Varieties of Disturbance

by Lydia Davis

  The sense of humor which they share so generously with others, Vi’s ready laughter and Helen’s gentle smile, no doubt provides another form of release, both physical and emotional, along with a strengthening of their supportive community, while their storytelling, however abbreviated in Helen’s case, reinforces their firm sense of identity.

  The loving, but strict, upbringing by their families of origin, with its strongly inculcated work ethic, would provide at least three major benefits: a steady emotional support, a reinforcement of identity, and training in the self-discipline that would encourage Vi and Helen to maintain good habits and find satisfaction in industry. Their close involvement with their families of origin would in turn encourage them to form close ties within their own created families and their circles of friends, these in turn providing a steady support for them. It may also be argued that the habit of orderliness which was taught them as children would be conducive to their creating and maintaining a healthy environment and thus to lessening the likelihood of their suffering a disabling or fatal accident.

  Their close involvement with their church communities yields a complex of benefits, arising not only from the rituals and spiritual beliefs of the church but also from the social activities surrounding them.

  Lastly, a love of domestic animals involves an interaction with a positively disposed or needy creature that generally reciprocates one’s affection and provides yet another form of release from stress.

  Many of the positive elements in Vi’s and Helen’s lives are, of course, part of a reciprocal pattern: for instance, the work Vi and Helen have done, whether at home or on a job, has provided them with a positive sense of satisfaction; or their generosity toward another person has yielded generosity in return; or their kindness to a pet has inspired affection on the part of the pet. The positive effects of their actions induce them, in turn, to repeat the actions; in other words, a positively reinforcing cycle is created that constantly perpetuates the well-being of the initiator, Vi or Helen.

  November 2002

  Update: In the four years since this study was written, there have been some relatively minor changes in the situations of Vi and Helen, now respectively eighty-nine and ninety-six, but their health and vitality remain very much the same.

  Helen’s house was sold and its contents dispersed. This meant that she could no longer ask her family to bring her something from home, for instance some piece of clothing from a certain closet. Most of her clothing was given away, as were her furniture, books, kitchenware, and linens. She did not want to move anything into the nursing home because of the lack of space. She consented only to have a single oil painting from the house to hang above her chair. It is a very early one by her son that depicts her Bible lying open on a table by a window next to a potted geranium.

  The selling of the house also meant that she could no longer go back and visit it, as she used to do on excursions from the nursing home. Now her family drives past it on their way to see her, and reports to her on its condition: the new owners have rebuilt the front porch; the plantings have not changed; yesterday there was a car in the driveway; today there was a Christmas tree upstairs.

  Vi now has two more great-grandchildren, or a total of four. The older ones tell the little ones they must mind her because she “belongs to the old school,” as she reports with delight. Her house was badly flooded one winter when the pipes burst while she was away. It had to be completely gutted, and while Vi was waiting for the insurance company to come forward with more money for the repair work, she lived either with her granddaughter in Washington or with her best friend down the hill from her house—the same friend with whom she had studied the Bible on Saturday evenings and who had had a frightening attack at three in the morning.

  When surprised by a visit at ten in the morning a year or so ago, the two companionable women, both in their eighties but looking twenty years younger, were still in their immaculately clean house robes, one hanging out a load of wash in the sunshine on a square laundry tree in the backyard and the other sitting at the gleaming Formica table in the kitchen. Vi had no immediate plans to go back to work, but also no plans to give notice to any of her employers. Later, she quit her office-cleaning job, but she does continue, though now eighty-nine years old, to clean house for at least two families.

  Vi is still in good health, and active in church. She has recently taken a much-anticipated trip to Alaska which was not as successful as it might have been, since one member of the group had to go home halfway through due to a death in the family. “They never should have told her,” Vi says.

  Helen’s health, too, is reasonably good. Now ninety-six, she takes only one prescription medication, for high blood pressure. Her balance has worsened, and her hearing has deteriorated slightly. But she is mentally alert, with an excellent memory, and her sense of humor is still lively, as is her interest in the activities of her family and friends. After several years of a successful companionship, Helen’s young roommate was removed to another facility. The roommate who succeeded her was an old woman of a sour temperament, active enough to propel herself around in a wheelchair, but a constant grumbler. She died not long after arriving; Helen did not know the cause. The current roommate is a kindly Ukrainian woman with a large circle of friends and family: Helen mentions the noise produced by the long, frequent visits, though she does not explicitly complain.

  Helen maintains the same rather limited physical activity as when she entered the nursing home. Since she has fallen several times, however, she is no longer allowed to move about on her own but is connected to an alarm on the back of her chair by a wire clipped to the shoulder of her blouse; the alarm will sound if she stands up. She still takes a daily walk around the nursing home when there is a volunteer or family member available to accompany her. She moves at a fairly brisk pace, leaning forward on her walker, and quietly nods or says hello to almost everyone she meets, though many residents are unaware of the meaning of her greeting and respond with a blank stare—which of course she can’t see. One section of the hallway, near the entrance lobby, displays greatly enlarged framed vintage photographs, in color, of features of the town as it used to be, such as the footbridge over the river, the old shopping street with its awnings and horse-drawn carriages, the great limestone buildings of the thread mill, and the legendary frog pond of Revolutionary War fame. She calls this part of the walk “going down Main Street” and likes to stop in front of each photograph and ask questions about it. She is still reluctant to join in any of the planned activities of the home, but she will, if pressed by family members, attend a Christmas concert or “Piano with Bob” in the Recreation Room, politely staying until the very end of what may be a tedious hour-long performance.

  January 2006

  Reducing Expenses

  This is a problem you might have someday. It’s the problem of a couple I know. He’s a doctor, I’m not sure what she does. I don’t actually know them very well. In fact, I don’t know them anymore. This was years ago. I was bothered by a bulldozer coming and going next door, so I found out what was happening. Their problem was that their fire insurance was very expensive. They wanted to try to lower the insurance premiums. That was a good idea. You don’t want any of your regular payments to be too high, or higher than they have to be. For example, you don’t want to buy a property with very high taxes, since there will be nothing you can do to lower them and you will always have to pay them. I try to keep that in mind. You could understand this couple’s problem even if you didn’t have high fire insurance. If you did not have exactly the same problem, someday you might have a similar problem, of regular payments that were going to be too high. Their insurance was high because they owned a large collection of very good wine. The problem was not so much the collection per se but where they were keeping it. They had, actually, thousands of bottles of very good and excellent wine. They were keeping it in their cellar, which was certainly the right thing to do. They had an actual wine cellar. B
ut the problem was, this wine cellar wasn’t good enough or big enough. I never saw it, though I once saw another one which was very small. It was the size of a closet, but I was still impressed. But I did taste some of their wine one time. I can’t really tell the difference, though, between a bottle of wine that costs $100, or even $30, and a bottle that costs $500. At that dinner they might have been serving wine that cost even more than that. Not for me, especially, but for some of the other guests. I’m sure that very expensive wines are really wasted on most people, including myself. I was quite young at the time, but even now a very expensive wine would be wasted on me, probably. This couple learned that if they enlarged the wine cellar and improved it in certain other specific ways, their insurance premiums would be lower. They thought this was a good idea, even though it would cost something, initially, to make these improvements. The bulldozer and other machinery and labor that I saw out the window of the place where I was living at the time, which was a house borrowed from a friend who was also a friend of theirs, must have been costing them in the thousands, but I’m sure the money they spent on it was earned back within a few years or even one year by their savings on the premiums. So I can see this was a prudent move on their part. It was a move that anyone could make concerning some other thing, not necessarily a wine cellar. The point is that any improvement that will eventually save money is a good idea. This is long in the past by now. They must have saved quite a lot altogether, over the years, from the changes they made. So many years have gone by, though, that they have probably sold the house by now. Maybe the improved wine cellar raised the price of the house and they earned back even more money. I was not just young but very young when I watched the bulldozer out my window. The noise did not really bother me very much, because there were so many other things bothering me when I tried to work. In fact, I probably welcomed the sight of the bulldozer. I was impressed by their wine, and by the good paintings they also owned. They were nice, friendly people, but I didn’t think much of their clothes or furniture. I spent a lot of time looking out the window and thinking about them. I don’t know what that was worth. It was probably a waste of my time. Now I’m a lot older. But here I am, still thinking about them. There are a lot of other things that I’ve forgotten, but I haven’t forgotten them or their fire insurance. I must have thought I could learn something from them.

  Mother’s Reaction to My Travel Plans

  Gainsville! It’s too bad your cousin is dead!

  For Sixty Cents

  You are in a Brooklyn coffee shop, you have ordered only one cup of coffee, and the coffee is sixty cents, which seems expensive to you. But it is not so expensive when you consider that for this same sixty cents you are renting the use of one cup and saucer, one metal cream pitcher, one plastic glass, one small table, and two small benches. Then, to consume if you want to, besides the coffee and the cream, you have water with ice cubes and, in their own dispensers, sugar, salt, pepper, napkins, and ketchup. In addition, you can enjoy, for an indefinite length of time, the air conditioning that keeps the room at a perfectly cool temperature, the powerful white electric light that lights every corner of the room so that there are no shadows anywhere, the view of the people passing outside on the sidewalk in the hot sunlight and wind, and the company of the people inside, who are laughing and turning endless variations on one rather cruel joke at the expense of a little balding redheaded woman sitting at the counter and dangling her crossed feet from the stool, who tries to reach out with her short, white arm and slap the face of the man standing nearest to her.

  How Shall I Mourn Them?

  Shall I keep a tidy house, like L.?

  Shall I develop an unsanitary habit, like K.?

  Shall I sway from side to side a little as I walk, like C.?

  Shall I write letters to the editor, like R.?

  Shall I retire to my room often during the day, like R.?

  Shall I live alone in a large house, like B.?

  Shall I treat my husband coldly, like K.?

  Shall I give piano lessons, like M.?

  Shall I leave the butter out all day to soften, like C.?

  Shall I have problems with typewriter ribbons, like K.?

  Shall I have a strong objection to the drinking of juice, like K.?

  Shall I hold many grudges, like B.?

  Shall I buy large loaves of white bread from the baker, like C.?

  Shall I keep tubs of clams in my freezer, like C.?

  Shall I make a bad pun at the wrong moment, like R.?

  Shall I read detective novels in bed at night, like C.?

  Shall I take beautiful care of my own person, like L.?

  Shall I smoke and drink heavily, like K.?

  Shall I drink heavily and smoke sometimes, like C.?

  Shall I welcome people into my house to visit and to stay, like C.?

  Shall I be well informed about many things, like K.?

  Shall I know the classics, like K.?

  Shall I write letters by hand, like B.?

  Shall I write “Dearest Both,” like C.?

  Shall I use many exclamation marks and capitals, like C.?

  Shall I include a poem in my letter, like B.?

  Shall I often look up words in the dictionary, like R.?

  Shall I admire the picture of the beautiful President of Iceland, like R.?

  Shall I often look up etymologies, like R.?

  Shall I bring a potted tulip to the back door as a gift, like L.?

  Shall I give small dinner parties, like M.?

  Shall I get a little arthritis in my hands, like C.?

  Shall I keep a gray dove and a gray hound, like L.?

  Shall I play the radio by my bed all night, like C.?

  Shall I leave too much food in the rented house at the end of the summer, like C.?

  Shall I often eat a single baked potato for my dinner, like Dr. S.?

  Shall I have ice cream once a year, like Dr. S.?

  Shall I swim in the bay alone, even in the worst weather, like C.?

  Shall I drink vegetable cooking water, like C.?

  Shall I label my folders in shaky handwriting, like R.?

  Shall I chew my food slowly and thoroughly, like Dr. S.?

  Shall I walk by the canal, like B.?

  Shall I take my guests along the canal, like B.?

  Shall I put daylily buds in the salad for my guests, like B.?

  Shall I come out in the morning neatly dressed with my bed made, like R.?

  Shall I have my first cup of coffee at eleven o’clock, like R.?

  Shall I lay out the forks in a fan, and the napkins in a row, for company, like L.?

  Shall I make pancakes in the morning when traveling, like C.?

  Shall I carry liquor in the trunk of my car when on holiday, like C.?

  Shall I make an oyster stew on New Year’s Eve that is full of sand, like C.?

  Shall I hand a knife carefully to another person handle first, like R.?

  Shall I speak against my husband to the grocer, like C.?

  Shall I always read with a pencil in my hand, like R.?

  Shall I hug my bereaved children too long and too often, like C.?

  Shall I ignore health warnings, like B.?

  Shall I give gifts of money freely, like C.?

  Shall I give gifts with animal themes, like C.?

  Shall I keep a small plastic seal in my refrigerator, like C.?

  Shall I have trouble sleeping on my arm, like R.?

  Shall I take off my shirt just before I die, like B.?

  Shall I wear only black and white, like M.?

  A Strange Impulse

  I looked down on the street from my window. The sun shone and the shopkeepers had come out to stand in the warmth and watch the people go by. But why were the shopkeepers covering their ears? And why were the people in the street running as if pursued by a terrible specter? Soon everything returned to normal: the incident had been no more than a moment of madness during which the
people could not bear the frustration of their lives and had given way to a strange impulse.

  How She Could Not Drive

  She could not drive if there were too many clouds in the sky. Or rather, if she could drive with many clouds in the sky, she could not have music playing if there were also passengers in the car. If there were two passengers, as well as a small caged animal, and many clouds in the sky, she could listen but not speak. If a wind blew shavings from the small animal’s cage over her shoulder and lap as well as the shoulder and lap of the man next to her, she could not speak to anyone or listen, even if there were very few clouds in the sky. If the small boy was quiet, reading his book in the back seat, but the man next to her opened his newspaper so wide that its edge touched the gearshift and the sunlight shone off its white page into her eyes, then she could not speak or listen while trying to enter a large highway full of fast-moving cars, even if there were no clouds in the sky.

  Then, if it was night and the boy was not in the car, and the small caged animal was not in the car, and the car was empty of boxes and suitcases where before it had been full, and the man next to her was not reading a newspaper but looking out the window straight ahead, and the sky was dark so that she could see no clouds, she could listen but not talk, and she could have no music playing, if a motel brightly illuminated above her on a dark hill some distance ahead and to the left seemed to be floating across the highway in front as she drove at high speed between dotted lines with headlights coming at her on the left and up behind her in the rearview mirror and taillights ahead in a gentle curve around to the right underneath the massive airship of motel lights floating across the highway from left to right in front of her, or could talk, but only to say one thing, which went unanswered.