Act 5, Scene 8: “And We Really Liked the Ice Cream”

TRL and S take the boys to Vermont to their friend’s farm. They visit the chicken coop to see where eggs (and the evening dinner) come from, look at the turkeys, walk right up to cows, feed the rainbow trout in the pond, pick strawberries from the garden, pet Jr. the black-nosed sheep, and go wading in the nearby lake. That’s all on the first day. TRL and S also take them to a farm museum, where they see old farm implements and visit milk cows in their milk pens, say hi to prize-winning horses, and see ice cream being made the old-fashioned way: vanilla, cream and sugar are dumped into a metal tub, it is sealed and covered with ice and salt and hand-cranked for 20 minutes in the shade of a 200-year-old maple tree next to the old ice house. The boys get to sample the result.

Back in the burbs, TRL asks: “Guys, what was your favorite part of the whole weekend?”

“Eating the ice cream,” they announce in unison.

Tepidly flavored marginally cold too-soft ice cream wins out over the Real Farm Experience.

“We should have just spread some manure on the driveway and then gone to Friendly’s,” TRL grunts to S.

Act 5, Scene 7: “An Act of Illusion”

TRL walks into the kitchen. E is on the floor, pushing around some fallen Cheerios.

“Hey,” says TRL.

E looks up and smiles. Then picks up a Cheerio and slowly brings it towards his mouth.

“No,” says TRL firmly. “We don’t eat food off the floor. You know that.”

E looks up at TRL and then pops the cereal into his mouth.

TRL picks him up. “Spit it out,” he says. He inspects E’s mouth but the Cheerio is nowhere to be found.

“Did you just eat that after I said not to?”

“No.”

“I just saw you put the cereal in your mouth. I told you not to. Did you just put it in your mouth?”

“No,” insists E. And for a second, TRL believes him. He doubts himself, even though he saw E put it in his mouth. TRL learns something about magic right then, the power of suggestion, that insisting upon something both parties know is not true can sometimes, at least momentarily, make it true.

E learns a little something, too. About the consequences of lying.

“You have just earned a time out,” says TRL.

Act 5, Scene 6: “Lost”

TRL wakes up, looks around and doesn’t know where he is. He is in a bed, but doesn’t know where. It is dark. Where is he?

He starts sweating and panicking. He lunges for a window and lifts the blinds. He still doesn’t know where he is. He sees another window and opens the blinds. It is dark outside. He is in a room. He grunts, terrified. He can’t seem to wake up, and he still is lost.

S opens her eyes. “What are you doing?”

TRL stumbles for a door, goes out into a hall. But what hall? He moves into a bathroom and flips on the light. He sees himself in a mirror. He is covered in sweat. He knows that it is himself staring back. But where is he?

In his bathroom, he slowly realizes. But then the realization flickers away and he panics again.

In his bathroom, he comes to realize once more. This time the understanding stays. He sweats profusely. He is shaking. What is wrong with him? Is this how someone with Alzheimer’s feels?

S walks in to go to the bathroom. “Are you OK?”

TRL grunts, now embarrassed that he was so confused. He feels vulnerable and frightened.

S goes back into their bedroom and TRL throws water onto his face. This was the first night back in their house since coming back from five days at the beach. It must have confused him, he tells himself. And while they were away, they had an offer on their house; they were moving. And the next day he had a job interview, an attempt to set his career straight.

All in all, TRL feels lost.

Act 5, Scene 5: “Tough Love”

TRL and C get into a little fight. TRL has constructed a really cool fort out of pillows and a sheet. E crawls inside and happily reads in the Cave of Excitement and Solitude. And then C comes in, stands up and twirls around, ripping the sheet off in the process.

“C,” whines TRL. “You ruined it.”

E happily reads on.

TRL repositions the pillows and puts the sheet back over the fort.

And C darts in, stands up and ruins it.

“Not nice,” growls TRL. C just looks up, smiles, and twirls around. E continues to read happily. TRL stomps away in a huff. He then busies himself by making a snack for the boys.

“Guys, snack,” he calls, and they clatter into their seats. TRL kisses C on the forehead. “Can we be friends?” he asks.

C levels a thoughtful gaze at TRL.

“Be my Daddy,” he responds.

Act 5, Scene 4: “And It’s Cold, Too”

The TRL family is at the beach, and C and E polish off ice cream cones after the long and sweaty work of building sand trenches, pits and mounds. To C and E, it is joyous beach fun. To TRL, who is the main earth mover and chief designer, it is the building of civilizations, the blooming of a grand vision of a better world, as well as the exercising of his suppressed-by-life God complex which held its full promise in his twenties. Plus it’s a damn fine work-out.

They are heading back to the house to shower, when C, who has finished his cone, turns to E, presenting him with an imaginary ice cream treat: “Would you like to try my ice cream? There’s no glass in it,” says C.

The ultimate product, guaranteeing something that everybody wants while implying that the competition may just have some unpleasantness waiting as a nasty surprise. It is the perfect product pitch.

Bloody tongues? Glass shards sticking out from your gums? Ben and Jerry’s, Haagen-Dazs, Ciao Bella. Fine ice cream, but no guarantees. C’s Ice Cream - There’s No Glass In It. Because it says so right in the name.