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Authors: Tennessee Williams

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BOOK: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
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[
Big Mama has been straightening things up
in the room during this speech.
]

BIG MAMA
[
closing
closet door on discarded clothes
]:

Miss Sally sure is a case!
Big Daddy says
she's always got her hand out fo’ something. He's not mistaken.
That poor ole thing always has her hand out fo’ somethin’. I
don't think Big Daddy gives her as much as he should.

[
Somebody shouts for her downstairs and she
shouts:
]

I'm comin'!

[
She starts out. At the hall door, turns and
jerks a fore-finger, first toward the bathroom door, then toward
the
liquor cabinet, meaning: “Has Brick
been drinking?” Margaret pretends not to understand, cocks her
head and raises her brows as if the pantomimic performance was completely
mystifying to her.

[
Big Mama rushes hack to
Margaret:
]

Shoot! Stop playin’ so
dumb!—
I mean has he been drinkin’ that stuff much
yet?

MARGARET
[
with a
little laugh
]:

Oh! I think he had a highball after supper.

BIG MAMA:

Don't laugh about it!—Some single men stop drinkin’ when
they git married and others start! Brick never touched liquor before
he—!

MARGARET
[
crying
out
]:

THAT'S NOT FAIR!

BIG MAMA:

Fair or not fair I want to ask you a question, one question:

D'you make Brick happy in bed?

MARGARET:

Why don't you ask if he makes
me
happy in
bed?

BIG MAMA:

Because I know that—

MARGARET:

It works both ways!

BIG MAMA:

Something's not right! You're childless and my son
drinks!

[
Someone has called her downstairs and she
has rushed to the door on the line above. She turns at the door and points at
the bed.]

—When a marriage goes on the rocks, the rocks are
there,
right
there!

MARGARET:

That's—

[
Big Mama has swept out of the room and
slammed the door.
]


not—fair . . .

[
Margaret is alone, completely alone, and
she feels it. She draws in, hunches her shoulders, raises her arms with fists
clenched, shuts her eyes tight as a child about to be stabbed with a vaccination
needle. When she opens her eyes again, what she sees is the long oval mirror and
she rushes straight to it, stares into it with a grimace and says: “Who
are you?"-Then she crouches a little and answers herself in a
different voice which is high, thin, mocking: “I am Maggie the
Cat!" Straightens quickly as bathroom door opens a little and Bricks
calls out to her.
]

BRICK:

Has Big Mama gone?

MARGARET:

She's gone.

[
He opens the bathroom door and hobbles out,
with his liquor glass now empty, straight to the liquor cabinet. He is whistling
softly. Margaret's head pivots on her long, slender throat to watch
him.

[
She raises a hand uncertainly to the base
of her throat, as if it was difficult for her to swallow, before she
speaks:
]

You know, our sex life didn't just peter out in the usual way, it
was cut off short, long before the natural time for it to, and
it's going to revive again, just as sudden as that. I'm confident
of it. That's what I'm keeping myself attractive for. For the time
when you'll see me again like other men see me. Yes, like other men see me.
They still see me, Brick, and they like what they see. Uh-huh. Some of them
would give their-

Look, Brick!

[
She stands before the long oval mirror,
touches her breast and then her hips with her two hands.
]

How high my body stays on me! —Nothing has fallen on me
—not a fraction . . . .

[
Her voice is soft and trembling: a pleading
child's. At this moment as he turns to glance at her—a look which
is like a player passing a ball to another player, third down and goal to
go—she has to capture the audience in a grip so tight that she can hold
it till the first intermission without any lapse of
attention.
]

Other men still want me. My face looks strained, sometimes, but
I've kept my figure as well as you've kept yours, and men admire it. I
still turn heads on the street. Why, last week in Memphis everywhere that I went
men's eyes burned holes in my clothes, at the country club and in restaurants
and department stores, there wasn't a man I met or walked by that
didn't just eat me up with his eyes and turn around when I passed him and
look back at me. Why, at Alice's party for her New York cousins, the
best-lookin’ man in the crowd followed me upstairs and tried to force
his way in the powder room with me, followed me to the door and tried to force his
way in!

BRICK:

Why didn't you let him, Maggie?

MARGARET:

Because I'm not that common, for one thing. Not that I wasn't almost
tempted to. You like to know who it was? It was Sonny Boy Maxwell,
that's who!

BRICK:

Oh, yeah, Sonny Boy Maxwell, he was a good end-runner but had a little injury
to his back and had to quit.

MARGARET:

He has no injury now and has no wife and still has a lech for me!

BRICK:

I see no reason to lock him out of a powder room in that case.

MARGARET:

And have someone catch me at it? I'm not that stupid. Oh, I might
sometime cheat on you with someone, since you're so insultingly eager to have
me do it! But if I do, you can be damned sure it will be in a place and a
time where no one but me and the man could possibly know. Because I'm not
going to give you any excuse to divorce me for being unfaithful or anything else . .
. .

BRICK:

Maggie, I wouldn't divorce you for being unfaithful or anything else.
Don't you know that? Hell. I'd be relieved to know that
you'd found yourself a lover.

MARGARET:

Well, I'm taking no chances. No, I'd rather stay on this hot tin
roof.

BRICK:

A hot tin roof's ‘n uncomfo'table place t’ stay on . . .
.

[
He starts to whistle
softly.
]

MARGARET
[
through
his whistle
]:

Yeah, but I can stay on it just as long as I have to.

BRICK:

You could leave me, Maggie.

[
He resumes whistle. She wheels about to
glare at him.
]

MARGARET:

Don't want to and will not!
Besides if I
did, you don't have a cent to pay for it but what you get from Big Daddy and
he's dying of cancer!

[
For the first time a realization of Big
Daddy's doom seems to penetrate to Brick's consciousness, visibly,
and he looks at Margaret.
]

BRICK:

Big Mama just said he
wasn't,
that the report was
okay.

MARGARET:

That's what she thinks because she got the same story that they gave Big
Daddy. And was just as taken in by it as he was, poor ole things . . . .

But tonight they're going to tell her the truth about it. When
Big Daddy goes to bed, they're going to tell her that he is dying of
cancer.

[
She slams the dresser
drawer.
]

—It's malignant and it's terminal.

BRICK:

Does Big Daddy know it?

MARGARET:

Hell, do they
ever
know it? Nobody says,
“You're dying.” You have to fool them. They have to fool
themselves.

BRICK:

Why?

MARGARET:

Why?
Because human beings dream of life
everlasting, that's the reason! But most of them want it on earth and
not in heaven.

[
He gives a short, hard laugh at her touch
of humor.
]

Well. . . . [
She touches up her
mascara.
] That's how it is, anyhow . . . . [
She looks about.
] Where did I put down my
cigarette? Don't want to burn up the home-place, at least not
with Mae and Gooper and their five monsters in it!

[
She has found it and sucks at it greedily.
Blows out smoke and continues:
]

So this is Big Daddy's last birthday. And Mae and Gooper, they
know it, oh,
they
know it, all right. They got the first
information from the Ochsner Clinic. That's why they rushed down here with
their no-neck monsters. Because. Do you know something? Big
Daddy's made no will? Big Daddy's never made out any will in
his life, and so this campaign's afoot to impress him, forcibly as possible,
with the fact that you drink and I've borne no children!

[
He continues to stare at her a moment, then
mutters something sharp but not audible and hobbles rather rapidly out onto the
long gallery in the fading, much faded, gold light.
]

MARGARET
[
continuing her liturgical chant
]:

Y'know, I'm
fond
of Big Daddy, I am
genuinely fond of that old man, I really
am,
you know .
. . .

BRICK
[faintly, vaguely
]:

Yes, I know you are . . . .

MARGARET:

I've always sort of admired him in spite of his coarseness, his
four-letter words and so forth. Because Big Daddy
is
what he
is,
and he makes no bones about
it. He hasn't turned gentleman farmer, he's still a Mississippi
redneck, as much of a redneck as he must have been when he was just overseer here on
the old Jack Straw and Peter Ochello place. But he got hold of it an’ built
it into th’ biggest an’ finest plantation in the Delta. I've
always
liked
Big Daddy . . . .

[
She crosses to the
proscenium.
]

Well, this is Big Daddy's last birthday. I'm sorry about
it. But I'm facing the facts. It takes money to take care of a drinker and
that's the office that I've been elected to lately.

BRICK:

You don't have to take care of me.

MARGARET:

Yes, I do. Two people in the same boat have got to take care of each other. At least
you want money to buy more Echo Spring when this supply is exhausted, or will you be
satisfied with a ten-cent beer?

Mae an’ Gooper are plannin’ to freeze us out of Big
Daddy's estate because you drink and I'm childless. But we can defeat
that plan. We're
going
to defeat that
plan!

Brick, y'know, I've been so God damn
disgustingly poor all my life!—
That's the
truth,
Brick!

BRICK:

I'm not sayin’ it isn't.

MARGARET:

Always had to suck up to people I couldn't stand because they had money and I
was poor as Job's turkey. You don't
know what
that's like. Well, I'll tell you, it's like you would feel a
thousand miles away from Echo Spring!—And had to get back to
it
on that broken ankle . . . without a crutch!

That's how it feels to be as poor as Job's turkey and have
to suck up to relatives that you hated because they had money and all you had was a
bunch of hand-me-down clothes and a few old moldy
three-per-cent government bonds. My daddy loved his liquor, he fell in
love with his liquor the way you've fallen in love with Echo
Spring!—And my poor Mama, having to maintain some semblance of social
position, to keep appearances up, on an income of one hundred and fifty dollars a
month on those old government bonds!

When I came out, the year that I made my debut, I had just two evening
dresses! One Mother made me from a pattern in
Vogue,
the other a hand-me-down from a snotty rich cousin
I hated!

—The dress that I married you in was my grandmother's
weddin’ gown . . . .

So that's why I'm like a cat on a hot tin roof!

[
Brick is still on the gallery. Someone
below calls up to him in a warm Negro voice, “Hiya, Mistuh Brick, how yuh
feelin'?” Brick raises his liquor glass as if that answered
the question.]

MARGARET:

You can be young without money, but you can't be old without it. You've
got to be old
with
money because to be old without it is
just too awful, you've got to be one or the other, either
young
or
with money,
you
can't be old and
without
it.—That's
the
truth,
Brick . . . .

[
Brick whistles softly,
vaguely.
]

Well, now I'm dressed, I'm all dressed, there's nothing else for
me to do.

[
Forlornly, almost
fearfully.
]

I'm dressed, all dressed, nothing else for me to do . . . .

[
She moves about restlessly, aimlessly, and
speaks, as if to herself.
]

I know when I made my mistake.—What am I—?
Oh! —my bracelets . . . .

[
She starts working a collection of
bracelets over her hands onto her wrists, about six on each, as she
talks.
]

I've thought a whole lot about it and now I know when I made my
mistake. Yes, I made my mistake when I told you the truth about that thing with
Skipper. Never should have confessed it, a fatal error, tellin’ you about
that thing with Skipper.

BOOK: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
7.64Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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