Bad Jews

Philip Ettinger as Jonah, Molly Ranson as Melody, Tracee Chimo as Daphna and Michael Zegen as Liam in the Roundabout Theatre Company production of Bad Jews, directed by Daniel Aukin.

Bad Jews

JOAN MARCUS

Y JOSHUA HARMON

APRIL14 AMERICANTHEATRE 63

PLAYSCRIPT

66 AMERICANTHEATRE APRIL14

Bad JewsBY JOSHUA HARMON

CHARACTERSDAPHNA FEYGENBAUM: 22, Liam and Jonah’s first cousin. Two-thirds body, one-third hair. Thick, intense, curly, frizzy, long brown hair. Hair that clogs a drain after one shower. Hair you find on pillows and in corners of the room and in your refrigerator six months after the head from which it grew last visited. Hair that could not be straightened even if you had four hours and three hairdressers double-fisting blow-driers. Hair that screams: Jew.LIAM HABER: 25, Daphna’s cousin: his mother is the sister of Daphna’s father. Wire rim glasses. University of Chicago Asian studies Ph.D. student. Former Fulbright scholar in Japan. Has as much of a sense of humor as an overdue library book.JONAH HABER: 21, Liam’s younger brother. Sometime–University of Vermont sophomore. Less lanky than his brother. Less brainy. More brawn. More heart.MELODY: 24, Liam’s girlfriend. Short, stick-straight blonde hair. Which she wears with a barrette. To be extra cute. Mousy. She looks like someone who would have been abducted when she was nine but returned to her parents unharmed. Works for a non-profit.

March. Not quite winter, not quite spring.A studio apartment on the Upper West Side. A pull-out sofa (which is pulled out), a full air mattress, which has been inflated, and a twin air mattress, which has not been set up. Guests are coming, preparations have been made.Jonah, in boxers, black socks and a button-down, sits cross-legged, playing a video game. His suit jacket and pants are balled up somewhere in the room.After a moment, he hits pause. Beat. Then he stands up and presses his forehead against the window, which looks out on the Hudson River.The bathroom door opens, which sends Jonah back to his video game. Daphna Feygenbaum emerges from the bathroom in pajamas.DAPHNA: I’m sorry but I still, I mean—you can see the Hudson River! From the bathroom! This apartment…Really, Jonah? Boxers and black socks? Is that supposed to do it for me?Let me—I would never want you to do it for me, you’re my cousin and, gross. Just, like, if you’re at all interested in people of the opposite sex who are not your cousins?She gestures at his current get-up.DAPHNA: Don’t.

Where’s your suit—But before she can ask, Daphna sees Jonah’s suit, balled up. She wants to tell him to take better care of it, but decides not to. She admires it, then hangs it up.DAPHNA: I love that your mom got you a new suit for Poppy’s funeral before he even died.JONAH: He was sick a long time.DAPHNA: Mmm, not really, actually. But still, like, in your mom’s checklist of shit to get done while he was dying it was like, don’t forget, Jonah’s gonna need a new suit for when it happens. It’s great.Give me your shirt. I’ll hang it up, you can wear it tomorrow it’s not dirty give it to—JONAH: No. I want to wear it.DAPHNA: Suit yourself.Daphna watches Jonah playing video games. He senses her watching him.JONAH: What?DAPHNA: Nothing.She can’t help herself.DAPHNA: It’s just, like, in so many cultures, like, I know so many guys AND girls your age who’ve been fighting for years. Gilad’s been in the army five years and he’s just two years older than you, but here you are, not a care in the world, in your boxers, in an apartment your parents bought you! I still can’t get over the fact your parents bought you and Liam this apartment.JONAH: It’s just a studio.DAPHNA: It’s just a studio he says. Do you see the view? Have you seen the view from the bathroom? That’s the Hudson River.JONAH: I know.DAPHNA: An apartment with a view like that, studio or no studio, on Riverside Drive, on 84th Street, I can’t even imagine what it cost.JONAH: It wasn’t too bad.DAPHNA: What’s not too bad, like a million dollars?JONAH: I don’t know.DAPHNA: Holy shit. So what, they were just like, here boys, have an apartment, mwah?!JONAH: No, but Mom turned Liam’s room into an office, so—DAPHNA: Yeah that’ll happen—JONAH: So we only had my bedroom for guests or if Liam came home or, you know, there was a while they thought Poppy might move in—DAPHNA: Are you kidding? Poppy was never moving in here—JONAH: They didn’t know for sure—DAPHNA: Never. He was never moving in, that was never happening. Never.JONAH: Ok but—DAPHNA: My parents wanted him to move in with them but he said he would never do that, he was so insistent he didn’t want to be a burden on—JONAH: Ok! But they weren’t sure and—

DAPHNA: No, they knew—JONAH: then this apartment was for sale and it’s in the building, it’s on their floor, so they got it. I don’t see what the big deal is?DAPHNA: Must be nice, that’s all I’m saying.JONAH: You’re staying here.DAPHNA: Right…JONAH: So I guess it’s good they bought it.DAPHNA: Um, in normal families, Jonah, if people need a place to sleep, they like sleep on the couch, or double up in beds, or even—and this will really shock you—sleep in sleeping bags. They don’t buy a spare apartment on the off chance someone might need to spend the night.JONAH: Whatever. Real estate is a good investment, plus I might maybe live here when I graduate, so it’s not a big deal.DAPHNA: Yeah, no, totally, totally, no biggie.JONAH: Um… you’re not poor.DAPHNA: Compared to your family? We’re like the Joads.JONAH: I don’t know who that is.DAPHNA: You don’t need to. Your parents buy you spare apartments.JONAH: All I’m saying is, you’re not poor.DAPHNA: Are you out of your— The reason I’m an only child, Jonah, is because my parents couldn’t afford another.JONAH: So maybe they were poorer once, but they’re not now—DAPHNA: My parents are public schoolteach-ers. Do you even know the first thing about economics in this country? We are the middle class. The dictionary definition. Your mom hasn’t worked since she had Liam TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO because you’re so rich she didn’t have to.JONAH: That’s not true.DAPHNA: Oh right, my bad, she has a home office now, so she can do what exactly?JONAH: She’s a consultant.DAPHNA: Right. On what?JONAH: I don’t know. Ask her.DAPHNA: Usually, people hire consultants because they’re experts in their fields. In what field does Fanny Feygenbaum profess to be an expert?JONAH: You know that’s not her name.DAPHNA: It’s the name she was born with.JONAH: But you know that’s—DAPHNA: It’s what Poppy called her.JONAH: You’re not Poppy!A really intense beat. Somehow Jonah has hurt Daphna, though he’s not sure how.JONAH: I’m sorry. I didn’t—DAPHNA: No, it’s—I’m just being… Sorry. Totally not your… Today was just like, intensely… intense.JONAH: Yeah.DAPHNA: Ugh. Feelings! Right?JONAH: Yeah.DAPHNA: Yeah.

Joshua Harmon Bad JewsPLAYSCRIPT

Beat. Daphna gets up and tousles Jonah’s hair. She gets a tissue, he turns off his video game, goes to the unmade bed and starts to make it up.DAPHNA: What are you doing?JONAH: Making up the bed?DAPHNA: Liam can make up his own bed.JONAH: Oh, no but, I was gonna sleep here.DAPHNA: Uhh why?Oh, right, I forgot: your parents worship him! So we should totally switch beds, that makes sense. I mean, who cares that we’ve been here for two days dealing with everything when Liam couldn’t even be bothered to show up to his own grandfather’s funeral.JONAH: He’s getting in tonight.DAPHNA: The funeral was today. Not tonight. It happened. It’s over. And he missed it. And I’m sorry, but between you and me, that is

so fucked up.JONAH: It’s not his fault, he—DAPHNA: Jonah, I literally, if I have to hear one more time about Liam dropping his iPhone off a ski lift and not having service for two days, I will literally— He knew Poppy was dying. He should have been checking in. I’m sorry, but he was with—what’s her name?JONAH: Melody.DAPHNA: Melody. He could have used Melody’s phone? If that had been me, if I had gone skiing for spring break despite knowing full well that my grandfather was basically on death’s door, which, I would NEVER have done, but if that had been me—JONAH: Poppy wanted him to go—DAPHNA: If that had been me, I would have been calling home, every day, three times a day,

at least, to check in and see and—and at the very least, I would have told my mom where I was going in case of an emergency, which, the pending death of the most important person in your family is like the reason the word emergency was even invented in the first place. The idea that Liam just like flies off to Aspen with Melody and his like $1200 snowboard when his grandfather is dying and drops his phone off a ski lift which is in and of itself a beautiful metaphor for what money means to him—JONAH: But I don’t mind sleeping on the—DAPHNA: No Jonah! No. He’ll take the twin. He’ll make some snide—but he’ll take the—because I actually literally can’t take the twin air mattress even if I wanted to because with my back, I actually have to have the extra room—but when he starts making a mockery of shiva my blood is just gonna boil—JONAH: He’s not going to mock anyth—DAPHNA: Yes he will! He mocks us any chance he gets. Always has.JONAH: What are you talking about?DAPHNA: What am I talking about? Ok. Example. Example? Example. Two years ago at Passover, when he randomly came home, which was totally random and weird, with his last girlfriend, what’s her face—JONAH: Miyushi.DAPHNA: Miyushi, right, his Peace Corps whore. God she was atrocious. But so my dad was reading a passage in Hebrew, which god forbid one does at Passover, and I look up and he’s giving Miyushi this look across the table—JONAH: What look?DAPHNA: This look, like, this would be over by now if Jewy McJewerson would shut the fuck up. This look like, “I’m above all this,” like, “you and I are on this spiritual enlightenment plane way above everyone else—”JONAH: Come on!DAPHNA: I’m serious. This look he gave her, I’ll never forget it, it stayed with me so strong, and then after seder, our parents had all gone to bed, we were watching TV and Liam was like, “I’m hungry,” even though we’d just had this enormous meal and he went into the kitchen and found these shortbread cookies and even Miyushi was like, “I thought you weren’t supposed to eat that on Passover,” but Liam just smiled, popped a cookie in his mouth and was like, “I’m a bad Jew,” then turned to me even though he knew I was keeping Passover, handed me the bag and goes, “Want one?”“I’m a bad Jew.”JONAH: Not everyone cares about it the way you do.DAPHNA: I’m not asking everyone to! I don’t—I’m not even saying, I’m just saying, I don’t understand why he has to take so much pride in how totally disdainful he is of—


Tracee Chimo (Daphna) and Philip Ettinger (Jonah) in the Roundabout production at the Laura Pels Theatre.

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JONAH: He’s not disdainful—DAPHNA: He is, Jonah! He is. If you choose not to see it, that’s your choice, but the fact remains he looks down on me and looks down on my family—JONAH (On “and looks down”): He does not look down on you! Or your family!DAPHNA: For being what he is but doesn’t want to be and for not hating it. He looks down on us. You know what, let’s just drop it. Ok? Let’s just. Whatever. Let’s just drop it.Long pause.DAPHNA: Whatever.Long pause.DAPHNA: It’s not even worth it.Long pause.DAPHNA: It’s just the reason I bring it up at all is, well, there is a reason, and I hate that I even need to do this but I know if I don’t say something it’ll just be, whatever, so there’s something I want to ask you. Ok?Ok?JONAH: O…k…DAPHNA: Poppy’s chai.I want it.It’s the only thing of his I want. Everything else, count me out, but Poppy’s chai is like… And I’m the only one who that stuff even matters to. You said so yourself, it doesn’t matter to everyone like it matters to me so it makes sense that the person who religion like actually really means something to should get the most religious, I mean, I’m moving to Israel when I graduate? I want to join the army—there are all these weird immigration regulations but in the fall, I’m starting my rabbinical coursework with—did I tell you this? There’s this amazing rabbi who does pre-rabbinical coursework in Haifa? For women? And she’s vegan, and like—I know, a chai is typically worn by, men usually wear them but technically it’s a piece of jewelry. I mean, a medallion on a chain? That’s jewelry, and I’m the only one who wears—this is important to me, Jonah. I wouldn’t be saying something if it wasn’t, you know? And so, like, what do you think?JONAH: I don’t, I mean… it’s not really up to me.DAPHNA: It’s not up to you, but when my mom talked to your mom she was like the kids should work it out, because apparently as it turns out Poppy’s will is like basically useless which I don’t blame him for, at all, but like, no one actually realized that someone would have to actually figure this stuff out at some point but it’s like that point is now here, and, but, so, like…JONAH: I really don’t want to be involved in—DAPHNA: You’re one of Poppy’s grandchildren, you’re involved.JONAH: I don’t know.DAPHNA: You have to know—

JONAH: No. I don’t want it, so just… That’s it.DAPHNA: You don’t?JONAH: No.DAPHNA: So then it’s cool with you for me to—JONAH: I really don’t want to be involved in this—DAPHNA: What about Liam?JONAH: What about him?DAPHNA: Do you think he’ll agree with us, or, like, do you think like, he like, wants it?JONAH: I said I don’t—DAPHNA: Has he said anything to you, or your mom, or—JONAH: You asked me how I felt, I said I don’t want it, that’s it.DAPHNA: Ok. Then I’ll talk to Liam about it. But—ok.Beat.DAPHNA: It is so good to see you! Even under these circumstances, it’s still like—you should visit me. Before graduation.JONAH: What?DAPHNA: Cause that’s just gonna be a clusterfuck. But you should come down some weekend. It’d be fun, don’t you think?JONAH: …Yeah.DAPHNA: Do you have a car? At school?JONAH: I did, but then… not anymore.DAPHNA: There’s a bus. I know there is because some of my friends took it last fall to see Ben Harper maybe, or someone who is definitely not worth getting on a bus and driving four hours to see, but he was playing at your school that weekend and they took a bus, so you should come visit me.JONAH: Ok.DAPHNA: What weekend are you thinking?JONAH: Um…DAPHNA: Cause graduation’s the last weekend of April, and the weekend before that is senior week—don’t ask, and the weekend before that I’ll be studying for finals but so maybe the weekend before that, which is in, like, two weeks. Weird. Would that work?JONAH: Maybe.DAPHNA: Ok, well, um, do you want to check?JONAH: Yeah.DAPHNA: And you’ll let me know…JONAH: Yeah.DAPHNA: Cause I think you would really, really love Vassar, and I want to talk to you about that some more actually, because I know UVM has not been… which really says more about that school than anything about you. I mean that.JONAH: …Thanks?DAPHNA: But the onus is on us now, you know? If we want to maintain these relationships, we’re adults, so it’s not like if our parents make plans then I’ll see you, cause, Poppy’s dead, so our parents are gonna start transitioning into being the next generation of our family and

we’ll be like the parents, you know, like if Gilad and I get married next summer which we’ve been talking about then we’ll have kids in five, six years tops which is why we need to start acting like, like taking responsibility which is why I don’t even know if he wants it but if he does, like, you know, that conversation, if it winds up being a conversation it needs to happen at the right—it needs to happen properly, so if Liam brings it up before I’m—which I don’t even know if he will, but if he does, can you just help me just quash that conversation?JONAH: Uhm…DAPHNA: Cause as long as that conversation happens in the right way, it won’t even be an issue.JONAH: Ok.DAPHNA: Ok what?JONAH: I don’t know.DAPHNA: So are you gonna visit me, or…JONAH: Yeah, I just have to check.DAPHNA: What do you have to check?JONAH: My schedule and stuff.DAPHNA: Um, ok, well do you wanna do that?JONAH: Like now?DAPHNA: Like yeah?JONAH: Oh well I’ll check when I’m back at school. My syllabuses are there. And stuff…DAPHNA: Aren’t those all online? All of my syllabi are online.JONAH: Oh, maybe.DAPHNA: Ok, so… I mean, if you don’t wanna come you don’t have to, there’s no pressure, I just thought—JONAH: No, yeah, it would be—DAPHNA: If you don’t want to come you don’t have to.JONAH: No I do I just have to check.Without words, Daphna says, “Then check!” Jonah opens his laptop and begins surfing the internet, sort of hoping that before he can find his syllabi, a meteor lands in the apartment, which is sort of what happens when there’s a knock at the door. Liam and Melody have come down the hallway, wheeled suitcases behind them, Liam’s $1200 snowboard tucked under his arm. Daphna gives Jonah a “here we go” look, then opens the door.DAPHNA: Hi.LIAM: Hey.Liam gives Daphna the most tepid hug imaginable.LIAM: Melody, this is my cousin, Diana.DAPHNA: It’s Daphna.LIAM: And you remember—DAPHNA: You know that. He knows that.LIAM: Jonah, maybe you could get off your laptop?JONAH: I’m just checking something.LIAM: Maybe you could just check something later and say hello?MELODY: Hi Jonah.


JONAH: Hey.DAPHNA: He’s checking to see when he’s—LIAM: Why aren’t you wearing pants?Embarrassed, Jonah finds pants.DAPHNA: free to come visit me—JONAH: We were just getting—LIAM: Visit you?DAPHNA: At Vassar.LIAM: For what?DAPHNA: For fun.LIAM: What?MELODY: This apartment is so nice!DAPHNA: Who are you again? Sorry, just—MELODY: Melody.DAPHNA: Melody. Like a song.Liam lifts his suitcase onto the full air mattress, setting it down on top of something belonging to Daphna.DAPHNA: Hey, um, that’s my—sorry, that’s… where I’m sleeping?Daphna pulls her cardigan out from under Liam’s suitcase and refolds it.LIAM: I thought Mom said we were all staying here?DAPHNA: Yeah, but, we’ve already been here, so, all that’s left is…Daphna points at the twin air mattress.LIAM: But that’s a single. Two people can’t fit there.JONAH: I don’t mind switch—DAPHNA (To Jonah): No. (To Liam) We didn’t know you were bringing a guest if we—MELODY: We just came from Aspen—DAPHNA: No one told me you were bringing—MELODY: We flew here as soon as Liam heard the—JONAH: I don’t mi—DAPHNA: NO. If we’d known you were bringing—we would have changed the sheets, washed them, dried them, re-made the beds, plus with my back…LIAM: Why doesn’t someone take your room?JONAH: Cause, her parents are staying there.LIAM: They are?DAPHNA: Yes Liam, they are. You know we can’t afford a hotel in this city—we always stay with—MELODY: It’s fine. Don’t even worry. We’ll be fine. We like to cuddle.Beat.LIAM (To Jonah): How’d it go today?JONAH: It was fine.LIAM: And…DAPHNA: More than four hundred people showed up.LIAM: Jonah?JONAH: It was nice. It was sad.MELODY: Liam really wanted to be there. It’s really such bad luck that everything with his phone and everything just went kaplooie when it did.DAPHNA: It’s not “bad luck” but you know what? Let’s not go into it right now. Or ever.

Ok? Thanks.JONAH (To Melody): How was Aspen?MELODY: Oh. Uhm, it was so much fun. I’m still learning. I mostly just stayed on the bunny hills, but these little munchkins kept showing me up! It was so embarrassing!LIAM: She was great.MELODY: He’s being generous. I fell down so many times I—DAPHNA: Yeah there were more than four hundred people at the funeral. It was really packed.MELODY: Four hundred! That’s—DAPHNA: He touched a lot of people, and he was a hugely important figure in the—LIAM: Who spoke?DAPHNA: I did. I spoke. Your mother spoke. The rabbi. Abraham Foxman.MELODY: Who’s he?DAPHNA: Aunt Ruth.MELODY: Whose aunt is that again?DAPHNA: There were eight speakers. Maybe nine. Maybe ten. Ten, Jonah? It was a big deal. Nine. It was a big deal. A big deal.LIAM: I really wanted to be there. We both did.DAPHNA: Then you should have been.Beat.LIAM: I’m just… I’m gonna see if we can pull out the couch in my parents’ place, cause—DAPHNA: It’s already set up for shiva, you can’t—LIAM: Well maybe we can find a spot to—DAPHNA: There are no spots—LIAM: Well maybe we can—DAPHNA: You can’t. We had tables brought in. Lots of tables. And they’re all—MELODY: This is fine—LIAM: We can move a few tables and make a little—DAPHNA: You can’t move tables everyone’s asleep do you know what time it is it’s really late and those tables are really heavy you can’t just move them they’re actually very heavy tables.LIAM: We can at least give it a shot. Jonah.DAPHNA: Please do not start moving everything around that some of us have spent hours and hours getting—LIAM: Jonah. (To Melody) We’re just going right down the hall to my parents. We’ll be right back.Liam exits into the hallway. After a beat, Jonah follows. Melody and Daphna are alone. Melody removes her shoes, then goes into the bathroom. Daphna watches her, occasionally running a brush through her hair.But our focus shifts to the hallway. Jonah closes the door. Liam points at it.LIAM: I can’t stay in there tonight.JONAH: You can take the pull-out. I don’t mind—LIAM: No, I will not— You’re not actually going to visit her at Vassar?

JONAH: I don’t know.LIAM: Jonah.JONAH: She asked me to.LIAM: Just cause she asked doesn’t mean you have to go.JONAH: I know.LIAM: That’s not how things work.JONAH: I know.LIAM: Jonah.JONAH: What?LIAM: You’re not going.JONAH: Uhm, ok.LIAM: If she tries to—JONAH: She—LIAM: If she fucking does her fucking thing, in front of Melody? Fuck. No, we’re staying in the apartment.JONAH: There really isn’t any room in there for—LIAM: So we’ll make room.JONAH: It’s just for a night or two—LIAM: We can stay in the living room.JONAH: It’s set up for tomorrow. The couches aren’t—if you start moving things, Mom’ll freak—LIAM: So we’ll stay in Mom’s office.JONAH: There’s no floor space with the new desk—LIAM: I’ll sleep in the kitchen.JONAH: Mom said—LIAM: I’ll sleep on Mom and Dad’s floor.JONAH: With Melody?LIAM: Why not? I don’t care.JONAH: It’s just for a night—LIAM: I’ll sleep in the bathroom. I’ll sleep with my head against the fucking toilet.JONAH: You’ll survive.LIAM: Why is that—do you hear the language you use when you talk about her? Survival. If her parents weren’t so completely tight-waded stingily totally, just, cheap—because they can absolutely afford a hotel, absolutely, but—JONAH: Some of us have been stuck with her for two days straight and we’ve survived.LIAM: Is that a dig at me?JONAH: No. I’m just saying—LIAM: It sounded like—JONAH: No I’m just saying like, you’ve been here all of five minutes and…LIAM: And what, Jonah? What?JONAH: You should just relax, is all.LIAM: I’m relaxed. Don’t tell me to—this isn’t a resort don’t tell me to relax. Fuck. Just, let’s just make some room.The boys exit down the hall. Our attention shifts back to the apartment. Daphna watches the bathroom door, like a cat roused from an afternoon nap, pretending to still be asleep while she formulates a plan of attack, with one eye open. Melody comes out of the bathroom just as the boys have exited.MELODY: You can see the river from the bathroom!



This apartment is so nice.It really—DAPHNA: I love your hair.MELODY: Oh. Thank you.DAPHNA: Great barrette!MELODY: Thank you.DAPHNA: I wish I had straight hair.MELODY: It’s pretty boring actually. I always wanted hair like yours. It’s so much more interesting—DAPHNA: What’s that?MELODY: What?DAPHNA: On your leg.MELODY: Where?DAPHNA: Is that, like, a musical note?MELODY: Oh, my tattoo. Yes. It’s a treble clef.DAPHNA: That’s a music thing?MELODY: Yes.DAPHNA: It’s huge!MELODY: Yeah.Beat.DAPHNA: Pretty!MELODY: Thanks.DAPHNA: Did you get it because you love music?MELODY: Yeah. I studied opera in college, and when—DAPHNA: You did?MELODY: That was my major, yes.DAPHNA: You majored in opera? Wow.MELODY: Yeah.DAPHNA: Do you perform in Chicago, or…MELODY: No, no, I work for a non-profit. CHS? Chicago Historical Society.DAPHNA: I don’t…MELODY: It’s kind of, it’s an educational program for underprivileged local area high school students to expose them to the city’s architectural past. They make you memorize that.DAPHNA: Very cool. But so do you still sing then, or…MELODY: No. Not really. No.DAPHNA: So you have a background in architecture too, or…MELODY: Oh, no. I don’t know anything about architecture, actually. But I’m just an administrator there.DAPHNA: Oh ok. Cool.Beat.DAPHNA: I’m sorry, I’m confused. You studied opera, but you’re working at—MELODY: At CHS, I know! I don’t know, you know? I love opera, and I love to sing, but when I thought about trying to make a living doing that, it was just kind of so unappealing to me? And like, depressing? Just waiting so a million different people can tell you you’re not good enough. It wasn’t for me. And I tried. I did the whole audition thing. I went on, like three. Or two. Two auditions, maybe? It was awful. So I decided to do something else, but I got this tattoo, so I would always remember

how important music is to me.DAPHNA: Did you think otherwise you’d forget?MELODY: I mean, I just wanted—DAPHNA: Cause you always have your name, right? To remind you.MELODY: It was really more symbolic, really, more than anything I guess.DAPHNA: Symbolic of what?MELODY: Of, uhm—DAPHNA: Yeah that’s so interesting to me because I just have the total opposite philosophy.MELODY: On what?DAPHNA: Tattoos. Or the need to like brandish yourself.MELODY: It really doesn’t hurt as much as you might think it—DAPHNA: I don’t want to think about it, I don’t like thinking about pain.MELODY: No but it’s fun, they have all these designs you can—DAPHNA: Melody. I can’t get a tattoo.I’m Jewish?It’s against Jewish law.MELODY: I know a Jewish person with tattoos.DAPHNA: Well they’re wrong.MELODY: Oh.DAPHNA: Yeah. Jewish law prohibits tattoos of any kind but even if it didn’t that wouldn’t be a problem for me because just for like me personally, when I like step back and reflect on all the things that had to occur in the universe over billions of years so that I could be alive, in my body, right now, like, we’re made of the same things as stardust, that’s how connected we are, to everything, so to be like, who cares about the natural, larger-than-life mysterious universal reasons why my body was designed the way it is, like, screw that, I’m just gonna permanently etch this doodle onto my body which is composed of the same things that are in stars?!?!Poppy had a tattoo, but that was different, obviously. That wasn’t by choice.B-14312. I memorized it. I used to—when I was little, I would trace it with my… he’d hold out his arm and I would—while he talked to my parents or watched…I actually, actually, uhm, no, so, Liam. Liam, Liam, Liam. Has Liam ever told you his Hebrew name?MELODY: His Hebrew…DAPHNA: Yeah, his Hebrew name?MELODY: I don’t think so.DAPHNA: Oh my god, you are gonna…Shlomo. I’m not kidding. He like freaks out if you call him that, I’ve seen him go completely ape-shit, but…MELODY: Shlomo?DAPHNA: Yeah. Liam’s named after his dad’s like best friend from boarding school, and I think he like killed himself or something, I

forget the whole story, but since Liam’s not a Jewish name, they went in the total opposite direction for his Hebrew one, so: Shlomo. Keep that in your back pocket for a rainy day.Daphna winks at Melody. MELODY: In my back—DAPHNA: So how did you and Shlomo meet?MELODY: I mean… we met online.DAPHNA: Online?MELODY: Yes.DAPHNA: What site?MELODY: Match.DAPHNA: Liam Haber was on Match.com?MELODY: He doesn’t like me to tell people, he thinks it’s embarrassing but I don’t see what’s so embarrassing—DAPHNA: What did his profile say?MELODY: It was straightforward. It wasn’t anything weird. Which was a relief, cause, you know, there are a lot of weirdos out there—DAPHNA: What was his profile name?MELODY: I don’t remember.DAPHNA: Do you remember anything specific about his profile?MELODY: Not re—I mean, he had a nice picture. I liked his smile.DAPHNA: You liked his smile.MELODY: Yes he has a very nice smile.DAPHNA: Hm. Liam and Melody sitting in a tree. Right? Haha.MELODY: I guess.DAPHNA: Are you two just kinda, like, casually dating, or is this more, like, serious?MELODY: I think… I think—yes, it’s serious.DAPHNA: How serious?MELODY: Pretty serious, I think.DAPHNA: Hm.What kind of a name is Melody?MELODY: What?DAPHNA: What is its derivation?MELODY: Oh, I don’t know. Caucasian?DAPHNA: What’s your background?MELODY: What do you mean?DAPHNA: Where does your family come from?MELODY: Oh. Delaware.DAPHNA: Before that.MELODY: Before what?DAPHNA: Before Delaware.MELODY: I mean, we’ve always been in Delaware.DAPHNA: No you haven’t.MELODY: Actually yes we’ve always—DAPHNA: Actually no you haven’t always been in Delaware the only people who have always been in Delaware are Indigenous Delawareans but even they didn’t start there even they crossed over the Bering Strait land bridge during the last ice age but if you look around Delaware if you actually opened your eyes and looked you probably wouldn’t see too many of them right and why is that why is that well I’ll tell you why that is the reason why that is and the reason why families like the one you come


from can even live in Delaware is because all those native peoples were SLAUGHTERED so people who look like you and pray like you and reproduce like you could grow up in peaceful suburban housing developments with bookshelves filled with the King James Bible and Nicholas Sparks novels and Eat Pray Love which is probably your favorite book but no Howard Zinn (am I right or am I right) so if your family has always been in Delaware then actually the truth of the matter which we have to face unfortunately hard as it may be is that your family was more than likely major contributors and perhaps even leaders of the most atrocious genocide in American history which means you have the blood of genociders coursing through your veins right this very second but even if they did that they still had to come from somewhere so what I’m asking is where did your family come from before they moved to Delaware to perpetrate genocide?MELODY: I don’t want to have an argument.DAPHNA: This isn’t an argument, what are—we’re talking.MELODY: It doesn’t feel like talking.DAPHNA: We’re talking. I’m just getting to know you, where you come from. I find it interesting. Really. Tell me.MELODY: My mom, I think my mom is like, Dutch-Irish, maybe, and my dad’s side is German. And there’s a little Scottish or Welsh in there too, I think.

DAPHNA: You think?MELODY: But my family’s—we’re just American.DAPHNA: Just American. Ok.MELODY: But I really don’t see why any of it matters, you know? Where people come from? People are just people.DAPHNA: People are just people?MELODY: Yes. People are people. It doesn’t matter that you’re Jewish or I’m—DAPHNA: It doesn’t matter that I’m Jewish?MELODY: No.DAPHNA: It doesn’t matter?MELODY: No.DAPHNA: Well it matters to me.MELODY: Ok.DAPHNA: It matters to me very much.MELODY: Right, but—DAPHNA: And it’s mattered to hundreds of generations of my family.MELODY: I know—DAPHNA: But to you: meaningless.MELODY: I wasn’t—DAPHNA: Five thousand–plus years of mattering, but not to you!MELODY: That’s not what I—DAPHNA: And it really mattered to Poppy. I don’t know what Liam told you, but it mattered to Poppy. A lot. He was—MELODY: Can I—I’m thirsty. Is there, can I have something to drink?DAPHNA: There’s water.

MELODY: Ok.Melody starts to move to the kitchen.DAPHNA: No, sit. I got it.Daphna goes to the kitchen area. Melody takes out her cell phone. Daphna returns with two glasses of water and hands one to Melody.MELODY: Thank you. I just have a voicemail I have to, should—DAPHNA: Of course. Go ahead. You’re lucky your phone survived the ski lift.Melody goes to the kitchen and pretends to listen to a voicemail, turned away from Daphna, who sips her water, slightly amused. After a moment, the boys appear in the hall. Jonah’s about to open the door…LIAM: Wait.JONAH: What?LIAM: I just need a second more to not be in there.Don’t look at me like that.JONAH: I’m not looking at you like any—LIAM: Like, I told you so.JONAH: Well, I did.LIAM: Whatever. It was worth a shot. How Mom could ever think putting me in the same room with Diana would even remotely—JONAH: There really isn’t another option—LIAM: Can you not, like, jump to everyone else’s defense over me whenever I say anything? It’s really annoying.Beat.JONAH: She was asking about Poppy’s chai.


Tracee Chimo (Daphna) and Molly Ranson (Melody) in the Roundabout Underground production.

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LIAM: What?JONAH: Daphna asked me about it.LIAM: Don’t call her that.JONAH: She asked me about it.LIAM: When?JONAH: Before you got here.LIAM: Fuck. She’s gonna make this a thing, isn’t she?JONAH: I don’t know.LIAM: What’d she say? Fuck.JONAH: She wants it.A moment, while Liam allows himself to feel the weight of this future fight.LIAM: What’d she say?JONAH: She wants it.LIAM: Does she know I have it?JONAH: No.LIAM: So Mom didn’t say anything?JONAH: No.LIAM: And you didn’t tell her he gave it to me?JONAH: He didn’t give it to you, really—LIAM: He gave it to me, Jonah. Poppy gave it to me.JONAH: Mom gave it to you.LIAM: Because Poppy said I could have it. Because he wanted me to have it. Because he gave it to me. Because he said I could have it.JONAH: He didn’t know what he was saying at that point—LIAM: No. I’m not going to—no. Poppy always said I could have it. Since I was—since always. Everyone knows that. Everyone heard—Poppy has always said—it’s not even—when Grandma died, she gave that, whatever, that jewelry thing to Diana. That necklace. Which is worth a whole lot more than this. Which is, you know, what matters to the cheapskates. And no one complained. But Poppy’s a man, so his things, which are men’s things, go to men, that’s just—I don’t even know why I’m getting worked up about this. It’s mine. I have it. It belongs to me.JONAH: Ok.LIAM: Ok.Beat.LIAM: What’d she say, though, like, did she even make a case for about why she thinks she’s even—JONAH: Because it’s a religious item—LIAM: Are you kidding? It’s so much more than—JONAH: Please don’t get mad at me, I am not the—LIAM: That’s like saying anything made of gold is a religious item because gold has religious significance to Incas.JONAH: Uhm…LIAM: It’s an example. It’s—whatever. Poppy’s chai—like, if it were any chai, just like, any chai you bought at a store or whatever I could understand that argument, it’s just a religious item, but for Poppy, everyone knows, for Poppy, it was so much more, it mattered to

him on like a whole host of different levels—JONAH: I know—LIAM: I know you know but it’s like, I’m proposing to Melody.JONAH: Oh.LIAM: Yeah.JONAH: You are?LIAM: Yeah. I was gonna propose tonight.JONAH: Oh.LIAM: Yeah. I was supposed to—that’s why we went to Aspen.JONAH: Oh.LIAM: You didn’t put that together?JONAH: Uhm…LIAM: You didn’t put it together that the reason Poppy gave me the chai was because I was proposing?JONAH: No.LIAM: You’re legitimately not intelligent.This really hurts Jonah, because he’s not as smart as Liam, and he knows it.JONAH: But…LIAM: But what?JONAH: But Poppy was sick.LIAM: I made the plans before he got—I’m not—I made the plans before he was sick, Jonah!JONAH: Ok.LIAM: Yeah, I made reservations for dinner at this really cool restaurant at the top of a mountain and I was gonna tell her the story of Poppy’s chai but then—I should have done it already. Can you imagine Diana’s face if Melody had walked in with the chai around her neck?JONAH: Um, no I can’t actually.LIAM: I know, but—JONAH: Wait: You were gonna use Poppy’s chai to propose?LIAM: That’s why I had it.JONAH: Like…LIAM: What, Jonah?JONAH: Like, do you also have a ring?LIAM: No.JONAH: But you weren’t… you weren’t going to give Poppy’s chai to Melody?LIAM: That’s why I needed it. I’m going to propose to her with—have you been listening to me at all?JONAH: Yeah, no, it’s just…LIAM: Just what, Jonah?JONAH: Nothing. It’s just, that’s kind of like a family thing.LIAM: What do you think Melody is if I marry her?JONAH: Yeah, no, ok.LIAM: If I marry her, she’s part of our family. What belongs to our family will belong to her. And the chai would be the bedrock of two marriages of two generations of people in our family. Grandma wasn’t part of Poppy’s family when he gave her the chai. It’s the same thing.Jonah.

JONAH: What?LIAM: Do you not see how it’s the same thing?JONAH: I really don’t want to be involved in—LIAM: Tough shit, you are involved.JONAH: I just don’t want to be in the middle of—LIAM: There’s nothing to be in the middle of. Poppy gave the chai to me, to propose to my future wife just like he used it to propose to his wife and that’s what’s gonna happen so there’s nothing to discuss. I was just hoping, as my brother that I’d have your support, but I see that I don’t.JONAH: It’s not a—LIAM: No, it’s fine. It’s fine.JONAH: Don’t be like that.LIAM: I’m not being like anything.JONAH: Yeah you are so stop.LIAM: Ok fine it’s just, Diana better not make a thing about this, because I haven’t proposed yet, obviously, I haven’t told Melody the story of Poppy’s chai, and I want it to come from me, I don’t want her to hear about it from Diana. That’d be the opposite of romantic. That’d be like the antithesis of romance, so just, like, if Diana brings it up, which, I really hope she fu… but if she does, can you just help me just quash that conversation?JONAH: Oh. Oh, I—LIAM: Jonah! Can you just help me in that one area, please? If it comes up?JONAH: Yeah ok.LIAM: Ok. Thanks.Thanks.JONAH: You’re welcome.You really… (Unsaid: are gonna propose to Melody?)LIAM: What?JONAH: Uhm. Nothing.Jonah opens the door. Liam follows. Daphna’s casually been brushing her hair. Melody runs to Liam.DAPHNA: Did you girls have fun out there?LIAM: There really isn’t room in the apartment, so…MELODY: Really?LIAM: Yeah. There’s stuff everywhere, my mom is kind of a—MELODY: Oh.Liam puts his arm around Melody.DAPHNA: Aww. This is like an ad for Match.com.LIAM: What?DAPHNA: I never knew you were an online dater.LIAM: I— What?DAPHNA: I would love to see your profile.LIAM: I deactivated it.DAPHNA: Awww. He must really like you.LIAM (To Melody): I wish you hadn’t—MELODY: A lot of people do it. It’s not something to feel embarrassed about. It’s very normal now.


DAPHNA: It definitely is. I mean, I didn’t meet Gilad online, that’s my boyfriend, he lives in Israel, but like, he’s in the army, but if I wasn’t dating him, I would have no problem going online I do everything else online, why not date?LIAM (On “lives in Israel”): Do we have to Gilad right now?DAPHNA: It’s very cute, Jonah, Melody says what first earned Liam a place in her heart was his winning smile—LIAM: What did you tell her?MELODY: Nothing, just how we—DAPHNA: Don’t worry Liam. It was all very PG. Well, PG-ish. I mean, she didn’t air any of your dirty laundry. Well, not much of it, right Mellow?LIAM: Her name’s Melody. Not Mellow. Melody.DAPHNA: Uhm, I’m pretty sure if Melody has a problem with me calling her Mellow, she can speak for herself—LIAM: And can you not brush your hair all over everyone’s stuff?DAPHNA: What?LIAM: Your hair is going everywhere. It’s really disgusting.DAPHNA: Uhm…LIAM: Go in the bathroom if you want to do that? It’s rude.DAPHNA: It’s rude to brush my hair?LIAM: Yeah. In the room where we all have to sleep, it’s rude. Public grooming is rude.DAPHNA: What are you, like a public grooming zealot?Beat.DAPHNA: Ohhhhhkay. Excuse me while I go in the bathroom to brush my hair. Slicha.Daphna exits to the bathroom. When the door closes, Liam flies off the handle.LIAM: She is a fucking cunt.MELODY: Liam!JONAH (Simultaneous): Whoa.LIAM: Fuck!JONAH: Liam, relax.LIAM: Stop telling me to relax. You keep telling me to relax like we’re suddenly in Shangri-La. Nothing about this is— (To Melody) And stop telling her—I specifically asked you not to tell her things about us, so please don’t—MELODY: I—LIAM: Just please Melody. Please. You don’t know her, so just trust me, don’t tell her things, you can’t—you can’t give her one detail about even the least significant thing because she’ll take that one microscopic insignificant tiny little morsel of a detail and find a way to spin it in her little web and spit it back at you with so much venom you won’t even know what hit you, and now whatever you—JONAH: Liam.LIAM: Jonah.JONAH: You’re being…

LIAM: What, Jonah? I’m being what, honest? You have a problem with honesty now? This is absurd.MELODY: What’s absurd?LIAM: Everything! Your def—and—this situation! Look at us! Look at this room! This room is like my worst nightmare, we’re on top of each other like—JONAH: We’re not on top of each other.LIAM: Yes we are. Yes we fucking are! You can’t even move without tripping over a—Liam purposely trips over his suitcase.LIAM: See?MELODY: You did that on purpose.LIAM: That’s not the point. And I am choking on her hair. Is anybody else choking on her hair?MELODY: No.LIAM: You can see the strands just like, hanging in the air like pollution. She’s like a dog. It seriously, it’s like having a dog in the house.JONAH: Can you keep your—LIAM: Daphna? You’re shedding again! Fucking “Daphna.” Can we just—her name is Diana. Diana. I know she wishes she were this like barbed wire hopping, Uzi-toting Israeli warlock superhero: Daphna; but actually, Diana Feygenbaum grew up in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, in an armpit town doing swim team badly and hysterically sobbing when she didn’t get picked to be cheerleader, in her closet, with the door closed—that’s a true story, by the way, and her screen name, when we were younger, her like AIM screen name, ok, was PrincessDiana88. She’s as Israeli as Martin Van fucking Buren, but she thinks because our grandfather survived the Holocaust and because her disgustingly hideous hair probably grows the same as it did for all the other women in the history of our family who actually suffered, that somehow means she’s suffered too, but the truth is, PrincessDiana88 has suffered about as much as, as, as this fucking, this pillow.MELODY: Are you done?LIAM: No! I’m not done. Why is everyone—I’m not saying anything that isn’t true. Why is everyone pretending like Daphna is like, this like, lovely, gorgeous, big-hearted girl? Uhm, she’s not. You want to play pretend, you play pretend, but I’m done. I am fucking done fucking pretending, because the truth is, I am horrified. She is horrifying. Just listen to her, every other word that comes out of her mouth is some unbelievably offensive insult that we’re supposed to pretend not to hear? I’m not deaf. And the most offensive thing of all, do you want to know the most—JONAH: Not really.LIAM: The most astonishingly offensive thing of all is the fact that she actually believes, in her heart of hearts, she is the only one Poppy meant something to. Because she’s like, Super

Jew. But you know what? Jonah and I lost our grandfather too. Our grandfather. But to her, she can’t even fathom that I have things too that I remember? That I did with Poppy? That I remember? That…Beat (sincere emotion; breath; back to business).LIAM: But watch tomorrow, when she’s parading around shiva like this little rabbi in the making, you watch, any time there’s a prayer or praying or prayer-like anything, she’ll get this look on her face, like, I’m above all of you, like, I’m on this spiritual enlightenment plane way above everyone else, like Poppy’s death hits me more or hurts me more or means more to me because I’m reading some shit in Hebrew which I would put money on the fact that she doesn’t even know what half that shit means but as soon as I come around or Jonah comes around, her little talmudic personality grows in two seconds like those sponges you put in water, and she becomes this little uber-Jew who like lords her newfound and—dare I say it? Yes, I dare—temporary and potentially passing religious fanaticism over everyone, like after her trip to Israel last summer, all we heard about at Thanksgiving was this fucking Army boyfriend she had now from some town where you have to say “cccccchh” to pronounce it, so she pronounced it like sixteen hundred times, this guy who is so Jewish and so great and he wants to marry her and she’s going to make aliyah and live in Jerusalem shoving shofars in her hideous unused vagina until the whatever arrives and it’s like, I bet this guy fucked her once, when he was drunk, by accident, and woke up the next morning and was like, uhhhh MISTAKE, but she woke up and thought, BOYFRIEND! and because he’s Israeli, and Jewish, that somehow makes him superior even though the dude probably doesn’t even know her name and I’d bet money he never did and it’s so fucking pathetic it makes my skin crawl, not even crawl, like, it makes my skin slide completely off me, detach itself from my body and pool up in a slimy slithering puddle at my feet and I just want to grab her by the back of her hideous fucking Jew hair and smash her face into a puddle of my molten dead skin and let her breathe that in for an hour or two. The fucking bitch.Beat.Daphna returns from the bathroom. The room is quiet. Everyone is cautious. Watching her. Waiting.DAPHNA: Excuse me.She inches past Melody to put her hairbrush in her cosmetics bag. Liam tries to engage Melody in a silent conversation. She ignores him. Daphna turns around and sees everyone watching her.DAPHNA: How’s school?LIAM: What?DAPHNA: My mom said you’re almost done.



LIAM: Uhm, with the Masters. There’s still the Ph.D.DAPHNA: God, that’s so much school!LIAM: I don’t, uhm, mind it.DAPHNA: I would hope not!LIAM: Yeah.DAPHNA: Yeah. And you’re studying, I’m sorry, I know it has to do with Japanese—LIAM: Culture. Contemporary Japanese youth culture.DAPHNA: Right. (To Melody) Liam’s funny that way. He’s obsessed with Japan. I’m sure you already know. Even though there’s absolutely nothing Japanese about any aspect of our family. Except his mom makes you take off your shoes before you come inside their house. But when Liam was ten I think, for some reason my family was in town during his birthday, Liam insisted on going to this crazy Japanese restaurant, what’s it called?LIAM: Benihana.DAPHNA: Do you know it?MELODY: No. I don’t.DAPHNA: It’s this restaurant where they cook your food in front of you on a really hot stove top and use all sorts of scary looking knives. Remember that?JONAH: Yeah.DAPHNA: Liam was in ten year old boy heaven, but—oh my god! Do you remember that night? I’m just—who was it, it was my family, your family, Poppy and Grandma, nine Jews with Jewish digestive tracts eating some pretty intense Asian food. And—do you remember, like, one by one, people would be eating and all of a sudden it would hit them, like: boom. Look at Jonah!Jonah is already hysterical at the memory.DAPHNA: And they would like waddle walk, they waddle walked away from the table and then came back like eight minutes later, but there was only one unisex bathroom, which Grandma refused to use so three times she went across the street to this hotel lobby…JONAH: And Poppy was like: (In Eastern European accent) Vat is wrong vis dis bassroom?When dinner was over, we couldn’t leave because…DAPHNA: We literally, we’d start to walk outside and it was like, wait, Aunt Fanny’s about to… We hailed a taxi, Poppy’s bending down to—JONAH: He ducks into the cab, he’s starting to sit and then, woosh, he pops out like—LIAM: I never saw Poppy run like that—JONAH: Like the Road Runner.DAPHNA: The hostess looked at us like we were actual Jewish aliens.LIAM: And Poppy comes out of the restaurant twenty minutes later, and he’s like, he says…Daphna is so hysterical, she can’t breathe. So is Jonah.MELODY: What does he say?

But now Liam is too hysterical. Whenever someone gains their composure, they see one of the others and explode with laughter all over again.MELODY: What did he say?No one responds to Melody, they’re laughing too hard. She takes out her phone and texts. Finally the laughter subsides. Jonah’s happy.DAPHNA: Ohhh boy.LIAM: I forgot about…JONAH: Wow. Amazing. Amazing.A long moment of catching their breath. Liam sees Melody staring at him: This is the fucking bitch you were railing against? Really?LIAM: Are you tired?Melody nods.LIAM: Yeah. I’m like ready to pass out. You ready for bed?Melody nods. Liam goes to his suitcase.LIAM: Let me just brush my teeth, then we’ll…DAPHNA: Uhm, hey, uhm, before we… there’s something I wanted to… Jonah and I talked before and we’re on the same page—JONAH: Wait, Daphna. Let’s not—DAPHNA: It’ll just take a second.JONAH: No, let’s not do this tonight maybe—DAPHNA: Jonah. Let me—JONAH: Daphna. Another—DAPHNA: Poppy’s chai.Quick beat.LIAM: Jonah’s right let’s go to bed.DAPHNA: I just wanna make sure we’re all on the same page—LIAM: Yeah we are let’s go to bed—DAPHNA: So it’s cool then for me to have it—JONAH: Daphna, not now.LIAM: I really want to go to bed now.DAPHNA: Ok but I don’t know when we’ll have another time to talk it’ll only take a second and I just think Poppy’s chai is—LIAM: NOT. NOW.MELODY: Liam people are allowed to talk—JONAH: Daphna just—DAPHNA: Poppy’s chai is—LIAM: YOU NEED TO SHUT THE FUCK UP. NOW.DAPHNA: Poppy’s chai—LIAM: NOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW.His scream is scary and intense. Daphna is shaken. Melody goes to comfort her.DAPHNA: What is wrong with him?MELODY: I don’t know.DAPHNA: He’s been picking on me and picking on me since from the second he got here.MELODY: Do you want some tea? Jonah, do you guys have tea?DAPHNA: Tea?MELODY: Yes, tea. To calm you down. When my nerves are frayed, I always—DAPHNA: I don’t drink tea it makes me gag.MELODY: Oh.DAPHNA: I just need to be, like, still for a minute.

MELODY: All right.DAPHNA: I just need to block out that scream.Daphna is still for like ten seconds.DAPHNA: Maybe you could sing something?MELODY: Oh, I don’t—DAPHNA: That would be really—LIAM: No. We’re not—Melody holds up a finger to silence Liam.DAPHNA: A song is what would actually really calm me down. If you would even consider just like, humming something, or…MELODY: Of co—if that will—of course. Are you… Do you have a particular song you want to hear? Well… in college, when I was studying, I—no. I know. Do you know Porgy and Bess?DAPHNA: Who are they?MELODY: No, it’s a… You’ll know this. Ahh. I haven’t sung in a while actually, but—LIAM: You do not have to sing.Melody almost responds to Liam.DAPHNA: It will soothe me.Melody begins to sing “Summertime.” It is the whitest white girl rendition of the song ever sung. There is no attempt to mimic a black singer, or even Janis Joplin’s edge. It is perfectly enunciated, mildly operatic and utterly devoid of emotion. The only place where this performance wouldn’t be totally humiliating is in a nursing home. Everyone is embarrassed and uncomfortable. Except Melody. Who is unaware of what she sounds like.When the song ends, Melody clears her throat. No one talks for a long time.Like, a really long time.It’s beyond awkward.Liam goes to Melody and puts his arm around her.MELODY: What are you doing?LIAM: Nothing.Just.Comforting you.MELODY: Why would you comfort me?LIAM: In case you were… uncomfortable.MELODY: I’m not.Melody goes into the bathroom and slams the door. A long moment of Jonah and Daphna laughing.LIAM: Very nice. Way to make her feel welcome.DAPHNA: Um, I imagine watching you SCREAM in my FACE probably didn’t make her feel very welcome—LIAM: There was no reason to ask her to do that. That was just cruel.DAPHNA: She’s a trained opera singer! How was I supposed to know she can’t—it’s not cruel to ask a trained opera singer to sing.JONAH: Come on, you guys—LIAM: Melody has done nothing but be sweet and lovely and supportive, she came here to support me and to support our family but as soon as you sniff out anyone who you think—DAPHNA: Uh uh uh uh uh no no I don’t sniff out anything Liam I’m not a dog—


LIAM: Maybe you can’t handle being around such a genuinely good person but—DAPHNA: I can handle being around such a genuinely good person, but thanks for looking out, and thanks for bringing someone to “support our family” but I’m pretty sure we can support ourselves.LIAM: She is—DAPHNA: Yeah can we just: What is she doing here? This is so weird!LIAM: What?DAPHNA: She never even met Poppy!LIAM: She’s my girlfriend—DAPHNA: Who brings some random girl no one’s ever met to their grandfather’s funeral—LIAM: She’s my girlfriend! She’s not a random girl. Jonah’s met her, my—DAPHNA: Do not—I know you Liam, I fucking know you, you actually don’t require that much support, do you really just get off that much on rubbing my face in your shit?LIAM: What are you—DAPHNA: What are you talking about? Don’t.LIAM: Don’t what?DAPHNA: You know exactly—LIAM: I have no idea what you’re talking about—DAPHNA: You have no idea?LIAM: I have no idea—DAPHNA: You have no idea?LIAM: I have no—DAPHNA: You just parade these totally inferior

little women through our family functions but you have no idea—LIAM: Inferior?DAPHNA: Oh don’t act like you don’t know exactly what I’m—Jonah knows what I’m talking about.As soon as Jonah hears his name, he starts shaking his head.DAPHNA: These inferior—I met Miyushi, don’t fuck with me.LIAM: Inferior?DAPHNA: Yes, Liam: inferior. Do you not know what inferior means? I met Miyushi.JONAH: Daphna.DAPHNA: No I’m not even—and then this one, with the tattoo of a fucking treble clef on her calf the size of a tumor which really does speak volumes about the (Taps her brain) of a person who wakes up and thinks, what should I do today, hmm, oh I know! I’ll get an enormous treble clef needled into my skin, that’ll be soooo beautiful; this one, who dresses like she was conceived and fucking live-water birthed in a Talbots; and this one who—elephant in the room: you heard her sing? Were her professors deaf or just lazy? Either way, she spent god knows how much money in college and in private little voice lessons in Wilmington so she could sing like that—only to go on two auditions before dumping that dream off like an unwanted baby in a dumpster, so you wanna suddenly get all women’s rights with me

you can’t believe I called your precious little girlfriends inferior, what should I call them? Ambitious? Intelligent? Fucking brainiacs? All I’m saying is what everyone else with eyes and an IQ above sixty can see as plain as day which is that while you may be an arrogant entitled smug little fuck, you do have options. You’re smart, you’re getting a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and you do come from all this money and—and it pains me to say it, but you’re not completely atrocious looking. You could actually date a woman who was your intellectual equal but instead you find these tepid little Bambi creatures to impose this hyper-masculine hegemenonical totalitarian regime on even though you like to like think you’re like this like super sensitive in touch sensitized like dork-chic Chicago grad student who’s like uber-liberal and totally devoted to the preservation of these little cultural studies because studying Japan is definitely worthy of five years of intensive labor, but studying Torah for all of ten minutes is only worthy of total utter snide sniveling disdain; if you found yourself in the middle of a rain dance you would be soooo respectful trying to do every movement perfectly to like honor every Native American who ever lived, but if you found yourself in the middle of a hora—I’ve seen you in the middle of a hora—you look like you want to fucking die; if someone asks your religion you proudly state, “I’m an


Tracee Chimo (Daphna), Philip Ettinger (Jonah) and Michael Zegen (Liam) in the Roundabout production at the Laura Pels Theatre.

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atheist” but the second anyone starts a little Israel-Palestine discussion, it’s like, find me a stopwatch and let’s count to ten because it won’t even take that long before I hear, “As a Jew…” because then you’re a Jew, but only when you can use it to bash all things Jewish which somehow makes you stand a little taller, doesn’t it, puts a little pep in your step like you’re so fucking enlightened even though you reek of fucking cliché; you haven’t lit a menorah since the nineties, but hello Facebook photos of you in a Santy Claus hat ho-ho-hoing it up next to the Christmas tree you put up in your apartment, and it was kind of obvious that, for whatever reason, you actually liked wearing that cheap fake crushed red velvet hat with the shitty white pom-pom on the end, or maybe it wasn’t the hat, maybe it was just getting to stand under the mistletoe and smooch paper-cut-lips Melody, amazing, dynamic, smart-as-shit Melody, the icon of your ideal woman, because we know, a woman who’s actually trying to make something of her life and her intellect is worthy of your harshest criticism but a woman with zero career goals and maybe point two brain cells and less than no talent is a genuinely good person, you two must be so genuinely happy, spending time with her must be a scintillating experience, in fact, I myself had the chance to talk with her this evening and she really does offer up an intellectual feast for the mind, I can only imagine the topics you two must cover in your daily conversation, subjects like, how cute she looks on the bunny hill, or, how cute she looks in her Talbots secretary outfits, or really what it all comes down to: hhhhow nice it is to fuck an ethnic-free bush! Yeah Shlomo, you’re right: your girlfriends aren’t inferior. You are.Beat.LIAM: I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to stay here tonight.DAPHNA: Ah, yes, don’t respond to my truth. Dismiss me.LIAM: You need to find somewhere else to sleep. I actually can’t be around you.DAPHNA: You don’t have a choice.LIAM: I do have a choice. This isn’t your apartment. So get. Out.DAPHNA: And go where?LIAM: I don’t care where you go. Go to the JCC. 76th and Amsterdam. See if they’ll take you in for the night.DAPHNA: You are such an anti-Semite.LIAM: I don’t care where you go, but if you stay here someone is not going to survive the night and I will not subject Melody to anymore of your hideous… to you, because you have an incessant need to lash out at anyone who makes you feel insecure—DAPHNA: Ummm, you think Melody makes me feel insecure?LIAM: I don’t think that; I know it.

DAPHNA: What does that girl possibly have that I don’t—LIAM: A good heart. A pretty face. An engaging personality. A sense of compassion, not only for those less fortunate, but for everyone. She’s a good person. You’re not. Your righteousness is all self-righteousness; hers is pure. There’s a purity to her. She got a tattoo of a treble clef because she loves music. It’s that simple. She’s uncomplicated. She is what she is, no more, no less. No deception, no ulterior motives. She’s a song I can’t stop singing.Melody has been standing in the doorframe of the bathroom, listening to Liam talk about her. She goes to him and kisses him. Daphna mouths, “A song he can’t stop singing?” with her eyebrows raised as high as they can possibly go.LIAM: Are you ok?Melody nods.MELODY: You know you can hear everything in the bathroom?DAPHNA: No shit. You don’t think I heard everything he said about—MELODY: Please don’t talk to me like that—LIAM: You have to stop talking to people like—MELODY: Everyone stop. Just stop it! You can’t talk to each other in this… (Searches hard for a big word) Horrible way. Do you know what it was like before, to hear your boyfriend, talk the way you were talking? That’s not you!DAPHNA: Uhm…MELODY (To Liam): I don’t talk that way. I just heard every single…Searches hard for a big word; no luck this time.MELODY: and I’m not about to lash back at—because everyone in here, no matter whatever you think of them, is a human being, and you don’t talk to human beings that way. If I ever did, I honestly couldn’t live with myself.Promise me all that horribleness is over.LIAM: I—MELODY: Otherwise, I’ll go.LIAM: No—Mel—I—MELODY: I will. I’ll fly back to Chicago.LIAM: No—you have my word.MELODY: I’m not saying you have to be best friends or even, but civil. Everyone.LIAM: I promise.MELODY: Thank you.Now it’s been a really long day, I think everyone’s probably really over-tired, so let’s just maybe go to bed.LIAM: Ok.Liam kisses Melody on the cheek. She flinches. He goes to open his suitcase. Melody sees Daphna. Beat.MELODY: But first. Before you screamed at her, in a way I never want to hear again, I think Deevna was trying to talk to you about something important to her, and human beings have the right to speak no matter what you think of them, even if they don’t… She’s a human being. So Deevna, what did

you want to say?Beat.DAPHNA: Oh. I—well it was about Poppy’s chai—JONAH: Hey you know what? Really and truly, everyone’s tired, we’ve calmed down, so what I think we should do is go to bed and talk in the—MELODY: No.LIAM: Mel—MELODY: No. She wasn’t saying anything wrong and it sounded very important to her, so we’re going to respect her and listen to her because we are good people and that’s what good people do.LIAM: Honey, I understand you’re trying to be helpful but you really don’t understand the—MELODY: Liam.LIAM: But you don’t understand—MELODY: Liam—LIAM: Jonah you said—MELODY: Liam—JONAH: I really think—MELODY: No—LIAM: Daphna please can we not do this now I am—MELODY: Liam. Let her speak.Beat.MELODY: Go on. No one is going to interrupt you.DAPHNA: Thank you. Um, all I wanted to talk about was, and it’s really not a big deal, it’s just, like, Poppy’s chai is…Breath.DAPHNA: This is the last time we’ll be together as a family for a while since I’m moving to Israel this summer, and your mom said you’re not coming to my graduation cause you have finals then or, which is fine, really, it’s just a ceremony I don’t even care about it but since I’m, because of how I feel about and like how involved I am in, I mean, I think it makes the most sense that Poppy’s chai should go to—MELODY: What’s a…?DAPHNA: Chai? It’s the Hebrew word for life, it’s two letters, a chet and a yud, and it has a numeric equivalent of eighteen which is an important number in Judaism. It’s made of gold, it’s not very big, and Poppy wore it on a chain around his neck his whole life. A lot of people, a lot of men, I should say, have one, more so now, it was a lot less common then actually but Poppy’s was particularly—JONAH: Daphna—LIAM: Please—MELODY: No! She’s not saying anything wrong. Let her talk.DAPHNA: The reason Poppy’s chai was special was because he held onto it during the Holocaust, in this amazing way, because obviously Jews couldn’t have gold jewelry, but it was his father’s and when it was clear that he and his father were going to be split


up, his father gave Poppy the chai, cause he thought maybe he could use it later to trade for food or, who knows what—LIAM: Please…MELODY: Liam.DAPHNA: So for two years, Poppy kept his father’s chai under his tongue, like, he kept it in his mouth for two years while he was in the camps.JONAH: Daphna—DAPHNA: I don’t know why they don’t want me to tell you about this, it’s an incredible story.JONAH: Daphna, don’t.DAPHNA: Don’t what? So then after the war, Poppy looked for the rest of his family but they had been killed, all of them. Poppy had three sisters, and a little brother and his parents and his grandparents and aunts and uncles: all gone. All killed. So then the camp was liberated and Poppy left and came to America and that’s where he met our grandma, in America, who was a total bitch but that’s a totally separate story, but Poppy didn’t have any money when he came here and he couldn’t buy her a ring—LIAM: I’m begging you, Daphna, please?DAPHNA: Um, ok, no.MELODY: No, keep going. This is…DAPHNA: So he couldn’t buy her a ring, but he wanted to marry her, so he proposed with the only piece of jewelry he had, and so she wore his chai until he could afford to buy her a real ring and then he wore it again, and it’s this amazing artifact of our family and the power of like our grandfather surviving and he always loved putting it on me when I was little and when you look at his three grandchildren, I think we can all agree that the one who is clearly, like, the one who is without question the most connected with what that chai represents and what it means, is me, which we can all agree on, and so, clearly I upset… I was out of line. I admit it. And, I’m sorry. I apologize. Sincerely. And it’s no excuse, but you really upset me too with what I overheard, and that’s not what the spirit of this whole thing is supposed to be about, so I just wanted to say that, you know? But, by the same token, we need to make a decision, and I think this can just be very simple, and Jonah said he agreed I should—JONAH: I didn’t say that.DAPHNA: Jonah! Yes you did.JONAH: I said I didn’t want to get in the middle of it so don’t put me there.DAPHNA: Jonah!JONAH: I said I don’t want it, so leave me out.DAPHNA: Actually, you said—JONAH: Leave me out.DAPHNA: But you—JONAH: Leave me out!DAPHNA: Wow. Ok. Wow. Fine. Stay out. Just—wow.

Beat.DAPHNA: So Liam. What do you say? Is it cool with you, if I…?Beat.DAPHNA: I really, it’s just the most important thing to me, and…Beat.DAPHNA: Liam?Liam?Um, Liam?MELODY: Liam?DAPHNA: Hi, Liam?MELODY: Honey?Honey?Liam!LIAM: You would have to murder me.DAPHNA: Um, what?MELODY: Liam?LIAM: Not just over my dead body. You would have to make me dead. You would have to kill me before I let you have Poppy’s chai.Daphna doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.DAPHNA: Well I guess we have some things to discuss then.LIAM: Nope.DAPHNA: Yeah, we have to figure this out—LIAM: There’s nothing to figure out.DAPHNA: Well I want Poppy’s chai but I’m obviously not going to murder you for it. I hope that’s obvious. So that means we need to work this out like—LIAM: There’s nothing to work out because I have it, ok?DAPHNA: You have it?LIAM: I have it.DAPHNA: How’d you get it?LIAM: Poppy gave it to me.DAPHNA: You’re lying. You’re lying. My mom saw it around his neck a week ago in the hospital. He still had it a week ago.LIAM: What, did you send your mom in to spy on Poppy?DAPHNA: No but I asked her to check and see—LIAM: Oh my god—DAPHNA: if he still had it on when she came up to visit him a week ago and he did.LIAM: Holy shit.DAPHNA: So if you have it how did you… how could you? You couldn’t. Your mom even said— What, did she just give it to you now when you stopped in the apartment tonight?LIAM: Nope.DAPHNA: But you haven’t been home since last—you were skiing in Vail. Your mom was with him more than anyone, she’s been there every day, you’ve been in Chicago, so the only way it could have even gotten to you is if your mom…Holy shit.Holy fucking…She didn’t…She mailed it to you?

She mailed it to you?LIAM: She didn’t mail it. She FedEx-ed it.DAPHNA: FedEx?!? What’s the difference?LIAM: You can track the package.DAPHNA: I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you. I don’t—LIAM: Stop, I was always getting it, you know that.DAPHNA: What??LIAM: Poppy always said I could have it—DAPHNA: Poppy never said anyone—LIAM: And I’m the oldest grandson. It was never up—DAPHNA: The oldest grandson?LIAM: And plus, you got Grandma’s necklace.DAPHNA: Grandma’s necklace? Grandma was a bitch!LIAM: And you got her necklace.DAPHNA: You want her necklace? You can have it. No one wanted any of her shit no one liked her.LIAM: She had nice stuff—DAPHNA: Poppy never specified who could have the chai, all he ever said was, this is for the grandchildren, he never—JONAH: Daphna. He has it.DAPHNA: But—JONAH: He has it.DAPHNA: But… Jonah? Then why didn’t you say something?JONAH: I don’t—DAPHNA: When I brought it up, why didn’t you say something?JONAH: I told you I don’t want to… be involved, in… this.DAPHNA: No when I asked you if you thought Liam would be cool with me having it, why didn’t you tell me he already did?Jonah says nothing.DAPHNA: That is maybe the shittiest thing anyone has ever done to me. And I thought we were…You suck.LIAM: Enough. Lay off him.DAPHNA: Lay off him? Really Liam? What are you now, brother of the year? Amazing brother, amazing grandson, ama—you want Poppy’s chai so much, you love Poppy so much, where have you been? Jonah’s been here, I’ve been here, we made it to the funeral. You couldn’t even be bothered to call. I made it down three weeks ago when he went into the hospital. Did you? Did you? And do not pull rights of the first born bullshit with me—we live in a modern world that shit is dead that shit is—because if there were rights of the first born here, it would go to my Dad, MY Dad, cause he’s the oldest male heir. Not you. Not you. You don’t get to take whatever you want without—LIAM: He gave it to me, no one took anything, he gave—DAPHNA: Your mom took something and



didn’t tell anyone. Which is called stealing, Liam, stealing.LIAM: Poppy always said I could have it.DAPHNA: Does it say that in the will?Yeah, I didn’t think so.So what, did Aunt Fanny rip it off his neck while he was—LIAM: Jesus! No one ripped anything, ok? He gave it to her. She asked him for it, I asked him for it, and he gave it to her, and she sent it to me.DAPHNA: You’ve been in Aspen, were you even there to get it? Or is Poppy’s chai in your lobby just like on the floor—LIAM: I got it before my trip. Chill out.DAPHNA: Why’d you have to have it before he died? Why couldn’t you have waited—MELODY: Oh my god.Melody is very, very emotional. Maybe shaking.MELODY: Oh my god.Liam looks at Melody. Melody looks at Liam. They know. Daphna looks at Jonah. He knows. It takes her a moment, but Daphna figures it out. She is the last to know.DAPHNA: No…MELODY: Oh my god.DAPHNA: Oh my god.LIAM: I wanted to tell you the story myself. I wanted you to hear it from me.DAPHNA: No fucking way.MELODY: In Aspen?LIAM: Yes.MELODY: How long were you planning this?LIAM: For a while. Since December. Since November. Since I first met you.DAPHNA: Am I the only one who feels like the walls are caving in?MELODY: I can’t believe—DAPHNA: You were going to put our grandfather’s chai around her?MELODY: I can’t believe…DAPHNA: Is this like, symbolic? Did you have a ring? Tell me you have a ring. Or were you planning to give it to her?Beat.DAPHNA: You were gonna fucking give Poppy’s chai to this fucking piece of music?LIAM: I love you.MELODY: Baby.DAPHNA: Hold the horses. What the FUCK?!? You can’t—Jonah! You can’t— You wanna talk about dead bodies? Over my dead body is she gonna sport my dead grandfather’s Holocaust Hebrew chai around her Christian cunt neck.JONAH: Daphna, don’t.DAPHNA: Over my dead Jewish corpse is that going on her. You wanna marry a non-Jew? Knock yourself out. Have a great time. Shicksa heaven. Best wishes. But Poppy’s chai is never going around her neck. Never ever never ever ever.LIAM: Unfortunately, Diana, that’s not some-thing you have a say in.

DAPHNA: Actually, it is!LIAM: Actually, it isn’t.MELODY: Baby.DAPHNA: Jonah. Jonah, is that what you want for Poppy’s chai?JONAH: I’m not getting involved—DAPHNA: You’re involved Jonah. You’re involved. This is our grandfather. This is Poppy. You can’t not get involved because you get freaked out. You’re involved. Do you want Poppy’s chai to go to someone who isn’t one of the three of us? Honestly think about that.Do you?Beat. (This is the longest beat in the play.)JONAH: No.Beat.DAPHNA: Thank you. Thank you. You don’t get to do this. Two to one. Go get a ring. Ok? But you don’t get to give away things that don’t belong to you, you don’t—LIAM: If he didn’t want it to belong to me, then why do I have this?Liam takes Poppy’s chai out of his pocket. Daphna was not prepared for this. Stunned, she watches him move toward Melody.LIAM (To Melody): I’m sorry. I tried. I really, really tried and I promise I will do a better job next time. I promise. Ok? Being with you makes me want to try harder—I wanted to do this in Aspen but—DAPHNA: Wait. Wait. Just— You can’t do this.LIAM: Watch me.DAPHNA: Just hear me out. Please. Just— How can you do this, when you have seen the numbers on your own grandfather’s arm?LIAM: Do NOT holocaust me—DAPHNA: Don’t you know what—don’t you see how this little object is—don’t you care?, that if you put that around her neck, you’re killing something.LIAM: Killing something?DAPHNA: Something that matters.LIAM: It doesn’t matter.DAPHNA: You are Poppy’s grandson. You know it matters.LIAM: Not to me.DAPHNA: You’re getting a Ph.D. in cultural studies!LIAM: So?DAPHNA: So culture matters! Who people are, matters. Look at the Nobel Prizes—look at how disproportionately Jewish people have achieved in economics, literature, science—LIAM: Are we really gonna do chosen people talk? Really?DAPHNA: Twenty-two percent! That’s the percentage of Nobel Prize winners who are Jewish.LIAM: Now you’re memorizing Jewish statistics? Fuck.DAPHNA: Do you know what our global population is? It’s not twenty-two percent, not even close.

LIAM: So in the hopes of more Jews winning Nobel Prizes I should marry a Jew? Is that seriously your point?DAPHNA: No my point is, play this out. You get married, you two get married and you have kids, so they’re half-Jewish and half-Delaware. And that kid marries someone who is Asian, and they have a kid, so that kid is a quarter Jewish, a quarter Delaware, and half-Asian, and that kid marries someone who is half-black and half-Puerto Rican and they have a kid, and so that kid is—LIAM: They’re American!DAPHNA: In a couple generations, all these kids are running around bearing the hyphenated names of cultures that no longer exist. It’ll be just one giant globalized corporate world populated by one kind of people, who all speak one language and shop at the same store and all look the same. That’s how it ends up unless—MELODY: No, it’s like that John Lennon song! It’s our country, like, succeeding. Like, progress! No nations, no religions, no—DAPHNA: A world without Jews is progress?MELODY: I didn’t say—DAPHNA: A girl with blonde hair and blue eyes should not be telling me a world without Jews is progress.LIAM: You’re the one who sounds like a Nazi. Keeping the race pure? You sound like a Nazi.DAPHNA: How does your half-Jewish daughter teach her one-quarter Jewish daughter to be Jewish? Exactly how does that work?LIAM: What do you want her to teach her? Bible stories? When was the last time you actually read the Bible, cause I’d be curious to know which part of it speaks to you? The part that says women were made from the ribs of men? That lying with a man as you lie with a woman is an abomination? Or best of all for you, a woman who is menstruating is impure and touching her makes you unclean? Is that what you want to preserve? Or do you just like the “traditions”? Is your Judaism a totally infantilized version that gives you the warm fuzzies cause it reminds you of Poppy and being a little kid, some sugar-coated memories of a childhood that wasn’t even that sweet, because if I know you at all, I know there’s no way you could read any of that stuff without having to modify a thousand and one sections and pretend not to see a thousand more until you water it down so thoroughly to make it palatable for your 21st century sensibilities that it barely resembles the original at all. I’m sorry, but I can’t get worked up about preserving a totally watered down version of something that wasn’t even true to begin with, and I’m not going to allow it to dictate how I live my life or who I choose to live my life with so I can genetically or biologically pass on something I don’t even believe in.DAPHNA: Ok. So stop. You know what? Let’s


all stop. Let’s all decide, right now, we’re going to stop being Jewish. That’s what you want? You think you’re the first person to ever question it? Cause I bet there were people before us who had questions too, but they kept practicing. They didn’t stop. None of them did. And they didn’t exactly have it easy, but they never stopped. And this thing that people in our family were doing in 1900 and in 1800 and in 1500 and in 200 and in 500 BCE made it all the way here to us. That alone has got to at least give you pause. And so now, when it’s easier to be Jewish than it has ever been in the history of the world, now when it’s safest, now we should all stop? I can’t. I can’t. And if I know you at all, you don’t want me to stop either. Because if I stop, if we all stop, it will be gone. And you can’t get it back. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.Beat.LIAM: You know what all this late night Vassar dorm room Hillel Club conversation sounds like to me?DAPHNA: Like Nazis, I know.LIAM: No.DAPHNA: Like white supremacists.LIAM: No no. It sounds to me like, you sound like someone who’s never been in love.DAPHNA: What?LIAM: You sound—DAPHNA: That’s not true. That’s not even true. Gilad and I—if you ever took an interest in anyone other than yourself, you would know, Gilad and I are getting married.Pause.LIAM: I don’t think Gilad is real.DAPHNA: Uhm, ok, are we getting like Plato cave reality bullshit now? Cause I can show you his profile on Facebook?LIAM: If you were in love with someone, in reality, not in your imagination, but in reality, if anyone had ever loved you—DAPHNA: Gilad loves me.LIAM: If Gilad really loved you, you would understand what Melody and I are all about. But you don’t. Because you’ve never had that. And you know what? I bet you never will.DAPHNA: Wow. Thank you.LIAM: You’re welcome.I love this woman.I love you.And this obviously isn’t how I had planned for this to go, but here we are, in this horrible situation, and the only way I’m surviving it is… If things had gone as planned, I would have told you the story about how my grandfather met a woman who made him want to live after he’d been through the worst things a person can go through, and obviously that hasn’t been my experience, but when I told him I found someone who made me feel that way—DAPHNA: He was in a coma!LIAM: He said, then you need to—

DAPHNA: He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t talk!LIAM: You ask that girl to marry you. So Melody, will you marry me?MELODY: Liam.LIAM: You want me to get on my knees? I will get on my knees. Melody: will you marry me?MELODY: Yes.Liam stands up. They kiss. He takes the chai and begins to put it around Melody’s neck.LIAM: This belongs to you now.DAPHNA: Don’t put that…Don’t you put that…DON’T YOU FUCKING PUT THAT AROUND HER NECK!He puts the chai around Melody’s neck. She is moved, and uncomfortable.Daphna explodes.DAPHNA: NO!Daphna grabs the chai and tries to rip it off Melody’s neck. Melody cries out in pain. Liam grabs Daphna and tries to pull her off. Melody is choking. Jonah tries to separate the women, but someone grabs at his forearm in the process. He yelps in pain and backs away.DAPHNA: THIS. DOESN’T. BELONG. TO. YOU.Daphna succeeds in ripping the chain off Melody’s neck. Melody falls to a puddle on the floor. Daphna, breathless, holds the chai balled up in her closed fist and paces while Liam comforts Melody, who doesn’t move.LIAM: Are you ok?Honey? Are you…Liam looks at Daphna, but says nothing.LIAM: Do you want to—let me see your neck. Do you want to go to the hospital?MELODY (Still balled up): Is it bleeding?LIAM: Not really.MELODY: Not really?!?Melody shoots up. She’s hysterical.LIAM: No.MELODY: Liam! I’m bleeding!LIAM: Not really—MELODY: Take me to the hospital. I want to go to the hospital.LIAM: Really?MELODY: Yes! I’m bleeding! And that thing is rusty! I could have been—LIAM: It’s made of gold, gold doesn’t—MELODY: It was in someone’s mouth! I could have an infection. I want to go to the hospital.LIAM: Really?MELODY: Yes. Really.LIAM: Ok.No one moves. They don’t know what to do.MELODY: Really, Liam!Liam gathers their belongings.MELODY: Don’t talk to her. Don’t even look at her.Liam hasn’t even looked at Daphna. But Melody can’t stop staring at her.MELODY: Don’t even look at her.

Beat.LIAM: Come on.Come on. Let’s go get a cab.He tries to get Melody to take an interest in her coat, but she’s still staring at Daphna.LIAM: Let’s go.After a beat, they exit. Jonah and Daphna are alone.DAPHNA: I don’t even want it. I don’t even—JONAH: Shut up.DAPHNA: I don’t! He pushed me, he pushed me from the minute he got here.Am I in trouble?Jonah looks at her but says nothing. He starts to turn off the lights in the room, getting ready for bed.DAPHNA: Do you think she’s ok?JONAH: She’s fine.DAPHNA: Do you think they’ll come back? After the hospital?JONAH: Uhm, no.DAPHNA: Where will they go?Jonah looks at Daphna.DAPHNA: Do you think—JONAH: I’m done.DAPHNA: You’re done?JONAH: I’m… tired.DAPHNA: Are you mad at me?JONAH: I want to go to bed.DAPHNA: Why are you mad at me what did I—JONAH: I’m done.DAPHNA: But I was only—JONAH: I’m done.DAPHNA: I wish Gilad was here—JONAH: Stop it, everyone knows—DAPHNA: But what Liam said isn’t true—JONAH: Everyone knows. Stop.DAPHNA: Oh.A long, intense moment for Daphna.Then Jonah unbuttons his left cuff, rolling up the sleeve to his elbow. His forearm is bandaged.DAPHNA: Jonah. What…Jonah looks down at his arm. He looks at Daphna. He takes off the bandage, slowly and carefully. It hurts.DAPHNA: Jonah. Is that real?He nods.DAPHNA: Why did you do that?Poppy’s numbers on your own arm? Jonah.Jonah has no answer. Daphna traces the numbers on his arm with her finger.A moment with them, together.Moonlight, reflected off the Hudson River, streams through the window.Blackout.

END OF PLAY


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