Fiction by Marc Erdrich
Soul Mates - page 2
than anything.
SON: Don’t start that again...please! You know there’s no way Ellen and I are getting back together.
MOTHER: How he wanted that.
SON: (to audience) She means it’s what she wanted. All he wanted was to go on a cruise. In the end it was her
constant nagging that killed him.
FATHER: (Entering the room. He is in his 80s, small, grandfatherly.) Janet, have you got a little something for lunch?
MOTHER: Lunch? You just ate breakfast.
FATHER: That was four hours ago.
MOTHER: I think if I let you, you’d eat all day.
FATHER: A little something for lunch, Janet. That’s all I want.
MOTHER: You don’t need any lunch.
FATHER: (Forgetting about lunch.) You know, Janet, I’ve been thinking, it might be nice to go on a cruise – like the
ones they advertise in the paper – to Bermuda.
MOTHER: (Snickering) Bermuda? You want me to go on a cruise to Bermuda...with you? You can’t even remember to
take your pills. How do you expect to go on a cruise?
FATHER: No, I mean it, Janet. Let’s go on a cruise.
MOTHER: You and your ideas. I’m no going on any cruise with you. That’s all I need is for something to happen...
FATHER: So what could happen? I could die? I could die on a boat just as easily as I could die in my own house.
MOTHER: (Looking at him with disgust.) You know, Lou, you make me sick.
SON: I don’t understand. Why are you talking to him like that? A cruise doesn’t sound like a bad idea.