Guestward Ho!

by Patrick Dennis

  We let the matter drop there.

  "Married?"

  “Yes," I said distinctly, even though I didn't see what business it was of his.

  "A couple, then?"

  "Well, We'd thought just a cook, but of course a couple would be perfect," I said. Then I tuned out long enough to indulge in a roseate little dream of life with a couple—there He'd be, impeccable in white jacket, serving drinks and canapés, circling the dinner table (unlike Curly) with silent perfection, pressing Bill's suits, and driving me wherever I wanted to go and whenever; She'd be dishing up superb meals, dusting, arranging flowers, making beds, and pressing knife-edged pleats in every stitch I owned. And where would I be? Right on the chaise longue!

  "You say yuh been doin' ranch work, sister?" the man said.

  I came right down to earth. "Nothing else but, brother," I said.

  "Then you know all about kitchen work, I s'pose?"

  "Everything about it, more's the pity," I said. "That's why we want to hire . . ."

  "Yuh done chambermaid work?"

  "It seems as though I've done nothing else," I said.

  Then he turned to Bill. "An' you—you bin drivin' and doih' outside work an' takin' care o' horses an' all that stuff?"

  "Oh, yes," Bill said. "In fact, so much so that we thought we'd come to you and see if we could get some sort of. . ."

  "How long yuh bin workin' on ranches?"

  "About a month," Bill said.

  "But it seems much longer," I added with a winning smile.

  "That ain't much experience, folks. But I think maybe I kin place yuh at the Brush Ranch up around Santa Fe or . . ."

  "But they're competitors of ours," Bill murmured.

  The man went right on: ". . . er else with a crazy pair of kids from Noo York who's taken over Miz Huntinhouse's ranch. They oughta be needin' some help, if they ain't dead by now."

  "Well, they ain't dead by now," I bellowed. "But they're pretty damned close to it! We happen to be that crazy pair of kids from New York and we can do just fine without any help from the likes of you!" Sweeping an imaginary sable cape around me, I got up and marched out of his office, trying to look as much like the grande dame and as little like the tweeny as possible.

  From the classified section of the Albuquerque telephone directory we located another agency where a brisk, efficient woman, wearing a suit that cost about half again as much as mine, took us over the hurdles of domestic employment with breezy dispatch.

  Yes, she had all sorts of help. Yes, she could send us experienced cooks, waiters, waitresses, chambermaids, bellmen, bartenders—almost anything we wanted. Did we need a lifeguard for the pool? Did we have any preference as to sex, size, and color? No, there'd be no waiting. Oh, mercy, there were absolute throngs of perfectly trained servants waiting to be interviewed in the next room. We could undoubtedly pick out just what we wanted and take it right home with us—cash and carry.

  I thought she was having hallucinations—or that I was—but then she explained that the Arizona season was over and that lots of experienced help regularly showed up for the New Mexico season. That suited us right down to the ground. She swung open a door and there was a perfect harem of household help, its collective hands folded in its collective lap.

  Like all other women, I pride myself on my infallible intuition, and it is infallible in that it works exclusively in reverse gear. Put a pickpocket, an arsonist, a second-story man, or a dope pusher into a room with five thousand solid citizens and I'll go straight to the culprit and select him as the one honest man in the whole bunch. But do you think I'll ever admit it at the time I'm doing the choosing? Not on your tintype!

  "How about that one?" Bill muttered, pointing to a trim-looking woman of about thirty.

  "Uh-uh," I breathed, "she's too crisp and efficient-looking. She'd be like having a machine in the kitchen. She doesn't look quite folksy enough for a ranch."

  "Or those two?" Bill whispered, indicating the most British-looking pair I've ever seen.

  "Nope, there again—too formal for a ranch. You'd never be able to get near them and I really do aim to wind up with one of those jolly, over-upholstered women like Minnie."

  Bill nodded to a yellow-haired Scandinavian couple. She was overstuffed. "Do you think, maybe, those . . ."

  "Bill!" I gasped. "Just look! Aren't those two perfect?"

  So, like a homing pigeon, I fluttered down a row of flawless servants and fit upon Buck and Evangeline. She cooked, and he—well, he was just as handy as a pocket in a shirt. They'd worked in hundreds of places. Too many, I should have realized, to have had a tenure of more than a month in any one of them. And reasonable! Oh my, but weren't they inexpensive! Cheaper, as a matter of fact, than we had expected only one servant to be.

  And charming! Evangeline, who did the talking, almost bowled us over with her sunny nature. Nothing she liked to do better than cook for hungry folks! Her pastry just melted in your mouth! Her sweetbreads amandine, her truffled grouse, her squab pâté, her filet of sole Marguery, her creme brûlée—all were so good that she just didn't know which was the best. Oh, she adored to run up a baked alaska and to make her own ice cream and there was no task she preferred above getting together a rich afternoon tea with lots of crisp pastry swimming in drawn butter. Oh, and they were wild about ranch life and . . . Well, we put them in the station wagon right then and there.

  There were vague signs of discontent and hypochondria on the part of Evangeline all the way home.

  "I get a little carsick, Mr. Hooton," she said, turning quite pale. "Could we take another road?"

  "I don't believe there is another road, Evangeline," Bill said.

  "All my family got carsick, too," Evangeline said. "Mama and Papa and Uncle Gus. And my Granny was so carsick that. . ." From Albuquerque to Santa Fe Evangeline regaled us with the nausea of her forefathers, carrying the family failing of carsickness back to the invention of the wheel. By the time we reached the Plaza in Santa Fe, I was a little carsick just from hearing about it and feeling queasy enough to do something about it. So we stopped at a drugstore and I went in for a quick Alka-Seltzer. Buck got out of the car a bit behind me and kept mumbling things about having to buy shoelaces. But just as I was going into the druggist's I caught a glimpse of him scooting into the saloon next door, which seemed an unusual place to look for shoelaces.

  "Mighty dusty out on these roads," Evangeline said, coughing dramatically. "It's very bad for my asthma. Asthma just runs in our family. Mama died of it in '32 and poor Papa . . ."

  I began gasping and coughing so loudly that I couldn't hear the rest of her respiratory monologue.

  We should have been on to them right away, but we were much younger in 1953.

  Once home, I showed them their room, introduced them to Curly and the kitchen, got out of my hot girdle, and headed straight for the chaise—but not for longue, if you'll pardon an unpardonable pun.

  Evangeline was a hypochondriac and Buck a drunk. Although he did wax the tables to such a sheen that every dish skated right off onto the floor, he didn't do anything else and he also managed to do nothing so slowly that I was nearly driven out of my mind just watching him. As for Evangeline, I believe that her mother was frightened by a medical student. Every morning she awoke with a new disease, in alphabetical order. We started out with anthrax, bubonic plague, cancer, dandruff, epilepsy, and so on. On the twenty-sixth day Evangeline got Zulu fever, Buck got drunk, and they both got the boot.

  I got into my girdle again and went back to the agency.

  Next came Clytie.

  Clytie was flighty. She flew right off to a new job at Bishop's Lodge, thence to Hotel La Fonda, thence to El Gancho. After that I lost track of her.

  After that came James B. Smith, with not one, but two wives.

  Then there were Delphine, a religious fanatic; Maude and Claud; Astrid; Crazy Kate—well, I'm getting ahead of the story.

  Anyhow, at last we had a wrangler in the corral, a couple
in the kitchen, guests in half the bedrooms, and hope in our hearts. (And not a brain in our heads, I can tell you from the wisdom of hindsight.) June was in sight. Every mail brought inquiries, or, better, reservations, and, as far as I was concerned, we were open for the season.

  7. Rules and regulations

  I’ve talked so far, it seems, only about the problems of Rancho del Monte and none of the pleasures. And even though I found those first months of running the ranch a supreme pain in the head, arms, back, and knees, both Bill and I drew an enormous amount of satisfaction and pleasure from our guests.

  There had been people like the Binders who had resolutely shut their eyes to the horrible mistakes we were making and people like the Easter crowd who had pitched right in and helped make beds and dust the stairs and peel potatoes when they should have been waited on hand and foot. A Mr. Tom Power from Minneapolis even found some old lumber lying about and made an enormous barbecue table for us that we still love and cherish and use. And none of these people actually had to do anything but lie in bed, complain, and drive on to a better-organized establishment run by a couple who knew what they were doing.

  And why did they help us? Well, it wasn't because of my peaches and cream complexion or that I scintillated with charm—which I certainly did not! They just did it because they were exceptionally nice people. In fact, Bill and I have been blessed with such a wonderful succession of guests—and only a very few stinkers—that to list them all would turn my story into a small but rather substantial directory of charming people. It would read like the telephone book of Utopia.

  And as more nice people came and went, Bill and I were able to make up an impromptu set of rules and regulations for the ranch. That sounds terribly forbidding, doesn't it? But the rules and regulations were very elastic and they weren't laid down by Bill and me but by the guests themselves. We let them establish the pattern of life at Rancho del Monte and then we followed suit. That may have been crazy, but it worked out very well.

  Rule Number One was established with the arrival of the Carroll Binders, when we practically dragged them out of their rooms and flung them upon the dinner table so that the meal wouldn't be ruined. The rule was: Treat 'Em Rough. Treat them like your guests and not your customers—ugly word! If they really are guests, they'll respond correctly. If they're customers, they'd never like Rancho del Monte anyhow.

  We tried old Rule Number One on Bob and Polly Walker and it worked with them, too.

  Before the season officially began that first year, a large and impressive Cadillac from California rolled up to disgorge two of the nicest people you ever met anywhere—the Walkers. They had no reservations, they had never heard of us, and we had never heard of them. Like fairy godparents, they simply dropped in from nowhere and stayed on and on for two months.

  As far as Bill and I were concerned, the Walkers couldn't have picked a worse time to arrive because we were painting the dining room. And as far as the Walkers were concerned, Bill and I couldn't have picked a worse time to paint the dining room because they were arriving—and they were arriving sick. While motoring around the Southwest, Bob Walker had come down with pneumonia, a severe case of it, in one of those unheard-of little towns that really seemed like the end of the world. It had been days before Polly Walker could get to a real doctor for her—husband and Bob had had to make do with an osteopath. He'd nearly died, and just when they thought they'd found a place where he could recuperate in the high, dry sunlight, the main floor of Rancho del Monte was a mare's nest of ladders, buckets, scaffolds, and drop cloths, damp and pungent with wet paint.

  If I had been in their Cadillac, I'd have driven right on to St. Vincent's Hospital in Santa Fe, called for an oxygen tent, and crawled in. But the Walkers were made of sterner stuff. Until the dining room was finished they took their meals with us at a card table in front of the fireplace and claimed that it was a picnic, even if everything did taste faintly of turpentine. When new draperies went up they oh-ed and ah-ed over them as though they had selected just that pattern to live with for the rest of their lives.

  Polly and Bob were in their sixties with grown children and grandchildren and they made Bill and me feel just as though we were a part of their large and happy family and, conversely, I guess they felt that they were a part of ours. They certainly would have been welcome additions. In fact, they even took over the management of Rancho del Monte for a couple of days while Bill and I went to Juarez to do some shopping.

  Maybe I should tell you why we went to Juarez, which is just across the border in regular, or old, Mexico.

  The laws in New Mexico are very stringent, as they should be, about how dishes are washed in hotels and restaurants. If you ever spot a greasy plate or a lipsticky cup in the state, you can rest assured that the inspector isn't far behind and that a summons will be slapped on the restaurant within the next forty-eight hours. So all public eating places have automatic dishwashers. And I don't mean those pretty pastel dishwashers you see advertised in the magazines, where a gorgeous model wearing a chiffon apron and an inane smile stands in the third position of ballet admiring her pale hands. I mean a rough-and-tumble, hell-for-leather, professional automatic dishwasher, bristling with gauges and dials and thermometers and heating units and safety valves. Par for rinsing in ours was 220° F.

  Now, one of my weaknesses has always been the best in china, crystal, linen, and silver. (That is to say, it used to be a weakness and a pretty fatal one at that.) I'd rather drink out of a toilet bowl than one of those heavy crockery cups sold to the restaurant trade because they are practically indestructible. Naturally, Rancho del Monte had a full gross of heavy restaurant ware, but I was ever so much smarter than Bess Huntinghouse. Me serve guests on hash-house plates? Not on your life! So as soon as I got my own china unpacked—and what a lot there used to be!—I started swanking with Wedgwood and Spode and Limoges at every meal.

  Mother always told me: "Barbara, you only have to touch Limoges for it to chip." Mother was wrong. You don't have to touch Limoges at all; just stare at it hard and it disintegrates before your very eyes. But in spite of the manhandling my good china got from Curly and Buck and Evangeline, the only casualty was a butter plate—until the night I decided to take matters into my own hands.

  "I wouldn't touch that dishwashing machine if I were you," Bill said, eyeing the monster suspiciously.

  "Nonsense," I said, very much the little Hausfrau. "Curly's been mending fences all day and it's silly to leave this stack of sticky dishes until tomorrow morning when Buck and Evangeline get back." I can't think why I was feeling so chipper that night, but I was using one of those irritatingly bright cooking-school voices and even humming. Bill gave me one of those who-do-you-think-you're-kidding looks and asked if I'd ever tried to use the machine.

  "Oh, lots of times!" I said. That wasn't exactly true. The dishwasher and I had met before, but never without a chaperone. "It's perfectly simple! Any fool could run it."

  "Have it your way," Bill said and sauntered out of the kitchen.

  I started stacking my Limoges china into the maw of the dishwasher. I tossed in the soap, set all the gadgets the way I thought they should be set, turned up the heating unit full tilt, let the water gush in, closed the top, and let her rip.

  Then I sat down at the kitchen table to read the day's mail. There was an invitation to a wedding in New York, an announcement of a one-man show at the Associated American Artists gallery, a summons from a Madison Avenue hairdresser urging me to do something about my dry scalp before the depredations of the Newport season made me look any worse, and a card from a dress shop I'd never been able to afford begging me to come in and just rob them blind at their end-of-the-season clearance. Since distance seemed to preclude my accepting any of these offers, I turned to the letters. There was one from an old school friend who had married the U.S. Mint. Her problem was that she was torn between the exertion of packing a trunk to spend the summer in Italy and the ennui of simply pigging it in Main
e. "Too bad about her!" I grumbled. Then I turned to a long letter from my sister-in-law who said that she, too, was contemplating Europe—Paris especially—and why didn't Bill and I just pick up stakes and come with her.

  I was about to make a rude noise when I became conscious of the fact that the automatic dishwasher was making a much ruder and noisier noise. "You'd think they'd perfect these contraptions so that they'd run a little more quietly," I grumbled. Then I turned to a letter from my mother, which contained the disquieting news she was planning to visit Bill and me in our "mud hut." (Mother simply cannot understand about adobe.) After that first bombshell there was a lot of absorbing news about my sisters and their babies and my brother in the Army, but I found it increasingly hard to concentrate.

  Then Bill came pounding out to the kitchen and shouted, "Barbara! Do something about that dishwasher! It's shaking the whole house down!"

  "Oh, good Lord!" I cried, jumping up.

  The machine was so hot that Bill could hardly touch it, but he finally got it disconnected and silenced. When it was cool enough to take the top off the two of us looked in. It was a ghastly sight.

  I can't tell you just exactly what had happened, but I’d done something foolish about the water. It had all drained out and what was left of my Limoges china could, be put through a sieve. If anyone wants any powdered Limoges, just ask me. I've got boxes of it.

  Anyhow, we were gone from the ranch for two days, leaving the Walkers in the unique position of resident-manager-guests. We did it without a qualm, and the Walkers accepted it in the same way. In fact, we were all the way into Mexico before I realized with a startled little giggle that Bill and I had acted almost like an eccentric comedy team in a light farce who had invited a respectable older couple to dinner and then walked out on them, saying, "You'll find chops in the freezer and all the makings of an angel food cake in the pantry. If you want anything, just ask the maid. There's plenty of coffee at the A & P and if Babikins starts screaming in the nursery, just run up and diaper him. We're off to the Stork Club!"