Carson McCullers

by Carson McCullers

  MOLLIE: Embarrasses you?

  PARIS: Embarrasses me! Don’t you understand? When I hear the words agony or labor, it makes me scrooch up my behind.

  MOLLIE: But it was me, Paris. It really happened to me.

  PARIS: That doesn’t make any difference. It still embarrasses me.

  MOLLIE: It happened to you too, Paris Lovejoy, never forget that. Phillip was wonderfully brave. He just sat in a chair across the room drinking Four Roses.

  PARIS: The King can only move one square, and the Queen can move anywhere— Why is that?

  JOHN: Because the Queen is defending the King. And the King is the point of the game.

  PARIS: I know that’s the point of the game. When the King is dead, the game is all over.

  MOLLIE: When it was all over, Mother Lovejoy cooked a lovely ham-hocks and greens dinner with cornsticks. I couldn’t eat any, but Paris knew what he wanted as soon as he touched my breast.

  PARIS: Hush up, Mother!

  JOHN: That’s enough, Mollie.

  MOLLIE: Instinct, of course. But it seemed to me a miracle.

  PARIS: I’m jumping out of my skin.

  (He exits.)

  JOHN: Mollie, why was Paris named Paris?

  MOLLIE: You asked me and I’ll tell you. It was inevitable. Phillip and I were on our way to Richmond, staying overnight at the Stratford Arms Motel, to be with Mother Lovejoy until the confinement. Mother Lovejoy had already named him Phillip Ralston Lovejoy IV.

  JOHN: Yes, I think the IV is very aristocratic. I get the point.

  MOLLIE: Phillip was standing naked at the motel window—the morning sunlight on his body—and we were talking about Paris and how we were going to go there. I was thinking I would be mighty glad to go abroad and get away from Mother Lovejoy.

  JOHN: Getting away from Mother Lovejoy is understandable.

  MOLLIE: When I was looking at Phillip in the sunlight at the window—suddenly I had the most marvelous unheard-of feeling come over me. It was blissful—something between a fishtail and a ghost—and when I felt it, I cried “Phillip.” Phillip turned to me, and I said, “Phillip, no matter whether it’s a boy or a girl his name is Paris.” And Phillip looked at me a long time and said, “What?”

  JOHN: Well, that’s a reasonable question.

  MOLLIE: But once having named my child, it hurts a mother’s heart.

  (We hear sound of guitar. MOTHER LOVEJOY enters.)

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: Paris has learned the guitar.

  MOLLIE: Without any lessons.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: So I hear. He’s not musical the way I used to think of it. At least not like Paderewski. How well I remember Paderewski. I went with Miss Birdie Grimes to hear him play in Atlanta. Birdie Grimes and eighteen other girls, all different ages. We stayed at the Henry Clay Hotel for one day, all of us in one room.

  JOHN: That must have been an interesting experience.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: I do like Poles very much, if they’re aristocratic and if they’re Paderewski. He was such a thrilling man, and so gracious. Shook hands with all of the eighteen pupils, as well as the other three thousand people there. Had a little fur collar on his coat. Through the years every time Paderewski came through Atlanta, I went to hear him. It was a concert of Paderewski’s after I married Mr. Lovejoy that started Phillip.

  JOHN: How do you mean, started?

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: I was sitting there listening to the concert, you know the part that goes dum-da-dum—not that I was able to dance then. I was in the fifth month. And then suddenly I knew.

  JOHN: What did you know?

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: I knew that my child was going to be a great genius. Premonitions like that are uncanny with a mother. When Loreena was coming I was just nauseated. Let prenatal influence go.

  MOLLIE: Where is Sister?

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: I ask you, where is Sister. She sits there moping, her nose in a book. If she hadn’t strained her eye so much, she wouldn’t have been afflicted with those awful spectacles. Her nose is grown to a book. Loreena Lovejoy is hard stock.

  MOLLIE: What do you mean?

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: Your father was a merchant—you ought to know. The things that are hard to sell. The dry goods and notions store was full of them. That’s all he had to sell. Everything from chewing tobacco to chamber pots. That was a store that was all hard stock. No wonder your father got bankrupt. Fort Lee, the Army camp, carried away all the hard stock except Loreena—human hard stock, I mean.

  (PHILLIP enters, carrying the applejack.)

  PHILLIP: Found it. Anybody like a drink?

  MOLLIE: Dinner is almost ready.

  (Exits. MOTHER LOVEJOY goes right on talking.)

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: I had set my cap on General Slade, who opened the ball at the cotillion, and they say ate eleven pieces of fried chicken. But what happened to my dreams? The Army opens a great career for a woman. But Loreena—she just let the war go by.

  PHILLIP (as he begins pouring a drink): Leave Sister alone.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: As you well know, I have never been a bossy mother.

  PHILLIP: As I well know, Mother.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: I let my children lead their own lives. True, at first I wanted you to be President, but I’m satisfied that you’re a genius.

  PHILLIP: I think I would have made a dreamy President.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: Sister—I wanted her to be an opera singer. I said, “Sister, it’s all right with me if you sing in grand opera at the Metropolitan.” But would she sing at the Metropolitan, would she?

  PHILLIP: Leave her alone, Mother.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: Disappointed about grand opera, I said, “Very well, miss, flute and fly.” But would she fly? Would she?

  PHILLIP: She can’t Mother.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY (asking JOHN): Would she flute?

  JOHN: I don’t know, Mrs. Lovejoy.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: No sir-ree bob. Nothing but tribulations.

  (MOTHER LOVEJOY exits upstairs.)

  PHILLIP: While we are alone, Tucker, I want to tell you I’m glad you understand Mollie. She is a very special person, and she needed a special person at a special time.

  JOHN: Why are you telling me all this, Lovejoy?

  PHILLIP: Because I want you to understand Mollie. She is a poet.

  JOHN: A poet?

  PHILLIP: Surely you have seen there is a whole ambience of poetry around her? Clarity, harmony, radiance—that’s poetry. That’s Mollie. She is clear as a glass of water, harmonious as a church organ, and the evening star is not as radiant as Mollie. You like making poems, Tucker?

  JOHN: I never made one.

  PHILLIP: You have noticed that logic of absurdity in Mollie. That non sequitur that puts the image over slam-bang. The dichotomies of poetry.

  JOHN: What are the dichotomies of poetry?

  PHILLIP: Well, heat and cold used almost simultaneously. Sweet and sour.

  JOHN: Do you write poetry too?

  PHILLIP: Everybody writes poetry when they are in love.

  JOHN: Even so, I never wrote any poetry. I tried when I was a kid, but when a line ended with “moon” the next line always came up “June.” Kind of obvious.

  PHILLIP: That’s the main thing about Mollie. There is nothing obvious about her. There is only poetry and understanding. Last night when I lay in bed with her—

  JOHN: Mollie slept with you last night?

  PHILLIP: Yes and Mollie will never leave me.

  JOHN: What makes you so sure?

  PHILLIP: Because I am weak, that’s why I’m so sure.

  JOHN: I never knew a man before, not even a bastard, to glory in his weakness.

  PHILLIP: I don’t glory in it. I just use it.

  JOHN (calls): Mollie.

  (MOLLIE enters.)

  JOHN: Is it true, Mollie?

  MOLLIE: Is what true?

  JOHN: Phillip has told me you went to him last night.

  PHILLIP: Answer him, Mollie. The man’s asked a question.

  MOLLIE: If I did s
omething and I’m ashamed, would you forgive me? As if I were drunk.

  PHILLIP: You never drink.

  MOLLIE: As if I were drugged or somehow powerless. Could you forgive?

  JOHN: No.

  MOLLIE: And if I tell you it would never happen again so long as we both are alive—would you believe me?

  JOHN: No. Why did you do it. Do you still love him?

  MOLLIE: No.

  JOHN: Is it just pity?

  MOLLIE: “Just” is too small a word for pity. It’s like saying just food, just God. And whatever my feelings once were for Phillip they were never small. But now it’s over. Can’t you believe? Can’t you forgive?

  JOHN: With you Mollie it’s better to be miserable and stay as you are than to be deliriously happy if you have to change. When will you be strong enough to love the strong?

  MOLLIE: When I look at you I am.

  JOHN: When I look at you I can’t stand it.

  (He exits.)

  MOLLIE: I want to leave with him.

  PHILLIP: I wouldn’t try.

  (MOLLIE exits after JOHN. MOTHER LOVEJOY comes down the stairs in garden hat and gloves. She is singing.)

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: “I wandered today through the hills, Maggie.”

  (She looks at PHILLIP.)

  What do you look like that for? Your face all screwed up. What is wrong with you, son?

  PHILLIP: Mother, have you ever in anguish or acute shame, or terrible embarrassment, subconsciously called a person’s name. Have you ever, in the bottom layer of your soul, without words, called someone for help?

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: Who would I call?

  PHILLIP: I don’t know. My father, maybe.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: Your father has been dead to us for many years. But this has happened to me. Once Patricia Flanoy was talking to me about a dress and I was watching the curtain, in the sewing room, and suddenly the curtain was blown by the wind and the creepiest feeling came over me. It seemed to me that I had seen that curtain blow in the wind, at exactly the same time and heard Patricia Flanoy’s voice, “Cut on the bias, Ophelia.” The same words, the same curtain, moving in the same wind.

  PHILLIP: That’s just déjà vu. A trick of memory.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: It made my flesh crawl.

  PHILLIP: A trick of memory.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: You were always a complicated child, Phillip. An eleven-month-old baby just lying there and kicking until I was wild with impatience, wild with waiting.

  PHILLIP: I didn’t want to be born. I was afraid even then.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: Afraid, nothing. You crawled before any other child, walked before any other child, talked before any other child. When you were eighteen months old, you took up the American flag and walked around the block singing the Marseillaise, “To arms, to arms, you brave . . .”

  PHILLIP: Don’t, Mother.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: It was practically scary. A little boy in diapers singing the Marseillaise, and marching around the block. I never knew what got into you, or what’s the matter with you now.

  PHILLIP: Nothing, Mother. Nothing.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: You’re not the only soul that suffers. When your father took French leave of us, I had a hard row to hoe. After the shock I had to fall back on my needle. I sewed christening robes, ball dresses, barbecue outfits, shrouds. Sometimes I would sew all day. And I would sing as I sewed:

  “Way down yonder in Argentine

  A wild cat jumped on a sewing machine

  Sewed forty-nine stitches

  In a wild cat’s britches.”

  That’s sewing some.

  PHILLIP: Then Uncle Willie left you all that money.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: Such a fair will. I wanted to send you to music school. You remember how you used to play that Rachmaninoff piece about Moscow burning.

  (She sings.)

  Dum-dum-dum-dum— But no, you were going to be a writer. A writer! Whoever heard of anybody just becoming a writer? I answer notes and letters and R.S.V.P. But just to sit there all day writing something that actually didn’t happen. Writing stories and poems that were always sent back to you.

  PHILLIP: Except two poems—ten dollars. And one story—twenty.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: I said to you, Son, “Why don’t you do something that will fetch you something?”

  PHILLIP: You certainly did, Mother.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: Like taking that job I got you in the Feed and Guano Store. But would you work in the Feed and Guano Store? No.

  PHILLIP: I was writing.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: I would take those chocolate cupcakes and lemonade out to you in the summerhouse before you discovered beer and spoiled your sweet tooth. I had faith in you all the time whether you were Paderewski or not. Such faith. Even when Birdie Grimes and Patricia Flanoy said you were lazy or crazy or just like your father. When you became famous they had to laugh out of the other side of their mouths. And so did I.

  PHILLIP: Then what happened to me, Mother?

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: You married Mollie. And she set you down, so you could just work and be idle for ever.

  PHILLIP: Mother, tell me, how can you work and be idle for ever?

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: After that great success everybody was waiting, Birdie Grimes, Patricia Flanoy, Baby Gozart. The old crowd. The whole world was waiting.

  PHILLIP: I tried, Mother. I tried.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: And it was like the mouse and the mountain. The mountain was in labor and the crowds came to watch and see what would be born. And after much rumbling and heaving, the mountain brought forth a mouse.

  (SISTER enters.)

  PHILLIP: Shut up, you babbling old horror.

  SISTER: Phillip, how can you talk to Mother like that?

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: My ears, do I hear them?

  SISTER: Apologize to her.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: Did I hear my ears? Never have I been so mortified.

  SISTER: You mortify everybody else, Mother.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: What was it you called me, Phillip?

  PHILLIP: I don’t remember.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: I do. It’s seared in my brain. You called me a babbling old horror. Brooks babble, belles babble, Southern belles. Why, it’s their stock in trade. And it’s been your stock in trade too, Mr. Phillip Lovejoy. What else have you been doing but babbling. Writing the stories I told you about my Uncle Willie and Birdie Grimes. If you had written about them in an amusing lucrative way like Gone with the Wind, that would be different.

  PHILLIP: I never wrote about Birdie Grimes.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: You wrote about a little boy on the back fence, and the chinaberry tree and Uncle Willie for six hundred pages, and nothing happened. Absolutely nothing happened.

  PHILLIP: He died at the end.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: But it was my Uncle Willie.

  PHILLIP: Yes, Mother.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: These total recall and total insignificance novels. Why didn’t you ever write something even semicommercial? Look at that little French girl.

  PHILLIP: Yes, Mother.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: Babbling old horror . . . and old, who made me old? I’ll tell you, Mr. Lovejoy—you and Loreena. And horror! How could you, Phillip? It’s not so much the word itself—but the combination—babbling old horror. It will ring in my ears till doomsday. Retract!

  SISTER: When family people quarrel among themselves, they know how to wound. Like you pick a piece of material. You know just how to feel it.

  PHILLIP: I retract.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: My son, why do you hate me so?

  PHILLIP: Because I hate myself.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: I was proud of you—and to anyone who would listen, I boasted—to people on street cars and buses everywhere. But I have a temper too, when I am hurt.

  PHILLIP: I haven’t noticed your temper, just your bitchiness.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: See! Hear! Never again am I going to finance you and your ugliness. You know what that sanatorium cost?

  PHILLIP: Yes.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY:
Sanatoriums or any other jim-crack foolery, that’s final. No more rest homes—insane rest homes.

  PHILLIP: All right with me.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: And I’m leaving now.

  PHILLIP: That’s all right too.

  MOTHER LOVEJOY: I’m going upstairs, Loreena. After what I’ve heard in this house, I couldn’t stay another minute. Come, Loreena.

  (MOTHER LOVEJOY exits. SISTER remains on stage.)

  PHILLIP: I don’t know why— I don’t know why I want to say I’m sorry— Do I have to tell you what I’ve gone through these last years?

  SISTER: I know, Phillip.

  PHILLIP: Fourteen years ago The Chinaberry Tree was called a work of genius. Won all the prizes and made a fortune.

  SISTER: Phillip, how did you run through all that money?

  PHILLIP: Because I didn’t believe the money or the fame was real.

  SISTER: It was real.

  PHILLIP: Real for then, I was right to distrust it. What happened to me?

  SISTER: I don’t know. I don’t know.

  PHILLIP: I only know it happened so gradually I didn’t even notice it. Other people were aware of it long before I was. Sister, why didn’t you tell me?

  SISTER: How could I tell you?

  PHILLIP: When you saw me drink three martinis before lunch why didn’t you slap them from my hand?

  SISTER: How could I?

  PHILLIP: When I roamed all over the world year after year why didn’t you ask me where I was going?

  SISTER: Because I didn’t know where you wanted to go.

  PHILLIP: When I was playing around with other women while Mollie was here, why didn’t you give me hell?

  SISTER: I did a couple of times, but you don’t remember.

  PHILLIP: I wish I had not written that goddamn book. I will never forget one day the month that book was published.

  SISTER: What happened?

  PHILLIP: Nothing. It was just an hour of desolation. I thought that I could never do it again and I was desolate and terrified.

  SISTER: All writers when they finish their book think they can never write another.

  PHILLIP: For a year, two years, three years, I was afraid to write anything and then when I finished my second book what a clobbering I got.

  SISTER: The critics had it in for you. I remember I tore up the reviews and stomped on them.

  PHILLIP: Nothing was low enough to say about my second book as nothing was good enough to say about the first. What had happened to me? I kept wondering what had I done?