Laura-1a

THE BRIDGE OF DREAMS--LAURA

ACT I--THE GLASS MENAGERIE

[Christine is talking to Laura and Henry in the New York apartment she now shares with her father, Jack, and Laura.]

CHRISTINE
I'm glad you could come back to help with the opening of The Tempest, Uncle Henry. And since I've got you and Laura together this evening, I'd like you to tell me how Dad met you two. The other evening he told me about how he met Mother--doing three plays with her at the University of Kansas. He said he'd met Laura the same way, doing three plays with her at Wellington College . . . and you were involved in all of them. He said, "I'll tell you about that, too . . . but some other time."

LAURA
I guess he meant "met" us doing The Glass Menagerie, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and A Doll's House that year.

HENRY
Of course we'd both met Jack long before doing those plays. We were in each other's office every day from the beginning of the school year, and Laura pretty well ran his office. I think I met your dad at the first faculty meeting, but I'm sure I met your mother--first saw Betty--when I was having lunch with Marge at our little country club. I'll never forget that.

CHRISTINE
I told you Jordan and I had lunch there with Marge when we stopped at Wellington driving out from New York, didn't I? What a woman! [Pause.] I think Dad just remembers that year as structured by those three plays. He said that was his first real job--with his brand new M.A., director of the Wellington College Theatre in the brand new Nelson Fine Arts Center.

HENRY
Well Marge was important to the college . . . and to the alumni association . . . and to the Wellington Community Players--who were also going to use that new theatre. She was eagerly awaiting the new director, and when she saw Betty and Jack come into the country club, she called them over to our table.

[Henry gets up to move to the table at the back corner of the set with Marge. Christine goes off to come on with Jack as Betty.]

MARGE
Jack! Come join us. And is this your wife? Betty? I'm pleased to meet you. I understand you're an actress, too. Jack said you might be interested in our Community Theatre productions. And, oh, Jack, this is the Professor Henry Gordon I was telling you about . . . you know . . . The Bald Soprano.

BETTY
[Laughing.] I'd have guessed you to be a baritone.

JACK
[To Betty, as they all laugh.] The one Marge told me had suggested the Wellington Players might do Ionesco's The Bald Soprano as first production in "our" new theatre. So Henry Gordon, psychology professor . . . meet my wife, Betty.

MARGE
He told me it was a simple play, with a small cast--but a good role for me--and very experimental--"what's happening now" in Paris. He even volunteered to do the technical work on the play, if we'd do it, just to get a chance to work with all the electronic toys in that lovely new theatre. So we read the play, and--in spite of not understanding it--I finally said "yes."

JACK
[To Henry.] I'm told you know enough about lighting to have been a consultant when they installed the system--so I look forward to talking to you about the problems I'll have with The Glass Menagerie, with all its scrims. And about Ionesco, too. I've barely heard of these Absurdists, know a couple of Sartre's plays, No Exit and The Flies, but none of Ionesco.

HENRY
I spent much of last summer in Paris. I saw La Canatrice chauve three times, and was fascinated by it. I actually like Ionesco's The Lesson better--the absurdity makes more sense to me [Smiles at Betty.] . . . and Waiting for Godot . . . but there's no part in either for Marge.

JACK
Well, I can't worry about any of that now. I'll be happy to see what you do with it, but have my own "first play," The Glass Menagerie, to consider, scheduled for about a month after you do The Bald Soprano, I think . . . and classes to teach for the first time, which will be a totally new experience for me.

BETTY
But I might be willing to help on your play. The original is in French, then, isn't it? Do you have a copy I might borrow?

HENRY
We're having our first read-through of the play Thursday night . . . in English, of course. Why don't you come to that. And I'll bring a copy of the play in French.

[Lights follow Henry and Christine, who stop center stage.]

CHRISTINE
And then Mother was in that play, The Bald Soprano, wasn't she? While she was still pregnant with me.

HENRY
And delighted in it. Most of them had no idea what Ionesco was doing, but, though she was meeting him for the first time, too, she was tuning to his wave length as if it were her own--the only one laughing in all the right places. With Ionesco she'd found a kindred spirit. She did The Lesson with Jordan as an after piece in New York a number of times. We saw at the read through how much she wanted to be on stage. She volunteered to work on props and costumes, called Marge the next day and went to lunch with her again. They hit it off very well from the first. Betty said she could ride with Jack when he had things to do at school, but could still drive when necessary, to get to "be around theatre a little." Two weeks later, there she was, seven months pregnant, right in the middle of our play, challenging Marge for center stage. And both of them delighted by it! Jack came back even on evenings he didn't have to, would sit in the back of the theatre, reading his assignments, or grading papers, waiting to take Betty home, and watching her work with Marge.

CHRISTINE
But I thought Marge already had the play cast.

HENRY

Oh yes. Marge had cast her best friend from high school, Norma--who had done a lot of melodrama with her--as Mrs. Martin. But one night Norma said she'd "had enough of that crazy play." Then Betty started telling her how funny it was, laughing and using lines from the play, like "How bizarre, how

absolutely bizarre," and "Groom the goose, don't goose the groom"--which really delighted Marge. It seemed she already had half of the play memorized, just from rehearsals. It was Marge who then asked, "Well, do you think you could do Norma's part?" I was surprised when Betty said "yes" . . . but your dad wasn't. Looking back, it seemed like she'd plotted it all along, since it was obvious Norma didn't think the play was funny at all.

CHRISTINE
Ionesco based The Bald Soprano on exercises in a language book he used when he was struggling with English, just turning some of the ridiculous patterns into a kind of game, didn't he?

HENRY
I think so. When Marge suggested Betty take the part Betty had used that phrase again, "How bizarre!" and laughed, saying, "An ostentatiously pregnant Mrs. Martin? What if I had the baby right on stage?" But she didn't say "No." She'd been at the rehearsals, so knew the problems Norma was having, though I'd seen Norma's attitude as a virtue--delivering the lines as if there were nothing funny about them should have been a riot. But Betty was there rehearsing that evening with script in hand, by two or three evenings later without the script. And borrowing the books from me, she started reading other Ionesco plays in French. Her French was already pretty good.

[They walk back to where Laura is sitting.]

LAURA
Jack was concerned at first about Betty and Marge, said that Marge, of all people, might find Betty intimidating on stage.

HENRY
But Betty never challenged her at all, just settled in as a comfortable pregnant woman, playing language tricks with those absurd speeches. Jack told me that, even at home, everything became, 'What a coincidence! How incredibly bizarre!' until he wanted to strangle someone--someone named Bobby Watson.

CHRISTINE
[To Laura.] I'm hearing about Henry, and about Marge, but how did Dad meet you? As a student in one of his classes?

LAURA
I was in one of his classes, but I also worked in the theatre office, from the beginning of the year. The first play we were doing at the college was The Glass Menagerie, and I was cast as Laura. I also suggested that he and I could do a reading of The Lesson, along with The Bald Soprano. Henry--Professor Gordon in those days--got me reading the Ionesco, too, there in the office, and it seemed to me that your dad [Smiles.]--Professor Curtis then--and I could easily do The Lesson as a staged reading, without much rehearsal, to give the audience a little fuller evening, with two short plays. Your dad liked the idea, but Marge didn't, and Betty said it would be anticlimactic. But we explained it would just be billed as an afterpiece, to fill out the evening for those who wanted to stay for a little more Ionesco, and they finally accepted that as relatively harmless.

HENRY

It was at the rehearsal at Marge's the evening after Jack proposed that idea that I first heard Betty say anything about Laura. [Smiling at her.] Or not "say" exactly. She did a parody of the young college girl trying to impress the new young director--and not just as an actress--obviously intended

as Laura. She even used lines from The Lesson, like 'I've got a toothache,' that showed that she'd read that play, too. Even in late pregnancy, she was a pretty good mimic. It broke Marge up. Me, too, I'd have to admit. [To Laura.] Well, you were a good-looking coed, and Betty was a pregnant wife. It seemed natural enough to me. Jack had his concerns, too. He said you gave that reading so much more time and energy than he'd expected that it required more from him than he wanted to give. It was as if you were the director and he was the delinquent student--a nice turn in terms of that little play.

CHRISTINE
[To Laura.] So that's how you came into his life.

HENRY
[Laughing.] Well, there was more to it than that, but, yes, most noticeably as his Laura in The Glass Menagerie. He thought it a nice touch that he could cast a girl whose name actually was Laura. Laura Burns . . . from Omaha. Your father was chief surgeon in the big hospital there, as I recall. I met him when he and your mother came to see the play opening night . . . but, thanks to Christine, Jack wasn't there that night.

LAURA
Jack met my parents back stage the opening night of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, when we had so many other problems I'm afraid he was a little abrupt with them. My father never trusted Jack. In his letters to me he blamed Jack for everything. Jack said that was probably fair--because a teacher shouldn't get involved with a student, and run off with her. "But he thinks I led you astray. Little does he know." Jack didn't like my father much, either, claimed I'd learned how to manipulate men practicing on my father over the years.

CHRISTINE
[To Henry.] And you say Mother thought something was going on between Dad and Laura from the first. That's interesting.

HENRY
Well, Laura was a theatre major, in her junior year, so almost your mother's age. She'd already had some substantial parts, both in high school in Omaha and in her two years there at Wellington, and had become Jill of all trades around the theatre, part time secretary, then, as they got to work on the play, helping on sets, costumes, publicity--everything. Jack paid her for about ten hours a week, I think, and she put in about thirty. And just below that quiet, obliging surface there was an iron will, yes, used to getting its way with "authority"--which was fine with Jack, so long as she was negotiating for him with higher authority. He'd accepted her help gratefully the first month he was there, but by the time they had the theatre pretty much to themselves, as The Bald Soprano was over, said he could see he'd need to be careful with this girl.

LAURA
Oh? Well he certainly never said that to me.

HENRY
[To Christine.] I'd already had her as a student--in beginning psychology the year before--where you could say she'd psyched me out of an A--and had her in an upper division class that semester. She'd also been one of the girls, the brunette, Hermia, in A Midsummer Night's Dream the year before.

LAURA
Yes . . . Hermia. I remembered it fondly when Christine was Titania . . . found myself still able to mutter many of the lines.

HENRY
[To Christine.] And Jack did begin to neglect Betty. He had in effect turned her over to Marge and me while The Bald Soprano was on--when she was busy and excited--then paid her even less attention just when she needed it most, during that down period right after the play--and in the last days of her pregnancy--because he was so involved in his own play by then, and with his teaching, which he took very seriously. Marge became baffled by Betty, too. Almost inseparable while doing The Bald Soprano, when it was over Marge could hardly get Betty to go to lunch. She said she'd rather sit home and knit though [To Christine.] I don't think you had any booties to show for it, or read, or think about things. Jack thought she was concerned about the baby, though she wouldn't talk about it, said, "We'll worry about that when it's time . . . what good does it do now?" Since she didn't seem to be having any trouble, he tried to accept that . . . when thinking about it at all . . . was mostly thinking about his play. Betty had come to a few of the rehearsals, enough to begin to see herself in the role of Laura, I think, but made no comments, beyond saying she just felt like an outsider, and stopped coming.

LAURA
I could tell that it bothered her to see someone else the center of attention on stage . . . as it always did.

HENRY
But I don't think it ever occurred to Jack that she might be jealous of Laura--with him or as an actress. She knew her own power. Right after The Bald Soprano was over, I was a little concerned about her strange moods, but thought, "Well, what do you expect? She's pregnant. Once the baby is here she'll be too busy to pay any attention to what any of us are doing."

LAURA
And she did make a close friend of their next door neighbor.

[Christine steps over to join Jack in a dining room in Nebraska. As Betty, she is reading the evening paper, after dinner.]

JACK
Well, I need to get back to school. The blocking is going pretty well, but there are still a lot of problems--and one is the weather. If we get another snowstorm like that one two nights ago, I wonder what the road conditions are going to be like coming home. What is the newspaper predicting?

BETTY
[Laughs.] Depend upon ice on the road . . . this is Nebraska. [Gives a little gasp.] Here's a story about the man who lives next door. He saved a boy's life last night. He is State Trooper Kent Brigot, isn't he? Listen! "Dan Driscoll, a Wellington student who commutes from his family farm eight miles north, lost control of his 1947 Ford pickup truck on an icy section of US 81 the other side of Four Corners, hit a bridge abutment, and turned over in the ditch, dislocating his left shoulder and fracturing his left leg. He had severed an artery in the fractured leg and was bleeding badly. State Trooper Kent Brigot found him there, applied a tourniquet, radioed for an ambulance, and accompanied Driscoll to the Wellington hospital." That's really amazing . . . to save someone's life. And he lives right next door. His wife's a teacher, or librarian, or something, at the Junior High School, isn't she? We know them well enough to borrow lawn tools, or say "hello" in passing, but have lived here for almost two months and don't really know our neighbors on either side. I think I'll go over and get better acquainted.

[Christine comes back to the living room.]

LAURA
The reason I remember that incident so well is that I knew Dan . . . not much of a student, but very likable . . . who then killed Officer Brigot with that same 1947 Ford pickup while we were rehearsing A Doll's House that spring. He'd had enough time to get out of the hospital and get that truck back on the road, but not enough time to learn how to drive it, I guess.

HENRY
[To Christine.] In the later incident, Kent had stopped a fellow for speeding on State Highway 15, north of Wellington, given him a ticket, and was evidently checking on something at the back of the patrol car, when the boy came around the curve too fast, swerved onto the wrong side of the road and rammed into the parked police car, killing Kent instantly. The guy Kent had given the ticket was maybe half a mile down the road, heard the tires squealing and then saw the accident in his rearview mirror. He saw the boy stop and get out of the truck. But, by the time he turned around and drove back, he was limping away in what was left of his truck. And what was left of him had to be picked up later at his folks' farm. No one could have helped Kent by then, anyway, but the boy was the one I felt sorriest for in the whole stupid affair. I think of how often something like that could have happened to me when I was a teenage driver.

LAURA
I remember that we canceled rehearsals for the funeral--just when Betty and I were switching roles. I wonder what Dan's doing now . . . at forty. Probably farming . . . with a new truck. Life goes on.

HENRY
Well, Betty got acquainted with Emma Brigot that same semi-snowbound November evening--and had found a friend. By then Betty was distinctly pregnant--due to deliver almost any time--and Emma responded like the good Nebraska farm woman she was, showing how much the rest of us had been failing her. Jack would have been more considerate, but, given Betty's quixotic temperament, didn't know how. And Marge and I weren't much better at dealing with the emotional currents of a pregnant woman. After what Jack had told me of their experience in Kansas, I'd begun to attribute much of Betty's moodiness to the comedown it must have been to move from center stage, Miss Campus Queen, with football stars and leading men at your call, to Mrs. Faculty Wife at a little college in Nebraska, to whom no one is paying any attention at all.

LAURA
I don't see how it could have been about Jack and me . . . though he did say later that she'd remarked about him talking more about me than the other kids in the play at home, and spending more time with me than with her, but there really wasn't anything for him to apologize for. I can vouch for that.

HENRY
But Betty had obviously met someone, in Emma, who was on the right wave length. Emma had four children of her own an oldest boy in the Navy, on the highway patrol there in Wellington now, like his dad was, I believe; an oldest daughter already married to a farmer living about three miles south of town; a younger son in college at the University of Nebraska; and the youngest, Peg, in her first year of high school. And Emma was the most genuinely maternal woman I've ever known. It really was as if she were Betty's mother.

LAURA
And Jack's mother, too--making sure Betty had dinner ready when he came home, and his shirts ironed to go to school..

HENRY
She hadn't run over as the "welcome wagon lady" the day they moved in--probably saw them as needing to get acquainted with "all those college people" first. But when Betty went over there that evening, bubbling over about what Kent had done, Emma saw what she needed immediately. Jack said that, in spite of a late rehearsal, he got home before Betty did. Kent was on the night shift, and Peg had come home from a basketball game to turn directly to watching the late movie on television, while Betty had talked to Emma until after midnight, sitting there in that warm Nebraska living room.

LAURA
Betty spent a lot of time with Emma from then until you were born. Once Jack knew she had Emma to turn to, he might not even go home for dinner, would just call and tell her what he was working on. Then he and I might go over to the Happy Scotchman, or whatever that hamburger stand across from school was called, for a quick cheeseburger, glass of milk, and piece of coconut cream pie, as we discussed props, or publicity, or budget then right back to work, on the lighting lay out, or a special rehearsal to get my limp just right, or whatever.

HENRY
You two did spend more and more time together, until I became a little suspicious, myself. [To Christine.] You read about these schoolgirl crushes and think "situation comedy," right? But he was lucky to have you as his Laura. Whenever I think of The Glass Menagerie I think of you in that role.

LAURA
But not as good as Betty . . . was I?

HENRY
That's not fair. Betty was a natural, but you were certainly good enough to play lead roles at bigger schools than Wellington. And you were willing to work. So Jack worked with you, by the hour, to get your own part polished perfectly, and to take care of all the other details of production--which you were willing to work on. But he, too, felt that some of your special rehearsals were a little contrived, and, I admit, I'd even started kidding him about it. [To Christine.] I think he tried to stop meeting with Laura alone . . . quite so often . . . said he wasn't interested in a backstage romance, only doing the play.

LAURA
And I told him that I was surprised that he'd think I had anything more than the play in mind . . . but, it's true, I did. And, as I look back on my innocent self at twenty, I was making it as clear as I could that I was a sophisticated woman of the world, who knew that people in the theatre were above the petty moral limitations that kept most people in Nebraska in the Middle Ages. I told him that the British or French or Italian actresses and directors that I read about in magazines understood 20th century relationships between men and women. I never quite said, 'And I'm available,' but I was.

HENRY
[To Christine.] She was, indeed, a pert and shapely 20 . . . tempting enough. Jack said he knew this very well, but felt there was a wide enough insurance margin, not exactly in terms of being true to Betty, but in terms of what he knew you had to pay for what you got in affairs of this kind, that he could

imagine, not only the wild night, but also what they'd be talking about the next morning not only the orgy, but the hangover. He said that had kept him out of a lot of trouble over the years . . . or from leading the more exciting life he might have led.

LAURA
I can just see you two professors, discussing me so cavalierly in the office as if I were a threat . . . while I was struggling with my own emotions . . . in love as only a twenty-year-old can be. [To Christine.] The real confrontation came on dress rehearsal night. We were still rehearsing the first act when Jack got a call from Emma Brigot that Betty's labor was finally beginning and that he'd better get her to the hospital. I heard him say, "Why now?"--after he'd hung up, I believe. It's terrible to admit that our play was more important to your father than your birth, but you'd been expected at least a week earlier. I could tell how frustrated he was when he told us he'd get back if he could.

HENRY
Emma went with them to the hospital, assuring Jack that everything was perfectly normal, and, with the vague notion that labor usually went on for hours, he thought he might be able to get back to the theatre for an hour or two of the finishing touches he thought the play needed and still be back at the hospital by the time you were born. He said he felt guilty about it, but, with Betty's groaning consent, and Emma's tight lipped assurance that she would be there, back he went. I offered to take over for him, but he said there were just a few things he wanted to be sure about. Then, in the last scene, I remember you got upset over some minor piece of business.

LAURA
Jack always insisted on saying I "threw a tantrum."

HENRY
[To Christine.] Well, I did think she was going to break all the glass animals we'd borrowed for her menagerie. The fact that she didn't break a single one should have been a clue.

LAURA
Then Jack threw a tantrum of his own. I apologized, understanding how tense he must be, but insisted that we work out something I could feel comfortable with opening night.

HENRY
So Jack said, "All right everybody. That's no doubt the best we can do. Make up call at 7:00 tomorrow night. If I'm not here, Professor Gordon will be in charge. From this point on the director is just a nuisance, anyway--like the father when the baby is born--right? Which means I had better get back to the hospital."

LAURA
[Seductively.] Then he and I were there in the theatre alone. While you were being born, I was declaring myself to be in love with your father, and I didn't feel embarrassed by that at all. I'd been struggling with it--thinking about his wife and her baby--but I thought he needed to know my feelings about him, and I needed to know his about me, before I could go on stage the next night. He accused me of blackmailing him, at the worst possible time, said this was more bizarre than anything in The Bald Soprano. [Laura is laughing by this time.]

HENRY
Jack told me later that, in resisting her advances, his footwork alone would have qualified the scene as high farce--and that he launched a quick counter offensive, grounded in ambiguity.

LAURA
Yes, he said he could understand my anxiety about opening night--but this wasn't the time to . . . worry about us. After the play was over, we'd have to consider . . . and so on. When he finally drove me back to the dorm it was close to midnight.

HENRY
When he got back to the hospital he said Emma was very upset.

[The hospital scene.]

EMMA
Where have you been? I've been trying to call, but . . .

JACK
I'm sorry. I should have moved the phone to the theatre connection . . . but . . . has Betty had the baby?

DOCTOR
Yes . . . and I'm afraid there were complications. The baby seems fine . . . was more than full term. But it was a difficult delivery, and we decided on surgery late. It involved a kind of hysterectomy. I can show you what I mean.

JACK
Just tell me what it means . . . to my wife.

DOCTOR
Well, to put it simply, it means that your wife won't be able to have another baby. We'll watch her for the next couple of days for other complications, but that much is certain.

[Back to the living room.]

HENRY
Jack said that he began to weep as the doctor told him this, not because he had any particular desire for more children--had never thought about it--but, he said, mostly for the state of his own soul, because he hadn't been there with Betty when she faced that kind of trauma. He always felt guilty about that. It wouldn't have made any difference at all, but it did to Jack . . . and who knows about Betty? From that point on I assumed all the director's duties, allowing him to spend his evenings at the hospital. The play was scheduled to run Friday and Saturday evenings for two weeks. He could have visited Betty in the afternoon, after classes, some of which he canceled anyway, and gone on to the theatre in the evenings, if there had been any real need, but I think he was trying to avoid any more awkward confrontations with Laura. He said he was afraid she might get temperamental enough to walk out on the play.

LAURA
Now that really is too much . . . as you well know.

HENRY
He knew he'd have to face her eventually, to settle things in the office, but avoided even going there for a day or two, expecting her to be there. But Laura made it easier by not showing up during the day at all, at the office or in the class she had with him--as if they'd agreed on that. He began to suspect that she was waiting for him to come to her, like a spider in her web, on stage, surrounded by her glass menagerie, where the advantage would be all hers. I made it possible for him to avoid that. There I was, at that critical moment, standing between the designing woman and my beleaguered friend . . . just the beginning of a series of friendly gestures on my part, you know.

LAURA
[To Christine.] I sympathized with Betty over any complications in your birth, but didn't really understand what they were. Henry said you both seemed to be doing pretty well.

HENRY
It's hard to imagine a healthier or more charming baby than you were. It seemed to me your father must've had ulterior motives for not coming to the theatre at all. Laura was still coming to my class, and I never saw any of this "spider woman" stuff. Jack said that, if anything, he was more awkward at the hospital than he would have been at the theatre, just sat there, feeling healthy and helpless, as I always do myself as a visitor in a hospital. He'd talk to Betty, a little, but not about anything central to what either must have been thinking--though they did sometimes exchange looks, he said, that seemed to communicate more, perhaps the unsettling recognition that they seemed to share that each was looking at a total stranger.

LAURA
I already knew that Betty was unhappy in Wellington.

HENRY
[To Christine.] But we were all delighted with you from the first. Jack held you more than Betty did when you were in the room, and told me he would frequently go down to look at you through the nursery window. But he could only spend about so much time doing that, so spent much of the time talking to Emma, who seemed to come to the hospital just so he'd have someone to talk to, or to listen to, as she carried on active conversations with Betty, or with the nurses, since she, in striking contrast to the bewildered husband, knew just the right things to say and do in a hospital room.

LAURA
Betty did have problems with the birth, but I don't remember ever seeing Betty cry over any misfortune, though she could cry very easily, on command, on stage.

HENRY
Jack said Betty was never more beautiful than near the end of that week in the hospital, when she had some of the bloom back in her cheeks, but still looked a little ethereal, with that melancholy mode of "sorrow under control" adding its bitter-sweet touch. He felt increasingly guilty about having unintentionally neglected to be with her in her time of need . . . as she lay there silently contemplating him, without a word of reproach.

CHRISTINE
He must have loved Mother very much.

HENRY
He did . . . and you, too. But he'd have preferred a little anger, or signs of frustration, from her. I'd go to the hospital and tell them how well the play was doing. The Wellington Weekly review heralded a new era in local theatre--good to read, if pretty conventional. I extolled all the cast members, one by one, except Laura, hinting there might be problems with her, then made a point of telling Betty that the main problem with her was believing the Gentleman Caller could pass her by. Betty nodded and smiled to herself, as if it were a private joke.

LAURA
I remember you joking about it one evening, suggesting that we rewrite the ending for closing night so that we'd run off together, leaving Tom and Amanda behind to continue to badger each other the rest of their lives. I was for that.

HENRY
Jack did come to the final performance, slipping in just as the play was beginning. I saw him come in . . . had been looking for him . . . every night. He'd taken Betty and Christine home the day before, and Emma and Peg offered to stay with them so he could see his play. Betty might have gone along, but said, "Too long to sit. I saw some of your rehearsals. But invite them all here, to see the baby, afterwards." And Emma said, "Peg and I will fix some cookies and things." Jack said he watched this play he'd directed, thinking, "Did I do this?" I've seen half a dozen productions of The Glass Menagerie over the years, too--it's a great play, hard to do wrong but that was the best. [To Laura.] He said he was particularly watching you, trying to read the "real you" between the lines, and you were much better than he'd remembered--as you were left at the end your glass menagerie . . . and your dreams. For that he could forgive a lot of foolishness.

LAURA
Yes . . . with my dreams.

HENRY
Jack told us backstage after the play that he was proud of the whole cast, and extended Betty's invitation for a "meet the baby cast party, which you can then take elsewhere and extend into an orgy if you'd like." They were all elated, caught up in the excitement of closing night--all except Laura, it seemed.

LAURA
I hadn't seen Jack face to face since he'd left me at my dorm the night you were born. The minute our eyes met he could see the resentment I felt over his having avoided me for the whole run of the play. So he made a special point of inviting me.

HENRY
Laura went to the party with the young business major who had played The Gentleman Caller. I thought Jack should be saying, "Please! Here's your second chance. Take her!" What could be more natural--a college boy pursuing a college girl. But when I saw him looking at the two of them, it was more like her father might, sceptical about letting them go off alone.

[Laura goes off to enter as her younger self. The light comes up on Jack toward the back of the stage made up like a baby's room, talking to two students as Laura and Lester enter.]

LESTER
[Taking the baby.] This sure is a pretty baby. [To Laura, as he hands the baby to her.] You ready to leave? I'll get your coat.

JACK
[To Laura, as Lester and the others leave.] Well, you did do a great job as Laura.

LAURA
Yes, didn't I. And I've thought about it a lot . . . and about us. I should feel sorry for your wife, and you, since Dr. Gordon says she can't have any more children. But I don't feel sorry for you . . . not at all . . . since you have this beautiful baby. [She rocks Christine in her arms to keep her from interrupting.] I don't even feel sorry for myself just taken advantage of! I feel worse than if you'd seduced me . . . which . . . [She looks him straight in the eye.] you might easily have done.

JACK
[Laughs.] Like Dimmesdale seduced Hester. [Looking at Christine.] I think our little Pearl just winked at me.

LAURA
You grossly abused my affection for you, to get me to do a tremendous amount of work, on stage and off, then tricked me into staying in the play when I was tempted to dump it all--by hiding behind your wife and baby. I did identify with Laura in the play, left by the man she loves to amuse herself with her glass menagerie. I finally decided the important thing was to reaffirm my love, remain true to myself, even if you were a dirty skunk who didn't deserve it. Sooner or later you'll see that, too. You told us once about how an Elizabethan sonneteer would sublimate his emotions in his art. I felt that that was what I was doing, sublimating my emotions into the role. [When Jack inadvertently laughs at this point, it is as if she might hit him--if her hands were not occupied with Christine.]

JACK
You must accept that I've been more concerned about Betty and the new baby than about anything else. It's important for me not to get involved with students anyway.

LAURA
That's all irrelevant. Solomon had a thousand wives . . . John! It still comes down to you and me . . . that's not over yet. You'll see. [Lester calls "Laura!" from off, as Jack and Laura turn toward the door to see Betty standing there quietly, smiling.]

LAURA
Coming! [Handing the baby to Jack, as Lester is at the door with her coat. To Betty.] You certainly have a lovely baby.

JACK
[To Lester.] Well, good luck. [Laura gives him a dirty look, as they leave.]

BETTY
[Continuing to smile.] She seems good with the baby. Maybe she'll be available for us as babysitter. She'll have so much time on her hands now that the play is over. [She leaves.]

JACK
[To the baby.] I'll be surrounded by women with time on their hands . . . all plotting against me. I don't know what she meant by that Solomon reference, but she seemed to think it was profound. I wonder if your mother heard all that. Must have, the way she was smiling. And you, too . . . [Smiles at her.] but I hope you're on my side . . . even if you are one of them.

[Cut back to the living room scene.]

HENRY
[To Christine.] Jack not only thought more of Laura for that outburst, but decided that this whole thing would probably work itself out. Since she did do most of the work at the office, he knew he needed her. And since he no longer felt threatened, he even found her new stance engaging. He thought that not only could he live with this, but it might be edifying to watch a bright young college girl work this kind of emotional overload out of her system. Surely she couldn't sustain it long.

LAURA
I don't believe I ever heard that analysis before.

CHRISTINE
And how did it work out?

LAURA
That will take us through at least two more plays.