Page 178 - Always Virginia

166 Virginia Day Fritscher

appear fictitiously in the novel, The Geography of Women: A Ro-
mantic Comedy, written by Jack Fritscher, and published in 1998.
It was the Finalist Winner of the National Small Press Book Award
for Best Fiction 1999. The Geography of Women was translated into
Greek and published by Periplous Publishing, Athens, Greece, in
December 2000.
The “voice” of the narrator in The Geography of Women grows
out of the combined dialect, speech patterns, vocabulary, and stories
of both Mary Pearl Lawler Day and Virginia Claire Day Fritscher.
The interviewer, pointedly, knowing all these family stories by heart,
directed the thirty minutes of these questions to accommodate the
energy of his eighty-three-year-old grandmother. This transcription
is absolutely accurate.

May 8, 1972

Jack Fritscher: [John Joseph Patrick Fritscher]: Nanny, thank
you for doing this little interview. Tell me where you were born
and anything else you wish to say.

Mary Pearl Lawler Day: I was born in St. Louis on Virginia
Avenue, October 2, 1888. I had four brothers and no sisters. I always
had a very happy life. Everybody was always good and kind to me
and still are. I don’t see why lots of people say they wish they were
dead. I don’t. I’m getting old. I’m almost 84. I am old. And I’m
still happy to think I’m living. I have lots of good friends and all
my relatives. I could live with any of them, and get along and be
happy. Well... [She laughs.]

Jack: Tell me about your mother and father.
[John Patrick Lawler, born c. 1857 in St. Louis of parents from
Ireland, died (age 63) 1920, in St. Louis and Honorah Anastasia
McDonough Lawler, born 1861 in north St. Louis of parents
from Ireland, died (age 63) 1924 in Kampsville at the home of her
daughter Mary Pearl Day who cared for her.]