BETTE-  (She's being pushed and now her numbness is giving way to what's underneath.  She's taken aback by what she feels is almost an understatement or a sarcastic comment.)  "What?  What the hell do you know about my tortured soul?" (Her voice is emboldened but showing the auditory signs of a just how tortured that soul is.)  "I told you I'm sorry, what more do you want?"

TINA-  "And I told you I know.I knowI know.  What more do you have to give, what more do have to say other than 'I'm sorry'?  Is there anything else in there Bette?"  (She moves one step closerthey're about 15 feet apart.)  "You kept asking me earlier tonight 'WHY'?  Whywhywhy.  When I stood that night at the CAC looking for you and turned to find a sight that my eyes fell on, like a warrior falls on his sword, all I could see was your answer to my question to you before we lost our child.  I had asked you WHY- I wanted to know whether my fear that you had fallen out of love with me was justified.  And there, not before, but there and then, that awful night, you gave me what seemed like an answer delivered straight through my heart.  And when I faced you in our bedroom, as I do now, you said then too that you were sorry.  And I delivered my answer to that that apology.  For several months thereafter you never said that word again, but there you were at every turn, hoping for redemption, looking at me like your redeemer, like I had to give you somethinglike unless I would give you something and prove it to you, you couldn't see anything else, you couldn't feel anything else, you couldn't do anything other than relive your betrayal and destruction of everything I held dear.  You made me relive it with you.  I suppose that was to be expected.  But it was relentless.  You seemed to wait for me, for the next move, the next decisioneven our first touch after that horrendous nightyou stood there and waited for permission, not just in the first moments, but throughout.  And there was a hint of fear in youit scared me when I saw it.  Most times I couldn't see past it.  I didn't know what was beyond itI became afraid of what was left in you.  I tried to ignore it and thought we needed time to mend our wounds.  After all, we still loved each other, I thought.  Our child was born and you still waited and looked for whatever you hoped I'd give you, but you gave everything of yourself to hershe became the recipient of everything else in you, except for 'I'm sorry', except for that look, that feeling, that posture of waiting for me to come to you, to give you what you neededthat was reserved for me.  My child was the luckiest daughter alive, and I was the unluckiest woman I knewsleeping next to the love of my life, the woman who was my other half, the one who made me whole, but I couldn't touch her, I could barely stand being near her and then my only escape was away from her, in a direction so opposite to my heart's direction into her that I couldn't find my way backand given that she wouldn't step forward, not unlike what she's doing now, she couldn't catch up to me, she couldn't reach me, she couldn't find meso I was lost."

BETTE-  (Bette is enduring countless jolts of pain inflicted by Tina's words.)  "Tina, I'mI"

TINA-  "Yes, I know, you're sorry."  (Tina's eyes are bearing the brunt of her intensity and showing it.  Her voice is escalating in emotion.)  "I KNOW that.  What I don't know is everything else, what I don't know is killing mekilling me slowlyto the point that I don't know whether I have anything left to give you and mystified by what you want.  You asked why, as though you couldn't have asked all those months before tonight.  Well, I've tried to explain why.  I don't know you, I don't know what's in your heart of hearts, I don't know us anymore."

BETTE-  "If you know how sorry I am, about months ago and about tonight, then what else do you want from me?  What more could I possibly give you?"

TINA-  (Tina is being impaled all over againher eyes close to endure the blow and quickly open to her fury)  "What?!  You're not listening to me"

BETTE-  "You're standing there telling me you KNOW how sorry I am, but you DON'T know everything else.  You're looking at me and saying that you couldn't stand being near me, that all you could see from me was my apologywell Tina, I don't have any more to give.  I don't know how else to say 'I'm sorry' for all that I've done.  I can't do this anymoreI can't give you a better apology.  You're sick and tired of my apology, you can't stand to be near me, you've left me, you're making love"  (her voice cracks)  "to someone elseto a man no less, and now you're standing here telling me you don't want my apologiesyou want me to chase after you somehow.  My God Tina, where have you been all these months?  Haven't you seen me trying to talk to you, to reach out to you, haven't you seen me love your daughter as a daughter?  Before she was born, long before, I "

TINA-  "Do you hear yourself?  Are you hearing me at all?"

BETTE-  "No, I don'tall I hear is my voice and your yours.  I don't hear the words.  I don't understand them.  I don't know how to make sense of it all.  You never forgave me and now wonder why 'I'm sorry' became my mantra, my way of life around you.  Even before I betrayed you, you walked away from me, from usyou withdrew.  And then I lost myself and threw everything away.  You walked out on me, understandably, and I paid for my betrayal every day, every living, breathing moment of every day for months.  I fought for you, I chased you, I did everything I could to find us againand then you took me back and punished me like I never thought possible.  You pushed me away, you distanced yourself, and now your answer is to tell me I was too apologetic and didn't try hard enough to find you. 

When I lost you after Provocations, I couldn't care less about anything.  You had exited my life and it was as though my heart had been removed and replaced by a mere life-sustaining device.  Do you know what it's like Tina to have no sustenancethat's what I lost when I lost you.  Do you know what it's like to have lost that, to yearn it, and to find nameless and faceless women to have sex with and not be able to face them while doing it?  The only face I could possibly look at was yours because try as I might I could never make love without you.

When I was allowed to touch you again it was like being rebornI had my life again, ever so briefly.  My heart could beat with love again because I could revisit your embrace and you would accept mine.  You had changed somehow, but to touch you againto love you again, have you any idea what you were doing to me that day?  Do you know what you did to me when you shared Angelica's birth with me?  You needed safety and comfort but if that's what I provided to you in that time, it was so much more that you and Angelica gave me- I had in my arms the love of my life and the child we dreamed of, the child we planned all those years to bring into being.   What did you see in me in that time apart from stability in an intense time?

I wonder Tina, do you know what it's like to lay in bed all night just watching the person next to you sleep...all night Tinado you know what it's like, to stare for hours, by only night light, at the love of your life, to do this these past months as I have done?  To watch her breathing, her heartbeats, her countenance change in the course of dreaming and deep sleep."  (She's growing exasperated and her heart as well as voice are wearing thin and she's perilously close to not being able to do anything other than sob.  Tina is fighting the angst in her chest and the lumps in her throatthe tears she can do nothing about.)  "Do you know what it's like, to do this night after night, to gaze upon the woman who is my life and yet not be able to touch her, because she wouldn't let me, not be able to reach her with my words because she wouldn't listen to me, not be able to love her because she didn't want medo you have any idea?"  (Tina cries and her tears flow freely.  Bette's tears hadn't yet stopped.  They are both stupefied by their words and their pain, taking what seemed like an endless moment to breathe.)

TINA-  (She looks at Bette after those final words in that lengthy speech and quotes her)  "'not be able to love her because she didn't want medo you have any idea?'  Yes, I do Bette, I know, because all this time you didn't love me, you didn't touch me, you didn't reach me with your wordsyou retreated and waitedyou didn't show me what's inside you, you showed me what you thought I needed to see.  I was struggling with being a mother and needing to work and feeling lost in a panic.  I felt like I couldn't breathe and then I had these feelings I couldn't understand.  The simplicity of being with a manany manaroused me and was like a window out of what was becoming my darkness.  It confused me except in one waythe woman that had loved me so much once no one else ever owned my heart and mind, my body and my soul.  But nobody else made it so hard to love them.  Instead of being there for me you cited Budist philosophy.  Instead of giving me what's inside of you, you gave me lectures on the value of art in the world.  Instead of asking me what I needed, you phoned to tell me that a woman in the other room had told you she needed you on her $50,000 rug.  If I didn't let you touch me, you simply withdrew.  If I wouldn't listen to your words, you stopped saying them or said something different, but never said what you're saying tonight.  If I didn't let you love me it's because you DIDN'T love meyou were afraid of meyou remembered another 'me', you projected a pathetic nostalgia, you waited for me, but you didn't give me your love or show it to meyour unadulterated love, want and need.  And even now you still don't show me what's in there for me.  Still it's 'I'm sorry' or 'why?' or 'look at all that I've done to save us' or 'look at all you've done wrong Tina'there's nothing else there.  I told you BetteI told youI'm telling you nowright nowwhat's in my hearteven after all that I've done wrong, I'm looking at you, from a distance now because you won't even let me come closerand I'm telling youI never stopped loving you.  I am still"  (her voice breaks though it is resolved) "in love with youdammit Bettedo you hear me?