What's for Dinner? by James Schuyler (diy ebook reader txt) 📗

to a florist’s. You’d think they’d have a flower shop in the hospital: it would certainly show a profit.”

“That’s right,” Mr Mulwin said. “It would make somebody a nice little business.”

“Business, business,” Mrs Judson said. “I’m getting fed up, hearing about business. It’s all you men seem to think about.”

“Why Ethel,” Sam Judson said, “at home you always took a real interest in my work and how it was going.”

“That was different,” Mrs Judson said. “That was at home. Now I’m stuck here, making moccasins nobody needs.”

“You might make me a pair,” Sam said. “I could wear them around the house. Like slippers.”

“And when I’ve made those, then what? I want to go home.”

“And I want you at home. You’re beginning to open up,” Sam said. “Although I’ve never heard you talk in this cross way before.”

“Somebody went through my dresser drawers. I suspect you,” Ethel Judson said to Bertha.

“You’re full of baked beans,” Bertha said. “What could possibly be in your dresser that would faintly intrigue me? An elastic stocking?”

“Now you’re making fun of my varicose veins. You’re awful. None of my children were brats like you, heavens be thanked.”

“I’ve never met you before,” Mrs Hartz said, “but I’ll thank you not to call my daughter a brat. She’s had problems, as you yourself apparently have.”

“That’s right,” Mr Hartz backed up his wife, “Bertha isn’t a brat.”

“Oh blah,” Mrs Judson said, and fell silent.

“Go ahead,” Bertha said. “Let it out. I can take it. All you sweet old ladies, full of venom and bile.”

“Sincerely,” Mrs Brice said, “I don’t think I’m full of venom and vile. I mean, bile. I don’t think Mrs Judson is either: the hospital and not being in your own home and all can get on anybody’s nerves. It does mine sometimes. I look forward to going home.”

“And I look forward to having you home again, mother. It’s a lonely place without you.”

“I’m sorry you don’t want to hear about business, Mrs Judson,” Mr Mulwin said, “because that’s what I’m in here about: too much business, too many business worries, wondering if I could trust my managers all the way. Of course you can’t, it’s putting temptation in a man’s path.”

“Say,” Bertha said, “just what is your line of business.”

“I have a chain of drugstores.”

“How big a chain?” Bertha demanded.

“We have three branches, plus the main outlet down on State Street.”

“What’s it called? I never heard of any drugstore around here called Mulwin’s.”

“The Thrifty Drug Company.”

“Oh that,” Bertha said. “I’ve been in one of those. The doctor gave me a prescription for some kind of uppers when I had the downs. I got it filled in one of your stores. They weren’t any good. Too mild. No kick, no boost, no up.”

“We just fill the prescriptions as the doctors write them. He probably didn’t believe in anything too stimulating. Lots of doctors don’t. It depends on the patient. I used to help myself to a little benzedrine when I didn’t feel up to snuff.”

“Benzedrine,” Dr Kearney said, “can make a person touchy—in fact more than touchy, downright paranoid. That may have been a precipitant of the condition that brought you here.”

“I wasn’t hooked on the stuff,” Mr Mulwin said. “Just now and then. Mostly I’ve got more energy than I need. Nervous energy.”

“Do you need a prescription to get amyl nitrite?” Bertha asked.

“You do indeed,” Mr Mulwin said. “Nor have you any need for it unless you have a heart condition.”

“Poppers,” Bertha said. “They have their uses—at the right time.”

“I’m afraid,” Mrs Hartz said, “that at college Bertha was led to experiment with drugs.”

“Nobody had to lead me,” Bertha said. “Don’t blame me on others. Besides, I never got into the hard stuff. I’m too smart to wind up a junkie.”

“Of course you are, dear,” her mother said. “I didn’t mean to make any serious implications.”

“I thought you said you’d tried LSD,” Lottie asked. “Doesn’t that count as hard stuff?”

“Not like heroin or coke or morphine or like that,” Bertha said. “LSD and peyote are just mind extenders. Sunshine pills.”

“I beg to differ,” Dr Kearney said. “There are clinics chock-a-block with experiments with these so-called perception extenders. Some of them are sent so far out they never come back. They’ve been warned, but they won’t believe it.”

“I’m as much of a drug addict as Bertha ever was—not that she was really an addict. I suppose,” Lottie said to Mr Mulwin, “I’ll be going to one of your stores for my Antabuse tablets when I leave here. I couldn’t bear having the prescription filled at our local pharmacy. Not that everyone doesn’t know all about me already.”

“You exaggerate,” Norris said. “And those that do know only feel sympathy. You have had visitors, and flowers and letters. It will all soon be forgotten.”

“Antabuse?” Mrs Brice said. “What’s that?”

“It’s a pill,” Lottie said. “And after you take one, if you have a drink it makes you violently ill. Attractive thought. It will be my little invisible crutch.”

Mrs Brice now turned to Dr Kearney. “When I leave here and stop my medication, mayn’t I relapse. Sink back into my old depression.”

“First of all, we’ll hope you’ve become insightful enough that that won’t happen. Secondly, your medication will continue for a time after you leave. Thirdly, you’ll be coming in for consultations on a diminishing schedule. Does that reassure you?”

“It will be funny,” Mrs Brice said, “coming back as a visitor. Almost as funny as going home. I’ve gotten used to it here. To the routine, anyway.”

“I agree,” Lottie said. “I’ve kind of subsided into the routine here—no lists to make, no vacuum cleaner, no dishwasher to unload in the morning. I’m a scrupulous housekeeper—too scrupulous for some, I can’t bear to see a thing out of place—but I wonder how I’ll feel about it when I get home. It may merely seem a burden.”

“You’ll probably plunge into it like a seal into a pool,” Mr Mulwin said, with sudden poetry.

“That’s one thing my wife and I have always had