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It seems kind of like the show just turned into itself. It's always nice when a show finally does that, isn't it? Frank needs Monica's signature for some insurance scam, so he and Sheila trick her into showing up at a grocery store for a fake prize, since he knows she'd never meet with him on her own. Fast-forward a few minutes to Monica and her new girlfriend, Bob, attempting to run Frank and Kev down in their giant eighteen-wheeler. They eventually track the guys to Sheila's house, where an epic showdown starts with Sheila flipping out and ends with the entire family in shards.
The reappearance doesn't shake Lip too bad -- he's too busy trying to figure out his stuff with Karen, even doing a car job with Steve to pay for concert tickets -- but Ian's undone enough that he runs to Mickey for comfort. A short time later, Kash finds them fucking in the stockroom, and a terrified/swaggering Mickey tries to pressure Kash into silence/complicity, so Kash shoots him in the leg. Ian is, as usual, completely awesome.
(As is Karen, who's willing to sucker a car out of Eddie, since he won't quit with this creepy Purity Ball bullshit, and Sheila, who's busily making quite a friend of Debs. And also V and Kev -- damn, this episode was great -- who give us the first full-on hysterical laugher of the season when entertaining a truly unbelievable white urban social worker lady, to see about fostering their foster child's cult-baby.)
Debbie spends most of the episode tracking down Steve/Jimmy, making the acquaintance of his insane mother (crazy great Julia Duffy) and learning the truth: He is slumming it because, as he says, he was raised by wolves just like the Gallaghers, only his went to Harvard. But Debbie's game of little-kid blackmail dissolves the second Monica shows up, and she blabs the latest thing -- Steve's bought a house for Fiona, door to the Gallagher house -- at a terribly unromantic time.
In the end, Bob and Monica decide they want to run off with Liam, since he's half-black and could use Bob's expertise in the area of being black. This starts a big cathartic fight with Fiona, who points out the fact that she's been a single mother since Liam was two months old and should be the only person making decisions about his welfare. Monica goes right for Carl and Debbie, who forgive her just enough for a hug... And that's it for Fiona, who drops the keys to the Gallagher house, tells all the parents in the room they can go fuck themselves, and runs off to see the house Steve bought her, having officially quit.
It was heartbreaking, but a little more than that. I sort of needed a minute afterwards. I would not expect to be this emotionally fucked-with -- by a show, I stress, where the lead spent most of the episode with kimchee vomit down his jeans, commando -- but I guess everybody has a history, and I guess this show just kinda nailed mine.
week: Fiona initiates a three-way racially complicated custody case over the babies; Veronica and Kev possibly receive yet another baby; and Frank decides to back the wrong Gallagher woman, earning him yet more enmity from the rest of his children. Three episodes left.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Debs takes V on a drive out to Lake Forest to spy on this mysterious Candace that texts Steve, but doesn't tell her they're on a Steve Recon until they're sitting outside the house, where is parked a girly car with whorish vanity plates reading "D-Lish." Veronica finally asks Debbie why she's so focused on this and Debbie explains, "Fiona takes care of everyone, but no one takes care of Fiona," and that even though Fiona is probably weirded out about Candace, she's still too proud to do anything: "So we have to." Veronica notices that Debbie is awesome.
And yes, Fiona is starting to feel a little desperate about the Candace thing, because Steve seeming to be perfect and then turning out to be imperfect is all her nightmares coming true at once. It would be cruel, really, if he tempted her out into the world and then ended up proving her right about everything; this has become the new Worst Thing that could happen and thus she thinks of little else. She tries to draw him out in conversation; he is slippier than usual. Finally, she decides they'll just dance as long as they can, and pulls him out onto the floor.
Lip borrows some cash from Ian so he can take his non-girlfriend Karen to Florence + The Machine; when Ian says it's getting serious he plays it off: "She's my best friend, okay? You know I'd never spend that kind of cash on a girl anyway." It is sad, Lip and Karen are so close to figuring life out and it's nerve-wracking; Lip is amazing. I think the character would be this complex and wonderful on paper regardless, but the actor really does make you think through the meaning of every word in that whole line.
door, little Ethel prays: "God bless Jonah, my sweet baby boy, and God bless my husband, Clyde. May those who are caring for him remind him to take his blood pressure supplement and his glucosamine/chondroitin supplement, so that he can bend down to pick up our child. And God bless the other wives, who are probably on their knees right now asking you to bless me."
Tomorrow is the big visit with Jonah, about which Kev could not be more excited because A) It will cheer Ethel up and distract her from her campaign of being constantly weird, and B) Kev loves babies and there will be more babies in the house and maybe they will just keep backing the truck up and unloading babies until Kev has all the babies. Veronica pulls out earplugs for Ethel so they can fuck; Kev assumed she was going to jam them in his ass because 90% of this show is stuff going up dudes' asses.
Frank wakes up at a frat house with a hefty hula girl lying across him, because sure. She sees him, figures out they did it, considers how fucking gross he is, and immediately starts crying and barfing all over his dick. It's rather remarkable; he pulls his jeans up around the barf and tears and heads on back home, because that is literally the grossest thing you can think of.
Back home, Eddie Jackson has become a "Promisemaker" and he's all about "Purity Balls" and other Showtime-type things that were relevant about ten years ago but this show just found out about and decided to make fun of. If only Kevin Nealon could be here. If only Kevin Nealon could be fucking up every show at once. Anyway, Karen tells him to fuck off about eleven times, and he slips a picture of them when she was little under the bathroom door, and she is actually touched, but not enough to give in.
Which, I do have to give props on this, because this is the only show I can think of that actually expresses properly the rage of the inadequately parented. I'm not talking about whiny Baby Boomer ingratitude, I'm talking about actual abuse and neglect. What Steve will characterize as being raised by wolves. That particularly seething anger kids feel when they look at their "elders" and finally realize their particular elders are not worthy of even a little respect, which cognitive dissonance pretty much feels like the ceiling is crushing in on you at all times like an Indiana Jones trap, and from which the only rescue is time. Assuming you survive.
Acrobatic post-sex post-slumber cuteness in Fiona's bed with Steve, and she's starting to notice he's not so attentive these days, and he asks her about that computer class she was so excited about, and she lies about that, and the walls get higher, and she even makes a Jenny McCarthy immunization joke but he's already gone.
Downstairs, Debbie hounds them both about her suspicions, but neither of them knows what she's talking about. Fiona invites Steve to a family movie night after making a joke about his tiny perfect ass, but he can't come; when Debs presses him more directly he bends down and twinkles at her, false for the first time: "Truth? I'm in the CIA, and this is all just a cover." If she didn't know before, she knows now: It's the wolves. He's one of them.
Frank makes small talk with one of the Alibi waitresses, whom he apparently slept with at some sad low point, and then gets a call (Alex Borstein, always fairly awesome, playing a lawyer-daycare-doula-kennel operator, naturally) about how one of his many Curly Sue schemes has finally come through and he's received a settlement. I fucking hate it when things go Frank's way.
Debbie: "Oh hey, Ethel. Why are you still cleaning that one spot on V's carpet?"
Ethel: "CPS are bringing me my baby, so everything has to be just so."
Debbie: "You're so lucky you have a baby. Even just another Aunt Ginger would do me."
Ethel: "If you're ten now, you can expect your menses in about two years thanks to hormone mimics in our milk and drinking water, and then you can start trying."
Debbie: "Does it hurt?"
Ethel: "Shoving a premature child out of my baby vagina? Or getting constantly raped?"
Debbie: "Both."
Ethel: "Yes, both hurt."
Debbie: "I can't imagine why, they both seem like healthy good ideas."
Ethel: "But it's the kind of pain you {never, ever] forget!"
Debbie: "Adults cannot be trusted for shit. We are carrying their selfish broken bodies on our backs every single day."
Ethel: "My existence is just one more way to illustrate this."
Lip and Karen do a mad mess of fucking in that van outside; eventually he asks her to stop bitching about her father's Purity Balls long enough for them both to come. Meanwhile Carl has frozen a two-liter of orange soda and dropped it from the balcony, resulting in a weird slow-motion explosion/sex juxtaposition that I'm not sure I understand at all. Lip's got plans tonight, but they're still on for his big surprise Friday; they hold hands and bask. Can't shake the feeling that if they ever do get exclusive something young and fragile and beautiful is going to die. They're making this up as they go along, right now, so it's perfect.
Debbie heads to the library to get a copy of Crucial Confrontations, the better to prepare for her war on Steve, and also to see her adorable young friend Simon. She spouts some stupid/precocious nonsense about Harry Potter that is clearly a first-draft piece of dialogue standing in for an actual joke, and then Simon helps her look up the dirt on the nonexistent Steve Wilton. One good joke later ("Can you do it backwards?" "Notliw?") they've placed the address from Steve's phone, confirming that Candace Lishman (D-Lish) lives there. Simon asks her seven times to "hang out" with him, and just when you think she's going to try and get pregnant, she flips a Fiona on his ass and smirks her way out of there, saying they just did.
Still searching for Florence money, Lip considers Fiona's joking suggestion that he go fuck Barb from Cougar Town, a fantastic show, for the extra cash. Seems this "Mrs. Niedereiter" hasn't been too shy with him up to this point ("There are a lot of dark corners around my house that could use some attention, Phillip") and that even if he's not yet willing to attend those corners, he's willing to smash her birdhouse again so he'll have something to fix over there.
Fiona: "Hey, what do you think of Steve?"
Lip: "Ass is kind of small. Not really my type." (Looking closer.) "You about to retreat and count your wounded?"
Fiona just wants to know if she should trust him; Lip shakes his head at her. "That's like asking if you should believe in God." Good answer, Phillip Gallagher. And once again, you think about that one harder and for longer than you normally would, because of the way he says it. He's got this gift with inflection.
It is difficult to describe the scene, in which Kev and V and Ethel are visited by this person, just this vision really, of a big white girl who talks like a big black girl. I mean like exactly. And so everything she says is amazing, and the more and more Veronica hates her is amazing, and the scene goes on and on and just keeps getting funnier and funnier and I'll be damned if I can figure out how they did it.
Because you got this very specific-looking white girl, doing a very specific government-employee black girl voice, which in any other situation would be the whole of the joke and not a very good one; like, consider if Frank ran into this person how not-that-funny it would be. And then bring that into Veronica's house, and I can see it just being screamingly awkward, but instead it's just loveable and funny.
Bobby Moynihan did this character a couple times his first year on SNL, a quasi-gay weirdo bartender with delusions of grandeur, that I absolutely loved -- and has now swallowed into his Snooki impression -- which sort of approximates this, but that's not it either. And the dialogue has a few totally hot spots ("Is your voice dressed up for Halloween?") and that's part of it, but not the whole thing. I just can't stop watching this scene over and over.
Anyway, the upshot is that Kev may be able to convince the CPS/DCFS lady to place Jonah with his mother Ethel, who his already placed with them, so they'll be like grandparents in a way, and Kev looooves this idea and Veronica does not totally hate the idea, because possibly Kevin has never been cuter than at this exact moment.
Sheila's having a super-awkward time with the Promisemakers or Bible Study or whatever, they're like telling her "jokingly" to shine their shoes since she's taken them away anyway, and before Eddie comes down she just flies off the handle and starts quoting Robert Frost at them, and Frank show up, strips off his vomitty piss jeans in the kitchen, totally disgusting, bathes in the sink, nonstop yammering, and she just shrieks in these peals of nervous laughter and it's hard to watch from any angle at all. Especially knowing that this is the least stressful thing she's going to be dealing with in this episode.
The lawyer's name is Lou, and she's actually just gone to the bathroom while wearing a child in a sling, which is gross enough that you can extrapolate her friendship with Frank. She gives him the particulars of this settlement deal -- train doors closing on his ankle -- and mentions that Monica, the kids' mother, will need to sign the paperwork too. He obliges by forging her signature, but for some reason in this case that won't do: She needs to accompany him to the city offices and do it there. Lou heads off to be a doula and Frank eats some dog food.
Lip, desperate, calls Steve -- not that he's a huge fan -- and asks to borrow money. Since Steve is going back and forth to Lake Forest all the time, he's actually in a pickle himself and, against everybody's better judgment, offers to pay Lip for his help with a car-stealing.
Steve's mom Julia Duffy (the guest stars this week, my God) still looks like a million books, God bless her, and has fully internalized her kookiness at this point. Debbie heads over and knocks on the door with a "Are you screwing my sister's boyfriend?" which just causes her to giggle and offer her a joint, because rich people are just as crazy as poor people, and usually more so because they have more time to devote.
Mrs. Lishman sits Debbie down and they chat for awhile about this and that, and right when she's admitting she doesn't even know Steve and he's certainly not, in Deb's horrific terms, "pushing it into [her]," Steve walks in and his mom calls him Jimmy and plants a big old kiss on his lips, and it's spooky. Seems "Jimmy" is top of his class at Michigan, in med school, and plans to become a cardiothoracic surgeon, like his big brother and father, and the reason Steve's been out of Chicago so much is that his dad was injured in a minor car accident and he's been called home repeatedly. For her part, Debbie introduces herself politely and innocently, before giving Steve the staredown of the century.
It's incredibly well-acted: The intensity and fear shading into disappointment and eventually a broken heart, for both of them. You can see Steve getting smaller under her gaze, but the fear goes away and the Fiona part goes away and pretty much it's just Steve, feeling like a complete asshole for lying to Debbie, and then even that's gone and he just feels very cold and very alone and very much like a complete fraud. All in the eyes. So Debbie fucking bounces before she starts crying with frustration, and Candace is about to invite her for dinner before she realizes she's gone: "Oh, shit. I liked her."
Joan Cusack takes the random parts of this paragraph and knits them into something that is truly beautiful: She finds Frank hiding in the hall closet and worries that he's taking a crap in there, when really he's trying to get up the nerve to call Monica, even though he knows she hates him and can't figure out a way to make her come do this money thing with him. He tries to get Sheila to call for him -- fake Monica out with some kind of fake prize -- but Sheila, already feeling pretty weird about the whole Frank Situation given last week and earlier in this episode -- thinks (correctly) that he's fucking around on her, so he has to chase her upstairs and under the duvet where she's crying and eventually offer to quote, "dress up any way you want, no safety word." Old Sheila, she snaps to.
They call up Monica and pretend it's some promotional thing where she won $100 and a teddy bear for showing loyalty to this grocery store, which Sheila writes down for later, and the whole time she's making these insane, gruesome, beautiful Bacon-esque faces, and Frank's getting more and more uptight and mean as the call goes on, and whatever it kind of degenerates into acting tics for everybody at once, but they've got Monica where they want her.
Steve finds Debbie sitting in the snow at lakeside and begs her to let him take her home, but she does more of that precocious stuff the actor can't quite pull off ("I'm not supposed to take rides from strangers, and it's clear that you are a stranger") before pointing out that the many things she's maybe going to tell Fiona, aside from his false identity, now include the totally gross kissing of him on the mouth by his mother. "Life gets really complicated when you're an adult," he starts, and then gets real:
"I was raised by a pack of wolves. Just like you were. Only my wolves went to Harvard." Crimson. "You know, they have red wolves at Lincoln Park Zoo, maybe we could go check them out sometime?" Debbie's not buying it; she has no idea that this is where he brain just honestly went. "I do not want to be a doctor. I do not want to be like the rest of my family. What I want is Fiona." More precocious crap, basically down to the fact that Debbie needs Fiona in the game for at least a couple more years, and either he ditches her or distracts her but it's not helping. Surprising even himself, Steve admits that he's bought Fiona a house, and then takes Debbie to show it off.
"This was Mr. Harris's house," Debbie says, as they step inside. "They said he died of lung cancer, but we're all pretty sure it was full-blown AIDS."
Debbie runs around Fiona's new house -- Which, isn't that the house between Veronica's house and Ginger's? Didn't they say something early on about how they're technically neighbors because the person between them is gone or dead or something? -- and just about falls back in love with Steve before she catches herself and demands not only a "really cool pink vest" (it is, in all fairness, totally cool), but a new rolling pin and flour sifter for her baking lessons with Sheila, in order to keep quiet. He shakes his head, not hugely surprised considering Debbie is a known grifter, and then she goes back to running around, up the wooden hill, peering into closets: "Which room'll be mine when I sleep over?"
Eddie: "Lip's going out with somebody else tonight? Good, that will cut down on the percentage of today that you're a total whore."
Karen: "Fuck off."
Eddie: "I just love you so much, even though you're a disgusting tramp, I want to things with you like we used to. Before you turned into a cocksucking hooker."
Karen: "Fuck. Off."
Eddie: "Sweetie, why won't you talk to me? Can't we at least talk about what a slut you are? I just love you so much and I want to connect. Like for example about how you're a whore."
Karen: "Can you actually fucking hear yourself?"
Eddie: "Get in my time machine and go with me to a Purity Ball to when you were still a virgin. Jesus is magic and will make that happen. And then my whole life will be perfect again!"
Karen: "What do any of those things have to do with each other? Why does your self-obsessed vision of yourself require me at all, and why does putting that into action mean being as absolutely insulting as possible?"
Eddie: "Just stand still while I talk to you about how disgusting you are! This is so disrespectful."
Karen: "Seriously, dude. I fired you as my dad like months ago. Why are you bothering me at all?"
Eddie: "I'll give you the car!"
Karen: "I am listening."
(Lip drives the follow car for Steve, an act which will surely have consequences.)
Frank lies in wait outside the grocery store, drinking a pint in the parking lot and looking grizzled and uriney. Eventually a big monster truck pulls up and Monica gets out of it. She is quite the farewell-drugs casting coup, being played by Nancy Spungen, who is looking remarkably unburnt-up. Also, Monica is wearing pink faux-fur, and kissing a big butch lady named Bob.
Debbie: "Jimmy."
Steve: (Sighs; produces gifts.)
Debbie: "Peace offering implies a one-time thing. This could take a while. Till I'm sure that you're not still lying."
Steve: "They're releasing my dad from the hospital. I'm gonna pick him up, I'm gonna take him home. You know everything there is to know. No more secrets. I promise."
Debbie, inspecting her merchandise, still can't pull off any of this. It is not her fault, because annoying precocious kids should have been abolished from TV years back, and this is dialogue that, while clever and all, no actor should be forced to contend with. Precocious children are another lie grownups tell themselves: Just small adults. "Children are resilient."
"Sifter sifts. Rolling pin rolls. Nice when things do what they say they will, Jimmy."
Put any actress in clothes this ugly and unwearable, for example, and people will start asking what she did to piss off Wardrobe. It would be funny if it worked -- this idea that the world is Debbie's noir movie and we're all just living in it -- but in the end all you're doing is setting up a promising young naturalistic actress to fail. And getting on everybody else's nerves at the same time.
Grocery Store Guy: "I have neither $100 nor have I a teddy bear for you."
Bob The Lesbian: "[Lesbian stuff!]"
Monica: "[Nancy Spungen stuff.]"
Bob: "Monica, was this even the right store?"
Monica: "Stop talking down to me like I'm stupid! And unreliable."
Monica spots Frank, who has lost his nerve now that giant scary Bob is in the picture, and there ensues a very long, very pleased-with-itself sequence of Kev's tiny beat-up pickup being chased by Bob's giant eighteen-wheeler cab, with very loud music and lots of Frank, as usual but especially in this episode, screaming incomprehensible demands when a short, rational explanation would do the trick. They head for Sheila's, where Debbie is getting her baking lesson.
Sheila: "I would say my advice to you would be to let Fiona live in her own relationship. You can't do it for her. Sometimes, sweetie, when people are in love they don't tell someone everything for a reason."
Debbie: "That's like lying."
Sheila: "No, sweetie it's just... A little editing. Now: The sifting. We separate and aerate those flour particles to make them absorb liquids better."
Debbie: "Someone should sift my dad."
Sheila: "Oh, you Gallaghers. You're all so funny!"
All Hell: (Breaks impressively loose.)
The lesbians are at the door like crimson wolves, Frank is crawling around on the floor like a GI -- still refusing to explain one thing about what's going on, for no real reason other than that the plot doesn't allow it -- and Sheila is just scream-scream-screaming -- "WHAT IS HAPPENING?" -- wet ingredients lofting through the air, crab-walking back into her own kitchen cabinets, eyes rolling around in her hair, begging Frank to stop screaming at her and never quite getting frustrated enough with the fact that he continues to scream at her in spite of this, and finally Debbie walks to the door, sees her mother in the yard where Liam once stood.
Monica, standing in the snow with the graceless gall to open her arms wide so Debbie can get a running start. Debbie shoves her ass out of the way so she can call in her reinforcements, while Monica and Bob head inside the Jackson house. They do not take off their shoes nor do they put them in bags, no matter how many times Sheila begs.
Monica: "That was a nasty trick, even for you, Frank. I had my heart set on that teddy bear!"
Frank: (Dismisses this, but not for the obvious reasons; talk immediately turns to the kids she abandoned, but not in the correct way: Still and always, it's about his burdens.)
Monica: "I was an emotional cripple! Not one ounce of self-respect! You almost destroyed me! You drove me into the ground! Et cetera!"
(This nonsense goes on for a while; they are the two most worthless people in the entire universe; they were created just to piss you off.)
Everybody at Fiona's is feeling wiggly and excited about movie night. Carl makes some weird-little-kid joke about Fiona and Steve reproducing during the movie, and Fiona awesomely just does this gross, like, Mayonnaise Man voice all billions and billions of sperrrrrm and they finally all settle in. And Steve does show up, and Lip did get his tickets, and they are giggling about their old crummy microwave and how Steve should or shouldn't buy them a new one, as is his wont. Everything feels normal, and safe. For one second.
Debbie shows up, looking like the ghost of a total stranger, and Lip and Ian immediately tag-team in on that, trying to cheer her up, assuming that Frank's done something terrible to her, and she just yells, "Why do you always blame Dad first?" They're honestly confused, because who else is there?
"She's over at Sheila's," Debbie chokes out. "Monica."
Somehow this connects up in Debbie's head with Fiona leaving her behind too, going to the new house with Steve-Jimmy, and she runs off sobbing because she's already carrying so many of their secrets; Steve's just like, "Surprise?" Ian says fuck it and takes off for work, shaken more than we've ever seen him.
Liam keeps screaming "Mommy!" but nobody knows who he means.
Ian shows up at Mickey's house in tears, but Mickey's dad is throwing a fit inside and he's supposed to be at work anyway. Mickey looks at him for a while, not entirely hatefully this time, before agreeing to come to the Kash & Grab in a few minutes.
Monica and Frank go into this Ultimate Martyrdom Tournament where each of the discounts their own violent behavior while trying to score points on the other's violent behavior. Eventually, as things get steamier and scarier, Bob steps in to pull them apart. Sheila inserts herself in turn and Bob bristles -- "Bob. Only Moni call me Roberta" -- and it's obnoxious, and Sheila wonders if they shouldn't just leave Monica alone for a few minutes, to apologize. And to whom?
Fiona appears, with the rest of them in tow. How about us?
"It's all right, I'm not one of yours," says Veronica, peeping around from the foyer. "I just came to rubberneck."
Kash comes shouting into the store, jubilant: He's finally gotten Linda pregnant, and he can have Ian again. He comes running around the corner, into the stockroom, where Ian is fucking Mickey, desperately and delightfully; he stares.
Monica: "I knew you'd be fine with Fiona."
Fiona nearly falls apart. To be fine. "Fine," with Fiona. "I knew you'd kill Fiona," more like. "I knew I was sucking the life and childhood out of her before she'd ever had a chance to learn the world." "I knew I was bricking her up in hell; I knew I was sacrificing her to my own selfish, childish needs."
Mickey struts out into the store, stealing a candy bar again for the first time since the gun. Scared, petrified, almost as much of showing his fear as of being caught out, so he gets the upper hand on Kash the way he always does: Shoving his emasculation in his face: "Fucking right you keep your mouth shut. You better keep it shut." All this going through Mickey's head and all Kash can see is this kid, the one who's already taken everything from him, coming into his little prison and taking the only thing he has left. So he shoots him.
Lip's sitting on the stop when Ian shows back up, having gotten the fuck on up out of there. "There was a shooting. Kash shot Mickey. In the leg, he's fine." They pass a cigarette back and forth. Ian reminded Frank the most of their mother; he looks the most like her. Small, tough. He's got it under control:
Ian: "What'd I miss, with Mom?"
Lip: "Well. You know how Dad's a total fucking asshole? Turns out he's the good one."
Bob's stance is that, even though it sucks that Frank lured them back there to pull off a con, they'll cooperate if he gives them Liam. Something about black kids needing black parents because of a cultural backlash against Madonna and Malawi or something.
Monica: "Roberta and I want to start a family of our own.
Fiona: "How about you finish this one first? You don't get to abandon your kids and then show up one day to take your pick of the litter.
Frank: "Now, that's not fair. Your mother's made mistakes, but she's here now. That's got to count for something."
(Oh, yes he did.)
Fiona explains at length how this is certainly not about Frank in any way; how this is actually about Monica, but not really about her either. Negative space; crimson wolves.
"This is about what you didn't do. It's about what I did. And you know what? I did a fucking great job. Debbie is Class President. She's on the Debate team, going to Nationals. And Lip, he's top of his class. He set the curve. Ian was promoted in ROTC, and he tested out of English. And Carl made something blow up for his science fair."
All the facts and figures of her little life, the things that were so necessary she couldn't even see them, until now, as anything to be proud of. They whirl, she almost breaks. The house, the family, the life Fiona built. The world she got forced into constructing and maintaining, until it almost killed her. Until she looked love in the eye and very nearly said, "Fuck you."
Fiona: "Liam doesn't even know who you are."
Monica: "I'm his mother!"
Fiona: "You were my mother."
Very close to shattering. Tell me to stop and I'll stop.
Monica, canny, goes to the youngest, the weakest links, Carl and Debbie, looking them in the eye. He twiddles his thumbs, she burns. Monica looks into their eyes, climbs onto their backs, runs her nails down their faces.
Monica: "Debbie and Carl, I am so sorry if I hurt you. I love you so much. Please, let me be your Mommy again..."
They fold into her hug, ungainly and unsure. Responding not to her now, on this couch in this strange house, but to a voice they can barely remember. They don't mean it, they're unsure, but the atmosphere is untenable and they can just about hear her, long ago; they can just about hear her, promising it's going to be okay.
Debbie's used to making allowances. She knows she can carry them.
They're unsure, and in a minute they will break away, but it's just long enough that Fiona nods, and takes the keys out of her pocket. Ginger's house, on nightmare row.
She sets them down on a side table, and takes the measure of her parents. All this time she thought she was pretending; she thought the rest of the grownups were alive and she was merely in disguise. "I knew you'd be fine with Fiona."
When did it happen, she wonders, that she outpaced them both?
Ethel started trying when she was twelve.
"You know what? You're right. You are their mother. And you're here now. So I'm done. I'm done with the school, and the bills, and the clinics. I'm done. They're all yours now, Mom. Good luck."
Fiona walks away from the house that she built, and the children sway back away from Monica in her absence. Everything becomes so quiet. Nobody blames anybody, for a moment.
Monica sees the hate in their eyes, and doesn't know where it's coming from. While she was gone, everything stopped and nobody got hurt. And now she's back, and they're all attacking her, as though she's done something wrong. As though she was there to hurt them. As though anybody was.
Fiona walks away from the house that she built, and when Steve arrives she falls mutely into his arms. She's never looked so old. She's never felt so young. Steve takes Fiona to see the house he bought. Neither of them look back, at the ruins.
We were raised by wolves. This is what happens .
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