The Davis Family Live the Simple Life
This story was written by myself as an assignment for Robert McCloskey Month with the Soirée Society of the Arts. It is a silly little story dedicated to “Mirabel,” who puts up with a lot from “Rose.” (Don’t pay too much attention to the illustration. If it doesn’t convince you that I am a bad “drawer,” as the children put it, then nothing will.) Those of you who know my family will have fun identifying each character. It’s not a true story, but it could be. Forgive some choppiness; there was a deadline!
Rose sighed over the apparent doom of her family. Oblivious to her dark contemplations, the others of the Davis family seemed happy enough. Papa Davis was talking on the telephone in the office while absently flipping through radio stations. Mama Davis was curled up on the sofa, humming loudly to an unheard tune; the earbuds of her iPhone were plugged in. Clara was frying onions and cilantro for the pilaf that was simmering in the rice cooker. Ira was listening to the Seven Pounds of Bacon band on his iTunes while typing rapidly on the computer. Winston was barely distinguishable amid a knot of boys; they were huddled around another computer, silly video game music rising above them. Rose noticed that Mirabel, wanting to know the time, passed the analogue clock in the living room to check the digital clock in the kitchen.
When they sat down at the table for dinner, Rose had an idea to share. "We should turn off the electricity for a week, just once," she declared. "It would do us good to know how to do without. Look how everything we do revolves around electricity. Dependence is unhealthy."
"Never," said Mama Davis.
"I second that," said Mirabel.
"I third it," said Ira.
"That might be an interesting experiment, Rose," Papa Davis interjected. "I wonder how well even you would be able to handle it, though."
"It wouldn't be too hard, Mama," Rose insisted. "We'd just have to get used to new ways. And it would be temporary."
“Never,” Mama Davis repeated. This was, as it turned out, a statement of preference rather than of fact.
The next evening, everyone could be found in much the same electrically-powered pursuits. Even Rose was shameless, playing her iPod while checking blogs on her mother’s iPhone.
The front door banged shut, and Papa Davis strode in, shedding a tie and briefcase in his wake. "Well, well, well," he said. "It looks like Rose will be getting a taste of her wish." He waved an official-looking paper. "This notice from the electric company says that, 'due to unavoidable problems,' we will be without electricity for twenty-four hours, starting eleven o'clock tonight."
"What?" Mirabel shrieked.
Rose smirked.
"Guess they have some problems at the plant. Yippee." Ira's enthusiasm was doubtful.
"I think it will be a fun experiment," Clara said peaceably.
“‘Plain living, high thinking,’” Rose declared. “Wordsworth. Was it Wordsworth?”
“How should I know?” said Mirabel testily. "We're going to go crazy! No computers, no air conditioning—"
"No refrigeration either," Papa Davis reminded them. "Ira, we'll need to cover the refrigerator with some comforters to help insulate it. Nobody should open the refrigerator unless they have to. Hey, this should be pretty good for our electric bill."
"I can't believe it!" Mirabel raged. "I have a million emails to answer tomorrow and a book report to type for school."
"Well, don't be so crabby," soothed Rose. "It's not forever, and meanwhile we can learn some very useful life skills and thinking patterns. Like writing by hand, for instance. Did you know that typing on the computer and writing by hand exercise very different brain functions?"
Mirabel braced herself for another of Rose's infamous monologues. How Rose lectured! She was always lecturing, and one couldn’t get a word in edgewise once she was started. It all came of reading too much nonfiction.
“…focus, concentration, and logical succession of thought necessary to writing fluently on paper…”
Mirabel wasn’t listening anymore. Rose’s talk made her head hurt. She went to the kitchen to get a drink of water—Rose trailing after—but there were no clean glasses, as usual.
“We really need to get more cups,” Mirabel muttered.
“What’s that you’re saying?” Rose asked crossly.
“I wasn’t saying anything.”
“Something about needs.” she persisted.
“I was talking to myself.”
“What was I saying, then?” Rose sighed heavily as she tried to regain her train of thought.
That night, the girls lay in their beds, talking about folk dancing and friends and church. There was a sudden heaviness, a loud buzzing, and then an eerie stillness. Rose got up and checked the light switch.
"The electricity is out now," she told her sisters. "It must be eleven o'clock. Goodnight."
——————————
Outside, a soprano mockingbird rhapsodized about the beautiful morning, Opening his eyes, Papa Davis began to stretch but paused midway. Something wasn’t quite right, though it took him awhile to discover what it was. A golden band of sunlight lay across his lap. The sun had risen. It must be over the trees now...
Papa Davis lunged for the bedside alarm clock. They exchanged blank stares. The memory of yesterday finally piercing his foggy mind, Papa Davis jumped out of bed, waking Mama Davis who began to moan and yawn.
“What is it?” she mumbled.
“The time!—the time!” cried Papa Davis as he sprinted to his closet and began banging drawers. “The alarm clock didn’t ring this morning! I don’t even know what time it is!”
Mama Davis lurched out of bed and stumbled sleepily to the bathroom. She flipped the switch, but nothing happened. “Bother.”
Papa Davis’s fraught attempts to find clothes in the dark had wakened the rest of the household.
Rose stood unbraiding her hair in the bedroom doorway. “I was thinking. Before the advent of electricity, humans were more aware of and in tune with the natural rhythms of the sun rising and setting. Before clocks, no one regarded these arbitrary symbols of hours and minutes and seconds. I believe it was Chesterton who observed that the heaviest chain tied to a man was a watch chain.” No one seemed to notice what Rose considered a very fine and sensible speech. She withdrew from the doorway with becoming dignity.
Clara, still wrapped in her violet kimono, came from the living room where she had been consulting the battery-powered analog clock. “It’s seven-thirty!” she hallooed down the hall.
“Oh, thanks!” Papa Davis dashed down the hallway, nearly colliding with William, who was padding along to the bathroom. “Sorry, bud.”
Rose emerged into the hallway fifteen minutes later. Mama Davis, wrapped in a towel, stuck her head out her bedroom door.
"Who used all the hot water?" Mama Davis asked. Mama Davis was not happy.
Before Rose could answer, Clara opened the other bathroom door and emerged from an enveloping of steam. "Boy, that was a nice shower," she declared loudly. "What's the matter, Mama?"
It was a delicate situation, and Rose took this opportunity to flee. "I'll go start breakfast," she said.
She tied on her apron and briskly set to business. “Alright, then. What shall we have for breakfast? Scrambled eggs sounds good to me!” She had cracked eighteen eggs and buttered the skillet before she remembered that the stove didn't work without electricity.
Mama Davis, having forgone her shower, came out for breakfast.
"What will I do?" Rose complained, gesturing at the brimming bowl.
Mama Davis shook her head. "Cover them and put them in the refrigerator. Cold cereal—"
"I couldn't!" Rose cried. "The refrigerator won't be cold enough now to prevent an outbreak of salmonella."
"Throw them away then, for heaven's sake."
"I couldn't!" Rose wrung her hands. "Eighteen eggs and good milk!"
Ira came in, his face behind in a wilderness survival handbook. "We could cook them over a flame," he said. "These diagrams show 'the best way to build a safe and effective cooking fire.'"
William and John leapt around Mama Davis, grasping her skirts. "Please, Mama, please!"
"Alright," Mama Davis relented unexpectedly. "But let's please not set the house on fire too."
"The last thing we need," remarked Mirabel.
Soon there was a cheery blaze out of doors, Rose leaning over it to stir the skillet and the rest of the Davis children gathered around to give advice.
“We’re Western settlers, having breakfast on the open prairie!” said William, jumping around the fire more like a warlike Indian chief. Winston and John supplied the sound of gunshots and war whoops, and the boys tumbled together on the grass,
“Get away from the fire!” Clara admonished them. “This is not fun and games!”
Rose, pushing back the damp tendrils of hair that stuck to her cheek, agreed grimly.
After dousing the fire, the Davis children ate their scrambled eggs (slightly scorched) and milk that was not quite cold. Afterwards they finished all their chores except for the laundry, which was piled in dank and smelly heaps in the bath tub. The house being restored to some semblance of order, the children began their schoolwork. Winston and William, who normally did their schoolwork in the kitchen, moved their books to the living room, where the sunlight was stronger.
The air was hot, still, and smelled of damp fingers pressed on pencils.
"It's blasted hot in here," Mirabel observed after a period of silence.
"Open the French doors," Clara suggested, getting up to do it herself. "Maybe we'll get a breeze in here.”
Everyone returned to their schoolwork. Clara interrupted the stillness with a sudden spasm. "There was a trickle of sweat running down my back," she explained to her staring siblings. "It tickled."
"Close the French doors," Mirabel insisted. "There isn't a breeze, and it's only gotten hotter." She closed them and returned to her desk.
Rose came in. "Why don't you open the French doors?" she asked, swinging them open. "Maybe we'll get a breeze in here."
Mirabel's shoulder blades were positively forbidding.
"Huh, there isn't much of a breeze is there?" Rose remarked, licking her forefinger to test the air. No one answered her, and she wiped her finger on her skirt. "None, in fact." She closed the doors again.
Mama Davis came in. "It's stifling in here," she groaned. "Open the French doors. There might be a breeze." She didn't understand why everyone leapt up at once in loud protest.
Mirabel hunched again over her grammar exercises, her dark brows contracted. "Rose, what does 'odious' mean?"
"'Smelly,'" said Ira from behind his algebra.
Mirabel looked at her book again. "Ew! 'A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it odious to artists.'"
"That is not what it means," said Rose. "Look it up, Mira, for heaven's sake."
"You're never any help!"
Rose began in sing-song, "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day..."
Mirabel knew that proverb by heart. She sighed and, taking Mama Davis's iPhone, clicked open the internet application.
Mama Davis pounced. "Don't you dare use the iPhone! I'm saving the battery to watch my movie."
"Then how am I going to find this out for school?" Mirabel demanded.
"Ever heard of a dictionary?" was Rose's laconic suggestion.
Mirabel tossed her curls and heaved out the tattered college dictionary. It had belonged to Mama Davis when she herself was a young student, and it had not aged as well. She flipped through the thin pages, their soft edges torn and thumb-marked.
Odious, it turned out, meant "extremely unpleasant, repulsive." Rose told Mirabel that intelligence was marked by initiative, but Mirabel didn't believe her. It was easier than looking up 'initiative' in the dictionary.
——————————
The morning and early afternoon passed as normally, as the Davis children busied themselves with their schoolwork. When the books had been put away, the children were dismayed to remember that the computer, the radio, “everything” Mirabel said, was unavailable.
“What do I do, what do I do?” Mama Davis wailed, roaming the house. “I am bored!”
“And I’m a plank,” said Ira. “I had a million things to do on the computer after school. Now what am I going to do?”
“Quit complaining,” admonished Rose brightly.
"But what in tarnation are we going to do?"
"There's plenty of work that can be done," Mama Davis said warningly.
"Let's dance," Rose suggested. "We haven't done it in so long, and my limbs are positively aching for a polka or something."
"We can't do that either," said Mirabel. "The music player needs electricity."
"We don't have to worry about that—not for awhile," Rose reminded her. "It has a back-up battery that should last us a couple dances at least."
They were dancing the Virginia Reel, singing "Yankee Doodle" as the set peeled off. There was a loud crackling and the music died abruptly. The dancers raised a collective groan.
"Just as we were getting into it," Ira wailed.
"And we were supposed to do the Hebrew dance next," said Mirabel, crossing her arms and pursing her lips.
Even Rose was deflated, but she tried to keep a cheerful face as she put the iPod and speakers into their case. "Oh, well, another day."
"Meanwhile, my heart is beating like crazy," said Clara, taking a hearty swig of water. "What are we going to do next?"
"Something energetic," pleaded Mirabel. “This day without electricity has been simply odious.”
“Swimming!” Clara screamed. “How could we forget? It’s hot and there’s nothing to do inside.”
The children rushed into their bathing suits and into the cool water. This entertained them until Ira had to get out to make dinner.
“What am I supposed to make without a stove or oven? I should like to know.”
“Leftovers,” said Mama Davis. “Let’s use up the food in the refrigerator before it goes bad.”
The front door banged. William and John tackled their father and began all at once to tell him the adventures of the day. "Cooked over a fire... but no computer... the Indians attacked, and we won the battle..."
"Hold on, hold on," Papa Davis laughed, peeling them off his sides. "Let me say hello to your mother."
"We're not talking to you right now," said Mama Davis, only half in fun.
"Do I sense a coolness?" Papa Davis asked, bending over to kiss his wife.
Clara tossed her head. "You do not. It must be the lingering effects of living in air conditioning all day. We, sir, have had nothing like."
"Is that it?" Papa Davis loosened his collar. "It is rather warm in here, isn't it?"
"Isn't it?" Rose's face was hidden behind the blur of a fan. Out of desperation she had dug it out of their Civil War costumes.
"What's for dinner?" Papa Davis asked. "Or don't I get any?"
"Leftovers a la Ira Davis," announced Ira with what was meant to be a French accent. "Bon appetite."
The Davis family sat down to a strange lukewarm casserole. Picking gingerly through the conglomeration, they made a game out of guessing what was in it. "Spicy lemon quinoa with very wilted parsley," Papa Davis guessed. "When is the last time we had that?" Mexican chicken, chopped. Kidney beans with lots of garlic. Mint peas with almonds. Some white soft stuff that even Ira couldn't remember. "Stale grits," Rose finally said, lunging for the water. All this was mixed with steak seasoning for unified flavoring and olive oil to make it stick together.
John wouldn't have any because of the peas, and Winston wouldn't have any because of the quinoa, but the rest of the Davis family made a good show of eating. There were, tellingly, no second servings. Even the dog turned up his nose.
“Odious,” Mirabel uttered under her breath.
Ira grinned as he scraped the leftover casserole into the garbage pail. "Are you sure you don't want to eat the rest?" he asked Rose. "Think of the starving Chinese or Bengalese."
Rose did not deign to answer.
"Alright, clean up time," Papa Davis announced. "While you kids clean up dinner, I'll shoot off a few emails and—Oh, wait. I can't." He went to play his mandolin instead.
It was Rose's turn to wash the dinner dishes. The dishwasher couldn't run without electricity.
"And it serves you right," said Ira, "for wishing we didn't have electricity."
That was alright. Rose liked hand-washing dishes. Besides, she had read somewhere that dishwashing powder was the most toxic home chemical. That had always bothered her. She took out the lavender castile soap and made a gloriously fragrant mound of snowy suds in the sink.
Singing "Minstrel Boy" under her breath, Rose took an armload of greasy plates and ran water over them, but the water wouldn't warm, and the olive oil congealed. "Why isn't the water getting hot?" she finally complained.
"No hot water, remember?" said Mirabel triumphantly.
Rose turned back to the sink. This was not so fun. She needed more soap and more fresh water to cut the grease—the grease on the plates, the bowls, the forks, the knives. Even the glasses were ringed with grease. "Doesn't anyone wipe their lips before imbibing?" Rose wanted to know. She stacked the last of the washed dishes on the counter. "Well, a few germs won't kill us, anyway," she said doubtfully, her face twisted in a grimace. "And the castile soap is natural and organic," she added reflectively. "Some of the soap wouldn't come off."
"Less soap next time," Papa Davis advised. "Alright, kids. Let's do some 'sanging' in the living room."
After the hymnals were distributed, the Davis family sat down on the couches, the fireplace, the floor.
"One-hundred," was William's immediate request, so they began with "Holy, Holy, Holy."
"Is it getting dark or am I getting blind?" Papa Davis wanted to know when they had finished the last stanza. "Ira, go fetch my old man glasses."
"They won't help," declared Mama Davis. "It's too dark for any of us to see. I had to finish from memory."
"Me too," the others chimed.
So they put down their hymnals and sang several more hymns from memory.
"Singing in the dark like this is crazy," said Winston.
"Do you have to call everything 'crazy'?" Rose demanded. "Why not 'morbid' or 'uncanny' or 'bizarre'?"
"I don't even know what those words mean," said Winston equably.
"Ever heard of a dictionary?" That was Mirabel, and there was bitterness in her voice.
"Now, let's not be rude," warned Papa Davis.
The other children looked meaningfully at Rose, who pretended not to notice. She said, "I don't know. I actually like sitting in the dark like this. We never do."
"Mostly because that would be insane," suggested Ira.
"Why do you have to call everything insane—"
"It would be sordid, uncanned, a big craft bazaar. Whatever."
Rose laughed in spite of herself. She began musingly, “Rise with the sun and go down with the same. Rather than constantly flooding the house with artificial lights,” she began, obviously reciting a future blog post [not published yet ;-)], “we should learn to appreciate the varying intensity of sunlight throughout the waking hours, and adjust our activities accordingly.”
“Well, I’m not going to bed at six o’clock,” protested Winston, and Will and John gave a hearty seconds.
Rose faltered. “Well, I’m not so sleepy either. Probably my biological clock needs adjusting.”
“Uh, that would be your internal clock, Rose.”
Papa Davis snapped his fingers. At least, the others assumed it was Papa Davis. They could not see him, but when he spoke it was with the voice of one who had indeed snapped his fingers. “I have an idea. Just a minute, please.”
The dog barked and a timid knock was heard at the door. Ira rose to see who it was. A delivery man was just recognizable in the deepening twilight.
“Hello, there!” the delivery man said. “I wasn’t sure anyone was home. Why don’t you put on the lights?”
Ira smiled, his teeth shining whitely in the gloom. “We are living the simple life, sir. No lights. No radio. No air conditioning.”
Win’s voice came from the darkness. “No nothing.”
“That’s a double negative,” Rose protested. “If we had no nothing we would have to have something.”
“We have matches!” Papa Davis declared triumphantly. He struck a match. His face looked eerie in the meager light, but it soon disappeared again. “Ouch! I’ve burnt my fingers. Do we have candles?”
“The right side of the second shelf in the fourth cabinet,” answered Mama Davis with characteristic precision.
Papa Davis turned and stumbled over the coffee table again.
“More to the ri-i-ght!” William sang out.
“That’s going to smart,” Clara observed. “You’d better get some arnica for that.”
“I think it’s a bit late,” grumbled Papa Davis as he limped away. They could not see him, but his family knew he was limping because of the peculiar rhythm of his footfalls. Mama Davis had used detective novels and Indian woodland-guides to teach the children to notice that sort of thing.
Ira turned back to the delivery man’s inquiring face. “Thanks for the package. Have a good night.”
“You too,” the man said doubtfully.
“What is it?” the girls chorused when Ira returned.
“Who can tell?” Ira said. “I can’t read in the dark.”
“Put the package away,” commanded Papa Davis. “We’ll look at it tomorrow. I think it’s my order from Harbor Freight.”
The girls collapsed back on the sofas with disappointed sighs. Papa Davis lit the candles.
“Candlelight is supposed to be flattering to the complexion, “ Rose purred from the corner.
“You would need that, wouldn’t you?” Ira joked tauntingly.
Rose bristled with indignation. “So will you, once I’m through with you!”
Ira ducked as a pillow hurtled across the room and struck Papa Davis full in the face. Rose sighed regretfully over her poor aim.
“Now, now,” admonished Papa Davis when he had removed the pillow. “Let’s not set the house afire with these antics.”
Rose and Ira contented themselves with swapping hideous grimaces.
Clara shrieked with laughter. “You look so funny making faces in the candlelight!”
So they all made faces at each other.
There was a sudden heaviness, and then a buzzing, and then a hum—the familiar, comfortable hum of electricity. That beautiful, industrious hum that meant bright lights and computers and air conditioning and refrigeration and hot showers.
Mama Davis broke into the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
Ira leapt up and flipped the switch. The room was suddenly illumined, and the glad faces of the Davis family. Even Rose, unguarded, wore a look of relief.
Clara rose with a generous yawn. "Thank goodness. Now that we have the lights, let's turn them off and go to bed."
Mama Davis was already halfway down the hallway. "Don't any of you dare use the hot water. I'm taking a shower first!"
"Uh, honey, it'll take awhile for the water heater to warm the holding tank," Papa Davis called out. "It won't be ready until tomorrow."
Rose blew out the candles, a little ruefully. She went to the bedroom and settled the iPod in its player. She scrolled through the albums and selected Bach. She was glad to have electricity, but she wouldn’t tell her family how much. Electricity, she had decided, was good in its place. That was alright. She had other campaigns.
"Do you realize how utterly dependent the city food supply is on petroleum?" she asked after breakfast the next morning. "Without the gas to support the transportation network, grocery stores would run out food in three days. What could a modern family in the suburbs do in such a dire situation?"
"Don't you even think it!" Ira bellowed.
Illustration: Papa Davis is late for work.
Illustration and text © 2011.
COMMENT ON THIS POST BY SENDING AN EMAIL TO THE HANDMAIDEN.
LA MATER (aka MAMA DAVIS) said...
Loved it—of course! Enjoyed hearing you read it aloud at the Society Luncheon, but I was able to catch more of the familial similarities while reading it on my own. If you decide to write a further adventures series the Davis’s may grow to be well known as “The Moffats”... Carry on! ;-)
Tuesday, March 29, 2011 09:04 AM
HANDMAIDEN said...
Oh, yes, there are several Davis family stories in the works, not the least of which is “The Davis Family Go Camping.” We have plenty of hilarious family anecdotes to weave into that one. ;-)
I’m glad you liked it, Mama Davis.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011 11:40 AM
ELISSA said...
*giggle* What fun! I sure wish I had been able to participate in the activity that month, but we were all very sick, and when I wasn’t sick, I was tending my little brother and darling mother, so I didn’t have a chance to write out a story. Thanks for sharing this with us. Last May we were without natural gas for about six days, which for us meant no stove or oven, and no hot water. And it happened just as we came home from a two week vacation. That was not fun. Cold showers, washing my hair with boiling water (boiled on our propane stove). I don’t know how many times I scalded my scalp with it. I had to use the neighbor’s oven to bake bread. The worst thing was laundry—since we had been gone for about two weeks. That certainly was a challenge, clothes that had not seen the light of day for months were brought out. :-) Oh, and my dad pneumonia during this. Yeah, that was not a good week. —Elissa
Tuesday, March 29, 2011 03:03 PM
HANDMAIDEN said...
That emphatically does not sound like a fun week!
You couldn’t wash your laundry in cold water, though? I mean, desperate times call for desperate measures, yes?
And no hot soup or inhalations or poultices for poor Dad!
I wonder what Rose would have done.... :-)
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 04:42 PM
ELISSA said...
Now that you mention it, I do think we did some laundry in cold water, I had forgotten. (I’ve kind of tried to block that rather unpleasant time from my memory. ;-)
Sunday, April 10, 2011 01:21 AM
Tuesday, March 29, 2011