EMILY: Did you put your arms around him or anything?
MARSHA: No, I just started to get a warm feeling. I was so naive. I was fifteen and we used to neck at the door every night and he would get a hard-on? I used to think it was his wallet that had somehow worked its way over, I thought he had very peculiar pockets. Until I was twenty-five years old, I thought it was his wallet.
EMILY: Maybe it was his wallet. What did Tim say? Is he coming over?
MARSHA: Yeah, I can’t believe he’s really coming back after what I did to him last night. I thought he’d be furious.
EMILY: Do you understand why you threw him out?
MARSHA: Of course I do — it was all about Merrill Johnston, it was the first time I’ve ever seen my doctor with a woman. I was much more jealous of that than of Tim Cullen and his little lip-reading flirtation with another girl, but he was the only one around to attack.
EMILY: You know it’s interesting, talking about last night, that story you told before about your goody-goody image of your mother, it’s interesting because it upsets you so much when I get drunk and everything. Did you ever analyze that?
MARSHA: I just don’t think it’s nice.
EMILY: You don’t think it’s nice. Precisely.
MARSHA: Emily, don’t try to make it into a thing of mine. Everybody gets as upset.
EMILY: Joan doesn’t.
MARSHA: Joan is an alcoholic, you can’t take her as a criterion. Do you get upset when she drinks?
EMILY: Very upset.
MARSHA: There you are, because you’re normal. How would you feel if I did what you did last night, if I didn’t recognize you when I got drunk and behaved that way? Would you think it was a peculiarity of yours if you got upset?
EMILY: No, but I’m not sure how upset I would get.
MARSHA: Believe me, you’d get fantastically upset if you saw someone as sick as you. It was incredible. You did not know who I was.
EMILY: Did Tim get upset?
MARSHA: He was ready to leave you on the beach. Everybody was. I had to fight them to go get you — even Vinnie, and then you treated me like your jailer, you told me to leave you alone.
EMILY: Did I really?
MARSHA: That’s what infuriates me, that you don’t even remember. I really can’t take it, Emily.
EMILY: There’s no reason why you should. I don’t think I’m going to be coming out for a while, Marshie. Maybe I’ll take Sick Joan and we’ll go to Woods Hole for a little rest cure — the two sickies.
MARSHA: I think maybe you should.
11. THE CLAM DINNER
VINCENT: Do you have any bread?
MARSHA: Only white.
VINCENT: What kind would you want with clams? Don’t you know the Italian color way of eating? White and white and white: the white wines and white clams and white bread, it’s gorgeous. Were you sitting out here when I pulled up?
MARSHA: I was hovering by the door, I was afraid something happened to you. You took such an inordinate length of time.
VINCENT: You told me to drive slowly, I went purposely slow so you wouldn’t be nervous.
MARSHA: Well I was. I felt like I was waiting for my daddy.
VINCENT: What time did your father used to get home from work?
MARSHA: About six-thirty.
VINCENT: Mine got home at seven-thirty. That’s too late for a young kid to wait up.
MARSHA: Didn’t he work in the neighborhood?
VINCENT: No, but it’s funny, he worked not far from the hospital he died in.
MARSHA: That was near your house.
VINCENT: No it wasn’t. Brooklyn is an enormous long place, it’s a big graveyard.
MARSHA: Don’t eat that black stuff, the foreskin. Peel it back as if you were giving it a bris.
VINCENT: You know when I was sixteen, my mother was dead and I made a New Year’s dinner for a girl at my house. I made her this, but she couldn’t eat it.
MARSHA: Why?
VINCENT: The sight of the penies got her so upset.
MARSHA: You don’t eat that, Vinnie.
VINCENT: Of course you do, are you kidding? It’s the combination of this softness and that hardness that’s the great thing.
MARSHA: I love them. I love seafood.
VINCENT: They’re really exquisite. Don’t ever eat any raw clams though.
MARSHA: I like raw clams.
VINCENT: Okay, get hepatitis.
MARSHA: Boy, I’m glad the weekend’s over.
VINCENT: When’s Timothy coming out again?
MARSHA: I don’t know. I’ll tell you, when I threw him out, I was sure that was the last I’d see of him. The next day, when I finally found him at your house—
VINCENT: As though you were even looking.
MARSHA: No, after I explained to him what had happened, the pressures on me of Emily’s drunkenness on the beach, seeing Merrill Johnston with that blonde, but that it was still very bad of me and I was sorry, and he forgave me, I was really taken aback because most people I know aren’t forgiving.
VINCENT: Catholic. Priest.
MARSHA: You never heard the whole story. On the phone I said you know you left your bathing suit here and everything, Tim, do you want to come and get it? He said yes and then I got very nervous. I thought it was going to be awful, I mean I still thought he must be furious with me. I was doing the dishes when he came in, I had my back to the room.
VINCENT: Were you aware he arrived?
MARSHA: I guess so, but I really didn’t know how to handle it, so I just kept washing the dishes. And he came up behind me and kissed me.
VINCENT: On the neck?
MARSHA: On the cheek. He took me in his arms and held me, and I got fantastic waves of love. I mean I really loved him and he really loved me.
VINCENT: Your father forgiving you.
MARSHA: We talked a little bit and it was very very beautiful, very loaded. I didn’t want him to leave, but he was determined to go.
VINCENT: You’re almost in tears, you know.
MARSHA: I was very sad, but in a deep, wistful, loving way. I walked him out to the car and we talked some more. His last words before he drove off were “sometimes I think I care about you more than I know.”
VINCENT: That’s a beautiful story.
MARSHA: I’ll tell you the weirdest thing though — he said he wouldn’t be at all surprised if the next time he came out you and I were married, and that he didn’t even think it would be so sick.
VINCENT: Don’t you think we should have some white bread?
MARSHA: If we’re getting married, we should definitely have some white bread. I think it would be very sick, don’t you, Vinnie?
VINCENT: I wouldn’t sleep with you, but it would be an interesting experience.
MARSHA: I wouldn’t either.
VINCENT: Why, because I’m too much like a brother?