't a diary." "It was a journal." "Oh, sorry." "Dear diary, another girl beat me up today." "Oh, yeah, it's all just all a barrel" " of giggles to you, right?" " Aw." "Come on, you think my mom really did read my journal?" "Oh, honey, what's so surprising?" "She would ride a Q-tip into your brain if she could." "I know, but even if she did read it, how'd she crack the code?" "You had a code?" "What was the code?" "It was a code I invented." "Okay, say something to me in your code." "Y-oka." " What?" " I'm answering you in the code." "Y-oka." "Okay, one more." "Y-oka, my e-wif." ""My wife"?" ""Okay, my wife."" "So you just took the last letter of the word and put it in front." "Maybe." "Wow, how uncrackable." " It's a good code." " No no, it is." "It's not at all e-lam." "It's not lame." "Sorry." "That's okay." "Good night, my little ass-jack." "That's..." "That's not even how you do it, okay?" "It's not the whole word." "It's just the letter." "It's s-jacka." "Oh, good morning, dear." "Hello." "Would you like some pancakes?" "Sure, why not?" "You have any n-baco?" "Any what, dear?" "Some n-baco to go with my s-pancake." "Why are you talking gibberish?" "Is it gibberish?" "Well, I certainly don't understand it." "Really?" "'Cause I think that you do." "N-baco." "What are you doing?" "What do you think I'm doing?" "N-baco." "Is that Spanish for something?" "So you admit that it's another language." "Well, it sounds like "bacon."" " You read my journal." " What?" "What-- what journal?" "Oh, "what journal?" The journal that I kept as a kid." "How else would you know about n-baco and Tammy Gellis?" "What?" "What are you talking about?" "Are you saying that you never read my journal?" " I didn't even know you had a journal." " Yes, you did," " and you read every word of it!" " I never read your journal!" " Dad, did Mom ever read my journal?" " I read your journal!" "Ah-ha-ha-ha!" " What journal?" " What do you mean, "What journal?"" "His journal with the dungaree cover." "I don't know what you're talking about." "Where are my pancakes?" "His journal, Frank." "We used to sit up at night and read it after Johnny Carson." "I confessed for nothing." "You read it to him?" "He couldn't figure out the code." "Oh, yeah!" "Your little girlie book." "There was some funny stuff in there." "All right." "Like sleeping with the belt around your head to make your nose smaller." "How could you do that, Ma?" "Huh?" "How could you go into my journal?" "I wanted to know what was in there." "It was private!" "There was stuff in there I didn't want anyone to know about!" "Like when he glued bottle caps to his socks because he wanted to be a tap dancer?" "Shut up, Dad." "Oh, don't be angry, dear." " I read it for your own good." " Yeah yeah, sure you did." "For your information, I just wanted to know that you were okay." "That you weren't on drugs." "You know dancers, always trying to keep their weight down." "Shh, Frank." "I mean, how else was I supposed to know what was happening in your life?" "Why couldn't you be like a normal parent and ask me?" "I did ask you." "Did you ever answer me?" "Exactly." "That's what you said about everything." ""How was school today?"" ""Did you finish lunch?"" ""What about the other boys?" "Did they like your outfit today?"" "You didn't leave me much choice." "So you're perfectly fine with this?" "You don't think you've done anything wrong?" "I was just trying to be a good mother." "I mean, if you can't see that, and I see that you can't" "I mean obviously you feel that I stepped over some boundaries." "Then I want to apologize, Raymond." "No, really, I mean it." "I'm sorry, Raymond." "All right, then." "So, are there pancakes?" "That's it?" "You don't have anything to say to me?" "What?" "What do you mean?" "I just apologized for doing something that apparently offended you, and you have nothing to say to me?" "Thank you." ""Thank you"?" "I see." "So you think that you're innocent in all of this?" "Yeah." "Fine." "It's just fine, Raymond." "But let me tell you something, you may have written that diary, but I had to read it!" "Hey, Robert." " You busy?" " Kinda." "What do you want?" "Ready for this?" "What, do you got a cat now?" "I was just at your mother's house." "Anything she's ever done to you, I can top it." "Left me at a gas station in Arizona?" "She came back." "Conceived me out of wedlock?" "Oh, yeah yeah, you're a big victim." "Listen to this." "25 years ago, I kept a journal." "She used to read it every day." "The dungaree one." "Did you read it?" "Yeah, Raymond, I read your diary." "I wasn't getting enough of you." "Yeah, well, she read it." "She read the whole thing." "And now for some reason, she's mad at me." " Well, what was in it?" " It doesn't matter what was in it!" "God, everybody's missing the point here!" "That was my private journal." "Those were my private thoughts, okay?" "Doesn't matter if I wrote-- oh my God." " What?" " Oh." "Oh, no." "Oh, no!" "What?" "I'm just remembering the stuff I used to write in it." "Go ahead." "You know, like I had a grown-up dream once of my homeroom teacher Mrs. Hustwick." "Oh, I remember her-- Lusty Husty." "So Ma read that." "It's not a big deal." "And then I had the chart." "What do you mean?" "Chart for what?" "For awhile, I used to... measure things." "Ma read that, huh?" "That is pretty bad." "Hey, what?" "You kept a diary." "She probably read yours too." " I hope she did." " What do you mean?" "I was hip to Ma." "I had two diaries." "The one for her was a decoy." "You kept two sets of books?" "Yeah, the one I let her find had stuff in it that I knew she'd want to read," "like, um... how good her eggplant parmigiana was and how her punishments were fair and just and about how I wanted to marry someone just like her." "A fake diary." " You kept a fake diary." "That's sick." " Yep, and I kept it in the first place I'd knew she'd look," " under my mattress." " That's where I kept mine." "Unfortunately." "Well, where'd you keep the real one?" "Safety deposit box at First National." "What?" "How'd you get a safety deposit box?" "You were a kid." "I was tall." "What did you put in that one?" "Well, certainly nothing I'd have to write with my pants down." "Yeah, if your pants were down, the only thing you could write is, "Hey, where's everybody going?"" " What?" " I don't know!" "Freak." "Hi, Ma." "Hello, Raymond." "Listen, Ma, about the journal..." "I want to apologize for what... you saw in there." "Um... could you not look at me while I say this?" "All right." "Um... you know, when you're 14, the world is a very confusing... and sexy place." " Ma, come on." " Oh." "So I just want you to know that I outgrew all that stuff, okay?" "And I don't do that stuff anymore, hardly." "So I'm sorry that you had to see that, and I just want you to know that I'm not still some kind of weirdo, all right?" "So I'm gonna go take a shower" " and maybe you want to do the same." " Raymond." "Raymond, do you think I'm a prude?" "What?" "Do you think all that stuff is why I'm upset, what you did as a teenager?" "I don't care about your happy dreams." "All right, Ma." " Or where you have your little hair." " Ma, stop it!" "Or how you went into my sewing kit for my measuring tape." "Oh, God!" " Raymond." " Oh oh!" "Oh, come on, grow up." "That's not what I'm upset about." "I mean, give me a little credit." " Please stop talking!" " No, I will not." "As if you've forgotten October 9th, 1974." "I have to forget everything now." "Did you forget what you wrote on October 9th?" "I don't know!" "What?" "You still have that?" "Gimme it!" " No no no." "No." " No, gimme it, gimme it, Ma!" ""October 9th, 1974."" "A single entry on this particular day." ""Not much to report, except..." "I e-hat my Mom."" "That's it?" "There's nothing else on the page." "No reason for it before or after." "Just here between" ""l dropped a pencil to look up Mrs. Hustwick's dress,"" "and "Today Mrs. Hustwick caught me doing the pencil thing."" "Just this sentence." "No exclamation point after," "like you were having some sort of a tantrum." "It's just written like a fact." ""l e-hat my Mom."" "Well, so what, Ma?" "That doesn't mean anything." "Then why did you write it?" "Was it something I did?" "I don't know." "It was probably nothing that you did." "Oh, so it's what I thought." "You just generally hated me." "What are you talking about?" "I was a kid." "Every kid probably wrote that." "Robby didn't." "You want to know what he wrote on the same day?" "Oh, no." "No." "No, Ma." ""Terrific chicken tonight."" " That's a fake book, Ma!" "No, that's a decoy." " What?" "The real one's in a safe deposit box at First National!" " You know how crazy you sound." " It's true!" "We're not talking about your brother." "I need to know why you wrote that." "I don't know, Ma!" " Do you know when this feeling began?" " No." "No." " Do you know when this feeling ended?" " No." "I see." "Oh, come on, Ma." "What?" "I don't hate you." "I never hated you." "I don't know why I wrote that." "I'm sorry." "Okay, I'm sorry." "That was a terrible thing to write." "I was wrong to ever write that." "You know, I didn't really wanna be a tap dancer, either." " Okay, are we okay now?" " Yes." "Oh oh, I guess we are." "Okay." "Hey, Ray, it's 5:00." "You were gonna pick up the kids." "Oh, all right." " Everything all right?" " Yeah, everything's fine." "I apologized." "Everything's fine." "Wait a minute." "Did you say that you apologized?" "He's a good boy." "Wait, he apologized to you for you reading his journal?" "No, no, that would be stupid." "I apologized because I wrote "l e-hat my Mom" in there." "Who cares what you wrote?" "That was 25 years ago." "Yeah, but, you know..." " Do you know how sick that sounds?" " Debra." " You don't understand." " No no, you know what?" "The problem is I do understand." "I mean, when is this gonna stop?" "How could you make him apologize for something that you did wrong?" "Excuse me?" "How could you make your son apologize for private thoughts he had 25 years ago?" "I mean, don't you see how wrong that is?" "P-shut u." "I just want to ask you something." "Do you ever have any doubts about how good a mother you are?" " Yes, of course" " No no, I mean severe doubts." "Have you any idea what it's like to be married to a husband who never helps you at all?" "Go ahead." "And when you go to him for support, he only enhances those doubts?" "That was my life." "Imagine little Michael, who loves you, who lights up whenever you get near him." "Imagine him at 14, and he doesn't talk to you anymore." "And you don't want to push him, so you just give him more love." "And then one night you make him his favorite dinner, and you try to give him a kiss good night, and he goes up the stairs with a grunt." "And you come across his journal, and you open it, and it says, "l hate my Mom."" "I wouldn't wish that on you, Debra." " Ray." " What?" "Apologize to your mother." "I" " I already did." "Do it again!" "No no, look, that's all right, dear." "That was 25 years ago." "But there is one thing I would like." "Could you cross that out, dear, please?" "Okay." "And what would you like to write there?" ""l... e-lov..." " my Mom."" " Oh, that's so nice." "And could you date it there?" "Okay, and initial it there." "And here." "Hey, what are you doing?" "Just a little light reading." "What?" "Could people not read my journal?" "Gimme it." "No, come on, some of this is cute." "Listen." ""Today I kissed Shelly for the first time."" "Shelly was a turtle."