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“Tell Me A Riddle” By Tillie Olsen
The marriage short story starts with an aging Russian immigrant couple Eva and David. Both Eva and David start to break apart in their forty-seventh year of marriage. Their tensions had been repressed during the years while they were raising their children, but have resurfaced now that they live alone. • The latest conflict is over how to spend their retirement. David wants to move into a Florida retirement community (called the Haven), but Eva cherishes her freedom and her space, and refuses to move from their house in a Northeastern city.
Their adult children - Hannah, Paul, Vivi, Sammy, Lennie, and Clara - are confused over this situation, and try to convince their parents to be reasonable. • Eva resents a lifetime of putting her own needs on hold for those of others. Specifically, she resents how David her husband has always been able to go to lodge meetings and card games, while she was forced to stay at home.
POP QUIZ CAN YOU NAME 2 OF EVA & DAVIDS 6 KIDS ?
Now, Eva spends much of her time simply sitting around, resting. • All she wants now is solitude and silence, but David constantly nags about moving to the Haven, even threatening to sell the house without her consent. • One night, after Sunday dinner, their son Paul notices how inactive Eva (his mother) has become, and suggests she see a doctor. Both Eva and her son Paul insist that the cost is unnecessary, but Paul's wife Nancy insists that she will drive Eva there herself.
The doctor's tests reveal the possibility of a small kidney disorder, but his primary advice is that Eva become more active, start "living like a human being" (72). • David exploits this advice to argue they should move to the Haven. • When she continues to resist, David stops going to meetings, and invites old friends and relatives to visit Eva, but she pushes them away. Finally, he gives up trying. • One night, when he is leaving for a meeting, she begs him to stay. Instead, he mocks her for constantly changing her mind, and leaves her behind, sobbing and cursing him.
When he returns, Eva is lying on a cot on their sun-porch. She stays there for a week, refusing to talk to or go near him. • He finds the bed seems empty without her. One day, he hears her singing an old Russian love song as she gets wet from the rain. He insists she come inside, but has to help her because she is so weak.
David finds a buyer for the house, and invites all their children who live nearby to dinner, in hopes that they can convince their mother to move. • Because they can tell how weak she is becoming, they decide that Hannah's doctor/husband, Phil, should examine her.
Phil, (Hannah’s husband) discovers that Eva is in fact sick - she has cancer all over. An emergency surgery to remove her gall bladder buys her time, but the diagnosis says that she has "at best...a year" to live (77). • At the hospital, Paul tells David the truth, but suggest they keep it a secret from Eva. While Eva is happily surrounded by flowers and visits, Sammy (David & Eva’s daughter) councils her dad to travel with her mom around the country to visit their other children. • Though David mourns the threatened future of his move to the Haven, he realizes that she will not long be strong enough for such travel.
