A Lie of the Mind- Act 3, Scene 1 Lines- LORRAINE

SALLY: Rise and shine! It’s coffee time!

LORRAINE: Did he tell you to say that? He probably did, didn’t he? Where is the humiliation supposed to end?

SALLY: Just try a little sip of soup, Mom. Just a little sip.

LORRAINE: Not from you.

SALLY: Look, you can’t keep blaming me forever. He’s gone. There was nothin’ I could do about it.

LORRAINE: Is there any good reason in this Christless world why men leave women? Is there? Is there any good reason for that? You tell me. You tell me. Isn’t there enough to suffer already? We got all kinda’ good reasons to suffer without men cookin’ up more.

SALLY: There’s always a chance he might come back.

LORRAINE: He won’t come back now. Thanks to you. Not now. I know him. He’s like a stray god. He’s home for a while and you pet him and feed him and he licks your hand and then he’s gone again. I know where he’s gone too. Straight to that girl. You can bet yer bivey on that. She’s got a hold on his mind.

SALLY: Well, Frankie’ll bring him back then. He’ll find him.

LORRAINE: Frankie can’t even find his own zipper. Hows he gonna find his brother?

SALLY: Just try a little soup, Mom.

LORRAINE: I don't want any a’ that slop! Stop tryin’ to pawn it off on me.

SALLY: It’s the same batch you made for Jake.

LORRAINE: I know. Smells like it.

SALLY: Smells all right to me.

LORRAINE: It's ripe.

SALLY: Well, you gotta’ eat somethin’.

LORRAINE: My son's abandoned me! Can't you understand that? He's abandoned me. And you put him up to it.

SALLY: I didn't put him up to nothin’. What was he gonna’ do? Stay here and rot in this room. He woulda’ left sooner or later.

LORRAINE: He's run off to the wild world when he could’ve stayed here under my protection. He could’ve stayed here forever and no one could’ve touched him. Now he's gonna’ wind up right back in prison. In prison, where they’ll eat him alive.

SALLY: Just take a little bit on your tongue. See if you like it.

LORRAINE: Get that stuff away from me! What'sa matter with you! I'm not interested in food. I'm not interested in keeping something alive that's already dead.

SALLY: You're not dead yet! You won't get out of it that easy!

LORRAINE: I know what's going to happen. I can see it plain as day. They'll find him by the highway. That's what’ll happen. Crumpled up. Busted open like a road dog. Then maybe you’ll be satisfied.

SALLY: I don't want anything to happen to him any more than you do. He couldn't stay here.

LORRAINE: I'll get a call. Cop will come to my door. Just like before. Just like with his daddy. I'll wait for that cop. I'll wait right here. Long as I have to.

SALLY: Now don't start imagining things.

LORRAINE: There's nothing imaginary about it. I can see it.

SALLY: What can you see?

LORRAINE: Maybe the same cop will come. The very same cop. I could never figure that out. Why'd they send a cop? Why should a cop be a messenger of death? It's like sending a fireman.

SALLY: You can't let yourself get so worked up over this. You're going to make yourself sick. 

LORRAINE: You sent that cop, didn't you? Back then. Jake never woulda’ done somethin’ like that. He’d a’ come and told me face to face.

SALLY: We were miles away. Mexico. It happened in Mexico. Remember?

LORRAINE: I remember! Don't talk to me like I'm an idiot.

SALLY: We tried to call you that night it happened. We both tried to call you but they said the police had to do it. It was international. I never wanted to send a cop. They said it had to be official.

LORRAINE: Doesn't matter. Official, unofficial, it's the same news. Dead is dead. Nobody can make it undead.

SALLY: You didn't really care one way or the other, did you? You let him go a long time ago.

LORRAINE: He left me! All right? Get that straight in your noggin’. He left me! Not the other way around.

SALLY: You never tried to find him.

LORRAINE: Are you kidding? Man runs off. Into the night. No word. No note. No phone call. Disappears like an apparition and I'm supposed to go track his ass down. Not me, sister. No sir. Not this one. Let him stagger around, lost and wild-eyed if he wants to. Let him bang his head up and down the Alleyways moaning like a baby about some mystery he doesn't even have a clue to. You can't save the doomed! You make a stab at it. You make the slightest little try and you're doomed yourself. Take a look at your brother if you don't believe me.

SALLY: But you never even tried, did you?

LORRAINE: Tried what? Who are you to be judging me now? Who are you? You don't even have a man. never did. 

SALLY: You’re not recommending it, are you?

LORRAINE: Just don’t go accusing me of neglecting your father. You don’t know nothin’ about it.

SALLY: You never even asked me about it.

LORRAINE: About what?

SALLY: Our trip down there. Me and Jake made a special trip. Remember? We found him in his trailer down there.

LORRAINE: So what? Ya’ want a medal or somethin’? You’re his kids, not his wife. Why shouldn’t you try to find him. I don’t wanna’ hear about that stuff now.

SALLY: We really surprised him. I don’t think he’d had a visitor for months.

LORRAINE: Who’d visit him?

SALLY: He didn’t even know who we were at first. Just stood there at the screen door, kinda staring at us like we might be burglars or something.

LORRAINE: Probably drunk. As usual.

SALLY: Nope. Stone cold sober. Didn’t have any money to drink. He looked real weak and vulnerable. The opposite of how he was when he was drinking.

LORRAINE: He was always weak. That never changed.

SALLY: He took us inside and the smell almost knocked me over. No windows. Smelled like dirty laundry and cigarettes and something else. Something almost sweet.

LORRAINE: Booze.

SALLY: Maybe.

LORRAINE: Tiger Rose. That was his baby. Tiger Rose. I musta’ tripped over a million a’ them skinny green bottles.

SALLY: He had all these pictures of us taped to the walls. baby pictures and 4-H Club pictures and pictures of Jake running with a football. but they were all squeezed in between these other pictures. Pictures of Bing Crosby and Ginger Rogers and Ida Lupino and Gene Autry and Louis Armstrong. And there we were kinda’ peeking out between the cracks of these faces. I got the feeling he must have spent a lot of time talking to these faces. Maybe even introducing the pictures of us to the pictures of all these stars. Trying to make a family out of us all. So we'd know each other.

LORRAINE: Yeah, well he shoulda tried that at home first.

SALLY: You can’t condemn him now. He’s dead.

LORRAINE: I’ll condemn him right up to my last breath! He shaped my whole life. Vengeance is the only thing that keeps me goin’.

SALLY: How can you get revenge out of a dead man?

LORRAINE: Because- he’s still alive in me. You understand that? He’s still walkin’ around inside me. He put that stuff into that’ll never go away. Ever. He made sure a’ that.

SALLY: That’s not him. That’s you. If you hadn’t found him, youda’ found somebody else to throw the blame on.

LORRAINE: Yeah, well, you didn’t know him like I knew him.

SALLY: Guess not. Because what I saw down there with Jake was a man who was totally innocent.

LORRAINE: Innocent! That’s a hot one.

SALLY: Didn’t you ever wonder about him? About what became of him?

LORRAINE: Who?