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

in common,” Norris said. “We’re both fanatically tidy.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Mr Mulwin said. “I had to let one man go: his store just wasn’t orderly enough to meet my standards, which are high. A drugstore has to be kept scrupulously clean, or who would ever want to go into it?”

“I wouldn’t,” Mrs Brice said. “I like a nice clean shiny store. I stopped going to one shop because I could smell that they’d been using roach spray. ‘No thank you,’ I thought, and quietly went elsewhere. It was a handy delicatessen for little last minute purchases, but I’d rather walk a few more blocks and shop someplace you could see was kept clean.”

“You see?” Mr Mulwin said, as though someone had challenged Mrs Brice. “Christ, I’m sleepy. Pardon the language.”

“That will wear off,” Dr Kearney said. “Only yesterday you were out like a light.”

“I don’t want that again if I can help it,” Mr Mulwin said. “At the last minute I thought I was being murdered, or at least that I’d die and suffer terrible pain. It was a minute of pure terror. I never want to feel that again.”

“It seems to have helped, though,” Mrs Mulwin said.

“Oh, I’m no different than I ever was. Only I’m overcome with sleepiness. Could I be excused from this and go to bed?”

“Why don’t you stick it out?” Dr Kearney said. “It won’t be much longer, and you’ll have a feeling of accomplishment.”

“I’ve already got that. I built my business up from scratch with my own two hands. That’s accomplishment.”

“Yes,” Lottie said. “That’s real accomplishment. I’ve come to admire you.”

“Business, business,” Mrs Judson said. “There’s got to be more to life than dishes and business.”

“Hear, hear,” Bertha said.

“There, there,” Lottie said. “Different people have different objectives in life. What’s yours, Bertha?”

“To get out of here.”

“You can be more serious than that. I mean in a larger, life-scale sense.”

“Your own objectives don’t sound so hot to me,” Bertha said. “Get off the sauce and keep dusting. That’s not for me: I like dust. I might go to one of those free form colleges up in Vermont or New Hampshire, if my folks will give me an allowance. I can’t make life plans in a nut house: I’m disconnected from my peer group.”

“Of course,” Mr Hartz said, “we’d like you to continue your education. I, personally, would like to feel a little more secure about your attitude towards drugs, even the so-called mild ones. It seems plain they don’t agree with you.”

“I’m not hooked on anything. I told you that. I told everybody that, and it’s true.”

“I think what your father means,” Lottie said, “is more that you have experimented, and he’d like to feel that that period is behind you.”

“Not even a joint now and then, to relax and groove on the music?”

“Marijuana,” Dr Kearney said, “definitely does not agree with everyone, no matter how the popular legend goes.”

Lottie giggled. “I wonder how it would affect me? It might be a good substitute for alcohol.”

“Where are you planning to buy it?” Norris said. “I decline to meet some contact downtown and travel around with my briefcase full of contraband.”

“You needn’t worry, dear,” Lottie said. “I’m not planning to spend my time sitting around the house—stoned, do they call it?”

“That’s the word,” Bertha said.

“You’re an entire youthquake unto yourself, aren’t you Bertha,” Norris said.

“You wouldn’t expect me to have the problems of middle aged and elderly depressives, would you? Where would be the sense in that?”

“Obviously,” Norris said, “you’re much better than you were, yet your dominant attitude still seems one of defiance. You keep stepping on your own shoe laces, so to speak. Like your experiments with drugs: surely you see how much harm they did you?”

“Smoking grass isn’t an experiment, it’s a trip. It’s an experience. I don’t intend to drop any more acid—take LSD to you, that is—I’ve had that. Besides, I don’t believe in synthetics. Grass is organic.”

“So is opium,” Dr Kearney said, “from which the lethal heroin is derived.”

“I’ve never fooled with that, and I’m not going to. You sound like I can’t trust myself: I told you, I’m no junkie.”

“When it isn’t business, it’s drugs,” Mrs Judson said. “I never heard anything like it in my life. I’m that disgusted.”

“I’m not disgusted,” Lottie said. “I find this variety of human experience fascinating. And I’ve learned a lot of little things here that may add up to one big thing. I found out I could go without paraldehyde when I thought I couldn’t. And I may make painting a serious hobby. I’ll always be an amateur, but that’s all right. The time flies by when I’m at my easel.”

“I think your pictures are lovely,” Mrs Brice said.

“Would you like to have one? Pick out the one you like best, and I’ll make you a present of it.”

“How sweet! And I know just the one I’ll pick: that floral study you finished yesterday.”

“That one? All right. It’s yours.”

“So you think my sitting up and listening to this is doing me some kind of good, hunh?” Mr Mulwin said with a touch of his old ardor to Dr Kearney. “OK. I’ll go through with it.”

“Your willingness to stay,” Lottie said, “means you’re playing a part in our little community, even if you don’t feel up to participating this evening.”

“I’m inclined to say, ‘Oh balls,’ “ Mr Mulwin said. “I’ll admit that right now I don’t give a damn if my business goes to hell in a bobsled.”

“You’ll change your mind about that,” Mrs Mulwin said. “You’re tired, and that’s not your basic character speaking.”

“Then I’ll shut up, like Mrs Judson.”

“Don’t tell me to shut up, you rude thing,” Mrs Judson said.

“That’s not what he meant,” Sam Judson said.

“I guess I can hear as good as the next one,” Mrs Judson said. “And I certainly won’t shut up if I don’t feel like it. How come Mrs Brice and Mrs Taylor can go trotting all over the grounds and I can’t? I’m