"How did the week go?" "This week and previously applause with loud." "What happens between then and now?" "I go home." "What do you think of the life you chose?" "It's a nasty hangover." "My life." "Are you upset with me?" "Because I said I wouldn't come to your play?" "Isn't there anyone else you'd like to ask instead?" "I'd really like for my mother to be able to be there." "Twenty years ago you were afraid you didn't have the strength to see your mother through her death." "Now your sister is dying and you're terrified again." "I got the result for the brca1 test." "It will give us something to talk about next week." "Is this normal?" "What?" "For it to be so hard to get started, you know, to sit here for so long and not say anything?" "It's actually only been a minute or two, but yeah, it's quite common." "If I didn't say anything for the whole hour, would you say something eventually or would you just sit there?" "45 minutes later..." ""It's time." "We'll pick up here next week."" "Eventually I would say something, yeah, but the silences are instructive." "How long before you intervene?" "What's the record?" "What's the longest silence by a patient?" "20-25 minutes." "Yeah?" " Who blinked first?" " I did." "Finally I said, "what are you thinking about?"" "And she said, "I've just been sitting here wondering when you were gonna say something."" "So what are you thinking about?" "So last week as you were leaving you said that you'd gotten the results of your test, but you hadn't looked at them yet." "I'm not ready to talk about that yet." "How come?" "Did you look at the results?" "Izzy..." "I'm sitting here thinking about izzy." "You've heard from her?" "Only when she wants something." "Last week I got an email, a text, three messages on my voicemail." "It's more communication than I've had from her in months." "She wanted to download some music and needed my password." "Well, maybe that was her way of breaking the ice." "Oh, by whining and begging, issuing demands?" "You sound like you're kind of angry with her." "Maybe it's time r you to see her." "I did." "When?" "This week." "I had her scarf, remember?" "Oh yes, the one that you took from Tricia's." "And some other things." "I had a t-shirt that she loved and some paperbacks." "I stuffed them all in a backpack and I went down to her school and ambushed her." "Ambushed her?" "Well, if I'd told her I was coming, she never would have stayed put." "Anyway, she was out front, chatting with some friends on the steps." "She looked very grown-up, chic, full of life." "I just stood there and watched her for a few minutes." "And what was that like?" "It was sort of surreal." "It was like looking into the future." "Who is this young woman?" "I mean, where'd she come from?" "I don't know." "She..." "She looked sort of confused when she saw me, surprised." "Her friends were gawking." "And then this confident young woman just evaporated in front of my eyes and she went back to being this sullen, obnoxious little..." "Well, they're grown-ups around their friends." "But they're... they're still children with us." "Did you speak to her?" "She always licks her lips when she gets nervous, you know?" "It's compulsive." "She did it all the time when she was a child." "She used to have this red ring of irritation around her mouth." "She started doing that when she was talking to me." "I said, "honey, don't do that,"" "and I offered her some chapstick." "You would have thought that I tried to scald her with a hot poker." "I mean, she just fled." "And did that hurt you?" "Oh no." "I'm used to stuff like that." "That didn't hurt me." "What she did after hurt me." "What did she do?" "She texted me." ""Thanks for bringing the scarf." "You should call Trish." "She's really sick now." "She looks like a skeleton."" "It's always about Trish." "You know, I haven't seen my daughter for months..." "I mean, not really, not in any meaningful way." "She's been spending every waking minute with my sister." "I finally reach out to her." "I see her once, and what does she do?" "She texts me about Trish." "How did you feel when you heard that Patricia looked like a skeleton?" "Well, how do you think I felt?" "I don't know." "I'm finding it kind of hard to read your reaction, but I imagine that it must have been hard to hear." "It was very hard." "I couldn't even take it in." "I just texted Izzy back and said, you know, "great seeing you, darling."" "And "I'll call Trish after the show."" "And did you?" "Why?" "You agree with Izzy?" "You think I should call my sister?" "Yes, I do." "I think that you should call your sister." "Well, I went out and got laid instead." "I know, I know you're judging me, but I don't care." "I haven't been with anyone since Russell." "25 and very handsome." "No body fat... none." "Actually I was a little worried." "Ithought," ""I wonder if he gets cold in the winter."" "Part of me wanted to fuck him, part of me wanted to take him home and wrap him in a blanket and give him a great big meal." "It was that maternal-erotic thing you were talking about." "So this man that you..." "Oh, he's in the cast..." "Eddie, Eduardo." "Well, you know the script, right?" "He is one of Maxine's houseboys." "After the preview I went out for a quick drink with the cast." "And I was gonna call Tricia afterwards, when I got home." "I knew she'd be up." "She sleeps during the day and then she's up at night..." "you know, the morphine." "You haven't done that before, have you... gone out with the cast?" "Well, they've been bugging me." "I've just been avoiding it." "He kept buying me martinis." "I'm a lightweight." "I only need one drink." "But halfway through the third I asked him to show me where he lived, just like that." "Wasn't that bold of me?" "Do you think it was the alcohol that made you bold?" "Didn't hurt." "Two years." "I kept telling myself, "don't worry, Frances, it's like riding a bicycle."" "And was it?" "He took off my shirt and touched me, and I thought I was gonna lose it." "I mean, he loved my breasts." "You sound surprised." "I'm not 25 or synthetic, if you know what I mean." "And he just kept kissing them and touching them." "Well, I forgot how sensitive they are." "Are you shocked?" "No." "Oh please." "Are you trying to shock me?" "No, I just know how squeamish you are." "What about my behavior would make you think I'm squeamish?" "Well, your whole life seems squeamish to me." "I mean, no wonder Trish loved you so much." "She always had a thing for repressed men." "I'm..." "I'm struck by the fact that you went out and that you had sex for the first time in two years when you were confronted by the very real image of your sister being sick... very sick." "What's the connection between the two events?" "I wanted to feel good instead of bad." "Do you think there might be anything else?" "No, but clearly you do." "So why don't you just tell me what it is?" "Well, let me ask you something:" "Had you opened your test results by that night?" "No." "Have you opened them since?" "The first thing that you mentioned about having sex with this man was how good he made your breasts feel." "I know that you've talked about not being able to imagine having mastectomies if the test proved positive." "Do you think you might have been looking to shield yourself, to arm yourself with reasons not to have the operation, to be reminded that your breasts are sensual and that you cannot imagine ever losing them?" "I thought about reading the results after sleeping with Eddie." "I thought, you know, time to face reality." "I left there at 3:00 A.M." "I just..." "I couldn't stay any longer." "Why not?" "I was just lying awake, staring at him." "He was tangled in the sheets." "He looked so impossibly young." "So how did you feel when you went home?" "You told me before that your house felt empty." "No, I was relieved." "It was good to be alone after all that intimacy." "I got home." "I put on some Lucinda Williams." "That seemed appropriate, you know." "She's all about heartbreak and longing." "And I smoked a little pot." "And I sat there staring at the envelope." "So did you open it?" "I couldn't." "I mean," ""I'll open this envelope," I thought," ""and I'll find out I'm gonna be dead in five years, and then what?" "Who am I gonna call to help me through this?"" "So I just sat there staring at it." "And then the pot eventually made me sleepy." "I went to bed." "So who do you think of when you say that you want somebody to get you through this?" "I don't know." "I mean, Tricia's got all these people getting her through it." "I mean, she's got my daughter, right?" "She's got an army of girlfriends on top of that." "She's probably got Russell, you know, delivering meals or something." "He always wished that I could be more like her." "Why do you say that?" "Oh, just the way they'd look at each other when she'd come over for dinner..." "I knew." "Are you saying that they looked at each other in, what, a sexual way?" "No, Russell would never have slept with her." "She wasn't beautiful enough." "She set us up because she wanted to keep him in her life." "Are you suggesting that Tricia used you to stay close to Russell for some kind of emotional affair?" "You think she's so perfect, you know." "Tricia has everybody convinced she's some kind of a Saint." "Except you?" "You don't see her like that?" "Guess who else had sex this weekend." "Izzy and Miller." "How do you know that?" "Izzy emailed Trish." "Yeah, she wrote," ""I'm glad we got that over with." "It wasn't as bad as I imagined it would be."" "What's gonna happen to that girl?" "First her grandmother, then her aunt, quite possibly her mom." "She's gonna feel doomed." "Doomed to lose her mother?" "Tricia's favorite statistic... 87% chance that you'll get breast cancer if you test positive for the gene." "That's my fate." "But that doesn't have to be your fate." "Izzy doesn't have to be doomed to lose her mother." "So you still feel, if the test is positive, that you'd rather develop cancer than have your breasts removed?" "Yes." "And what if you do develop cancer?" "What then?" "Trish was a fool... a double mastectomy for what?" "I'm guessing she thought it might save her life." "Yeah well, it didn't." "She spent the last year of her life looking like..." "My mother knew better." "She refused, you know." "When they found the tumor, she had a lumpectomy finally, but she did not let the doctors take her breasts." "And you understood her decision." "I did." "I think Tricia had those operations just to spite mama, you know, to reject her vanity." "And by extension reject yours, just like Izzy rejects you..." "Yes." "...Shaving her head in solidarity with your sister." "You talked about having no one to get you through opening your test results." "Do you really feel that if you asked Izzy that she would say no?" "Would you please read this?" "These are your test results?" "Yes." " Are you sure that you...?" " Yes." "You know, I'm happy to be here for you." "I'm happy to do this with you." "But I think that you should open the letter." "No." "You don't have to tell me what it says." " Just open it, okay?" " Maybe we should just..." "What, talk about why I want you to do this, Paul?" "Just do it, please." "We can talk about it afterwards." "What does it say?" "Read it, Frances." "Please." "It's negative." "Is it negative?" "Am I reading it right, Paul?" "Is this...?" "That's what it says." "Oh my God." "I'm very relieved." "Thank you." "Thank you." "Yes, it must be a huge weight lifted." " This means Izzy too." " Does it?" "That would have been her inheritance... cancer." "It's unbelievable really." "Isn't this unbelievable?" "Yes, it's..." "it's great news, yes." "And not only are you now freed from this awful worry about Izzy, about your own health, but you can now go see your sister." "What is that supposed to mean?" "You no longer have to fear that she'll torment you about having that procedure." "No no, I can't see my sister." "Why not?" "I'm not going to see my sister because she'll ask about this." "She'll ask about the results." "And I'll have to tell her the truth." "I can't lie to Tricia." "Why would you not want to tell her about the results?" "They're good." "They're the best possible outcome." "They couldn't be better." "She's dying, okay?" "How would you like it if you were dying and I came to you and said," ""hey, guess what." "I get to live."" "If that person were my sister, I would be very very glad." "Patricia will be relieved knowing that Izzy will have a mother, knowing, in all likelihood, that you'll live an average lifespan." "How do you know what her reaction will be?" "I don't really know." "I'm just predicting, knowing what I know about Patricia." "That would be a normal response." "Oh, I thought you're not supposed to use words like "normal."" "Okay, let me put this as plainly as I possibly can." "You need to see your sister before she dies." "You don't have any reason not to." "The reason you thought you had no longer exists." "Well, I don't want to hurt her." "She won't be hurt." "She'll be pleased." "You know, I hope she's more pleased than you are." "I mean, don't you think you could be a little happier for me?" "I know that you've been expecting the worst possible outcome." "You've been preparing yourself for bad news, understandably." "But you cannot let your confusion or the mixed feelings that you have about this genuinely good news stand in the way of dealing with your sister." "You need to see your sister before she dies." "Oh, you know, what the hell happened between the two of you anyway?" "Sorry?" "No, the way you talk about her..." "It's like you're still in love with her." "Still?" "Why do you say that?" "Well, that's what she told me... that you were in love with her back then." "Were you?" "No." "Well, she thinks you were." "So clearly she's deluded." "She was in love with you." "You are so angry with your sister." "Is it because she's dying and she needs you and you're scared that you won't be able to help her, that you won't even be able to stay in the room with her, that her illness will be too much for you to bear" "and you'll run away from her just as you ran away from your mother?" "It'll kill me." "It won't kill you." "It's all gone, Paul..." "her eyelashes, her hair, her breasts... gone." "It'll kill me." "She's the one who's dying, not you." "It is not gonna kill you." "If you don't do it now, you'll always regret it."