scene six
“white lace curtains”
A spot comes up on the corner of the living room in Jim’s bungalow on Peach Street—or is it Elm? White lace curtains are at a window; there is a ridiculously large and ornate radio-Victrola with a goldfish bowl on top. On the wall above the radio is a picture of “Hope” seated blindfolded and playing a broken-stringed lyre. Jim is seated beside the radio-Victrola with a glass of ice water. He has on purple pongee pajamas with white-frogged buttonholes.
His wife Edna calls from offstage.
edna: Jim!
jim: Yep.
edna: Comin’ t’ bed?
jim: Soon as I cool off a little. I’m worried about Ben Murphy. I’m afraid he’s going to pieces.
edna: Ben has always been an absolute screwball. Even his wife admits it. She told me yesterday that he’s been going down to the office in cowboy boots! Confidentially, she said, I’m just about through!
jim: He’s plunging back into his adolescence. Talks about rebellion. Rebellion is all right for the upper classes and the lower classes, but for the middle classes—it will never do! The middle has always got to be the middle.
edna: Please close the bedroom door and talk the whole thing over with yourself.
jim [wearily]: Okay, sweetheart. [He steps out of the spot and can be heard closing the door. He returns and switches on the radio.]
h. v. kaltenborn1: Was described as being in a sea of flames: Very little damage was done to military objectives but the civilian population suffered terrible casualties. The sky at midnight was a blazing inferno. Wave after wave of dive bombers swooped down upon the already blasted metropolis. The whole residential section was laid to waste. Helpless women and children by the tens of thousands—
[Jim casually switches the dial.]
baby-talk singer: But this little piggy was a bad little piggy
baby-talk singer: And he boogie-woogied all the way home!
[The doorbell rings. Jim turns off the radio and moves out of the spot. He can be heard admitting the caller—Ben.]
jim: Aw, you again.
ben: Yeah. Me again.
[They step into the spot. Ben’s appearance is completely demonic.]
edna [sharply]: Who on earth was that ringing the doorbell at this time of night?
jim [puts finger to lips]: Nobody, sweetheart. Go to sleep.
edna: Nobody? Awwwww! —You mean Mr. Benjamin Murphy!
ben [sorrowfully]: What a dreadful bitch that woman is.
jim: Shhh! Sit down.
ben: It’s hot as blazes in here.
jim: Edna’s got the fan.
ben: So has Alma.
jim: Why are you barging in here at this time of night?
ben: Partly to ask your pardon for what I said at Mike’s. I didn’t mean to be nasty about your appearance.
jim: Oh, well. I’m not self-conscious. Besides—
ben: Huh?
jim: I recognized a certain amount of truth in some of your statements.
ben: Did you?
jim: Yes.
ben: Which ones? About your loss of resistance?
[Jim nods slowly.]
Then what’ll you do about it?
jim: Nothing.
ben: You’ll do nothing?
[Jim nods.]
Nothing at all?
jim: What can I do?
ben: Resist it!
jim: Resist what? How?
ben: In fighting gangrene they cut off the affected members.
jim: Okay. Give me an axe and I’ll cut off my head.
ben: You don’t have to cut off your head.
jim: What, then?
ben: The superfluous fat on your spirit. The weekly paycheck that corrupted a marathon swimmer.
jim: Shylock! —What did you lend me?
ben: Belief! —Once. Don’t you remember?
jim [with a mocking lilt]: “Sweet Alice—Ben Bolt.”
ben: I took a walk just now around the campus.
jim: That must’ve been gruesome.
ben: It was. I talked with a number of ghosts, including yours.
jim: What did mine have to say?
ben: A lot of what turned out to be the sort of stuff they remove from stable floors with a shovel. I wanted to marry a girl who wrote lyric verse. No, wait, you said, don’t give up infinite possibilities for sex and a sonnet. Don’t live out your life behind a pair of white lace curtains. Well, I got the sex all right, but without the sonnet. Here’s the white lace curtains in your window. A duplicate pair’s in mine. What happened to the tramp steamer in which we were going to ship out? [Pause.]
jim [somberly]: Scuttled.
ben: Yeah. Scuttled. Once you asked life a question. You got no answer. Instead of grabbing a pick and shovel and tearing into the Sphinx to force the oracle out, you lay down flat in front of her in the hot desert sun and went to sleep with your shirt pulled over your head. [Pause.]
jim [wearily]: Define the issues.
ben: You know what they are.
jim: Vaguely.
ben: Vagueness is what makes sheep of populations! Haven’t we learned we can’t be sheep any more now that we know that sheep are merely kept to be shorn—and slaughtered? I want to refurnish my life!
jim: With what?
ben: New things! Beliefs—that are like steel weapons! Ideals—that catch the sunlight!
jim: Where will you find them? In what political party?
ben: In the political party of my heart! In my instinct that tells me I don’t have to be caged!
jim [quietly with dignity]: Ben, I’m just as hungry for things to believe in as you are. I used to have social convictions even before you had them. What happened? I saw how little they meant to the people I got them from. I’m human, I’m disillusioned—I need a new faith. Find me a new faith, Ben. Do that and I’ll face round about. I’ll cut off this comfortable fat that offends your eye. I’ll sell my belongings, quit my wife, and my job, and enlist in the new Crusade! But not until you’ve produced the corpus delicti—Ben, you’re not a genius, my lad, and neither am I. We belong to the class of wage earners—the little people—made for normal adjustments!
ben: Bungalows on Peach Street?
jim: Yes.
ben: Faded purple pajamas?
jim: Yes.
ben: White lace curtains?
jim: Yes.
ben: NO! [He seizes the white lace curtains and tears them down.]
jim [gently]: A stupid gesture, a useless act of resistance. Edna, my wife, will put them back up tomorrow.
[Ben catches his breath in a desperate sob. He looks about wildly, then charges out. The door is heard slamming.]
edna [wildly at the telephone]: Alma? Alma, that screwball husband of yours is over here raising the roof and I just can’t endure it! —Huh?
jim: Ben’s gone, Edna. [Pause.]
edna: I just called Alma. —She’s all packed up and is going home to her mother. —Now what would you call that?
jim: The luck of the Irish!
fade
[Mr. E laughs offstage.]
1 American news commentator for CBS and NBC; famed for his frontline radio broadcasts during World War II.