Lydia Davis - Can't and Won't - Stories

Adela rushes out of the kitchen into the living room even when guests are present and shouts: Telephone for you in your room!

Although I have asked her to speak gently, she never does. Today she came rushing out of the kitchen into the dining room saying: Telephone, for you! and pointed at me. Later she did the same with our luncheon guest, a professor.

I say to Luisa: I would like to discuss the program for the days to come. Today I do not need more than a sandwich at noon, and fruit. But el señor would like a nutritious tea.

Tomorrow we would like a rather nourishing tea with hard-boiled eggs and sardines at six, and we will not want any other meal at home.

At least once a day, we want to eat cooked vegetables. We like salads, but we also like cooked vegetables. Sometimes we could eat both salad and cooked vegetables at the same meal.

We do not have to eat meat at lunchtime, except on special occasions. We are very fond of omelets, perhaps with cheese or tomato.

Please serve our baked potatoes immediately after taking them from the oven.

We had had nothing but fruit at the end of the meal for two weeks. I asked Luisa for a dessert. She brought me some little crepes filled with applesauce. They were nice, though quite cold. Today she gave us fruit again.

I said to her: Luisa, you cannot refer to my instructions as “capricious and illogical.”

Luisa is emotional and primitive. Her moods change rapidly. She readily feels insulted and can be violent. She has such pride.

Adela is simply wild and rough, a harebrained savage.

I say to Luisa: Our guest, Señor Flanders, has never visited the park. He would like to spend several hours there. Can you make sandwiches of cold meat for him to take with him? It is his last Sunday here.

For once, she does not protest.

When setting the dining table, Adela puts each thing down with a bang.

I say to Luisa: Please, I would like Adela to polish the candlesticks. We are going to have them on the table at night.

I ring the bell at the dining table, and a loud crash follows instantly in the kitchen.

I have told them: There should not be these kitchen noises during our cocktail and dinner hour. But they are hitting each other again and yelling.

If we ask for something during a meal, Adela comes out of the kitchen and says: There isn’t any.

It is all so very nerve-racking. I often feel worn out after just one attempt to speak to her.

Luisa, I say, I want to make sure we understand each other. You cannot play the radio in the kitchen during our dinnertime. There is also a lot of shouting in the kitchen. We are asking for some peace in the house.

We do not believe they are sincerely trying to please us.

Adela sometimes takes the bell off the dining table and does not put it back on. Then I cannot ring for her during the meal but have to call loudly from the dining room to the kitchen, or go without what I need, or get the bell myself so that I can ring it. My question is: Does she leave the bell off the table on purpose?

I instruct them ahead of time: For the party we will need tomato juice, orange juice, and Coca-Cola.

I tell her: Adela, you will be the one in charge of answering the door and taking the coats. You will show the ladies where the toilet is, if they ask you.

I ask Luisa: Do you know how to prepare empanadas in the Bolivian style?

We would like them both to wear uniforms all the time.

I say to Adela: Please, I would like you to pass among the guests frequently with plates of hors d’oeuvres that have been recently prepared.

When the plates no longer look attractive, please take them back out to the kitchen and prepare fresh ones.

I say to her: Please, Adela, I would like there always to be clean glasses on the table, and also ice and soda.

I have told her: Always leave a towel on the rack above the bidet.

I say to her: Are there enough vases? Can you show them to me? I would like to buy some flowers.

Here are more of the details of the silent warfare: I see that Adela has left a long string lying on the floor next to the bed. She has gone away with the wastebasket. I don’t know if she is testing me. Does she think I am too meek or ignorant to require her to pick it up? But she has a cold, and she isn’t very bright, and if she really did not notice the string, I don’t want to make too much of it. I finally decide to pick up the string myself.

We suffer from their rude and ruthless vengeance.

A button was missing from my husband’s shirt collar. I took the shirt to Adela. She shook her finger and said no. She said that la Señora Brodie always took everything to the dressmaker to be mended.

Even a button? I asked. Were there no buttons in the house?

She said there were no buttons in the house.

I told Luisa they could go out on Sundays, even before breakfast. She yelled at me that they did not want to go out, and asked me, Where would they go?

I said that they were welcome to go out, but that if they did not go out, we would expect them to serve us something, even if it was something simple. She said she would, in the morning, but not in the afternoon. She said that her two older daughters always came to see her on Sundays.

I spent the morning writing Luisa a long letter, but I decided not to give it to her.

In the letter I told her: I have employed many maids in my life.

I told her that I believe I am a considerate, generous, and fair employer.

I told her that when she accepts the realities of the situation, I’m sure everything will go well.

If only they would make a real change in their attitude, we would like to help them. We would pay to have Adela’s teeth repaired, for instance. She is so ashamed of her teeth.

But up to now there has been no real change in their attitude.

We also think they may have relatives living secretly with them behind the kitchen.

I am learning and practicing a sentence that I will try on Luisa, though it may sound more hopeful than I feel: Con el correr del tiempo, todo se solucionará.

But they give us such dark, Indian looks!

NECESSARY EXPENDITURE

A concrete mixer has come and gone from the house next door. Mr. and Mrs. Charray are renovating their wine cellar. If they improve their cellar, they will pay less for fire insurance. At the moment, their fire insurance is very expensive. The reason for this is that they own thousands of bottles of very good wine. They have very good wine and some fine paintings, but their taste in clothes and furniture is strictly lower middle class.

EXPENDITURE NECESSARY

The Charrays’ taste in clothes and furniture is dull and strictly lower middle class. However, they do own some fine paintings, many by contemporary Canadian and American painters. They also have some good wine. In fact, they own thousands of bottles of very good wine. Because of this, their fire insurance is very expensive. But if they enlarge and otherwise improve their wine cellar, the fire insurance will be less expensive. They are doing this: a concrete mixer has just come and gone from their house, next door.

A woman, thirty, does not want to leave her childhood home.

Why should I leave home? These are my parents. They love me. Why should I go marry some man who will argue and shout at me?

Still, the woman likes to undress in front of the window. She wishes some man would at least look at her.