Teddy straightens up, opens his arms and engulfs her.
“I’m so sorry, Trudy. I’m so, so sorry.” He is weeping. I have never seen this man cry, not even at John’s funeral. He has always shut off his emotions like a leaky faucet, only Teddy ignored its repair.
“I wasn’t there for you,” he says. “I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know.”
Trudy grabs her brother’s face.
“Why do you think I was so mean to you?” she asks with an almost wistful smile. “I didn’t want you to be around me. Iwanted you out of that house. If you hated me and you hated Daddy, you were safe.”
Teddy falls to his knees, and Trudy holds him.
I sit up and lean against the wall.
Sid and Barry peek their heads out of their own bedrooms.
“Is everything okay?” Sid whispers.
“I don’t know,” I whisper back.
“Are we okay?” Barry asks.
I nod.
They come into the hallway, take a seat on the floor beside me and lean their heads on my shoulder.
“I should have told you about Leo,” Sid says.
“I should have told you about the role,” Barry says. “I’m just going through a lot.”
“Me, too,” Sid adds. “We love you, Ronny.”
“Do you?” I ask.
“More than Barry Manilow,” Sid says.
“More thanThe Golden Girls,” Barry adds.
“That’s a lot,” I say. “You know I can’t stay mad at my best friends.” I remember a favorite Rose line from one of our shows. “After all, we’ve eaten over five hundred cheesecakes together.”
“You mean, drank over five hundred martinis together,” Sid corrects me.
“You say toMAYto, I say toMAHto.” I smile.
“So, what’s going on in there?” Barry asks.
“No more secrets, as I said on stage.”
I take a deep breath and tell them why Trudy is actually here.
They sit in stunned silence. Then Barry comes clean about how he got his role and his relationship with Kyle.
“What should I do?” he asks. “I have the role of a lifetime, but at what cost to my integrity? I just feel so gross.”
I look at Sid, who looks at me. Our expressions are bemused, to say the least.
“You have integrity?” Sid asks.
“This makes you feel gross?” I ask.
