The scene is the same as before. The spotlight focuses on the lefthand, “bedroom” portion of the stage where Dorothea, seated at her vanity table and mellowed by her mebaral and sherry “cocktail,” soliloquizes.
DOROTHEA [taking a large swallow of sherry]: Best years of my youth thrown away, wasted on poor Hathaway James. [She removes his picture from the vanity table and with closed eyes thrusts it out of sight.] Shouldn’t say wasted but so unwisely devoted. Not even sure it was love. Unconsummated love, is it really love? More likely just a reverence for his talent—precocious achievements . . . musical prodigy. Scholarship to Juilliard, performed a concerto with the Nashville Symphony at fifteen. [She sips more sherry.] But those dreadful embarrassing evenings on Aunt Belle’s front porch in Memphis! He’d say: “Turn out the light, it’s attracting insects.” I’d switch it out. He’d grab me so tight it would take my breath away, and invariably I’d feel plunging, plunging against me that—that—frantic part of him . . . then he’d release me at once and collapse on the porch swing, breathing hoarsely. With the corner gas lamp shining through the wisteria vines, it was impossible not to notice the wet stain spreading on his light flannel trousers. . . . Miss Gluck, MOP IN!!
[Miss Gluck, who has timidly opened the bathroom door and begun to emerge, with the mop, into the bedroom, hastily retreats from sight.]
Such afflictions—visited on the gifted. . . . Finally worked up the courage to discuss the—Hathaway’s—problem with the family doctor, delicately but clearly as I could. “Honey, this Hathaway fellow’s afflicted with something clinically known as—chronic case of—premature ejaculation—must have a large laundry bill. . . .” “Is it curable, Doctor?”—“Maybe with great patience, honey, but remember you’re only young once, don’t gamble on it, relinquish him to his interest in music, let him go.”
[Miss Gluck’s mop protrudes from the bathroom again.]
MISS GLUCK, I SAID MOP IN. REMAIN IN BATHROOM WITH WET MOP TILL MOP UP COMPLETED. MERCIFUL HEAVENS.
[Helena and Bodey are now seen in the living room.]
HELENA: Is Dorothea attempting a conversation with Miss Gluck in there?
BODEY: No, no just to herself—you gave her the sherry on top of mebaral tablets.
HELENA: She talks to herself? That isn’t a practice that I would encourage her in.
BODEY: She don’t need no encouragement in it, and as for you, I got an idea you’d encourage nobody in nothing.
DOROTHEA [in the bedroom]: After Hathaway James, there was nothing left for me but—CIVICS.
HELENA [who has moved to the bedroom door the better to hear Dorothea’s “confessions”]: This is not to B. B.!
BODEY: Stop listening at the door. Go back to your pigeon watching.
HELENA: How long is this apt to continue?
DOROTHEA: Oh, God, thank you that Ralph Ellis has no such affliction—is healthily aggressive.
HELENA: I have a luncheon engagement in La Due at two!
BODEY: Well, go keep it! On time!
HELENA: My business with Dorothea must take precedence over anything else! [Helena pauses to watch with amused suspicion as Bodey “attacks” the Sunday Post-Dispatch which she has picked up from the chair.] What is that you’re doing, Miss Bodenheifer?
BODEY: Tearing a certain item out of the paper.
HELENA: A ludicrous thing to do since the news will be all over Blewett High School tomorrow.
BODEY: Never mind tomorrow. There’s ways and ways to break a piece of news like that to a girl with a heart like Dotty. You wouldn’t know about that, no, you’d do it right now—malicious! —You got eyes like a bird and I don’t mean a songbird.
HELENA: Oh, is that so?
BODEY: Yeh, yeh, that’s so, I know!
[Pause. Bodey, who has torn out about half of the top page of one section, puts the rest of the paper on the sofa, and takes the section from which the piece has been torn with her as she crosses to the kitchenette, crumpling and throwing the torn piece into the wastebasket on her 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, to prepare 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 and the 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 Place?
BODEY: Stylish? Civilized, huh? And too expensive for you to swing it alone, so you want to rope Dotty in, rope her into a place that far from Blewett? Share expenses? You prob’ly mean pay most.
HELENA: To move from such an unsuitable environment must naturally involve some expense.
[Miss Gluck falls out of the bathroom onto Dorothea’s bed.]
DOROTHEA: MISS GLUCK! CAREFUL! Bodey, Bodey, Sophie Gluck’s collapsed on my bed in a cloud of steam!
HELENA: Has Miss Gluck broken a steam pipe?
[Bodey rushes from the kitchenette into the bedroom.]
BODEY [to Helena]: You stay out.
[Dorothea emerges from the bedroom. She closes the door and leans against it briefly, closing her eyes as if dizzy or faint.]
HELENA: At last.
DOROTHEA: I’m so mortified.
HELENA: Are you feeling better?
DOROTHEA: Sundays are always different—
HELENA: This one exceptionally so.
DOROTHEA: I don’t know why but—I don’t quite understand why I am so—agitated. Something happened last week, just a few evenings ago that—
HELENA: Yes? What?
DOROTHEA: Nothing that I’m—something I can’t discuss with you. I was and still am expecting a very important phone call—
HELENA: May I ask you from whom?
DOROTHEA: No, please.
HELENA: Then may I hazard a guess that the expected call not received was from a young gentleman who cuts a quite spectacular figure in the country club set but somehow became involved in the educational system?
DOROTHEA: If you don’t mind, Helena, I’d much prefer not to discuss anything of a—private nature right now.
HELENA: Yes, I understand, dear. And since you’ve located that chair, why don’t you seat yourself in it?
DOROTHEA: Oh, yes, excuse me. [She sits down, weakly, her hand lifted to her throat.] The happenings here today are still a bit confused in my head. I was doing my exercises before you dropped by.
HELENA: And for quite a while after.
DOROTHEA: I was about to—no, I’d taken my shower. I was about to get dressed.
HELENA: But the Gluck intervened. Such discipline! Well! I’ve had the privilege of an extended meeting with Miss Bodenheifer—[She lowers her voice.] She seemed completely surprised when I mentioned that you were moving to Westmoreland Place.
DOROTHEA: Oh, you told her. —I’m glad. —I’m such a coward, I couldn’t.
HELENA: Well, I broke the news to her.
DOROTHEA: I—just hadn’t the heart to.
[Miss Gluck advances from the bedroom with a dripping wet mop and a dazed look.]
HELENA [to Dorothea]: Can’t you see she’s already found a replacement?
DOROTHEA: Oh, no, there’s a limit even to Bodey’s endurance! Miss Gluck, would you please return that wet mop to the kitchen and wring it out. Küche—mop—Sophie.
HELENA: Appears to be catatonic.
DOROTHEA [as she goes into the bedroom to get Bodey]: Excuse me.
BODEY [singing nervously in the kitchenette]: “I’m just breezing along with the breeze, pleasing to live, and living to please!”
[Dorothea returns to the living room.]
DOROTHEA: How did Bodey take the news I was moving?
HELENA: “That far from Blewett!” she said as if it were transcontinental.
DOROTHEA: Well, it is a bit far, compared to this location.
HELENA: Surely you wouldn’t compare it to this location.
DOROTHEA: Oh, no, Westmoreland Place is a—fashionable address, incomparable in that respect, but it is quite a distance. Of course, just a block from Delmar Boulevard and the Olive Street car-line, that would let me off at—what point closest to Blewett?
HELENA: Dorothea, forget transportation, that problem. We’re going by automobile.
DOROTHEA: By—what automobile do you—?
HELENA: I have a lovely surprise for you, dear.
DOROTHEA: Someone is going to drive us?
HELENA: Yes, I will be the chauffeur and you the passenger, dear. You see, my wealthy cousin Dee-Dee, who lives in La Due, has replaced her foreign-made car, an Hispano-Suiza, no less, practically brand-new, with a Pierce Arrow limousine and has offered to sell us the Hispano for just a song! Immediately, as soon as she made me this offer, I applied for a driver’s license.
[A moment of shocked silence is interrupted by a short squawk from Bodey’s hearing aid.]
BODEY [advancing quickly from the kitchenette]: Limazine? What limazine? With a show-fer?
HELENA: Miss Bodenheifer, how does this concern you?
BODEY: Who’s gonna foot the bill for it, that’s how!
HELENA: My cousin Dee-Dee in La Due will accept payment on time.
BODEY: Whose time and how much?
HELENA: Negligible! A rich cousin! —Oh, my Lord, I’ve always heard that Germans—
BODEY: Lay off Germans!
HELENA: Have this excessive concern with money matters.
BODEY: Whose money?
HELENA: Practicality can be a stupefying—
MISS GLUCK: Bodey?
HELENA: —virtue, if it is one.
MISS GLUCK: Ich kann nicht—go up.
HELENA: Go up just one step to the kitchen! Please, Dorothea, can’t we—have a private discussion, briefly?
MISS GLUCK: Das Schlafzimmer is gespukt!
HELENA: Because you see, Dorothea, as I told you, I do have to make a payment on the Westmoreland Place apartment early tomorrow, and so must collect your half of it today.
DOROTHEA: —My half would amount to—?
HELENA: Seventy.
DOROTHEA: Ohhh! —Would the real estate people accept a—postdated check?
HELENA: Reluctantly—very.
DOROTHEA: You see, I had unusually heavy expenses this week—clothes, lingerie, a suitcase . . .
HELENA: Sounds as if you’d been purchasing a trousseau. —Miss Bodenhafer says that her brother, “Buddy,” is seriously interested in you. How selfish of you to keep it such a secret!—even from me!
DOROTHEA: Oh, my heavens, has Miss Bodenhafer—how fantastic!
HELENA: Yes, she is a bit, to put it politely.
DOROTHEA: I meant has she given you the preposterous impression that I am interested in her brother? Oh, my Lord, what a fantastic visit you’ve had! Believe me, the circumstances aren’t always so—chaotic. Well! Il n’y a rien à faire. When I tell you that she calls her brother Buddy and that he is her twin! [She throws up her arms.]
DOROTHEA: Except for gender, alike as two peas in a pod. You’re not so gullible, Helena, that you could really imagine for a moment that I’d—you know me better than that!
HELENA: Sometimes when a girl is on the rebound from a disappointing infatuation, she will leap without looking into the most improbable sort of—liaison—
DOROTHEA: Maybe some girls, but certainly not I. And what makes you think that I’m the victim of a “disappointing infatuation,” Helena?
HELENA: Sometimes a thing will seem like the end of the world, and yet the world continues.
DOROTHEA: I personally feel that my world is just beginning. . . . Excuse me for a moment. I’ll get my checkbook. . . .
[Dorothea goes into the bedroom. Miss Gluck wanders back into the living room from the kitchenette, wringing her hands and sobbing.]
HELENA: MISS BODENHEIFER!
BODEY: Don’t bother to tell me good-bye.
HELENA: I am not yet leaving.
BODEY: And it ain’t necessary to shake the walls when you call me, I got my hearing aid on.
HELENA: Would you be so kind as to confine Miss Gluck to that charming little kitchen while I’m completing my business with Dorothea?
BODEY: Sophie, come in here with me. You like a deviled egg don’t you? And a nice fried drumstick when your—digestion is better? Just stay in here with me.
[Bodey leads Miss Gluck back to the kitchenette, then turns to Helena.]
I can catch every word that you say to Dotty in there, and you better be careful the conversation don’t take the wrong turn!
MISS GLUCK [half in German]: Ich kann nicht liven opstairs no more, nimmer, nimmer—kann nicht—can’t go!
BODEY: You know what, Sophie? You better change apartments. There’s a brand-new vacancy. See—right over there, the fifth floor. It’s bright and cheerful—I used to go up there sometimes—it’s a sublet, furnished, everything in cheerful colors. I’ll speak to Mr. Schlogger, no, no, to Mrs. Schlogger, she makes better terms. Him, bein’ paralyzed, he’s got to accept ’em, y’know.
MISS GLUCK: I think—[She sobs.]—Missus Schlogger don’t like me.
BODEY: That’s—impossible, Sophie. I think she just had a little misunderstanding with your—[She stops herself.]
MISS GLUCK: Meine Mutter, ja—
BODEY: Sophie, speak of the Schloggers, she’s wheeling that old Halunke out on their fire escape.
[The Schloggers are heard from offstage.]
MR. SCHLOGGER’S VOICE: I didn’t say out in the sun.
MRS. SCHLOGGER’S VOICE: You said out, so you’re out.
BODEY [shouting out the window]: Oh, my Gott, Missus Schlogger, a stranger that didn’t know you would think you meant to push him offa the landin’. Haul him back in, you better. Watch his cane, he’s about to hit you with it. Amazin’ the strength he’s still got in his good arm.
MRS. SCHLOGGER’S VOICE: Now you want back in?
[Helena rises to watch this episode on the fire escape.]
MR. SCHLOGGER’S VOICE: Not in the kitchen with you.
HELENA [to herself but rather loudly]: Schloggers, so those are Schloggers.
BODEY [to Miss Gluck]: She’s got him back in. I’m gonna speak to her right now. —HEY MISSUS SCHLOGGER, YOU KNOW MISS GLUCK? AW, SURE YOU REMEMBER SOPHIE UPSTAIRS IN 4-F? SHE LOST HER MOTHER LAST SUNDAY. Sophie, come here, stick your head out, Sophie. NOW YOU REMEMBER HER, DON’T YOU?
MRS. SCHLOGGER’S VOICE: Ja, ja.
BODEY: JA, JA, SURE YOU REMEMBER! MRS. SCHLOGGER, POOR SOPHIE CANT LIVE ALONE IN 4-F WHERE SHE LOST HER MOTHER. SHE NEEDS A NEW APARTMENT THAT’S BRIGHT AND CHEERFUL TO GET HER OUT OF DEPRESSION. HOW ABOUT THE VACANCY ON THE FIFTH FLOOR FOR SOPHIE. WE GOT TO LOOK OUT FOR EACH OTHER IN TIMES OF SORROW. VERSTEHEN SIE?
MRS. SCHLOGGER’S VOICE: I don’t know.
BODEY: GIVE SOPHIE THAT VACANCY UP THERE. THEN TERMS I’LL DISCUSS WITH YOU. [She draws Miss Gluck back from the window.] Sophie, I think that done it, and that apartment on five is bright and cheerful like here. And you’re not gonna be lonely. We got three chairs at this table, and we can work out an arrangement so you can eat here with us, more economical that way. It’s no good cooking for one, cookin’ and eatin’ alone is—lonely after—
[Helena resumes her seat as Bodey and Miss Gluck return to the kitchenette.]
HELENA [with obscure meaning]: Yes— [She draws a long breath and calls out.] Dorothea, can’t you locate your checkbook in there?
[Dorothea returns from the bedroom wearing a girlish summer print dress and looking quite pretty.]
DOROTHEA: I was just slipping into a dress. Now, then, here it is, my checkbook.
HELENA: Good. Where did you buy that new dress?
DOROTHEA: Why, at Scruggs-Vandervoort.
HELENA: Let me remove the price tag. [As she removes the tag, she looks at it and assumes an amused and slightly superior air.] Oh, my dear. I must teach you where to find the best values in clothes. In La Due there is a little French boutique, not expensive but excellent taste. I think a woman looks best when she dresses without the illusion she’s still a girl in her teens. Don’t you?
DOROTHEA [stung]: —My half will be—how much did you say?
HELENA: To be exact, $82.50.
DOROTHEA: My goodness, that will take a good bite out of my savings. Helena, I thought you mentioned a lower amount. Didn’t you say it would be seventy?
HELENA: Yes, I’d forgotten—utilities, dear. Now, we don’t want to move into a place with the phone turned off, the lights off. Utilities must be on, wouldn’t you say?
DOROTHEA: —Yes. —Of course, I don’t think I’ll be dependent on my savings much longer, and a duplex on Westmoreland Place— [She writes out a check.] —is a—quite a—worthwhile—investment . . .
HELENA: I should think it would strike you as one after confinement with Miss Bodenhafer in this nightmare of colors.
DOROTHEA: Oh. —Yes. —Excuse me . . . [she extends the check slightly.]
HELENA: —Are you holding it out for the ink to dry on it?
DOROTHEA: —Sorry. —Here. [She crosses to Helena and hands the check to her.]
[Helena puts on her glasses to examine the check carefully. She then folds it, puts it into her purse, and snaps the purse shut.]
HELENA: Well, that’s that. I hate financial dealings but they do have to be dealt with. Don’t they?
DOROTHEA: Yes, they seem to . . .
HELENA: Require it. —Oh, contract.
DOROTHEA: Contract? For the apartment?
HELENA: Oh, no, a book on contract bridge, the bidding system and so forth. You do play bridge a little? I asked you once before and you said you did sometimes.
DOROTHEA: Here?
HELENA: Naturally not here. But on Westmoreland Place I hope you’ll join in the twice-weekly games. You remember Joan Goode?
DOROTHEA: Yes, vaguely. Why?
HELENA: We were partners in duplicate bridge, which we usually played, worked out our own set of bidding conventions. But now Joan’s gone to Wellesley for her Master’s degree in, of all things, the pre-Ptolemaic dynasties of Egypt.
DOROTHEA: Did she do that? I didn’t know what she did.
HELENA: You were only very casually—
DOROTHEA: Acquainted.
HELENA: My cousin Dee-Dee from La Due takes part whenever her social calendar permits her to. She often sends over dainty little sandwiches, watercress, tomato, sherbets from Zeller’s in the summer. And a nicely uniformed maid to serve. Well, now we’re convening from auction to contract, which is more complicated but stimulates the mind. —Dorothea, you have an abstracted look. Are you troubled over something?
DOROTHEA: Are these parties mixed?
HELENA: “Mixed” in what manner?
DOROTHEA: I mean would I invite Ralph?
HELENA: I have a feeling that Mr. T. Ralph Ellis might not be able to spare the time this summer. And anyway, professional women do need social occasions without the—male intrusion . . .
DOROTHEA [with spirit]: I’ve never thought of the presence of men as being an intrusion.
HELENA: Dorothea, that’s just a lingering symptom of your Southern belle complex.
DOROTHEA: In order to be completely honest with you, Helena, I think I ought to tell you—I probably won’t be able to share expenses with you in Westmoreland Place for very long, Helena!
HELENA: Oh, is that so? Is that why you’ve given me the postdated check which you could cancel tomorrow?
DOROTHEA: You know I wouldn’t do that, but—
HELENA: Yes, but—you could and possibly you would. . . . Look before you, there stands the specter that confronts you . . .
DOROTHEA: Miss??
HELENA: Gluck, the perennial, the irremediable, Miss Gluck! You probably think me superficial to value as much as I do, cousin Dee-Dee of La Due, contract bridge, possession of an elegant foreign car. Dorothea, only such things can protect us from a future of descent into the Gluck abyss of surrender to the bottom level of squalor. Look at it and tell me honestly that you can afford not to provide yourself with the Westmoreland Place apartment . . . its elevation, its style, its kind of éclat.
[Miss Gluck, who has come out of the kitchenette and moved downstage during Helena’s speech, throws a glass of water in Helena’s face.]
DOROTHEA: Bodey, RESTRAIN HER, RESTRAIN MISS GLUCK, SHE’S TURNED VIOLENT.
BODEY: Sophie, no, no. I didn’t say you done wrong. I think you done right. I don’t think you did enough.
HELENA: Violence does exist in the vegetable kingdom, you see! It doesn’t terrify me since I shall soon be safely out of its range. . . . Just let me draw two good deep breaths and I’ll be myself again. [She does so.] That did it. . . . I’m back in my skin. Oh, Dorothea, we must, must advance in appearances. You don’t seem to know how vastly important it is, the move to Westmoreland Place, particularly now at this time when you must escape from reminders of, specters of, that alternative there! Surrender without conditions . . .
DOROTHEA: Sorry. I am a little abstracted. Helena, you sound as if you haven’t even suspected that Ralph and I have been dating . . .
HELENA: Seriously?
DOROTHEA: Well, now that I’ve mentioned it to you, yes, quite. You see, I don’t intend to devote the rest of my life to teaching civics at Blewett. I dream, I’ve always dreamed, of a marriage someday, and I think you should know that it might become a reality this summer.
HELENA: With whom?
DOROTHEA: Why, naturally with the person whom I love. And obviously loves me.
HELENA: T? RALPH? ELLIS?
[Bodey, still in the kitchenette, nervously sings “Me and My Shadow.”]
DOROTHEA: I thought I’d made that clear, thought I’d made everything clear.
HELENA: Oh, Dorothea, my dear. I hope and pray that you haven’t allowed him to take advantage of your—generous nature.
DOROTHEA: Miss Bodenhafer has the same apprehension.
HELENA: That is the one and only respect in which your friend, Miss Bodenhafer, and I have something in common.
DOROTHEA: Poor Miss Bodenhafer is terribly naïve for a girl approaching forty.
HELENA: Miss Bodenhafer is not approaching forty. She has encountered forty and continued past it, undaunted.
DOROTHEA: I don’t believe she’s the sort of girl who would conceal her age.
HELENA [laughing like a cawing crow]: Dorothea, no girl could tell me she’s under forty and still be singing a song of that vintage. Why, she knows every word of it, including—what do they call it? The introductory verse? Why is she cracking hard-boiled eggs in there?
DOROTHEA: She’s making deviled eggs for a picnic lunch.
HELENA: Oh. In Forest Park.
DOROTHEA: No, at Creve Coeur.
HELENA: Oh, at Creve Coeur, that amusement park on a lake, of which Miss Bodenheifer gave such a lyrical account. Would you like a Lucky?
DOROTHEA: No. Thank you. My father smoked Chesterfields. Do you know Creve Coeur?
HELENA: Heard of it. Only. You go out, just the two of you?
DOROTHEA: No, her brother, Buddy, usually goes with us on these excursions. They say they’ve been going out there since they were children, Bodey and Buddy. They still ride the Ferris wheel, you know, and there’s a sort of loop-the-loop that takes you down to the lake shore. Seats much too narrow sometimes. You see, it’s become embarrassing to me lately, the brother you know . . .
HELENA: Who doesn’t interest you?
DOROTHEA: Heavens, no, it’s—pathetic. I don’t want to hurt Bodey’s feelings, but the infatuation is hardly a mutual thing and it never could be, of course, since I am—well, involved with—
HELENA: The dashing, the irresistible new principal at Blewett.
[Bodey sings.]
DOROTHEA: —I’d rather not talk about that—prematurely, you know. Ralph feels it’s not quite proper for a principal to be involved with a teacher. He’s—a very, very scrupulous young man.
HELENA: Oh? Is that the impression he gives you? I’m rather surprised he’s given you that impression.
DOROTHEA: I don’t see why. Is it just because he’s young and attractive with breeding, background? Frequently mentioned in the social columns? Therefore beyond involvement with a person of my ignominious position.
HELENA: Personally, I’d avoid him like a—snakebite!
[Bodey, in the kitchenette, sings “I’m Just Breezing along with the Breeze” again.]
Another one of her oldies! The prospect of this picnic at Creve Coeur seems to make her absolutely euphoric.
DOROTHEA: I’m afraid that they’re the high points in her life. Sad . . . Helena, I’m very puzzled by your attitude toward Ralph Ellis. Why on earth would a girl want to avoid a charming young man like Ralph?
HELENA: Perhaps you’ll understand a little later.
[Dorothea glances at her watch and the silent phone.]
DOROTHEA [raising her voice]: Bodey, please not quite so loud in there! Miss Brookmire and I are holding a conversation in here, you know. [She turns back to Helena and continues the conversation with an abrupt vehemence.] —Helena, that woman wants to absorb my life like a blotter, and I’m not an ink splash! I’m sorry you had to meet her. I’m awfully—embarrassed, believe me.
HELENA: I don’t regret it at all. I found her most amusing. Even the Gluck!
DOROTHEA [resuming with the same intensity]: Bodey wants me to follow the same, same old routine that she follows day in and day out and I—feel sympathy for the loneliness of the girl, but we have nothing, nothing, but nothing at all, in common. [She interrupts herself.] Shall we have some coffee?
HELENA: Yes, please. I do love iced coffee, but perhaps the ice is depleted.
BODEY [from the kitchenette]: She knows darn well she used the last piece.
HELENA: Is it still warm?
[Dorothea has risen and gone into the kitchenette where she pours two cups of coffee.]
DOROTHEA: It never cools off in this electric percolator, runs out, but never cools off. Do you take cream?
HELENA: No, thank you.
DOROTHEA [bringing the coffee into the living room]: Bodey does make very good coffee. I think she was born and raised in a kitchen and will probably die in a kitchen if ever she does break her routine that way.
[Bodey crosses to the kitchen table with Dorothea’s purse and hat which she has collected from the living room while Helena and Dorothea sip their coffee.]
BODEY: Dotty, remember, Buddy is waiting for us at the Creve Coeur station, we mustn’t let him think we’ve stood him up.
DOROTHEA [sighing]: Excuse me, Helena, there really has been a terrible problem with communication today. [She crosses to Bodey and adjusts her hearing aid for her.] Can you hear me clearly, now at last?
BODEY: You got something to tell me?
DOROTHEA: Something I’ve told you already, frequently, loudly, and clearly, but which you simply will not admit because of your hostility toward Ralph Ellis. I’m waiting here to receive an important call from him, and I am not going anywhere till it’s come through.
BODEY: Dotty. It’s past noon and he still hasn’t called.
DOROTHEA: On Saturday evenings he’s out late at social affairs and consequently sleeps late on Sundays.
BODEY: This late?
HELENA: Miss Bodenhafer doesn’t know how the privileged classes live.
BODEY: No, I guess not, we’re ignorant of the history of art, but Buddy and me, we’ve got a life going on, you understand, we got a life . . .
DOROTHEA: Bodey, you know I’m sorry to disappoint your plans for the Creve Coeur picnic, but you must realize by now—after our conversation before Miss Brookmire dropped in—that I can’t allow this well-meant design of yours to get me involved with your brother to go any further. So that even if I were not expecting this important phone call, I would not go to Creve Coeur with you and your brother this afternoon—or ever! It wouldn’t be fair to your brother to, to—lead him on that way . . .
BODEY: Well, I did fry up three chickens and I boiled a dozen eggs, but, well, that’s—
HELENA: Life for you, Miss Bodenhafer. We’ve got to face it.
BODEY: But I really was hoping—expecting—
[Tears appear in Bodey’s large, childlike eyes.]
HELENA: Dorothea, I believe she’s beginning to weep over this. Say something comforting to her.
DOROTHEA: Bodey? Bodey? This afternoon you must break the news to your brother that—much as I appreciate his attentions—I am seriously involved with someone else, and I think you can do this without hurting his feelings. Let him have some beer first and a—cigar. . . . And about this super-abundance of chicken and deviled eggs, Bodey, why don’t you call some girl who works in your office and get her to go to Creve Coeur and enjoy the picnic with you this afternoon?
BODEY: Buddy and I, we—don’t have fun with—strangers . . .
DOROTHEA: Now, how can you call them strangers when you’ve been working in the same office with these girls at International Shoe for—how many years? Almost twenty? Strangers? Still?
BODEY: —Not all of ’em have been there long as me . . . [She blows her nose.]
DOROTHEA: Oh, some of them must have, surely, unless the death rate in the office is higher than—a cat’s back.
[Dorothea smiles half-apologetically at Helena. Helena stifles a malicious chuckle.]
BODEY: —You see, Dotty, Buddy and me feel so at home with you now.
DOROTHEA: Bodey, we knew that I was here just for a while because it’s so close to Blewett. Please don’t make me feel guilty. I have no reason to, do I?
BODEY: —No, no, Dotty—but don’t worry about it. Buddy and me, we are both—big eaters, and if there’s somethin’ left over, there’s always cute little children around Creve Coeur that we could share with, Dotty, so—
DOROTHEA: Yes, there must be. Do that. Let’s not prolong this discussion. I see it’s painful to you.
BODEY: —Do you? No. It’s—you I’m thinking of, Dotty. —Now if for some reason you should change your mind, here is the schedule of the open-air streetcars to Creve Coeur.
HELENA: Yellowing with antiquity. Is it legible still?
BODEY: We’ll still be hoping that you might decide to join us, you know that, Dotty.
DOROTHEA: Yes, of course—I know that. Now why don’t you finish packing and start out to the station?
BODEY: —Yes. —But remember how welcome you would be if—shoes. [She starts into the bedroom to put on her shoes.] I still have my slippers on.
DOROTHEA [to Helena after Bodey has gone into the bedroom]: So! You’ve got the postdated check. I will move to Westmoreland Place with you July first, although I’ll have to stretch quite a bit to make ends meet in such an expensive apartment.
HELENA: Think of the advantages. A fashionable address, two bedrooms, a baby grand in the front room and—
DOROTHEA: Yes, I know. It would be a very good place to entertain Ralph.
HELENA: I trust that entertaining Ralph is not your only motive in making this move to Westmoreland Place.
DOROTHEA: Not the only, but the principal one.
HELENA [leaning forward slowly, eyes widening]: Oh, my dear Dorothea! I have the very odd feeling that I saw the name Ralph Ellis in the newspaper. In the society section.
DOROTHEA: In the society section?
HELENA: I think so, yes. I’m sure so.
[Rising tensely, Dorothea locates the Sunday paper which Bodey had left on the sofa, in some disarray, after removing the “certain item”—the society page. She hurriedly looks through the various sections trying to find the society news.]
DOROTHEA: Bodey?—BOOO-DEYY!
DOROTHEA: Where is the society page of the Post-Dispatch?
BODEY: —Oh . . .
DOROTHEA: What does “oh” mean? It’s disappeared from the paper and I’d like to know where.
BODEY: Dotty, I—
DOROTHEA: What’s wrong with you? Why are you upset? I just want to know if you’ve seen the society page of the Sunday paper?
BODEY: —Why, I—used it to wrap fried chicken up with, honey.
DOROTHEA [to Helena]: The only part of the paper in which I have any interest. She takes it and wraps fried chicken in it before I get up in the morning! You see what I mean? Do you understand now? [She turns back to Bodey.] Please remove the fried chicken from the society page and let me have it!
BODEY: —Honey, the chicken makes the paper so greasy that—
DOROTHEA: I will unwrap it myself! [She charges into the kitchenette, unwraps the chicken, and folds out the section of pages.] —A section has been torn out of it? Why? What for?
BODEY: Is it? I—
DOROTHEA: Nobody possibly could have done it but you. What did you do with the torn out piece of the paper?
BODEY: —I— [She shakes her head helplessly.]
DOROTHEA: Here it is! —Crumpled and tossed in the wastebasket!—What for, I wonder? [She snatches up the crumpled paper from the wastebasket and straightens it, using both palms to press it hard against the kitchen table so as to flatten it. She holds up the torn-out section of the paper so the audience can see a large photograph of a young woman, good looking in a plain fashion, wearing a hard smile of triumph, then she reads aloud in a hoarse, stricken voice.] Mr. and Mrs. James Finley announce the engagement of their daughter, Miss Constance Finley, to Mr.—T. Ralph Ellis, principal of—
[Pause. There is much stage business. Dorothea is stunned for some moments but then comes to violent life and action. She picks up the picnic shoebox, thrusts it fiercely into Bodey’s hands, opens the door for her but rushes back to pick up Bodey’s small black straw hat trimmed with paper daises, then opens the door for Bodey again with a violent gesture meaning, “Go quick!” Bodey goes. In the hall we hear various articles falling from Bodey’s hold and a small, panting gasp. Then there is silence. Helena gets up with a mechanical air of sympathy.]
HELENA: That woman is sly all right but not as sly as she’s stupid. She might have guessed you’d want the society page and notice Mr. Ellis’s engagement had been torn out. Anyhow, the news would have reached you at the school tomorrow. Of course I can’t understand how you could be taken in by whatever little attentions you may have received from Ralph Ellis.
DOROTHEA: —“Little—attentions?” I assure you they were not—“little attentions,” they were—
HELENA: Little attentions which you magnified in your imagination. Well, now, let us dismiss the matter, which has dismissed itself! Dorothea, about the postdated check, I’m not sure the real estate agents would be satisfied with that. Now surely, Dorothea, surely you have relatives who could help you with a down payment in cash?
DOROTHEA: —Helena, I’m not interested in Westmoreland Place. —Now.
HELENA: What!
DOROTHEA: I’ve—abandoned that idea. I’ve decided not to move.
HELENA [aghast]: —Do you realize what a shockingly irresponsible thing you are doing? Don’t you realize that you are placing me in a very unfair position? You led me to believe I could count on your sharing the expense of the place, and now, at the last moment, when I have no time to get hold of someone else, you suddenly—pull out. It’s really irresponsible of you. It’s a really very irresponsible thing to do.
DOROTHEA: —I’m afraid we wouldn’t have really gotten along together. I’m not uncomfortable here. It’s only two blocks from the school and—I won’t be needing a place I can’t afford to entertain—anyone now. —I think I would like to be alone.
HELENA: All I can say is, the only thing I can say is—
DOROTHEA: Don’t say it, just, just—leave me alone, now, Helena.
HELENA: Well, that I shall do. You may be right, we wouldn’t have gotten along. Perhaps Miss Bodenheifer and her twin brother are much more on your social and cultural level than I’d hoped. And of course there’s always the charm of Miss Gluck from upstairs.
DOROTHEA: The prospect of that is not as dismaying to me, Helena, as the little card parties and teas you’d had in mind for us on Westmoreland Place . . .
HELENA: Chacun à son goût.
DOROTHEA: Yes, yes.
HELENA [at the door]: There is rarely a graceful way to say good-bye. [She exits.]
[Pause. Dorothea shuts her eyes very tight and raises a clenched hand in the air, nodding her head several times as if affirming an unhappy suspicion regarding the way of the world. This gesture suffices to discharge her sense of defeat. Now she springs up determinedly and goes to the phone.
[While waiting for a connection, she notices Miss Gluck seated disconsolately in a corner of the kitchenette.]
DOROTHEA: Now Miss Gluck, now Sophie, we must pull ourselves together and go on. Go on, we must just go on, that’s all that life seems to offer and—demand. [She turns her attention to the phone.] Hello, operator, can you get me information, please? —Hello? Information? Can you get me the number of the little station at the end of the Delmar car-line where you catch the, the—open streetcar that goes out to Creve Coeur Lake?— Thank you.
MISS GLUCK [speaking English with difficulty and a heavy German accent]: Please don’t leave me alone. I can’t go up!
DOROTHEA [her attention still occupied with the phone]: Creve Coeur car-line station? Look. On the platform in a few minutes will be a plumpish little woman with a big artificial flower over one ear and a stoutish man with her, probably with a cigar. I have to get an important message to them. Tell them that Dotty called and has decided to go to Creve Coeur with them after all so will they please wait. You’ll have to shout to the woman because she’s—deaf . . .
[For some reason the word “deaf“ chokes her and she begins to sob as she hangs up the phone. Miss Gluck rises, sobbing louder.]
No, no, Sophie, come here. [Impulsively she draws Miss Gluck into her arms.] I know, Sophie, I know, crying is a release, but it—inflames the eyes.
[She takes Miss Gluck to the armchair and seats her there. Then she goes to the kitchenette, gets a cup of coffee and a cruller, and brings them to Sophie.]
Make yourself comfortable, Sophie.
[She goes to the bedroom, gets a pair of gloves, then returns and crosses to the kitchen table to collect her hat and pocketbook. She goes to the door, opens it, and says . . .]
We’ll be back before dark.
THE LIGHTS DIM OUT