A monologue from the play by Richard Manley
EMMA (mid-fifties)
When I came home from the store the house was…silent. Which was odd because it was dinnertime, before I left I’d put his fish sticks on the table . . .
Radio’d been on, had a small roast in, all the beer was gone, but what’s a roast without a little beer. You’d been sitting there with him,
reading the paper, I was going to say it was perfect, but it wasn’t, hadn’t been perfect in a long time, but it was a…welcome break in the action.
You’d been drinking; did I know you were drunk? Did I knowingly leave him alone with a, a . . . I ask myself that every day.
And the house is silent and everything has been…swiped off the table. And I go upstairs to his room and you’re…
standing there…with this sort of…bewildered look on your face. And Sammy’s in bed. Except that all his clothes are on.
And I say why are his clothes on and you just stare at me and I think well maybe he suddenly got sick, and I, I, I say . . . Sammy?
And he doesn’t answer. And I go to him and pull the covers back and his . . . face . . . is . . . broken. Like . . . jagged!
His . . . cheek! His ear! Just . . . broken! I’m afraid to pick him up! Like he’s . . . going to fall apart! For years I had dreams that he’s falling apart!
And you’re saying it’s OK, but in this . . . REALLY . . . drunk way that sounds like…ishokee. Ishokee, and it’s like this voice comes to me: run.
And . . . bam! I’m downstairs. Trying to call 911, trying to keep him from falling apart, you’re coming down the stairs,
I grab a knife from the drawer, bolt out the door, make it to the car, you’re coming out like Frankenstein, I dropped the knife or I could’ve stabbed you.
So yeah, I grab you by the f***ing neck. Scratch the sh*t out of you. And you kind of topple backwards into the mud and and…suddenly I’m driving.
I mean did you hit him? Did you drop him? Did you shake him? Did you throw something at him? Was it an accident?
Can you tell me it was an accident? Just tell me! I think you should! I think you should be able to remember why I had to go and take him like that!
And I think you should remember why we had to go and spend our…whole f***ing lives without you!
