Three Plays of Tennessee Williams Read online

  BRICK [holding his head unnaturally still and uptilted a bit]: It was Skipper that told me about it. Not you, Maggie.

  MARGARET: I told you!

  BRICK: After he told me!

  MARGARET: What does it matter who—?

  [Brick turns suddenly out upon the gallery and calls:]

  BRICK: Little girl! Hey, little girl!

  GIRL [at a distance]: What, Uncle Brick?

  BRICK: Tell the folks to come up!—Bring everybody upstairs!

  MARGARET: I can't stop myself! I'd go on telling you this in front of them all, if I had to!

  BRICK: Little girl! Go on, go on, will you? Do what I told you, call them!

  MARGARET: Because it's got to be told and you, you!—you never let me!

  [She sobs, then controls herself, and continues almost calmly.]

  It was one of those beautiful, ideal things they tell about in the Greek legends, it couldn't be anything else, you being you, and that's what made it so sad, that's what made it so awful, because it was love that never could be carried through to anything satisfying or even talked about plainly. Brick, I tell you, you got to believe me, Brick, I do understand all about it! I—I think it was—noble! Can't you tell I'm sincere when I say I respect it? My only point, the only point that I'm making, is life has got to be allowed to continue even after the dream of life is—all—over....

  [Brick is without his crutch, leaning on furniture, he crosses to pick it up as she continues as if possessed by a will outside herself:]

  Why I remember when we double-dated at college, Gladys Fitzgerald and I and you and Skipper, it was more like a date between you and Skipper. Gladys and I were just sort of tagging along as if it was necessary to chaperone you!—to make a good public impression—

  BRICK [turns to face her, half lifting his crutch]: Maggie, you want me to hit you with this crutch? Don't you know I could kill you with this crutch?

  MARGARET: Good Lord, man, d' you think I'd care if you did?

  BRICK: One man has one great good true thing in his life. One great good thing which is true!—I had friendship with Skipper.—You are naming it dirty!

  MARGARET: I'm not naming it dirty! I am naming it clean.

  BRICK: Not love with you, Maggie, but friendship with Skipper was that one great true thing, and you are naming it dirty!

  MARGARET: Then you haven't been listenin', not understood what I'm saying! I'm naming it so damn clean that it killed poor Skipper!—You two had something that had to be kept on ice, yes, incorruptible, yes!—and death was the only icebox where you could keep it....

  BRICK: I married you, Maggie. Why would I marry you, Maggie, if I was—?

  MARGARET: Brick, don't brain me yet, let me finish!—I know, believe me I know, that it was only Skipper that harbored even any unconscious desire for anything not perfectly pure between you two!—Now let me skip a little. You married me early that summer we graduated out of Ole Miss, and we were happy, weren't we, we were blissful, yes, hit heaven together ev'ry time that we loved! But that fall you an' Skipper turned down wonderful offers of jobs in order to keep on bein' football heroes—pro-football heroes. You organized the Dixie Stars that fall, so you could keep on bein' team-mates for ever! But somethin' was not right with it!—Me included!—between you. Skipper began hittin' the bottle... you got a spinal injury—couldn't play the Thanksgivin' game in Chicago, watched it on TV from a traction bed in Toledo. I joined Skipper. The Dixie Stars lost because poor Skipper was drunk. We drank together that night all night in the bar of the Blackstone and when cold day was comin' up over the Lake an' we were comin' out drunk to take a dizzy look at it, I said, 'SKIPPER! STOP LOVIN' MY HUSBAND OR TELL HIM HE'S GOT TO LET YOU ADMIT IT TO HIM!'-one way or another!

  HE SLAPPED ME HARD ON THE MOUTH!—then turned and ran without stopping once, I am sure, all the way back into his room at the Blackstone....

  —When I came to his room that night, with a little scratch like a shy little mouse at his door, he made that pitiful, ineffectual little attempt to prove that what I had said wasn't true—

  [Brick strikes at her with crutch, a blow that shatters the gemlike lamp on the table.]

  —In this way, I destroyed him, by telling him truth that he and his world which he was born and raised in, yours and his world, had told him could not be told?

  —From then on Skipper was nothing at all but a receptacle for liquor and drugs....

  —Who shot cock-robin? I with my—

  [She throws back her head with tight shut eyes.]

  —merciful arrow!

  [Brick strikes at her; misses.]

  Missed me!—Sorry,—I'm not tryin' to whitewash my behaviour, Christ, no! Brick, I'm not good. I don't know why people have to pretend to be good, nobody's good. The rich or the well-to-do can afford to respect moral patterns, conventional moral patterns, but I could never afford to, yeah, but—I'm honest! Give me credit for just that, will you please?—Born poor, raised poor, expect to die poor unless I manage to get us something out of what Big Daddy leaves when he dies of cancer! But Brick?!—Skipper is dead! I'm alive! Maggie the cat is—

  [Brick hops awkwardly forward and strikes at her again with his crutch.]

  —alive! I am alive! I am...

  [He hurls the crutch at her, across the bed she took refuge behind, and pitches forward on the floor as she completes her speech.]

  —alive!

  [A little girl, Dixie, bursts into the room, wearing an Indian war bonnet and firing a cap pistol at Margaret and shouting: 'Bang, bang, bang!' Laughter downstairs floats through the open ball door. | Margaret had crouched gasping to bed at child's entrance. She now rises and says with cool fury:]

  Little girl, your mother or someone should teach you—[gasping]—to knock at a door before you come into a room. Otherwise people might think that you—lack—good breeding....

  DIXIE: Yanh, yanh, yanh, what is Uncle Brick doin' on th' floor?

  BRICK: I tried to kill your Aunt Maggie, but I failed—and I fell. Little girl, give me my crutch so I can get up off th' floor.

  MARGARET: Yes, give your uncle his crutch, he's a cripple, honey, he broke his ankle last night jumping hurdles on the high school athletic field!

  DIXIE: What were you jumping hurdles for, Uncle Brick?

  BRICK: Because I used to jump them, and people like to do what they used to do, even after they've stopped being able to do it....

  MARGARET: That's right, that's your answer, now go away, little girl.

  [Dixie fires cap pistol at Margaret three times.]

  Stop, you stop that, monster! You little no-neck monster!

  [She seizes the cap pistol and hurls it through gallery doors.]

  DIXIE [with a precocious instinct for the cruellest thing]: You're jealous!—You're just jealous because you can't have babies!

  [She sticks out her tongue at Margaret as she sashays past her with her stomach stuck out, to the gallery. Margaret slams the gallery doors and leans panting against them. There is a pause. Brick has replaced his spilt drink and sits, faraway, on the great four-poster bed.]

  MARGARET: You see?—they gloat over us being childless, even in front of their five little no-neck monsters!

  [Pause. Voices approach on the stairs.]

  Brick?—I've been to a doctor in Memphis, a—a gynaecologist.... I've been completely examined, and there is no reason why we can't have a child whenever we want one. And this is my time by the calendar to conceive. Are you listening to me? Are you? Are you LISTENING TO ME!

  BRICK: Yes. I hear you, Maggie.

  [His attention returns to her inflamed face.]

  —But how in hell on earth do you imagine—that you're going to have a child by a man that can't stand you?

  MARGARET: That's a problem that I will have to work out.

  [She wheels about to face the hall door.]

  Here they come!

  [The lights dim.]

  CURTAIN

  ACT TWO

  Ther
e is no lapse of time. Margaret and Brick are in the same positions they held at the end of Act One.

  MARGARET [at door]: Here they come!

  [Big Daddy appears first, a tall man with a fierce, anxious look, moving carefully not to betray his weakness even, or especially, to himself.]

  BIG DADDY: Well, Brick.

  BRICK: Hello, Big Daddy.—Congratulations!

  BIG DADDY: —Crap....

  [Some of the people are approaching through the hall, others along the gallery | voices from both directions. Gooper and Reverend Tooker become visible outside gallery doors, and their voices come in clearly. They pause outside as Gooper lights a cigar.]

  REVEREND TOOKER [vivaciously]: Oh, but St Paul's in Grenada has three memorial windows, and the latest one is a Tiffany stained-glass window that cost twenty-five hundred dollars, a picture of Christ the Good Shepherd with a Lamb in His arms.

  GOOPER: Who give that window, Preach?

  REVEREND TOOKER: Clyde Fletcher's widow. Also presented St Paul's with a baptismal font.

  GOOPER: Y'know what somebody ought t' give your church is a coolin' system, Preach.

  REVEREND TOOKER: Yes, siree, Bob! And y'know what Gus Hamma's family gave in his memory to the church at Two Rivers? A complete new stone parish-house with a basketball court in the basement and a—

  BIG DADDY [uttering a loud barking laugh which is far from truly mirthful]: Hey, Preach! What's all this talk about memorials, Preach? Y' think somebody's about t' kick off around here? 'S that it?

  [Startled by this interjection, Reverend Tooker decides to laugh at the question almost as loud as he can. How he would answer the question we'll never know, as he's spared that embarrassment by the voice of Gooper's wife, Mae, rising high and clear as she appears with Doc' Baugh, the family doctor, through the hall door.]

  MAE [almost religiously]: —Let's see now, they've had their tyyy-phoid shots, and their tetanus shots, their diphtheria shots and their hepatitis shots and their polio shots, they got those shots every month from May through September, and—Gooper? Hey! Gooper!—What all have the kiddies been shot faw?

  MARGARET [overlapping a bit]: Turn on the Hi-Fi, Brick! Let's have some music t' start off th' party with!

  [The talk becomes so general that the room sounds like a great aviary of chattering birds. Only Brick remains unengaged, leaning upon the liquor cabinet with his faraway smile, an ice cube in a paper napkin with which he now and then rubs his forehead. He doesn't respond to Margaret's command. She bounds forward and stoops over the instrument panel of the console.]

  GOOPER: We gave 'em that thing for a third anniversary present, got three speakers in it.

  [The room is suddenly blasted by the climax of a Wagnerian opera or a Beethoven symphony.]

  BIG DADDY: Turn that damn thing off!

  [Almost instant silence, almost instantly broken by the shouting charge of Big Mama, entering through hall door like a charging rhino.]

  BIG MAMA: Wha's my Brick, wha's mah precious baby!!

  BIG DADDY: Sorry! Turn it back on!

  [Everyone laughs very loud. Big Daddy is famous for his jokes at Big Mama's expense, and nobody laughs louder at these jokes than Big Mama herself, though sometimes they're pretty cruel and Big Mama has to pick up or fuss with something to cover the hurt that the loud laugh doesn't quite cover. On this occasion, a happy occasion, because the dread in her heart has also been lifted by the false report on Big Daddy's condition, she giggles, grotesquely, coyly, in Big Daddy's direction and bears down upon Brick, all very quick and alive.]

  BIG MAMA: Here he is, here's my precious baby! What's that you've got in your hand? You put that liquor down, son, your hand was made fo' holdin' somethin' better than that!

  GOOPER: Look at Brick put it down!

  [Brick has obeyed Big Mama by draining the glass and handing it to her. Again everyone laughs, some high, some low.]

  BIG MAMA: Oh, you bad boy, you, you're my bad little boy. Give Big Mama a kiss, you bad boy, you!—Look at him shy away, will you? Brick never liked bein' kissed or made a fuss over, I guess because he's always had too much of it! Son, you turn that thing off!

  [Brick has switched on the TV set.]

  I can't stand T V, radio was bad enough but TV has gone it one better, I mean—[Plops wheeling in chair]—one worse, ha ha! Now what'm I sittin' down here faw? I want t' sit next to my sweetheart on the sofa, hold hands with him and love him up a little!

  [Big Mama has on a black and white figured chiffon. The large irregular patterns, like the markings of some massive animal, the luster of her great diamonds and many pearls, the brilliants set in the silver frames of her glasses, her riotous voice, booming laugh, have dominated the room since she entered. Big Daddy has been regarding her with a steady grimace of chronic annoyance.]

  BIG MAMA [still louder]: Preacher, Preacher, hey, Preach! Give me you' hand an' help me up from this chair!

  REVEREND TOOKER: None of your tricks, Big Mama!

  BIG MAMA: What tricks? You give me you' hand so I can get up an'—

  [Reverend Tooker extends her his hand. She grabs it and pulls him into her lap with a shrill laugh that spans an octave in two notes.]

  Ever seen a preacher in a fat lady's lap? Hey, hey, folks! Ever seen a preacher in a fat lady's lap?

  [Big Mama is notorious throughout the Delta for this sort of inelegant horseplay. Margaret looks on with indulgent humor, sipping Dubonnet 'on the rocks' and watching Brick, but Mae and Gooper exchange signs of humorless anxiety over these antics, the sort of behaviour which Mae thinks may account for their failure to quite get in with the smartest young married set in Memphis, despite all. One of the Negroes, Lacy or Sookey, peeks in, cackling. They are waiting for a sign to bring in the cake and champagne. But Big Daddy's not amused. He doesn't understand why, in spite of the infinite mental relief he's received from the doctor's report, he still has these same old fox teeth in his guts. 'This spastic thing sure is something?' he says to himself, but aloud he roars at Big Mama:]

  BIG DADDY: BIG MAMA, WILL YOU QUIT HORSIN'?—You're too old an' too fat fo' that sort of crazy kid stuff an' besides a woman with your blood-pressure—she had two hundred last spring!—is riskin' a stroke when you mess around like that....

  BIG MAMA: Here comes Big Daddy's birthday!

  [Negroes in white jackets enter with an enormous birthday cake ablaze with candles and carrying buckets of champagne with satin ribbons about the bottle necks. | Mae and Gooper strike up song, and everybody, including the Negroes and children, joins in. Only Brick remains aloof.]

  EVERYONE: Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, Big Daddy—[Some sing: 'Dear, Big Daddy!']—Happy birthday to you. [Some sing: 'How old are you!']

  [Mae has come down center and is organizing her children like a chorus. She gives them a barely audible: 'One, two, three!' and they are off in the new tune.]

  CHILDREN: Skinamarinka—dinka—dink Skinamarinka—do We love you. Skinamarinka—dinka—dink Skinamarinka—do.

  [All together, they turn to Big Daddy.]

  Big Daddy, you!

  [They turn back front, like a musical comedy chorus.]

  We love you in the morning; We love you in the night. We love you when we're with you. And we love you out of sight. Skinamarinka—dinka—dink Skinamarinka—do.

  [Mae turns to Big Mama.]

  Big Mama, too!

  [Big Mama bursts into tears. The Negroes leave.]

  BIG DADDY: Now Ida, what the hell is the matter with you?

  MAE: She's just so happy.

  BIG MAMA: I'm just so happy, Big Daddy, I have to cry or something.

  [Sudden and loud in the hush:]

  Brick, do you know the wonderful news that Doc Baugh got from the clinic about Big Daddy? Big Daddy's one hundred per cent!

  MARGARET: Isn't that wonderful?

  BIG MAMA: He's just one hundred per cent. Passed the examination with flying colors. Now that we know there's nothing wrong with Bi
g Daddy but a spastic colon, I can tell you something. I was worried sick, half out of my mind, for fear that Big Daddy might have a thing like—

  [Margaret cuts through this speech, jumping up and exclaiming shrilly:]

  MARGARET: Brick, honey, aren't you going to give Big Daddy his birthday present?

  [Passing by him, she snatches his liquor glass from him. She picks up a fancily wrapped package.]

  Here it is, Big Daddy, this is from Brick!

  BIG MAMA: This is the biggest birthday Big Daddy's ever had, a hundred presents and bushels of telegrams from—

  MAE [at same time]: What is it, Brick?

  GOOPER: I bet 500 to 50 that Brick don't know what it is.

  BIG MAMA: The fun of presents is not knowing what they are till you open the package. Open your present, Big Daddy.

  BIG DADDY: Open it you'self. I want to ask Brick somethin'! Come here, Brick.