Read Online The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder - Free Book Online Page A

hasn’t been exactly a happy one. I wouldn’t have my friend hear some of these lines for the whole world. I don’t suppose it occurred to the author that some other women might have gone through the experience of losing their husbands like this. Wild horses wouldn’t drag from me the details of my friend’s life, but . . . well, they’d been married twenty years, and before he got rich, why, she’d done the washing and everything.
    MR. FITZPATRICK:
    Miss Somerset, your friend will forgive you. We must play this scene.
    SABINA:
    Nothing, nothing will make me say some of those lines . . . about “a man outgrows a wife every seven years” and . . . and that one about “the Mohammedans being the only people who looked the subject square in the face.” Nothing.
    MR. FITZPATRICK:
    Miss Somerset! Go to your dressing room. I’ll read your lines.
    SABINA:
    Now everybody’s nerves are on edge.
    MR. ANTROBUS:
    Skip the scene.
    MR. FITZPATRICK and the other ACTORS go off.
    SABINA:
    Thank you. I knew you’d understand. We’ll do just what I said. So Mr. Antrobus is going to divorce his wife and marry me. Mr. Antrobus, you say: “It won’t be easy to lay all this before my wife.”
    The ACTORS withdraw. ANTROBUS walks about, his hand to his forehead muttering:
    ANTROBUS:
    Wait a minute. I can’t get back into it as easily as all that. “My wife is a very obstinate woman.” Hm . . . then you say . . . hm . . . Miss Fairweather, I mean Lily, it won’t be easy to lay all this before my wife. It’ll hurt her feelings a little.
    SABINA:
    Listen, George: other people haven’t got feelings. Not in the same way that we have,—we who are presidents like you and prize-winners like me. Listen, other people haven’t got feelings; they just imagine they have. Within two weeks they go back to playing bridge and going to the movies.
    Listen, dear: everybody in the world except a few people like you and me are just people of straw. Most people have no insides at all. Now that you’re president you’ll see that. Listen, darling, there’s a kind of secret society at the top of the world,—like you and me,—that know this. The world was made for us. What’s life anyway? Except for two things, pleasure and power, what is life? Boredom! Foolishness. You know it is. Except for those two things, life’s nau-se-at-ing. So,—come here!
    She moves close. They kiss.
    So.
    Now when your wife comes, it’s really very simple; just tell her.
    ANTROBUS:
    Lily, Lily: you’re a wonderful woman.
    SABINA:
    Of course I am.
    They enter the cabana and it hides them from view. Distant roll of thunder. A third black disk appears on the weather signal. Distant thunder is heard. MRS. ANTROBUS appears carrying parcels. She looks about, seats herself on the bench left, and fans herself with her handkerchief. Enter GLADYS right, followed by two CONVEENERS . She is wearing red stockings.
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    Gladys!
    GLADYS:
    Mama, here I am.
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    Gladys Antrobus!!! Where did you get those dreadful things?
    GLADYS:
    Wha-a-t? Papa liked the color.
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    You go back to the hotel this minute!
    GLADYS:
    I won’t. I won’t. Papa liked the color.
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    All right. All right. You stay here. I’ve a good mind to let your father see you that way. You stay right here.
    GLADYS:
    I . . . I don’t want to stay if . . . if you don’t think he’d like it.
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    Oh . . . it’s all one to me. I don’t care what happens. I don’t care if the biggest storm in the whole world comes. Let it come.
    She folds her hands.
    Where’s your brother?
    GLADYS:
    In a small voice.
    He’ll be here.
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    Will he? Well, let him get into trouble. I don’t care. I don’t know where your father is, I’m sure.
    Laughter from the cabana.
    GLADYS:
    Leaning over the rail.
    I think