Lydia Davis - Varieties of Disturbance

Vi’s strong faith occasionally enters her conversation, when she refers to “God’s will” or, more jocularly, describes what God might have in mind for her future. When she used to visit the local prison, she would incorporate some Christian teaching in her conversations with the prisoners. She likes to spend time at Bible study with her best friend on a warm Saturday evening in summer. They take chairs out into the backyard, and as it grows dark they read aloud to each other from Scripture, discussing each passage in preparation for the following day’s Bible class.

Hope reacted against her mother’s strong religious convictions by rejecting all organized religions and in fact all forms of spirituality, as well as, though indirectly, by joining, at one stage, the Communist Party.

Vi spends most of every weekend on church activities. She was for a time president of an official churchwomen’s group, the Deaconesses. She sings in the choir, which involves going to choir rehearsals as well as occasionally traveling to other churches, often in distant towns, to give performances. Congregations of different churches also visit each other: often her church will visit another for a supper, or her church will prepare a supper to host another church, when she will bake and help wash up afterward. She will exclaim later over the quantity of food consumed by the other congregation.

In her walk around the nursing home, Helen will sometimes ask family members to look for the names of acquaintances. She will always stop in front of the chapel. Here, next to the open stained-glass doors, a signboard with a black background and removable white letters bears the names of those residents who are in the hospital or recently deceased and in need of a candle and/or a prayer. She will ask to have the names read to her in case they include someone she knows.

Personal Habits

Both Vi’s and Helen’s eating habits are sensible, Vi’s diet marginally more balanced since she includes more fresh fruits and vegetables. Neither is particularly health-conscious; their good habits are also the habits of their families of origin.

Both have always practiced moderation, eaten regular meals, and enjoyed food and the preparation of food, although Vi has been more explicitly enthusiastic about food than Helen. Both have eaten predominantly home cooking (including baking) all their lives, and although they enjoy restaurant meals have tended to eat very little food that could be called convenience, junk, or fast food, with the exception of sandwiches and pastries. When they were children, of course, neither one ever ate in a restaurant.

When Vi was growing up on the farm in Virginia, the family ate their own fruits and vegetables — fresh in season and home-canned in winter — and the animals they raised themselves. They bought almost nothing but sugar in a sack, which the children would carry home — and on the way, Vi says, being mischievous and fun-loving, they would sneak a taste by sucking a corner of the sack.

In contrast to her light lunch when she is working at a cleaning job, Vi has a hearty breakfast and dinner. For breakfast she has a glass of milk, a glass of juice, cereal, eggs, bacon, and toast. With her second husband she used to have pancakes on Sundays, with coffee. She drinks quite a lot of milk now, but did not when she was younger. When she goes home after a day of work, she says, she makes herself a nice dinner. In the cold weather she likes to start with a bowl of soup. “A little bowl?” “No, a medium-sized bowl.” Then she has some meat, perhaps meatballs, pork chops, or chicken and vegetables. She makes the soup and the meatballs herself. She likes her own cooking. She does not care for meat now, though, as much as she used to; she likes vegetables and fruit more.

Helen used to order a Reuben sandwich when she went out to lunch: corned beef and cheese on rye bread. She would, however, eat only half the sandwich, taking the other half home for her next day’s lunch. She liked to go out for doughnuts after church with her friends. They would also have breakfast together in a restaurant every Wednesday, before they did their grocery shopping. In her later years, her cupboards used to contain a good deal of canned food as well as Lipton tea, Sanka, boxes of pastries and cookies, and spices, flour, and sugar for baking. She liked sweets, but ate them in small quantities. She would have a piece of fruit during the day. She would buy prepared seafood salad for sandwiches. For family dinners, she regularly made mashed potatoes and what she called a “salad,” which consisted of an aspic mold containing grated carrots, Jell-O, and pineapple. Earlier in her life, she would bake pastries and breads for her family, setting the dough to rise on the radiators in winter.

Both Vi and Helen like rhubarb and welcome a chance to have it fresh out of a friend’s or family’s garden and eat it stewed. Vi bends down herself and gives each stalk a vigorous twist at the base to break it off, collecting half a dozen to take home with her. In Helen’s case, her family brings it to her already stewed and ready to eat, but there is always the danger that a member of the nursing home staff will remove the tub of slimy-looking fruit and throw it out, as happened once, before Helen has a chance to enjoy it.

Hope has been adamant, all her life, in planning a healthy food program for herself. Now, every day, under her instruction, her live-in companion prepares for her, for lunch, a bean soup, a small salad, and a small bowl of popcorn, followed by a fruit and yogurt dessert. She sometimes calls out to her companion several times to see if lunch is ready yet or to request additional services that delay the preparation of the meal. When the time comes, she makes her way slowly to the dining area via the kitchen, where she may give a few more instructions. While she eats, she wears a cracked green plastic tennis visor over her eyes to shade them from the overhead chandelier and watches a book program on the television.

Neither Helen nor Vi ever smoked. When she was small, Vi and her cousin Joe had tried smoking their grandmother’s pipe when she was away. There wasn’t much tobacco in it, but Vi became very sick. Later, she didn’t dare tell her grandmother why she was so sick. If her grandparents had found out what she had done, she says, “I woulda had some sores now ” from it. This bad experience discouraged her from ever wanting to smoke again.

Hope had the occasional cigarette in her twenties, during the years when, stylish and attractive, she also tended to form various short-lived attachments to, often, wealthy and well-born lovers and traveled abroad, sometimes at their expense. However, smoking did not agree with her and she did not continue.

Vi does not habitually drink alcohol at all. She says she likes her Manishevitz, but the last time she drank any, in fact, was many years ago: an employer used to invite her to breakfast and offer her a small glass, but that employer is long gone. Helen, before she moved into the nursing home, would occasionally be persuaded to have a little sweet wine after a holiday meal: seated in her customary place at one end of the dining table, in front of a glass-fronted cupboard containing sets of delicate sherry glasses and some commemoration plates and mugs, she would sip it slowly and thoughtfully. Now she does not have wine or any other alcohol.

Hope, by contrast, has drunk wine and mixed drinks all her life, enjoying an altered state of mind in which she is more apt to make risqué or tactless remarks, and whether or not company is present, she often has a glass of wine with her dinner.

For guests, she likes to open a bottle of champagne: When they arrive at the door, she is immediately distracted by the thought of the champagne and barely greets them before sending them to find it in the refrigerator. After the champagne has been drunk, she will sometimes have her guests bring out a leftover bottle of wine from the refrigerator, though it is ice-cold and may be sour.