Well, she goes on to explain, crying more fiercely now, frightening him because it’s raining very hard and there’s quite a bit of traffic heading into the city at this hour of the morning, and he doesn’t want her to run into one of the trucks rolling ponderously toward the George Washington Bridge, but how can she see through this driving rain and her own veil of tears, her vale of tears? Well, she says, I got very scared when he sent the letter to my building because that meant he’d followed me from the theater and he knew where I lived, and it sounded very threatening, the business about my wanting it as much as he did and now he knew where to get it and all, it sounded like somebody getting ready to rape me, for Christ’s sake! And you were away, David, don’t forget that, you weren’t here, you hadn’t even called, where the hell were you?
She is beginning to sound hysterical, he has dealt with hysteria before. “Honey,” he says, “calm down, I’m here now,” but she keeps ranting about how she had to go to someone and the only one she could think of was Rickie, the kid from the bike shop, who was kind enough and brave enough to take her for something to eat after the show, and walk her home afterward, so that fucking lunatic would think he was her boyfriend and get scared off.
“Kate, watch the road,” he warns.
“It isn’t as if I have a brother or a father I can turn to,” she says, “and my sister is helpless, of course, and even if my mother wasn’t in San Diego, she wouldn’t give a damn if an ax murderer was following me. You don’t know what she’s like, David...”
And now he listens to a furious recitation that truly could come from any one of his patients, a conversation so privileged that it transforms this teeny-weeny car into a psychiatrist’s cubicle, or, more accurately, a priest’s confessional. Patiently, he listens. This is the woman he loves, and she is in serious trouble. As the windshield wipers snick at the incessant rain, he listens.
The fury she expends on her mother has one dubious side effect in that it stanches the flow of tears and forces a hunched-over-the-wheel concentration on the road, as if Kate is driving this tiny car not only through the fiercely slanting rain but also, like a sharpened stake, directly into her mother’s heart. Her mother’s name is Fiona, but it could just as easily be Shirley, or Rhoda or Marie or Lila, who are the respective reviled mothers of Arthur K, Alex J, Susan M and Michael D, or for that matter David’s own mother Ruth before he went through the extensive analysis that put his hatred for her to rest. (A father named Neil lurks in the background of Kate’s fiery recitation, somewhat like a shadow lingering offstage, a fact that brings him immediately to prominence in David’s trained analytical mind.) But her rage seems exclusively directed toward Fiona as the car approaches the bridge in a similarly raging storm that buffets it with wind and water. Everywhere around them, rumbling trucks lumber like dinosaurs.
According to Kate, her mother was — and is — a demanding, ungiving, unforgiving bitch who would rather kick a cripple than light a candle in church. “We used to call her Fee the Fair,” she says, virtually grinding the words out through essentially clenched teeth...
...not only because she was an extravagantly beautiful woman, but also because she was so fucking unfair with the girls, and even with their father (Neil still skulks in the shadows, a figure reluctant to take his proper place on the stage of Kate’s mind), accusing them of plots to thwart her will or topple her carefully organized plans. Bess was the true beauty in the family — with their mother’s red hair and green eyes, of course, which both of them had inherited — but also with a rare sort of radiant inner beauty that shone on her face like something beatific. Maybe this was why Fiona tended to pick on her more often than she did Kate, who, to tell the truth, was a scrawny, skinny kid who looked more like a boy than the girl she was supposed to be... well, he knows that, she’s already told him what she looked like at thirteen. Even so, Kate really was her father’s favorite, as her mother never failed to point out to poor Bess (Neil taking a step closer, into the spotlight, and then retreating swiftly into the shadows again).
“Here, I’ve got it,” David says, and hands her the change for the toll.
Kate rolls down the window, hands the coins over to the collector, and quickly rolls it up again before they both drown. The brief interruption serves as an end to the first act. But when the curtain goes up again after intermission, it is on another scene entirely, perhaps another play entirely.
David wishes they were someplace else, anywhere else, anywhere but inside this claustrophobic car hurtling through the rain. He longs to hold her, kiss the drying tears from her face, comfort her and console her, tell her how much he loves her, promise he will be here to take care of her, she has nothing to worry about, he’s here now. Somehow they make it over the bridge and are heading downtown on the Harlem River Drive. Out on the river tugboats move listlessly through the shifting mist on the water. As Kate sifts sobbingly through the tattered tissue of her memory, the windshield wipers swipe ceaselessly and ineffectively at the rain. He is truly afraid she will crash the car into any one of the vehicles everywhere around them, certain tomorrow’s headline in the Daily News will read LOVERS PERISH IN FLAMES.
Flames.
Flames have suddenly become the thesis of this large-screen, full-color extravaganza. Flames are what now envelop Kate’s sister on a night in August long ago, everything seems to happen to Kate in August, wasn’t it a wet and steamy day in August when she was just thirteen — yes, the theater’s business manager, or accountant, or whatever the hell he was, his small office, yes, her blatant, brazen seduction of her father’s best friend. But the fire is... what? Three years later? And flames are consuming her fourteen-year-old sister as she runs out of the burning house she herself has set on fire. Flames are everywhere, the house, Bess’s gown, her hair, red as fire anyway, redder now with flames that lick and bite at curling crackling strands. Flames are the theme, flames are the plot, flames are the horror. In hot and almost comic pursuit, like a small band of inept Keystone Kops chasing a human torch, Fiona and a shrieking Kate come running across the lawn after her. Bess is yelling, “Let me die, let me burn in hell!” Kate can hardly breathe. Her father suddenly rushes out of the house with a wet sheet trailing from his hand. He chases his younger daughter, tackles her, brings her to the ground, her nightgown in flames, her hair on fire, Jesus, oh Jesus, holds her pinned to the ground as Kate screams “Leave her alone, you son of a bitch!” and Fiona, all wide-eyed and shocked, stands by appalled as Bess repeats over and over again, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned... bless me, Father, for I have sinned... bless me...” He wraps her in the cool wet sheets, the sheets beginning to steam around her, the smell of her scorched and smoldering hair stinking up the August night, the sheets steaming on the humid August night, everything happens in August, August is the cruelest month.