Hurrah at Last
By Richard GreenbergLaurie, a playwright, is having a fever dream. In it, among other things, his mother tells him that she wishes he would die. His mother is a proto-typical Jewish mother. She constantly says, "I'm just disgusted with everything!"
REVA: Ugh, I'm just disgusted with everything! Why are we still here? I want to go home! How long before this thing happens, anyway?
You're supposed to be some sort of writer; is this what you really like? These big, passe, melodramatic scenes where somebody tells a secret and everything changes forever? The way it never happens in real life, or if it does, everything's forgotten by the time the fortune cookies get there?
I admit it. I want you to go. And take your sister along with you while you're at it. Why shouldn't I? You're always upset with me, you're always mocking me. What am I supposed to be, grateful for that? What, the laws of people no longer apply to me?
You two are just waiting for us to die, anyway. I know what I'm talking about. You can't even understand why we're not eager to drop dead. You ask each other: "Why are they reluctant? We're fine with the idea."
Well, let me tell you, it's not like you reach a point and you're fine with the idea. "Serene old age" was invented by a forty-year-old. The real thing is terrifying, it's physically painful, and it's frankly depressing. Whatever may be torturing you now, trust me, you'll be nostalgic for when you hit your father's age.
So why lie? Why pretend there isn't something attractive in the thought that you'll go first? And then, your sister, God willing. Your father, there's no problem - look at the man. Boom, boom, boom, the entire chain link fence of disasters that is my life tumbling like the Berlin Wall - like none of it ever happened. And I start up again. And maybe there's not a shot at a day of - I won't say happiness - but not awful.
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