AMANDA: Naturally I would like to know when he's coming!
TOM: He's coming tomorrow.
AMANDA: Tomorrow?
TOM: Yep. Tomorrow.
AMANDA: But, Tom!
TOM: Yes, Mother?
AMANDA: Tomorrow gives me no time I
TOM: Time for what?
AMANDA: Preparations! Why didn't you phone me at once, as soon as you asked him, the minute that he accepted? Then, don't you see, I could have been getting ready!
TOM: You don't have to make any fuss.
AMANDA: Oh, Tom, Tom, Tom, of course I have to make a fuss! I want things nice, not sloppy! Not thrown together. I'll certainly have to do some fast thinking, won't I?
TOM: I don't see why you have to think at all.
AMANDA: You just don't know. We can't have a gentleman caller in a pigsty! All my wedding silver has to be polished, the monogrammed table linen ought to be laundered! The windows have to be washed and fresh curtains put up. And how about clothes? We have to wear something, don't we?
TOM: Mother, this boy is no one to make a fuss over!
AMANDA: Do you realize he's the first young man we've introduced to your sister? It's terrible, dreadful, disgraceful that poor little sister has never received a single gentleman caller! Tom, come inside! [She opens the screen door.]
TOM: What for?
AMANDA: I want to ask you some things.
TOM: If you're going to make such a fuss, I'll call it off, I'll tell him not to come!
AMANDA: You certainly won't do anything of the kind. Nothing offends people worse than broken engagements. It simply means I'll have to work like a Turk! We won't be brilliant, but we will pass inspection. Come on inside. [Tom follows, groaning.] Sit down.
TOM Any particular place you would like me to sit?
AMANDA: Thank heavens I've got that new sofa! I'm also making payments on a floor lamp I'll have sent out! And put the chintz covers on, they'll brighten things up! Of course I'd hoped to have these walls re-papered.... What is the young man's name?
TOM: His name is O'Connor.
AMANDA: That, of course, means fish—tomorrow is Friday! I'll have that salmon loaf—with Durkee's dressing! What does he do? He works at the warehouse?
TOM: Of course! How else would I—
AMANDA: Tom, he—doesn't drink?
TOM: Why do you ask me that?
AMANDA: Your father did!
TOM: Don't get started on that!
AMANDA: He does drink, then?
TOM: Not that I know of!
AMANDA: Make sure, be certain! The last thing I want for my daughter's a boy who drinks!
TOM: Aren't you being a little bit premature? Mr. O'Connor has not yet appeared on the scene!
AMANDA: But will tomorrow. To meet your sister, and what do I know about his character? Nothing! Old maids are better off than wives of drunkards!
TOM: Oh, my God!
AMANDA: Be still!
TOM [leaning forward to whisper]: Lots of fellows meet girls whom they don't marry!
AMANDA: Oh, talk sensibly, Tom—and don't be sarcastic!
[She has gotten a hairbrush.]
TOM: What are you doing?
AMANDA: I'm brushing that cow-lick down! What is this young man's position at the warehouse?
TOM [submitting grimly to the brush and the interrogation]: This young man's position is that of a shipping clerk, Mother.
AMANDA: Sounds to me like a fairly responsible job, the sort of a job you would be in if you just had more get-up.
What is his salary? Have you any idea?
TOM: I would judge it to be approximately eighty-five dollars a month.
AMANDA: Well—not princely, but—
TOM: Twenty more than I make.
AMANDA: Yes, how well I know! But for a family man, eighty-five dollars a month is not much more than you can just get by on....
TOM: Yes, but Mr. O'Connor is not a family man.
AMANDA: He might be, mightn't he? Some time in the future?
TOM: I see. Plans and provisions.
AMANDA: You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don't plan for it!
TOM: I will think that over and see what I can make of it.
AMANDA: Don't be supercilious with your mother! Tell me some more about this—what do you call him?
TOM: James D. O'Connor. The D. is for Delaney.
AMANDA: Irish on both sides! Gracious! And doesn't drink?
TOM: Shall I call him up and ask him right this minute?
AMANDA: The only way to find out about those things is to make discreet inquiries at the proper moment. When I was a girl in Blue Mountain and it was suspected that a young man drank, the girl whose attentions he had been receiving, if any girl was, would sometimes speak to the minister of his church, or rather her father would if her father was living, and sort of feel him out on the young man's character. That is the way such things are discreetly handled to keep a young woman from making a tragic mistake!
TOM: Then how did you happen to make a tragic mistake?
AMANDA: That innocent look of your father's had everyone fooled! He smiled—the world was enchanted! No girl can do worse than put herself at the mercy of a handsome appearance! I hope that Mr. O'Connor is not too good-looking.
TOM: No, he's not too good-looking. He's covered with freckles and hasn't too much of a now.
AMANDA: He's not right-down homely, though?
TOM: Not right-down homely. Just medium homely, I'd say.
AMANDA: Character's what to look for in a man.
TOM: That's what I've always said, Mother.
AMANDA: You've never said anything of the kind and I suspect you would never give it a thought.
TOM: Don't be so suspicious of me.
AMANDA: At least I hope he's the type that's up and coming.
TOM: I think he really goes in for self-improvement.
AMANDA: What reason have you to think so?
TOM: He goes to night school.
AMANDA [beaming]: Splendid! What does he do, I mean study?
TOM: Radio engineering and public speaking!
AMANDA: Then he has visions of being advanced in the world! Any young man who studies public speaking is aiming to have an executive job some day! And radio engineering- A thing for the future! Both of these facts are very illuminating. Those are the sort of things that a mother should know concerning any young man who comes to call on her daughter. Seriously or—not.
TOM: One little warning. He doesn't know about Laura. I didn't let on that we had dark ulterior motives. I just said, why don't you come and have dinner with us? He said okay and that was the whole conversation.
AMANDA: I bet it was! You're eloquent as an oyster. However, he'll know about Laura when he gets here. When he sees how lovely and sweet and pretty she is, he'll thank his lucky stars be was asked to dinner.
TOM: Mother, you mustn't expect too much of Laura.
AMANDA: What do you mean?
TOM: Laura seems all those things to you and me because she's ours and we love her. We don't even notice she's crippled any more.
AMANDA: Don't say crippled! You know that I never allow that word to be used!
TOM: But face facts, Mother. She is and—that's not all—
AMANDA: What do you mean "not all'?
TOM: Laura is very different from other girls
AMANDA: I think the difference is all to her advantage.
TOM: Not quite all—in the eyes of others—strangers—she's terribly shy and lives in a world of her own and those things make her seem a little peculiar to people outside the house.
AMANDA: Don't say peculiar.
TOM: Face the facts. She is.
[THE DANCE-HALL MUSIC CHANGES TO A TANGO THAT HAS A MINOR AND SOMEWHAT OMINOUS TONE.]
AMANDA: In what way is she peculiar—may I ask?
TO
M [gently]: She lives in a world of her own—a world of—little glass ornaments, Mother.... [He gets up. Amanda remains holding the brush, looking at him, troubled.] She plays old phonograph records and—that's about all— [He glances at himself in the mirror and crosses to the door.]
AMANDA [sharply]: Where are you going?
TOM: I'm going to the movies. [He goes out the screen door.]
AMANDA: Not to the movies, every night to the movies! [She follows quickly to screen door.] I don't believe you always go to the movies! [He is gone. Amanda looks worriedly after him for a moment. Then vitality and optimism return and she turns from the door, crossing to portières.]
Laura! Laura!
[Laura answers from kitchenette.]
LAURA: Yes, Mother.
AMANDA: Let those dishes go and come in front! [Laura appears with dish towel. Gaily.] Laura, come here and make a wish on the moon!
LAURA [entering]: Moon—moon?
AMANDA: A little silver slipper of a moon. Look over your left shoulder, Laura, and make a wish!
[Laura looks faintly puzzled as if called out of sleep. Amanda seizes her shoulders and turns her at an angle by the door.] Now! Now, darling, wish!
LAURA: What shall I wish for, Mother?
AMANDA [her voice trembling and her eyes suddenly filing with tears]: Happiness! Good fortune!
[The violin rises and the stage dims out.]
CURTAIN
SCENE SIX
TOM: And so the following evening I brought Jim home to dinner. I had known Jim slightly in high school. In high school Jim was a hero. He
had tremendous Irish good nature and vitality with the scrubbed and polished look of white chinaware. He seemed to move in a continual spotlight. He was a star in basket-ball, captain of the debating club, president of the senior class and the glee club and he sang the male lead in the annual light operas. He was always running or bounding, never just walking. He seemed always at the point of defeating the law of gravity. He was shooting with such velocity through his adolescence that you would logically expect him to arrive at nothing short of the White House by the time he was thirty. But Jim apparently ran into more interference after his graduation from Soldan. His speed had definitely slowed. Six years after he left high school he was holding a job that wasn't much better than mine.
He was the only one at the warehouse with whom I was on friendly terms. I was valuable to him as someone who could remember his former glory, who had seen him win basketball games and the silver cup in debating. He knew of my secret practice of retiring to a cabinet of the washroom to work on poems when business was slack in the warehouse. He called me Shakespeare. And while the other boys in the warehouse regarded me with suspicious hostility, Jim took a humorous attitude toward me. Gradually his attitude affected the others, their hostility wore off and they also began to smile at me as people smile at an oddly fashioned dog who trots across their path at some distance.
I knew that Jim and Laura had known each other at Soldan, and I had heard Laura speak admiringly of his voice. I didn't know if Jim remembered her or not. In high school Laura had been as unobtrusive as Jim had been astonishing. If he did remember Laura, it was not as my sister, for when I asked him to dinner, he grinned and said, 'You know, Shakespeare, I never thought of you as having folks!'
He was about to discover that I did….
[LIGHT UPSTAGE.
Friday evening. It is about five o'clock of a late spring evening which comes 'scattering poems in the sky.'
A delicate lemony light is in the Wingfield apartment.
Amanda has worked like a Turk in preparation for the gentleman caller. The results are astonishing. The new floor lamp with its rose-silk shade is in place, a coloured paper lantern conceals the broken light fixture in the ceiling, new billowing white curtains are at the windows, chintz covers are on chairs and sofa, a pair of new sofa pillows make their initial appearance.
Open boxes and tissue paper are scattered on the floor.
Laura stands in the middle with lifted arms while Amanda crouches before her, adjusting the hem of the new dress, devout and ritualistic. The dress is coloured and designed by memory. The arrangement of Laura's hair is changed; it is softer and more becoming. A fragile, unearthly prettiness has come out in Laura: she is like a piece of translucent glass touched by light, given a momentary radiance, not actual, not lasting.]
AMANDA [impatiently]: Why are you trembling?
LAURA: Mother, you've made me so nervous!
AMANDA: How have I made you nervous?
LAURA: By all this fuss! You make it seem so important!
AMANDA: I don't understand you, Laura. You couldn't be satisfied with just sitting home, and yet whenever I try to arrange something for you, you seem to resist it. [She gets up.] Now take a look at yourself. No, wait! Wait just a moment—I have an idea!
LAURA: What is it now?
[Amanda produces two powder puffs which she wraps in handkerchiefs and stuffs in Laura's bosom.]
LAURA: Mother, what are you doing?
AMANDA: They call them 'Gay Deceivers'!
LAURA: I won't wear them!
AMANDA: You will!
LAURA: Why should I?
AMANDA: Because, to be painfully honest, your chest is flat.
LAURA: You make it seem like we were setting a trap.
AMANDA: All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be!
Now look at yourself, young lady. This is the prettiest you will ever be! I've got to fix myself now! You're going to be surprised by your mother's appearance! [She crosses through portières, humming gaily.]
[Laura moves slowly to the long mirror and stares solemnly at herself. A wind blows the white curtains inward in a slow, graceful motion and with a faint, sorrowful sighing.]
AMANDA [off stage]: It isn't dark enough yet. [Laura turns slowly before the mirror with a troubled look.]
AMANDA [laughing, still not visible]: I'm going to show you something. I'm going to make a spectacular appearance!
LAURA: What is it, Mother?
AMANDA: Possess your soul in patience—you will see! Something I've resurrected from that old trunk! Styles haven't changed so terribly much after all….
[She parts the portières.]
Now just look at your mother!
[She wears a girlish frock of yellowed voile with a blue silk sash. She carries a bunch of jonquils - the legend of her youth is nearly revived.]
[Feverishly]: This is the dress in which I led the cotillion, won the cakewalk twice at Sunset Hill, wore one spring to the Governor's ball in Jackson! See how I sashayed around the ballroom, Laura?
[She raises her skirt and does a mincing step around the room.]
I wore it on Sundays for my gentlemen callers! I had it on the day I met your father—
I had malaria fever all that spring. The change of climate from East Tennessee to the Delta—weakened resistance—I had a little temperature all the time—not enough to be serious—just enough to make me restless and giddy! Invitations poured in—parties all over the Delta! 'Stay in bed,' said mother, 'you have fever!'—but I just wouldn't. I took quinine but kept on going, going! Evenings, dances! Afternoons, long, long rides! Picnics—lovely! So lovely, that country in May—all lacy with dogwood, literally flooded with jonquils! That was the spring I had the craze for jonquils. Jonquils became an absolute obsession. Mother said, 'Honey, there's no more room for jonquils.' And still I kept on bringing in more jonquils. Whenever, wherever I saw them, I'd say, ‘Stop! Stop! I see jonquils!’ I made the young men help me gather the jonquils! It was a joke, Amanda and her jonquils! Finally there were no more vases to hold them, every available space was filled with jonquils. No vases to hold them? All right, I'll hold them myself! And then I—[She stops in front of the picture. Music plays.] met your father! Malaria fever and jonquils and then—this—boy....
[She switches on the rose-coloured lamp.]
I hope they get here before i
t starts to rain.
[She crosses the room and places the jonquils in a bowl on the table.]
I gave your brother a little extra change so he and Mr. O'Connor could take the service car home.
LAURA [with an altered look]: What did you say his name was?
AMANDA: O'Connor.
LAURA: What is his first name?
AMANDA: I don't remember. Oh, yes, I do. It was—Jim!
[Laura sways slightly and catches hold of a chair.]