Read The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis Online
Authors: Lydia Davis
Q.
A. Yes, another one was excused because he had a nephew on the police force.
Q.
A. Well, they were all selected by lunchtime, and we were allowed to leave for an hour. They pinned special badges on the ones who had been selected for the jury and instructed them not to talk to anyone, and told us not to talk to them.
Q.
A. Yes. I happened to go to the same café as one of the jurors, and I smiled at her, and she smiled back at me, she knew why I was smiling, she seemed nice, but I didn’t dare even say hi.
Q.
A. Yes, we did see some. I think they were brought in from next door. I think the jail was next door and maybe there was an underground passage. Anyway, as far as I can remember, when I first went in, in the morning, I was waiting for the elevator when a line of them came out of another door in the hallway there, in the basement, and went up the stairs next to the elevator. There was one policeman in front of them and one policeman behind them. Then, when we all went out at lunchtime, going back down in the elevator and back out those side doors, they were also being taken back downstairs again and back through that door in the basement hallway. Then, when we came back in from lunch, they were being taken up again. I didn’t see them when we left in the afternoon. I guess they were in a courtroom.
Q.
A. There were four or five of them, all men, in orange suits. They were wearing handcuffs and each one was carrying a manila folder, holding it in front of him. They weren’t talking, and they looked pretty subdued. They were walking in a line, single file. They all had to keep their arms and hands, and those manila folders, in the same position because of the handcuffs. So they were a little like a show on stage, coordinated.
Q.
A. Yes, it made me feel even more that I was good, or that I was not bad. That it was all very simple, some people were good and some people were not so good. There were people who were proceeding correctly with their lives, and this could be proved by asking them a few questions. And there were people who were not proceeding correctly with their lives.
Q.
A. Though you sensed a bond with the others, when you were all standing around outside during a break. The feeling that you were all in this together, thrown together by chance.
Q.
A. Yes, at lunchtime, when we all went out at once, it reminded me of something and I wasn’t sure what. Then I realized it was ladybugs. You can order a package of ladybugs and you get a few hundred in the package. You keep them in the refrigerator until the warm weather comes, and then you release them to feed in your yard. Some of them stay nearby and feed, and some fly away. That’s how it was. We were released all at the same time into the neighborhood, nearly two hundred of us, most of us not knowing the neighborhood, and we went out and looked for a place to eat. Most of us stayed and ate near the courthouse.
Q.
A. It was two o’clock when we finally went home. They had us waiting there after lunch in case there was going to be a selection for another trial, but there wasn’t another selection, so they let us go. They told us to call that night after six, and to call each night after that for the rest of the week, to see if we had to come in the next day. I called every night for the rest of the week, but I didn’t have to go in again. In a way, that felt like therapy too, or some kind of discipline. As though I had to be prepared to do the job again, and if I was prepared, and did the right thing, I might be excused from doing the job. So I did the right thing, each night, and each night I was excused and allowed to stay home the next day.
Q.
A. No, not really. I would have liked to be on a jury. I would have been very interested. But at the same time I had a lot of work I was supposed to be doing at home.
Q.
A. Yes, that was all. I didn’t have to do anything more. And I won’t be eligible again for two years.
Q.
A. Yes!
At a certain point in her life, she realizes it is not so much that she wants to have a child as that she does not want not to have a child, or not to have had a child.
I have an old dictionary, about one hundred and twenty years old, that I need to use for a particular piece of work I’m doing this year. Its pages are brownish in the margins and brittle, and very large. I risk tearing them when I turn them. When I open the dictionary I also risk tearing the spine, which is already split more than halfway up. I have to decide, each time I think of consulting it, whether it is worth damaging the book further in order to look up a particular word. Since I need to use it for this work, I know I will damage it, if not today, then tomorrow, and that by the time I am done with this work it will be in poorer condition than it was when I started, if not completely ruined. When I took it off the shelf today, though, I realized that I treat it with a good deal more care than I treat my young son. Each time I handle it, I take the greatest care not to harm it: my primary concern is not to harm it. What struck me today was that even though my son should be more important to me than my old dictionary, I can’t say that each time I deal with my son, my primary concern is not to harm him. My primary concern is almost always something else, for instance to find out what his homework is, or to get supper on the table, or to finish a phone conversation. If he gets harmed in the process, that doesn’t seem to matter to me as much as getting the thing done, whatever it is. Why don’t I treat my son at least as well as the old dictionary? Maybe it is because the dictionary is so obviously fragile. When a corner of a page snaps off, it is unmistakable. My son does not look fragile, bending over a game or manhandling the dog. Certainly his body is strong and flexible, and is not easily harmed by me. I have bruised his body and then it has healed. Sometimes it is obvious to me when I have hurt his feelings, but it is harder to see how badly they have been hurt, and they seem to mend. It is hard to see if they mend completely or are forever slightly damaged. When the dictionary is hurt, it can’t be mended. Maybe I treat the dictionary better because it makes no demands on me, and doesn’t fight back. Maybe I am kinder to things that don’t seem to react to me. But in fact my houseplants do not seem to react much and yet I don’t treat them very well. The plants make one or two demands. Their demand for light has already been satisfied by where I put them. Their second demand is for water. I water them but not regularly. Some of them don’t grow very well because of that and some of them die. Most of them are strange-looking rather than nice-looking. Some of them were nice looking when I bought them but are strange-looking now because I haven’t taken very good care of them. Most of them are in pots that are the same ugly plastic pots they came in. I don’t actually like them very much. Is there any other reason to like a houseplant, if it is not nice-looking? Am I kinder to something that is nice-looking? But I could treat a plant well even if I didn’t like its looks. I should be able to treat my son well when he is not looking good and even when he is not acting very nice. I treat the dog better than the plants, even though he is more active and more demanding. It is simple to give him food and water. I take him for walks, though not often enough. I have also sometimes slapped his nose, though the vet told me never to hit him anywhere near the head, or maybe he said anywhere at all. I am only sure I am not neglecting the dog when he is asleep. Maybe I am kinder to things that are not alive. Or rather if they are not alive there is no question of kindness. It does not hurt them if I don’t pay attention to them, and that is a great relief. It is such a relief it is even a pleasure. The only change they show is that they gather dust. The dust won’t really hurt them. I can even get someone else to dust them. My son gets dirty, and I can’t clean him, and I can’t pay someone to clean him. It is hard to keep him clean, and even complicated trying to feed him. He doesn’t sleep enough, partly because I try so hard to get him to sleep. The plants need two things, or maybe three. The dog needs five or six things. It is very clear how many things I am giving him and how many I am not, therefore how well I’m taking care of him. My son needs many other things besides what he needs for his physical care, and these things multiply or change constantly. They can change right in the middle of a sentence. Though I often know, I do not always know just what he needs. Even when I know, I am not always able to give it to him. Many times each day I do not give him what he needs. Some of what I do for the old dictionary, though not all, I could do for my son. For instance, I handle it slowly, deliberately, and gently. I consider its age. I treat it with respect. I stop and think before I use it. I know its limitations. I do not encourage it to go farther than it can go (for instance to lie open flat on the table). I leave it alone a good deal of the time.
It invariably precedes, even if it do not altogether supersede, the determination of what is absolutely desirable and just.
For years my mother said I was selfish, careless, irresponsible, etc. She was often annoyed. If I argued, she held her hands over her ears. She did what she could to change me but for years I did not change, or if I changed, I could not be sure I had, because a moment never came when my mother said, “You are no longer selfish, careless, irresponsible, etc.” Now I’m the one who says to myself, “Why can’t you think of others first, why don’t you pay attention to what you’re doing, why don’t you remember what has to be done?” I am annoyed. I sympathize with my mother. How difficult I am! But I can’t say this to her, because at the same time that I want to say it, I am also here on the phone coming between us, listening and prepared to defend myself.
You ask me about Edith Wharton.
Well, the name is very familiar.
Dear Sir,
I am writing to you to object to the word
cremains
, which was used by your representative when he met with my mother and me two days after my father’s death.
We had no objection to your representative, personally, who was respectful and friendly and dealt with us in a sensitive way. He did not try to sell us an expensive urn, for instance.
What startled and disturbed us was the word
cremains
. You in the business must have invented this word and you are used to it. We the public do not hear it very often. We don’t lose a close friend or a family member very many times in our life, and years pass in between, if we are lucky. Even less often do we have to discuss what is to be done with a family member or close friend after their death.
We noticed that before the death of my father you and your representative used the words
loved one
to refer to him. That was comfortable for us, even if the ways in which we loved him were complicated.
Then we were sitting there in our chairs in the living room trying not to weep in front of your representative, who was opposite us on the sofa, and we were very tired first from sitting up with my father, and then from worrying about whether he was comfortable as he was dying, and then from worrying about where he might be now that he was dead, and your representative referred to him as “the cremains.”
At first we did not even know what he meant. Then, when we realized, we were frankly upset.
Cremains
sounds like something invented as a milk substitute in coffee, like Cremora, or Coffee-mate. Or it sounds like some kind of a chipped beef dish.
As one who works with words for a living, I must say that any invented word, like
Porta Potti
or
pooper-scooper
, has a cheerful or even jovial ring to it that I don’t think you really intended when you invented the word
cremains
. In fact, my father himself, who was a professor of English and is now being called
the cremains
, would have pointed out to you the alliteration in
Porta Potti
and the rhyme in
pooper-scooper
. Then he would have told you that
cremains
falls into the same category as
brunch
and is known as a portmanteau word.
There is nothing wrong with inventing words, especially in a business. But a grieving family is not prepared for this one. We are not even used to our loved one being gone. You could very well continue to employ the term
ashes
. We are used to it from the Bible, and are even comforted by it. We would not misunderstand. We would know that these ashes are not like the ashes in a fireplace.
Yours sincerely.
Tonight we are going to a party to celebrate my dentist’s wife’s graduation from college. All these years, while the dentist has been working on my teeth, his wife has been earning credits at the college, just a few at a time. Every semester, along with her other courses, she has been studying painting with my husband, who teaches painting and drawing at the college. She has been studying with him in a tutorial situation. She is an enthusiastic flower gardener and paints mostly flowers. She has written texts about her flower gardens, to go with her paintings. My husband told me that a flower painting of hers that was hanging in the Art Building at commencement time was stolen—by a student, he thought, or a student’s parents.
I didn’t know she was actually earning a degree until we received the invitation to this party to be given by her friend, who is a faculty secretary at the college. A few days after the invitation arrived, we received another one from the same woman, but for a different date. I was sure there had been a mistake. But in fact she is simply giving two parties, and we are invited to both.