“I’ve told you over ‘n’ over again what the layoff is, yet every time you open your mouth, you make it sound like something—low and dirty.”
Olive is once again at loggerheads with Pearl over what makes the layoff season so special to her. Olive is nearly 40, but immature and the layoff season means fives months of romantic magic every year without all the decidedly non-magical intrusions of an actual marriage. Pearl’s conception that there is something dirty about it springs from her own imagination, of course, but the idea was really planted there by Bubba who suggested that Oliver in delirious love for the season neglected to mention the more earthly pursuits that make it such a time heavenly magic for her.
“Kathie? Well, that’s what I’ll call you. Okay?”
Johnnie has just melted Bubba’s heart by asking her what her real name is and suggesting that the reason everybody calls her by that nickname is because they want to keep her a kid and not allow her to grow up. From that point, Bubba is on her way to discovering for herself what makes the layoff season such a special time for Olive.
“A grown woman howling over a silly Kewpie doll. That’s Olive for yer!”
The doll is one of a collection that Roo has brought to Olive every year during the layoff season for the past sixteen years. They are what gives the play its title. They are more than that, however; the dolls are the central symbol of Olive’s lack of maturity. And Emma’s exasperation confirms the central imagery of that maturity because she is right. That is Olive, through and through.
“She’s gunna have the sort of respectability that doesn’t need a black dress to show it.”
The black dress is for pearl what the Kewpie dolls are for Olive, but in reverse. Where the dollars are the symbol of Olive’s refusal to grow up and accept maturity, the “good black” is Pearl’s go-to attire for presenting her maturity to the world. The reference in this particular quote is to her daughter and the fact that she is raising her right; meaning she is raising her not to become a stunted adolescent like Olive.
