Three Plays (16 page)

MARGARET
: Brick hears you, Big Mama, he understands what you're saying.

BIG MAMA
: Oh, Brick, son of Big Daddy! Big Daddy does so love you! Y'know what would be his fondest dream come true? If before he passed on, if Big Daddy has to pass on, you gave him a child of yours, a grandson as much like his son as his son is like Big Daddy!

MAE
[popping briefcase shut | an incongruous sound]
:
Such a pity that Maggie an' Brick can't oblige!

MARGARET
[suddenly and quietly but forcefully]
: Everybody listen.

[She crosses to the center of the room, holding her hands rigidly together.]

MAE
: Listen to what, Maggie?

MARGARET
: I have an announcement to make.

GOOPER
: A sports announcement, Maggie?

MARGARET
: Brick and I are going to—
have a child!

[Big Mama catches her breath in a loud gasp. | Pause. | Big Mama rises.]

BIG MAMA
: Maggie! Brick! This is too good to believe!

MAE
: That's right, too good to believe.

BIG MAMA
: Oh, my, my! This is Big Daddy's dream, his dream come true! I'm going to tell him right now before he—

MARGARET
: We'll tell him in the morning. Don't disturb him now.

BIG MAMA
: I want to tell him before he goes to sleep, I'm going to tell him his dream's come true this minute! And Brick! A child will make you pull yourself together and quit this drinking!

[She seizes the glass from his hand.]

The responsibilities of a father will—

[Her face contorts and she makes an excited gesture; bursting into sobs, she rushes out, crying.]

I'm going to tell Big Daddy right this minute!

[Her voice fades out down the hall. | Brick shrugs slightly and drops an ice cube into another glass. | Margaret crosses quickly to his side, saying something under her breath, and she pours the liquor for him, staring up almost fiercely into his face.]

BRICK
[coolly]
: Thank you, Maggie, that's a nice big shot.

[Mae has joined Gooper and she gives him a fierce poke, making a low hissing sound and a grimace of fury.]

GOOPER
[pushing her aside]
: Brick, could you possibly spare me one small shot of that liquor?

BRICK
: Why, help yourself, Gooper boy.

GOOPER
: I will.

MAE
[shrilly]
: Of course we know that this is—

GOOPER
:
Be still, Mae!

MAE
: I won't be still! I know she's made this up!

GOOPER
: God damn it, I said to shut up!

MARGARET
: Gracious! I didn't know that my little announcement was going to provoke such a storm!

MAE
: That
woman
, isn't
pregnant!

GOOPER
: Who said she was?

MAE
:
She
did.

GOOPER
: The doctor didn't. Doc Baugh didn't.

MARGARET
: I haven't gone to Doc Baugh.

GOOPER
: Then who'd you go to, Maggie?

MARGARET
: One of the best gynaecologists in the South.

GOOPER
: Uh huh, uh huh!—I see...

[He takes out pencil and notebook.]

—May we have his name, please?

MARGARET
: No, you may not, Mister Prosecuting Attorney!

MAE
: He doesn't have any name, he doesn't exist!

MARGARET
: Oh, he exists all right, and so does my child, Brick's baby!

MAE
: You can't conceive a child by a man that won't sleep with you unless you think you're—

[Brick has turned on the phonograph. A scat song cuts Mae's speech.]

GOOPER
:
Turn that off!

MAE
: We know it's a lie because we hear you in here; he won't sleep with you, we hear you! So don't imagine you're going to put a trick over on us, to fool a dying man with a—

[A long drawn cry of agony and rage fills the house. Margaret turns phonograph down to a whisper. | The cry is repeated.]

MAE
[awed]
: Did you hear that, Gooper, did you hear that?

GOOPER
: Sounds like the pain has struck.

MAE
: Go see, Gooper!

GOOPER
: Come along and leave these love birds together in their nest!

[He goes out first, Mae follows but turns at the door, contorting her face and hissing at Margaret.]

MAE
:
Liar!

[She slams the door.

Margaret exhales with relief and moves a little unsteadily to catch hold of Brick's arm.]

MARGARET
: Thank you for—keeping still....

BRICK
: OK, Maggie.

MARGARET
: It was gallant of you to save my face!

BRICK
: —It hasn't happened yet.

MARGARET
: What?

BRICK
: The click....

MARGARET
: —the click in your head that makes you peaceful, honey?

BRICK
: Uh-huh. It hasn't happened.... I've got to make it happen before I can sleep....

MARGARET
: —I—know what you—mean....

BRICK
: Give me that pillow in the big chair, Maggie.

MARGARET
: I'll put it on the bed for you.

BRICK
: No, put it on the sofa, where I sleep.

MARGARET
: Not tonight, Brick.

BRICK
: I want it on the sofa. That's where I sleep.

[He has hobbled to the liquor cabinet. He now pours down three shots in quick succession and stands waiting, silent. All at once he turns with a smile and says:]

There!

MARGARET
: What?

BRICK
: The
click
....

[His gratitude seems almost infinite as he hobbles out on the gallery with a drink. We hear his crutch as he swings out of sight. Then, at some distance, he begins singing to himself a peaceful song. | Margaret holds the big pillow forlornly as if it were her only companion, for a few moments, then throws it on the bed. She rushes to the liquor cabinet, gathers all the bottles in her arms, turns about undecidedly, then runs out of the room with them, leaving the door ajar on the dim yellow hall. Brick is heard hobbling back along the gallery, singing his peaceful song. He comes back in, sees the pillow on the bed, laughs lightly, sadly, picks it up. He has it under his arm as Margaret returns to the room. Margaret softly shuts the door and leans against it, smiling softly at Brick.]

MARGARET
: Brick, I used to think that you were stronger than me and I didn't want to be overpowered by you. But now, since you've taken to liquor—you know what?—I guess it's bad, but now I'm stronger than you and I can love you more truly! Don't move that pillow. I'll move it right back if you do!—Brick?

[She turns out all the lamps but a single rose-silk-shaded one by the bed.]

I really have been to a doctor and I know what to do and—Brick?—this is my time by the calendar to conceive!

BRICK
: Yes, I understand, Maggie. But how are you going to conceive a child by a man in love with his liquor?

MARGARET
: By locking his liquor up and making him satisfy my desire before I unlock it!

BRICK
: Is that what you've done, Maggie?

MARGARET
: Look and see. That cabinet's mighty empty compared to before!

BRICK
: Well, I'll be a son of a—

[He reaches for his crutch but she beats him to it and rushes out on the gallery, hurls the crutch over the rail and comes back in, panting. | There are running footsteps. Big Mama bursts into the room, her face all awry, gasping, stammering.]

BIG MAMA
: Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, where is it?

MARGARET
: Is this what you want, Big Mama?

[Margaret hands her the package left by the doctor.]

BIG MAMA
: I can't bear it, oh! God! Oh, Brick! Brick, baby!

[She rushes at him. He averts his face from her sobbing kisses. | Margaret watches with a tight smile.]

My son, Big Daddy's boy! Little Father!

[The groaning cry is heard again. She runs out, sobbing.]

MARGARET
: And so tonight we're going to make the lie true, and when that's done, I'll bring the liquor back here and we'll get drunk together, here, tonight, in this place that death has come into.... —What do you say?

BRICK
: I don't say anything. I guess there's nothing to say.

MARGARET
: Oh, you weak people, you weak, beautiful people!—who give up.—What you want is someone to—

[She turns out the rose-silk lamp.]

—take hold of you.—Gently, gently, with love! And—

[The curtain begins to fall slowly.]

I
do
love you, Brick, I
do!

BRICK
[smiling with charming sadness]
: Wouldn't it be funny if that was true?

THE CURTAIN COMES DOWN

THE END

NOTE OF EXPLANATION

Some day when time permits I would like to write a piece about the influence, its dangers and its values, of a powerful and highly imaginative director upon the development of a play, before and during production. It does have dangers, but it has them only if the playwright is excessively malleable or submissive, or the director is excessively insistent on ideas or interpretations of his own. Elia Kazan and I have enjoyed the advantages and avoided the dangers of this highly explosive relationship because of the deepest mutual respect for each other's creative function: we have worked together three times with a phenomenal absence of friction between us and each occasion has increased the trust.

If you don't want a director's influence on your play, there are two ways to avoid it, and neither is good. One way is to arrive at an absolutely final draft of your play before you let your director see it, then hand it to him saying, Here it is, take it or leave it! The other way is to select a director who is content to put your play on the stage precisely as you conceived it with no ideas of his own. I said neither is a good way, and I meant it. No living playwright, that I can think of, hasn't something valuable to learn about his own work from a director so keenly perceptive as Elia Kazan. It so happened that in the case of
Streetcar
, Kazan was given a script that was completely finished. In the case of
Cat
, he was shown the first typed version of the play, and he was excited by it, but he had definite reservations about it which were concentrated in the third act. The gist of his reservations can be listed as three points: one, he felt that Big Daddy was too vivid and important a character to disappear from the play except as an offstage cry after the second act curtain; two, he felt that the character of Brick should undergo some apparent mutation as a result of the virtual vivisection that he undergoes in his interview with his father in Act Two. Three, he felt that the character of Margaret, while he understood that I sympathized with her and liked her myself, should be, if possible, more clearly sympathetic to an audience.

It was only the third of these suggestions that I embraced wholeheartedly from the outset, because it so happened that Maggie the Cat had become steadily more charming to me as I worked on her characterization. I didn't want Big Daddy to reappear in Act Three and I felt that the moral paralysis of Brick was a root thing in his tragedy, and to show a dramatic progression would obscure the meaning of that tragedy in him and because I don't believe that a conversation, however revelatory, ever effects so immediate a change in the heart or even conduct of a person in Brick's state of spiritual disrepair.