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

with. Take Mrs Brice. If we let her, she’d just sit, sit, sit all day and all evening—except for meals, of course. And she doesn’t even know she’s in a depression. Her only son and his family, I happen to know. But she never alludes to it: it’s all bottled up inside her.”

“How’s the food?” Norris asked.

“Too starchy, but on the whole, not bad. I mean it is hospital fare.” She put her hands on her hips and smoothed down her dress. “I’m certainly going to have to diet when I get out of here.”

“You look fine,” Norris said. “In fact, you look a good deal better than when you came in. I think you were underweight.”

“Probably. It’s often the case with people who have my problem.”

“So this is your little hidey-hole,” Norris said. The room was indeed small and narrow, and, like the sun room, dominated by a chintz—in this case, one with a pattern of ivy and oriental poppies. The walls were painted a milky shade of lime.

“The first night I was here I thought those poppies were out to get me,” Lottie giggled. “Fortunately, the doctor had ordered something to make me sleep. But I’ve gotten used to it—even rather to like it. I suppose because it’s my room. You sit in the chair. I’ll perch here on the bed.”

“I see you’ve received a lot of floral tributes.” Norris regarded her deep window sill, crammed with potted plants. A bouquet of gladiolas in mixed colors towered on the desk.

“Guess who sent me the glads? You’ll never: Mag Carpenter. Wasn’t it thoughtful? Isn’t it kind? And so just like her. But let’s not talk about me. Tell me about you: how’s the office?”

“All is in the capable hands of Miss Finch. But I’ll bet it’s not the office you’re wondering about: it’s the house.”

“Frankly, I haven’t got a worry in the world. I suppose it’s this stuff I take. My partner over-trumped me earlier and it seemed to me like the funniest thing I’d ever come up against. I really had to hold myself in to keep from going on a laughing jag.”

A nurse with a trolley appeared in the door and rapped on the frame. “Medication time,” she said.

“Heavens: is it four o’clock already?” Lottie hopped off the bed and accepted a small plastic cup from which she drank. The nurse made a face.

“I don’t know how you can stomach it, Mrs Taylor,” she said. “The smell alone . . .”

“The funny thing about it,” Lottie said, “I’m afraid is that I’ve almost gotten to like it. I try not to breathe in people’s faces, but yesterday one of the patients turned quite pale and said, ‘Embalming fluid! I smell embalming fluid!’ I explained that paraldehyde and formaldehyde smell alike, because they’re related. I’m afraid she thought for a while there that she was hallucinating.”

“I must push on,” the nurse said, continuing on her errand of mercy.

A look of almost worry passed over Lottie’s face. “The doctor says it won’t all be roses when they change my medication. It frightens me: suppose I plunge back into feeling the way I did?”

“It’s a transition,” Norris said, “back to your normal self. One step at a time.”

“That’s what the head nurse keeps saying. I don’t feel blue so I won’t be blue. How is Mrs Gompers working out?”

“Hasn’t broken anything so far, to the best of my knowledge. Of course I made it plain which cupboards are strictly out of bounds. And I carried some of the things from the living room up to the attic: why tempt fate?”

“It makes me feel funny,” Lottie said, “thinking of people like Mrs Gompers knowing all about me. It makes me feel horrid.”

“Sympathy . . .” Norris began.

“And I don’t want sympathy. When I get out of here what I’m going to want is a drink. A fat lot of good sympathy is going to do me then.”

“You underestimate your own will power. When you come home, and realize what strides you’ve taken, you won’t want a drink.”

“Oh I don’t want to be an alcoholic—a common drunk, that’s for sure. But how can anyone know how he or she will stand up to temptation? It’s so easy to think, ‘One little nip won’t hurt.’ Then it’s the primrose path to hell all over again. There’s a woman in here now who . . .”

A young woman with heavy eyebrows, a blank expression and wearing a flowered wrapper came and stood in the door. “Is that your husband?” she said.

“Why, yes, it is,” Lottie said in her new bright voice. “This is Norris, Bertha. I’m sorry, but I’ve forgotten your last name.”

“So have I,” Bertha said.

“Oh now, I’m sure you can remember it if you try. You knew it yesterday.”

“That’s not my fault. A lot of people think I look like Elizabeth Taylor. Do you?”

“Do you mean Elizabeth Taylor, the famous actress?” Norris hedged.

“Yes, that one.”

Norris decided to go whole hog. “As a matter of fact, I do see quite a resemblance. I imagine your smile is like hers.”

Bertha frowned. “Some people say I look like Lucille Ball. But I wouldn’t want to look like her. She’s a screwball. How old are you?”

“I won’t see fifty again,” Norris said. “That’s as far as I’m prepared to go.”

“How old is she?”

Lottie laughed. “That’s my little secret. Or we could say, I’ve forgotten, just as you forgot your last name.” Bertha left.

“Did we hurt her feelings?” Norris said.

“She isn’t taking in anything much. She’s new here and makes the most terrible fusses. They may not let her stay in a semi-open ward if she doesn’t begin to respond soon. Do you know, I’ll have outside privileges next week? I’m quite looking forward to my first stroll around the block. And there’s a gift shop in L 4. That’s the main building.”

“I know. I’m probably better acquainted with the exterior of the hospital than you are. Do the patients always have to go out in couples?