Read The Magic Tower and Other One-Act Plays Online
Authors: Tennessee Williams
The Magic Tower and Other One-Act Plays (14 page)
MRS. POCCIOTTI
: Take her away? She won’t like it.
MISS MORGAN
: I’m afraid we can’t consult her wishes in the matter. Nor yours, either. You’ve shown yourself completely incompetent to care for this girl. I think I may say that you have even contributed to her delinquency.
MRS. POCCIOTTI
: I don’t think she’ll want to be going. You don’t know Tina. She fights, she kicks something awful.
MISS MORGAN
: If she won’t go peaceably, she’ll have to be removed by force.
MRS. POCCIOTTI
: I hope she will go. It’s bad for the boys, her laying there naked like that.
MISS MORGAN
: What? Lying
naked?
MRS. POCCIOTTI
: Yes. She won’t keep the clothes on her. The boys look in through the door and they laugh and they say bad things.
MISS MORGAN
[
in disgust
]: Tch, tch, she’ll have to be taken away and held for a long observation. [
She rises
.]
MRS. POCCIOTTI
: Better you make it be soon. From the way she is looking.
MISS MORGAN
: What do you mean? How has your daughter been looking, Mrs. Pocciotti?
MRS. POCCIOTTI
: Like—this. [
Her curved palm moves slowly before her abdomen in a broadly elliptical gesture
.]
MISS MORGAN
: Oh! You mean—? [
She raises her hand to her lips. Mrs. Pocciotti nods slowly
—
goes on with her sweeping
.]
SLOW CURTAIN
(A COMEDY IN ONE ACT)
The Pretty Trap
was first performed on March 23, 2011 at the Southern Rep Theatre, New Orleans, as part of the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival’s centennial tribute to Williams. It was directed by Aimée Hayes; the set design was by Ashley Sehorn; the costume design was by Laura Sirkin-Brown; the sound design was by Mike Harkins; the props were designed by Sarah Zoghbi; and the lighting design was by Joan Long.
CHARACTERS
AMANDA WINGFIELD
LAURA WINGFIELD
TOM WINGFIELD
JIM DELANEY
Character Descriptions:
Amanda Wingfield, a perennial southern belle, transferred to more rigorous climate and conditions.
Laura Wingfield, her daughter, a shy and sensitive girl of eighteen who “needs to be pushed a little.”
Tom Wingfield, her son, the dreamy type, who also needs pushing a little.
Jim Delaney, a gentleman caller, who represents dreams plus action, the man coming toward us. Needs pulling.
Author’s Note: This play is derived from a longer work in progress,
The Gentleman Caller
. It corresponds to the last act of that play, roughly, but has a lighter treatment and a different ending.
The feeling of the play is nostalgic. It belongs to memory, which is softly lighted and not too realistic, and often has the quality of faint music. The curtain rises on the interior of Apartment F, third floor south, on Maple Street in Saint Louis, in a block that also contains the Ever-ready Garage, a Chinese laundry, and a bookie’s shop disguised as a cigar store. It is early summer. There are billowing white lace curtains at the windows and the furnishings of the little apartment contrive to have a certain grace and charm in spite of their cheapness. The scene is played in two areas, downstage for the living room and upstage for the dining room. Portieres are between the two areas, which give the effect of a second proscenium or a stage within a stage. That faint music, which is the music of memory, is heard as the curtain rises
.
AMANDA
[
offstage
]: Don’t come into the kitchen in your white dress! Go in front and relax till they get here.
[
A door at the back of the upstage area is opened and Laura comes in. She is a very slight and delicate girl of nineteen. She has a fugitive prettiness that could easily escape attention, that comes and goes, but sometimes could stab your heart. Probably the dress that she actually wore on this evening was not so lovely as that which memory gives her. She seems to move in a radiance of her own. Amanda enters the dining room with a bowl of jonquils, which she places between the candelabra on the drop leaf table. She is a middle-aged woman of great energy whose early prettiness was more emphatic than Laura’s. She has relinquished none of the girlish vivacity that must have been so charming in her youth but now is a little comical or pathetic
.]
AMANDA
: I was carrying jonquils the very first afternoon that I met your father. However it wouldn’t be fair to blame that on the flowers. The Cutrere boy had driven me over to Clarksdale to see old Agnes Hoskins who’d just had another stroke and couldn’t talk. It depressed me so to see her in that condition, but on the way back we passed this field of jonquils, literally thousands of them. I made Dave stop the car, and I got out and gathered my two arms full. Dave was annoyed because I wouldn’t put them down in the back seat of the car.
I used them for a shield when he tried to kiss me. I didn’t care to be kissed by Dave Cutrere! [
She laughs archly
.] But when I got home and entered the downstairs hall, still carrying all those jonquils in my
arms—Well
, there was your father, discovered for the first time, installing a telephone at the foot of the stairs. How much better it would have been
if—!
[
She crosses downstage to Laura
.]
Still—I
wouldn’t have had a daughter as pretty as you! If I hadn’t married that telephone man, who fell in love with long-distance. That hem’s a little
uneven—hardly
noticeable though, I’ll leave it alone. I’ve got to mix the dressing for the salmon and change myself and it’s already five of six. Laura, you’re almost as pretty as I used to be. It’s early for white, but white’s so lovely on you. You’re so slender, Laura. It’s better to start out slender, for life does put flesh on you. I’m very lucky that I can still wear misses. Turn around.
Yes—it
dips a little but men don’t notice such things. You’ve never looked so pretty and maybe you’ll never look so pretty again. So be on your best behavior; for once come out of the
shell—
Vivacity counts for so much!
LAURA
: I feel all gone inside.
AMANDA
: Laura! Why?
LAURA
: You’ve made such a
fuss—Mother
, you don’t even
know
him!
AMANDA
: He’s Tom’s best friend at the warehouse, and before I suggested Tom’s bringing him home to dinner, I took a trip down there to have a look at him. I had Tom point him out.
LAURA
: Oh, Lord.
AMANDA
: On the pretext of buying some bedroom slippers. I liked his appearance very, very much, clean-cut type of boy who studies radio engineering at night school. Impresses me as worth investigation!
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.
I
was
amused
when boys came bumbling around, and I had no pangs of conscience when it seemed like one would have the trap sprung on him!
LAURA
: I feel so ashamed of being pushed at strangers.
AMANDA
: You wouldn’t have to be pushed if you weren’t such a shrinking violet of a girl, more old-fashioned than I am! I don’t know how you do it, but you’re eighteen and never been out with a boy! Never
out
with one even. If you were an awkward, homely, stupid girl, that would be natural, Laura. But you’re like a young green tree that’s beginning to flower, and is it so evil to have somebody look at you?
LAURA
: You make it seem so important. That’s why I’m nervous about it.
AMANDA
: Well, it might be important, you can never tell. I’m not only the practical member of this family, but the romantic one, too. . .
LAURA
: What has romance got to do with this boy coming over?
AMANDA
: Nothing if you’re a nit-wit! Nothing if you’re just going to sit there with your teeth in your mouth, like you did the night that I took you over to the Young People’s league at the church, speaking to nobody so nobody spoke to you! Your sort of prettiness can’t be depended on, Laura. It might go out as quickly as it came and leave you stranded in this little apartment. I put you in business college, worked like a trooper so I could pay the tuition. What did you do? Claimed it made you nervous, and so you quit.
LAURA
: I’m always being pushed into something, something I don’t want.
AMANDA
: What do you want, then? Tell me.
LAURA
: To be left alone. I’d like to live by myself.
AMANDA
: Two courses are open to girls in your circumstances. Either they have a business career or get married. And I’ve given up on you ever getting a job!
LAURA
: Well, give up on getting me a husband, too.
AMANDA
: All right, very well, then. I won’t live forever to make provisions for you. You’ll wind up one of
those—barely
tolerated spinsters who live with their brothers’ families and eat the crust of
humility all their lives! That’s the future you cut out for yourself when you take no advantage of anything done for you.
[
Laura bursts into tears. She runs out of the room
.]
LAURA
[
calling back
]: I’m going into my room and I won’t come out. I won’t come out for dinner. And you can have the gentleman caller yourself!
AMANDA
: Don’t come out, then! Stay in that little mousetrap of a room the rest of your days as far as I am concerned. I’ll make no effort if everything’s resisted! I’ll call no more old women up to buy the
Home Beautiful
! I’ll work in no more bargain basements either! I’ll be just as neurotic as you, young lady, stay and keep my nose in books all the time and let the world pass by!
[
The doorbell rings
.]
AMANDA
[
looking panicky
]: Oh, my heavens, and I’m still in my house-dress! [
Crosses back
.] Laura, Tom’s lost his door-key again and is ringing the bell. You’ll have to let them in.
LAURA
: I won’t do it, let them in yourself.
AMANDA
: I can’t go to the door. Just look at me, will you!
LAURA
: I can’t either.
AMANDA
: You’ll
have
to!
LAURA
: Well, I
won’t
. I absolutely won’t.
[
Bell rings again
.]
AMANDA
: Laura Wingfield, I do not intend to answer that door. And that is final. If you don’t open the door and let your brother and Mr. Delaney in, the bell will go on ringing till Doomsday and I’ll not budge an inch! You know me well enough to be quite certain I mean it! [
Pause
.
Another ring
.
Laura’s door opens and she slips out
.]
LAURA
: I’ve
been—crying
.
AMANDA
: I don’t care what you’ve been, you will go to the door!
LAURA
: Well, then, get out of sight if you don’t want to be seen, and I don’t blame you! You really look like a witch!
AMANDA
: Is that
so!—
Young lady.
You—serpent’s
tooth! I have you children to thank for a faded appearance! Making myself a slave, doing menial labor, cooking in a high-school cafeteria, working in a dirty bargain basement, selling subscriptions to horrible magazines over the phone! And you throw at me
such—such—
LAURA
: If you want me to answer the door, you’ll have to let go of my arm!
AMANDA
: I don’t want you to do anything
ever
!
— Believe
me! [
She bursts into tears and crosses out rear door
.]
LAURA
: I’ll let them in, but I won’t come to the table! [
Crosses downstairs to front door as Tom starts knocking
.]
LAURA
: All right, all right! You don’t have to break the door down. [
She opens the front door, admitting Tom and Jim. She stares coldly at Tom
,
ignoring Jim altogether
.]
LAURA
: Did you forget your key?
TOM
: I lost it.
LAURA
: You’d lose your head if it wasn’t fastened on.
TOM
: Laura, this is—Jim.
LAURA
: How do you do?
JIM
[
heartily
]: Hello, there. I didn’t know Shakespeare had a sister.
LAURA
[
barely touching the hand he extends
]: Excuse me. [
She turns quickly and goes out
.]
JIM
: What was the matter?
TOM
: She’s very shy.
JIM
: Oh! It’s unusual to meet a shy girl. She looks a little like you except she’s pretty.
TOM
: Thanks.
JIM
[
following him into living room
]: This is a nice little place.
TOM
:
Ha—ha!
JIM
: Well, it’s home-like.
TOM
: Look at the paper?
JIM
: Give me the comic section.
[
Amanda
calls from the rear
.]
AMANDA
: Tom?
TOM
: Yes?
AMANDA
: Is that you and Mr. Delaney?
tom [
ironically
]: No, Mother, it’s Napoleon and Joan of Arc! [
He is evidently as little pleased by his part in the business as Laura
.]
AMANDA
: Ask the young man if he’d like to wash his hands?
TOM
: Would you?
JIM
: I took care of that at the warehouse.
TOM
: He says his hands aren’t dirty, Mother.
AMANDA
[
musically
]: Well, dinner is nearly ready. I’ll be right in.
TOM
: Don’t break your neck. [
Jim glances over the paper
.]
JIM
: Your mother has a nice voice. Southern.
TOM
: She’s sort of a perennial southern belle. [
Picks up front page of paper
.] Hitler’s bit off another hunk of Europe. [
Jim laughs heartily
.]
TOM
: What’s funny?
JIM
: It’s Sadie Hawkins day!
AMANDA
[
off
]: Laura, dear, I hope you’re nearly ready. I’m putting things on.
[
Amanda enters the dining room with a salad bowl. She has changed into a summery, girlish frock that is sprinkled with flowers. The hair net is removed, and her head is a mass of ringlets, which are distinctly too youthful for her present appearance
.]
AMANDA
[
musically
]: Somebody seems to be having a mighty good laugh in here! This is Mr. Delaney, I presume? Oh, don’t get up! I’ve heard such a lot of wonderful things about you! Only you haven’t got the
comfo’table
chair. Tom, you’re such a poor host, seating Mr. Delaney in that straight chair. You sit there on the
sofa
! I’m not going to say “Mr.,” I’m going to skip formalities and call
you—
JIM
[
a little stunned by her animation
]:
—Jim
.
AMANDA
:
Jim
! I’ve known so many nice
Jims—in
days gone by. In fact I’ve never known a Jim that wasn’t a darling! So you must be one too! Now tell me—Tell me all your hopes and dreams! Don’t be frightened of me, I know I’m a rattle-trap, I have all the vivacity in this house! And I’m greedy for information,
just—just—
greedy
for it! So tell me everything! Everything all at once! You work in the warehouse? Of
course—I
know
you do! But what’s your position there? The same as Tom’s? Oh, no, it’s better than Tom’s, Tom’s told me that already! A
shipping—shipping—?
JIM
:
—Clerk
.
Yes—shipping
clerk.
AMANDA
: Oh! That must
be—nice!
You—handle—
shipping
.
Tom, go tell Miss Wingfield to put the rest of the dinner on the table. You’ve met Laura, my pretty little daughter?