Implacable, but enjoyable.

Act I

Stoner-esque description of a professor becoming washed up and criticized (particularly by women) in his field. This drives a rift between he and his academic wife, though it doesn't sound like there is much animus between them as there is just residual discontentment in the house.

I was delighted by her. Though she also repulsed me. When she was a student, and later when she became my wife. She annihilated me by knowing things I didn't know. My desire was something about her I could control, and ultimately, marrying her was the greatest revenge against her brilliance.

Interesting intellectualization of the weird, highly-gendered relationship between prof and his wife and then:

When she was my student, deep down, I wanted to lick up and down the route between her breasts. But she was my stydent, and so I kept this desire sublimated, entirely. I tell you: entirely.

whoop – there it is.

ACT II

Younger realtor philosophizes about a number of things as she shows off things, not so much about the house as the nature surrounding and the value imbued into the house (and the furniture) by Helen, who would rather die than be in assisted living, where she is now.

The buyer is always trying to prove their worth, hopeful that the seller will chose them over another buyer. Did you put any thought into me finding value in you?

I told her no, but I was lying

The realtor comes to reveal that she has actually done a fair bit of research about the professor, his him pinned down, identified him as a depleted. He accedes. She then further reveals that she has the ability to channel Helen through her to help heal let people experience love. Not in some fru-fru therapeutic way, but some real eastern zen shit. Prof is holding out for some sort of gross happy ending with the ghost of the assisted-living healing homeowner and the younger realtor, has nothing to lose.

ACT III

Commence seance

You need to do less and do it more fully

Scare of current wife, attracted his wife's younger self, because it was malleable. Possessed realtor talks about Ibid. statement a la their bedroom activities.

ACT IV

She ricocheted off the wooden bench.

Recollection in front of Helen (now fully manifested) about the day his wife left him. How she revealed that she had made her mind up years prior the day he hit her dog (who was, admittedly, being bad).

Helen talks about the boys using her pond and how frustrated she got by the mothers who blamed her for their getting injured drinking at her pond, as if she were somehow responsible for watching/policing their children.

Helen/Realtor is convinced there's some Freudian blockage going on in the man where he needs to remove the influence of maternal influence he installed his wife into. Dunno how to reconcile this with his need to control his wife.

ACT V

would you have consulted the flowers? Hypothetically.

The wife receives hypotheticals about being a writer accused of being a hack based on another woman's writing (the character of the other woman and the situation in question actually seem to describe the professor, but in the hypothetical he's a woman, thus annihilating that axis of social wrongdoing, making it all personal. Fasctinating.)

ACT VI

She turned her head away.

I had seen that, too. I had seen it for too long–this flinching at my tough, as if it were a reminder of her own body, which she had been trying to forget.

Man observes his wife (who he is newly infatuated with, waking up one morning in their shared apartment) writing ACT V. Reconciling w/the weird maternal stuff, the professor man is portrayed as a total infant, needing to- and wanting to be taken care of.

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