Frances -- Week Two

Paul gets checked out by a neurologist to see if he is exhibiting symptoms for Parkinson's. During Frances's session, she notices that he looks haggard. She shows Paul the "prompter" the producers want her to wear in her ear in case she forgets her lines during the performance. Though she can't figure out the reason for her lapses, Frances recalls that during one of them she felt the need to call her teenage daughter, Izzy, who has been spending all her free time at Patricia's bedside. In spite of fond memories of early motherhood and marriage, Frances now she sees her ex-husband Russell and Izzy as united against her. She's been reading Izzy's emails and discovered that she and her boyfriend are considering having sex (something Frances hasn't done since Rusell left her for a grad student). Frances feels excluded from Izzy and Patricia's close relationship. Paul reveals that when he reached out to see how Patricia was doing, he realized that Frances had lied about receiving her sister's permission to see him. After agreeing to tell Patricia about seeing Paul, Frances turns the conversation to the anxiety she feels about the test for the breast cancer gene and her deep fear of getting a mastectomy. Sunk into the couch, she reaches out for Paul to help her up, and he obliges.