The Glass Menagerie

Tom? Tom?

Can't start dinner without you!

Tom!

You know I had the funniest experience in church last Sunday.

The church was crowded, except for one little pew way down front and that was just one little woman.

I smiled very sweetly at her and I said,

"Excuse me, would you mind if we shared this pew?"

And she said, "This space is rented."

You know, that's the first I ever knew that the Lord rented space.

These northerns Episcopalians.

I don't understand the southern Episcopalians, but these northern ones... Honey, honey!

Don't push your food with the things.

You want to push your food with something then use a crust of bread.

You must chew your food.

Animals have secretions in their stomachs which enable them to digest their food without mastication

but human beings must chew their food before they swallow it down.

A well-cooked meal has many delicate flavors

that have to be held in the mouth for appreciation and not just gulped down so chew! Chew! Chew!

Don't you want to give your salivary glands a chance to function?

Mother, I have not enjoyed one bite of this dinner because of your constant directions on how to eat it.

It's you that make me rush through meals with your hawk-like attention to every bite I take.

It's disgusting.

All this talk about salivary glands, animal secretions, mastication.

Temperament like a metropolitan star.

You aren't excused from this table.

I'm getting a cigarette.

You smoke too much. - Mother, I'll bring in the coffee.

No, no, no, no, you sit down.

I'm going to be the house boy today and you're gonna be be the lady.

I am already up! - Resume your seat. Resume your seat.

You keep yourself fresh and pretty for the gentleman callers,

I'm not expecting any gentleman callers,

Well the nice thing about them is they come when they're least expected.

I remember one Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain when your mother was a girl-

I know what's coming now.

Yes, but let her tell it. - Again? - She loves to tell it.

I remember one Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain when your mother was a girl

she received 17 gentlemen callers.

Sometimes there weren't chairs enough to accommodate them all

and we had to send the houseboy over to the parish house to fetch the folding chairs.

How did you entertain all those gentlemen callers?

Well I had to understand the art of conversation!

I bet you could talk. Well I could, all the girls in my day could, I tell you.

Yes. - Well they had to know how to entertain their gentleman callers.

Wasn't enough for a girl to be possessed to have a pretty face and a graceful figure

although I wasn't slighted in either respect.

She also needed to have a nimble wit and a tongue to meet all occasions.

What did you talk about?

Well we talked about things of importance going on in the world.

Never anything common of course about it.

My callers were gentlemen all. Some of the most prominent men on the Mississippi Delta.

Planters or sons of planters.

There was young Champ Blocklin. He later became vice-president of the Delta Planters plant.

And... Hadler Stevenson. He was drowned in Moon Lake.

My goodness he's certain left his widow well-provided for.

A hundred and fifty thousand dollars and government bonds.

And the Gutrea brothers. Wesley. And Bates.

Bates was one of my own particular boys.

But he got in a quarrel with that wild Wainright boy

and they shot it out on the floor of Moon Lake.

Was shot through the stomach and died in the ambulance on the way to Memphis.

Certainly left his widow well provided for too.

Eight to ten thousand acres, no less.

Never loved that woman, she just caught him on the rebound.

My picture was found on him the night he died.

Oh and that boy -

every girl in the Delta was super settler cat for.

That beautiful, brilliant young Fitzhugh boy from Green Cadet.

What'd he leave his widow? - He never married.

What's the matter with you?

You talk as though all of my old admirers had turned up their toes to the daisies!

Isn't this the first you've mentioned that still survives?

He made off a lot of money.

Went north to Wall Street, made a fortune.

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and I could've been Mrs. Jane Duncan Fitzhugh mind you!

But what I do?

I just went out of my way and picked your father.

Mother, let me clear the table.

No, no, no, you go in front. Study your typewriter chart.

Practice your shorthand a little. Stay fresh, stay pretty.

Almost time for our gentleman callers to start arriving.

How many do you think we're going to entertain this evening?

I don't believe that we're gonna be receiving any, Mother.

Not any, not one gentleman caller?

You must be joking. What's the matter? Has there been a flood or a tornado?

It's not a flood and it isn't a tornado.

I'm just not popular like you were in Blue Mountain, Mother.

Mother's afraid I'm gonna be an old maid.

No Mother, I was just... - I know. You were just practicin' your typing I suppose.

Deception deception deception.

How was DAR meeting Mother? - DAR meeting?

Didn't you go to the DAR meeting?

No I didn't go to any DAR meeting. I didn't have the strength. I didn't have the courage.

I just wanted to find a hole in the ground and crawl in it and stay there for the rest of my entire life.

Why are you doing that?

Why, why? How old are you Laura?

Mother, you know my age.

I was under the impression that you are an adult but evidently I was very much mistaken.

Please don't stare at me Mother.

What is going to become of us?

What is the future?

Something happened, Mother. Mother, something happened.

I'll be alright in a minute. I'm just bewildered by life.

Mother.

I wish you would tell me what's happened.

I went to the DAR this afternoon as you know.

I was to be inducted as an officer.

I stopped by at Rubicam's business college to tell them about your cold

and to ask how you're progressing down there.

Oh. - Oh yes. Oh oh oh.

I went straight to your typing instructor and introduced myself as your mother.

She didn't even know who you were.

"Wingfield?" she said. We don't have any such scholar enrolled in our school.

I assured her she did.

I said my daughter Laura has been coming to classes here since early January.

Well I don't know, she said, unless you mean that terribly shy little girl

who dropped out of school after a few days' attendance.

No, I said, I don't mean her!

I mean my daughter Laura who's been coming here every single day for the past six weeks.

Excuse me, she said, and she took down the attendance book and there was your name, unmistakable

and all the days you were absent.

I still told her she was wrong.

I still said that must have been some mistake.

There must have been some mix up in the record

"No", she said, "no, I remember her perfectly now.

She was so shy and her hands trembled so that her fingers couldn't touch the right keys."

"She had to gave a speed test she just broke down completely,

she was sick at the stomach and had to be carried to the washroom.

After that she never came back.

We telephoned the house every single day but we never got any answer.

That was while I was working all day long I suppose, down at that department store, demonstratin' those -

Oh I felt so weak I couldn't stand up.

I just sit down while they got me a glass of water.

Fifty dollars tuition.

I don't care about the money so much

but all my hopes for any kind of future for you, gone up the spout, just gone up the spout!

Don't do that Laura, don't play that!

What have you been doing every day when you goin' out of the house

pretending that you were going to Rubicam's business college?

Just been goin' out walking.

That's not true!

Yes it is, Mother! I just been walking.

Walking? Walking?

Deliberately courting pneumonia in that night coat?

Where did you walk to, Laura?

All sorts of places mostly in the park.

Even after you started catching that cold?

It the lesser of two evils, Mother, I couldn't go back.

I threw up on the floor.

From half past seven til after five every day

you mean to tell me you walked around in the park

because you want to make me think that you were going to Rubicam's Business College?

It wasn't as bad as it sounds.

I went inside places to get warm.

Inside where?

I mean in the art museum. And the bird houses.

The zoo. I visited the penguins every day.

And you did all that just to deceive me? Just for deception.

Why?

When you're disappointed you get that awful suffering look on your face,

like the picture of Jesus's mother at the museum!

I couldn't face it.

I just couldn't.

So what are we gonna do now and the rest of our lives?

Just sit down in this house and watch the parades go by?

Amuse ourselves with the glass menagerie?

Eternally play those worn-out records your father left us as a painful reminder of him?

We can't have a business career, nope, can't have that, that just gives us nervous indigestion.

What is there left for us now but dependency all our lives?

Course, some girls do marry.

My goodness Laura, haven't you ever liked some boy?

Yes, mother, I liked one once.

You did? - Came across his picture a while ago.

He gave you his picture too?

Yes, well it was in the yearbook.

Oh. A high school boy.

His name is Jimmy.

Here he is in the Prates of Penzance.

The what? - It was the operetta the senior class put on.

He had a beautiful voice.

I sat across the aisle from him Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays in the auditorium.

Here he is with the silver cup for debating. See his grin?

So he had a grin too.

He used to call me Blue roses.

Blue roses?! What'd he call you a silly name like that for?

I was out sick with pleurosis.

When I came back he asked what the matter was, and I said I have pleurosis.

He thought I said "blue roses" but that's what always called me after that.

Every time he saw me he'd say, "Hello, blue roses."

I didn't care much for the girl that he went out with, Emily Meisenbach.

Emily was the best-dressed girl at Soldan but never struk me that she was sincere.

I read in the paper once that they were engaged.

A long time ago, they're probably married by now.

It's alright honey. That doesn't matter.

Little girls who are cut out for business careers sometimes end up marrying a very nice young man

and I'm just gonna see to it that you do that too. - Mother?

What is it now? - I'm crippled.

Don't say that word!

How many times have I told you never to say that word?