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

“You yourself said you didn’t feel ready for grounds privileges. But I do think Bertha deserves another chance.”

“What do you others think?” Dr Kearney sounded bored.

“I think Bertha has improved in every way,” Mrs Brice said firmly.

“I’ll buy that,” Lottie said. “I’ve grown quite fond of her and think of her as, ‘our Bertha’.”

“In many ways,” Norris said, “Bertha seems to me the patient who has made the greatest progress. She was certainly a most disturbed young woman at the time my wife came here.”

“I’m all for giving a person the benefit of the doubt,” Mr Carson said. “But my opinion isn’t worth much. Since I just got here. My opinion isn’t worth much, period, come to think of it.”

Mrs Carson gave a little squeak of protest.

“Mrs Judson?” Dr Kearney said, “haven’t you an opinion?”

“Well, it seems to me it’s up to you doctors to decide what’s for the best. I mean, that’s what you’re trained for, isn’t it? I’ve nothing against Bertha or her staying here—even if her language isn’t always what I’d care to hear. But I can put up with it. I think she only does it to get a rise out of we older women.”

“There’s never been any strong language used around home,” Sam Judson said. “My wife isn’t used to it.”

“So I’m to be sent to Siberia,” Bertha said, “because I cuss a little bit and went for a walk. Big deal.”

“What do you think of your own progress, Bertha?” Lottie asked. “Now that we’ve all had our little say.”

Bertha became morose. “How can I tell? I don’t stand around watching myself.”

“Yes,” Lottie persisted, “but how do you feel—how do you seem to yourself.”

“Like the same old Bertha. There never was all that much the matter with me. Well, I guess on the other hand lying on the hall floor in a coma so everybody had to step over me wasn’t exactly normal, or whatever you want to call it. But those were things I couldn’t help. I didn’t decide to go bonkers—I just kind of slid into a pit.”

“And now you’ve climbed a good way out of it,” Lottie said. “Don’t you think you should give yourself some credit for your own exertions?”

“It’s mostly the dope—the medicine—they give you that does that.”

“I don’t think you should give all the credit to the medicine,” Mrs Brice said. “You could have gone on lying on the floor till the day of doom if you’d a mind to. You’re a very determined girl: for good or for bad is for you to decide. I think you’ve decided pretty much for the good.”

“I don’t see why you should be nice to me,” Bertha said. “I’m never particularly nice to you.”

“I don’t pay any mind to that. You’re just being yourself: and that I can rather admire. A person has to have spunk in this world.”

“And Bertha has her fair share of that,” Mrs Judson said, lapsing into her mood of a few days previous.

“Without some spunk, you won’t get anywhere in life,” Mr Mulwin said. “I wish I felt some welling up in me, instead of feeling so damn tired all the time. You stick to your guns, Bertha, don’t let them walk all over you.”

“Do you want to stay or do you want to go?” Dr Kearney suddenly said to Bertha. “By and large, the choice lies pretty much with you.”

“I guess I want to stay. I want to get well and get out of here, like everybody else. Go back to school. Have some fun with people my own age. But why should you believe that?”

“No reason,” Dr Kearney said, “if you pull stunts like this running away. You upset some of the patients, you took a lot of the staff away from their work, in general you made a nuisance of yourself. And a center of attention. Do you think that may have had anything to do with it?”

“No,” Bertha said with admirable firmness. “I wasn’t thinking about being a center, I wasn’t thinking about anything, except I was in a bad mood and had an impulse and acted on it. If you let me stay, I’ll try to exercise more self-control. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“How long, oh Lord, how long?” Mrs Judson said.

“Until the dreadful journey’s done,” Mrs Brice said, sotto voce.

“Why, Fanny,” Lottie said.

“I think it’s a quotation,” Mrs Brice said. “I don’t mean anything by it.”

“This all reminds me of a song,” Mr Carson said in his pleasant voice. “ ‘I’ll be hard to handle/ I’ll be up to tricks,’ I think it went. But I can’t trust my memory.”

“We want you to be yourself, Bertha,” Dr Kearney said, “not at the mercy of this other self who indulges in moods and impulses that are, as you well know, destructive.”

“Isn’t that what any of us wants?” Norris said.

“How about if I said I’m sorry and won’t do it again?” Bertha said.

“Apologies don’t count for much around here,” Dr Kearney said. “Lip service.”

“He means actions speak louder than words,” Mrs Judson said.

“Why don’t you shut up?” Bertha said. “I’m sorry. That slipped out. I guess I’m just another lost cause.”

“I don’t think,” Lottie said, “anyone wants you to inhibit yourself. It’s more a matter of how you direct your energies. I must say, I think it’s hard—a young person with a lot of vim cooped up with us older fuddy-duddies.”

“Fuddy-duddy,” Mr Carson said, “that about describes it. I couldn’t even carry this through to completion.” He shot back his cuffs and exhibited his bandages.

“What did you use?” Bertha asked with lively interest, “a razor blade?”

“No. A keen-edged paring knife.”

“I threw it out,” Mrs Carson said. “I never wanted to see it again.”

“It wasn’t the knife’s fault,” Mr Carson said in a reasonable tone. “I woke up in the night—you could hardly say I’d been to sleep—feeling low. So after a while I went down in the kitchen and got it and tried to take my life—to open my veins. But, as