Edna tells Rose, "Don't worry about me. I'm a decorated war veteran. I've tied tourniquets on blown-off legs with blood squirting clear across the tent. One time my hand cramped, and I had to use my teeth." She's tough, you dig? She thinks she should be able to handle getting over Irv leaving her but, actually, she seems unable to get past it. She remembers that when Hal Sr. died, it hurt, but it made sense and she was able to deal with it. "But this one...it's weeks later...I'm still IN it. When something's over, it should be over. Why should I care if his smell is leaving the pillow?"

Clearly, she does care. Edna is pretty awesome in this scene. She's hurting, and Rose knows it, but Edna spurns all attempts Rose makes at trying to get her to share her feelings with Irv. "Oh, no. He left." Rose says that's just pride talking. "Do you even know what I had to do," Rose says, "to keep Harold from running off and joining the seminary three days before we got married?" Edna: "I don't want to." Hee. The point is, Rose says, Edna wouldn't still be so upset if the marriage wasn't worth saving. Edna protests this, but too much, and Rose bustles her out the door to come and hang out at Chez Abbott.

In the halls of Julliard, Ephram is wandering around, listening to various people in their various rehearsals. I loved this part, because I was a music student, myself -- though not at a school as prestigious as Julliard -- and clearly remember doing the same thing along the rehearsal corridors. I remember early in my freshman year coming out of my own practice room after crashing for a piano exam, and knocking on the door of the room next to mine, where a guy had been playing the same three measures of some trombone solo for two hours, trying to get it right. I hit him up for 50 cents to get a Coke, and I remember he nervously asked if I was a piano student. I told him, no, I was a vocalist, and he goes, "Yeah, I could tell." Even though the joke was on me, I laughed. We understood each other. That guy plays in a very important orchestra, now. I still sing professionally. Being able to understand even the smallest thing about music, and the performance of music, will really put it in the blood, and it's in there for life. I know actors feel the same way about the theater. So, when Ephram stops to watch a girl practice her violin and clearly finds her level of skill to be impressive, I can see in his face the same thing I felt the first time I ever sat in a really good choir. It feels like a gift. He realizes he belongs there, with these musicians, and it is a bona fide thrill.