Read A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur Online
Authors: Tennessee Williams
A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur (6 page)
[
Sensing the hostile “vibes,” Miss Gluck moans, swaying a little
.]
HELENA:
Miss Bodenheifer, I will not dignify your insults with response or attention!
[
Miss Gluck moans louder
.]
Aren’t you able to see that this Miss Gluck is mental? Distressing to hear and to look at! . . . Be that as it may, I shall wait.
BODEY:
Sitting? Tight as a tombstone? Huh?
HELENA:
I can assure you that for me to remain in this place is at least as unpleasant to me as to you. [
She cries out to Dorothea who is still in the bedroom
.] Dorothea? Dorothea? Can you hear me?
DOROTHEA
[
clinging to something in the bedroom
]: See
you—Blewett—t’morrow
. . .
HELENA:
No, no, at once, Dorothea, the situation out here is dreadful beyond endurance.
[
Abruptly, Miss Gluck cries out, clutching her abdomen
.]
BODEY:
Sophie, what is it, Sophie?
MISS GLUCK:
Heisser Kaffee gibt mir immer Krampf und Durchfall
.
[
This episode in the play must be handled carefully to avoid excessive scatology but keep the humor
.]
BODEY:
You got the runs?
Zum Badezimmer?
Sophie’s got to go to the bathroom, Dotty.
DOROTHEA:
Hasn’t she got one upstairs?
BODEY:
After hot coffee, it gives her diarrhea!
DOROTHEA:
Must she have it down here?
MISS GLUCK
[
in German
]:
KANN NICHT WARTEN!
BODEY:
She can’t wait, here, bathroom, Sophie!
Badezimmer!
[
Miss Gluck rushes through the bedroom into the bathroom
.]
DOROTHEA:
What a scene for Helena to report at Blewett. Miss Gluck, turn on both water faucets full force.
BODEY:
Sophie,
beide Wasser rennen
.
DOROTHEA:
Bodey, while I am here don’t serve her hot coffee again since it results in
these—crises!
BODEY:
Dotty, you know that Sophie’s got this problem.
DOROTHEA:
Then send her coffee upstairs.
BODEY:
Dotty, you know she needs companionship, Dotty.
DOROTHEA:
That I cannot provide her with just now!
[
Bodey returns to the living room
.]
HELENA:
How did Dorothea react to Miss Gluck’s sudden indisposition?
BODEY:
Dotty’s a girl that understands human afflictions.
[
There is a crash in the bathroom
.]
DOROTHEA:
Phone, Ralph’s
call—has he—did
he?
BODEY:
Phone, Dotty? No, no phone.
HELENA:
I wouldn’t
expect—
BODEY
[
to Helena
]: Watch it!
HELENA:
Watch what, Miss Bodenheifer? What is it you want me to watch?
BODEY:
That mouth of yours, the tongue in it, with such a tongue in a mouth you could dig your grave with like a shovel!
HELENA
[
her laughter tinkling like ice in a glass
]:
—The
syntax of that sentence was rather confusing. You know, I suspect that English is not your native language but one that you’ve not quite adequately adopted.
BODEY:
I was born on South Grand, a block from Tower Grove Park in this city of St. Louis!
HELENA:
Ah, the German section. Your parents were German speaking?
BODEY:
I learned plenty English at school, had eight grades of school and a year of business college.
HELENA:
I see, I see, forgive me. [
She turns to a window, possibly in the
“
fourth wall
.”] Is a visitor permitted to look out the window?
BODEY:
A visitor like you’s permitted to jump out it.
HELENA
[
laughing indulgently
]: With so many restrictions placed on one’s speech and
actions—
[
Bodey turns up her hearing aid so high that it screeches shrilly
.]
DOROTHEA:
Is it the phone?
HELENA:
Please. Is it controllable, that electric hearing device?
BODEY:
What did you say?
[
The screeching continues
.]
HELENA:
Ow . . . ow . . .
[
Bodey finally manages to turn down the hearing aid
.]
DOROTHEA:
Oh please bring a mop, Bodey. Water’s streaming
under—the
bathroom door. Miss Gluck’s flooded the bathroom.
BODEY:
What? Bring?
HELENA:
Mop, mop!
[
Helena moves toward the bedroom door but Bodey shoves her back
.]
BODEY:
Stay! Put! Stay put!
[
Bodey grabs a mop from the closet and then rushes into the bedroom
.]
DOROTHEA:
See? Water? Flooding?
BODEY:
You told her to turn on both faucets. SOPHIE!
Halte das Wasser ab
, Sophie! [
Bodey opens the bathroom door and thrusts in the mop
.] Here,
das Wust, das Wust
, Sophie!
DOROTHEA
[
to herself
]: This is incredible to me, I simply do not believe it! [
She then speaks to Bodey who has started back toward the living room
.] May I detain you a moment? The truth has finally struck me. Ralph’s calls have been intercepted. He has been repeatedly calling me on that phone, and you have been just as repeatedly lying to me that he hasn’t.
BODEY:
LYING
TO—?
DOROTHEA:
YES, LYING! [
She stumbles to the door of the bedroom
.] Helena, will
you
please watch that phone for me now?
HELENA
[
crossing to the bedroom door
]: I’m afraid, Dorothea, that a watched phone never rings!
[
Bodey emerges from the bedroom. She and Helena return to the living room while Dorothea retreats to the bed, shutting the door behind her
.]
What a view through this window, totally devoid
of—why
, no, a living creature, a pigeon! Capable of flight but perched for a moment in this absolute desolation . . .
INTERVAL
The scene is the same as before. The spotlight focuses on the lefthand
, “
bedroom
”
portion of the stage where Dorothea, seated at her vanity table and mellowed by her mebaral and sherry
“
cocktail,” soliloquizes
.
DOROTHEA
[
taking a large swallow of sherry
]: Best years of my youth thrown away, wasted on poor Hathaway James. [
She removes his picture from the vanity table and with closed eyes thrusts it out of sight
.] Shouldn’t say wasted but so unwisely devoted. Not even sure it was love. Unconsummated love, is it really love? More likely just a reverence for his
talent—precocious
achievements . . . musical prodigy. Scholarship to Juilliard, performed a concerto with the Nashville Symphony at fifteen. [
She sips more sherry
.] But those dreadful embarrassing evenings on Aunt Belle’s front porch in Memphis! He’d say: “Turn out the light, it’s attracting insects.” I’d switch it out. He’d grab me so tight it would take my breath away, and invariably I’d feel plunging, plunging against me
that—that—frantic
part of him . . . then he’d release me at once and collapse on the porch swing, breathing hoarsely. With the corner gas lamp shining through the wisteria vines, it was impossible not to notice the wet stain spreading on his light flannel trousers. . . . Miss Gluck, MOP IN!!
[
Miss Gluck, who has timidly opened the bathroom door and begun to emerge, with the mop, into the bedroom, hastily retreats from sight
.]
Such
afflictions—visited
on the gifted. . . . Finally worked up the courage to discuss
the—Hathaway’s—problem
with the family doctor, delicately but clearly as I could. “Honey, this Hathaway fellow’s afflicted with something clinically known
as—chronic
case
of—premature ejaculation—must
have a large
laundry bill. . . .” “Is it curable, Doctor?”—“Maybe with great patience, honey, but remember you’re only young once, don’t gamble on it, relinquish him to his interest in music, let him go.”
[
Miss Gluck’s mop protrudes from the bathroom again
.]
MISS GLUCK, I SAID MOP IN. REMAIN IN BATHROOM WITH WET MOP TILL MOP UP COMPLETED. MERCIFUL HEAVENS.
[
Helena and Bodey are now seen in the living room
.]
HELENA:
Is Dorothea attempting a conversation with Miss Gluck in there?
BODEY:
No, no just to
herself—you
gave her the sherry on top of mebaral tablets.
HELENA:
She talks to herself? That isn’t a practice that I would encourage her in.
BODEY:
She don’t need no encouragement in it, and as for you, I got an idea you’d encourage nobody in nothing.
DOROTHEA
[
in the bedroom
]: After Hathaway James, there was nothing left for me
but—CIVICS
.
HELENA
[
who has moved to the bedroom door the better to hear Dorothea’s “confessions
”]: This is not to B. B.!
BODEY
: Stop listening at the door. Go back to your pigeon watching.
HELENA:
How long is this apt to continue?
DOROTHEA:
Oh, God, thank you that Ralph Ellis has no such
affliction—is
healthily aggressive.
HELENA:
I have a luncheon engagement in La Due at two!
BODEY:
Well, go keep it! On time!
HELENA:
My business with Dorothea must take precedence over anything else! [
Helena pauses to watch with amused suspicion as Bodey “attacks” the Sunday
Post-Dispatch
which she has picked up from the chair
.] What is that you’re doing, Miss Bodenheifer?
BODEY:
Tearing a certain item out of the paper.
HELENA:
A ludicrous thing to do since the news will be all over Blewett High School tomorrow.
BODEY:
Never mind tomorrow. There’s ways and ways to break a piece of news like that to a girl with a heart like Dotty. You wouldn’t know about that, no, you’d do it right
now—malicious! —You
got eyes like a bird and I don’t mean a songbird.
HELENA:
Oh, is that
so?
BODEY:
Yeh, yeh, that’s so, I know!
[
Pause. Bodey, who has torn out about half of the top page of one section, puts the rest of the paper on the sofa, and takes the section from which the piece has been torn with her as she crosses to the kitchenette, crumpling and throwing the torn piece into the wastebasket on her way
.]
HELENA:
Miss Bodenheifer.
BODEY
[
from the kitchenette
]: Hafer!
HELENA:
I have no wish to offend you, but surely you’re able to see that for Dorothea to stay in these circumstances must be extremely embarrassing to her at least.
BODEY:
Aw, you think Dotty’s embarrassed here, do you?
[
Bodey has begun to line a shoebox with the section of newspaper she took with her. During the following exchange with Helena, Bodey packs the fried chicken and other picnic fare in the shoebox
.]
HELENA:
She has hinted it’s almost intolerable to her. The visitations of this Gluck person who has rushed to the bathroom, this nightmare of clashing colors, the purple carpet, orange drapes at the windows looking out at that view of brick and concrete and asphalt, lamp shades with violent yellow daisies on them, and wallpaper with roses exploding like bombshells, why it would give her a breakdown! It’s giving me claustrophobia briefly as I have been here. Why, this is not a place for a civilized person to possibly exist in!
BODEY:
What’s so civilized about you, Miss
Brooks-it
? Stylish, yes, civilized, no, unless a hawk or a buzzard is a civilized creature. Now you see, you got a tongue in your mouth, but I got one in mine, too.
HELENA:
You are being hysterical and offensive!
BODEY:
You ain’t heard nothing compared to what you’ll hear if you continue to try to offer all this concern you feel about Dotty to Dotty in this apartment.
HELENA:
Dorothea Gallaway and I keep nothing from each other and naturally I intend, as soon as she has recovered, to
prepare her for what she can hardly avoid facing sooner or later and
I—
BODEY
[
cutting in
]: I don’t want heartbreak for Dotty. For Dotty I want
a—life
.
HELENA:
A life
of—?
BODEY:
A life, a
life
—
HELENA:
You mean as opposed to a death?
BODEY:
Don’t get smart with me. I got your number the moment you come in that door like a
well-dressed
snake.
HELENA:
So far you have compared me to a snake and a bird. Please decide
which—since
the archaeopteryx, the only known combination of bird and snake, is long extinct!
BODEY:
Yes, well, you talk with a kind of a hiss. Awright, you just hiss away but not in this room which you think ain’t a civilized room. Okay, it’s too cheerful for you but for me and Dotty it’s fine. And this afternoon, at the picnic at Creve Coeur Lake, I will tell Dotty, gentle, in my own way, if it’s necessary to tell her, that this unprincipled man has just been using her. But Buddy, my brother Buddy, if in some ways he don’t suit her like he is now, I will see he quits beer, I will see he cuts out his cigars, I will see he continues to take off five pounds a week. And by Dotty and Buddy there will be
children—children!—I
will never have none, myself, no! But Dotty and Buddy will have beautiful kiddies. Me?
Nieces—nephews
. . . .
—Now
you! I’ve wrapped up the picnic. It’s nice and cool at Creve Coeur Lake and the ride on the
open-air
streetcar is
lickety-split
through green country and there’s flowers you can pull off the bushes you pass. It’s a fine excursion. Dotty will forget not gettin’ that phone call. We’ll stay out till it’s close to dark and
the
fireflies—fly
. I will slip away and Buddy will be alone with her on the lake shore. He will smoke no smelly cigar. He will just respectfully hold her hand and
say—“I
love you, Dotty. Please be mine,” not meanin’ a girl in a car parked up on Art Hill
but—for
the long run of life.
HELENA:
—Can
Dorothea be really attached to your brother? Is it a mutual attraction?
BODEY:
Dotty will settle for Buddy. She’s got a few reservations about him so far, but at Creve Coeur she’ll suddenly recognize
the—wonderful
side of his nature.
HELENA:
Miss Bodenheifer, Dorothea is not intending to remain in this tasteless apartment. Hasn’t she informed you that she is planning to share a lovely apartment with me? The upstairs of a duplex on Westmoreland Place?
BODEY:
Stylish? Civilized, huh? And too expensive for you to swing it alone, so you want to rope Dotty in, rope her into a place that far from Blewett? Share expenses? You prob’ly mean pay most.
HELENA:
To move from such an unsuitable environment must naturally involve some expense.
[
Miss Gluck falls out of the bathroom onto Dorothea’s bed
.]
DOROTHEA:
MISS GLUCK! CAREFUL! Bodey, Bodey, Sophie Gluck’s collapsed on my bed in a cloud of steam!
HELENA:
Has Miss Gluck broken a steam pipe?
[
Bodey rushes from the kitchenette into the bedroom
.]
BODEY
[
to Helena
]: You stay out.
[
Dorothea emerges from the bedroom. She closes the door and leans against it briefly, closing her eyes as if dizzy or faint
.]
HELENA:
At last.
DOROTHEA:
I’m so mortified.
HELENA:
Are you feeling better?
DOROTHEA:
Sundays are always
different—
HELENA
: This one exceptionally so.
DOROTHEA:
I don’t know why
but—I
don’t quite understand why I am
so—agitated
. Something happened last week, just a few evenings ago
that—
HELENA:
Yes? What?
DOROTHEA:
Nothing that
I’m—something
I can’t discuss with you. I was and still am expecting a very important phone
call—
HELENA:
May I ask you from whom?
DOROTHEA:
No, please.
HELENA:
Then may I hazard a guess that the expected call not received was from a young gentleman who cuts a quite spectacular figure in the country club set but somehow became involved in the educational system?
DOROTHEA:
If you don’t mind, Helena, I’d much prefer not to discuss anything of
a—private
nature right now.
HELENA:
Yes, I understand, dear. And since you’ve located that chair, why don’t you seat yourself in it?
DOROTHEA:
Oh, yes, excuse me. [
She sits down, weakly, her hand lifted to her throat
.] The happenings here today are still a bit confused in my head. I was doing my exercises before you dropped by.
HELENA:
And for quite a while after.
DOROTHEA:
I was about
to—no
, I’d taken my shower. I was about to get dressed.
HELENA:
But the Gluck intervened. Such discipline! Well! I’ve had the privilege of an extended meeting with Miss
Bodenheifer—[
She lowers her voice
.]
She seemed completely surprised when I mentioned that you were moving to Westmoreland Place.
DOROTHEA:
Oh, you told her.
—I’m glad
.
—I’m
such a coward, I couldn’t.
HELENA:
Well, I broke the news to her.
DOROTHEA:
I—just
hadn’t the heart to.
[
Miss Gluck advances from the bedroom with a dripping wet mop and a dazed look
.]
HELENA
[
to Dorothea
]: Can’t you see she’s already found a replacement?
DOROTHEA:
Oh, no, there’s a limit even to Bodey’s endurance! Miss Gluck, would you please return that wet mop to the kitchen and wring it out.
Küche
—mop—Sophie
.