Varieties of Disturbance
I have been hearing what my mother says for over forty years and I have been hearing what my husband says for only about five years, and I have often thought she was right and he was not right, but now more often I think he is right, especially on a day like today when I have just had a long conversation on the phone with my mother about my brother and my father and then a shorter conversation on the phone with my husband about the conversation I had with my mother.
My mother was worried because she hurt my brother’s feelings when he told her over the phone that he wanted to take some of his vacation time to come help them since my mother had just gotten out of the hospital. She said, though she was not telling the truth, that he shouldn’t come because she couldn’t really have anyone in the house since she would feel she had to prepare meals, for instance, though having difficulty enough with her crutches. He argued against that, saying “That wouldn’t be the point!” and now he doesn’t answer his phone. She’s afraid something has happened to him and I tell her I don’t believe that. He has probably taken the vacation time he had set aside for them and gone away for a few days by himself. She forgets he is a man of nearly fifty, though I’m sorry they had to hurt his feelings like that. A short time after she hangs up I call my husband and repeat all this to him.
My mother hurt my brother’s feelings while protecting certain particular feelings of my father’s by claiming certain other feelings of her own, and while it was hard for me to deny my father’s particular feelings, which are well-known to me, it was also hard for me not to think there was not a way to do things differently so that my brother’s offer of help would not be declined and he would not be hurt.
She hurt my brother’s feelings as she was protecting my father from certain feelings of disturbance anticipated by him if my brother were to come, by claiming to my brother certain feelings of disturbance of her own, slightly different. Now my brother, by not answering his phone, has caused new feelings of disturbance in my mother and father both, feelings that are the same or close to the same in them but different from the feelings of disturbance anticipated by my father and those falsely claimed by my mother to my brother. Now in her disturbance my mother has called to tell me of her and my father’s feelings of disturbance over my brother, and in doing this she has caused in me feelings of disturbance also, though fainter and different from the feelings experienced now by her and my father and those anticipated by my father and falsely claimed by my mother.
When I describe this conversation to my husband, I cause in him feelings of disturbance also, stronger than mine and different in kind from those in my mother, in my father, and respectively claimed and anticipated by them. My husband is disturbed by my mother’s refusing my brother’s help and thus causing disturbance in him, and by her telling me of her disturbance and thus causing disturbance in me greater, he says, than I realize, but also more generally by the disturbance caused more generally not only in my brother by her but also in me by her greater than I realize, and more often than I realize, and when he points this out, it causes in me yet another disturbance different in kind and in degree from that caused in me by what my mother has told me, for this disturbance is not only for myself and my brother, and not only for my father in his anticipated and his present disturbance, but also and most of all for my mother herself, who has now, and has generally, caused so much disturbance, as my husband rightly says, but is herself disturbed by only a small part of it.
Lonely
No one is calling me. I can’t check the answering machine because I have been here all this time. If I go out, someone may call while I’m out. Then I can check the answering machine when I come back in.
Mrs. D and Her Maids
Names of Some Early Maids, With Identifying Characteristics
Cora, who misses them all
Nellie Bingo: our darling, but she disappeared into a sanatorium Anna the Grump
Virginia York: not a whirlwind
Birdell Moore: old-fashioned, with warm Southern sweetness Lillian Savage: not insulted by drunks
Gertrude Hockaday: pleasant, but a perfidious hypochondriac Ann Carberry: feeble, old, and deaf
The “Brava”: came irregularly, not to be considered a Negro High school girclass="underline" worse than nothing
Mrs. Langley: English, and exactly what we need Our Splendid Marion
Minnie Treadway: briefly a possibility
Anna Slocum: wished it had all been a bad dream Shirley: like a member of the family
Joan Brown: philosopher of the condition
Mrs. D
Before she is Mrs. D, she lives in the city with her little daughter and her maid, Cora. The daughter is four years old. She goes to nursery school and when at home is taken care of mainly by Cora. This leaves Mrs. D free to write and also to go out in the evenings.
Mrs. D writes short stories, some good, some less good, which she places mostly in ladies’ magazines. She likes to speak of “selling” a story, and she counts on earning a little money from it to supplement her salary. She will publish a story in one of the best magazines just before she is married. The story is called “Real Romance.”
Marriage to Mr. D
When Mrs. D’s little daughter is six, Mrs. D marries again, and becomes Mrs. D. The ceremony takes place in the country at a friend’s house. It is a small wedding and the reception is out on the lawn under the trees. The season is early fall, but the women are still wearing summer dresses. The little daughter’s blond hair is now cut short. Cora is not at the wedding. She no longer works for Mrs. D, but they write letters to each other.
Housekeeping
Mr. and Mrs. D set up house in a college town, where Mr. D has a job teaching. Mr. D gives his stepdaughter breakfast every morning and walks her to school. Mrs. D lingers in bed before beginning her day at the typewriter.
Mrs. D Has a Baby
After a year of marriage, Mrs. D becomes pregnant. A baby boy is born in the fall, at the Lying-In Hospital. He is strong and healthy. Mr. D is very moved. He will write a short story about a father and his small son.
Cora Still Misses Them All
Cora writes:
Ge; Was I glade to hear from you all I would had writting you but I misslayed your address I can tell by the exsplaination that you all are fine I would love to come out and see you all expecilly the new one I know my little girl is lovely as ever all way will be Yes I am Working, but I hafter to make up mine whether I will stay here ore go back with my one should I had said the other people did I ever write you about them well they was very nice from England a lawyer ore laywer whitch ever you spell it Oh, I know you will be suprise who I am working for Now you jest; I will tell you later on I had a little accident this summer I fell and crack my knee broke a Fibula whitch I has been layed up for 2 month but I am up and working now when are you coming to the city again when you do please try to bring the children when every you move drop me a line let me know I dont care how nice other people are I still think about you I wish you all could come to the city to stay Mr D could get a job Easyer than Alphonso could out there we have a nice house out here in the Country you know how I am about the Country well we are doing fine did you ever meet Mike Mrs. F boy he is nice but I know your new one is much more nicer My greatest Love to you all