“Mo—ther!” Vic Wylie’s frantic hands were in his reddish hair. “You’re not a five-year-old brat whining for a lollypop. You’re fifteen. You feel you’re a man. You’re suddenly aware that the most wonderful woman in the world is fighting a hard battle. You want to help. Put that into your voice.”
Joe tried again.
“No, no. Not ‘Mo—ther’ with a valley between the two syllables. That’s the way a young child pules. You’re fifteen. You feel that you ought to be the man of the family. You’re long past the ‘Mo—ther’ stage.”
Joe put snap into it. “Mother.”
Wylie groaned. “Too abrupt; too cold. You’ve got to get that ‘Mother’ with a depth, a feeling.... Try it again.”
Joe drew a breath. “Mother.”
“Now you’re swinging back to the cute stage. Something in between the two. Get it.”
A shaken Joe Carlin obeyed the will of an inexorable taskmaster. Sweat beaded his upper lip; sweat ran down his cheeks. For fifteen minutes he struggled to put into one word what a slave-driver wanted put into that one word. Then Wylie snapped his fingers.
“Carry that last ‘Mother’ in your ear. That’s the inflection I want. Give me the rest of it.”
Sweat dropped on page four of the script. Joe read: