RING 3X
GK: Hello?
SS: Duane, it's your mother. Remember?
GK: Hi, Mom. How are you?
SS: Don't change the subject. I called to see if you're outside.
GK: No.
SS: Why not?
GK: I'm working.
SS: It's so nice out. Go outside. You might meet someone.
GK: Mom----
SS: I worry about you. Scrunched up over that laptop computer like a grasshopper day and night. Trying to write that novel. Honey, you need to live life to write a novel. You can't write a novel about writing novels.
GK: Okay. Thanks for calling.
SS: Listen. I saw an ad in the paper today for a writer. And right away I thought of you. They're looking for someone to write obituaries.
GK: Ma, I don't think so.
SS: It pays.
GK: Ma----
SS: I repeat: it pays.
GK: Come on.
SS: That short story you left here on accident when you came for dinner last week ----the one with the unicorn in the bathtub and the dwarves dancing around the volcano----- nobody is going to pay you for that, Duane.
GK: Okay. Thanks for the advice, Mom.
SS: Why don't you start out by writing my obituary.
GK: Mom----
SS: I want to have it ready when I go --
GK: Mom----
SS: I don't want to die and just disappear like I was nobody. One of those standard "Beloved wife and mother, dearly missed by all who knew her" sorts of obits----- I want something more specific. "She cared for her own even though they turned their backs. (WEEPY) She never stopped loving them. It simply wasn't in her to lose faith in people, even those near and dear who turned a cold shoulder." (WEEPY)
GK: Mom, what are you trying to tell me? Have you been reading those articles about the right to die? Have you? I wish you wouldn't.
SS: Maybe you should write your father's, too.
GK: Mom, it's summer. Let's not talking about dying, Okay?
SS: Duane. We are dying the moment we are born. We are born astride the grave. The light gleams an instant, then it's dark once more.
GK: Mom, that's from Samuel Beckett. Not the cheerfulest writer you ever met.
SS: That was from his play, Waiting for Go-Dot.
GK: Waiting for Godot.
SS: Waiting for Go-Dot.
GK: Whatever.
SS: And I'll tell you one thing. He earned a lot off that play. Waiting for Go-Dot was a huge moneymaker.
GK: Mom, please.
SS: Talk to your father, Duane. You know it means so much to him. (OFF) Hank! If you're at a stopping place, Duane wants to say hi! (ON) Oh and honey: I do not want lilies at my funeral. (OFF) Hank!! (ON) Ok? No lilies. Write that down. (OFF) HANK. (ON) Ok, here he is dear --
(TR BREATHING)
GK: Hi, Dad.
TR: (DELAYED) Hi, son.
GK: You sound busy.
TR: Yup. We're at the mortuary, shopping for coffins.
GK: What??
TR: (PAUSE) Your mom got it in her head that we should get it done, so we're here. She wants the oak and I'm sort of leaning toward the bronze ones. I like that metallic look. Trying to decide between teal and beige. What do you think?
GK: It's whatever you want.
TR: Well, you're the one who'll be looking at it. I won't be.
GK: Right.
TR: I'll send you the brochure.
GK: Dad----
TR: They also got some double-wides so the two of us could share one but I donno. Seems creepy to me, don't you think.
GK: It's whatever you want.
TR: Your mother wants that but she says, "I don't want to force you to lie alongside me if you don't want to."
GK: Right.
TR: You know your mother.
GK: I do.
TR: Okay. Bye, Son.
GK: Bye.
SS: (OFF) Hank! Give me the phone. Don't drop it in the coffin, for gosh sakes. (ON) You there, Duane?
GK: I'm here, Mom.
SS: I was reading an article today about a woman who had a baby and she raised it in a terrarium. A terrarium, Duane. Raised it with a turtle. The kid spent hours and hours in this glass terrarium and she kept getting a bigger one as the kid grew up and guess what----- he turned out just fine. Boy O boy. The things you read in newspapers. He became a mathematician and he has a family and he lives down the block from his mom and they have dinner and enjoy each other and I was a mom 24/7/365 and she left her kid in the terrarium and went to movies and went dancing and now she has grandchildren and (WEEPY) ---- O never mind. Never mind. ---- just promise me you won't get lilies. I hate them.
GK: Okay, Mom. No lilies.
(SS SOBS)
GK: And I'll work on your obituary today so just send me what you want me to include. Okay? Just send me an email with it.
SS: And if Diane Westerhauser outlives me, she is not invited to the reviewal. Remember that.
GK: Gotcha.
SS: And Duane, go outside! But make sure to put on sunscreen, yup.
GK: Alright, Mom. Love you.
SS: Bye honey, love you!
GK: Bye now.
SS: Bye now.