from Suddenly Last Summer

By Tennessee Williams

(Catherine's cousin Sebastian died in a horrible way while traveling with Catherine. Catherine was placed in a mental institution by Sebastian's mother, Violet, who refuses to accept Catherine's story of her son's death. A young psychiatrist has been questioning Catherine in the garden of her Aunt Violet's New Orleans home.)

CATHERINE: At a Mardi Gras ball some--some boy that took me to it got too drunk to stand up! I wanted to go home. My coat was in the cloakroom, they couldn't find the check for it in his pockets. I said, "Oh hell, let it go!"--I started for a taxi. Somebody took my arm and said, "I'll drive you home." He took off his coat as we left the hotel and put it over my shoulders, and then I looked at him and--I don't think I'd ever even seem him before then, really!--He took me home in his car but took me another place first. We stopped near the Dueling Oaks at the end of Esplanade Street... Stopped!--I said, "What for?"--He didn't answer, just struck a match in the car to light a cigarette in the car and I looked at him in the car and I knew "what for"!--I think I got out of the car before he got out of the car, and we walked through the wet grass to the great misty oaks as if somebody was calling us for help there! He took me home and said an awful thing to me. "We'd better forget it," he said, "my wife's expecting a child and--."--I just entered the house and sat there thinking a little and then I suddenly called a taxi and went right back to the Roosevelt Hotel ballroom. The ball was still going on. I thought I'd gone back to pick up my borrowed coat but that wasn't what I'd gone back for. I'd gone back to make a scene on the floor of the ballroom, yes, I didn't stop at the cloakroom to pick up Aunt Violet's old mink stole, no, I rushed into the ballroom and spotted him on the floor and ran up to him and beat him as hard as I could in the face and chest with my fists 'till--Cousin Sebastian took me away.