What's for Dinner? by James Schuyler (to read list .txt) 📕

“This is an open session, I can say what I like.”

“Why is it, then, your family never comes to these evenings?”

“Because they freak me out, I have fits when I see my family.” Bertha became rigid. “I’d like to scream my head off at you, you phoney. Whited sepulchre.”

“Do I have to put up with this, Dr Kearney?” Lottie demanded.

“Leave me out of it,” the doctor said. “The quarrel is between you ladies.”

“Piss, fuck, shit,” Bertha chanted.

“Sam,” Mrs Judson said, “I don’t like it here a bit. I told you, I’ve changed my mind.”

“We talked that all out at home, Ethel. You said you could see yourself that you needed help. You did make suicide threats, you know, and that wasn’t like you.”

“You don’t have to tell the whole world,” Mrs Judson said.

“Mrs Judson,” Mrs Brice said, “I understand so well how you feel. I often find these sessions distressing—people saying things right out in the open, and all the quarreling and disagreeableness. I’ve never cared a whit for anything disagreeable—it’s so unnecessary. I don’t see why we can’t talk things over sensibly, if there is anything to talk over.”

“You see?” Mr Brice said, “bringing things out in the open does seem to help. When you first came here you wouldn’t say a word, just sit and look forlorn, like at home.”

“Doesn’t my hair look nice? Lottie Taylor gave me a shampoo and set today, even though she was feeling terribly nervous.”

“It’s more than nervous,” Lottie said.

“But you find you can function,” Dr Kearney said, “despite the discomfort you’re experiencing.”

“Function, of course I can function. I could function if I had a broken leg, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to go leaping off a ski jump. Part of what upsets me is that I know you have medication that will make this transition more bearable for me. It’s cruel, it’s sadistic.”

“I think you’re doing very well. Make an effort to relax, and as I said, we’ll discuss this in our private session tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow! Oh God how long. A whole night and a morning to get through. I wish I had just gone on drinking until I died.”

“I can ski,” Bertha said.

“No, Lottie,” Norris said, “that’s not true. It was your idea as much as mine that you come here. You saw that you needed it, and you did it.”

“Why do you always sit there,” Mr Mulwin asked Norris, “with that wise old owl look on your face? You think you’re the cat’s meow, don’t you.”

“Your own mug,” Norris said, “is not precisely a garland of roses. Your petulant truculence shows in it very plainly. It looks puerile, which means childish, in the event you don’t know.”

“Aren’t we descending to personalities?” Sam Judson asked. “I don’t see what Mrs Judson is going to get out of these kind of goings on.”

“Oh, now you’re trying to get in on the act, buster,” Mr Mulwin said.

“For Pete’s sake,” said Mrs Mulwin, “be yourself. Or stop being yourself and be the self you used to be. All this bullying talk is just a cover up for the things you really want to talk about, only you won’t let them out. I’m not so dumb as you think I am. You create your own hypertension. He got so overtense it made him impotent.”

“I’ll kill you!”

“That’s the least of my worries. I won’t say anymore about it and you don’t have to talk about it, either. I just said it to try to break through your shell. The hospital isn’t doing it, but that’s your fault. You won’t let it, you won’t go half-way to meet it.”

“It’s not something to worry about,” Norris said. “It happens to many men at different times in their life, then when you figure out what your worries are, and work them out, it goes away.”

“You, I suppose,” Mr Mulwin said, “are the neighborhood champion cocksman. Women see you coming and just lie down and spread their legs.”

“Oh Mr Mulwin, I’m sorry about whatever’s the matter,” Mrs Brice said, “but I sincerely do not care for smut.”

Bertha laughed. “You should have been at my college. Would your face be red.” She stopped laughing and looked at Mr Mulwin. “I wish you’d fuck off and button up, you old grouch. So there.”

“All this filthy talk,” Lottie said, “is very tiresome. I can contribute my own problem in the briefest possible span: I want a drink.”

“Is drinking a symptom,” Mr Brice asked, “or is it more of an illness in itself?”

“It’s both,” Lottie said. “No, it isn’t. It’s a habit that grows on you, and I must say it’s a very pleasant habit. Barring, that is, the small embarrassments, such as burning dinner, falling down and not being able to talk straight. But as Bertha might say, what the hell.”

“Leave me out of it,” Bertha said. “I’m no boozer. Give me good old grass every time. And I wouldn’t mind dropping a little acid. You people don’t even know what the world looks like. Though I admit that last trip when they brought me here was pretty freaky. It scared me shitless. I think it was bum acid. That rat, I should have known better than to buy it off him. If they legalized acid, then you’d know what you were getting, instead of this home brewed stuff. That can kill you. The last choo choo train.”

3

The motel room was paneled in knotty pine and decorated with bronzed plaques of Roman emperors. Mag and Norris were lying side by side, she in her slip and he with a towel over his middle. They were both smoking, he his pipe and she a cigarette in a tortoise shell holder. Mag broke what had been a long and easy silence.

“I don’t know quite how it is, but you bring out something in me that Bartram never did. We were quite conservative in our lovemaking, though I always enjoyed it. Well, ‘always’ is saying a lot: there are times when