The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (51 page)

Susan A. uses the more loaded conjunction
but
: “When it was over everything looked like a fairyland but some trees were bent and broken.” She follows this sentence with another compound-complex sentence, using the strong conjunction
so
and including an imperative: “We are very sorry that you are in the hospital, so get well quick.”

Some of the children’s verb tenses are unclear.

Apropos a movie, Theodore writes: “I wish you saw it.” It is unclear whether he means “I wish you could see it” or “I wish you had seen it.”

Billy T. writes: “I hope you will eat well.” It is not clear when or where Stephen should eat well.

Joseph A. writes: “I hope you have fun.” It is not clear when or where Stephen should have fun. Both Billy and Joseph probably intended the meaning conveyed by the present participle forms “are eating well” and “are having fun.” It may be noted that Joseph is the only child to associate Stephen’s stay in the hospital with having fun.

The most vivid verb is Scott’s Anglo-Saxon
yank
.

The only instances of use of the imperative (4, one softened by “Please”) are found in the letters of girls. This may imply a greater inclination to “command” or “boss” on the part of the girls than the boys, but may also be statistically insignificant, given the small number of letters in the sample.

The style of the letters is for the most part informal, i.e., neither excessively formal nor extremely casual or colloquial. Occasionally, the diction becomes conversational: there are two instances of
Well
as openings of sentences (both omit the comma that should follow). There is a vivid conversational verb,
yank
, in Scott’s letter. It is worth noting, however, a conspicuous formality common to most of the children on at least one point: given a choice, as they seem to have been, most of the children sign their full names to their letters. Also, in the two instances in which children refer to other children by name, they use the full name, even though Stephen would have known perfectly well from the context which child they were talking about. It may be that in the school setting, first and last names were so commonly used inseparably by the teacher in calling the roll or in reprimanding, that when writing in school, in any case, the children profoundly identified one another and themselves by first and last names both.

Two of the children achieve moments of stylistic eloquence. One, Susan A., creates a vivid concrete image that is enhanced by her use of alliteration and a forceful rhythm: “some trees were bent and broken.” The other, Sally, opens with a powerful specific image—“Your seat is empty”—and then reinforces it with parallel structure: “Your stocking is not finished.”

It could be argued that Scott, too, achieves a certain pleasing balance with his alternation, in the four sentences of his cogent letter, between “over there” and “here where we are,” “up there” and “back here again,” in fact creating a seesaw motion and thereby tying Stephen more closely to the class than any of the other children.

Some of the letters are bland and/or inexpressive, while others are more informative and more colorful, and/or express their writers’ personalities more vividly.

Probably the blandest letter, in that it includes all the most commonly expressed formulaic sentiments and only the most general “news,” with no departures from convention in content or style that would express an individual personality, is Maureen’s. Although it is undeniably friendly and cheerful, the friendliness and cheerfulness seem somewhat rote: “How are you feeling? I miss you very much. I hope that you will be back in school soon. I like school very much. I had a very nice time in the snow.” Her handwriting is round and slants consistently to the right with one notable exception: the word
I
, which is vertical. It may not be going too far to suggest that these markedly contrasting
I
’s express a sublimated rebelliousness, a suppressed desire to be less conformist and obedient than she evidently is.

Another fairly bland letter, in a small, round script, is Mary’s, although she is slightly more emphatic than Maureen—“We all miss you very much”—and adds one specific: “I have had lots of fun playing with my sled in the snow.”

The content can be generally summarized as falling under the following headings, within the two more general categories of expressions of sympathy and “news”:

Miss You

Many of the children’s letters include the standard “We [or I] miss you” or “We [or I] miss you very much,” often paired with “We [or I] hope you will be back soon.”

Van opens with those two sentiments and then finds himself at a loss: in thin, tremulous handwriting, with so little space between the words that they almost touch, he closes with “I think that is all to say [
sic
] because I just can’t think.” Some of Van’s letters sit nicely on the line, some float up above it, and some sink below it. It is possible, in his case—as in others in which the child betrays some anxiety—that the letters do not sit on the line because the child is overcompensating: for fear of letting his letters sink below the line, he keeps them up off the line; for fear of letting them float up off the line, he forces them down below it. We must remember, when imagining these children learning to write neat script, that a line is not an actual resting place for a letter. It is a conceptual mark, and a very thin one, and a beginning writer finds it difficult to touch that line exactly with each letter. There is thus a certain amount of anxiety, for some children, even in the act of writing script, regardless of what they are trying to express.

Joan is more specific, and thus more poignant, immediately evoking the classroom: “I miss you in our row in school.” She conveys, in addition, a sense of solidarity among the children in that particular row—“our row.”

Sally is even more specific, and her letter, though one of the briefest, carries the most powerful, and the darkest, emotional burden: “Hope you are feeling better. Your seat is empty. Your stocking is not finished.” This last sentence is followed by a period, but then, ambiguously, by a lowercase
b
, so that we cannot be sure whether Sally meant to continue the sentence or begin a new one when she goes on to say, again dwelling on darker possibilities: “but I don’t think it will be finished.” The function of the
but
is also unclear. Sally’s handwriting is faint and thin, and the letters extremely small, except when, as she has evidently mistaken the teacher’s instructions, the tall letters such as
f
and
l
extend hesitantly all the way up to touch the line above. The content, along with the brevity of the letter and Sally’s small handwriting, would seem to indicate either an innate pessimism or a low self-esteem, despite the quite exceptional exuberance and panache of her capital
H
.

How Are You/Hope You Are Feeling Better

Another commonly expressed sentiment is: “We [or I] hope you are feeling well/will feel better soon/will get well soon/how are you feeling?”

Billy J. opens with “I hope you are feeling well,” closes with “I hope you will be back soon,” and adds only one sentence in between: “We are not doing much.” The words
not doing much
are smaller and more compact than the rest, perhaps reflecting the content of the remark. Billy’s letters also tend to sink below the line, according well in spirit with his only news—that not much is being accomplished.

Lois strikes a conversational note that is stylistically unusual among the letters when she writes, in bold black script that sits squarely on the line but sometimes disappears off the right side of the page: “How are you feeling now? Better, I hope.”

Joseph A., instead of writing “How are you?” writes “How do you?” The teacher does not notice this.

Come Back Soon/Wish You Were Here

Lois, who manages eight sentences within the space of her six lines, expresses this sentiment twice, once at the beginning—“When will you be back?”—and once, employing a courteous command, at the end—“Please try to come back soon.”

Carol’s letter, as quoted above, adds the intensifying explanation “because it is lonesome without you”—either quite sincere, since she lives next door to Stephen and may be a close friend, or at least polite. It should be noted that Carol stands in a privileged relationship to Stephen, since their families are also friends, as her letter clearly indicates.

The enthusiastic Joseph goes farther, expressing impatience: “I can’t wait until you come back to school.”

Stephen’s friend Jonathan, whose handwriting is well rounded and upright, each letter sitting firmly on the line, uses almost the same words: “I can hardly wait until you will be home again.” Presumably, Jonathan replaces the more common “back to school” with “home again” because he is not only a good friend but a neighbor.

One girl, Diane, expresses the same sentiment in almost the same words—“I can hardly wait for you to come back to school”—and then reinforces it with a second sentence that employs two imperatives: “Hurry up and come back.”

Her friend Mary K. expresses it more precisely and rather severely, hoping that Stephen “will be back in school in a very short time.”

Billy T. emphasizes Stephen’s discharge from the hospital rather than his return to school. He also devotes two of the three sentences of his brief letter to this idea: “When will you be out? I hope you will be out soon.”

Another boy, Scott, expresses this sentiment in one of the most cogent letters, in which each sentence follows logically from the one preceding. He begins with empathy, “I know how it feels over there,” and then develops his idea, first repeating his expression of empathy (unusual among the letters): “I think you would like to be here where we are.” Now he adds a note of drama, along with a rare use of the subjunctive: “And if I were up there I’d yank you out of bed.” Finally he completes his back-and-forth structure with another reference to the school and the logical—“Then”—result of his imagined action: “Then you could be back here again.” (Scott’s phrases “over there” and “up there” signal his awareness that the hospital is some distance from the town and on an elevated site, a fact supported by Jonathan’s identical use of “up there” and a third child’s reference to “Hospital Hill” in a description of sledding.)

One girl, Susan B., in one of the briefer letters (three lines, three sentences), expresses only the common sentiments and then adds the wistful secondhand report: “Jonathan A. told me that he send [
sic
] you a big box of candy.” Her handwriting changes noticeably in the latter part of this sentence: dark, upright, and confident at the start of her letter, the words become increasingly faint and slant more and more to the right until the word
candy
, thin and delicate, is lying almost on its side.

Experience in Hospital/Food

Only a few children express curiosity about Stephen’s experience in the hospital.

Kingsley asks: “Do you like it at the hospital?”

Stephen’s good friend Jonathan, too, is interested: “How is it up there?”

Stephen’s next-door neighbor, Carol, is more specific: “Do you have good meals there?”

Billy T. is also concerned about Stephen’s food, presumably in the hospital, although his use of the future tense makes this somewhat unclear: “I hope you will eat well.”

Arlene, who was evidently not sure how to spell her own name, or perhaps chose to decorate it with the added
i
, brings a tone of urgency or even peremptoriness to her letter, with her two brief but exact questions: “Who is your nurse? Who is your doctor?” We understand, however, when we come to the last sentence in her letter, that her interest may be “professional”: “I got a nurse kit for Christmas.”

Empathy: I Know How It Feels

Scott opens with a display of empathy—“I know how it feels over there”—before threatening to visit Stephen.

Joseph O. also opens with what seems to be generous empathy: “I know how you feel.” But he then continues with an apparent non sequitur: “I am going to get a new coat with a hood.”

N
EWS

Weather

A few children mention the weather.

Joseph A. says, laconically or reasonably: “The temperature keeps on changing.”

Cynthia, who has a good understanding of the importance of accuracy and detail (see below), writes: “It’s very icey [
sic
] out today.”

Another girl, Susan A., is more poetical about the weather, deploying the only metaphor in the entire sample of letters. Although the metaphor is a hackneyed one, she immediately afterward improves on it with a more powerful realistic description: “A week ago we had a sleet storm. When it was over everything looked like a fairyland but some trees were bent and broken.” Her ultimately matter-of-fact and realistic approach to her surroundings is reflected in handwriting that is quite regular, except for some tremulous lines in the taller letters.