ERIN
How
drunk do you think we’re going to be by the time that comet gets here?
JENNA
Shitfaced,
I hope.
ERIN
People are
going to stay sober for this. Can you
believe that? The world is ending, and
people are going to be stone-cold sober for the whole thing. What the hell is that about?
JENNA
They’re nuts.
ERIN
They’re
friggin’ nuts.
JENNA
Jesus.
ERIN
Goddamn right.
(A beat.)
JENNA
You call
Markie?
ERIN
He doesn’t want
to hear from me.
JENNA
What do you
mean he doesn’t want to hear from you?
You’re his mother.
ERIN
Linda told me
not to call. He’s all upset about this—
JENNA
She didn’t tell
him, did she?
ERIN
She tells him
everything. She’s very open with the
kid.
JENNA
You don’t tell
a six-year-old the world’s gonna explode.
What the hell’s wrong with her?
ERIN
They were
saying on the news that—They were giving tips.
About how to tell kids. She saw
it on the news and she did it the way they said.
JENNA
What? How to break it to them gently? ‘Hey Kid, the world’s about to end. You wanna talk about it? Here.
Let’s use puppets.’ There’s no
good way to do it. Tell the kid to go
play in his room and when it happens, at least he won’t spend his last few
minutes on earth having a panic attack.
ERIN
It’s her
choice. She’s his—
JENNA
She’s his
aunt. You’re his mother.
ERIN
She’s the one
who watches him so…
JENNA
Screw her. And why doesn’t she want you calling?
ERIN
I guess as soon
as she told him what was going to happen, he took all his pillows into his
closet, and he was hiding under them like it was some kind of fort. I guess he thinks he’s protecting himself.
JENNA
See? Look what she did.
ERIN
He won’t come
out. Not even to answer the phone, so…
JENNA
I gotcha.
(A beat.)
He’s kind of an
asshole, huh?
ERIN
What do you
mean?
JENNA
He builds this
fort and he doesn’t invite anybody else to come stay in it with him? Not Linda.
Not you—
ERIN
Jenna, the fort’s
pointless.
JENNA
I know that,
but he doesn’t know that. Why doesn’t he
offer some shelter to the rest of us? I
mean, he’s six, what good is the fort going to do if everybody else in the
world blows up?
ERIN
He’s just a
kid. Kids don’t think through things.
JENNA
Yeah, well.
(Pause.)
Billy asked me
today if I’m sad we don’t have a kid. I
said ‘What good would a kid be now?’
He’s so stupid sometimes.
ERIN
You think I was
stupid for having Markie?
JENNA
Of course you
were stupid. You were too damn young.
ERIN
You
didn’t say that then.
JENNA
You don’t tell
somebody the truth when you know damn well they’re going to go ahead and do
exactly what they want to do anyway.
You’re my best friend, you were pregnant—
ERIN
You said ‘Have
the kid.’
JENNA
And you were
going to have that kid no matter what.
What else was I supposed to say? But
I was honest about you letting Linda watch him.
I told you once she started, she’d never let him go. That was a huge mistake you made.
ERIN
Who else was I
going ask? My mother? When she had Jimmy dealing drugs right in the
living room? Right on the front porch
sometimes?
JENNA
I told you I
would have taken him.
ERIN
You never said
that.
JENNA
Yes, I did,
Erin. Yes, I sure as hell, did.
ERIN
You weren’t any
better off then I was back then.
JENNA
What are you
talking about?
ERIN
You were living
with your grandfather in his spare room.
Where were you going to put a baby?
JENNA
That spare room
was huge! You think I couldn’t have fit
a crib in there? I had a sunroom and
everything!
ERIN
You lived three
blocks away from me! Why was I going to
give you my baby if you were that close?
JENNA
So you could
come visit it!
ERIN
I didn’t want
to visit it, Jenna! That was the
point! I didn’t want Markie anywhere
near me. I was all screwed up. God, were you even around back then? Don’t you remember how bad I was?
JENNA
You were fine.
ERIN
No, I wasn’t.
JENNA
Everything
always seems so bad when you’re six years out from it. At the time, it wasn’t that bad. You were young. You were—what?—twenty? Twenty-two?
ERIN
I was still an
adult.
JENNA
Twenty-two’s
not an adult. Nobody’s an adult in their
twenties. That’s why I couldn’t believe
you were having the kid. You were
supposed to be having fun.
ERIN
So you wanted
me to give you the kid? Like you were any more grown up than I was.
JENNA
I was
thirty! I was ready to take care of a
kid. You weren’t.
ERIN
So you weren’t
falling down drunk on the front porch every night next to me, huh?
JENNA
You always try
to make it like I was as bad as you.
ERIN
You just said I
wasn’t even all that bad.
JENNA
You weren’t,
but you always try to make it like you were, and you try to make it like I was
too, and that everything was my fault.
ERIN
I never said
that.
JENNA
You never say
anything. You just put everything you
mean into the nicest kind of words so I can never call you on anything. But I know what you’re getting at, Erin, I
always know.
ERIN
I don’t blame
you for anything, all right? I only
blame myself.
JENNA
You should be
blaming Steve for taking off on you.
ERIN
He didn’t know.
(A beat.)
JENNA
What do you
mean he didn’t know? Of course he knew. What did he think was going to happen? You were going to have the kid and then it
was magically going to take care of itself?
ERIN
Steve didn’t
know I got pregnant.
(A beat.)
JENNA
Are you kidding
me?
ERIN
I called him
this morning to tell him. Six years
later. I said, ‘Hey Steve, remember six
years ago when I said “Good luck in Seattle?”
I should have said, “You’re going to be a father.”’
JENNA
And what did he
say?
ERIN
I don’t
know. It went to voicemail. That was the message I left him. Hopefully he didn’t change his number.
JENNA
You never told
him?
ERIN
He would have
wanted to get married, and get a house, and it all would have been great until
one of us screwed up and then everything would have come tumbling down. I know it.
I knew it then, and I know it now.
I made the right decision.
JENNA
But if he doesn’t
get the message in time, he’s never going to get to meet his kid.
ERIN
Yeah, and I’m
not all that proud about it, but there’s not much I can do now.
(Pause.)
JENNA
You wouldn’t
have been such a bad mother, you know.
Maybe it would have been tough for a few years while you were learning
how to do it, but it would have ended up being all right.
ERIN
So why didn’t
you have kids?
(A beat.)
JENNA
You know why.
ERIN
Because you
were a mess like me? You haven’t been a
mess for awhile now, Jenna. Tonight
excluded. You could have had one.
JENNA
Yeah, well,
there’s that and then there’s…I can’t.
ERIN
What?
JENNA
Have kids. I can’t have ‘em.
ERIN
Why not?
JENNA
We tried. Billy and me.
For a few years. Nothing.
(Pause.)
ERIN
I’m sorry.
JENNA
It would have
been nice to watch Markie, but…you know, I probably would have done the same as
Linda. I probably wouldn’t have wanted to
give him back either.
ERIN
I bet you would
have done just as good as she did.
JENNA
Better than
Linda? Are you crazy? With the teddy bear cookie jars and the
floors you can eat off of?
ERIN
Yeah, she was
born to be a mother. I don’t know who
she learned it from. Our mother was…I
guess she got lucky.
JENNA
Good to know
somebody did.
(A beat.
You should go
see him.
ERIN
Who?
JENNA
Markie. The thing’s not here yet. You can make it over there in time. Maybe it won’t even come until tomorrow like
they said it might. You can have
breakfast with the kid and everything.
ERIN
While he sits
in the closet?
JENNA
So get in there
with him.
ERIN
Jenna—
JENNA
You don’t have
to have some big tearful reunion. Just
say you wanted to stop by. What does he
call you anyway?
ERIN
Erin. He calls me Erin.
JENNA
All right, so
have Linda say ‘Erin wanted to stop by.’
It’s not like it’s unusual, right?
You’ve gone over there before.
ERIN
What good is it
going to do him?
JENNA
It’s not about
doing him any good. It’s about how it’s going
to do you some good. The kid’s dealing
with this the way he’s gotta deal with it, the way that makes him feel good,
you gotta do the same thing. We all have
to do what we have to do to get ourselves through this.
ERIN
Through this
into what? This is it, Jenna.
JENNA
Maybe, maybe
not. But you really want to spend your
last day on Earth sitting in a bar with me doing what we’ve always done? Feeling sorry for ourselves? Bitching about our lives? Thinking about the people we’d rather be
with.
ERIN
You regret all
this? All these years? All the things we did?
JENNA
Regret’s like
saying you know things would’ve been better if you did something
different. I don’t know that. Nobody knows that. I only know what I did and how it turned out,
and yeah, maybe this and maybe that. And
maybe if I could have had kids, I’d be like Linda right now, living in a nice
neighborhood, raising a nice kid, feeling like I did pretty good for
myself. Who knows?
(A beat.)
ERIN
You know why
Linda doesn’t have her own kids?
JENNA
Why?
ERIN
She told me Markie’s
so perfect, what were the odds she was going to have a kid as good as him? I couldn’t tell if that was her trying to
hurt me or tell me I did something good.
JENNA
Erin?
ERIN
Yeah?
JENNA
Go see your
kid.
(A beat.)
ERIN
Okay.
(She gets up.)
Can’t screw a
kid up too much in one night, right?
JENNA
Not unless you’re
my father.
ERIN
You going home
to Billy?
JENNA
I don’t
know. Maybe I’ll stay here a little
longer. Close the bar down one last
time.
ERIN
So this might
be the last time I see you then, huh?
JENNA
Yeah, this
might be it. I mean, I’ll call you when
I see one of the Four Horsemen, but before then, I doubt I’ll have the
time. I want to make sure I go home and
clean my bathroom before I die.
Something about dying with a messy bathroom just doesn’t seem right to
me.
(ERIN laughs.)
ERIN
You know, I’m
sorry that—
JENNA
Don’t go saying
sorry now. We’ll be here all night. Just go.
I got more drinking to do.
(A beat.)
ERIN
You know I
would have done a lot of things different the past six years, but not this—you and
me. I wouldn’t have done this any
different.
JENNA
Me either. Give Markie a hug for me, all right?
ERIN
You got it.
(ERIN leaves. A moment.)
Lights
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