Orpheus Descending and Suddenly Last Summer

by Tennessee Williams

  SISTER: What did you take out of that box on the table?

  CATHARINE: Just a cigarette, Sister.

  SISTER: Put it back in the box.

  CATHARINE: Too late, it’s already lighted.

  SISTER: Give it here.

  CATHARINE: Oh, please, let me smoke, Sister!

  SISTER: Give it here.

  CATHARINE: Please, Sister Felicity.

  SISTER: Catharine, give it here. You know that you’re not allowed to smoke at Saint Mary’s.

  CATHARINE: We’re not at Saint Mary’s, this is an afternoon out.

  SISTER: You’re still in my charge. I can’t permit you to smoke because the last time you smoked you dropped a lighted cigarette on your dress and started a fire.

  CATHARINE: Oh, I did not start a fire. I just burned a hole in my skirt because I was half unconscious under medication. [She is now back of a white wicker chair.]

  SISTER [overlapping her]: Catharine, give it here.

  CATHARINE: Don’t be such a bully!

  SISTER: Disobedience has to be paid for later.

  CATHARINE: All right, I’ll pay for it later.

  SISTER [overlapping]: Give me that cigarette or I’ll make a report that’ll put you right back on the violent ward, if you don’t. [She claps her hands twice and holds one hand out across the table.]

  CATHARINE [overlapping]: I’m not being violent, Sister.

  SISTER [overlapping]: Give me that cigarette, I’m holding my hand out for it!

  CATHARINE: All right, take it, here, take it!

  [She thrusts the lighted end of the cigarette into the palm of the Sister’s hand. The Sister cries out and sucks her burned hand.]

  SISTER: You burned me with it!

  CATHARINE: I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.

  SISTER [shocked, hurt]: You deliberately burned me!

  CATHARINE [overlapping]: You said give it to you and so I gave it to you.

  SISTER [overlapping]: You stuck the lighted end of that cigarette in my hand!

  CATHARINE [overlapping]: I’m sick, I’m sick! —of being bossed and bullied!

  SISTER [commandingly]: Sit down!

  [Catharine sits down stiffly in a white wicker chair on forestage, facing the audience. The Sister resumes sucking the burned palm of her hand. Ten beats. Then from inside the house the whirr of a mechanical mixer.]

  CATHARINE: There goes the Waring Mixer, Aunt Violet’s about to have her five o’clock frozen daiquiri, you could set a watch by it! [She almost laughs. Then she draws a deep, shuddering breath and leans back in her chair, but her hands remain clenched on the white wicker arms.] —We’re in Sebastian’s garden. My God, I can still cry!

  SISTER: Did you have any medication before you went out?

  CATHARINE: No. I didn’t have any. Will you give me some, Sister?

  SISTER [almost gently]: I can’t. I wasn’t told to. However, I think the doctor will give you something.

  CATHARINE: The young blond man I bumped into?

  SISTER: Yes. The young doctor’s a specialist from another hospital.

  CATHARINE: What hospital?

  SISTER: A word to the wise is sufficient. . . .

  [The Doctor has appeared in the window.]

  CATHARINE [rising abruptly]: I knew I was being watched, he’s in the window, staring out at me!

  SISTER: Sit down and be still. Your family’s coming outside.

  CATHARINE [overlapping]: LION’S VIEW, IS IT! DOCTOR?

  [She has advanced toward the bay window, The Doctor draws back, letting the misty white gauze curtains down to obscure him.]

  SISTER [rising with a restraining gesture which is almost pitying]: Sit down, dear.

  CATHARINE: IS IT LION’S VIEW? DOCTOR?!

  SISTER: Be still. . . .

  CATHARINE: WHEN CAN I STOP RUNNING DOWN THAT STEEP WHITE STREET IN CABEZA DE LOBO?

  SISTER: Catharine, dear, sit down.

  CATHARINE: I loved him, Sister! Why wouldn’t he let me save him? I tried to hold onto his hand but he struck me away and ran, ran, ran in the wrong direction, Sister!

  SISTER: Catharine, dear—be still. [The Sister sneezes.]

  CATHARINE: Bless you, Sister. [She says this absently, still watching the window.]

  SISTER: Thank you.

  CATHARINE: The Doctor’s still at the window but he’s too blond to hide behind window curtains, he catches the light, he shines through them. [She turns from the window.] —We were going to blonds, blonds were next on the menu.

  SISTER: Be still now. Quiet, dear.

  CATHARINE: Cousin Sebastian said he was famished for blonds, he was fed up with the dark ones and was famished for blonds. All the travel brochures he picked up were advertisements of the blond northern countries. I think he’d already booked us to—Copenhagen or—Stockholm. —Fed up with dark ones, famished for light ones: that’s how he talked about people, as if they were—items on a menu. —“That one’s delicious-looking, that one is appetizing,” or “that one is not appetizing”—I think because he was really nearly half-starved from living on pills and salads. . . .

  SISTER: Stop it! —Catharine, be still.

  CATHARINE: He liked me and so I loved him. . . . [She cries a little again.] If he’d kept hold of my hand I could have saved him! —Sebastian suddenly said to me last summer: “Let’s fly north, little bird—I want to walk under those radiant, cold northern lights—I’ve never seen the aurora borealis!”—Somebody said once or wrote, once: “We’re all of us children in a vast kindergarten trying to spell God’s name with the wrong alphabet blocks!”

  MRS. HOLLY [offstage]: Sister?

  [The Sister rises.]

  CATHARINE [rising]: I think it’s me they’re calling, they call me “Sister,” Sister!

  SCENE THREE

  The Sister resumes her seat impassively as the girl’s mother and younger brother appear from the garden. The mother, Mrs. Holly, is a fatuous Southern lady who requires no other description. The brother, George, is typically good looking, he has the best “looks” of the family, tall and elegant of figure. They enter.

  MRS. HOLLY: Catharine, dear! Catharine— [They embrace tentatively.] Well, well! Doesn’t she look fine, George?

  GEORGE: Uh huh.

  CATHARINE: They send you to the beauty parlor whenever you’re going to have a family visit. Other times you look awful, you can’t have a compact or lipstick or anything made out of metal because they’re afraid you’ll swallow it.

  MRS. HOLLY [giving a tinkly little laugh]: I think she looks just splendid, don’t you, George?

  GEORGE: Can’t we talk to her without the nun for a minute?

  MRS. HOLLY: Yes, I’m sure it’s all right to. Sister?

  CATHARINE: Excuse me, Sister Felicity, this is my mother, Mrs. Holly, and my brother, George.

  SISTER: How do you do.

  GEORGE: How d’ya do.

  CATHARINE: This is Sister Felicity. . . .

  MRS. HOLLY: We’re so happy that Catharine’s at Saint Mary’s! So very grateful for all you’re doing for her.

  SISTER [sadly, mechanically]: We do the best we can for her, Mrs. Holly.

  MRS. HOLLY: I’m sure you do. Yes, well—I wonder if you would mind if we had a little private chat with our Cathie?

  SISTER: I’m not supposed to let her out of my sight.

  MRS. HOLLY: It’s just for a minute. You can sit in the hall or the garden and we’ll call you right back here the minute the private part of the little talk is over.

  [Sister Felicity withdraws with an uncertain nod and a swish of starched fabric.]

  GEORGE [to Catharine]: Jesus! What are you up to? Huh? Sister? Are you trying to RUIN us?!

  MRS. HOLLY: GAWGE! WILL YOU BE QUIET. You’re upsetting your sister!

  [He jumps
up and stalks off a little, rapping his knee with his zipper-covered tennis racket.]

  CATHARINE: How elegant George looks.

  MRS. HOLLY: George inherited Cousin Sebastian’s wardrobe but everything else is in probate! Did you know that? That everything else is in probate and Violet can keep it in probate just as long as she wants to?

  CATHARINE: Where is Aunt Violet?

  MRS. HOLLY: George, come back here!

  [He does, sulkily.]

  Violet’s on her way down.

  GEORGE: Yeah. Aunt Violet has an elevator now.

  MRS. HOLLY: Yais, she has, she’s had an elevator installed where the back stairs were, and, Sister, it’s the cutest little thing you ever did see! It’s paneled in Chinese lacquer, black an’ gold Chinese lacquer, with lovely bird-pictures on it. But there’s only room for two people at a time in it. George and I came down on foot—I think she’s havin’ her frozen daiquiri now, she still has a frozen daiquiri promptly at five o’clock ev’ry afternoon in the world . . . in warm weather. . . . Sister, the horrible death of Sebastian just about killed her! —She’s now slightly better . . . but it’s a question of time. —Dear, you know, I’m sure that you understand, why we haven’t been out to see you at Saint Mary’s. They said you were too disturbed, and a family visit might disturb you more. But I want you to know that nobody, absolutely nobody in the city, knows a thing about what you’ve been through. Have they, George? Not a thing. Not a soul even knows that you’ve come back from Europe. When people enquire, when they question us about you, we just say that you’ve stayed abroad to study something or other. [She catches her breath.] Now. Sister? —I want you to please be very careful what you say to your Aunt Violet about what happened to Sebastian in Cabeza de Lobo.

  CATHARINE: What do you want me to say about what—?

  MRS. HOLLY: Just don’t repeat that same fantastic story! For my sake and George’s sake, the sake of your brother and mother, don’t repeat that horrible story again! Not to Violet! Will you?

  CATHARINE: Then I am going to have to tell Aunt Violet what happened to her son in Cabeza de Lobo?

  MRS. HOLLY: Honey, that’s why you’re here. She has INSISTED on hearing it straight from YOU!

  GEORGE: You were the only witness to it, Cathie.

  CATHARINE: No, there were others. That ran.

  MRS. HOLLY: Oh, Sister, you’ve just had a little sort of a—nightmare about it! Now, listen to me, will you, Sister? Sebastian has left, has BEQUEATHED! —to you an’ Gawge in his will—

  GEORGE [religiously]: To each of us, fifty grand, each! —AFTER! TAXES! —GET IT?

  CATHARINE: Oh, yes, but if they give me an injection—I won’t have any choice but to tell exactly what happened in Cabeza de Lobo last summer. Don’t you see? I won’t have any choice but to tell the truth. It makes you tell the truth because it shuts something off that might make you able not to and everything comes out, decent or not decent, you have no control, but always, always the truth!

  MRS. HOLLY: Catharine, darling. I don’t know the full story, but surely you’re not too sick in your head to know in your heart that the story you’ve been telling is just—too—

  GEORGE [cutting in]: Cathie, Cathie, you got to forget that story! Can’tcha? For your fifty grand?

  MRS. HOLLY: Because if Aunt Vi contests the will, and we know she’ll contest it, she’ll keep it in the courts forever! —We’ll be—

  GEORGE: It’s in PROBATE NOW! And’ll never get out of probate until you drop that story—we can’t afford to hire lawyers good enough to contest it! So if you don’t stop telling that crazy story, we won’t have a pot to—cook greens in!

  [He turns away with a fierce grimace and a sharp, abrupt wave of his hand, as if slapping down something. Catharine stares at his tall back for a moment and laughs wildly.]

  MRS. HOLLY: Catharine, don’t laugh like that, it scares me, Catharine.

  [Jungle birds scream in the garden.]

  GEORGE [turning his back on his sister]: Cathie, the money is all tied up.

  [He stoops over sofa, hands on flannel knees, speaking directly into Catharine’s face as if she were hard of hearing. She raises a hand to touch his cheek affectionately; he seizes the hand and removes it but holds it tight.]

  If Aunt Vi decided to contest Sebastian’s will that leaves us all of this cash?! —Am I coming through to you?

  CATHARINE: Yes, little brother, you are.

  GEORGE: You see, Mama, she’s crazy like a coyote! [He gives her a quick cold kiss.] We won’t get a single damn penny, honest t’ God we won’t! So you’ve just GOT to stop tellin’ that story about what you say happened to Cousin Sebastian in Cabeza de Lobo, even if it’s what it couldn’t be, TRUE! —You got to drop it, Sister, you can’t tell such a story to civilized people in a civilized up-to-date country!

  MRS. HOLLY: Cathie, why, why, why! —did you invent such a tale?

  CATHARINE: But, Mother, I DIDN’T invent it. I know it’s a hideous story but it’s a true story of our time and the world we live in and what did truly happen to Cousin Sebastian in Cabeza de Lobo. . . .

  GEORGE: Oh, then you are going to tell it. Mama, she IS going to tell it! Right to Aunt Vi, and lose us a hundred thousand! —Cathie? You are a BITCH!

  MRS. HOLLY: GAWGE!

  GEORGE: I repeat it, a bitch! She isn’t crazy, Mama, she’s no more crazy than I am, she’s just, just—PERVERSE! Was ALWAYS! —perverse. . . .

  [Catharine turns away and breaks into quiet sobbing.]

  MRS. HOLLY: Gawge, Gawge, apologize to Sister, this is no way for you to talk to your sister. You come right back over here and tell your sweet little sister you’re sorry you spoke like that to her!

  GEORGE [turning back to Catharine]: I’m sorry, Cathie, but you know we NEED that money! Mama and me, we—Cathie? I got ambitions! And, Cathie, I’m YOUNG! —I want things, I need them, Cathie! So will you please think about ME? Us?

  MISS FOXHILL [off stage]: Mrs. Holly? Mrs. Holly?

  MRS. HOLLY: Somebody’s callin’ fo’ me. Catharine, Gawge put it very badly but you know that it’s TRUE! WE DO HAVE TO GET WHAT SEBASTIAN HAS LEFT US IN HIS WILL, DEAREST! AND YOU WON’T LET US DOWN? PROMISE? YOU WON’T? LET US DOWN?

  GEORGE [fiercely shouting]: HERE COMES AUNT VI! Mama, Cathie, Aunt Violet’s—here is Aunt Vi!

  SCENE FOUR

  Mrs. Venable enters downstage area. Entrance music.

  MRS. HOLLY: Cathie! Here’s Aunt Vi!

  MRS. VENABLE: She sees me and I see her. That’s all that’s necessary. Miss Foxhill, put my chair in this corner. Crank the back up a little.

  [Miss Foxhill does this business.]

  More. More. Not that much! —Let it back down a little. All right. Now, then. I’ll have my frozen daiquiri, now. . . . Do any of you want coffee?

  GEORGE: I’d like a chocolate malt.

  MRS. HOLLY: Gawge!

  MRS. VENABLE: This isn’t a drugstore.

  MRS. HOLLY: Oh, Gawge is just being Gawge.

  MRS. VENABLE: That’s what I thought he was being!

  [An uncomfortable silence falls. Miss Foxhill creeps out like a burglar. She speaks in a breathless whisper, presenting a cardboard folder toward Mrs. Venable.]

  MISS FOXHILL: Here’s the portfolio marked Cabeza de Lobo. It has all your correspondence with the police there and the American consul.

  MRS. VENABLE: I asked for the English transcript! It’s in a separate—

  MISS FOXHILL: Separate, yes, here it is!

  MRS. VENABLE: Oh . . .

  MISS FOXHILL: And here’s the report of the private investigators and here’s the report of—

  MRS. VENABLE: Yes, yes, yes! Where’s the doctor?

  MISS FOXHILL: On the phone in the library!

  MRS. VENABLE: Why does he choose such a moment to make a phone call?

&n
bsp; MISS FOXHILL: He didn’t make a phone call, he received a phone call from—

  MRS. VENABLE: Miss Foxhill, why are you talking to me like a burglar!?

  [Miss Foxhill giggles a little desperately.]

  CATHARINE: Aunt Violet, she’s frightened. —Can I move? Can I get up and move around till it starts?

  MRS. HOLLY: Cathie, Cathie, dear, did Gawge tell you that he received bids from every good fraternity on the Tulane campus and went Phi Delt because Paul Junior did?

  MRS. VENABLE: I see that he had the natural tact and good taste to come here this afternoon outfitted from head to foot in clothes that belonged to my son!

  GEORGE: You gave ’em to me, Aunt Vi.

  MRS. VENABLE: I didn’t know you’d parade them in front of me, George.

  MRS. HOLLY [quickly]: Gawge, tell Aunt Violet how grateful you are for—

  GEORGE: I found a little Jew tailor on Britannia Street that makes alterations so good you’d never guess that they weren’t cut out for me to begin with!

  MRS. HOLLY: AND so reasonable! —Luckily, since it seems that Sebastian’s wonderful, wonderful bequest to Gawge an’ Cathie is going to be tied up a while!?

  GEORGE: Aunt Vi? About the will?

  [Mrs. Holly coughs.]

  I was just wondering if we can’t figure out some way to, to—

  MRS. HOLLY: Gawge means to EXPEDITE it! To get through the red tape quicker?

  MRS. VENABLE: I understand his meaning. Foxhill, get the Doctor.

  [She has risen with her cane and hobbled to the door.]

  MISS FOXHILL [exits calling]: Doctor!

  MRS. HOLLY: Gawge, no more about money.

  GEORGE: How do we know we’ll ever see her again?

  [Catharine gasps and rises; she moves downstage, followed quickly by Sister Felicity.]

  SISTER [mechanically]: What’s wrong, dear?

  CATHARINE: I think I’m just dreaming this, it doesn’t seem real!

  [Miss Foxhill comes back out, saying:]

  MISS FOXHILL: He had to answer an urgent call from Lion’s View.