It took a crew of wreckers two days to believe anybody had got a car up that hill and then down into the swimming pool. "An optical illusion," the garagemen kept saying as they peered down through the opalescent pools of floating oil to see the Jaguar glittering six feet underwater. It took another two days to drain the pool, remove the car, get it down off the hill, and towed away. It took another two days to get the pool and the wall around it repaired. And it took another two days to get the pool refilled. Poor Junior! By then he was wrung out, dried out, and thrown out—back again, I suppose, in some gloomy institution.
I felt awfully sorry for Junior, as I said to his law firm in my letter of farewell, but not sorry enough to keep him around for another minute. Rancho del Monte, I wrote rather archly, was not the Keeley cure. Then I clipped all the repair bills to my letter and mailed it off.
I'd started the season with a splash, all right. Bill says it's just my imagination, but every time I go swimming I keep tasting gin and ethyl.
9. Help! help! help!
The house was clean, the pool was repaired, reservations were coming in, Buck and Evangeline had been replaced, and we were open for the season. On top of that, Mother was somewhere between leafy Evanston and Santa Fe, bent on her tour of inspection and moving my way just as fast as my father was willing to drive. Don't think that that didn't put us on edge. You can always brazen it out with a total stranger, but when Mother knows best and has told you so for a good many years there's no bluffing with a scorched soup, a sullen cook, or even a crooked seam. We were thankful that Junior, Murphy, and the Jaguar were all being patched up in faraway places. And I was prayerfully thankful there were guests in the house and that it wasn't the yawning, empty cavern it had been before Easter. The Walkers were still with us. Dot Field was on from New York and, at seventy, was putting all the men to shame with her riding and all the women to shame with her figure. In fact, just seeing Dot dash about the place in the saddle or in her pretty Capezio slippers gave me the courage to diet and ride.
I had had some quasi lessons on horseback during my dim Evanston girlhood, but they had largely involved jogging sedately around a flat ring in an English saddle while the master said rude things about my back, neck, elbows, knees, heels, and what he called my "sloppy seat"—a term that wounded me to the quick until his exact meaning was explained. With Dot and Curly and Bill and a new blue denim riding habit to egg me on, I started out in a gingerly fashion but without much confidence. I kept saying I didn't want to fall off and break an arm—a logical enough statement, it seemed to me—and Curly kept saying: "There never was a hoss that couldn't be rode or a cowboy that couldn't be throwed." I greeted this witty thrust with tinselly laughter for the first ten or twelve times and after that I just muttered, "Oh, pipe down," said.a little prayer, and trotted off.
In fact, I was on horseback and looking suitably breeze-tossed and outdoorsy when Mother and Dad drove around the bend—much earlier than expected. Through some extraordinary stroke of good luck, I was able to put the horse in neutral, get off without falling off, and rush into my mother's arms.
After all the hugs and kisses and my-how-well-you-looks, Mother got right down to business. "Now, I want to see this place, Barbara," she said. Then she took my arm and started off on a tour of inspection with the thoroughness of a Housing Loan inspector. My heart was in my mouth, but it needn't have been.
"Why, Barbara!" Mother cried. "It's nice!" She cast an eagle eye onto the upholstery. "Why, yes, dear," she said, "it's really quite nice!" Then a squint into the corners for dust. "Why, Barbara, it's really lovely!" She checked to see that all twelve bathrooms were indoor ones. "Why, you silly girl, you told me it was a mud house. Daddy and I were so worried."
"It is a mud house, Mother," I said. Then I went patiently into the straw and mud make-up of adobe bricks, but I don't think she believed a word of it.
"Yes, it's nice. Isn't it nice, Harlan?" she asked my father. "Not entirely filled, though, is it, dear?" Mother asked darkly. My mother can smell a deficit from twenty miles off.
"Well, it's going to be," I said rather too staunchly. "We're expecting droves of guests right away." In all honesty, we were expecting some, but not right away. However, my words proved to be prophetic. No sooner were they out of my mouth than the Guy Houstons from Wichita and a Mrs. Hooper from Marblehead, Massachusetts, roared up the drive. "See?" I said to Mother, pretending I'd expected them all along. Exit deficit; enter profit.
Mrs. Hooper was a widow who had kicked over the traces of New England, and instead of sitting around in a damp place like Marblehead feeling sorry for herself, she'd taken to traveling, painting, and cooking and had managed to master all three pastimes as elegantly and exotically as possible. She spoke of herself almost exclusively as "Ma Hoops" and loved to dance the authentic Hawaiian hula singing her own accompaniment. She had met the Houstons in Honolulu the year before and the three of them had become steadfast traveling companions. And I must say that with Ma Hoops playing the Massachusetts comedienne and Guy and Helen Houston as straight men, they were as entertaining a trio as the Marx Brothers.
Things were looking up, the ranch was half full, and everybody adored everybody else; so much so that when my parents pushed off for California, the Houstons and Ma Hoops decided to throw a party in their honor. That was the day—needless to say—that another cook walked out, leaving me flat. But even this catastrophe turned into a blessing because Ma Hoops tucked up her sleeves and cooked the whole dinner by herself. It was a Polynesian meal she had been taught in the Islands, and both my life and my waistline have been richer and fuller ever since for having learned the recipe. But since Ma Hoops made no secret of it, neither will I. Here it is:
Two Pork Chops Per Person, Cut Medium Thick. This Recipe Is On The Basis Of Sixteen Chops.
Arrange chops in roaster. Sprinkle over them 1 cup of brown sugar. Add 1 1/2 bottles of soy sauce, 1/2 cup wine vinegar, 1/2 cup combined sweet fruit juices and pickled juices. Cook in 225-degree oven for 1 hour, covered. Then for 1/2 hour in fast oven.
To make gravy, pour off pork fat and thicken with cornstarch.
The vegetables used are onions (white), celery, and bell peppers. Cut all of these into fairly large pieces. Cook in very little water in a covered pan. The onions and celery should cook for fifteen minutes and the peppers for five to seven minutes. Add butter, pepper, and soy sauce to flavor.
This is a, meal in one, and everything is served at the same time. While you are cooking the chops and vegetables, cook enough rice for, in this case, 8 people. Arrange a fruit platter of canned apricots, peaches, pears, and pineapple. (Fresh pineapple is, even better.) Be sure to include some kumquats, too. Put the chops on a bed of rice, dish up the vegetables and the gravy, and you're ready to eat.
And if you have any leftover rice, vegetables, and meat, put them in a pot with a bouillon cube the next day, and you have a marvelous soup.
It was something of a triumph for Bill and me when Mother left, not only with a slight hangover from the Houston-Hooper party, but with the firm conviction that Bill and I still had all our faculties and a couple of dollars in the bank. "Yes, Barbara, it's really nice," were her parting words.
Well, that set me up so much I decided to go hog-wild on hiring help for the summer season. That was when James B. Smith and his wives came into our lives and also when we experimented with college vacation help.
From Colorado came two lovely young things named Nan McKenzie and Sue Blair. Nan was tall and slim and blonde and Sue was tall and slim and dark. Then, to help Curly in the corral, we got Dick Clark, who was tall and slim and redheaded. Although none of the kids had ever worked at much of anything before, except Dick who knew his horses, they were all eager—even when it came to being initiated into the mysteries of scouring bathrooms and scrubbing floors.
And do you think I stopped there? No, indeedie! I got a gardener too. Bess Huntinghouse had extensive gardens—vegetable, flower, and fruit—and although I
have the original Brown Thumb I decided that we'd have gardens, too. Therefore Bill and I hired Joe Vigil from the Tesuque Indian Reservation to come in for two days a week and do things like irrigating and mulching.
So at the opening of the season we had James B. Smith, with a wife yet to appear; Curly; Nan; Sue; Dick; and Joe. There was just one thing we didn't have—guests. No, sir, not a one. The Walkers had left, my parents were gone, then Guy Houston went, and finally his wife and Ma Hoops. Helen Houston left us in a perpendicular position rather than a horizontal one. But let me tell you, it was a close call, because everyone—everyone but Bill, that is—thought poor Helen was dying.
Next to a murder, there's nothing worse for a hotel than a death—don't ask me why, that's just the way it is. Other guests get edgy and superstitious and ill at ease and can't wait to move out. The word gets around fast. Reservations are cancelled so fast you'd think no one had ever died before. The place overflows with all sorts of grim unpleasant men on official business with the remains. The staff and all the guests are asked endless routine questions they can't possibly answer until the sadness of death is made so grisly that the survivors absolutely envy the corpse. Luckily, it's never happened at Rancho del Monte but, as I kept saying to myself that night, if Helen Houston had died, then I wanted to die, too.
We were all in bed when Ma Hoops came streaking into our room, her peignoir billowing out behind her. "You'd better come upstairs," she said. "I think Helen Houston is dying." Before you could say knife I was out of bed and clattering up the stairs behind Ma Hoops, with my peignoir billowing out behind me and Bill at my heels.
There Helen lay, propped up on pillows, her face chalk white, gasping for breath. With what strength she had left she panted out painfully, "I . . . I don't know what it is . . . I think I'm having a h-heart attack . . . I—I'm dying."
And I hadn't the slightest doubt that she was. "I'll call the doctor right away!" I cried and raced down to the telephone, full of determination but devoid of hope. But it was so late and the distances were so great I was certain the doctor could never get to the ranch in time to save poor Helen.
By that time everybody was awake and the throng of people in pajamas and nightgowns around the telephone was so thick I could scarcely get through. Everyone was trying to call a doctor—and everyone had a different doctor in mind. I broke through and called our own Dr. Hauser, who is a wonder, but I had no belief that he'd ever arrive in time to do much more than pronounce Mrs. Houston dead.
It was one of those times when a woman needs her mate and mine was nowhere to be found, but after I had dispersed the mob scene at the telephone and tried my best to send all the staff back to bed, I ran head on into Bill at Helen's door.
"Oh, there you are," I gasped. "You've got to help me until the doctor comes. We must do something."
"I've already done it," Bill said.
I looked into the room and there was Helen's bed completely covered by a large and oddly shaped blanket.
"Oh, Bill," I breathed, "you don't mean that she's already . . . that she's dead?"
"Certainly she's not dead," Bill said. "She has croup—at least, I think she has croup—and I've made a kind of tent for her."
"Croup?" I said. "Why, nobody ever has croup except tiny little children!"
"Well, that's what I think Helen has."
I marched into the room. There was a nasty odor of tincture of benzoin and the sound of steam hissing from under Bill's Rube Goldberg-style tent.
"Bill!" I said, "you can't! We may be killing her this way, trapped under all those blankets with all that stink and steam. Who do you think you are, Dr. Kildare?"
"I say she has croup," Bill said steadfastly.
Cautiously, I picked up the edge of the blanket tent and peered in. Bill had devised a croup kettle from an old coffee urn and it was hissing and sizzling away like mad. The odor was terrific. And there wasn't a sound out of Helen.
I wondered whether Bill would be held for murder or only manslaughter and I speculated as to just how old I'd be when he was sprung from the state prison. Then I looked at Helen and she smiled wanly. At least she was still alive. But for how long?
For an hour we sat there, with Bill making minor—and I felt fatal—rearrangements with his homemade Turkish bath. By the end of that time there was no more noise from Helen. We looked again and she lay there peacefully. Dead, I thought. Actually, she was asleep.
It has often been said of Bill that he has more courage than talent. This was a case in point. The doctor finally arrived. His diagnosis: Croup.
After Helen Houston was cured and preparing to leave, we all joked about the evening at great length. She'd never forget Rancho del Monte, she said, because it was the only place she'd ever visited where she occupied a tent in a room.
But now all of our guests were gone. Having once complained about a houseful of guests and ho help, I was now complaining even more bitterly about having a houseful of help and no guests.
James B. Smith—he seemed to have no shorter appellation and always referred to himself as "James B. Smith, Ma'am"; I never asked what the B was for, but I think I know—was feeding us well and economically, but every time I looked at the deficit book, my blood ran cold.
"But, I tell you, Barbara," Bill said, frowning at my frown, "these kids don't cost anything."
"Maybe you call the aggregate five hundred dollars a month we're paying them nothing, in addition to a cook and a cook's absent wife and a wrangler. But I call it something, and subtracted from the big round zero we're taking in every day it makes for quite a pretty deficit. If we don't get some guests for all the employees to take care of, I'll go stark, raving mad!"
And I wasn't the only one. Our overabundant but underworked staff was getting a little odd, too, what with twenty-four hours a day to spend and not a single guest to spend them on. I will say that our amateur help—Nan and Sue and Dick—managed to keep busy and out of mischief, and during subsequent summers we discovered that high school and college kids really do make nicer, brighter, politer employees than those hard and embittered old professionals. But the old pros, Curly and James B. Smith, were just itching for trouble.
James B. Smith was the first to crack. I was awakened at six one morning by the sound of some tinny blues being played very badly on the piano. "Do you hear music?" I muttered to Bill.
"Certainly riot," he groaned.
"Then what's that noise?"
"It's noise, but it isn't music," Bill said, and rolled over.
"Well, it might be John Cage or Arnold Schönberg or someone very modern and atonal," I mused. I was getting interested by this time. "But then, we might have left the radio on or . . ." My music appreciation lecture was cut short by a terrible crash of chords and the distinct sound of glass breaking.
That settled it. I got up and marched into the lounge, where I found James B. Smith, as drunk as a billy goat, playing wistfully to a captive audience of Nan and Sue, who sat there with great big eyes and tight little set faces. James B. Smith, it seemed, had got them up at four in the morning by telling them that there were secret guests in the house—pixyish little guesties that Miz Babs and Mister Bill didn't know anything about. Mystified and half asleep, the girls had dressed and come over to the main house, only to be faced by a two-hour blues concert I could have played better with my left foot, and no guests whatsoever.
The poor girls had made a valiant effort to silence James B. Smith—or at least to turn his volume down so low that Bill and I wouldn't hear him—and coerce him into going back to bed to sleep it off. But every time they tried to lock the piano and nudge our cook out of the room, he became twice as unruly and showed his mild displeasure by smashing a vase. So poor Nan and Sue had stuck it out for two long hours until the noise had routed me out of bed as mad as a wet hen.
When he saw me, he launched into a long, loud eight-to-the-bar concerto of his own composition, I believe, and kept roaring that his wife was due to arrive that day and how
much he loved that no-good woman. Now it just so happens my antisocial or Blue Period occurs every morning before I've had coffee, and this morning was no exception. "You listen to me, James B. Smith," I began wearily, but I never got a chance to say anything further. Bill came bounding-in, a tower of fury in gray pajamas. "Out!" Bill roared. "Out! Out! Out!"
If you think I'm testy in the mornings, you should see my mate!
"Mister Bill, I'm . . ." James B. Smith started.
"You're drunk, that's what you are," Bill bellowed. "You're drunk and you're also finished. Start packing!"
"But Mister Bill, I was just celebrating because my wife is comin'."
"Fine. She won't even have to get off the bus. You can celebrate together all the way back to Albuquerque. You're finished here!" With that, Bill pounded back to bed, his bare feet thundering on the floor. I sent the girls back to their rooms and urged James B. Smith to get a little rest, too. So we all slept off his big evening.
We put him on the noon bus, just as his wife was getting off it. They didn't seem in the least glad to see each other, and Bill was feeling a little crestfallen, too, since James B. Smith was the first employee he had ever really fired in anger. James B. Smith gave us a sad little wave of the hand as the bus started off, and we thought we had seen the last of him. How very wrong we were!
The next troublemaker was also a cook, and her name was Delphine.
Delphine came with excellent references. (I've become very cynical about cooks' references; as a rule, the better they are, the more anxious the former employers have been to get rid of them.) Her two or three dozen former mistresses said, to a woman, that Delphine was sober, settled, pious, and marvelous with chicken. What they didn't say was that Delphine was also crazy, a religious fanatic, noisy, and unable to cook anything except chicken.
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