Free A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller Page B

want my respect!
    BEATRICE: So I moved them out, what more do you want? You got your house now, you got your respect.
    EDDIE— he moves about biting his lip: I don’t like the way you talk to me, Beatrice.
    BEATRICE: I’m just tellin’ you I done what you want!
    EDDIE: I don’t like it! The way you talk to me and the way you look at me. This is my house. And she is my niece and I’m responsible for her.
    BEATRICE: So that’s why you done that to him?
    EDDIE: I done what to him?
    BEATRICE: What you done to him in front of her; you know what I’m talkin’ about. She goes around shakin’ all the time, she can’t go to sleep! That’s what you call responsible for her?
    EDDIE, quietly: The guy ain’t right, Beatrice. She is silent. Did you hear what I said?
    BEATRICE: Look, I’m finished with it. That’s all. She resumes her work.
    EDDIE, helping her to pack the tinsel: I’m gonna have it out with you one of these days, Beatrice.
    BEATRICE: Nothin’ to have out with me, it’s all settled. Now we gonna be like it never happened, that’s all.
    EDDIE: I want my respect, Beatrice, and you know what I’m talkin’ about.
    BEATRICE: What?
    Pause.
    EDDIE— finally his resolution hardens: What I feel like doin’ in the bed and what I don’t feel like doin’. I don’t want no—
    BEATRICE: When’d I say anything about that?
    EDDIE: You said, you said, I ain’t deaf. I don’t want no more conversations about that, Beatrice. I do what I feel like doin’ or what I don’t feel like doin’.
    BEATRICE: Okay.
    Pause.
    EDDIE: You used to be different, Beatrice. You had a whole different way.
    BEATRICE: I’m no different.
    EDDIE : You didn’t used to jump me all the time about everything. The last year or two I come in the house I don’t know what’s gonna hit me. It’s a shootin’ gallery in here and I’m the pigeon.
    BEATRICE: Okay, okay.
    EDDIE: Don’t tell me okay, okay, I’m tellin’ you the truth. A wife is supposed to believe the husband. If I tell you that guy ain’t right don’t tell me he is right.
    BEATRICE: But how do you know?
    EDDIE: Because I know. I don’t go around makin’ accusations. He give me the heeby-jeebies the first minute I seen him. And I don’t like you sayin’ I don’t want her marryin’ anybody. I broke my back payin’ her stenography lessons so she could go out and meet a better class of people. Would I do that if I didn’t want her to get married? Sometimes you talk like I was a crazy man or sump’m.
    BEATRICE: But she likes him.
    EDDIE: Beatrice, she’s a baby, how is she gonna know what she likes?
    BEATRICE: Well, you kept her a baby, you wouldn’t let her go out. I told you a hundred times.
    Pause.
    EDDIE: All right. Let her go out, then.
    BEATRICE: She don’t wanna go out now. It’s too late, Eddie.
    Pause.
    EDDIE: Suppose I told her to go out. Suppose I—
    BEATRICE: They’re going to get married next week, Eddie.
    EDDIE— his head jerks around to her: She said that?
    BEATRICE: Eddie, if you want my advice, go to her and tell her good luck. I think maybe now that you had it out you learned better.
    EDDIE: What’s the hurry next week?
    BEATRICE: Well, she’s been worried about him bein’ picked up; this way he could start to be a citizen. She loves him, Eddie. He gets up, moves about uneasily, restlessly. Why don’t you give her a good word? Because I still think she would like you to be a friend, y’know? He is standing, looking at the floor. I mean like if you told her you’d go to the wedding.
    EDDIE: She asked you that?
    BEATRICE: I know she would like it. I’d like to make a party here for her. I mean there oughta be some kinda send-off. Heh? I mean she’ll have trouble enough in her life, let’s start it off happy. What do you say?