A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur by Tennessee Williams Read Free Book Online

way
.]
    HELENA: Miss Bodenheifer.
    BODEY [
from the kitchenette
]: Hafer!
    HELENA: I have no wish to offend you, but surely you’re able to see that for Dorothea to stay in these circumstances must be extremely embarrassing to her at least.
    BODEY: Aw, you think Dotty’s embarrassed here, do you?
    [
Bodey has begun to line a shoebox with the section of newspaper she took with her. During the following exchange with Helena, Bodey packs the fried chicken and other picnic fare in the shoebox
.]
    HELENA: She has hinted it’s almost intolerable to her. The visitations of this Gluck person who has rushed to the bathroom, this nightmare of clashing colors, the purple carpet, orange drapes at the windows looking out at that view of brick and concrete and asphalt, lamp shades with violent yellow daisies on them, and wallpaper with roses exploding like bombshells, why it would give her a breakdown! It’s giving me claustrophobia briefly as I have been here. Why, this is not a place for a civilized person to possibly exist in!
    BODEY: What’s so civilized about you, Miss Brooks-it ? Stylish, yes, civilized, no, unless a hawk or a buzzard is a civilized creature. Now you see, you got a tongue in your mouth, but I got one in mine, too.
    HELENA: You are being hysterical and offensive!
    BODEY: You ain’t heard nothing compared to what you’ll hear if you continue to try to offer all this concern you feel about Dotty to Dotty in this apartment.
    HELENA: Dorothea Gallaway and I keep nothing from each other and naturally I intend, as soon as she has recovered, toprepare her for what she can hardly avoid facing sooner or later and I—
    BODEY [
cutting in
]: I don’t want heartbreak for Dotty. For Dotty I want a—life .
    HELENA: A life of—?
    BODEY: A life, a life
—
    HELENA: You mean as opposed to a death?
    BODEY: Don’t get smart with me. I got your number the moment you come in that door like a well-dressed snake.
    HELENA: So far you have compared me to a snake and a bird. Please decide which—since the archaeopteryx, the only known combination of bird and snake, is long extinct!
    BODEY: Yes, well, you talk with a kind of a hiss. Awright, you just hiss away but not in this room which you think ain’t a civilized room. Okay, it’s too cheerful for you but for me and Dotty it’s fine. And this afternoon, at the picnic at Creve Coeur Lake, I will tell Dotty, gentle, in my own way, if it’s necessary to tell her, that this unprincipled man has just been using her. But Buddy, my brother Buddy, if in some ways he don’t suit her like he is now, I will see he quits beer, I will see he cuts out his cigars, I will see he continues to take off five pounds a week. And by Dotty and Buddy there will be children—children!—I will never have none, myself, no! But Dotty and Buddy will have beautiful kiddies. Me? Nieces—nephews . . . . —Now you! I’ve wrapped up the picnic. It’s nice and cool at Creve Coeur Lake and the ride on the open-air streetcar is lickety-split through green country and there’s flowers you can pull off the bushes you pass. It’s a fine excursion. Dotty will forget not gettin’ that phone call. We’ll stay out till it’s close to dark andthe fireflies—fly . I will slip away and Buddy will be alone with her on the lake shore. He will smoke no smelly cigar. He will just respectfully hold her hand and say—“I love you, Dotty. Please be mine,” not meanin’ a girl in a car parked up on Art Hill but—for the long run of life.
    HELENA: —Can Dorothea be really attached to your brother? Is it a mutual attraction?
    BODEY: Dotty will settle for Buddy. She’s got a few reservations about him so far, but at Creve Coeur she’ll suddenly recognize the—wonderful side of his nature.
    HELENA: Miss Bodenheifer, Dorothea is not intending to remain in this tasteless apartment. Hasn’t she informed you that she is planning to share a lovely apartment with me? The upstairs of a duplex on Westmoreland