by Lydia Davis
Daily Lives
If we are to believe most of the information contained in the letters, we may ascertain at least the following about the children: Their possessions are relatively few—in any case, they are satisfied with as few as five fairly modest Christmas presents (see John C.), although quantity is clearly of interest to them (see Jonathan). They spend time with family members and classmates. Their activities include playing in the snow (both sledding and skiing), going to the movies, shopping downtown, and occasionally traveling out of town. Some have pets and strong friendships, and some have an interest in schoolwork. Some of the boys are interested in cowboys, reading, football, and the movies; some of the girls in music, dolls, and nursing. Both boys and girls like to play outdoors.
Time
In general, the children’s sense of time and place is well developed. The letters overall contain a clear sense of the past (e.g., what they got for Christmas), the present (“Your seat is empty”), and the future (“My Sister is going to get a new skisuit”). Some of the children anticipate Stephen’s return in the future. Only Jonathan promises further communication: “I will send you more letters soon.”
The immediate future at the time of the writing is evoked, exceptionally, by Mary K. (“Well we are starting reading now”).
Place
The letters also show that the children have a clear and accurate sense of where they are in space. As they sit in their schoolroom writing, they are in fact on a higher elevation than the center of town, which they not only colloquially but also correctly refer to as “down town.” They are closer to the center of town, however, than is the hospital, which they locate “over there.” Their plateau is also lower than the elevation on which the hospital sits, which they refer to as “up there.” “Up there” may also indicate their awareness of the fact that the hospital lies slightly to the north of the town.
It may also be pertinent to suggest that in the phrase “over there” we see a rare coincidence of actual and psychological space, in that their use of the phrase quite possibly signals an attempt on their part to distance themselves firmly from the hospital and its implied threat of death and disease.
The immediate space of the classroom is evoked by Joan and by Susan B. with their respective references to “in our row” and “Your seat is empty.”
It should be noted, in addition, that some children are more preoccupied generally by the outdoors (“we went skiing”) while some are more concerned with interior spaces (the classroom, row or seat; the hospital). There is also, besides the distancing “over there,” a general, perhaps anxious, identification of the hospital with the direction “out” (Billy T.’s “When will you be out?”) in contrast to the reassuring identification of the school with “in” and “back in” (Mary K.).
Characters and States of Mind
The teacher, though carefully controlling the form and general content of the letters, seems to have allowed the students to follow their own desires as to specific content and style, perhaps within certain limits. This being the case, the children’s choices of subject matter, along with their treatment of it, may give us clues as to their different characters and temperaments.
Some children indicate a high degree of self-sufficiency, entertaining themselves (outdoor play), while others reveal some dependence on “packaged” or “ready-made” entertainment (two instances of trips to the movies). Some reveal more inclination toward activity in general, whether physical or cultural (outdoor play, movies), while others are more concerned with material acquisition (Christmas presents, shopping trips); and finally, a majority of the children focus on outer-directed or interactive activities of one kind or another (play, shopping), while a small percentage seem preoccupied by certain ideas or mental states (you are gone, your seat is empty, “I just can’t think”).
Some show an inclination toward an interactive social world outside the family (“Diane T. and I”), while others are oriented more toward a domestic or familial world (shopping with Mother). Including siblings in accounts of the Christmas holiday (“My sister got a doll carriage. My brother got a football”) may reveal feelings of insecurity and a need to identify with the large family unit.
Some children display boldness (“I’d yank you out of bed”); or a quest for adventure (“This year I went on a higher part than I used to”); while others dwell on absence and lack (“I just can’t think”; and the refrain of “I miss you” and “We miss you”). Some strike a sad note (Carol’s “lonesome”; Sally’s “Your seat is empty”); or hint at a feeling of failure and/or defeat (fallen snowman, bent and broken branches); or of jealousy/envy/deprivation (another child received the box of candy). Some are peremptory in their tone (the girls’ use of the imperative) and some are loving (Janet’s obvious fondness for her pets). Some of the children are more sensitive to difficulty and loneliness than others. But all the children are capable of expressing friendly feelings toward a classmate in an unfortunate situation, at least when they are assigned to do so.
Some of the children display contradictory traits or inner conflict, as noted in the case of Maureen above. Another case is that of Arlene: although she is eminently practical, and seems sincere in her choice of nursing as a profession, she may betray a degree of suppressed romanticism (and thus an attraction toward a less practical vocation) in her highly unusual alteration of her own name from the more down-to-earth “Arlene” to the prettier and more fanciful “Arilene.”
Although the dominant mood expressed by the letters appears to be positive and optimistic, some of the children’s choices of subject matter and style betray a certain fear or uneasiness, or an awareness of the darker side of their lives (snowball fight, difficulty with jump), and this generalized fear may be present in all the children to some extent (e.g., the anxious repetition of “I hope…I hope…”).
In fact, although theirs would appear to have been a relatively safe world—including sledding, Christmas presents, shopping with Mother—it had its darker side: bent and broken branches, fallen snowmen, the empty seat and the unfinished stocking, the box of candy that went to another child. What did they feel as they played on Hospital Hill, with the hospital itself looming over them? Were they aware of Stephen, alone, perhaps looking out at them? Were they perhaps always half conscious that Stephen’s sudden accident might equally well have happened to them? The children were, it should be kept in mind, already deeply familiar with an environment that was confusingly paradoxical and vaguely threatening: the outdoor fun of sledding and skiing could take place only within sight of the grim façade of the hospital above them; their after-school treats could be gained only through an encounter with the hostile proprietor of the corner store, and would then be unwrapped within sight of the steep drop toward the slow-moving but dangerous river. More generally, in fact, one might say that these children, caught between the implicit threat of the hospital on the hill and the more explicit threat of the river down below, may indeed have wished to slip away, as they often enough did, out of reach of both these menaces, toward “down town” with its offerings of tempting merchandise in Mother’s company, or even out of town altogether (a trip to P.), or into the fictional world offered by the movie theaters, the cowboy books, and their own imaginations (“fairyland”).
Addendum
Of interest, for comparison, may be a letter in Stephen’s own handwriting, on an unlined page, written after he returned home, in which he thanks a former teacher for a gift evidently received during his convalescence. His letter is a rough draft, including one misspelling and one usage error, and lacking certain punctuation marks, and may closely resemble the rough drafts of his classmates’ letters, if such existed. It is dated “Feb. 20 1951” and reads: “Dear Miss R., Thank you for the book. I am out of the hospital and I dont have to wear krutchs anymore Love Stephen.”
Passing Wind
She didn’t know if it was him or the dog. It wasn’t her. The dog was lying there on the living room rug
between them, she was on the sofa, and her visitor, rather tense, was sunk deep in a low armchair, and the smell, rather gentle, came into the air. She thought at first that it was him and she was surprised, because people don’t pass wind in company very often, or at least not in a noticeable way. As they went on talking, she went on thinking it was him. She felt a little sorry for him, because she thought he was embarrassed and nervous to be with her and that was why he had passed wind. Then it occurred to her very suddenly that it might not have been him at all, it might have been the dog, and worse, if it had been the dog, he might think it had been her. It was true that the dog had stolen an entire loaf of bread that morning, and eaten it, and might now be passing wind, something he did not do otherwise. She wanted immediately to let him know, somehow, that at least it was not her. Of course there was a chance that he had not noticed, but he was smart and alert, and since she had noticed, he probably had, too, unless he was too nervous to have noticed. The problem was how to tell him.
She could say something about the dog, to excuse it. But it might not have been the dog, it might have been him. She could not be direct and simply say, “Look, if you just farted, that’s all right; I just want to be clear that it wasn’t me.” She could say, “The dog ate a whole loaf of bread this morning, and I think he’s farting.” But if it was him, and not the dog, this would embarrass him. Although maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe he was already embarrassed, if it was him, and this would give him a way out of his embarrassment. But by now the smell was long gone. Maybe the dog would fart again, if it was the dog. That was the only thing she could think of—the dog would fart again, if it was the dog, and then she would simply apologize for the dog, whether or not it was the dog, and that would relieve him of his embarrassment, if it was him.
Television
1.
We have all these favorite shows coming on every evening. They say it will be exciting and it always is.
They give us hints of what is to come and then it comes and it is exciting.
If dead people walked outside our windows we would be no more excited.
We want to be part of it all.
We want to be the people they talk to when they tell what is to come later in the evening and later in the week.
We listen to the ads until we are exhausted, punished with lists: they want us to buy so much, and we try, but we don’t have a lot of money. Yet we can’t help admiring the science of it all.
How can we ever be as sure as these people are sure? These women are women in control, as the women in my family are not.
Yet we believe in this world.
We believe these people are speaking to us.
Mother, for example, is in love with an anchorman. And my husband sits with his eyes on a certain young reporter and waits for the camera to draw back and reveal her breasts.
After the news we pick out a quiz show to watch and then a story of detective investigation.
The hours pass. Our hearts go on beating, now slow, now faster.
There is one quiz show which is particularly good. Each week the same man is there in the audience with his mouth tightly closed and tears in his eyes. His son is coming back on stage to answer more questions. The boy stands there blinking at the television camera. They will not let him go on answering questions if he wins the final sum of a hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollars. We don’t care much about the boy and we don’t like the mother, who smiles and shows her bad teeth, but we are moved by the father: his heavy lips, his wet eyes.
And so we turn off the telephone during this program and do not answer the knock at the door that rarely comes. We watch closely, and my husband now presses his lips together and then smiles so broadly that his eyes disappear, and as for me, I sit back like the mother with a sharp gaze, my mouth full of gold.
2.
It’s not that I really think this show about Hawaiian policemen is very good, it’s just that it seems more real than my own life.
Different routes through the evening: Channels 2, 2, 4, 7, 9, or channels 13, 13, 13, 2, 2, 4, etc. Sometimes it’s the police dramas I want to see, other times the public television documentaries, such as one called Swamp Critturs.
It’s partly my isolation at night, the darkness outside, the silence outside, the increasing lateness of the hour, that makes the story on television seem so interesting. But the plot, too, has something to do with it: tonight a son comes back after many years and marries his father’s wife. (She is not his mother.)
We pay a good deal of attention because these shows seem to be the work of so many smart and fashionable people.
I think it is a television sound beyond the wall, but it’s the honking of wild geese flying south in the first dark of the evening.
You watch a young woman named Susan Smith with pearls around her neck sing the Canadian National Anthem before a hockey game. You listen to the end of the song, then you change the channel.
Or you watch Pete Seeger’s legs bounce up and down in time to his Reuben E. Lee song, then change the channel.
It is not what you want to be doing. It is that you are passing the time.
You are waiting until it is a certain hour and you are in a certain condition so that you can go to sleep.
There is some real satisfaction in getting this information about the next day’s weather—how fast the wind might blow and from what direction, when the rain might come, when the skies might clear—and the exact science of it is indicated by the words “40 percent” in “40 percent chance.”
It all begins with the blue dot in the center of the dark screen, and this is when you can sense that these pictures will be coming to you from a long way off.
3.
Often, at the end of the day, when I am tired, my life seems to turn into a movie. I mean my real day moves into my real evening, but also moves away from me enough to be strange and a movie. It has by then become so complicated, so hard to understand, that I want to watch a different movie. I want to watch a movie made for TV, which will be simple and easy to understand, even if it involves disaster or disability or disease. It will skip over so much, it will skip over all the complications, knowing we will understand, so that major events will happen abruptly: a man may change his mind though it was firmly made up, and he may also fall in love suddenly. It will skip all the complications because there is not enough time to prepare for major events in the space of only one hour and twenty minutes, which also has to include commercial breaks, and we want major events.
One movie was about a woman professor with Alzheimer’s disease; one was about an Olympic skier who lost a leg but learned to ski again. Tonight it was about a deaf man who fell in love with his speech therapist, as I knew he would because she was pretty, though not a good actress, and he was handsome, though deaf. He was deaf at the beginning of the movie and deaf again at the end, while in the middle he heard and learned to speak with a definite regional accent. In the space of one hour and twenty minutes, this man not only heard and fell deaf again but created a successful business through his own talent, was robbed of it through a company man’s treachery, fell in love, kept his woman as far as the end of the movie, and lost his virginity, which seemed to be hard to lose if one was deaf and easier once one could hear.
All this was compressed into the very end of a day in my life that as the evening advanced had already moved away from me…
Jane and the Cane
Mother could not find her cane. She had a cane, but she could not find her special cane. Her special cane had a handle that was the head of a dog. Then she remembered: Jane had her cane. Jane had come to visit. Jane had needed a cane to get back home. That was two years ago. Mother called Jane. She told Jane she needed her cane. Jane came with a cane. When Jane came, Mother was tired. She was in bed. She did not look at the cane. Jane went back home. Mother got out of bed. She looked at the cane. She saw that it was not the same cane. It was a plain cane. She called Jane and told her: it was not the same cane. Bu
t Jane was tired. She was too tired to talk. She was going to bed. The next morning she came with the cane. Mother got out of bed. She looked at the cane. It was the right cane. It had the head of a dog on it, brown and white. Jane went home with the other cane, the plain cane. After Jane was gone, Mother complained, she complained on the phone: Why did Jane not bring back the cane? Why did Jane bring the wrong cane? Mother was tired. Oh, Mother was so tired of Jane and the cane.
Getting to Know Your Body
If your eyeballs move, this means that you’re thinking, or about to start thinking.
If you don’t want to be thinking at this particular moment, try to keep your eyeballs still.
Absentminded
The cat is crying at the window. It wants to come in. You think about how living with a cat and the demands of a cat make you think about simple things, like a cat’s need to come indoors, and how good that is. You think about this and you are too busy thinking about this to let the cat in, so you forget to let the cat in, and it is still at the window crying. You see that you haven’t let the cat in, and you think about how odd it is that while you were thinking about the cat’s needs and how good it is to live with the simple needs of a cat, you were not letting the cat in but letting it go on crying at the window. Then while you’re thinking about this and how odd it is, you let the cat in without knowing you’re letting the cat in. Now the cat jumps up on the counter and cries for food. You see that the cat is crying for food but you don’t think of feeding it because you are thinking how odd it is that you have let the cat in without knowing it. Then you see that it’s crying for food while you’re not feeding it, and as you see this and think it’s odd that you have not heard it cry, you feed the cat without knowing that you’re feeding it.
