Lydia Davis - The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

People may say “his body,” but that does not seem right either. It is not “his” body because he does not own it, if he is no longer active or capable of owning anything.

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I don’t know if there is a “he,” even though people will say “He is dead.” But it does seem correct to say “He is dead.” This may be the last time he will still be “he” in the present tense. Or it will not be the last time, because I will also say, “He is lying in his coffin.” I will not say, and no one will say, “It is lying in the coffin,” or “It is lying in its coffin.”

I will continue to say “my father” in relation to him, after he dies, but will I say it only in the past tense, or also in the present tense?

He will be put in a box, not a coffin. Then, when he is in that box, will I say, “That is my father in that box,” or “That was my father in that box,” or will I say, “That, in the box, was my father”?

I will still say “my father,” but maybe I will say it only as long as he looks like my father, or approximately like my father. Then, when he is in the form of ashes, will I point to the ashes and say, “That is my father”? Or will I say, “That was my father”? Or “Those ashes were my father”? Or “Those ashes are what was my father”?

When I later visit the graveyard, will I point and say, “My father is buried there,” or will I say, “My father’s ashes are buried there”? But the ashes will not belong to my father, he will not own them. They will be “the ashes that were my father.”

In the phrase “he is dying,” the words he is with the present participle suggest that he is actively doing something. But he is not actively dying. The only thing he is still actively doing is breathing. He looks as if he is breathing on purpose, because he is working hard at it, and frowning slightly. He is working at it, but surely he has no choice. Sometimes his frown deepens for just an instant, as though something is hurting him, or as though he is concentrating harder. Even though I can guess that he is frowning because of some pain inside him, or some other change, he still looks as though he is puzzled, or dislikes or disapproves of something. I’ve seen this expression on his face often in my life, though never before combined with these half-open eyes and this open mouth.

“He is dying” sounds more active than “He will be dead soon.” That is probably because of the word be — we can “be” something whether we choose to or not. Whether he likes it or not, he “will be” dead soon. He is not eating.

“He is not eating” sounds active, too. But it is not his choice. He is not conscious that he is not eating. He is not conscious at all. But “is not eating” sounds more correct for him than “is dying” because of the negative. “Is not” seems correct for him, at the moment anyway, because he looks as though he is refusing something, because he is frowning.

Beyond the hand holding this book that I’m reading, I see another hand lying idle and slightly out of focus — my extra hand.

I find a small caterpillar in my bed in the morning. There is no good window to throw him from and I don’t crush or kill a living thing if I don’t have to. I will go to the trouble of carrying this thin, dark, hairless little caterpillar down the stairs and out to the garden.

He is not an inchworm, though he is the size of an inchworm. He does not hump up in the middle but travels steadily along on his many pairs of legs. As I leave the bedroom, he is quite speedily walking around the slopes of my hand.

But halfway down the stairs, he is gone — my hand is blank on every side. The caterpillar must have let go and dropped. I can’t see him. The stairwell is dim and the stairs are painted dark brown. I could get a flashlight and search for this tiny thing, in order to save his life. But I will not go that far — he will have to do the best he can. Yet how can he make his way down to the back door and out into the garden?

I go on about my business. I think I’ve forgotten him, but I haven’t. Every time I go upstairs or down, I avoid his side of the stairs. I am sure he is there trying to get down.

At last I give in. I get the flashlight. Now the trouble is that the stairs are so dirty. I don’t clean them because no one ever sees them here in the dark. And the caterpillar is, or was, so small. Many things under the beam of the flashlight look rather like him — a very slim splinter of wood or a thick piece of thread. But when I poke them, they don’t move.

I look on every step on his side of the stairs, and then on both sides. You get somewhat attached to any living thing once you try to help it. But he is nowhere. There is so much dust and dog hair on the steps. The dust may have stuck to his little body and made it hard for him to move or at least to go in the direction he wanted to go in. It may have dried him out. But why would he even go down instead of up? I haven’t looked on the landing above where he disappeared. I will not go that far.

I go back to my work. Then I begin to forget the caterpillar. I forget him for as long as one hour, until I happen to go to the stairs again. This time I see that there is something just the right size, shape, and color on one of the steps. But it is flat and dry. It can’t have started out as him. It must be a short pine needle or some other plant part.

The next time I think of him, I see that I have forgotten him for several hours. I think of him only when I go up or down the stairs. After all, he is really there somewhere, trying to find his way to a green leaf, or dying. But already I don’t care as much. Soon, I’m sure, I will forget him entirely.

Later there is an unpleasant animal smell lingering about the stairwell, but it can’t be him. He is too small to have any smell. He has probably died by now. He is simply too small, really, for me to go on thinking about him.

It’s his turn to take care of the baby. He is cross.

He says, “I never get enough done.”

The baby is in a bad mood, too.

He gives the baby a bottle of juice and sits him well back in a big armchair.

He sits himself down in another chair and turns on the television.

Together they watch The Odd Couple.

The following is a study of twenty-seven get-well letters written by a class of fourth-graders to their classmate Stephen, when he was in the hospital recovering from a serious case of osteomyelitis.

The disease set in after a rather mysterious accident involving a car. Young Stephen, according to his own later report and a brief notice in the local newspaper, was returning home by himself at dusk one day in early December. He stepped into the street, preparing to cross, and was hit obliquely by a slow-moving car, not with great force, but with enough force to knock him to the ground. The driver of the car, a man of indeterminate age, stopped and got out to see if the boy was all right. Ascertaining that no great harm had been done, the man drove on. In fact, the boy had hurt his knee but said nothing about the accident at home, out of embarrassment or a perception that he was somehow to blame. The knee, untreated, became infected; the osteomyelitis bacteria entering the wound; the boy became seriously ill and was hospitalized. After some weeks, and worry on the part of his doctors, family, and friends, he recovered, thanks in part to the recently developed drug penicillin, and was discharged.

At the time of Stephen’s hospitalization, his parents put the following notice in the local paper in an attempt to locate the driver of the car. The notice was headlined PARENTS SEEK TO TALK TO DRIVER OF CAR IN ACCIDENT. It read: