Tennessee Williams - The Glass Menagerie

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?

TOM [ gently ]: She lives in a world of her own – a world of little glass ornaments, Mother… [ Gets Up . AMANDA remains holding 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 door. ]

AMANDA [ sharply ]: Where are you going?

TOM: I’m going to the movies. [ Out screen door .]

AMANDA: Not to the movies, every night to the movies! [ 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!

[ SCREEN IMAGE: 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 ]

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.

[ IMAGE: CLERK. ]

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. LEGEND ON SCREEN: “THE ACCENT OF A COMING FOOT” [15] “The accent on a coming foot” from a poem by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886): Elysium is as far as to The very nearest Room If in that Room a Friend await Felicity or Doom – What fortitude the Soul contains That it can so endure The accent of a coming Foot – The opening of a Door .