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making, is life has got to be allowed to continue even after the dream of life is—all—over....
    [Brick is without his crutch, leaning on furniture, he crosses to pick it up as she continues as if possessed by a will outside herself:]
    Why I remember when we double-dated at college, Gladys Fitzgerald and I and you and Skipper, it was more like a date between you and Skipper. Gladys and I were just sort of tagging along as if it was necessary to chaperone you!—to make a good public impression—
     
    BRICK [turns to face her, half lifting his crutch] : Maggie, you want me to hit you with this crutch? Don't you know I could kill you with this crutch?
     
    MARGARET : Good Lord, man, d' you think I'd care if you did?
     
    BRICK : One man has one great good true thing in his life. One great good thing which is true!—I had friendship with Skipper.—You are naming it dirty!
     
    MARGARET : I'm not naming it dirty! I am naming it clean.
     
    BRICK : Not love with you, Maggie, but friendship with Skipper was that one great true thing, and you are naming it dirty!
    MARGARET : Then you haven't been listenin', not understood what I'm saying! I'm naming it so damn clean that it killed poor Skipper!—You two had something that had to be kept on ice, yes, incorruptible, yes!—and death was the only icebox where you could keep it....
     
    BRICK : I married you, Maggie. Why would I marry you, Maggie, if I was—?
     
    MARGARET : Brick, don't brain me yet, let me finish!—I know, believe me I know, that it was only Skipper that harbored even any unconscious desire for anything not perfectly pure between you two!—Now let me skip a little. You married me early that summer we graduated out of Ole Miss, and we were happy, weren't we, we were blissful, yes, hit heaven together ev'ry time that we loved! But that fall you an' Skipper turned down wonderful offers of jobs in order to keep on bein' football heroes—pro-football heroes. You organized the Dixie Stars that fall, so you could keep on bein' team-mates for ever! But somethin' was not right with it!— Me included! —between you. Skipper began hittin' the bottle... you got a spinal injury—couldn't play the Thanksgivin' game in Chicago, watched it on TV from a traction bed in Toledo. I joined Skipper. The Dixie Stars lost because poor Skipper was drunk. We drank together that night all night in the bar of the Blackstone and when cold day was comin' up over the Lake an' we were comin' out drunk to take a dizzy look at it, I said, 'SKIPPER! STOP LOVIN' MY HUSBAND OR TELL HIM HE'S GOT TO LET YOU ADMIT IT TO HIM!'-one way or another!
    HE SLAPPED ME HARD ON THE MOUTH!—then turned and ran without stopping once, I am sure, all the way back into his room at the Blackstone....
    —When I came to his room that night, with a little scratch like a shy little mouse at his door, he made that pitiful, ineffectual little attempt to prove that what I had said wasn't true—
    [Brick strikes at her with crutch, a blow that shatters the gemlike lamp on the table.]
    —In this way, I destroyed him, by telling him truth that he and his world which he was born and raised in, yours and his world, had told him could not be told?
    —From then on Skipper was nothing at all but a receptacle for liquor and drugs....
    — Who shot cock-robin? I with my—
    [She throws back her head with tight shut eyes.]
    — merciful arrow!
    [Brick strikes at her; misses.]
    Missed me!—Sorry,—I'm not tryin' to whitewash my behaviour, Christ, no! Brick, I'm not good. I don't know why people have to pretend to be good, nobody's good. The rich or the well-to-do can afford to respect moral patterns, conventional moral patterns, but I could never afford to, yeah, but—I'm honest! Give me credit for just that, will you please?—Born poor, raised poor, expect to die poor unless I manage to get us something out of what Big Daddy leaves when he dies of cancer! But Brick?!— Skipper is dead! I'm alive! Maggie the cat