Carson McCullers

by Carson McCullers

  JOHN: I sometimes thought of love again, but you can’t plan love, it’s something that comes round cornerwise when you least expect it.

  MOLLIE: Like the day we met on Danger Road.

  JOHN: And the color and pulse of life returned.

  MOLLIE: Do you believe in God?

  JOHN: Tonight I believe in Him altogether.

  MOLLIE: But God is nothing you can see.

  JOHN: Love is nothing you can see either. But like God, it is everywhere. It’s not like the chair, the clock, the table. You don’t see it, you see through it.

  MOLLIE: Straight through it?

  JOHN: Love is transparent. When you’re in love there’s a light in your eyes and that light makes the chair, the clock, the table look luminous.

  MOLLIE: Luminous? Like your watch dial is luminous?

  JOHN: Luminous as love is luminous. Marry me, Mollie, marry me soon.

  MOLLIE: Would it be a cliché, John, if I said that love is so all of a sudden, and that I want to sleep on it, in the back of my mind?

  JOHN: I’ll be right across in the barn. In the meantime, good night, love.

  MOLLIE: Nighty-night.

  (JOHN exits. MOLLIE goes in a daze, touches the table, touches the chair, starts to wind the clock. We notice PHILLIP LOVEJOY for the first time, standing at the foot of the stairs. He is holding a small bouquet of flowers.)

  MOLLIE: Phillip, where did you come from?

  PHILLIP:

  Where do I come from?

  Where do I go?

  Where do I come from?

  My cotton-eyed Joe.

  MOLLIE: How you startled me.

  PHILLIP: I walked from the station.

  MOLLIE: All that way.

  PHILLIP: Saw a light at the window and you here with a man.

  MOLLIE: John Tucker, an architect.

  PHILLIP: I went up the back stairs.

  MOLLIE: Why?

  PHILLIP: I wanted to see you alone. Look, Mollie, everything’s the same. The same chair, table. Same furniture. The same rug. It seems so long ago. And there’s the clock.

  MOLLIE: The grandfather clock. It puts me in mind of peace and family.

  PHILLIP: It puts me in mind of time. You were winding it when I came back. Busily, busily winding time. I hate clocks.

  MOLLIE: It has a lovely chime.

  PHILLIP: What’s the matter, Mollie? You look so strange.

  MOLLIE: Nothing.

  PHILLIP: Are you afraid of me, Mollie?

  MOLLIE: I am proud of you, Phillip. Proud of the way you faced up to the sanatorium.

  PHILLIP: I didn’t face up to it.

  MOLLIE: What was it like at Blythe View?

  PHILLIP: It was like nothingness and nothingness is horrible, for nothingness is death.

  MOLLIE: Should I wake up Paris, Mother Lovejoy and Sister?

  PHILLIP: No, I want to see you alone. I have got to talk to you.

  MOLLIE: What about?

  PHILLIP: What I was and what I am now.

  MOLLIE: It’s late, Phillip. It is almost dawn.

  PHILLIP: I see the dawn, the colors crushed and cold on the horizon. Strips of lemon peel and orange. I see the dawn and I can describe it, but I can’t feel it. I can describe so many things. Like food—homemade blueberry cobblers, the dumplings and the golden lattice crust. But I can’t taste it.

  MOLLIE: I’ll make some for you tomorrow.

  PHILLIP: And flowers, Mollie. The tulips, jonquils and lilacs. I can describe them all against this watery light. But I no longer feel the joy of them. And love I can describe too, but I can’t feel it.

  MOLLIE: Why did you come back, Phillip?

  PHILLIP: I want to feel again. And taste and smell. I want to live again.

  MOLLIE: It’s always so sudden when I see you after a long time.

  PHILLIP: What’s sudden?

  MOLLIE: Just you—the look of you. But now I have to be adult and practical.

  PHILLIP: Why on earth, baby?

  MOLLIE: Because ten days ago I rented the barn apartment.

  PHILLIP: You mean that guy you were here with?

  MOLLIE: Yes, he’s my support—my moral support.

  PHILLIP: What does he have to do with us? What does anybody have to do with us?

  MOLLIE: We’re not the only people in the world, Phillip.

  PHILLIP: Between the rest of the world and us there’s always been a curtain—like a Pullman curtain. Don’t you remember that? Don’t you remember me and you in the nighttime? In the daytime, too.

  MOLLIE: Naturally. It happened.

  PHILLIP: I’ll tell you a secret, Mollie.

  MOLLIE: What?

  PHILLIP: I’m not through.

  MOLLIE: Is that the secret?

  PHILLIP: I am going to write the greatest goddam novel of this generation. And I’ll write it upstairs. Here on the farm. And the work, the world, the wonder will begin again.

  MOLLIE: But—

  PHILLIP: I feel the wonder rising as the wind is rising in the night. After the black dark years I feel it rising. You have to love me.

  MOLLIE: Do you still love me, Phillip?

  PHILLIP: Love you?

  (Shakes head negatively.)

  I feel surrounded by a zone of loneliness. I try to reach out and touch, but I can only grab. For the thing only is immortal.

  (He touches table, chair.)

  This table, this chair. These things will live beyond me.

  MOLLIE: If you don’t love me, why did you come back?

  PHILLIP: Like the sick person watches the well. Like the dying watches the living. No, Mollie, it’s not love.

  MOLLIE: Then what is it?

  PHILLIP: Without you I am so exposed, I am skinless. From the beginning you knew I had to live in a cocoon. You knew I had to live with you and be protected. It is not my fault, it is just an act of nature.

  MOLLIE: But cocoons are dead.

  PHILLIP: Yes. Cocoons are dead.

  MOLLIE: I don’t want to die, Phillip.

  PHILLIP: Listen Mollie, just listen.

  How shall I guard my soul so that it be

  Touched not by thine? And shall it be brought,

  Lifted above thee, unto other things?

  Ah gladly would I hide it utterly

  Lost in the dark where are no murmurings,

  In strange and silent places that do not

  Vibrate when the deep soul quivers and sings.

  But all that touches us two makes us twin,

  Even as the bow crossing the violin

  Draws but one voice from the two strings that meet.

  Upon what instrument are we two spanned?

  And what great player has us in his hand?

  O song most sweet.

  MOLLIE: It’s so beautiful, Phillip.

  PHILLIP: Yes, it’s beautiful, but I didn’t write it. Come on up to bed.

  MOLLIE: I’d better put these flowers in some water.

  PHILLIP: Hurry on up.

  (Starts upstairs.)

  MOLLIE (to herself): These flowers need an aspirin.

  (PHILLIP goes upstairs. MOLLIE opens PARIS’ door, turns off lights, stands for a moment, then PARIS enters.)

  MOLLIE: Paris?

  PARIS: What’s the matter, Mother? Why aren’t you asleep?

  MOLLIE: My child, if your mother told you she is in love with two people, what would you think?

  PARIS: Love. To me love is funny. Funny peculiar and funny ha-ha.

  MOLLIE: Did you say your prayers?

  PARIS: Yes, Mother.

  MOLLIE: What did you pray?

  PARIS: Do I have to tell you?

  MOLLIE: No, Lambie. I’m not nosey or anything like that—but a mother . . .

  PARIS: To hell you’re not nosey.

  MOLLIE: But being in love with two people—what would you do, Lambie?

  PARIS: I don’t know. It makes me sad when you talk so serious and growny.

  MOLLIE: John said love is luminous. Let’s s
ee.

  PARIS: How?

  MOLLIE: Look at the table and think about someone you love. Close your eyes.

  (She closes her eyes. By now light of the dawn is coming through the window.)

  Phillip Ralston Lovejoy.

  (Opens her eyes slowly.)

  Oh God, the table is shining.

  PARIS: It’s a plain wooden table—

  MOLLIE (looks hard at chair, and closes eyes): John Tucker.

  (Opens eyes.)

  The chair is luminous. Both! How can you, table? How can you, chair?

  PARIS: It’s a plain wooden chair.

  (Exits.)

  PHILLIP: Mollie!

  (She goes to the front door, looks up the stairs.)

  Mollie!

  (She touches the table, then the chair as . . .)

  THE CURTAIN FALLS

  ACT TWO

  Time: The next afternoon.

  At Rise: There is no one on stage. There is the sound of a typewriter. HATTIE BROWN and PARIS enter through kitchen door. HATTIE is a buxom girl a year older than PARIS.

  HATTIE: That examination was a real brain-cracker. Describe the aims of Thomas Jefferson. Who was the originator of the Monroe Doctrine?

  PARIS: The Monroe Doctrine reminds me of Marilyn Monroe and when I think about her I can’t keep my mind on a test. That’s the hardest part. Keeping your mind on a test.

  HATTIE: All during that test there was this fly. All I could think about was this fly buzzing against the window, when I had so many other things to think about. Ordinarily I never notice flies. Who’s writing on the typewriter?

  PARIS: Daddy.

  HATTIE (fearfully): Is he here?

  PARIS: He came last night.

  HATTIE: I’ve got to go.

  PARIS: Don’t go.

  HATTIE: I’ve got to go. My great-aunt Jane was in an institution, but she was only a great-step-aunt.

  PARIS: What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?

  HATTIE: Sonny Jenkins says your father is crazy.

  PARIS: That runty screwball. I beat him up.

  HATTIE: I heard he beat you.

  PARIS: After he wrote his play Daddy rested in a rest home. Anything wrong with that?

  HATTIE: We all read in the Daily News about what he did.

  PARIS: Daddy’s name has been in the papers many times—ever since I was born.

  HATTIE: I know he’s famous but—

  PARIS: Daddy rested in the rest home for a few months and now he’s well. The rest home was nice, lots of tennis playing and tea served in the afternoon.

  HATTIE: I thought places like that were creepy.

  PARIS: Tennis and drinking tea in the afternoon?

  HATTIE: I didn’t know they served afternoon tea to crazy people.

  PARIS: Don’t say crazy. Mother said, say sick. Daddy was not even sick.

  HATTIE: I’ve got to go.

  PARIS: Why? You just came.

  HATTIE: I’m afraid of your father. Besides Mother told me never to come here, Paris.

  PARIS: Why?

  HATTIE: On account of we took off our clothes and looked at each other.

  PARIS: Why did you tell her?

  HATTIE: I always tell Mother everything. Don’t you?

  PARIS: No. Besides she wouldn’t have minded.

  HATTIE: Not mind it? Mother was deeply shocked.

  (She likes the word.)

  —deeply shocked.

  (She puts her arms around PARIS.)

  —but Paris, I’m crazy about you—excuse me. I shouldn’t have used that word. I mean I’m mad about you.

  (PHILLIP enters.)

  PHILLIP: Forever wilt thou love and she be fair.

  HATTIE (in confusion): I’ve got to go—

  (Exits running.)

  PHILLIP: Fair Helen—

  PARIS: Her name is Hattie.

  PHILLIP: Did I come in at the end or the beginning?

  PARIS: I don’t know what you mean.

  PHILLIP: A boy of fourteen should.

  PARIS: I’m not fourteen.

  PHILLIP: How old are you?

  PARIS: Going on thirteen. Last year you sent me a little midget space suit for my birthday. Why don’t you remember my age?

  PHILLIP: I try to.

  PARIS: A little midget space suit. The truth is, Daddy, I can never really count on you as far as presents go.

  PHILLIP: I have another present for you, Son.

  (Goes to cupboard, brings out chess set.)

  PARIS: What is it?

  PHILLIP: This chess set.

  PARIS: But it is yours. Your father made it.

  PHILLIP: Yes, he carved it.

  PARIS: He was a master artist when he carved.

  PHILLIP: The chess set reminds me of home.

  PARIS: Which home?

  PHILLIP: When we bought this farm, to me, it was like buying Walden.

  PARIS: Walden?

  PHILLIP: Thoreau’s home. I dreamed about home and I saw myself.

  PARIS: This place?

  PHILLIP: I was going to stop drinking and buy a cow.

  PARIS: But you hate milk, Daddy.

  PHILLIP: For the better portion of my life I have yearned to like milk better than whiskey, but I never could.

  PARIS: Too bad.

  PHILLIP: I saw myself getting up at dawn—milking the cow—

  PARIS: But you never bought the cow.

  PHILLIP: But I saw myself. I saw myself working in the garden—

  PARIS: You know good and well you paid me to take care of the garden, Daddy.

  PHILLIP: And tending the green curled lettuce, the dusty summer corn, the eggplant and purple cabbages.

  PARIS: You paid me two dollars a week.

  PHILLIP: And then came breakfast, pancakes and sausages of home-raised pork.

  PARIS: You only drink black coffee for breakfast.

  PHILLIP: But I saw myself. I saw myself working on my novel every morning. Then in the afternoon there were fences to be mended, wood to be split.

  PARIS: You can still do that. This place is in a shambles.

  PHILLIP: I saw the farm in all its weathers—the mild, sweet days of May—and the green summer pond. The blue October and the apples.

  PARIS: You worked the still, Daddy, and made applejack.

  PHILLIP: Yeah, I did that. I saw the snowbound spells and I saw myself finishing a whole short novel at one stretch. Did you ever read “The Turn of the Screw,” Son?

  PARIS: Did you write it, Daddy?

  PHILLIP: No. But I wish I had.

  PARIS: Don’t look so sad, Daddy.

  PHILLIP: A funny thing, Paris.

  PARIS: What’s funny?

  PHILLIP: I thought that once I got back to the apple farm I would write like a house afire. But all morning long I’ve been sitting on my can just writing snips and snatches. Snips and snatches. I think I’ll go upstairs and put my nose back to the grindstone.

  MOLLIE (offstage): Lambie, Lambie!

  (PHILLIP exits upstairs. MOLLIE enters with two bags of groceries.)

  PARIS: Why are you crying, Mother?

  MOLLIE: Am I crying?

  PARIS: There are tears in your eyes.

  MOLLIE: Lambie, come and help me. The cost of celery is out of this world these days.

  PARIS: I could do without celery for ever.

  MOLLIE: But you have to have a well-balanced diet. Celery for the blood, carrots for the eyes and spinach for the iron. What are you eating, Paris?

  PARIS: Pickles and cake.

  MOLLIE: Pickles and cake? It’s combinations like that that give you that awful gas.

  PARIS: I wish you wouldn’t say things like that. It embarrasses me.

  MOLLIE: But it’s true, Lambie . . .

  (PARIS exits, slamming door behind him. MOTHER LOVEJOY enters, followed by SISTER, who takes a book down from shelf and starts to read.)

  MOLLIE: It’s terrible when a child slams a door in his mother’s face. Even to shut it is bad enough. How
sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child. That’s Shakespeare. Required reading my last year of school.

  SISTER: How old were you when you quit school, Mollie?

  MOLLIE: Fourteen years old. I had read every bit of King Lear and was in the first grade of Spanish—cierra la puerta—do you speak Spanish, Mother Lovejoy?

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: No. We had French at the Peachtree Female Academy. Parlez-vous français?

  MOLLIE: No. It’s curious that with all the long years of schooling I had, the only thing that stuck to me was that part about the serpent’s tooth and cierra la puerta. It means “shut the door” in Spanish.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: A curious thing to stick with you.

  SISTER: You learned more than a serpent’s tooth, Mollie.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: All night long I had my thinking cap on. Thinking, remembering, worrying. Do you remember, Mollie, how you looked the last time we were here?

  MOLLIE: Just before Phillip left?

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: You had fallen off so I was afraid you were going into a decline. I commented to myself—at last Mollie’s lost her looks.

  MOLLIE: You didn’t comment it to yourself. You commented it to me.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: But now you’re just as you used to be before Phillip left you. That old figure—the old color—the old life in your eyes.

  SISTER: Mollie never looked more beautiful—radiant, in fact.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: I say to myself, what is it? Is it vitamins, vitality? No, I am forced to conclude. I’ve given Sister vitamins since childhood—vitamins, cod liver oil, liver, spinach. Thin as she is, she eats like a field hand, but what does it do for her?

  SISTER: I’m healthy. That’s what it does for me.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: Since it’s not vitamins. Not vitality. I’ve come to the conclusion just what the one thing is.

  SISTER: What are you talking about?

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: It’s a word I have never used before—no lady should ever use. But I’m glad it’s out in the open.

  SISTER: What’s out in the open?

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: S–E–X, that’s what’s out in the open.

  SISTER: Is that why you had on your thinking cap last night?

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: Look at you. When you hold up your shoulders you’re more graceful than Mollie. Your form is—more to my taste than Mollie’s. I like a fragile, aristocratic form. Your voice is well-bred, musical. You are a lady to the manor born.

  MOLLIE: And Sister is intellectual—