(PHONE RINGS 3X, PICKUP)
GK: Hi. This is Duane.
SS (MOM, ON PHONE): Duane?
GK: I can't come to the phone right now.
SS: Oh for heaven's sake.
GK: Please leave a message after the beep. (BEEP)
SS: Honey, it's your mother. Are you standing there listening to your machine? Pick up. Duane? This is Mother. I'm talking to you. HELLO???
(CLICK)
GK: Mom? I just walked in the door. How are you?
SS: Where were you, Duane? It's late.
GK: I was out with friends, Mom.
SS: Friends? Ohhh. Plural friends? Or someone very special?
GK: It was a party at someone's house.
SS: Whose house?
GK: Someone I know.
SS: What's her name? Oh, I'm sorry. I shouldn't pry. I know that. I withdraw the question. Forget that I mentioned it. Just erase it from your mind. Erase, erase, erase.
GK: How are you, Mom?
SS: Oh, I've been better. I've been thinking about getting myself a big old prescription for Vicodin and spending the rest of my life in a beautiful fog.
GK: What's wrong, Mom?
SS: What isn't wrong? Anyway, enough about me. I'm going to make you an apple pie, Duane. I haven't done that for years because of the crippling arthritis in my hands but I am going out to an apple orchard tomorrow, one of those Pick Your Own orchards, and I am going to climb up a ladder to the very tippy-top of the tree so I can get the freshest apples and I'll bring them back to the house and bake you an apple pie just like I used to.
GK: Mom, why don't you just go to the store-----
SS: "Why don't I just go to the store?" Because you're worth more, Duane. Even though you can't seem to finish that novel you've been working on for twenty years and even though you can't keep a girlfriend for more than two weeks, still, you're my son. I'll never forget the night you were conceived. Boy O boy.
GK: Mom-----
SS: Your dad and I had a wonderful time making you.
GK: Could we not-----
SS: Your dad and I got lit up on whiskey sours and we were on the couch and he stuck his hand out his barn doors----
GK: Mom, please.
SS: And he had a little sock puppet on it----
GK: Mom, listen, are you on some sort of drug right now---
SS: It was a horse puppet. It said take me to the pasture, and then it whinnied.
GK: Okay, just stop.
SS: You know, I wanted to have another baby but your head was so big. Nine inches.
GK: Mom, could we not talk about this?
SS: Nine inches, Duane. It was like a football with eyes.
GK: Mom, it was a long time ago.
SS: Not to me it wasn't! --- Oh I wish I had had another baby. She would come visit me and bring me treats and take me places. She'd call me up every morning and we'd have a nice long chat. But I couldn't have her. Because of you. Doctors said that you hurt me so bad that if I got pregnant and if I so much as hiccupped the fetus would fall out on the floor. Splat. Your baby sister.
GK: Mom, please.
SS: Anyway. Enough about me. You're an only child, the one who gets all the presents, and keeps all the money when his parents die, and that's just how it is. I wanted to have a happy normal family that does things together and make eye contact and talk but instead we're like the expanding solar system or something, planets zooming farther apart, but ---- whatever. Speaking of family, here's your dad. Say something to him. ---- Hank! Hank! (TR OFF) Here's your son, he wants to talk to you. (TR OFF) What happened to the Oreos? (TR OFF) You didn't eat that whole bag, did you?!?! TWO BAGS?!? Oh Hank.
TR: Hello?
GK: Hi dad.
TR: Hi son.
GK: So mom's going out to an apple orchard?
TR: News to me.
GK: She's going up a ladder and pick apples to make an apple pie?
TR: I didn't hear about that.
GK: Is she taking her medications?
TR: You'd have to ask her.
GK: Maybe you should go along and make sure she's okay.
TR: I was planning on taking it easy tomorrow.
GK: Well, it's up to you.
(A BEAT)
TR: Yeah. Okay, here's your mom.
SS (MOM, OFF): Don't leave the empty Oreo bag here in the middle of the floor, Hank. My God-(ON) Duane, honey, are you still there?
GK: I'm here mom.
SS: Well anyway I should let you go, but I just want you to know that if I fall off that ladder-and I crack my pelvis in two and I'm in a nursing home doped up on Vicodin, I just want you to know that you shouldn't feel guilty about not coming to see me. Live your life, Duane.
GK: Mom----
SS: Just know that the apples I was after were for you, Duane. I picked them for you. To make an apple pie. A big, beautiful apple pie. (SOBS)
GK: Mom.
SS: What.
GK: I don't like apple pie.
SS: What?!? How can you say that.
GK: I've sort of gone over to blueberry.
SS: Honey, blueberries stain.
GK:I know that.
SS: And after I went to all this trouble. Or was going to go to all this trouble. Okay. Never mind. Why waste my time? I'll buy you a blueberry pie at Whole Foods. It'll cost an arm and a leg but what the heck. So I'll drop it off tomorrow. In your entryway. I won't come in and bother you. Okay?
GK: Mom-----
SS: So if you find a blueberry pie in your entryway, that's from me. Because I care.
GK: Okay mom. Got it.
SS: Bye honey. Love you Duane.
GK: Love you mom.