Etiquette and Vitriol by Nicky Silver (classic fiction .txt) 📗

horrible person really. For years now I’ve tried to convince myself that her death was somehow tragic to me, that she was a fine person. But she wasn’t and it wasn’t. She made me feel completely inadequate. She was very beautiful, you know. And tall and thin. She looked like Audrey Hepburn. I hated her. Her death was my liberation.

SERGE: You hated Audrey Hepburn?!

AMANDA: God no. I hated my mother. After she died I flourished for the first time. I lost all my weight and took control of my future.

SERGE: The two of you should start a club! He drones on all the time about his mother.

OTTO: She’s a nightmare!

SERGE: What’s wrong with you people?

AMANDA: Do you like your mother?

SERGE: Of course!

OTTO and AMANDA: Why?

SERGE: She’s my mother. I love her. She’s charming and witty and she believes in me. She instilled in me the confidence that lets me do anything I put my mind to.

OTTO and AMANDA: Oh.

SERGE: My father, on the other hand, is a turd.

OTTO: Listen to that! He’s so pithy. It would take me paragraphs to say what he says with a word! That’s the man I love! I hope you don’t mind if I have a nibble while we catch up, Betty. I’m starving! I haven’t eaten in minutes!

(He pulls a bag of bagels from his bag and eats as he talks) Help yourself to a bagel if you want, BUT DON’T TOUCH THE CINNAMON-RAISIN, they’re my favorite—I will never forget the first time I saw him! Talk about your some-enchanted-evenings! Do you remember how popular I was in school? I was the best-liked Jewish person in our class. I had more friends than I knew what to do with. Well, I had friends. NO ONE LIKED ME! No one’s ever liked me! Do I smell funny? You’d tell me if I smelled funny, wouldn’t you, Betty? No, no, don’t answer that. I bathe and if I smell funny there’s nothing more I can do about it, so I’d just as soon not know it.—Where was I? Oh yes, we met at Barneys—

AMANDA: Department stores are meat markets!

OTTO: It’s so true. Housewares are the worst! Anyway, he took me away with him, for a weekend in Bimini—

SERGE: I never did any such thing!

OTTO: Ooooo, he’s got a terrible temper!

SERGE: I’ve never even been to Bimini!

OTTO: I think he’s capable of anything.

AMANDA: I’VE been to Bimini.

OTTO: I keep warning him, I keep telling him with that temper and a diet void of sugar, he’ll put himself in a grave before he hits twenty!

SERGE: I’M THIRTY NOW!!

OTTO: I rest my case.

SERGE: Get out of my life!

OTTO: Could you love me again if I got out of your life? Could you?

SERGE: If you got out of my life? Forever? Yes. Yes, I could.

OTTO: But then I wouldn’t—I’m confused now.

SERGE: God!

(Amanda takes a bagel from Otto’s bag and eats ravenously—it’s a cinnamon-raisin.)

OTTO: We were going to redecorate his house. We went to Conran’s and picked out all new furniture—you look amazing by the way. I can’t get over it. You’ll have to share your diet tips later.—We went to ABC Carpets and found the most precious Persian rugs! We picked china and flatware. I told my mother, who’s in traction, by the by, now that you ask. My analyst says I have a neurotic fixation on my mother. But I ask you, at what point does a fixation become neurotic? You be the judge. DO I SEE RAISINS?!

(Amanda drops the bagel, panicked.)

The point is, we made plans. I went so far as to pick up one of those What-Shall-We-Name-the-Baby books. I voted for Shemuel. He wanted Violet. We bickered. I think it was a religious thing. What do you think?

SERGE: STOP TALKING!!

OTTO: He tortures me! He’s a pig! I weep to dehydration!

AMANDA (Confronting Serge): How can you be so cruel!?

(Otto crawls to his grocery bag, on the floor, and eats.)

SERGE: What?

AMANDA: Look at what you’re doing to him!

OTTO: Yeah, look.

SERGE: You don’t understand the situation.

AMANDA: How you can function under the elephantine burden of guilt you must carry is a conundrum to me!

SERGE: A what?

OTTO: I love the way you talk.

AMANDA: A riddle. It means riddle!

SERGE: Why don’t you just say riddle!?

AMANDA: Look at the state to which you’ve reduced this man!

SERGE: I’ve reduced him to nothing!

AMANDA: Exactly my point!

OTTO: What do you mean by that?

SERGE: How is this any of your business?

AMANDA: Loyalty is everything. When I was fat Betty Pemberton, Otto Woodnick came to my aid when no one else cared if I lived or died.

OTTO: I did?

AMANDA: I was teased mercilessly by pretty girls with tiny waists and prematurely perky breasts. I spent many a long afternoon weeping in fat, solitary misery behind the bleachers. There was one group of particularly venomous anorexics. They pelted me with rocks. They stole my English Lit. midterm. Otto Woodnick came to my rescue.

OTTO: I did?

AMANDA: He stayed up all night and helped me redo it! I only got a C+, but I would’ve had nothing to turn in, if it hadn’t been for Otto’s gallant chivalry.

OTTO: Don’t mention it. Rugalach?

AMANDA: He was sweet and kind and good.

SERGE: Well, he’s none of those things now!

(Otto starts choking.)

AMANDA: And who’s fault is that? I know what kind of feral beast you are! You think you can blithely destroy human beings without remuneration. This fat, loud, gasping, wheezing lump of despair—

(Without missing a beat, Amanda kicks Otto, who is choking, on his back. Something flies out of Otto’s mouth and back into the bag. He resumes eating, contented. There has been no pause in Amanda’s speech.)

—bears no resemblance to the Otto Woodnick I knew! You think I’ll let you toy with Ford the way you’ve toyed with poor, pathetic, now-repulsive Otto?! Well, I’m here to tell you, NO! YOU MAY NOT! You’ve got to be stopped!

OTTO: Who’s Ford?

AMANDA: My husband.

SERGE: My God!

OTTO (Rising): MY RIVAL!

SERGE: I’m not toying with anyone! I’m in love with Ford—

OTTO: Where is he?

AMANDA (Pointing toward the bedroom):