The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (64 page)

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 Manischewitz, 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.

Both Helen and Vi are thrifty by habit. Vi’s second husband would look out for sales and buy, for instance, ten large bottles of bleach for thirty-nine cents a bottle. Vi, too, buys in quantity. She keeps these extra supplies on her small enclosed side porch.

Helen has a metal serving spoon that she used to stir things on the stove for so long that it is worn down nearly straight on one side.

When her daughter was a child, Vi was given nice hand-me-down children’s clothes, including party dresses, by her employers. She would pack them carefully away until her daughter was the right size for them, then wrap them festively and present them for birthdays and Christmases as though they were new. Her daughter never suspected. Now Vi’s daughter in turn brings her good clothing from yard sales. Vi rarely buys a piece of new clothing for herself.

Vi does not buy more food than she needs, and she does not let it spoil. The same was true of Helen when she lived at home and cooked for herself. Vi drinks Lipton tea, and she uses each teabag twice, sometimes three times.

Helen, by now, in the restricted space of the nursing home, feels somewhat oppressed and burdened by her possessions, though she has so few. More inclined to give than receive, she resists offers of presents, though she sometimes appears secretly pleased by them; “No, no,” she will say gently, “don’t bring me anything. I don’t need
anything
!” Sometimes, only, she may ask for a bag of cough drops or a bar of soap.

Vi is quite open about liking to receive presents. She appreciates framed photographs, plants, and boxes of chocolates. At the end of her day’s work, she likes to take home, in the growing season, either produce from an employer’s vegetable patch or a perennial plant dug up out of the ground. But she likes gifts of money more than anything else. On the occasion of her eighty-fifth birthday, not only her employers but most of her friends gave her money.

Whether in order to make an economical choice or, more likely, to save trouble for her family, Helen, some years ago, went with her older son to a local funeral parlor, chose a casket, and paid in advance for the casket and funeral arrangements. With the same foresight, she had already chosen the nursing home in which she now lives.

Vi is rarely ill, having only the occasional cold in her head and chest. She has some arthritis in her left shoulder, which prevents her raising her left arm above shoulder height. She has to compensate when working by using her other arm for some things. For a time she was given physical therapy for it, but it didn’t get much better. She believes, though, that if you have arthritis, you have to use the affected limb, otherwise it will get worse and worse. She will cite the examples of several friends who moved less and less until they could not move at all. She has no other physical problems and takes no medication.

Although Helen’s eyesight and hearing are poor, she takes no prescription medications, her only pills being vitamins and an occasional aspirin. She had no medical problems until the age of eighty, when she began to develop macular degeneration, which has grown progressively worse. Sometime after she turned ninety, a friend of hers noticed, on their weekly grocery shopping trip, that her ankles were badly swollen. Helen went to the doctor and it was discovered that her heart had begun to beat more slowly and erratically. She was fitted with a pacemaker. Following insertion of the pacemaker, medical problems began that appeared to have been caused by the medical interventions themselves. For instance, a heart medication upset her stomach. This in turn caused her to lose weight and weaken, making her more prone to falling. One fall resulted in a broken hip. She entered her present nursing home on a temporary basis for treatment and then arranged to stay there permanently. In the nursing home, a treatment with a medicated shampoo led to a chronic and persistent skin irritation that she will apparently never be free of. Two of her medical problems, then—her macular degeneration and her erratic heartbeat—occurred naturally and spontaneously, whereas the others—the weight loss with resultant weakness, the fall and fracture, and the skin condition—resulted from medical intervention.

Helen’s well-being is dependent, now, on the environment of the nursing home and the treatment she receives there.

Both Helen and Vi take pride in their appearance. Both,
like Hope,
were attractive and popular with boys and men when they were younger. Their figures are strong, slender, and youthful. They have smooth, clear skin, Helen’s pale but with a diffused rosy color and Vi’s a rich, even brown.

Vi’s face is round, her eyes are dark brown and sparkling and slant upward a little at the outer edges. Her eyebrows are straight and thick. Her lips are often parted, as though she is about to speak or smile, and then her lower lip curves downward. Helen’s blue eyes are dim now, the whites yellowish. Both Helen and Vi wear large glasses, though Vi often removes hers for a photograph. Vi’s hands are shapely and dark brown. Her fingers are slim and fairly straight; only the last joint of the index finger is a little bent and swollen. Helen’s fingers are quite crooked.

A photograph of Helen taken when she was about twenty years old shows her leaning against the front porch of the large white house, her hands behind her back. Her head is tilted to one side, and she is smiling. Her black dress is low-waisted, with a V-neck, a loosely knotted black tie at the V, and a flared, pleated, knee-length skirt. She wears clear stockings and black heeled pumps with ankle straps. She has a string of pearls around her neck. Her long, dark hair is parted and tied back.

Both Vi and Helen pay attention to their clothes and enjoy dressing nicely. As a teenager, Vi wore a variety of handsome, but conservative, tailored clothes—blouses, suits, coats—of interesting fabrics, with detailed buttons and belts. She is pictured in one photograph wearing a wide-lapeled camel coat, a black beret, and a black scarf. In another, she is shown with a much older boyfriend who appears to be in his thirties and is dressed in a double-breasted suit, bicolored handkerchief folded into a triangle in his breast pocket, a tie with tiepin, and a hat, a cigar clamped in his mouth—but, as Vi points out, his pants have no crease. Here, she is wearing a pale blue dress with white buttons and a round white collar under a dark coat with a small white fur collar, and lavender heeled pumps with straps. In another photograph, with another boyfriend, this one her own age, she is wearing a dress with full cream-colored blouse and sleeves and broad swathes of lace down the front and around the neck. Her hair is simply arranged with a part down the middle, she is wearing her glasses, and, as in all her photographs, she has a relaxed, happy smile.

For a housecleaning job, Vi often goes out dressed in clean and pressed blue jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt or a sweater or, in warm weather, a T-shirt. Dressed in this way, she appears as athletic as a young girl. Very rarely, her head is wrapped in a kerchief tied in back; more usually, she is bareheaded, her hair braided in one of a variety of different styles. Her hair is still mostly dark, with only a little gray in it. When she dresses up for a party or church function, however, she wears a wig of smooth, waved, and styled black hair streaked with silver and a fancy dress of shiny material, sometimes with bouffant sleeves and a wide skirt, sometimes more streamlined. The change in her appearance is startling: she looks younger than her age, but also more formal, losing her youthful or tomboyish vivaciousness. In this guise she is known to most of the other church members not as Vi or Viola but as Mother Harriman.

When Helen still lived at home, she would have breakfast—often just a piece of toast and a cup of instant coffee—in her nightgown, housecoat, and slippers. Then, after washing the breakfast dishes, she would wash herself and dress in stockings, low-heeled pumps, a skirt, a blouse with a pin, or a dress, and sometimes a cardigan. She was always well groomed and her colors were pleasing in combination, if muted. Her gray hair was styled in a permanent wave. When she moved into the nursing home she immediately abandoned the permanent wave, and now her hair is straight and cut fairly short, a shiny silver, usually pinned to the side with a bobby pin. She now wears kneesocks instead of stockings, and athletic shoes because they have good support and traction.

Both Vi and Helen are graceful. They stand and move in an economical, balanced way, Helen more slowly and deliberately now than Vi. Neither one has ever been awkward, clumsy, or hasty. They know the importance of not rushing. If an employer or a friend has to go out on an errand, Vi will say, with a pleasant lilt to her words, “Take your time!”

Helen has always thought and planned ahead, and has been prepared for what she will do next. This is one of the reasons she is not clumsy and does not hurry. Only once did her younger son ever see her moving fast, and that was during an emergency: a little girl had fallen into a neighbor’s well and was drowning.

Vi’s posture is fully upright; she stands poised and balanced on her feet with her shoulders back and her head up, facing the person she is talking to and looking him or her directly in the eye. Helen has a slight stoop in her back and shoulders, and when she is seated, she tends to be rather graciously inclined toward the person she is talking to, this tendency no doubt exacerbated by her weak hearing. While she still lived in her own house, this forward inclination, as she peeled a potato or climbed the stairs with something in her arms, was expressive of her general state of readiness and activity, and even of her generosity, as she reached out a crooked hand to touch a grandchild or show a photograph.

Both Vi and Helen are polite and gracious in their actions and responses, and appreciative and thoughtful of others. But beyond these good manners, both have a good deal of personal charm. This expresses itself in their voices, facial expressions, bearing, wit, and alertness of response. They maintain steady eye contact; their expressions are relaxed and smiling, their voices are well inflected, rising and falling pleasantly; they are closely attentive to the conversation in progress and quick to respond with a thoughtful remark.

Both Vi and Helen are so friendly and charming that they consistently elicit positive reactions from others—their friends, employers, doctors, nurses, church congregation members, children and grandchildren—and therefore in turn receive, from these others, the sustenance of friendliness, consideration, and wit.

At present, although, inevitably, certain of the staff at the nursing home are by nature unresponsive, cold in manner, or bad-tempered, most have become very fond of Helen and describe her modest and generous personality either directly—“She’ll never tell you if she needs something”—or with gentle irony: “Oh, Helen—she’s such a complainer!”