Why, Troy? Why? After all these years come dragging this into me now, it don't make no sense at your age.
I could have expected this 10, 15 years ago. Why not now? Age ain't got nothing to do with it, Rose. I'm trying to be everything a wife should be. Everything a wife could be.
I've been married 18 years and I got lived to see the day you tell me you've been seeing another woman and not fathered a child. And you know I never want no half nothing in my family. My whole family is half everybody got different fathers and mothers my two sisters my brothers you could Hardly tell who's who could never sit down talk about papa mama So it's your papa your mama my papa my mama and he never wanted that for none of my children And now you want to drag you behind in here.
Tell me something like this. Stop it now You ought to know it's time for you to well, I don't want to know Rose, I just can't make it go away. It's done now.
I can't. I wish the circumstances are to thing away. And you don't want to either.
Maybe you want to wish me and my boy away, maybe that's what you want. Well, you can't wish us away. I got 18 years of my life invested in you.
You ought to have stayed upstairs in my bed where you belong. Now listen to me, we can get a handle on this thing. We can talk this out, come to an understanding.
All of a sudden it's we. Where was we at when you were down there rolling around with some godforsaken woman? We should have come to an understanding before you started making a damn fool of yourself.
You're a day late and a dollar short when you come to an understanding with me. Rose, it's just that... She give me a different idea, a different understanding about myself.
I can step out this house and get away from the pressures and the problems, be a different man. I ain't got to worry about how I'm gonna get the roof fixed or pay the bills. I can just be a part of myself I ain't never been before. What I want to know is, what I want to know... Is do you plan to continue seeing her?
That's all you can say to me. I can sit up in a house and laugh. You understand what I'm saying? I can laugh out loud and it feels good. It reaches all the way down to the bottom of my shoes, Rose.
I can't give that up. But you oughta go on and stay down there with her. Is she a better woman than me? It ain't about nobody being a better woman or nothing, Rose. You ain't to blame.
A man couldn't ask for a better wife than you've been. I'm responsible for it. I done locked myself into a pattern, trying to take care of you all that I forgot about myself.
What the- What the hell was I there for? That was my job, not somebody else. Rose, listen to me.
I done tried all my life to live decent. To live a clean, hard, useful life. I try to be a good husband to you in every way I know how.
Maybe I come into the world backwards. I don't know, but you're born... with two strikes on you before you come to the plate. You've got to guard it closely.
Always looking for the curve ball on the inside corner. You can't afford a call strike. You can't let nothing get past you.
If you're going down, you're going down swinging. Everything lined up against you. What you gonna do? I fooled them, Rose.
I bunted. When I found you and Cory in a halfway decent job, I was safe. Couldn't nothing touch me. I wasn't going to strike out no more.
I wasn't going back to the penitentiary. I wasn't going to lie in the street with a bottle of wine. I was safe. I had me a family, a job. I wasn't going to get that last strike.
I was... Standing on first base waiting for one of them boys to knock me in to bring me home You should've stayed in my bed Troy I saw the gal, she firmed up my backbone I got to thinking that if I tried, maybe I could steal second You understand what I'm saying? You should've held me tight, you should've grabbed me and held on I stood on first base for 18 years And I thought, well, damn it, go on for it. We ain't talking about baseball. We're talking about you going off and laying up with another woman and bringing her home to me.
That's what we're talking about. We're not talking about no baseball. Rose, you're not listening to me. I'm trying to explain it to you the best way I know how. It's not easy for me to admit that I've been standing in the same place for 18 years.
Well, I've been standing with you. I've been right here with you, Troy. I got a life, too. I gave 18 years of my life to stand in the same spot as you.
Don't you think I ever wanted other things? Don't you think I had dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me?
Don't you think I've ever crossed my mind to want to know other men? That I wanted to lay up somewhere and forget about my responsibilities? That I wanted someone to make me laugh so I could feel good?
You're not the only one who's got wants and needs. But I held on to your toy. I took all my feelings, my wants and needs and dreams, and I buried them inside you. I planted a seed and watched and prayed over.
I planted myself inside you and waited to bloom. It didn't take me no 18 years to realize the soil was hard. and rocky and it wasn't never gonna bloom but i held on to you troy i held you tighter you was my husband i owed you everything i had every part of me i could find to give you and upstairs in that bedroom with with the darkness falling in on me. I gave everything I had to try and erase the doubt that you wasn't the finest man in the world, and wherever you was going, I was going to be there with you because you was my husband. Because that's the only way I was going to survive is your wife.
You're always talking about what you give and what you don't have to give. But you take too, Troy. You take and don't even know nobody's giving. You say I take and don't give. Troy, you hurt me.
You say I take and don't give. Troy, you hurt my own life. I don't give you everything I got.
Don't you tell that lie. Troy. Don't you tell that lie.
Troy. Troy, you hurt me. Troy. Troy. All right.
That's strike two. You stay away from around me boy. Don't you strike out.
You're living with a full count.