TOM: Mother, you mustn’t expect too much of Laura.

AMANDA: What do you mean?

TOM: Laura seems all those things to you and me because she’s ours and we love her. We don’t even notice she’s crippled any more.

AMANDA: Don’t say crippled! You know that I never allow that word to be used!

TOM: But face facts, Mother. She is and – that’s not all

AMANDA: What do you mean "not all’?

TOM: Laura is very different from other girls

AMANDA: I think the difference is all to her advantage.

TOM: Not quite all – in the eyes of others – strangers – she’s terribly shy and lives in a world of her own and those things make her seem a little peculiar to people outside the house.

AMANDA: Don’t say peculiar.

TOM: Face the facts. She is.

[THE DANCE-HALL MUSIC CHANGES TO A TANGO THAT HAS A MINOR AND SOMEWHAT OMINOUS TONE.]

AMANDA: In what way is she peculiar – may I ask?

TOM [gently]: She lives in a world of her own – a world of little glass ornaments, Mother… [Gets Up. AMANDAremains holding brush, looking at him, troubled.] She plays old phonograph records and – that’s about all – [He glances at himself in the mirror and crosses to door.]

AMANDA [sharply]: Where are you going?

TOM: I’m going to the movies. [Out screen door.]

AMANDA: Not to the movies, every night to the movies! [Follows quickly to screen door.] I don’t believe you always go to the movies! [He is gone. AMANDA looks worriedly after him for a moment. Then vitality and optimism return and she turns from the door. Crossing to portières.] Laura! Laura![LAURA answers from kitchenette.]

LAURA: Yes, Mother.

AMANDA: Let those dishes go and come in front! [LAURA appears with dish towel. Gaily.] Laura, come here and make a wish on the moon!

[SCREEN IMAGE: MOON.]

LAURA [entering]: Moon – moon?

AMANDA: A little silver slipper of a moon. Look over your left shoulder, Laura, and make a wish!

[LAURA looks faintly puzzled as if called out of sleep. AMANDA seizes her shoulders and turns her at an angle by the door.] Now! Now, darling, wish!

LAURA: What shall I wish for, Mother?

AMANDA [her voice trembling and her eyes suddenly filing with tears]:Happiness! Good fortune!

[The violin rises and the stage dims out.]

[CURTAIN]

SCENE 6

TOM: And so the following evening I brought Jim home to dinner. I had known Jim slightly in high school. In high school Jim was a hero. He had tremendous Irish good nature and vitality with the scrubbed and polished look of white chinaware. He seemed to move in a continual spotlight. He was a star in basket-ball, captain of the debating club, president of the senior class and the glee club and he sang the male lead in the annual light operas. He was always running or bounding, never just walking. He seemed always at the point of defeating the law of gravity. He was shooting with such velocity through his adolescence that you would logically expect him to arrive at nothing short of the White House by the time he was thirty. But Jim apparently ran into more interference after his graduation from Soldan. His speed had definitely slowed. Six years after he left high school he was holding a job that wasn’t much better than mine.

[IMAGE: CLERK.]

He was the only one at the warehouse with whom I was on friendly terms. I was valuable to him as someone who could remember his former glory, who had seen him win basketball games and the silver cup in debating. He knew of my secret practice of retiring to a cabinet of the washroom to work on poems when business was slack in the warehouse. He called me Shakespeare. And while the other boys in the warehouse regarded me with suspicious hostility, Jim took a humorous attitude toward me. Gradually his attitude affected the others, their hostility wore off and they also began to smile at me as people smile at an oddly fashioned dog who trots across their path at some distance. I knew that Jim and Laura had known each other at Soldan, and I had heard Laura speak admiringly of his voice. I didn’t know if Jim remembered her or not. In high school Laura had been as unobtrusive as Jim had been astonishing. If he did remember Laura, it was not as my sister, for when I asked him to dinner, he grinned and said, “You know, Shakespeare, I never thought of you as having folks!” He was about to discover that I did.

[LIGHT UPSTAGE. LEGEND ON SCREEN: “THE ACCENT OF A COMING FOOT”[15].

Friday evening. It is about five o’clock of a late spring evening which comes “scattering poems in the sky.” A delicate lemony light is in the Wingfield apartment. AMANDA has worked like a Turk in preparation for the gentleman caller. The results are astonishing. The new floor lamp with its rose-silk shade is in place, a coloured paper lantern conceals the broken light fixture in the ceiling, new billowing white curtains are at the windows, chintz covers are on chairs and sofa, a pair of new sofa pillows make their initial appearance. Open boxes and tissue paper are scattered on the floor. LAURA stands in the middle with lifted arms while AMANDA crouches before her, adjusting the hem of the new dress, devout and ritualistic. The dress is coloured and designed by memory. The arrangement Of LAURA’s hair is changed; it is softer and more becoming. A fragile, unearthly prettiness has come out in LAURA: she is like a piece of translucent glass touched by light, given a momentary radiance, not actual, not lasting.]

AMANDA [impatiently]: Why are you trembling?

LAURA: Mother, you’ve made me so nervous!

AMANDA: How have I made you nervous?

LAURA: By all this fuss! You make it seem so important!

AMANDA: I don’t understand you, Laura. You couldn’t be satisfied with just sitting home, and yet whenever I try to arrange something for you, you seem to resist it. [She gets up.] Now take a look at yourself. No, wait! Wait just a moment – I have an idea!

LAURA: What is it now?

[AMANDA produces two powder puffs which she wraps in handkerchiefs and stuffs in LAURA’s bosom.]

LAURA: Mother, what are you doing?

AMANDA: They call them “Gay Deceivers”!

LAURA: I won’t wear them!

AMANDA: YOU Will!

LAURA: Why should I?

AMANDA: Because, to be painfully honest, your chest is flat.

LAURA: You make it seem like we were setting a trap.

AMANDA: All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be!

[LEGEND: “A PRETTY TRAP”]

Now look at yourself, young lady. This is the prettiest you will ever be! I’ve got to fix myself now! You’re going to be surprised by your mother’s appearance! [She crosses through portières, humming gaily.]

[LAURA moves slowly to the long mirror and stares solemnly at herself. A wind blows the white curtains inward in a slow, graceful motion and with a faint, sorrowful sighing.]

AMANDA [off stage]: It isn’t dark enough yet. [LAURA turns slowly before the mirror with a troubled look.]

LEGEND ON SCREEN: “THIS IS MY SISTER: CELEBRATE HER WITH STRINGS!” MUSIC.]

AMANDA [laughing, off]: I’m going to show you something. I’m going to make a spectacular appearance!

LAURA: What is it, Mother?

AMANDA: Possess your soul in patience? You will see! Something I’ve resurrected from that old trunk! Styles haven’t changed so terribly much after all.

[She parts the portières.]

Now just look at your mother!

[She wears a girlish frock of yellowed voile with a blue silk sash. She carries a bunch of jonquils – the legend of her youth is nearly revived.]