MARY PAGE: They don’t make you take geography? That should be the first thing you take. That should be Number One. Number Three. Reading, writing, geography.
LOUIS: Can you fill all these in?
MARY PAGE: Of course I can.
LOUIS: I get these four all mixed up.
MARY PAGE: You know this. ’Cause we’ve been there.
LOUIS: Nevada?
MARY PAGE: Have you been to Nevada?
LOUIS: I dunno.
MARY PAGE: You don’t know.
LOUIS: Nope.
MARY PAGE: You don’t know where you’ve been?
LOUIS: Nope.
MARY PAGE: What do you want for your birthday? You’ve got a birthday coming up.
LOUIS: Yeah.
MARY PAGE: Gonna be a teenager. God. (Pause) Do you know what you want?
LOUIS: M.A.S.K.
MARY PAGE: What’s that? Like a disguise?
LOUIS: Mobile Armored Strike Kommand.
(Mary Page’s daughter, Wendy, fifteen, enters, returning from the bathroom.)
MARY PAGE: You okay?
WENDY: I’m fine.
MARY PAGE: You didn’t eat much.
WENDY: It’s okay.
MARY PAGE: I know it’s hard, honey. I’m sorry.
WENDY: Please stop looking at me.
MARY PAGE: I never wanted it to get like this. But you both have to know—Louis?—you both have to know that your father and I love you very much. This doesn’t change the way we feel about you. This doesn’t have anything to do with you. We tried everything we knew to make it work, and we worked for so long at it, ’cause we love you guys so much and we wanted you to have a house that was, you know, a loving house.
WENDY: So where do we go? Who’s moving out?
MARY PAGE: Well, that’s complicated. The house belongs to Sonny, to your father, you know it belonged to your grandma, so the house is his. And I got a job offer down in Lexington, a new job—
WENDY: So you’re leaving.
MARY PAGE: Hold on, honey, it’s complicated—
WENDY: Why can’t you just say?
MARY PAGE: I am, I am saying. It’s complicated, so just listen and let me explain it. I have to go down there and start my job. But we don’t want to pull you guys out of school in the middle of a school year, so you’ll stay here with your father and I’ll come back and see you on the weekends. Then after—
WENDY: Where will you be on the weekends?
MARY PAGE: With you, here in Dayton, I’ll be at the house with you. Your father will go to your Aunt Leigh’s house.
WENDY: Just on the weekends.
MARY PAGE: Listen. Then sometime this summer you’ll move down with me.
WENDY: Just for the summer.
MARY PAGE: No, to live with me. Permanently.
WENDY: In Kentucky?! Mom!
MARY PAGE: Wait, don’t—
WENDY: Mom, I’m not living in fucking Kentucky!
MARY PAGE: Hey, watch your language, Wendy—
WENDY: Well, I’m not living in fucking Kentucky! I have two more years of high school! I’m not going to a new school my junior year! Not with all those fucking Kentucky hicks!
MARY PAGE: First of all, lower your voice—
WENDY: But it’s not fucking fair!
MARY PAGE: —and second of all—
WENDY: Don’t we get any say in what happens?!
MARY PAGE: —watch your—no, you don’t get any say in what happens, because the adults are making the decisions—
WENDY: That’s stupid, because the adults are making decisions about what they want, and we should get to say what we want!
MARY PAGE: You can say what you want, but that doesn’t mean—you can say what you want. Let me hear what you want.
WENDY: I want to finish high school! Here!
MARY PAGE: Well, that’s not possible, because I’m not going to be here. I’m going to be in Kentucky.
WENDY: Why don’t you get a job here?
MARY PAGE: Because that’s not the way it works. I looked for a job here but I couldn’t find one. Where I found a job is in Lexington. We can all say what we want but we don’t always get what we want. Louis, what do you want?
WENDY: Then I want to stay with Daddy, just while I’m in school, and then I’ll come down and spend the summers with you.
MARY PAGE: That’s not possible.
WENDY: Why?
MARY PAGE: Because that’s not what your father wants.
WENDY: What does he want?
MARY PAGE: He wants something else.
WENDY: What?
MARY PAGE: He wants . . . he wants to keep you guys for the rest of the school year while I go down to Kentucky. He wants me to come up and stay with you on the weekends while he goes to stay at your Aunt Leigh’s. He wants you to come down to Lexington to live with me starting this summer.
WENDY: So he gets exactly what he wants.
MARY PAGE: Yes.
WENDY: What do you want?
MARY PAGE: Your father and I talked about this and we agree about the way to do this. Wendy, please, I know this is hard—
WENDY: I wish you’d stop saying that.
MARY PAGE: I know this is hard, but it’s the best solution to a bad problem.
WENDY: Why can’t you just say what you want?
MARY PAGE: We’ll get through this. We’re just moving. We’re just going to move.
WENDY: To Kentucky.
MARY PAGE: Do you really think Lexington is that much worse than Dayton?
WENDY: Yes!
MARY PAGE: Really?
WENDY: Mom, they’re a bunch of hicks! They’re coal miners!
MARY PAGE: What do you know about coal miners—?
WENDY: You know what I mean! I don’t want to spend my last two years in high school with a bunch of hillbillies!
MARY PAGE: This isn’t Paris. This isn’t, y’know . . . Tokyo—
WENDY: No, Mom, God, don’t make me finish high school in Kentucky.
MARY PAGE: Do you really think a couple of hundred miles makes that much difference? Every place is the same. And I have to say this, it’s hard for you to see it now, this is sad, and it’s not the way we wanted it, but this is not a tragedy. Two people . . . your dad and I fell out of love with each other, it’s not like somebody died, or somebody got sick—
WENDY: Is that what happened, you and Daddy fell out of love?
MARY PAGE: Yes.
WENDY: That’s what he says?
MARY PAGE: We agree that this is the way to do this.
WENDY: