Authors: Tracy Letts

August: Osage County (16 page)

BOOK: August: Osage County

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VIOLET: Everyone’s got this idea I’m mean, all of a sudden.

IVY:
Please
, Momma.

VIOLET: I told you, I’m just telling the—

BARBARA: You’re a drug addict.

VIOLET: That is the truth! That’s what I’m getting at! I, everybody listen . . . I am a drug addict. I am addicted to drugs, pills, ’specially downers.
(Pulls a bottle of pills from her pocket, holds them up)
Y’see these little blue babies? These are my best fucking friends and they never let me down. Try to get ’em away from me and I’ll eat you alive.

BARBARA: Gimme those goddamn pills—

VIOLET: I’ll eat you alive, girl!

(Barbara lunges at the bottle of pills. She and Violet wrestle with it. Bill and Ivy try to restrain Barbara. Mattie Fae tries to restrain Violet. Others rise, ad-lib.)

STEVE: Holy shit—

IVY: Barbara, stop it!—

CHARLIE: Hey, now, c’mon!—KAREN: Oh God—

(Violet wins, wrests the pills away from Barbara. Bill pulls Barbara back into her seat. Violet shakes the pill bottle, taunting Barbara. Barbara snaps, screams, lunges again, grabs Violet by the hair, pulls her up, toppling chairs. They crash through the house, pursued by the family.

Pandemonium. Screaming. Barbara strangles Violet. With great effort, Bill and Charlie pry the two women apart. Mattie Fae and Johnna rush to Violet, tend to her.)

VIOLET
(Crying)
: Goddamn you . . . goddamn you, Barb . . .

BARBARA: SHUT UP!

(To the others)
Okay. Pill raid. Johnna, help me in the kitchen. Bill, take Ivy and Jean upstairs.
(To Ivy)
You remember how to do this, right?

IVY: Yeah . . .

BARBARA
(To Jean)
: Everything. Go through everything, every counter, every drawer, every shoe box. Nothing’s too personal. Anything even looks suspicious, throw it in a box and we can sort it out later. You understand?

CHARLIE: What should we do?

BARBARA: Get Mom some black coffee and a wet towel and listen to her bullshit. Karen, call Dr. Burke.

KAREN: What do you want me to say?

BARBARA: Tell him we got a sick woman here.

VIOLET: You can’t do this! This is
my
house! This is
my
house!

BARBARA: You don’t get it, do you?
(With a burst of adrenaline, she strides to Violet, towers over her)
I’M RUNNING THINGS NOW!

(Blackout.)

ACT THREE

SCENE 1

The window shades have all been removed. Nighttime is now free to encroach.

At rise: the three sisters in the study. They share a bottle of whiskey. An inflatable mattress, covered with a thin sheet, now lies on the study floor.

Elsewhere in the house: a game of spades in the dining room—Charlie and Mattie Fae versus Jean and Steve. Little Charles sits by himself in the living room, watching TV. Bill sorts through paperwork on the porch. Violet, pensive, wearing a robe, her hair wrapped in a towel, sits at the window on the second-floor landing.

KAREN: The doctor really thinks she needs to go to an institution?
Does
she need to go? Did he examine her?

BARBARA: Dr. Burke says she may be brain-damaged. “Slightly brain-damaged.” I told him he was “slightly incompetent” and I hoped some day soon he’d be “slightly dead.” He claims not to know she was taking so much. That’s why he’s eager to put her away, he’s afraid of a malpractice suit. I told him I was considering it. Irresponsible shithead—

KAREN: Why did he write so many prescriptions? Doesn’t he know—?

BARBARA: It’s not just him; she’s got a doctor in every port—

IVY: Here’s how she does it: she sees a doctor for back spasms and gets a prescription. Day or two later she goes back, says she lost her pills and he writes her another one. Then next week she pulls a muscle, more pills, then the dosage is wrong, more pills, over and over, until she makes one too many trips and he says I’m not prescribing anymore. And she pulls a sheaf of prescription receipts out of her purse and says, “I’ll go to the AMA and have your ass in court for over-prescribing me.” She genuinely threatens these men and they give in to her.

BARBARA
(To Ivy)
: You knew this was going on again?

(Ivy shrugs.)

Different tactic today, just at her wounded best, this wilting hothouse flower. Which made me look like Bette Davis. I tried to goad her into it, you know, “C’mon, Mom, give him your speech about the Greatest Generation. Tell him about the claw hammer.” I was like that guy in the cartoon with the frog that only sings for him.

IVY: It wouldn’t have done any good, Dr. Burke’s part of the same generation.

BARBARA: “Greatest Generation,” my ass. Are they really considering
all
the generations? Maybe there are some generations from the
Iron Age
that could compete. And what makes them so great anyway? Because they were poor and hated Nazis? Who doesn’t fucking hate Nazis?! You remember when we checked her in the psych ward, that stunt she pulled?

IVY: Which time?

KAREN: I wasn’t there.

BARBARA: Big speech, she’s getting clean, this sacrifice she’s making for her family, and—

IVY: Right, she’s let her
family
down but now she wants to prove she’s a good family member—

BARBARA: She smuggled Darvocet into the psych ward . . .
in her vagina
. There’s your Greatest Generation for you. She made this speech to us while she was clenching a bottle of pills in her cooch, for God’s sake.

KAREN: God, I’ve never heard that story.

IVY: Did you just say “cooch”?

BARBARA: The phrase “Mom’s pussy” seems a bit gauche.

IVY: You’re a little more comfortable with “cooch,” are you?

BARBARA: What word should I use to describe our mother’s vagina?

IVY: I don’t know, but—

BARBARA: “Mom’s beaver”? “Mother’s box”?

IVY: Oh God—

KAREN: Barbara!

(Laughter, finally dying out.)

I’m sorry about you and Bill.

IVY: Me, too, Barb.

BARBARA: If I had my way, you never would’ve known.

KAREN: Do you think it’s a temporary thing, or . . . ?

BARBARA: Who knows? We’ve been married a long time.

KAREN: That’s one thing about Mom and Dad. You have to tip your cap to anyone who can stay married that long.

IVY: Karen. He killed himself.

KAREN: Yeah, but still.

BARBARA: Is there something going on between you and Little Charles?

IVY: I don’t know that I’m comfortable talking about that.

BARBARA: Because you know he is our first cousin.

IVY: Give me a break.

KAREN: You know you shouldn’t consider children.

IVY: I’m almost forty-five, Karen, I put those thoughts behind me a long time ago. Anyway, I had a hysterectomy year before last.

KAREN: Why?

IVY: Cervical cancer.

KAREN: I didn’t know that.

BARBARA: Neither did I.

IVY: I didn’t tell anyone except Charles. That’s where it started between him and me.

BARBARA: Why not? Why wouldn’t you tell anyone?

IVY: And hear those comments from Mom for the rest of my life? She doesn’t need any more excuses to treat me like some damaged thing.

BARBARA: You might have told us.

IVY: You weren’t going to tell us about you and Bill.

BARBARA: That’s different.

IVY: Why? Because it’s you, and not me?

BARBARA: No, because divorce is an embarrassing public admission of defeat. Cancer’s fucking cancer, you can’t help that. We’re your sisters. We might’ve given you some comfort.

IVY: I just don’t feel that connection very keenly.

KAREN: I feel very connected, to both of you.

IVY
(Amused)
: We never see you, you’re never around, you haven’t been around for—

KAREN: But I still feel that connection!

IVY: You think if you tether yourself to this place in mind only, you don’t need to actually appear.

KAREN: You know me that well.

IVY: No, and that’s my point. I can’t perpetuate these myths of family or sisterhood anymore. We’re all just people, some of us accidentally connected by genetics, a random selection of cells. Nothing more.

BARBARA: When did you get so cynical?

IVY: That’s funny coming from you.

BARBARA: Bitter, sure, but “random selection of cells”?

IVY: Maybe my cynicism flowered with the realization that the obligation of caring for our parents was mine alone.

BARBARA: Don’t give me that. I participated in every goddamn—

IVY: Until you had enough and got out, you and Karen.

BARBARA: I had my own family to think about.

IVY: That’s a cheap excuse. As if by having a child you were alleviated of all responsibility.

BARBARA: So now I’m being criticized for procreating.

IVY: I’m not criticizing. Do what you want. You did, Karen did.

BARBARA: And if you didn’t, that’s not my fault.

IVY: That’s right, so don’t lay this sister thing on me now, all right? I don’t buy it. I haven’t bought it for a long time. When I leave here and leave for good I won’t feel any more guilty than you two did.

KAREN: Who says we don’t?

BARBARA: Are you leaving here?

BOOK: August: Osage County

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Read Book Download Book

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