Can't and Won't: Stories Read online

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  For Daniel and Theo and for Laura and Stephanie

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  I

  A Story of Stolen Salamis

  The Dog Hair

  Circular Story

  Idea for a Sign

  Bloomington

  The Cook’s Lesson

  At the Bank

  Awake in the Night

  At the Bank: 2

  The Two Davises and the Rug

  Contingency (vs. Necessity)

  Brief Incident in Short a, Long a, and Schwa

  Contingency (vs. Necessity) 2: On Vacation

  A Story Told to Me by a Friend

  The Bad Novel

  After You Left

  The Bodyguard

  The Child

  The Churchyard

  My Sister and the Queen of England

  The Visit to the Dentist

  Letter to a Frozen Peas Manufacturer

  The Cornmeal

  II

  Two Undertakers

  I Ask Mary About Her Friend, the Depressive, and His Vacation

  The Magic of the Train

  Eating Fish Alone

  Can’t and Won’t

  Pouchet’s Wife

  Dinner

  The Dog

  The Grandmother

  The Dreadful Mucamas

  Reversible Story

  A Woman, Thirty

  How I Know What I Like (Six Versions)

  Handel

  The Force of the Subliminal

  Her Geography: Alabama

  The Funeral

  The Husband-Seekers

  In the Gallery

  The Low Sun

  The Landing

  The Language of the Telephone Company

  The Coachman and the Worm

  Letter to a Marketing Manager

  III

  The Last of the Mohicans

  Grade Two Assignment

  Master

  An Awkward Situation

  Housekeeping Observation

  The Execution

  A Note from the Paperboy

  In the Train Station

  The Moon

  My Footsteps

  How I Read as Quickly as Possible Through My Back Issues of the TLS

  Notes During Long Phone Conversation with Mother

  Men

  Negative Emotions

  I’m Pretty Comfortable, But I Could Be a Little More Comfortable

  Judgment

  The Chairs

  My Friend’s Creation

  The Piano

  The Party

  The Cows

  The Exhibition

  Letter to a Peppermint Candy Company

  Her Geography: Illinois

  IV

  Ödön von Horváth Out Walking

  On the Train

  The Problem of the Vacuum Cleaner

  The Seals

  Learning Medieval History

  My School Friend

  The Piano Lesson

  The Schoolchildren in the Large Building

  The Sentence and the Young Man

  Molly, Female Cat: History/Findings

  The Letter to the Foundation

  The Results of One Statistical Study

  Revise: 1

  Short Conversation (in Airport Departure Lounge)

  Revise: 2

  Left Luggage

  Waiting for Takeoff

  Industry

  The Sky Above Los Angeles

  Two Characters in a Paragraph

  Swimming in Egypt

  The Language of Things in the House

  The Washerwomen

  Letter to a Hotel Manager

  Her Birthday

  V

  My Childhood Friend

  Their Poor Dog

  Hello Dear

  Not Interested

  Old Woman, Old Fish

  Staying at the Pharmacist’s

  The Song

  Two Former Students

  A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates

  The Woman Next to Me on the Airplane

  Writing

  Wrong Thank-You in Theater

  The Rooster

  Sitting with My Little Friend

  The Old Soldier

  Two Sligo Lads

  The Woman in Red

  If at the Wedding (at the Zoo)

  The Gold Digger of Goldfields

  The Old Vacuum Cleaner Keeps Dying on Her

  Flaubert and Point of View

  Family Shopping

  Local Obits

  Letter to the President of the American Biographical Institute, Inc.

  Nancy Brown Will Be in Town

  Ph.D.

  Notes and Acknowledgments

  Also by Lydia Davis

  Copyright

  A Story of Stolen Salamis

  My son’s Italian landlord in Brooklyn kept a shed out back in which he cured and smoked salamis. One night, in the midst of a wave of petty vandalism and theft, the shed was broken into and the salamis were taken. My son talked to his landlord about it the next day, commiserating over the vanished sausages. The landlord was resigned and philosophical, but corrected him: “They were not sausages. They were salamis.” Then the incident was written up in one of the city’s more prominent magazines as an amusing and colorful urban incident. In the article, the reporter called the stolen goods “sausages.” My son showed the article to his landlord, who hadn’t known about it. The landlord was interested and pleased that the magazine had seen fit to report the incident, but he added: “They weren’t sausages. They were salamis.”

  The Dog Hair

  The dog is gone. We miss him. When the doorbell rings, no one barks. When we come home late, there is no one waiting for us. We still find his white hairs here and there around the house and on our clothes. We pick them up. We should throw them away. But they are all we have left of him. We don’t throw them away. We have a wild hope—if only we collect enough of them, we will be able to put the dog back together again.

  Circular Story

  On Wednesday mornings early there is always a racket out there on the road. It wakes me up and I always wonder what it is. It is always the trash collection truck picking up the trash. The truck comes every Wednesday morning early. It always wakes me up. I always wonder what it is.

  Idea for a Sign

  At the start of a train trip, people search for a good seat, and some of them take a careful look at the people nearby who have already chosen their seats, to see if they will make good neighbors.

  It might help if we each wore a little sign saying in what ways we will and will not be likely to disturb other passengers, such as: Will not talk on cell phone; will not eat smelly food.

  Included in mine would be: Will not talk on cell phone at all, aside from perhaps a short communication to my husband at the beginning of the trip home, summarizing my visit in the city, or, more rarely, a quick warning to a friend on the way down that I will be late; but will recline my seat back as far as it will go, for most of the trip, except when I am eating my lunch or snack; may in fact be adjusting it slightly, back and up, from time to time throughout the trip; will sooner or later eat something, usually a sandwich, sometimes a salad or a container of rice pudding, actually two containers of rice pudding, though small ones; sandwich, almost always Sw
iss cheese, with in fact very little cheese, just a single slice, and lettuce and tomato, will not be noticeably smelly, at least as far as I can tell; am as tidy as I can be with the salad, but eating salad with a plastic fork is awkward and difficult; am tidy with the rice pudding, taking small bites, though when I remove the sealed top of the container it can make a loud ripping noise for just a moment; may keep unscrewing the top of my water bottle and taking a drink of water, especially while eating my sandwich and about one hour afterwards; may be more restless than some other passengers, and may clean my hands several times during the trip with a small bottle of hand sanitizer, sometimes using hand lotion afterwards, which involves reaching into my purse, taking out a small toiletries bag, unzipping it, and, when finished, zipping it up again and returning it to my purse; but may also sit perfectly quietly for a few minutes or longer staring out the window; may do nothing but read a book through most of the trip, except for one walk down the aisle to the restroom and back to my seat; but, on another day, may put the book down every few minutes, take a small notebook out of my purse, remove the rubber band from around it, and make a note in the notebook; or, when reading through a back issue of a literary magazine, may rip pages out in order to save them, though I will try to do this only when train is stopped at a station; lastly, after a day in the city, may untie my shoelaces and slip my shoes off for part of the trip, especially if the shoes are not very comfortable, then resting my bare feet on top of my shoes rather than directly on the floor, or, very rarely, may remove shoes and put on slippers, if I have a pair with me, keeping them on until I have nearly reached my destination; but feet are quite clean and toenails have a nice dark red polish on them.

  Bloomington

  Now that I have been here for a little while, I can say with confidence that I have never been here before.

  The Cook’s Lesson

  story from Flaubert

  Today I have learned a great lesson; our cook was my teacher. She is twenty-five years old and she’s French. I discovered, when I asked her, that she did not know that Louis-Philippe is no longer king of France and we now have a republic. And yet it has been five years since he left the throne. She said the fact that he is no longer king simply does not interest her in the least—those were her words.

  And I think of myself as an intelligent man! But compared to her I’m an imbecile.

  At the Bank

  I take my bag of pennies to the bank and throw them into a machine that will count them. I am asked by a teller to guess how much my pennies are worth. I guess $3.00. I am wrong. They amount to $4.24. But since I am within $1.99 of the correct sum, I qualify for a prize. Many people nearby in the bank congratulate me warmly. I may choose from among a number of prizes. When I refuse the first and the second, and seem likely to refuse the next, the anxious teller unlocks a secure vault and shows me the full array, which includes a large plastic piggy bank, a coloring book and crayons, and a small rubber ball. At last, so as not to disappoint her, I choose what I think is the best of them, a handsome Frisbee with its own carrying case.

  dream

  Awake in the Night

  I can’t go to sleep, in this hotel room in this strange city. It is very late, two in the morning, then three, then four. I am lying in the dark. What is the problem? Oh, maybe I am missing him, the person I sleep next to. Then I hear a door shut somewhere nearby. Another guest has come in, very late. Now I have the answer. I will go to his room and get in bed next to him, and then I will be able to sleep.

  dream

  At the Bank: 2

  Again, I go to the bank with my bag full of pennies. Again, I guess that my pennies will add up to $3.00. The machine counts them. I have $4.92. Again, the bank teller decides that I am close enough to the correct amount to win a prize. I look forward to seeing what the selection of prizes will be this time, but there is only one prize—a tape measure. I am disappointed, but I accept it. At least this time I can see that the teller is a woman. Before, I could not be sure whether she was a woman or a man. But this time, though she is still bald, she moves more gracefully and smiles more gently, her voice is higher, and she is wearing a pin on her chest that says Janet.

  dream

  The Two Davises and the Rug

  They were both named Davis, but they were not married to each other and they were not related by blood. They were neighbors, however. They were both indecisive people, or rather, they could be very decisive about some things, important things, or things to do with their work, but they could be very indecisive about smaller things, and change their minds from one day to the next, over and over again, being completely decided in favor of something one day and then completely decided against the same thing the next day.

  They did not know this about each other until she decided to put her rug up for sale.

  It was a brightly patterned wool rug, red, white, and black, with a bold design of diamonds and some black stripes. She had bought it at a Native American store near the town where she used to live, but now she found out it was not Native American. She had grown tired of it where it lay on the floor of her absent son’s room, because it was a little dirty and curled up at the corners, and she decided to sell it in a group sale that was being held to raise money for a good cause. But when it was much admired at the sale, more than she expected, and when the price of ten dollars that she had put on it was raised by an appraiser to fifty dollars, she changed her mind and hoped that no one would buy it. As the day wore on, she did not lower the price on the rug, as others were lowering their prices around her, and though people continued to admire it, no one bought it.

  The other Davis came to the sale early in the day and was immediately attracted to the rug. He hesitated, however, because the pattern was so bold and the colors so starkly red, white, and black that he thought it might not look good in his house, though his house was furnished in a clean, modern way. He admired the rug out loud to her, but told her he wasn’t sure it would look right in his house and left the sale without buying it. During the day, however, while no one else was buying the rug and while she was not lowering the price, he was thinking about the rug, and later in the day he returned for the purpose of seeing the rug again, if it was still there, and making up his mind whether to buy it or not. The sale, however, had ended, all the goods had been either sold or bagged for donation, or packed up and taken back home, and the expanse of green lawn by the porch of the parish house, where the sale had been held, lay clear and smooth again in the late-afternoon shadows.

  The other Davis was surprised and disappointed, and a day or two later, when he ran into this Davis at the post office, he said he had changed his mind about the rug and asked if it had been sold, and when she said it had not, he asked if he could try the rug in his house to see if it would look good.

  This Davis was immediately embarrassed, because in the meantime she had decided she should keep the rug after all, clean it up, and try it out here and there in the house to see how it would look. But now, when the other Davis showed such interest in the rug, she was no longer sure she should do that. After all, she had been willing to sell it, and she had thought it was worth only ten dollars. She asked the other Davis if she could take a few more days to decide whether she was willing to part with it. The other Davis understood and said that was fine, to let him know if she decided she didn’t want to keep the rug.

  For a while she left it in her son’s room, where it had originally been. She looked in on it now and then. It still looked a little dirty, with curled-up corners. She still found it somewhat attractive and at the same time somewhat unattractive. Then she thought she should bring it out where she would see it every day, so that she would feel more impelled to make a decision about whether or not to keep it. She knew the other Davis was waiting.

  She put it on the landing between the first floor and the second floor, and thought it looked good with the drawing that hung on the wall there. But her husband thought it was too bright. She left it there
, however, and continued to think about it whenever she went up or down the stairs. A day came when she decided quite firmly that although she found it quite attractive, the other Davis should have it, or at least try it out, because he liked it and it would probably look better in his house. But the next day, before she could act on her resolution, a friend came to the house and particularly admired the rug: this friend thought it was a new rug, and she thought it was very pretty. Now this Davis wondered if she shouldn’t keep it after all.

  Meanwhile, however, the days were passing, and she worried very much about the other Davis. She felt that he had clearly wanted to try the rug out and she was selfishly keeping it, even though she had been willing to sell it—and for only ten dollars. She felt that he probably wanted it, or admired it, more than she did. And yet she did not want to give up something that she had once admired enough to buy in the first place, and that other people also admired, and that she might like very much if she cleaned it up.

  Now the rug entered her thoughts often, and she attempted to make up her mind about it almost daily, and changed her mind about it almost daily. She used different lines of reasoning to try and work out what she should do. The rug was a good one—an expert had told her that; she had bought it because she liked it in the Native American store, though apparently it was not Native American; her son liked it, the rare times he came home for a visit; she would still like it if it was cleaned up a little; but on the other hand, she had not kept it clean before and probably would not again; and the other Davis, to judge by the presentation of the interior of his house, which was clean and tidy and thoughtfully arranged, would clean it up and take good care of it; she had been ready to sell it; and the other Davis had been ready to buy it. The other Davis would probably be willing to pay the fifty dollars for it, which she would then give to the good cause. If she kept the rug, it occurred to her, she herself should probably give fifty dollars to the good cause, since she had been willing to sell it and no one had bought it—though then she would be paying fifty dollars to keep something that was already hers, unless perhaps it could no longer be considered really hers once it was put out for sale for the good cause.