Free The End of the Story by Lydia Davis Page B

through the pile of pictures in her hand, pictures of a party she couldn’t remember, and more of people we both knew and people only she knew, she discovered another of him, although in this picture he was partly obscured by a cluster of people. She asked me if I wanted copies of them. I told her I did, though I also said that when the envelope arrived I might not open it right away.
    By now I am used to the version of his face that I have created from my own memory and the one snapshot I have. If I saw a clear picture of him or, even worse, several pictures from different angles and in different lights, I would have to get used to a new face. I don’t want to be unsettled just now, and I know I will be tempted not to open the envelope at all. But I will also be curious.
    *   *   *
    The nurse, downstairs, is playing the piano to entertain Vincent’s father. She is making mistakes just where I know she will. I listen for the mistakes and can’t hear the words I am trying to write. The old man loves it when she plays, though.
    These days, in the warm weather, spiders spin webs between the bottoms of the lampshades and the sides of the lamps. Many strange small black insects fly constantly about the lamp. We have screens on all the windows and doors, but the cat has torn holes in the bottom corners of some. Spiders also spin single strands of web across the paths in the yard at night, even in the time it takes me to walk out to the corner grocery store and back, so that when I come in from the street the soft threads collect on my bare legs.
    Before the meadow was plowed over in preparation for building the townhouses, I began learning to identify the wildflowers that grew there, then the wild grasses. I had never thought of identifying kinds of grass before. Now I realize that I should be able to identify spiders, too, by their appearance, the forms of their webs, their habits, and where they choose to live, so that I can name them instead of calling them “big spider,” “little spider,” “little tan spider,” etc.
    At times I have the feeling someone else is working on this with me. I read a passage I haven’t looked at in weeks and I don’t recognize much of it, or only dimly, and I say to myself, Well, that’s not bad, it’s a reasonable solution to that problem. But I can’t quite believe I was the one who found the solution. I don’t remember finding it, and I am relieved, as though I expected the problem still to be there.
    In the same way, I will decide to include a certain thought in a certain place in the novel and then discover that several months before, I made a note to include the same thought in the same place and then did not do it. I have the curious feeling that my decision of several months ago was made by someone else. Now there has been a consensus and I am suddenly more confident: if she had the same plan, it must be a good one.
    But at other times I discover that this person working with me has been hasty or careless, and now my work is even more difficult, because I have to try to forget what she wrote. Not only do I have to erase it or cross it out but also forget the sound of it or I will write it again, as though from dictation. I should know better, because when I translate, I have to make the English as good as I can when I first write it down or the bad sound of a bad version will stay with me and make it harder for me to write a good version.
    Another problem, on some pages, is that I keep putting a sentence in because it seems to belong there, and then I keep taking it out again. I have just figured out why this happens: I put the sentence in because it is interesting, believable, and clearly expressed. I take it out again because something about it is wrong. I put it in again because the sentence is good in itself and could be true. I take it out again because I have at last examined it closely enough to see that