Next on the script shelf:
Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf is a one-act called The Long Goodbye, included in 27 Wagons Full of Cotton And Other One-Act Plays
A sad sad sad little play. Ouch. It makes my heart hurt.
Joe is a frustrated writer. He is haunted (literally) by the ghost of his dead mother. He still lives in the apartment where he grew up – and as the play opens – movers have come and are taking the furniture away. He will be moving on. But this is not easy for him. In leaving this apartment, he will be leaving his past. He has a kid sister – Myra – who was a hot little number. He hasn’t seen her in years – she has moved away. The dead mother AND Myra (in a couple of different incarnations through the years) walk in and out of the present action, as the movers take the stuff away … Joe is literally a haunted man. He’s a writer. He can’t write. He has lost touch with Myra – who was, when he knew her, a hot young thing – but a good kid with a good heart. She just happened to be a swimming champion who looked great in her bathing suit – and so had a lot of attention from boys. But then when she would go out with them, wanting a little bit of fun (really – just fun – like dancing, and flirting, etc.) – the guys would always turn nasty and try stuff with her. She fended them off the best she could. But now Myra – as is so often the case with girls who develop early – has slid off the rails. By the end of the play, when she “appears” to Joe – she is now a blowsy whorish woman – obviously wearing rich clothes given to her by some sugar daddy. Innocence lost. Sexuality cheapened.
Oh, and the father … the father is a total mystery. He is only spoken of in passing … a silent, grumpy man … who one day just basically got up, walked out of the house, and was never heard from again. He has left everyone baffled in his wake. Did he just … not love them at all? WTF??
The play is the movement of Joe … trying to accept his past, his losses … and trying to move on.
It’s tragic.
I’ll post the bit where he talks to his dead mother. Some gorgeous writing here. Williams at his best.
From The Long Goodbye, by Tennessee Williams.
[Mother appears in the door — a worn, little woman in a dingy wrapper with an expression that is personally troubled and confused]
MOTHER. Joe, aren’t you going to bed?
JOE. Yes. In a minute.
MOTHER. I think you’ve written enough tonight, Joe.
JOE. I’m nearly finished. I just wanta finish this sentence.
MOTHER. Myra’s still out.
JOE. She went to the Chase Roof.
MOTHER. Couldn’t you go along with her sometimes? Meet the boys that she goes out with?
JOE. No, I can’t horn in on her dates. Hell, if I had a job I couldn’t pay tips for that crowd!
MOTHER. I’m worried about her.
JOE. What for? She says she’s older than I am, Mother, an’ I guess she’s right.
MOTHER. No, she’s only a baby. You talk to her, Joe.
JOE. Okay.
MOTHER. I regret that she took that job now, Joe. She should’ve stayed on at high school.
JOE. She wanted things — money, clothes — you can’t blame her. ‘S Dad out?
MOTHER. Yes … She’s given up her swimming.
JOE. She got kicked off the Lorelei team.
MOTHER. What for, Joe?
JOE. She broke training rules all the time. Hell, I can’t stop her.
MOTHER. She listens to you.
JOE. Not much.
MOTHER. Joe —
JOE. Yes?
MOTHER. Joe, it’s come back on me, Joe.
JOE. [facing her slowly] What?
MOTHER. The operation wasn’t no use. And all it cost us, Joe, the bills not paid for it yet.
JOE. Mother — what makes you think so?
MOTHER. The same pain’s started again.
JOE. How long?
MOTHER. Oh, some time now.
JOE. Why didn’t you —?
MOTHER. Joe … what’s the use?
JOE. Maybe it’s — not what you think! You’ve got to go back. For examination, Mom!
MOTHER. No. This is the way I look at it, Joe. Like this. I’ve never liked being cramped. I’ve always wanted to have space around me, plenty of space, to live in the country on the top of a hill. I was born in the country, raised there, and I’ve hankered after it lots in the last few years.
JOE. Yes. I know. [Now he speaks to himself] Those Sunday afternoon rides in the country, the late yellow sun through an orchard, the twisted shadows, the crazy old wind-beaten house, vacant, lop-sided, and you pointing at it, leaning out of the cary, trying to make Dad stop —
MOTHER. Look! That house, it’s for sale! It oughta go cheap! Twenty acres of apple, a hen-house, and look, a nice barn! It’s run-down now but it wouldn’t cost much to repair! Stop, Floyd, go slow along here!
JOE. But he went by fast, wouldn’t look, wouldn’t listen! The snake-fence darted away from the road and a wall of stone rose and the sun disappeared for a moment. Your face was dark, your face looked desperate, Mother, as though you were starving for something you’d seen and almost caught in your hands — but not quite. And then the car stopped in front of a road-side stand. “We need eggs.” A quarter, a dime — you borrowed a nickel from Dad. And the sun was low then, slanding across winter fields and the air was cold …
MOTHER. Some people think about death as being laid down in a box under earth. But I don’t. To me it’s the opposite, Joe, it’s being let out of a box. And going upwards, not down. I don’t take stock in heaven, I never did. But I do feel like there’s lots of room out there and you don’t have to pay rent on the first of each month to any old tight-fisted Dutchman who kicks about how much water you’re using. There’s freedom, Joe, and freedom’s the big thing in life. It’s funny that some of us don’t ever get it until we’re dead. But that’s how it is and so we’ve got to accept it. The hard thing to me is leaving things not straightened out. I’d like to have some assurance, some definite knowledge of what you were going to do, of how things’ll work out for you … Joe!
JOE. Yes?
MOTHER. What would you do with three hundred dollars?
JOE. I’m not going to think about that.
MOTHER. I want you to, Joe. The policy’s in your name. It’s in the right hand drawer of the chiffonier, folded up under the handkerchief box and it’s got … [Her voice fades out and two of the Movers come in carrying a floor-lamp]
