The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (60 page)

He does not know what his hand is doing: it curls around the iron rod of your chair and holds it fast. Then, while he is looking elsewhere, it curls around the narrow black foot of a strange frog.

He is filled with such courage, goodwill, curiosity, and self-reliance that you admire him for it. But then you realize he was born with these qualities: now what do you do with your admiration?

How responsible he is, to the limits of his capacity, for his own body, for his own safety. He holds his breath when a cloth covers his face. He widens his eyes in the dark. When he loses his balance, his hands curl around whatever comes under them, and he clutches the stuff of your shirt.

How he is curious, to the limits of his understanding; how he attempts to approach what arouses his curiosity, to the limits of his motion; how confident he is, to the limits of his knowledge; how masterful he is, to the limits of his competence; how he derives satisfaction from another face before him, to the limits of his attention; how he asserts his needs, to the limits of his force.

There are times when she is gentle, but there are also times when she is not gentle, when she is fierce and unrelenting toward him or them all, and she knows it is the strange spirit of her mother in her then. For there were times when her mother was gentle, but there were also times when she was fierce and unrelenting toward her or them all, and she knows it was the spirit of her mother’s mother in her mother then. For her mother’s mother had been gentle sometimes, her mother said, and teased her or them all, but she had also been fierce and unrelenting, and accused her of lying, and perhaps them all.

In the night, late at night, her mother’s mother used to weep and implore her husband, as her mother, still a girl, lay in bed listening. Her mother, when she was grown, did not weep and implore her husband in the night, or not where her daughter could hear her, as she lay in bed listening. Her mother later could not know, since she could not hear, whether her daughter, when she was grown, wept and implored her husband in the night, late at night, like her mother’s mother.

There is a description in a child’s science book of the act of love that makes it all quite clear and helps when one begins to forget. It starts with affection between a man and a woman. The blood goes to their genitals as they kiss and caress each other, this swelling creates a desire in these parts to be touched further, the man’s penis becomes larger and quite stiff and the woman’s vagina moist and slippery. The penis can now be pushed into the woman’s vagina and the parts move “comfortably and pleasantly” together until the man and woman reach orgasm, “not necessarily at the same time.” The article ends, however, with a cautionary emendation of the opening statement about affection: nowadays many people make love, it says, who do not love each other, or even have any affection for each other, and whether or not this is a good thing we do not yet know.

First they burned her—that was last month. Actually just two weeks ago. Now they’re starving him. When he’s dead, they’ll burn him, too.

Oh, how jolly. All this burning of family members in the summertime.

It isn’t the same “they,” of course. “They” burned her thousands of miles away from here. The “they” that are starving him here are different.

Wait. They were supposed to starve him, but now they’re feeding him.

They’re feeding him, against doctor’s orders?

Yes. We had said, All right, let him die. The doctors advised it.

He was sick?

He wasn’t really sick.

He wasn’t sick, but they wanted to let him die?

He had just been sick, he had had pneumonia, and he was better.

So he was better and that was when they decided to let him die?

Well, he was old, and they didn’t want to treat him for pneumonia again.

They thought it was better for him to die than get sick again?

Yes. Then, at the rest home, they made a mistake and gave him his breakfast. They must not have had the doctor’s orders. They told us, “He’s had a good breakfast!” Just when we were prepared for him to start dying.

All right. Now they’ve got it right. They’re not feeding him anymore.

Things are back on schedule.

He’ll have to die sooner or later.

He’s taking a few days to do it.

It wasn’t certain he would die before, when they gave him breakfast. He ate it. They said he enjoyed it! But he’s beyond eating now. He doesn’t even wake up.

So he’s asleep?

Well, not exactly. His eyes are open, a little. But he doesn’t see anything—his eyes don’t move. And he won’t answer if you speak to him.

But you don’t know how long it will take.

A few days after that, they’ll burn him.

After what?

After he dies.

You’ll let them burn him.

We’ll ask them to burn him. In fact, we’ll pay them to burn him.

Why not burn him right away?

Before he dies?

No, no. Why did you say “a few days after that”?

According to the law, we have to wait at least forty-eight hours.

Even in the case of an innocent old accountant?

He wasn’t so innocent. Think of the testimony he gave.

You mean, if he dies on a Thursday, he won’t be burned until Monday.

They take him away, once he’s dead. They keep him somewhere, and then they take him to where he’ll be burned.

Who goes with him and keeps him company once he’s dead?

No one, actually.

No one goes with him?

Well, someone will take him away, but we don’t know the person.

You don’t know the person?

It will be an employee.

Probably in the middle of the night?

Yes.

And you probably don’t know where they’ll take him either?

No.

And then no one will keep him company?

Well, he won’t be alive anymore.

So you don’t think it matters.

They will put him in a coffin?

No, it’s actually a cardboard box.

A cardboard box?

Yes, a small one. Narrow and small. It didn’t weigh much, even with him in it.

Was he a small man?

No. But as he got older he got smaller. And lighter. But still, it should have been bigger than that.

Are you sure he was in the box?

Yes.

Did you look?

No.

Why not?

They don’t really give you an opportunity.

So they burned something in a cardboard box that you
trust
was your father?

Yes.

How long did it take?

Hours and hours.

Burn the accountant! What a festival!

We didn’t know it would be cardboard. We didn’t know it would be so small or so light.

You were “surprised.”

I don’t know where he has gone now that he’s dead. I wonder where he is.

You’re asking that now? Why didn’t you ask that before?

Well, I did. I didn’t have an answer. It’s more urgent now.

“Urgent.”

I wanted to think he was still nearby, I really wanted to believe that. If he was nearby, I thought he would be hovering.

Hovering?

I don’t see him walking. I see him floating a few feet off the ground.

You say “I see him”—you can sit in a comfortable chair and say that you “see him.” Where do you think he is?

But if he’s nearby, hovering, is he the way he used to be, or is he the way he was at the end? He used to have all his memory. Does he get it back before he returns? Or is he the way he was near the end, with a lot of his memory gone?

What are you talking about?

At first I used to ask him a question and he would say, “No, I don’t remember.” Then he would just shake his head if I asked. But he had a little smile on his face, as though he didn’t mind not remembering. He looked as if he thought it was interesting. He seemed to be enjoying the attention. At that time he still liked to watch things. One rainy day we sat together outside the front entrance of the home, under a sort of roof.

Wait a minute. What are you calling “the home”?

The old people’s home, where he lived at the end.

That is not a home.

He watched the sparrows hopping around on the wet asphalt. Then a boy rode by on a bicycle. Then a woman walked by with a brightly colored umbrella. He pointed to these things. The sparrows, the boy on the bicycle, the woman with the colorful umbrella in the rain.

No, of course. You want to think he’s still hovering nearby.

No, I don’t think he’s there anymore.

You may as well add that he still has his memory. He would have to. If he didn’t, he would lose interest and just drift away.

I do think he was there for three days afterwards, anyway. I do think that.

Why three?

It is not that you are not qualified to receive the fellowship, it is that each year your application is not good enough. When at last your application is perfect, then you will receive the fellowship.

It is not that you are not qualified to receive the fellowship, it is that your patience must be tested first. Each year, you are patient, but not patient enough. When you have truly learned what it is to be patient, so much so that you forget all about the fellowship, then you will receive the fellowship.

The following study presents the lives of two elderly women still thriving in their eighties and nineties. Although the account will necessarily be incomplete, depending as it does in part on the subjects’ memories, it will be offered in detail whenever possible. Our hope is that, through this close description, some notion may be formed as to which aspects of the subjects’ behaviors and life histories have produced such all-around physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

Both women were born in America, one of African-American parents and one of immigrants from Sweden. The first, Vi, is eighty-five years old, currently still in very good health, working four days a week as a house- and office cleaner, and active in her church. The other, Helen, ninety-two, is in good health apart from her weakened sight and hearing, and though she now resides in a nursing home, she lived alone and independently until one year ago, caring for herself and her large house and yard with minimal help. She still looks after her own hygiene and tidies her room.

Both Vi and Helen grew up in intact families with other children and two caregivers (in Vi’s case these were her grandparents, for many years). Both were close to their siblings (in Vi’s case there were also cousins in the immediate family) and remained in close touch with them throughout their lives. Both have outlived all of them: Helen was predeceased by an older brother who reached the age of ninety and an older sister who died at seventy-eight; Vi by seven brothers, sisters, and cousins, all but one of whom lived into their eighties and nineties. Her last remaining cousin died at the age of ninety-four, still going out to work as a cook.

Vi spent most of her childhood in Virginia on her grandparents’ farm. She was one of eight siblings and cousins, all of whom lived with the grandparents and were raised by them up to a certain age. Her grandfather’s farm was surrounded by fields and woods. The children went barefoot most of the time, so their physical contact with the land was constant, and intimate.

The children never saw a doctor. If one of them was sick, Vi’s grandmother would go out into the fields or woods and find a particular kind of bark or leaf, and “boil it up.” Her grandfather taught the children to recognize certain healthful wild plants, and in particular to tell the male from the female of certain flowers, since each had different properties; then they would be sent to gather the plants themselves. As a regular preventive health measure, at the beginning of each season, the grandmother would give them an infusion to “clean them out”; this would, among other benefits, rid them of the parasitic worms that were a common hazard of rural life at that time. When Vi moved up to Poughkeepsie to live with her mother, the home treatments ceased: when she had even a mild cold, her mother would take her to the doctor and he would give her medicines.

Vi’s grandparents were both hard workers. For instance, in addition to her regular work, her grandmother also made quilts for all eight of the children. She would sew after breakfast and again in the afternoon. She enjoyed it, Vi says: she would use every bit of material, including the smallest scraps. Her grandmother’s hands were nice, “straighter than mine,” says Vi. Her grandmother would also sew clothes for the children out of the printed cotton fabric of flour sacks. On the first day of school, says Vi, she and her girl cousins would be wearing “such pretty dresses.”

Her grandmother was a kind woman. Her grandfather, also kind, was stricter. When he said something, he meant it, says Vi. The kids listened to both, but waited until their grandfather was out of the house to make their special requests, because their grandmother was more likely to give them what they wanted.