Three Plays

by Tennessee Williams

  MARGARET [with affected lightness]: I've noticed you do, Big Mama, but people have got to have some moments of privacy, don't they?

  BIG MAMA: No, ma'am, not in my house. [Without pause] Whacha took off you' dress faw? I thought that little lace dress was so sweet on yuh, honey.

  MARGARET: I thought it looked sweet on me, too, but one of m' cute little table-partners used it for a napkin so!

  BIG MAMA [picking up stockings on floor]: What?

  MARGARET: You know, Big Mama, Mae and Gooper's so touchy about those children—thanks, Big Mama...

  [Big Mama has thrust the picked-up stockings in Margaret's hand with a grunt.]

  —that you just don't dare to suggest there's any room for improvement in their—

  BIG MAMA: Brick, hurry out!—Shoot, Maggie, you just don't like children.

  MARGARET: I do SO like children! Adore them!—well brought up!

  BIG MAMA [gentle—loving]: Well, why don't you have some and bring them up well, then, instead of all the time pickin' on Gooper's an' Mae's?

  GOOPER [shouting up the stairs]: Hey, hey, Big Mama, Betsy an' Hugh got to go, waitin' t' tell yuh g'by!

  BIG MAMA: Tell 'em to hold their hawses, I'll be right down in a jiffy!

  [She turns to the bathroom door and calls out.]

  Son? Can you hear me in there?

  [There is a muffled answer.]

  We just got the full report from the laboratory at the Ochsner Clinic, completely negative, son, ev'rything negative, right on down the line! Nothin' a-tall's wrong with him but some little functional thing called a spastic colon. Can you hear me, son?

  MARGARET: He can hear you, Big Mama.

  BIG MAMA: Then why don't he say something? God Almighty, a piece of news like that should make him shout. It made me shout, I can tell you. I shouted and sobbed and fell right down on my knees!—Look!

  [She pulls up her skirt.]

  See the bruises where I hit my kneecaps? Took both doctors to haul me back on my feet!

  [She laughs—she always laughs like hell at herself]

  Big Daddy was furious with me! But ain't that wonderful news?

  [Facing bathroom again, she continues:]

  After all the anxiety we been through to git a report like that on Big Daddy's birthday? Big Daddy tried to hide how much of a load that news took off his mind, but didn't fool me. He was mighty close to crying about it himself!

  [Goodbyes are shouted downstairs, and she rushes to door.]

  Hold those people down there, don't let them go!—Now, git dressed, we're all comin' up to this room fo' Big Daddy's birthday party because of your ankle.—How's his ankle, Maggie?

  MARGARET: Well, he broke it, Big Mama.

  BIG MAMA: I know he broke it.

  [A phone is ringing in hall. A Negro voice answers: 'Mistuh Polly's res'dence.']

  I mean does it hurt him much still.

  MARGARET: I'm afraid I can't give you that information, Big Mama. You'll have to ask Brick if it hurts much still or not.

  SOOKEY [in the hall]: It's Memphis, Mizz Polly, it's Miss Sally in Memphis.

  BIG MAMA: Awright, Sookey.

  [Big Mama rushes into the hall and is heard shouting on the phone:]

  Hello, Miss Sally. How are you, Miss Sally?—Yes, well, I was just gonna call you about it. Shoot!—

  [She raises her voice to a bellow.]

  Miss Sally? Don't ever call me from the Gayoso Lobby, too much talk goes on in that hotel lobby, no wonder you can't hear me! Now listen, Miss Sally. They's nothin' serious wrong with Big Daddy. We got the report just now, they's nothin' wrong but a thing called a—spastic! SPASTIC!—colon...

  [She appears at the hall door and calls to Margaret.]

  —Maggie, come out here and talk to that fool on the phone. I'm shouted breathless!

  MARGARET [goes out and is heard sweetly at phone]: Miss Sally? This is Brick's wife, Maggie. So nice to hear your voice. Can you hear mine? Well, good!—Big Mama just wanted you to know that they've got the report from the Ochsner Clinic and what Big Daddy has is a spastic colon. Yes. Spastic colon, Miss Sally. That's right, spastic colon. G'bye Miss Sally, hope I'll see you real soon!

  [Hangs up a little before Miss Sally was probably ready to terminate the talk. She returns through the hall door.]

  She heard me perfectly. I've discovered with deaf people the thing to do is not shout at them but just enunciate clearly. My rich old Aunt Cornelia was deaf as the dead but I could make her hear me just by sayin' each word slowly, distinctly, close to her ear. I read her the Commercial Appeal ev'ry night, read her the classified ads in it, even, she never missed a word of it. But was she a mean ole thing! Know what I got when she died? Her unexpired subscriptions to five magazines and the Book-of-the-Month Club and a LIBRARY full of ev'ry dull book ever written! All else went to her hellcat of a sister... meaner than she was, even!

  [Big Mama has been straightening things up in the room during this speech.]

  BIG MAMA [closing closet door on discarded clothes]: Miss Sally sure is a case! Big Daddy says she's always got her hand out fo' something. He's not mistaken. That poor ole thing always has her hand out fo' somethin'. I don't think Big Daddy gives her as much as he should.

  [Somebody shouts for her downstairs and she shouts:] I'm comin'!

  [She starts out. At the hall door, turns and jerks a forefinger, first towards the bathroom door, then towards the liquor cabinet, meaning: 'Has Brick been drinking?' Margaret pretends not to understand, cocks her head and raises her brows as if the pantomimic performance was completely mystifying to her. Big Mama rushes back to Margaret.]

  Shoot! Stop playin' so dumb!—I mean has he been drinkin' that stuff much yet?

  MARGARET [with a little laugh]: Oh! I think he had a highball after supper.

  BIG MAMA: Don't laugh about it!—Some single men stop drinkin' when they git married and others start! Brick never touched liquor before he—!

  MARGARET [crying out]: THAT'S NOT FAIR!

  BIG MAMA: Fair or not fair I want to ask you a question, one question—D'you make Brick happy in bed?

  MARGARET: Why don't you ask if he makes me happy in bed?

  BIG MAMA: Because I know that—

  MARGARET: It works both ways!

  BIG MAMA: Something's not right! You're childless and my son drinks!

  [Someone has called her downstairs and she has rushed to the door on the line above. She turns at the door and points at the bed.]

  —When a marriage goes on the rocks, the rocks are there, right there!

  MARGARET: That's—

  [Big Mama has swept out of the room and slammed the door.]

  —not—fair...

  [Margaret is alone, completely alone, and she feels it. She draws in, hunches her shoulders, raises her arms with fists clenched, shuts her eyes tight as a child about to be stabbed with a vaccination needle. When she opens her eyes again, what she sees is the long oval mirror and she rushes straight to it, stares into it with a grimace and says: 'Who are you?'—Then she crouches a little and answers herself in a different voice which is high, thin, mocking: 'I am Maggie the Cat!'—Straightens quickly as bathroom door opens a little and Brick calls out to her.]

  BRICK: Has Big Mama gone?

  MARGARET: She's gone.

  [He opens the bathroom door and hobbles out, with his liquor glass now empty, straight to the liquor cabinet. He is whistling softly. Margaret's head pivots on her long, slender throat to watch him. | She raises a hand uncertainly to the base of her throat, as if it was difficult for her to swallow, before she speaks:]

  You know, our sex life didn't just peter out in the usual way, it was cut off short, long before the natural time for it to, and it's going to revive again, just as sudden as that. I'm confident of it. That's what I'm keeping myself attractive for. For the time when you'll see me again like other men see me. Yes, like other men see me. They still see me, Brick, and they like what they see. Uh-huh. Some of them would give their—Lo
ok, Brick!

  [She stands before the long oval mirror, touches her breast and then her hips with her two hands.]

  How high my body stays on me!—Nothing has fallen on me—not a fraction—

  [Her voice is soft and trembling—a pleading child's. At this moment as he turns to glance at her—a look which is like a player passing a ball to another player, third down and goal to go—she has to capture the audience in a grip so tight that she can hold it till the first intermission without any lapse of attention.]

  Other men still want me. My face looks strained, sometimes, but I've kept my figure as well as you've kept yours, and men admire it. I still turn heads on the street. Why, last week in Memphis everywhere that I went men's eyes burned holes in my clothes, at the country club and in restaurants and department stores, there wasn't a man I met or walked by that didn't just eat me up with his eyes and turn around when I passed him and look back at me. Why, at Alice's party for her New York cousins, the best lookin' man in the crowd—followed me upstairs and tried to force his way in the powder room with me, followed me to the door and tried to force his way in!

  BRICK: Why didn't you let him, Maggie?

  MARGARET: Because I'm not that common, for one thing. Not that I wasn't almost tempted to. You like to know who it was? It was Sonny Boy Maxwell, that's who!

  BRICK: Oh, yeah, Sonny Boy Maxwell, he was a good end-runner but had a little injury to his back and had to quit.

  MARGARET: He has no injury now and has no wife and still has a lech for me!

  BRICK: I see no reason to lock him out of a powder room in that case.

  MARGARET: And have someone catch me at it? I'm not that stupid. Oh, I might some time cheat on you with someone, since you're so insultingly eager to have me do it!—But if I do, you can be damned sure it will be in a place and a time where no one but me and the man could possibly know. Because I'm not going to give you any excuse to divorce me for being unfaithful or anything else....

  BRICK: Maggie, I wouldn't divorce you for being unfaithful or anything else. Don't you know that? Hell. I'd be relieved to know that you'd found yourself a lover.

  MARGARET: Well, I'm taking no chances. No, I'd rather stay on this hot tin roof.

  BRICK: A hot tin roof's 'n uncomfo'table place t' stay on....

  [He starts to whistle softly.]

  MARGARET [through his whistle]: Yeah, but I can stay on it just as long as I have to.

  BRICK: You could leave me, Maggie.

  [He resumes whistle. She wheels about to glare at him.]

  MARGARET: Don't want to and will not! Besides if I did, you don't have a cent to pay for it but what you get from Big Daddy and he's dying of cancer!

  [For the first time a realisation of Big Daddy's doom seems to penetrate to Brick's consciousness, visibly, and he looks at Margaret.]

  BRICK: Big Mama just said he wasn't, that the report was okay.

  MARGARET: That's what she thinks because she got the same story that they gave Big Daddy. And was just as taken in by it as he was, poor ole things.... But tonight they're going to tell her the truth about it. When Big Daddy goes to bed, they're going to tell her that he is dying of cancer.

  [She slams the dresser drawer.]

  —It's malignant and it's terminal.

  BRICK: Does Big Daddy know it?

  MARGARET: Hell, do they ever know it? Nobody says, 'You're dying.' You have to fool them. They have to fool themselves.

  BRICK: Why?

  MARGARET: Why? Because human beings dream of life everlasting, that's the reason! But most of them want it on earth and not in heaven.

  [He gives a short, hard laugh at her touch of humor.]

  Well.... [She touches up her mascara.] That's how it is, anyhow.... [She looks about.] Where did I put down my cigarette? Don't want to burn up the home-place, at least not with Mae and Gooper and their five monsters in it!

  [She has found it and sucks at it greedily. Blows out smoke and continues:]

  So this is Big Daddy's last birthday. And Mae and Gooper, they know it, oh, they know it, all right. They got the first information from the Ochsner Clinic. That's why they rushed down here with their no-neck monsters. Because. Do you know something? Big Daddy's made no will? Big Daddy's never made out any will in his life, and so this campaign's afoot to impress him, forcibly as possible, with the fact that you drink and I've borne no children!

  [He continues to stare at her a moment, then mutters something sharp but not audible and hobbles rather rapidly out on to the long gallery in the fading, much faded, gold light.]

  MARGARET [continuing her liturgical chant]: Y'know, I'm fond of Big Daddy, I am genuinely fond of that old man, I really am, you know——

  BRICK [faintly, vaguely]: Yes, I know you are....

  MARGARET: I've always sort of admired him in spite of his coarseness, his four-letter words and so forth. Because Big Daddy is what he is, and he makes no bones about it. He hasn't turned gentleman farmer, he's still a Mississippi red neck, as much of a red neck as he must have been when he was just overseer here on the old Jack Straw and Peter Ochello place. But he got hold of it an' built it into th' biggest an' finest plantation in the Delta.—I've always liked Big Daddy....

  [She crosses to the proscenium]

  Well, this is Big Daddy's last birthday. I'm sorry about it. But I'm facing the facts. It takes money to take care of a drinker and that's the office that I've been elected to lately.

  BRICK: You don't have to take care of me.

  MARGARET: Yes, I do. Two people in the same boat have got to take care of each other. At least you want money to buy more Echo Spring when this supply is exhausted, or will you be satisfied with a ten-cent beer?—Mae an' Gooper are plannin' to freeze us out of Big Daddy's estate because you drink and I'm childless. But we can defeat that plan. We're going to defeat that plan!—Brick, y'know, I've been so God damn disgustingly poor all my life!—That's the truth, Brick!

  BRICK: I'm not sayin' it isn't.

  MARGARET: Always had to suck up to people I couldn't stand because they had money and I was poor as Job's turkey. You don't know what that's like. Well, I'll tell you, it's like you would feel a thousand miles away from Echo Spring!—And had to get back to it on that broken ankle... without a crutch!

  That's how it feels to be as poor as Job's turkey and have to suck up to relatives that you hated because they had money and all you had was a bunch of hand-me-down clothes and a few old mouldy three per cent government bonds. My daddy loved his liquor, he fell in love with his liquor the way you've fallen in love with Echo Spring!—And my poor Mama, having to maintain some semblance of social position, to keep appearances up, on an income of one hundred and fifty dollars a month on those old government bonds!

  When I came out, the year that I made my debut, I had just two evening dresses! One Mother made me from a pattern in Vogue, the other a hand-me-down from a snotty rich cousin I hated!

  —The dress that I married you in was my grandmother's weddin' gown....

  So that's why I'm like a cat on a hot tin roof!

  [Brick is still on the gallery. Someone below calls up to him in a warm Negro voice, 'Hiya, Mistah Brick, how yuh feelin?']

  BRICK [raises his liquor glass as if that answered the question.]

  MARGARET: You can be young without money but you can't be old without it. You've got to be old with money because to be old without it is just too awful, you've got to be one or the other, either young or with money, you can't be old and without it.—That's the truth, Brick....

  [Brick whistles softly, vaguely.]

  Well, now I'm dressed, I'm all dressed, there's nothing else for me to do.

  [Forlornly, almost fearfully.]

  I'm dressed, all dressed, nothing else for me to do....

  [She moves about restlessly, aimlessly, and speaks, as if to herself.]

  I know when I made my mistake.—What am I—? Oh!—my bracelets....

  [She starts working a collection of bracelets over h
er hands on to her wrists, about six on each, as she talks.]

  I've thought a whole lot about it and now I know when I made my mistake. Yes, I made my mistake when I told you the truth about that thing with Skipper. Never should have confessed it, a fatal error, tellin' you about that thing with Skipper.

  BRICK: Maggie, shut up about Skipper. I mean it, Maggie; you got to shut up about Skipper.

  MARGARET: You ought to understand that Skipper and I—

  BRICK: You don't think I'm serious, Maggie? You're fooled by the fact that I am saying this quiet? Look, Maggie. What you're doing is a dangerous thing to do. You're—you're—you're—foolin' with something that—nobody ought to fool with.

  MARGARET: This time I'm going to finish what I have to say to you. Skipper and I made love, if love you could call it, because it made both of us feel a little bit closer to you. You see, you son of a bitch, you asked too much of people, of me, of him, of all the unlucky poor damned sons of bitches that happen to love you, and there was a whole pack of them, yes, there was a pack of them besides me and Skipper, you asked too goddam much of people that loved you, you—superior creature!—you godlike being!—And so we made love to each other to dream it was you, both of us! Yes, yes, yes! Truth, truth! What's so awful about it? I like it, I think the truth is—yeah! I shouldn't have told you....