Andrea wonders aloud if Cathy's going through the Change. "When that happened to my grandma, she started acting real strange. Crying in church all the time." Normalcy, they agree, is beyond us all. When they get back to the house, Marlene comes screaming off her porch. Thomas barks his hello, but Marlene is going apeshit. "That colored girl is trying to steal my Thomas!"

Yeah.

Andrea's like, "The fuck?" Marlene offers to shoot her with a rifle, essentially, and things sort of escalate to the point where Cathy comes out to Adam laughing while Marlene tries to strangle Andrea, who swings the old woman around on her back like a ragdoll. It is impressively fucked up, what Cathy finds herself walking into. "Do you know this colored girl?" Cathy is shocked, of course, even further by that, and Andrea tells Marlene to fuck herself, and Thomas is barking, and Adam is laughing, and she sends everybody back to their corners. She apologizes, and Marlene just stares. At the curb, Cathy turns with a tiny secret smile: "Told you to watch your dog." Marlene doesn't have a comeback this time.

The support group, unluckily, is just getting out for a break when Cathy walks by, horrified. They pile on her at the car and ask her if she got the groceries -- "Again: Unnecessary" -- and chortle about how Team Cathy missed her at Group. She taps her pack of cigarettes nervously against her finger, drawing their eyes and making their heads shake. "I'm not sure groups are really for me. I think I'm more the suffering-in-silence kind of gal?" They start in about the smoking, and she is not having it. "Look. I'm dying, people. I mean, you've got to let me have my simple pleasures."

They fight her about the cigarettes, they fight her about Team Cathy, they fight her about Group, they fight and fight and shake their heads and say horrible things like "When life give you lemons, squeeze out a smile!" and finally she has had enough. Her smile since they attacked has been begging for it, to be pushed, to express her resentment for their smothering, hateful love. She shines very brightly, for one moment. This is how it goes:

"Are you kidding me here? I don't know you people. I didn't ask for you to take me on as your pet project, and I sure as hell don't need to be judged by you. And in case no one's told you, cancer's not a gift. Cancer is not a passport to a better life. Cancer is the reason I'm not gonna have my life. I'm not gonna watch my son get married. I'm not gonna see my grandchildren. So excuse me for not squeezing out a smile. We walk around with this grayness inside of us, and you want to pretend that we're bright and shiny and full of possibilities? Well, count me out, because cancer sucks! Put that on your goddamn inspirational poster!"