Sweet Bird of Youth Read online

  BOSS: Now, honey--

  HEAVENLY: --and then another, another, all of them ones that you wanted something out of.

  I'd gone, so Chance went away. Tried to compete, make himself big as these big-shots you

  wanted to use me for a bond with. He went. He tried. The right doors wouldn't open, and so he went in the wrong ones, and--Papa, you married for love, why wouldn't you let me do it, while I was alive, inside, and the boy still clean, still decent?

  BOSS: Are you reproaching me for--?

  HEAVENLY [shouting]: Yes, I am, Papa, I am. You married for love, but you wouldn't let me do it, and even though you'd done it, you broke Mama's heart, Miss Lucy had been your

  mistress --

  BOSS: Who is Miss Lucy?

  HEAVENLY: Oh, Papa, she was your mistress long before Mama died. And Mama was just a

  front for you. Can I go in now, Papa? Can I go in now?

  BOSS: No, no, not till I'm through with you. What a terrible, terrible thing for my baby to say .

  . .

  [He takes her in his arms.]

  Tomorrow, tomorrow morning, when the big after-Easter sales commence in the stores--

  I'm gonna send you--in town with a motor-cycle escort, straight to the Maison Blanche. When

  you arrive at the store, I want you to go directly up to the office of Mr Harvey C. Petrie and tell him to give you unlimited credit there. Then go down and outfit yourself as if you was--buyin' a trousseau to marry the Prince of Monaco. . . . Purchase a full wardrobe, includin' furs. Keep 'em in storage until winter. Gown? Three, four, five, the most lavish. Slippers? Hell, pairs and pairs of 'em. Not one hat--but a dozen. I made a pile of dough on a deal involvin' the sale of rights to oil under water here lately, and, baby, I want you to buy a piece of jewelry. Now about that, you better tell Harvey to call me. Or better still, maybe Miss Lucy had better help you select it.

  She's wise as a backhouse rat when it comes to a stone--that's for sure. . . . Now where'd I buy that clip that I give your mama? D'you remember the clip I bought your mama? Last thing I

  give your mama before she died. . . . I knowed she was dyin' when I bought her that clip, and I bought that clip for fifteen thousand dollars mainly to make her think she was going to get well.

  . . . When I pinned it on her on the nightgown she was wearing, that poor thing started crying.

  She said, for God's sake, Boss, what does a dying woman want with such a big diamond? I said

  to her, honey, look at the price tag on it. What does the price tag say? See them five figures, that one and that five and them three oughts on there? Now, honey, make sense, I told her. If you

  was dying, if there was any chance of it, would I invest fifteen grand in a diamond clip to pin on the neck of a shroud? Ha, haha. That made the old lady laugh. And she sat up as bright as a little bird in that bed with the diamond clip on, receiving callers all day, and laughing and chatting with them, with that diamond clip on inside and she died before midnight, with that

  diamond clip on her. And not till the very last minute did she believe that the diamonds wasn't a proof that she wasn't dying.

  [He moves to terrace, takes off robe, and starts to put on tuxedo coat.]

  HEAVENLY: Did you bury her with it?

  BOSS: Bury her with it? Hell, no. I took it back to the jewelry store in the morning.

  HEAVENLY: Then it didn't cost you fifteen grand after all.

  BOSS: Hell, did I care what it cost me? I'm not a small man. I wouldn't have cared one hoot if it cost me a million . . . if at that time I had that kind of loot in my pockets. It would have been worth that money to see that one little smile your mama bird give me at noon of the day she

  was dying.

  HEAVENLY: I guess that shows, demonstrates very dearly, that you have got a pretty big heart

  after all.

  BOSS: Who doubts it then? Who? Who ever? [He laughs.]

  [Heavenly starts to laugh and then screams hysterically. She starts going towards the

  house. Boss throws down his cane and grabs her.]

  Just a minute, Missy. Stop it. Stop it. Listen to me, I'm gonna tell you something. Last

  week in New Bethesda, when I was speaking on the threat of desegregation to white women's

  chastity in the South, some heckler in the crowd shouted out, 'Hey, Boss Finley, how about

  your daughter? How about that operation you had done on your daughter at the Thomas J.

  Finley hospital in St Cloud? Did she put on black in mourning for her appendix?' Same heckler, same question when I spoke in the Coliseum at the state capitol.

  HEAVENLY: What was your answer to him?

  BOSS: He was removed from the hall at both places and roughed up a little outside it.

  HEAVENLY: Papa, you have got an illusion of power.

  BOSS: I have power, which is not an illusion.

  HEAVENLY: Papa, I'm sorry my operation has brought this embarrassment on you, but can

  you imagine it, Papa? I felt worse than embarrassed when I found out that Dr George Scudder's knife had cut the youth out of my body, made me an old childless woman. Dry, cold, empty,

  like an old woman. I feel as if I ought to rattle like a dead dried-up vine when the Gulf wind blows, but, Papa--I won't embarrass you any more. I've made up my mind about something. If

  they'll let me, accept me, I'm going into a convent.

  BOSS [shouting]: You ain't going into no convent. This state is a Protestant region and a

  daughter in a convent would politically ruin me. Oh, I know, you took your mama's religion

  because in your heart you always wished to defy me. Now, tonight, I'm addressing the 'Youth

  for Tom Finley' clubs in the ballroom of the Royal Palms Hotel. My speech is going out over a national TV network, and Missy, you're going to march in the ballroom on my arm. You're

  going to be wearing the stainless white of a virgin, with a 'Youth for Tom Finley' button on one shoulder and a corsage of lilies on the other. You're going to be on the speaker's platform with me, you on one side of me and Tom Junior on the other, to scotch these rumors about your

  corruption. And you're gonna wear a proud happy smile on your face, you're gonna stare

  straight out at the crowd in the ballroom with pride and joy in your eyes. Lookin' at you, all in white like a virgin, nobody would dare to speak or believe the ugly stories about you. I'm

  relying a great deal on this campaign to bring in young voters for the crusade I'm leading. I'm all that stands between the South and the black days of Reconstruction. And you and Tom

  Junior are going to stand there beside me in the grand crystal ballroom, as shining examples of white Southern youth--in danger.

  HEAVENLY [defiant]: Papa, I'm not going to do it.

  BOSS: I didn't say would you, I said you would, and you will.

  HEAVENLY: Suppose I still say I won't.

  BOSS: Then you won't, that's all. If you won't, you won't. But there would be consequences

  you might not like.

  [Phone

  rings.]

  Chance Wayne is back in St Cloud.

  CHARLES [offstage]: Mr Finley's residence. Miss Heavenly? Sorry, she's not in.

  BOSS: I'm going to remove him, he's going to be removed from St Cloud. How do you want

  him to leave, in that white Cadillac he's riding around in, or in the scow that totes the garbage out to the dumping place in the Gulf?

  HEAVENLY: You wouldn't dare.

  BOSS: You want to take a chance on it!

  CHARLES [enters]: That call was for you again, Miss Heavenly.

  BOSS: A lot of people approve of taking violent action against corrupters. And on all of them that want to adulterate the pure white blood of the South. Hell, when I was fifteen, I come down barefoot out of the red clay hills as if the Voice of God called me. Which it did, I believe. I firmly believe He called me. And nothing, nobody, nowhere is gonna stop me, never. . . .

&n
bsp; [He motions to Charles for gift, Charles hands it to him.] Thank you, Charles. I'm gonna

  pay me an early call on Miss Lucy.

  [A sad, uncertain note has come into his voice on this final line. He turns and plods

  wearily, doggedly off at left. the curtain falls House remains dark for short intermission!]

  SCENE TWO

  A corner of cocktail lounge and of outside gallery of the Royal Palms Hotel. This corresponds in style to the bedroom set: Victorian with Moorish influence. Royal palms are projected on the cyclorama which is deep violet with dusk. There are Moorish arches between gallery and

  interior: over the single table, inside, is suspended the same lamp, stained glass, and ornately wrought metal, that hung in the bedroom. Perhaps on the gallery there is a low stone balustrade that supports, where steps descend into the garden, an electric-light standard with five branches and pear-shaped globes of a dim pearly luster. Somewhere out of the sight-lines an entertainer plays a piano or novachord.

  [The interior table is occupied by two couples that represent society in St Cloud. They

  are contemporaries of Chance's. Behind the bar is Stuff who feels the dignity of his recent

  advancement from drugstore soda-fountain to the Royal Palms cocktail lounge: he has on a

  white mess-jacket, a scarlet cummerbund, and light-blue trousers, flatteringly close-fitted,

  Chance Wayne was once barman here; Stuff moves with an indolent male grace that he may

  have unconsciously remembered admiring in Chance.

  Boss Finley's mistress, Miss Lucy, enters the cocktail lounge dressed in a ball gown

  elaborately ruffled and very bouffant like an antebellum Southern belle's. A single blonde curl is arranged to switch girlishly at one side of her sharp little terrier face. She is outraged over something and her glare is concentrated on Stuff who 'plays it cool' behind the bar.]

  STUFF: Ev'nin', Miss Lucy.

  MISS LUCY: I wasn't allowed to sit at the banquet table. No. I was put at a little side-table, with a couple of state legislators an' wives. [She sweeps behind the bar in a proprietary

  fashion.] Where's your Grant's twelve-year-old? Hey! Do you have a big mouth? I used to

  remember a kid that jerked sodas at Walgreen's that had a big mouth. . . . Put some ice in this. . .

  . Is yours big, huh? I want to tell you something.

  STUFF: What's the matter with your finger?

  [She catches him by his scarlet cummerbund.]

  MISS LUCY: I'm going to tell you just now. The Boss came over to me with a big candy Easter

  egg for me. The top of the egg unscrewed. He told me to unscrew it. So I unscrewed it. Inside was a little blue velvet jewel box, no not little, a big one, as big as somebody's mouth, too.

  STUFF: Whose mouth?

  MISS LUCY: The mouth of somebody who's not a hundred miles from here.

  STUFF [going off at the left]: I got to set my chairs.

  [Stuff re-enters at once carrying two chairs. Sets them at tables while Miss Lucy talks.]

  MISS LUCY: I open the jewel box an' start to remove the great big diamond clip in it. I just got my fingers on it, and start to remove it and the old son of a bitch slams the lid of the box on my

  fingers. One fingernail is still blue. And the Boss says to me, 'Now go downstairs to the cocktail lounge and go in the ladies' room and describe this diamond clip with lipstick on the ladies'

  room mirror down there. Hanh?'--and he put the jewel box in his pocket and slammed the door

  so hard goin' out of my suite that a picture fell off the wall.

  STUFF [setting the chairs at the table]: Miss Lucy, you are the one that said, 'I wish you would see what's written with lipstick on the ladies' room mirror' las' Saturday night.

  MISS LUCY: To you! Because I thought I could trust you.

  STUFF: Other people were here an' all of them heard it.

  MISS LUCY: Nobody but you at the bar belonged to the 'Youth for Boss Finley' Club.

  [Both stop short. They've noticed a tall man who has entered the cocktail lounge. He has

  the length and leanness and luminous pallor of face that El Greco gave to his saints. He has a small bandage near the hairline. His clothes are country.]

  Hey, you.

  HECKLER: Evenin', ma'am.

  MISS LUCY: You with the Hillbilly Ramblers? You with the band?

  HECKLER: I'm a hillbilly, but I'm not with no band.

  [He notices Miss Lucy's steady, interested stare, Stuff leaves with a tray of drinks.]

  MISS LUCY: What do you want here?

  HECKLER: I come to hear Boss Finley talk. [His voice is clear but strained. He rubs his large Adam's apple as he speaks.]

  MISS LUCY: You can't get in the ballroom without a jacket and a tie on. . . . I know who you

  are. You're the heckler, aren't you?

  HECKLER: I don't heckle. I just ask questions, one question or two or three questions,

  depending on how much time it takes them to grab me and throw me out of the hall.

  MISS LUCY: Those questions are loaded questions. You gonna repeat them tonight?

  HECKLER: Yes, ma'am, if I can get in the ballroom, and make myself heard.

  MISS LUCY: What's wrong with your voice?

  HECKLER: When I shouted my questions in New Bethesda last week I got hit in the Adam's apple with the butt of a pistol, and that affected my voice. It still ain't good, but it's better.

  [Starts to go.]

  MISS LUCY [goes to back of bar, where she gets jacket, the kind kept in places with dress

  regulations, and throws it to heckler]: Wait. Here, put this on. The Boss's talking on a national TV hookup tonight. There's a tie in the pocket. You sit perfectly still at the bar till the Boss starts speaking. Keep your face back of this Evening Banner. Okay?

  HECKLER [opening the paper in front of his face]: I thank you.

  MISS LUCY: I thank you, too, and I wish you more luck than you're likely to have.

  [Stuff re-enters and goes to back of the bar.]

  FLY [entering on the gallery]: Paging Chance Wayne.

  [Auto horn offstage] Mr Chance Wayne, please. Paging Chance Wayne. [He leaves.]

  MISS LUCY [to Stuff, who has re-entered]: Is Chance Wayne back in St Cloud?

  STUFF: You remember Alexandra Del Lago?

  MISS LUCY: I guess I do. I was president of her local fan club. Why?

  CHANCE [offstage]: Hey, Boy, park that car up front and don't wrinkle them fenders.

  STUFF: She and Chance Wayne checked in here last night.

  MISS LUCY: Well I'll be a dawg's mother. I'm going to look into that, [Lucy exits.]

  CHANCE [entering and crossing to the bar]: Hey, Stuff! [He takes a cocktail off the bar and

  sips it.]

  STUFF: Put that down. This ain't no cocktail party.

  CHANCE: Man, don't you know . . . phew . . . nobody drinks gin martinis with olives.

  Everybody drinks vodka martinis with lemon twist nowadays, except the squares in St Cloud.

  When I had your job, when I was the barman here at the Royal Palms, I created that uniform

  you've got on. . . . I copied it from an outfit Vic Mature wore in a Foreign Legion picture, and I looked better in it than he did, and almost as good in it as you do, ha ha. . . .

  AUNT NONNIE [who has entered at the right]: Chance. Chance. . . .

  CHANCE: Aunt Nonnie! [to Stuff] Hey, I want a tablecloth on that table, and a bucket of

  champagne. . . . Mumm's Cordon Rouge. . . .

  AUNT NONNIE: You come out here.

  CHANCE: But, I just ordered champagne in here. [Suddenly his effusive manner collapses, as

  she stares at him gravely.]

  AUNT NONNIE: I can't be seen talking to you. . . .

  [She leads him to one side of the stage. A light change has occurred which has made it a

  royal palm grove with a bench. They cross to it solemnly, Stuff busies himself at the
bar, which is barely lit. After a moment he exits with a few drinks to main body of the cocktail lounge off left. Bar music: 'Quiereme Mucho']

  CHANCE [following her]: Why?

  AUNT NONNIE: I've got just one thing to tell you, Chance, get out of St Cloud.

  CHANCE: Why does everybody treat me like a low criminal in the town I was born in?

  AUNT NONNIE: Ask yourself that question, ask your conscience that question.

  CHANCE: What question?

  AUNT NONNIE: You know, and I know you know. . . .

  CHANCE: Know what?

  AUNT NONNIE: I'm not going to talk about it. I just can't talk about it. Your head and your

  tongue run wild. You can't be trusted. We have to live in St Cloud. . . . Oh, Chance, why have you changed like you've changed? Why do you live on nothing but wild dreams now, and have