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

“I haven’t got any problems that are going to get licked here. I think I have an ulcer. I feel like there’s a cannon ball right in my middle, here.”

“Greg, it’s your old tension pains,” Mrs Mulwin said. “You know what the family doctor said about them—you take things too hard. When you’re back home we might take up bowling. That’s good exercise.”

“For your peace of mind,” Dr Kearney said, “I can tell you that you do not have an ulcer.”

“What kind of peace of mind is that supposed to give?” Mr Mulwin said. “I have all the pain and symptoms of one, I might as well have the ulcer.”

“That’s silly talk,” Mrs Mulwin said. “You’re here to clear up the tensions, not talk about imaginary illnesses.”

Mrs Judson’s eyes had become watery. “I thought we were friends,” she said to Lottie.

“We are,” Lottie said.

“But you picked on me.”

“You’ll have to bear with me—I’m not altogether myself a lot of the time lately. At three in the afternoon my mind goes booze, booze, booze. I can taste it, and it tastes good.”

“I’ll get wifey here to slip you a bottle,” Mr Mulwin said.

“You do, and I’ll crack it over your skull,” Norris said.

Mr Mulwin laughed. “You two,” he said, “are a sketch. Mr and Mrs Uptight Taylor.”

“Why did you come here, Mr Mulwin?” Mrs Brice asked. “Don’t you want help, don’t you want to get well? I didn’t even know I was sick when I came here—I knew I was in the dumps, but I thought it was just the blues.”

“The blues,” Dr Kearney said, “is a good term for it. And when you have them all the time, you want to get rid of them: right?”

“No,” Mrs Brice said. “It was Mr Brice’s idea that I come here. He could see I was worse off than I knew.”

“Yes, Mother,” Mr Brice said, “you weren’t at all yourself. All our married life you always had a bright word, then, after the accident . . .”

“The accident. I won’t ever get over that. But I begin to see that mooning over it won’t bring them back. They’re gone. Forever. Thad and all his lovely family. The babies. It just seemed so wrong to me, a useless old woman, and they were the ones who were taken. I don’t know what people mean by God’s infinite mercy. I’m not going to think about it. I’ll keep going to church, but I won’t think about that.”

“I don’t believe in God,” Bertha said. “Do you, Mr Mulwin?”

“Sure,” Mr Mulwin said. “Why not? We’re not church goers though. I like to get my sleep Sunday morning.”

“Why Greg,” Mrs Mulwin said, “we never miss Easter. Or Christmas, usually. And of course we go to a lot of church suppers, and sociables, and like that. Mostly Methodist, but we’re not strict about it.”

“Everyone’s entitled to their opinions,” Mrs Brice said.

“It’s my opinion,” Mr Mulwin said, “that going to church isn’t worth much. I don’t like being preached at. Too much like school.”

“It gives me,” Mr Brice said, “a feeling of peace and a deep sense of the mystery of things.”

“I’m not a church-goer,” Norris said, “But thinking about God gives me similar feelings.”

“I didn’t know you ever thought about God, Norris,” Lottie said.

“Work is prayer,” Mrs Brice said. “Good works, that is. I was taught that in Sunday school, and never forgot it. So someone who is doing the right thing, might in a sense be praying, and believing in God, without even knowing it.”

“My work is rather mundane for that,” Norris said. “I wonder if selling used cars comes under the heading of work is prayer?”

“As much as anything you do,” Gregory Mulwin said. “What is it you do, anyway, unless it’s some sort of dark secret.”

“I was teasing Sam Judson,” Norris said. “Not speaking to you.”

“Norris is a lawyer—an attorney,” Lottie said, not without pride.

“Largely concerned with real estate,” Norris added.

“A shyster,” Mr Mulwin said. “I’ve come up against a few of your kind in my day and thanks, but no thanks.”

“If you were to buy a home, or to sell the building in which you have your business, you might find a reputable lawyer quite a useful person to know. There’s much written between the lines of that fine print.”

“People often sign things,” Lottie said, “without the slightest idea of what they’re letting themselves in for. Norris has told me of some hair raising instances.”

“I don’t believe in private property,” Bertha said. “Everything ought to belong to everybody, like a commune.”

“I don’t hold with communism,” Mrs Brice said, “but it does seem wrong that some people work very hard all their lives and have nothing to show for it. That’s never seemed quite right to me.”

“And the last shall be first,” Mr Brice murmured.

“And the rest of us will bring up the rear, lugging our TV sets,” Norris said.

“I’ve never cared all that much about TV,” Lottie said. “Though doubtless I have as many spiritual faults as the next. The next world: I can’t say I spend all that much time thinking about it.”

“I do,” Mrs Brice said. “Though I couldn’t express my thoughts in words.”

“Some thoughts don’t need to be, Mother,” Mr Brice said.

“Do you think we could return to the more immediate problems of this world?” Dr Kearney said. “This is a hospital, not a seminary.”

“Oh dear,” Mrs Judson said, “and just when I was getting interested.”

“You’re more interested in the spiritual life than in this one?” Dr Kearney said. “Or to put it another way, you make a choice between them?”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“He means,” Sam Judson said, “aren’t your problems ones of this world, the one with automobiles and houses in it, rather than of some other world, one we don’t know much about?”

“Oh dear,” Mrs Judson said. “I miss my quiet living room and my chair, even if I did feel sad, sitting there.”

“Can you tell us what you felt sad about?” Norris asked. “You and