Can't and Won't

by Lydia Davis

  * * *

  Then at last I began to feel normal again. For weeks I had felt vaguely ill, and afraid of accidents. I was afraid I would die. Why was I immediately afraid I would die? Was my life suddenly worth more because of this grant? Or did I think that because something good had happened to me, now something bad was going to happen? Was I afraid I would not be able to enjoy this good fortune because I would die first? It had been promised to me, and they, or you, couldn’t take it away. But you had been careful to say, in the very first letter you sent to me, that if I were to die, no one else, no one in my family, for instance, my mother or my sisters or my brother, could have it. What you didn’t need to say was that if I died, of course, I couldn’t have it either.

  Or did I think that now that I had been promised something this good, I would die before I received it?

  I had sudden generous impulses. I wanted to give money to my friends, and I wanted to give twenty-dollar bills to strangers in the city. I thought of donating something to the sad, shabby bus station, maybe some large plants and a shelf of books for the waiting area.

  Then I was warned by a friend who had been through this before. She said to watch out: I would have an almost irresistible impulse to give all the money away.

  There were many things I had wanted to do in my life and had never done because there was no time. I am not graceful, but I like to dance. I wanted to sing, even though my voice is thin and weak. But of course this award was not given to me for those things. The Foundation had not intended to support me during the time I spent dancing and singing.

  I used to dream about the nice things I would buy if I had enough money. Now a combination of shame and caution stopped me from spending the money freely or foolishly. I did, though, sometimes think about what I wanted to buy. I had a list: I wanted a canoe, an old wardrobe, a better piano, a dining table, a small piece of land, a trailer to put on it, a fishpond, some farm animals, and a shed to keep them in. This was in addition to some nicer clothes.

  I thought I had to be careful, though. If I bought something that was not necessary but that gave me pleasure, it might be expensive to keep, like the nice piece of land, on which I would have to pay taxes. Or it might require constant care, like the farm animals.

  I never did buy any of those things.

  After there was a notice in the college newspaper, I expected reactions and questions from the students at the next class. I was looking forward to the chance to talk to them about this exciting event. I wanted to talk to them about research, and how exciting it can be. I thought it would be easy to talk about this, and interesting, and it might increase their respect for me. I am much better in the classroom if I think they respect me. I prepared for this discussion, imagining their questions and thinking of some answers. But none of them had heard the news, and no one said anything about it. Since I had prepared for their interested questions and not for their blank silence, I was even stiffer and more awkward than usual.

  Now I see why I have been writing to you so much about teaching. I did not dare tell myself, before, just how much it bothered me, because I had to live with it. Then I thought I would never have to teach again. That was when I could admit that it was the worst torture—to be placed in front of that audience of indifferent or even possibly mocking young students.

  At first I thought my fear confronting the class was reasonable: what could be more terrifying than to stand up there in front of those ranks of critical or indifferent or contemptuous young people, exposed to their eyes and their thoughts in all my uncertainty, my unimpressive exterior, my lack of training, my lack of confidence and command. There was some truth to that. But I have done this over and over again at different schools for years now. Finally, at the start of that important year, the year of your phone call, when my fear had not lessened or vanished, as I thought it might, now that I had had some experience at this particular college, I had to face the fact that my fear was exaggerated and unnatural. Certain friends agreed with me.

  For instance, on the very first day of classes the first year I taught at this college, I had what I now think was a psychosomatic injury, if that’s the right term for an injury caused purely by an emotional condition: I woke up with a large blood clot in one eye. To myself, looking in the mirror, I seemed grotesque, monstrous. I don’t know if, when I stood there confronting the class later that day, the students noticed this blood clot. Since of course they would not say anything to me about it, I never knew. And it is true that students of that age are in general more interested in their own business than in any teacher, with or without a blood clot in her eye.

  Later in the term, I developed such a bad infection in the tip of one finger from an embedded sliver that I required surgery, and I wore a large bandage to class. The surgery left a permanent scar and indentation in that fingertip, and some loss of sensation. I can’t help seeing this injury, too, as a pathetic attempt to disable myself so that I could not teach.

  After the finger had healed and the bandage was off, I began falling asleep at odd times, for several minutes at a time. I fell asleep not only on the bus, which was not so surprising, but also in my office, with my head down on my desk or tipped back, and in my car, in parking lots after shopping, and lying in the dentist’s chair, and sitting in a row with other patients in the office of the eye doctor, waiting for my eyes to dilate. Obviously, I must have thought that falling asleep was one way to avoid my situation for at least a little while.

  During the whole term, I wore black—a black coat, black shoes, black pants, and a black sweater—as though it were some sort of protection. Black was certainly a strong color, and maybe I thought that appearing in black would convince the students that I was a strong person. I was supposed to lead them in a confident way. But I did not want to be their leader—I have never wanted to be anyone’s leader.

  When I wasn’t expecting it anymore, the students began to find out about my award and to ask questions. They seemed really interested in the news. They seemed to enjoy the sudden minor campus celebrity of their teacher. The novelty, the break in routine, which I welcomed, probably relieved them, too. Whenever anything out of the ordinary takes place in the class, such as a sudden thunderstorm, or a blizzard, or an electrical outage, or my appearing with that large bandage on my finger, I relax a little and the hour goes better.

  * * *

  The teaching was almost over for the semester. The last class would meet in eight days.

  I was feeling the approach of death, maybe because the time was coming when the Foundation would give me my first check. The only thing that could stop me from receiving the money in January was my own death. So I was thinking that the new year would inescapably bring either my death or the first check from the Foundation.

  At the last class, we had a party of sorts, although I made them do some classwork first. I had carried two bottles of cider up on the bus in a backpack, along with a bag of good cider doughnuts. We arranged the chairs in a very large circle, although that was not my idea. I could not think how to conduct a party with twenty-five undergraduates. I did not think it would be very festive for them to sit in rows facing me and eating their messy doughnuts. But to move the chairs out of the way and mill around standing up, as at a cocktail party, also seemed awkward, since not all the students were friends with one another.

  Now I was a little sorry to say goodbye to them. It was easier to miss them and think fondly of them when I didn’t have to be afraid of them anymore.

  Once the classes were over and the burden of teaching was taken away, of course I continued to teach in my own imagination, thinking of yet another reading assignment or smart comment. I imagined them all sitting there, receptive and interested, whereas actually they were by then sitting in other classes, or still on vacation, and not giving me or my course another thought, except maybe to wonder what their grade would be.

  Soon after the new year, I met with a tax advisor, and he gave me some bad news. A large part o
f the grant would go to paying taxes—on the grant! Another part of it would have to be put away in a special account—to avoid being taxed. What was left would not be enough to live on. I realized that I would have to continue looking for small, temporary jobs in almost the same way I did before. But I still thought I would not have to teach.

  Even at first, though, I had not wanted to cut my ties to the college completely. I thought I could give some lectures. I am not afraid of standing up in front of an audience to deliver a lecture that I have written ahead of time. I could do this in exchange for a small fee, I thought. But my plan to give lectures turned out to be impossible. I was told, instead, that I could receive a very small salary if I agreed to teach a special short course each fall, for people from the community. People from the community are usually older, sometimes quite old, and often eccentric. They are also more sympathetic and more respectful of a teacher, so I welcomed this solution.

  Then I was no longer afraid of dying. Was this because I had already received some of the money? Was I thinking that if I died now, I would at least not have lost all of it? I had an idea that at first seemed unrelated to my fear of dying: I should prepare for my death now, so that this preparation would be “out of the way” and I could then carry on with my life. If death was the worst thing I had to fear, then I should make my peace with it. But in fact, how could I have thought that this feeling was not related to my earlier fear of dying?

  I was also about to begin my letter to the Foundation, I thought. I would tell the Foundation that I was doing everything with more care. You would probably be happy to hear that. And I would tell you that, far from acquiring more things, as I could, now that I had a little more money, I wanted to get rid of all the things I didn’t need, the things that had been stacked on top of bookcases and covered with a thick layer of sticky dust, or pushed inside cupboards, packed in boxes, or crowded into the back of a cabinet in the bathroom, mildewing.

  Yet I knew that this might not interest you.

  In the letter I was going to write to the Foundation, I was not sure I would tell them about my plans, although maybe I would explain that in my life as it was before, I did not have time for such things as stopping to talk to my neighbors. I was grateful to the Foundation that I could now do these things. I would not tell you that I was not yet working on any serious project, or that I presently spent my days sorting things: medications, lotions, and ointments; magazines and catalogues; socks, pens, and pencils. Maybe I was sorting things because I thought I was going to die. Or maybe I felt that I was not worthy of this award, and that if the Foundation could look in on my life for a few minutes, it would be appalled at the disorder.

  I really didn’t think the Foundation had this in mind when they awarded me the grant. I was afraid they would feel they had wasted their money. It would be too late for them to take it back, but they would be disappointed or even angry.

  But perhaps my own conscience would sooner or later make me return to the work I should be doing. And perhaps the Foundation was relying on the fact that in the end my conscience would not let me waste my time and therefore their money.

  * * *

  After I received the first installment of the grant, I was wondering if I could buy something expensive. Then, one day, I nearly bought, by mistake, a sweater that cost $267. I think that is an expensive sweater, though some people would not think so, I know. I had misread the tag and thought it cost $167, which was already expensive enough. I had taken a deep breath and decided to buy it. I did not even try it on—I was afraid I would lose my nerve. When the salesgirl wrote up the slip, I saw the mistake and had to tell her that I would not buy it after all. It was a plain red cardigan. I did not really understand why the material and the one interesting design feature made it so much more expensive than what I was used to paying.

  I continued to stand there by the cash register, probably in part so that the salesgirl would think I was not embarrassed at having changed my mind because of the price. I looked down into the glass case of jewelry and admired a necklace that cost $234. It was pretty, but not so pretty that I thought I should spend that amount of money on it. Then I asked the price of a gold bracelet, and she told me that it cost nearly $400. “Gold is expensive, after all,” she said. It was a simple, delicate little bracelet with tiny, thin disks of gold strung on a piece of something I can’t remember now. It was very pretty. But no matter how pretty it was, I would never have spent $400 for it or for any piece of jewelry. In the end, I bought only what I might have bought anyway, a pair of earrings for $36.

  I didn’t know if I should ever wear anything expensive. I thought I could, just once, buy one thing as expensive as that bracelet. But should I? I had at one time decided that I would own just a few clothes and that they would be simple but well made. I still had that idea. But if they were well made, did that also mean they were expensive? To dress simply was not necessarily enough if the simple clothes were very expensive. But then, maybe excellent quality would be all right if I bought the clothes secondhand. They would be secondhand, simple, old, a little worn, but of excellent quality. That seemed like a good compromise. But then I worried that if I shopped for them at a secondhand store, I would possibly be taking them away from someone else who really needed them.

  * * *

  I was going to be busy that spring. The spring had already been planned long before to include a number of rather tiresome short-term jobs that I could not cancel now, such as producing reader’s reports for a publisher, writing short articles, and delivering papers at minor conferences. So my life did not feel any different, and did not seem any more free than it had been, except that from time to time I remembered that I would not be teaching in the fall—as I wrongly believed. The summer would come and I would really be free of every obligation.

  But by the time the summer did come, with the prospect of that short course I was now going to have to teach, so many months had passed that I had grown used to feeling two contradictory things: that everything in my life had changed; and that, really, nothing in my life had changed.

  * * *

  This teaching, here at the college, was not even the first time I had ever taught, as I told you earlier. In other years, some classes went well and some badly. I can remember feeling so faint during the first meeting of one class that I had to put the students to work at an exercise that I contrived on the spot, while I left the room. I went to stand on an outdoor walkway and stared at a grove of eucalyptus trees until I felt better.

  Another class, a few years later, at a different college, happened to meet in a room that had once been used as an office by a close friend of mine. In this very same room I had had a series of difficult encounters with her. Maybe that was what made the class particularly hard. During the first meeting, one talented student spoke up rudely when he found out what my requirements were for the course, and he dropped out immediately. I later offended another one because I said something personal which she took the wrong way.

  My office hours were scheduled for the hour before the class. None of my students ever came to see me, not once, and so I always sat in my cubicle alone. It was an evening class, and the building was almost empty at that hour, but next door to me was another cubicle occupied by a more popular and successful teacher. I would sit alone in the nearly empty building and listen to everything he said to the steady stream of his own students.

  I tell myself: There are just four of these hours each week. The four hours come one at a time, two on Tuesday and then two more on Thursday—just four small hours out of the whole week. But each casts a very long, very dark shadow on the day before, even on the two days before, and that shadow is especially dark the morning of each day of classes, and then darkest of all during those terrible ten or twenty minutes before the class, which include the last, almost unbearable minute of walking out the door of my office.

  I also tell myself that many people in the world have awful jobs, and that compared to those jobs,
this is a good job.

  I have been writing to you at length about teaching. That is because when your grant came, I thought I wouldn’t have to teach anymore. I also thought, and still think, that because you took enough interest in my work to give me the grant, you would be interested in everything about me and everything I had to say. I know this may not be true, but still I choose to believe that you care about how I am and what I am doing.

  * * *

  My mental habits are so fixed that I go on thinking the same things in the same way even when my circumstances have changed. But for a while, after the news, my vision of things widened. I saw more, on the peripheries, and I also observed and took pleasure in my wider vision itself. On one day, at least, I got into my car and drove into neighborhoods I had never explored before. I explored the new space, or the new time, that had been given to me. Then, maybe under the pressure of the various jobs in the spring, my vision narrowed again, I became intent on what I had to do, I concentrated on the next thing I had to do and not on my larger prospects. My vision led me only from breakfast to lunch and from lunch to dinner.

  Then, when I finished all the work I was scheduled to do in the spring, a deep laziness set in, to my surprise. What began as a great relaxation, once the pressure was lifted, became an endless, boundless laziness in which I willfully refused to do most of what was asked of me unless the person asking was right there in front of me. Any request from a distance, any letter or any other communication, I simply ignored. Or I answered it quickly so as to make it go away. I said I was too busy to do whatever it was they wanted, too occupied. I was too occupied with doing nothing.

  Usually I am a person of great energy. I can tackle any job, if asked, I can make myself do it, I can accomplish a whole string of tasks in succession at great speed and with great attention at the same time. Now, just when I was given such an opportunity to work on a project requiring research, for instance, all my energy deserted me suddenly, I was helpless, I said over and over again to anyone who asked me, “I’m sorry, I’m too busy, I have too much to do already.”