Coronado - Dennis Lehane [58]
BOBBY What happened?
BOBBY’S FATHER What didn’t? The world shook. Never looked the same after that. One day, we came out of the building at the same time, started talking while we walked to our cars. She had on this blue blouse…
[He swigs some water, leans back against the grave. Beat.]
BOBBY That’s it? The blue blouse? That’s your fucking story?
BOBBY’S FATHER You can’t explain love. When it seizes you, what it does. You end up sounding like an idiot. She wore a blue blouse, we talked, I felt like God gave birth to me that day. How about that shovel?
BOBBY Is she dead?
BOBBY’S FATHER She is to me.
[BOBBY lowers his head for a moment. When he raises it, he wipes at some tears.]
BOBBY’S FATHER Now you know.
BOBBY Now I know. Climb out. Go get the shovel.
[BOBBY’S FATHER climbs out, starts walking toward the car with BOBBY a few steps behind, knife at the ready.]
BOBBY’S FATHER She’d take your breath away, your mother. Most beautiful woman I ever saw. Snatch it out of your lungs.
Scene 13
The DOCTOR and the PATIENT.
PATIENT Let’s say we’d let Hal live.
DOCTOR Okay.
PATIENT He gives me the house and half the money, but he takes my child. That was his plan.
DOCTOR He would have been a better father than—
PATIENT
I know that, I know that. But what about me? And even removing me as a mother from the equation, okay, then what? Hal takes the baby, I get the house. Then what? It’s just the two of us, me and Will. And our love. Our love. Which doesn’t seem so hot after a while if there’s not a living, breathing representative of it to remind us. It’s just love. Two people who fuck on Saturday night if they’re not too tired from deciding where to eat the other six nights. But a child walks into the room like a candlewick? And sometimes, if you’re lucky, just by looking at him you remember you were young once. You lived.
DOCTOR We’re not special.
PATIENT I know. I know.
DOCTOR None of us.
PATIENT I do. I know that now.
DOCTOR Do you?
PATIENT Hey, I’m still getting my head around it, but…
[Beat.]
How long since your wife left you?
DOCTOR I never said my wife left me.
PATIENT How long?
DOCTOR She kicked me out six months ago. She…met someone.
PATIENT You let me believe I knew where you lived.
DOCTOR Well, I do. She doesn’t.
PATIENT So she’s not the perfect wife?
DOCTOR She was never even a very good wife. But I was never even a very good husband. I love her, though.
PATIENT Go back to her.
DOCTOR We don’t work. I mean, I mean, there’s what you want and what you can do. And in between? The world fucking waits to take its bites.
PATIENT Didn’t you know that going in?
DOCTOR Who knows that, going in? I knew the odds were a bit against us. I knew we didn’t really…align. But what do you do with the love? Put it on a shelf?
PATIENT Apparently, you do.
DOCTOR Yes. Apparently.
PATIENT Why’d you sleep with me?
DOCTOR Because I was an asshole.
[Chuckles. Shrugs.]
Because pain does that.
PATIENT It does, huh?
DOCTOR I’m sorry. Broke-down, lost-heart sorry.
[Beat. She smiles. She takes his face in her hands.]
PATIENT I want to give you something.
DOCTOR No. No. This ends.
PATIENT It’s not that. It’s not that. Trust me. Can you trust me?
DOCTOR Not really.
PATIENT Just this once. Pretty please?
DOCTOR Okay, but—
PATIENT Shush. Close your eyes.
[He does. Long beat. She kisses each eyelid once. She steps back. His eyes remain closed for a beat. He opens them. He stares at her and she at him.]
DOCTOR Thank you.
PATIENT Thank you. You probably can’t be a husband, but be a father. Okay?
[She takes several steps backward.]
DOCTOR What about you?
PATIENT Oh, yeah. That.
[She smiles and give him a bow. She waves and exits.]
Scene 14
Lights gradually up on BOBBY’S FATHER, his head barely above the grave now. BOBBY perches above the hole.
BOBBY’S FATHER I can’t fucking…
BOBBY Keep digging.
BOBBY’S FATHER Give me a break.