Can't and Won't

by Lydia Davis

  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!

  Reversible Story

  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

  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.

  How I Know What I Like (Six Versions)

  She likes it. She is like me. Therefore, I might like it.

  She is like me. She likes the things I like. She likes this. So I might like it.

  I like it. I show it to her. She likes it. She is like me. Therefore, I might really like it.

  I think I like it. I show it to her. She likes it. She is like me. Therefore, I might really like it.

  I think I like it. I show it to her. (She is like me. She likes the things I like.) She likes it. So I might really like it.

  I like it. I show it to her. She likes it. (She says the other one is “just plain awful.”) She is like me. She likes the things I like. So I might really like it.

  Handel

  I have a problem in my marriage, which is that I simply do not like George Frideric Handel as much as my husband does. It is a real barrier between us. I am envious of one couple we know, for example, who both love Handel so much they will sometimes fly all the way to Texas just to hear a particular tenor sing a part in one of his operas. By now, they have also converted another friend of ours into a lover of Handel. I am surprised, because the last time she and I talked about music, what she loved was Hank Williams. All three of them went by train to Washington, D.C., this year to hear Giulio Cesare in Egitto. I prefer the composers of the nineteenth century and particularly Dvořák. But I’m pretty open to all sorts of music, and usually if I’m exposed to something long enough, I come to like it. But even though my husband puts on some sort of Handel vocal music almost every night if I don’t say anything to stop him, I have not come to love Handel. Fortunately, I have just found out that there is a therapist not too far from here, in Lenox, Massachusetts, who specializes in Handel-therapy, and I’m going to give her a try. (My husband does not believe in therapy and I know he would not go to a Dvořák-therapist with me even if there was one.)

  The Force of the Subliminal

  Rhea was here for an overnight visit and we were talking about birthdays. I had asked her when her birthday was. She told me it was April 13, but that she never received any cards or gifts on her birthday, which was just as well because she did not want to be reminded of it. I remarked that one person who never let anyone forget her birthday was our mutual friend Ellie.

  Ellie was far away, in another country, where it was harder for her to remind people of her birthday. Then I thought, Why, it’s October: this is the month of Ellie’s birthday! I could not remember which day in October it was, so I went and looked it up where I had written it down in my address book. I discovered it was this very day, October 23. I told Rhea and we exclaimed over the fact that I had started talking about birthdays on Ellie’s birthday. Rhea said I must have known it all along, subliminally.

  I did not tell Rhea how I had come to think of birthdays: that as I was putting napkins on the table for dinner I remembered a story she had told me, how she was once, long ago, giving dinner to a group of our friends who were rather difficult to entertain since their standards were very high where food and wine and table service were concerned; how Rhea, who in those days did not usually care much about such things as table settings, but was capable of embarrassment in the presence of certain people such as these friends, discovered first that she had no napkins of any kind in the house, then no paper towels either, then no Kleenex tissues either; and how, a few minutes into the meal, one of the guests politely asked for a napkin; how Rhea explained the problem and another guest suggested using toilet paper; and Rhea’s embarrassment as the guests did continue the meal using toile
t paper; so that I was moved to want to send Rhea a set of cloth napkins for her next birthday so that she would never find herself in that situation again. But it was true that I might not have thought of Rhea’s story if I had not remembered, subliminally, that today was Ellie’s birthday.

  Later, after Rhea had gone to bed, while I was washing the last of the dinner dishes, I thought about the conversation and said to myself, with a feeling of mild satisfaction, Well, this is one year that Ellie has not been able to remind me of her birthday, because she is too far away. But then I thought, Wait a minute, the fact is that I have somehow remembered Ellie’s birthday. And then I realized that because she never lets anyone forget her birthday, and because I know this so well, it was not I who had subliminally known it all along, as Rhea and I had decided, but in fact Ellie who had managed, in the end, to remind me, though not as directly as usual, and also, with her characteristic efficiency, to remind Rhea at the same time.

  Her Geography: Alabama

  She thinks, for a moment, that Alabama is a city in Georgia:

  it is called Alabama, Georgia.

  The Funeral

  story from Flaubert

  I went to Pouchet’s wife’s funeral yesterday. As I watched poor Pouchet, who stood there bending and swaying with grief like a stalk of grass in the wind, some fellows near me began talking about their orchards: they were comparing the girths of the young fruit trees. Then a man next to me asked me about the Middle East. He wanted to know whether there were any museums in Egypt. He asked me: “What is the condition of their public libraries?” The priest standing over the hole was speaking French, not Latin, because the service was a Protestant one. The gentleman beside me approved, then made some slighting remarks about Catholicism. Meanwhile, there was poor Pouchet standing forlornly in front of us.

  Oh, we writers may think we invent too much—but reality is worse every time!

  The Husband-Seekers

  Flocks of women attempt to land on an island, seeking husbands from a tribe of very beautiful young men. They blow across the sea like cotton buds or seeding wild plants, and when rejected they pile up offshore in a floating bank of woolly white.

  dream

  In the Gallery

  A woman I know, a visual artist, is trying to hang her work for a show. Her work is a single line of text pasted on the wall, with a transparent curtain suspended in front of it.

  She is at the top of a ladder and cannot get down. She is facing out instead of in. The people down below tell her to turn around, but she does not know how.

  When I see her again, she is down from the ladder. She is going from one person to the next, asking for help in hanging her artwork. But no one will help her. They say she is such a difficult woman.

  dream

  The Low Sun

  I am a college girl. I tell a younger college girl, a dancer, that the sun is very low in the sky now. Its light must be filling the caves by the sea.

  dream

  The Landing

  Just now, during these days when I am so afraid of dying, I have been through a strange experience on an airplane.

  I was on my way to Chicago to take part in a conference. The emergency occurred as we were approaching the airport. This is something I have always dreaded. Each time I fly in an airplane, I try to make my peace with the world and gain some final perspective on my life. I always do this twice on the flight, once before takeoff and once before landing. But there has never before been anything worse, on any of these flights, than ordinary turbulence—although of course when the turbulence begins, I don’t know that it will be nothing more than ordinary turbulence.

  This time something was wrong with the wings. Some flaps were not opening that were supposed to slow the plane down as it approached the runway, so it was going to have to land at a very high speed. There was a danger that when it landed, going at such a high speed, a tire could burst and the plane might spin and crash, or the wheels could collapse and the plane might slide on its belly and catch fire.

  The announcement, from the pilot, terrified me. The terror was very physical, something like an icy bolt down my spine. With his announcement, everything had changed: we might all die within the next hour. I looked, for comfort or companionship in my fear, at the woman in the seat next to me, but she was no help, her eyes closed and her face turned away towards the window. I looked at other passengers, but each seemed absorbed in comprehending what the pilot had said. I, too, shut my eyes, and held on to the arms of my seat.

  A little time passed, and then there was a clarification from the steward, who announced approximately how long we would be circling above the airport. The steward was calm. As he spoke, I kept my eyes fixed on his face. This was when I learned something I stored away to remember later, on other flights, if there were to be other flights: if I was worried, I should look at the face of the steward or stewardess and read his or her expression for a clue as to whether I should be worried or not. This steward’s face was smooth and relaxed. The emergency was not one of the worst, he added. I looked across the aisle and met the eyes of a passenger in his sixties who was also calm. He told me he had flown over nine million miles since 1981 and experienced a number of emergency situations. He did not go on to describe them.

  But now the steward was doing something that only intensified my fear: still calm, but perhaps with the calm of fatalism, I now thought, fatalism produced by his long training and experience, or perhaps simply an acceptance of the end, he was instructing the people in the first row point by point what each of them was to do in case he himself became incapacitated. Watching him instruct them, in my eyes they were suddenly elevated from being mere passengers to being his assistants or deputies, and I saw him, already, reduced to helplessness, dead or paralyzed. Even if only in my imagination, the fatal crash was already imminent. At that point, I realized that anything other than routine behavior from a steward or stewardess would alarm me.

  Our lives might be almost over. This required an immediate reconciliation with the idea of death, and it required an immediate decision as to the best way to leave this world. What should be my last thoughts on this earth, in this life? It was not a matter of looking for solace but for acceptance, some way of believing that it was all right to die now. First I said goodbye to certain people close to me. Then I had to have a larger thought, for the very end, and what I found to be the best thought was the thought that I was very small in this large universe. It was necessary to picture the large universe, and all the galaxies, and remember how very small I was, and then it would be all right that I should die now. Things were dying all the time, the universe was mysterious, another ice age was coming anyway, our civilization would disappear, so it was all right that I should die now.

  While I was thinking this large thought, my eyes were again shut, I was clasping my hands together until they were moist, and I was bracing my feet very hard against the base of the seat in front of me. It wouldn’t help to brace my feet if we had a fatal crash. But I had to take what little action I could, I had to assert my tiny amount of control. In the midst of my fear, I still found it interesting that I thought I had to assert some control in an uncontrollable situation. Then I gave up taking any action at all and observed another interesting thing about what was happening now inside me—that as long as I felt I had to take some action, I was anguished, and when I gave up all responsibility and stopped trying to do anything at all, I was relatively at peace, even though the earth meanwhile was circling so far below us and we were so high up in a defective airplane that would have trouble landing.

  The airplane circled for a long time. Either later, or at the time, I learned that while we were circling, preparations were being made on the ground for an emergency landing. The longest runway was being cleared, because the plane would be coming in at a high speed and would therefore have to travel a long way as it slowed down. Fire engines were brought out and parked by the runway. There were several possible problems with landin
g at such a high speed. The wheels could give way and collapse, the plane then coasting on its belly. The friction of coasting could cause a fire, or the speed of the plane could cause it to tip forward, crushing its nose. If the plane was coasting on its belly, or if a tire burst, the pilot could lose control of the steering and the plane could veer off the runway and crash.

  At last the long runway was clear and the fire engines were in place, and the pilot began the descent. We passengers could not perceive anything out of the ordinary in the way he was flying the plane during the descent, but as the moment came for landing we grew more nervous: whereas before, the possible disaster was in our near future and we were still untouched, now it was just moments away.

  In a normal landing, a plane comes in quite steeply, maybe at a 30-degree angle, and it often then bumps or bounces a little on the ground as it makes contact. Moving at such a high speed, we could not safely do that, so the pilot descended in wide circles almost all the way down to the ground before he headed for the runway, approaching it so low that its path was at almost no angle to the ground. In order to have the whole length of the runway for decelerating, he touched the plane down as soon as he passed the edge of the runway, putting the wheels to the asphalt so gently that we hardly felt it: the landing was smoother than any I had experienced before. He then slowed the plane very gradually until we were taxiing at a normal speed. He had done a beautiful job of landing, and we were safe.

  Now, of course, the passengers all clapped and roared, in their relief, at the same time looking at one another and gazing out the windows in some awe at the fire engines that had not been needed. As the cheering died down, the sound of talking and laughing in the cabin increased. The man across the aisle told me about other near-disasters he had experienced, such as a fire aboard his airplane. We were informed by the steward, who also became more talkative now that we were on the ground, that pilots practice this sort of landing many times in their training. It might have helped us to know this earlier, but perhaps it would not have.