Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams Page B

pull yourself together or if
     you don't.
    BRICK:
    That's right, Big Daddy.
    BIG DADDY:
    You sound like you thought I was kidding.
    BRICK [ rising ]:
    No, sir, I know you're not kidding.
    BIG DADDY:
    But you don't care—?

    BRICK [ hobbling
     toward the gallery door ]:
    No, sir, I don't care . . . .
    Now how about taking a look at your birthday fireworks and getting some
     of that cool breeze off the river?
    [ He stands in the gallery doorway as the
     night sky turns pink and green and gold with successive flashes of
     light. ]
    BIG DADDY:
    WAIT!—Brick . . . .
    [ His voice drops. Suddenly there is
     something shy, almost tender, in his restraining gesture. ]
    Don't let's—leave it like this, like them other
     talks we've had, we've always—talked around things,
     we've—just talked around things for some rotten reason, I don't
     know what, it's always like something was left not spoken, something avoided
     because neither of us was honest enough with the—other . . . .
    BRICK:
    I never lied to you, Big Daddy.
    BIG DADDY:
    Did I ever to you?
    BRICK:
    No, sir . . . .
    BIG DADDY:
    Then there is at least two people that never lied to each other.
    BRICK:
    But we've never talked to each other.
    BIG DADDY:
    We can now.

    BRICK:
    Big Daddy, there don't seem to be anything much to say.
    BIG DADDY:
    You say that you drink to kill your disgust with lying.
    BRICK:
    You said to give you a reason.
    BIG DADDY:
    Is liquor the only thing that'll kill this disgust?
    BRICK:
    Now. Yes.
    BIG DADDY:
    But not once, huh?
    BRICK:
    Not when I was still young an’ believing. A drinking man's someone who
     wants to forget he isn't still young an’ believing.
    BIG DADDY:
    Believing what?
    BRICK:
    Believing . . . .
    BIG DADDY:
    Believing what?
    BRICK [ stubbornly
     evasive ]:
    Believing . . . .
    BIG DADDY:
    I don't know what the hell you mean by believing and I don't think you
     know what you mean by believing, but if you still got sports in your blood, go back
     to sports announcing and—

    BRICK:
    Sit in a glass box watching games I can't play? Describing what I
     can't do while players do it? Sweating out their disgust and confusion
     in contests I'm not fit for? Drinkin’ a coke, half bourbon, so
     I can stand it? That's no goddam good any more, no help—time
     just outran me, Big Daddy—got there first. . .
    BIG DADDY:
    I think you're passing the buck.
    BRICK:
    You know many drinkin’ men?
    BIG DADDY [ with a
     slight, charming smile ]:
    I have known a fair number of that species.
    BRICK:
    Could any of them tell you why he drank?
    BIG DADDY:
    Yep, you're passin’ the buck to things like time and disgust with
     “mendacity” and—crap! —if you got to use that
     kind of language about a thing, it's ninety—proof bull, and I'm
     not buying any.
    BRICK:
    I had to give you a reason to get a drink!
    BIG DADDY:
    You started drinkin’ when your friend Skipper died.
    [ Silence for five beats. Then Brick makes a
     startled movement, reaching for his crutch. ]
    BRICK:
    What are you suggesting?

    BIG DADDY:
    I'm suggesting nothing.
    [ The shuffle and clop of Brick's
     rapid hobble away from his father's steady, grave
     attention. ]
    —But Gooper an’ Mae suggested that there was something not
     right exactly in your—
    BRICK [ stopping
     short downstage as if backed to a wall ]:
    “Not right"?
    BIG DADDY:
    Not, well, exactly normal in your friendship
     with—
    BRICK:
    They suggested that, too? I thought that was Maggie's suggestion.
    [ Brick's detachment is at last broken
     through. His heart is accelerated; his forehead sweat-beaded; his breath
     becomes more rapid and his voice hoarse. The thing they're discussing,
     timidly and painfully on the side of Big Daddy, fiercely, violently on
     Brick's side, is the inadmissible thing that Skipper died to disavow
     between them. The fact that if it existed it had to be disavowed to “keep
     face” in the world they lived in, may be at the heart of the
     “mendacity” that Brick drinks to