Lydia Davis - The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

Gainesville! It’s too bad your cousin is dead!

You are in a Brooklyn coffee shop, you have ordered only one cup of coffee, and the coffee is sixty cents, which seems expensive to you. But it is not so expensive when you consider that for this same sixty cents you are renting the use of one cup and saucer, one metal cream pitcher, one plastic glass, one small table, and two small benches. Then, to consume if you want to, besides the coffee and the cream, you have water with ice cubes and, in their own dispensers, sugar, salt, pepper, napkins, and ketchup. In addition, you can enjoy, for an indefinite length of time, the air-conditioning that keeps the room at a perfectly cool temperature, the powerful white electric light that lights every corner of the room so that there are no shadows anywhere, the view of the people passing outside on the sidewalk in the hot sunlight and wind, and the company of the people inside, who are laughing and turning endless variations on one rather cruel joke at the expense of a little balding red-headed woman sitting at the counter and dangling her crossed feet from the stool, who tries to reach out with her short, white arm and slap the face of the man standing nearest to her.

Shall I keep a tidy house, like L.?

Shall I develop an unsanitary habit, like K.?

Shall I sway from side to side a little as I walk, like C.?

Shall I write letters to the editor, like R.?

Shall I retire to my room often during the day, like R.?

Shall I live alone in a large house, like B.?

Shall I treat my husband coldly, like K.?

Shall I give piano lessons, like M.?

Shall I leave the butter out all day to soften, like C.?

Shall I have problems with typewriter ribbons, like K.?

Shall I have a strong objection to the drinking of juice, like K.?

Shall I hold many grudges, like B.?

Shall I buy large loaves of white bread from the baker, like C.?

Shall I keep tubs of clams in my freezer, like C.?

Shall I make a bad pun at the wrong moment, like R.?

Shall I read detective novels in bed at night, like C.?

Shall I take beautiful care of my own person, like L.?

Shall I smoke and drink heavily, like K.?

Shall I drink heavily and smoke sometimes, like C.?

Shall I welcome people into my house to visit and to stay, like C.?

Shall I be well informed about many things, like K.?

Shall I know the classics, like K.?

Shall I write letters by hand, like B.?

Shall I write “Dearest Both,” like C.?

Shall I use many exclamation marks and capitals, like C.?

Shall I include a poem in my letter, like B.?

Shall I often look up words in the dictionary, like R.?

Shall I admire the picture of the beautiful president of Iceland, like R.?

Shall I often look up etymologies, like R.?

Shall I bring a potted tulip to the back door as a gift, like L.?

Shall I give small dinner parties, like M.?

Shall I get a little arthritis in my hands, like C.?

Shall I keep a gray dove and a gray hound, like L.?

Shall I play the radio by my bed all night, like C.?

Shall I leave too much food in the rented house at the end of the summer, like C.?

Shall I often eat a single baked potato for my dinner, like Dr. S.?

Shall I have ice cream once a year, like Dr. S.?

Shall I swim in the bay alone, even in the worst weather, like C.?

Shall I drink vegetable cooking water, like C.?

Shall I label my folders in shaky handwriting, like R.?

Shall I chew my food slowly and thoroughly, like Dr. S.?

Shall I walk by the canal, like B.?

Shall I take my guests along the canal, like B.?

Shall I put daylily buds in the salad for my guests, like B.?

Shall I come out in the morning neatly dressed with my bed made, like R.?

Shall I have my first cup of coffee at eleven o’clock, like R.?

Shall I lay out the forks in a fan, and the napkins in a row, for company, like L.?

Shall I make pancakes in the morning when traveling, like C.?

Shall I carry liquor in the trunk of my car when on holiday, like C.?

Shall I make an oyster stew on New Year’s Eve that is full of sand, like C.?

Shall I hand a knife carefully to another person handle first, like R.?

Shall I speak against my husband to the grocer, like C.?

Shall I always read with a pencil in my hand, like R.?

Shall I hug my bereaved children too long and too often, like C.?

Shall I ignore health warnings, like B.?

Shall I give gifts of money freely, like C.?

Shall I give gifts with animal themes, like C.?

Shall I keep a small plastic seal in my refrigerator, like C.?

Shall I have trouble sleeping on my arm, like R.?

Shall I take off my shirt just before I die, like B.?

Shall I wear only black and white, like M.?

I looked down on the street from my window. The sun shone and the shopkeepers had come out to stand in the warmth and watch the people go by. But why were the shopkeepers covering their ears? And why were the people in the street running as if pursued by a terrible specter? Soon everything returned to normal: the incident had been no more than a moment of madness during which the people could not bear the frustration of their lives and had given way to a strange impulse.

She could not drive if there were too many clouds in the sky. Or rather, if she could drive with many clouds in the sky, she could not have music playing if there were also passengers in the car. If there were two passengers, as well as a small caged animal, and many clouds in the sky, she could listen but not speak. If a wind blew shavings from the small animal’s cage over her shoulder and lap as well as the shoulder and lap of the man next to her, she could not speak to anyone or listen, even if there were very few clouds in the sky. If the small boy was quiet, reading his book in the backseat, but the man next to her opened his newspaper so wide that its edge touched the gearshift and the sunlight shone off its white page into her eyes, then she could not speak or listen while trying to enter a large highway full of fast-moving cars, even if there were no clouds in the sky.

Then, if it was night and the boy was not in the car, and the small caged animal was not in the car, and the car was empty of boxes and suitcases where before it had been full, and the man next to her was not reading a newspaper but looking out the window straight ahead, and the sky was dark so that she could see no clouds, she could listen but not talk, and she could have no music playing, if a motel brightly illuminated above her on a dark hill some distance ahead and to the left seemed to be floating across the highway in front as she drove at high speed between dotted lines with headlights coming at her on the left and up behind her in the rearview mirror and taillights ahead in a gentle curve around to the right underneath the massive airship of motel lights floating across the highway from left to right in front of her, or could talk, but only to say one thing, which went unanswered.

because she couldn’t write the name of what she was: a wa wam owm owamn womn

I slapped him again because when I was carrying him in my arms he tore my glasses off and hurled them at the grate in the hall. But he wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been so angry already. After that I put him to bed.

Downstairs, I sat on the sofa eating and reading a magazine. I fell asleep there for an hour. I woke up with crumbs on my chest. When I went into the bathroom, I could not look at myself in the mirror. I did the dishes and sat down again in the living room. Before I went to bed I told myself things were getting better. It was true: this day had been better than the day before, and the day before had been better than most of last week, though not much better.