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

“Of course we are,” Mrs Judson said. “Don’t put words in my mouth—I never said Mr Judson made me sad. It was just—it was only—well, it wasn’t any one thing. My life is more than half over, at best, and the half that’s over was the best half. Having babies and a family all around you to take care of. The there was less and less to do, and I got the mopes. Or the blues, if you want to call it that, Dr Kearney. I didn’t plan it to happen: it crept up on me gradually, like mud. I’m sorry now I said I wanted to kill myself, but I was feeling agitated that day and it popped out without my thinking. I wouldn’t know how to do it. Besides, I wouldn’t do it anyway. It would make Mr Judson unhappy.”

“Very unhappy, dear.”

“I think a person ought to have the right to go when they want to go,” Mr Mulwin said. “I think that’s a basic human right. I don’t want to go myself, just yet, but if I did want to go, I’d go.”

“Oh Greg,” his wife said, “suicide is the act of someone in a disturbed state of mind. Nobody who was feeling himself would want to do that: you never know what tomorrow holds.”

“Oh yes you do,” Lottie said. “That’s the trouble.”

“I may be sick as a dog, but I’m as happy as a king,” Bertha said. She began to whistle a rock tune.

“It seems to me,” Mrs Brice said, “that the thing is to find an interest that takes you out of yourself. I was thinking I might become one of the ladies who help out part time in the hospital, like that nice woman who comes around with the book cart. What are they called, candy stripers?”

“Candy stripers?” Norris said.

“They wear an attractive red and white striped kind of smock,” Mrs Brice explained, “striped like spearmint candy.”

“I’m not so advanced as you,” Lottie said. “At the moment all activities strike me as repulsive.”

“I just don’t know,” Mrs Judson said. “I’ve never been a good mixer.”

“My outside activities,” Mr Mulwin said, “are ruining my business, and the sooner I get back to it, the better.”

“Wasn’t it partly anxiety about your business,” Dr Kearney asked, “that got you in here.”

“Yes, it was,” Mrs Mulwin said. “Mr Mulwin finds it hard to rely on others—he double-checks and feels he has to carry the whole show on his own two shoulders.”

“You talk like I never tried to relax. I have tried. Some people aren’t cut out for relaxation, they like to keep on the move, to keep busy. I’m one of that kind. Only I get the lump.”

“The lump?” Mrs Brice said.

“Right here,” he placed a hand on his solar plexus. “Then I get short tempered and angry. You can’t get the best out of people who work for you if you’re snitified all the time, I know that. But I get the lump and it seems like I have to take it out on whoever’s next to me. It’s not my fault.”

“Of course not, dear,” Mrs Mulwin said. “It’s not a question of fault.”

“You ought to try exercises,” Lottie said, “like yoga. Make yourself relax.”

“Oh Christ,” Mr Mulwin said, “will you please stop trying to help me? You’re quite a mess yourself.”

“And don’t I know it,” Lottie said. “OK. I’ll quit. I still don’t think you’re as black as you paint yourself.”

“I’m a suffering hunk of humanity and if I’m painted any color it’s not black, it’s gray.”

“The trouble with you is,” Bertha said to Mr Mulwin, “you think you’re something special. Well, I have news for you. You’re not. I get a lump too but I don’t go bragging about it.”

“I don’t think my husband was exactly bragging about it, Bertha,” Mrs Mulwin said.

“I haven’t had one of my spells lately,” Bertha said. “That must mean I’m better than whatever I was. But I don’t feel better. I feel crazy. My voices keep telling me different things and they can’t agree. I’d be lost without my voices.”

“I hear voices,” Mr Mulwin said, “sometimes just when I’m dropping off to sleep. Last night one of them called me a lot of foul names. The funny thing was, until I woke all the way I thought it was the night nurse—that husky male one—who was doing it. Calling me names.”

“What do you make of it?” Dr Kearney said.

“I don’t think that male nurse likes me. I was crabby with him one night and he kind of snarled at me.”

“But it wasn’t his voice you heard last night.”

“Well, I guess I expected him to say mean things to me, after that time, and kind of dreamed that he did. I couldn’t repeat to you the things he said. I mean, the voices. The voice. There was just one.”

“Sometimes,” Mrs Brice said, “when I’m dropping off I hear a voice. It says my name. It startles me. Then I get back to going to sleep.”

“It’s probably the beginning of the dream process,” Lottie said. “I have fascinating dreams—nightmares, happy dreams, dreams that are like the movies—but in the morning I can’t remember them. It’s frustrating.”

“Once in a great while,” Norris said, “Lottie talks in her sleep. Usually it makes very little sense, although once in the canning season she said quite loudly, ‘It will never jell.“’

“It never did, either,” Lottie said. “It was quince.”

“Yetch,” Bertha said. “I hate quince jelly. I don’t see how anybody can stand to eat it.”

There was a pause, in which Lottie was heard humming to herself. It was the old song, “I had a little drink about an hour ago . . .”

“You have got a one-track mind,” Mr Mulwin said.

“I’ve never pretended otherwise. Look, I wish you’d make an effort to be a little friendly toward me. I don’t like going around all the time, feeling that someone is giving off bad vibrations, directed at me.”

“I just say what