The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (56 page)

After a year of marriage, Mrs. D becomes pregnant. A baby boy is born in the fall, at the Lying-In Hospital. He is strong and healthy. Mr. D is very moved. He will write a short story about a father and his small son.

Mrs. D wants a family, but she also wants to write, so she needs a maid to keep the house clean, cook and serve meals, and help care for the children. The expense of keeping a maid will be compensated by the money Mrs. D will earn writing.

Our darling Nellie. All I had to struggle to attain was a perfect maid, which is our most phenomenal achievement. We can’t get over our luck as she moves like a dainty angel about the house doing her duties with absolute perfection.

We are still having maid trouble because our very sweet maid is not really strong enough for the job and is constantly out sick, which makes it quite a problem to know what to do. We have had her examined by the doctor and he has told her to get X-rays taken of her lungs so we will know by the end of this week whether we can even hope to have her any more at all.

I hope you will forgive me for not writing to you and tell you that I am sick in the hospital. I didn’t want you to worry I hope you will forgive me.

I’ve been in the hospital 8 months And I miss home and every one.

Im in the ward with 8 girls and like it very much we get along swell.

In December Walter father had a x ray taken and the doctor said he have Tuberculosis so I had my taken and he said I have it. Oh I wish you cold see me the first two months all I did was cry.

I am coming along fine. If you see me you wont know me.

I will send you a snapshot in my next letter. I have gas on my left side.

I dont know how long I have to stay here. I hope it wont be long cause it’s lonsome.

I’m dying to see the baby.

I re’cd your Card and thanks a lot I will never forget you you been so good to me.

I dont think I will work any more not for a long time any way.

Doctor said I have to be quiet when I go home.

Give my love to the baby.

I really miss you All. Love to All. Nellie Bingo.

I am writing in response to your advertisement in today’s Traveler, since I shall be hiring a maid very soon. I should be glad to have you telephone me at Kirkland 0524 if the following details about the job are of interest to you.

We are a family of four. I must spend all my mornings at my work of writing. We live in a modern, convenient house.

The job is not an easy one, since there is all the housework to be done. I like to care for the baby as much as possible myself. We all regard that as a family pleasure as well as a duty, but of course he adds greatly to the washing. We enjoy eating, and we would hope that you like to cook and know how to use leftovers in appetizing and flavorsome dishes. But we do not require fancy cooking.

Anyone who works for us will have the chance to earn regular increases as long as she continues to make the house run so smoothly that my own work is in turn made more profitable.

We need someone who has the kind of temperament to fit into our house, of course. She should be cooperative, willing to accept and put into practice new ideas, especially in handling the baby, and calm, patient, and firm in dealing with him. Meals should be prompt.

I should be glad to hear from you, and the sooner the better.

Yours very sincerely.

Mrs. D gives the impression, in her letter, that she is sensible, efficient, and well organized, and that her family life is orderly.

She likes a clean house, but she herself is casual in caring for her things—after removing a sweater, she will drop it in a heap. But she has acquired for the house, often at low prices, well-made, handsome furniture and rugs, and when she and the maid have given the house some attention it looks attractive to outsiders.

She herself is only sometimes calm, patient, and firm, but it is true that the family enjoys eating.

I have finally got rid of Anna the Grump.

The story is called “Wonderful Visit.”

The family are now living at their third address in this college town. Mrs. D composes an ad herself, with several false starts and extensive revisions before she is satisfied with the result:

Writer couple with well-trained schoolgirl daughter and year-old baby

Writer couple who must have harmonious household with wife free for morning work

Woman writer who must be free of household problems every morning requires helper able to do all housework including personal laundry and part care baby; must be cooperative, like to cook, have high standards of cleanliness, willing to accept new ideas, calm and firm in dealing with baby. We should wish to have dinner guests about once a week and at that time have good table service. Job is not easy but return will be fair treatment

Return for heavy job will be fair dealing, definite time off, wages $16 per week to start and chance to earn quarterly increases. Kirkland 0524

It is true that Mrs. D’s daughter is well trained, though not in all respects. She is polite and sensitive to the feelings of others. She works hard in school and earns high grades. She is not very tidy in her habits, however, and does not keep her room very neat.

She is rather beautiful, according to Mrs. D, and remarkably graceful, but not phenomenally intelligent. Mrs. D describes her to friends as a tall, tense young child, and complains that she is subject to enthusiasms and anxieties that she herself finds “very wearing.” She complains about her daughter’s high voice. A speech therapist may help.

She remarks that sometimes, when the child is with her, she herself “cannot behave like a civilized being.”

It is true that Mrs. D is fair in her treatment of her maids. She also tends to develop intensely personal relationships with them. She is inquisitive as to their lives and thoughts. This can inspire affection on the part of the maid, or resentment, depending on the maid’s personality. It can lead to complicated patterns of vulnerability and subsequent ill will not always comfortable for maid or employer. Mrs. D tends to be highly critical of her maids, as she is of herself and her family.

Mrs. D confides to a friend:

The best thing about it, the really unbelievable thing, is that she can be an excellent maid and at the same time a person capable of appreciating the kind of qualities such families as yours and ours have.

Mrs. D sees her family, and the families of her friends, as enlightened and sympathetic to the working classes, as well as stylish, smart, witty, and cultured as regards literature, art, music, and food. In the area of music, for instance, she and her family enjoy certain pieces by the classical composers, although they also favor the more popular musicals and, over the years, will spend Sunday afternoons listening to recordings of
Oklahoma!
,
Finian’s Rainbow
,
South Pacific
, and
Annie Get Your Gun
.

Just when I run into the most marvelous dream of a maid that won’t happen again in a century, we sublet our apartment for six weeks and this maid doesn’t want to leave town. She may be influenced by her boyfriend, a twenty-four-year-old who is somehow intellectual-looking despite his position as driver of a florist wagon.

Our maid’s name is Virginia. She may not turn out to be the gem for temporary work that I had hoped I was sending you.

She is not the sort who starts out like a whirlwind.

She has a sort of nervous shyness.

She is extremely slow on laundry, but it probably wouldn’t matter so much in your case since you send out more things.

She can’t catch up with the ironing. But if you take a firm hand it ought not to be a problem. Also, you ought to make out a schedule for her.

Mrs. D writes a long description of Virginia:

When she came to see me for her first interview she sat sideways on the chair not looking at me. Sometimes she looked directly at me and smiled, and then she looked intelligent and sweet, but much of the time she had a hangdog heavy dull look to her face. Her voice was slow, rough, and hesitant, though her sentences were well formulated. She talked to me about her other job. She said to me, “Maybe I’m too conscientious, I don’t know. I never seem to catch up with the ironing, I don’t know. The man changes his underwear every day.”

When she spoke of desserts, her eyes lit up. “I know thousands of desserts I like to make,” she said.

She said she had been left alone very early and hadn’t had much schooling and that was why she had happened to get into domestic service.

She and I tried to work out a good schedule. She did not want to work after putting the dinner on the table at six, but she wanted to have her own dinner before leaving, otherwise she would have to eat in a restaurant. So we tried that, but there is something extraordinarily prickly about waiting on yourself, going in and out of the kitchen, when a servant is sitting there eating. And she did eat an enormous meal.

She had a pathological interest in her own diet. She was a fiend about salads and milk and fruit, all the things that cost the most.

I missed one of the baby’s blankets, the best one, which I had crocheted a border for, all around. Then one day I left the iron on all afternoon on the back porch and that’s when I found the baby’s blanket. She had used it to cover the ironing board. What else might she do? Too soon after, the baby’s playpen came apart in her hands.

Now my distrust was deepened to a certainty: she was not the person on whom to base any permanent plans. It was also obvious that she could not keep up with the ironing or anything else.

She acted dissatisfied and glum if she stayed beyond two o’clock. I had to sympathize, because what she wanted to do was go to the YWCA, where she and a few of the other domestics were taking some very improving courses.

All her friends were urging her to get a job in a defense plant. I asked her about it and she said, “The girls all say I’m wrong, but I just don’t think I’d like factory work.”

I was rushing around most of the morning when I should have been at the typewriter. I offered her the full-time position because the one time we had company she did such a fine job. She put on a beautiful dinner, exquisitely arranged and well cooked and perfectly served. The whole thing went off exceedingly well. But she calculated that the full-time job wouldn’t be worth it to her. She also told me that if she took the full-time job she didn’t see how she could get her Christmas shopping done. That was the crowning remark.

Her experience of our household was not at its easiest. We were moving at the time, and we were still not settled before I had to rush to finish a story. But she could not see that this was a chance to make herself useful to a coming writer who could thereafter afford to pay her better.

It is not clear what Mrs. D’s ambitions are. She writes easily and fluently, and has no difficulty conceiving plots for her stories. Over lunch she and Mr. D often exchange ideas for stories or characters, though Mr. D rarely has time now to write fiction. Mrs. D’s plots often involve domestic situations like her own. The characters, usually including a husband and wife, are skillfully and sympathetically drawn; they have complex relationships with recognizable small frictions, hurts, and forgiveness. She is particularly good with the speech of young children. However, the stories often have a vein of wistful sentimentality that works to their detriment.