Tag: Home Grown

Home Grown

Travels with Mama

A daughter unpacks her mother’s baggage

By Cynthia Adams

Mama never traveled light. She traveled with intentions. Those encapsulated champagne-and-caviar dreams and included sequins, suits, wraps, strappy heels, scarves, earrings, necklaces, belts, handbags, daywear, nightwear and leisure wear for God knows where.

Working at a consignment shop meant Mama apparently bought just about everything that happened to be in her size.

Travel light? Mama traveled heavy, whether visiting friends in Spartanburg or family in Switzerland. Regardless, she packed foam curlers, curling iron, enough hairspray to asphyxiate a ballroom full of people and a complete palette of makeup.

Taking Mama on a lark to L.A., something negotiated while she recovered from heart surgery, I learned a thing or two.

Never rent an economy-sized car when shuttling Mama.

Her suitcase — nicknamed “the coffin”— fit into the land yacht, her lumbering Lincoln — but was way too big to fit into the rental car I picked up at LAX.

The coffin could only fit through the rear doors when turned sideways and hefted across the rear seat. Mama patted her hair, commenting on the traffic, while I shoved her other bags and my single one into said trunk. And the West Coast traffic?

It is possible to be both sweaty and cold when terrified.

Flop sweat trailed from my temples as we merged onto the freeway. Then Mama began musing about a good comb-out.

A comb-out? She had gotten her hair done the previous day. But Mama had standards, which weren’t going to slip here in the land of “swimmin’ pools and movie stars.”

Passing a billboard, she visibly brightened, wondering about getting into a Wheel of Fortune taping.

I reminded Mama that my realm of influence was, well, nonexistent. The only two people I knew in Hollywood, Suzy Turcot and Sherwood Jones, were not lolling around swimmin’ pools. Suzy worked in lighting (on a hit sitcom and films) and Sherwood had edited the Olsen twin videos when they were kids, plus some feature films.

Barely aware of palm trees and iconic scenery, I glumly realized Mama wouldn’t be pacified with Gray Line star tours and museums. She wanted hair, makeup, action!

Prompted by her screaming “Stop,” we pulled into a Beverly Hills inn with Mama’s carry-on bag at her feet, a huge purse in her lap and the coffin filling the back seat.

Mama adored the spacious Italianate, frond-filled lobby. On a sideboard awaited freshly squeezed juice and stage-perfect fruit.

The lobby bore little semblance to our bargain-rate Lilliputian room. The coffin sprawled once it was inside, consuming the floor space. It would only fit beside my twin bed. Opened, it belched finery.

The first night I stepped right inside it while fumbling to the loo, entangled in Mama’s diaphanous garb.

She also brought court-worthy ensembles. Mama adored true crime, once accompanying me to Union, S.C., as I attempted to sniff out a story about a murdering mother. (She disarmed the lock-lipped townspeople with grandmotherly inquiries — Mama knew more about the murders than Nancy Grace.)

Which is why, on day two in L.A., donning a pantsuit, Mama mentioned Brentwood. After studiously following O.J. Simpson’s trial, Mama pointed out gory details as I clenched the steering wheel.

Mama Macabre.

Days in L.A. became a whirl of celebrity crimes and my traffic misdemeanors — when I found the police department to protest a whopping parking ticket, I pointed out it was featured in Beverly Hills Cop.

On a subsequent trip with a small entourage including my sister, our first to Vegas, we unwittingly booked a tattered hotel slated for demolition. And yet, Mama had filled the coffin with clothes suitable for Monte Carlo.

Her sparkly garb would have thrilled Raymond in Rain Man, but was overkill at the slots. If Mama noticed fellow gamblers in sweatshirts and worse, she didn’t comment.

Here I learned something new: Beware of a casino’s largesse.

Slurping down free cocktails, we shrieked with jubilation as the slot machine began screeching and flashing like a fire siren. Jackpot!

“How much did you win?” Mama gasped, adjusting her sequined top.

“I can’t count that high,” I shouted. Gawkers gawked. The machine spit coin after coin. “Forty quarters!”

I ordered another Bloody Muddy, weighing an upgrade to the Wynn with my winnings.

Ten dollars.

Regret, I realized by daybreak, thy name is stupid drunkenness.

It wasn’t even enough to buy Mama another glitzy consignment shop top.

The next day, chastened by my wanton ways, I reconnoitered and visited the Guggenheim Hermitage in the Venetian hotel. It was a “jewel box” tucked into the Venetian’s lobby, featuring works from both Russia’s State Hermitage Museum and the Guggenheim, which was as jarring a fish-out-of-water Vegas experience one might have. It echoed with my footsteps as only one other person — a guard — was inside. It soon closed due to lack of attendance.

Imagine.

Meanwhile, Mama rejoined my sister in the casino, inspired, rather than dissuaded, by my “windfall.”

While walking along the strip back to our dumpy hotel, I noticed a wrecking ball had been indiscreetly moved into place. It seemed a metaphor straight out of a Wes Anderson flick. Then a stranger handed me a yellow flier advertising cheap flights over the Grand Canyon.

I squinted in the overwhelmingly stark sunlight in amazement at this, the perfect antidote to the artifice of Vegas: A natural wonder.

On approach, the other passengers and I donned headphones playing the musical theme to Grand Canyon to fine effect. Better than the Guggenheim — a natural work in a staggering landscape.

As I stood on the precipice of this magnificent hole, my eyes welled. Meantime, back at the casino, Mama’s eyes shown with joy, too, when the one-armed bandit dispensed a bounty of coins. Enough winnings for a new pair of pantyhose.

We both won, Mama breathed out that night, dressed in a splendid cocktail frock. Her very best. OH

Home Grown

Zany or Zen: Me and the Chelsea

Lodging complaints

By Cynthia Adams

It was my father’s idea to book me into the Hotel Chelsea. Yes, that Chelsea — Manhattan’s confounding hotel.

I was 15, en route to meet fellow high schoolers and our chaperones, young art teachers, for studies abroad. This trip, plan B, arose when my mother nixed my being in Ecuador as an exchange student.

“I won’t have it,” Mama insisted. “Something terrible will happen.”

My travel-happy Dad, heavily influenced by a strong dollar and the hope that I would score him a bargain Rolex while we were in Lucerne, suggested Europe.

You may be thinking, the Chelsea! How very cool. But, no.

The seedy Chelsea was cheap. And so was my dad. Once, on a family trip to Nova Scotia, Dad tried to negotiate with an innkeeper on rates by offering his daughters’ help with housekeeping. Travel on the cheap with a large family reminded me of humorist David Sedaris’ accounts of his father, Lou Sedaris. My Dad, Warren, seemed to be Lou’s brother from another mother.

Rufus Wainwright wrote music at the Chelsea, even naming songs after it, telling Vanity Fair “there was no better address to have in terms of communicating decadent, sad ’20s esprit.”

Dad didn’t know the Chelsea had domiciled the likes of O. Henry, Mark Twain, Thomas Wolfe (who wrote You Can’t Go Home Again there), Tennessee Williams, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg plus Arthurs Clarke and Miller. No, he knew none of that. Nor that it was infamous for murders, suicides and misadventure — before Sid Vicious lived down to his moniker, killing Nancy Spungen.

The mood setter for my Chelsea experience was the taxi ride into the city. A grubby driver with two-day stubble on his double chin grinned as I gave the address: “222 West 23rd Street.”

“First time in New York?” he asked. “Southern gal,” he burped out, leering in the rearview mirror, careening wildly. Was he drunk?

The oppressive taxi stank of body odor.

“Welllll…” he drawled, like Robert DeNiro in Cape Fear. “Whar in Dixie? I’m Southern, too.”

I didn’t want to answer, but, well, Southern manners required it — so I mumbled, “Near Charlotte.” He followed up with, “Ever heard of a rapist, little girl?”

His gray teeth showed as he grinned. “I got charged with rape down in South Kerlina and left.”

Left? As in escaped? And I was in the rapist’s car.

Staring out the window, determinedly silent, I reviewed my helplessness. What to do? To my infinite relief, he pulled up at the Chelsea, chuckling.

I paid and fled with my bags into the then-seedy hotel, faced with a new dilemma. The Chelsea looked like what my elders called “a flophouse.”

Having escaped abduction or worse, I planned to hunker down in a dodgy room till morning. Before, gulp, taking another taxi ride to JFK.

I was famished, but not hungry enough to venture next door to El Quijote, which has since been restored, by the way.

Just as well, it happens. Lola Schnabel, daughter of artist Julian, told Vanity Fair about a finding a human tooth lodged in a croquette while living at the Chelsea.

At sunrise, jumping out of bed, I tugged opened the curtains.

And froze.

Mere yards away, a slender man on the rooftop was performing a sun salutation. In the nude.

I dragged the tatty curtains closed. As quickly as I could dress, I asked the Chelsea desk clerk for help with a taxi, one driven by a non-rapist. He kindly obliged.

Weeks later in Lucerne, a Rolex saleswoman pulled trays of watches for my (uninformed) inspection, but my budget was $300. She gently suggested Bucherer instead and gave me a tiny Rolex spoon. Dad wore the Bucherer for decades, as if it was the watch he coveted. I kept the spoon.

(Years later, I gasped when actor Keanu Reeves sported a Bucherer.)

I never mentioned the taxi driver, the pre-renovation Chelsea, nor the birthday-suit sun salutation to Dad — who died long before Reeves proved the Swiss saleswoman, bless her heart, had been right all along. OH

Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O.Henry magazine.

2023 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

Highly (Anxietied) Entertaining

My mother, the hostess with a host of worries

By Cynthia Adams

My mother, while a charming and gracious Southern woman, was driven to the fine edge of sanity by entertaining.

Hosting the Home Demonstration Club (born in the Depression) to discuss homemaking topics such as canning and cake decoration was on par with Princess Margaret making a stop in Hell’s Half Acre. HHA was 30 miles from Monroe, Charlotte, Concord and — well, places where HRH Margaret would never deign to visit.

“Company” sent seismic waves through our ranch home.

A hair appointment was booked. A trip to Smart Shop for a new dress. High-anxiety calls went to Mama Patty, her mother, who lived for company.

Mama Patty, always baking, was primed and ready for “drop-ins,” her polite term for interlopers. Not so with her youngest, Jonnie Louise (who dropped the “e” on Jonnie in her fifties — Mama Patty had hoped for a boy).

Out came the Electrolux, Johnson’s floor wax and the buffer. Yes, JL owned a buffer. Also, a punch bowl with cut-glass cups; plus, china, crystal, silver, linens, etc.

My older sister and I would vacuum, then hand wax the floors (yeah, Karate Kid stop your sniveling). Then buff. While managing to gripe and argue the entire time.

Once when I complained that I was too tired to help, Mom gave me one of her diet pills.

“These are from Dr. Pfeiffer, so they’re safe, but give lots of energy.”

Those pills became known as Black Beauties on the street — amphetamines. Of course, JL didn’t know this. I grew more jittery than the shuddering buffer, following the oak grain and inhaling the waxy smells as my young heart hammered.

While show time drew near, we were all banned from the kitchen as soon as cooking commenced.

Mom believed her usual repertoire lacking when it came to the Home Demonstration Club. She would send herself into a complete frenzy — once making a baked Alaska.

By the time the Home Demonstration agent and guests arrived, Mom, the floors and her buffet were perfect — but she was near collapse.

Then there was Mama Patty.

Mama Patty, who had faced devastating losses, lived out her life as if she had only walked among duckies and daisies. Yet she lost a toddler to meningitis. A young husband to an aneurysm. A breast to cancer.

(When questioned about never complaining, she replied, “Self-pity is a cancer! And it will kill you faster,” then proceeded to smock gowns for neighboring newborns and send cakes when someone died.)

Mama Patty’s house was tidy, cheerful — and full of bad furniture.

At least, the kitchen was cheerful. The table, chairs and counter were red melamine rimmed with chrome. Pound cakes (lemon and chocolate) awaited in Tupperware. A fruit pie chilled in the “Frigidaire” with fried chicken, potato salad and pickles.

A meal was always at the ready and she happily fed whomever graced her doorstep.

She “went modern,” decorating the den with a brown Naugahyde sofa and recliner, and a braided green rug. She accented with unidentifiable amber glass objects. With the recliner extended, she stretched out to enjoy her soaps, The Edge of Night and Secret Storm.

Mama Patty’s bedrooms were filled with 1940s-era “suites” of brown furniture, which even my kid self recognized as ugly.

When Mama Patty died, mourners spilled outside the country church, later overwhelming her little house. A weepy-eyed man no one recognized blubbered, “I loved Miss Pat so much!”

When asked how he knew our grandmother he answered, “Oh, I repaired her appliances.”

Seemed he and his family enjoyed not only regular visits but also her cooking. He once was fixing the washing machine when a bad storm arose; she perfectly innocently insisted he lie down on the bed till it passed.

Mama Patty feared storms, snapping turtles tangling up her fishing line, snakes and drowning.

All real things to fear. And all of which made my mother’s social anxieties, then and now, an even greater mystery. OH

Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O.Henry magazine.

2023 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

Fringe Movement

Bitchin’ kitsch-in

By Cynthia Adams

There it was in the venerable Architectural Digest. Shag carpet everywhere. The “rise of kitschy themed vacation rentals.”

“Kitschy” and “themed” extolled in AD, arguably the most revered design publication.

Before I could get my eyeballs back down from the top of my head, there in the magazine’s online edition unspooled images of pink, shaggy, fur-covered floors, walls and ceilings. Boudoirs with round beds — as in Elvis’ Vegas era, Pocono-honeymoon-style round beds. And more vinyl, glitz, brass, acrylic, glass, unidentifiable materials, and Elvis-gold and Vegas neon colors than have been on view since Plan 9 from Outer Space hit the movie screen and pre-rib removal Cher was on TV.

Forget Granny Chic, Granny Core‚ or Millennial Chic. Forget Coastal Grandma Chic. Forget anything you’ve read about Minimalism, Houston style, New York style, West Coast cool. Forget it and gird your design loins.

Something else, something very strange, is afoot.

Something tacky this way comes.

And the most unsettling part? When Architectural Digest embraces tacky, readers are expected to simply submit as their discomfort scale ratchets up. How bad must things be in modern life for us to embrace kitsch taken to extreme lengths?

The taste-makers at the vaunted Architectural Digest are not alone in claiming that kitschy décor, kitschy homes and kitschy boutique hotels are rare and hot-hot-hot.

Among the renters of such hip-to-kitsch grandparents’ abodes was even — wait for it — a fire department.

I sort of get it, in that case, anyway. Wouldn’t such an interior kitsch so bad that design mavens wave their magic design wands in order to position it as good, just cry out for combustion? Hot-hot-hot so incendiary as to burn-burn-burn? That would seem to be a pyrrhic victory.

But it seems there is no making kitsch, nor any extreme, go away for good. Bad taste exists because how else might we know how to define the antithesis?

According to the BBC, kitsch was supposedly killed by the Modern Art movement. But, no. (Spoiler: Andy Warhol has a big role in the offing of really bad taste by conflating it with hipster taste.) Here’s what the BBC says about it:

“This is one reason for the emergence of a wholly new artistic enterprise, which I call ‘pre-emptive kitsch.’ Modernist severity is both difficult and unpopular, so artists began not to shun kitsch but to embrace it, in the manner of Andy Warhol, Allen Jones and Jeff Koons.”

Here, friends, comes the best part. Pre-emptive kitsch as defined by the BBC themselves:

“The worst thing is to be unwittingly guilty of producing kitsch. Far better to produce kitsch deliberately, for then it is not kitsch at all but a kind of sophisticated parody. Pre-emptive kitsch sets quotation marks around actual kitsch, and hopes thereby to save its artistic credentials.”

The BBC editorialist has examples: “Take a porcelain statue of Michael Jackson cuddling his pet chimpanzee Bubbles, add cheesy colours and a layer of varnish.” Certainly a strong visual. They continue: “Set the figures up in the posture of a Madonna and child, endow them with soppy expressions as though challenging the spectator to vomit, and the result is such kitsch that it cannot possibly be kitsch. Jeff Koons must mean something else, we think, something deep and serious that we have missed. Perhaps this work of art is really a comment on kitsch, so that by being explicitly kitsch it becomes meta-kitsch, so to speak.”

Meta-kitsch lives. Deliberately, some say, deliciously (or deliriously) kitsch redux, as in, “the 1980s were far more than just the ’50’s redux,” a direct quote from an online dictionary.

Beat them to the punch, in other words. Be in on the joke.

And then we have, thanks to design writer Kelsey Lawrence, an exposition on the “rise of kitschy, themed vacation rentals,” which includes motel rooms, Airbnbs and even travel trailers. (Especially Air Stream trailers.)

It’s nostalgia-tinged, Lawrence says. Those Pepto-Bismol, Strawberry-Shortcake-doll pink walls and carpeting, crushed velvet as the fabric of the moment, and the must have on repeat: once again, Playboy mansion style round, velvet-covered beds.

Bow-kitsch-a-bow-bow.

Lawrence blames the trend on the hardship of the times; the barrage of bad news, which apparently can only be shut out by focusing upon kitsch.

So, if you stare at hardcore kitsch long enough, you can blot out the images of fellow Americans demonstrating for their civil rights?

Pre-emptive, meta-kitsch, if taken to its logical conclusion, would extend to all matters of taste. For example, if you wore Tammy Faye cry-me-a-river makeup to the office on Mondays, your Bobbie Brown-tastefully-neutral face would be far more appreciated — perhaps even celebrated! — on Tuesday.

Or if you ditched your Talbot’s jacket for a Kimmy Schmidt getup for the PTA meeting, everyone would applaud your knowing irony. A hipster, in-on-the-joke?

Like the green Jell-O with marshmallow-and-grated-carrot-salad brought to the elegant dinner party, temerity wobbling on a platter, the laugh wouldn’t be on you . . . it would be with you.

After the applause dies, enter FOMO.

What exactly, one worries privately, inside a tasteful home with pale lacquered ceilings, industrial-chic doors, upcycled floors and Jeff Koons-inspired art, what deep and serious thing, did I miss out on? OH

Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O.Henry.

2023 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

Ready to Pounce

A game of cat and alpha

By Cynthia Adams

I was so eager to break the glass ceiling that I began eyeing the work exits if the ceiling showed no signs of cracking. Some bosses made exits easier than others.

My first real job paid peanuts, but the boss was a rock star in the civil rights movement. I was idealistic enough to love the grant-funded dead-end work. When the grant expired, I accepted a permanent job with a lackluster boss, only to discover a telling omen.

My desk overlooked a cemetery.

Between the new boss’s whispery voice and the graveyard view, I flapped my wings daily just to get my blood flowing, achieving minimal career velocity.

I moved on to an international corporation with real pay and prospects, and two bosses. All they shared in common were New York backgrounds and human bodies.

One, a pipe-sucking, tweed-wearing adman with a lofty vision of himself, drove a Volkswagen Thing. Despite his eclectic exterior, he was a dullard counting the days to retirement. The other, a Dapper Dan right out of Mad Men, was fresh out of rehab — imposed after he infamously peed off the boss’s deck at a Christmas party.

Dapper Dan was utterly brilliant, but bitter about his ex-wife, who had recently left him.

Unfortunately, I reminded him of her. He immediately nicknamed me (ugh) Cat Turd.

No longer bored, I pointedly ignored the insult.

Slowly, the embittered one found grace, thanks to a relentless pursuit of recovery (although my feline excrement moniker stuck). He invited me to hear him speak at AA meetings — for once, he knew what he was talking about — sharing the program and his spiritual practice. Soon, I recognized toxic relationships of my own. Dapper Dan’s recovery helped me leave a painful marriage and recover myself, too.

Next, I found yet another colorful boss (imagine Colonel Potter on M*A*S*H). He was no alcoholic, but rewarded late workers with a splash of Dewar’s in our coffee mugs. I didn’t like Scotch, but adored the irreverent man.

I was recruited away from that job, but soon remorseful, as the new boss, a shameless sycophant, was Colonel Potter’s opposite.

Soon, I hastened to my final corporate gig — working alongside a vainly handsome, abusive alcoholic: “Mr. Alpha.”

What are the odds? Seemed I also reminded Alpha of his ex-wife.

I am ashamed to admit how thrilled I was when Alpha revealed himself by lewdly insulting an off-duty police officer at a work event. Arrested on suspicion of DUI, he dispatched me to find cash for his bail. Before I did, I whispered to the arresting cop, “Take his belt. He’s probably a suicide risk.”

Of course, Alpha was far too in love with himself for self-harm.

Alpha began making moves upon our shared assistant, who tearfully reported it to me. Human resources was overseen by Alpha’s pal and she refused to go there.

How to stop Alpha?

The answer surfaced while I was scanning articles for a work project.

I enlisted friends far and wide to mail articles on workplace harassment to Alpha — printing or typing his address.

I played a long game, and nervously waited.

Eventually, Alpha summoned me to his corner office.

“Shut the door,” he growled.

“Stop it. Right now,” Alpha demanded, face reddened.

“Stop what?” I asked, temples pounding.

“You know what,” he said. “I’m warning you.”

“If you tell me exactly what it is you want me to stop, I’ll certainly try,” I bluffed quietly.

Alpha glowered. His mouth opened. Then closed.

“Get out,” he snarled.

I padded away.

From that day forward, Alpha stopped pawing our assistant. Even so, I knew that even a Cat Turd had only nine lives and pondered my exit, praying I would land on my little cat feet. OH

Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O.Henry.

2023 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

Mama Buys a Horse

To have and to hold the reins

By Cynthia Adams

After decades of a volatile marriage, Mama had had enough.

Their Richard Burton/Liz Taylor stalemates were nuclear — often ending with bling. She loved jewelry, and Daddy liked extravagant gestures.

Our cash-strapped father loved land, cars and antiques. Once, he bought an Elvis Presley pink Caddy, then a horse-drawn carriage, displacing Mama’s Lincoln.

Her passions were big cars and hair and fashion.

My parents had eloped as teens, hiding the marriage license under the living room rug. When Mama developed a baby bump, they pulled back the rug.

They produced five young’uns. Daddy bought farmland — and baubles, pacifying Mama, who hated debt and his roaming eye. Arguments were the soundtrack to our childhoods.

Decades of stress, gravy and biscuits did their worst. He developed gout, “sugar,” and angina.

Mama developed breast cancer like her mother before her. Daddy, distraught, railed about disfiguring mastectomies, convinced of “laser alternatives.” She chose to excise it.

What couldn’t be removed was a metastasizing sense of betrayal.

Mama believed she had kept up her end of the marital bargain — at least all but the “in sickness and in health” part, which Daddy was failing, too.

She accepted a job assisting an elderly couple, packed up the Lincoln, and she and her best friend, Linda, left their husbands.

The left-behind men were a mess.

Daddy was bewildered. Their longstanding, unwritten contract was that if he capitulated, she was mollified.

A divorce required selling farmland.

“I’ll give her what she wants and she’ll come back,” he groaned.

She didn’t.

Daddy sourly predicted she couldn’t handle money, grousing, “She’ll blow right through it.”

She did.

We helplessly watched the wreckage.

Linda’s new boyfriend, Eddie, liked horses. Mama soon reported, “I’ve bought a horse! And the cutest riding outfit,” producing a picture of a quarter horse with a Western saddle.

Previously indifferent when we kept horses, Mama never learned to ride.

Our newly buxom Mama posed for Glamor Shots with an eye to the future, and her spending diversified beyond implants and horses.

She invested with hairdressers Perry and Terry in a startup florist business after a trip to Disney. Perhaps they twisted Mama’s arm; she’d returned with it in a cast.

The “Flower Pot” closed within 70 days. Seemed none of them knew or cared about actual floral work.

Next, she purchased an audacious ring in Miami, which we dubbed the Super Bowl ring.

Mama invested, then leapt out, taking a drubbing. “I’m not cut out for the stock market,” she frowned.

I inquired about her horse with no name. “Oh, I don’t know where it is,” she waved, sunlight setting her ring ablaze.

“You don’t know where it is?”

“Eddie’s taking care of it,” she said. “Somewhere. I’m not really a horse person.”

As it turned out, Eddie and Linda were over; Linda had reconciled with her husband.

Mama’s bank account dwindled . . . a missing horse . . . bad stocks . . . an empty Flower Pot. She began working at a consignment shop, easily affording new outfits every day.

Mama never looked better.

When Daddy died of a heart attack at 61, Mama sat with me all night as I sobbed.

“Your Daddy brought me a mess of collard greens a week ago,” she confided. “I sort of think he wanted us to get back together.”

I know he did, I gurgled through Tammy Faye-ugly tears.

Mama bought an extravagant spray of roses for his coffin.

Daddy had left her $10,000 to buy a diamond.

In death as in life, everything — and nothing — was resolved. OH

Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O.Henry.

2023 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

Love of the Pastel Service

The world’s a more colorful place when we don’t say what we mean

By Cynthia Adams

My immigrant husband has always had a soft spot for the postal service. Since arriving here from Johannesburg, Don has marveled at the fact that American mail is delivered in a reasonable period of time.

Not so back at home, he will say, shaking his head, giving a warm smile as the postal truck pulls to the curb and delivers mail. When working at home, he is always prepared to step outside to say hello.

In South Africa, by contrast, mail can — and does — disappear. If the post arrives, it won’t be swiftly. We finally abandoned sending his family birthday and holiday cards. “Back home,” he says, snow, rain, heat and gloom of night can and will stay couriers from their appointed rounds.

He so admires American mail’s superior service that he makes a point of knowing carriers by name. Kevin is “a great guy,” Don says.

The men and women of the USPS were among his first friends in a new country.

“They pick up stamped mail right from our door!” Don marvels with genuine pleasure. “They didn’t in South Africa.”

Our first Christmas together presented a little culture shock to him, too, as presents piled up beneath the tree. His Christmases had always been more austere.

“A little something for everyone,” I explained, defending perceived extravagance.

Soon, Hershey’s Kisses appeared, piled beneath the tree. The reason? “So the postman can have a little something!”

Following a move across town, we observed Shirley, our new mail carrier, endearing herself to every dog on our block by dispensing doggie treats.

Shirley was so beloved by neighborhood hounds that howling commenced the moment the mail truck appeared. She doled out biscuits at fences and front doors as doggies up and down the street yelped with anticipation.

Don contributed to the cause, leaving Milkbones for Shirley. One pre-Christmas morning he wrote a check.

“Who’s that for?” I asked.

“Our pastel loady,” he murmured.

“For the dog treats fund,” he scribbled in the memo line.

Our what? He repeated absentmindedly, “Shirley,” he said, “our pastel loady.”

I clapped my hands in delight. Through a misfiring of a brain synapse, postal lady became pastel loady!

A spoonerism!

Tangled, inverted words and phrases were dubbed spoonerisms, thanks to Archibald Spooner, a brilliant, colorful intellectual. The legendary Oxford professor and chaplain apparently amused his students and congregants by unwittingly switching parts of words

A classic example was when Spooner misspoke during an interview, declaring “the weight of rages will press hard upon the employer.” He meant to say, “the rate of wages.”

Another misstep by Chaplain Spooner: “It is kisstomary to cuss the bride.”

Spooner’s student was denounced by the Oxford don for tasting two worms, rather than wasting two terms.

One mystifying Spooner quote more Harry Potter than Oxford-speak? “You will leave by the next town drain.” (Rather than “the next down train.”)

In 1930, Spooner conflated “conquering kings,” spluttering out “kinkering congs.” Clearly, people could not wait to hear what his brain would produce next.

Even though his gaffes were widely quoted, and doubtlessly misquoted, Spooner remained good-natured. When he retired from public life, Oxford became a duller place. No more colorful clunkers.

Likewise, when the very popular Shirley retired from the pastel service, neighborhood dogs slumped, tails drooping. They went into a collectively silent, grousing funk for weeks.

Our terrier, Kip, eventually stopped gleefully racing along the fence line at the sight of each passing mail truck.

There was a sad reckoning: A fine pastel loady had passed from daily life. Missed by canines and customers alike, the world grew less colorful, a much grayer place. OH

Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O.Henry.

2023 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

A Diamette a Dozen

Dialect, diamond chips and decadent desserts

By Cynthia Adams

“There’s someone on the phone saying you won a free Diamette!” Don exclaimed from the kitchen. Grabbing a towel, I clambered out of the tub as he uttered:

“We just need to order a year’s worth of vitamins.”

My South African hubby pronounced this, “VIT-ah-mins.”

He appeared at the bathroom door, a new cordless Radio Shack phone in hand. “She’s on the phone now!”

Clamping his palm over the receiver he whispered, “What’s a Diamette?”

Slick with bathwater, I visualized a pin-sized diamond chip and mouthed, “NO! Don’t do it!” Did it matter that there was no such thing as a Diamette — it was probably just a clever workaround for some trademark like Diamanté?

Deeply enamored of telephones and TVs, Don emigrated from South Africa, where required government permits for either were challenging. Channeling Elvis, he now wanted them throughout our tiny cottage — so small we could have used cans and strings.

In South Africa, local calls, too, were billed by the minute, so telemarketing was unknown territory.

There were many landmines in the Land of Free Markets. And Don was a total innocent when it came to bogus giveaways and promotions.

“In this country, everything is legal until you’re told it’s not,” he solemnly noted.

I never got the Diamette, whatever it was purported to be.

There was a lot for me to learn, too. Sometimes, our separate realities were exactly as George Bernard Shaw once said: countries divided by a common language.

One evening, we returned from work to a frigid house. The irritable oil furnace, normally belching and rumbling, had gone silent.

Being handy, Don figured he could fix it. From beneath the house, he shouted, “Bring me a torch!”

I blanched. Wasn’t he from Johannesburg — not the wilds of Borneo?

“That may be something you use back home,” I retorted, “but I would not bring you a lighted torch even if I had one!”

He reappeared upstairs, face smudged, looking annoyed. “I cannot see without a torch!”

We stared, both incredulous.

Don pantomimed, clicking with his thumb: “A torch! A light?”

A flashlight.

There were more such moments. “Al-YOU-minium” is his word for foil, the stuff you wrap around baking potatoes.

Born in a land of abundant seafood, Don explained at the market that prawns are a specific crustacean.

“Shrimp differs.”

The checkout woman bet I “married him for his accent.” I glowered at her.

Afterward, we placed our groceries in the boot (trunk). He patiently explained the bonnet (the hood) and cubbyhole (glove box) as we parsed out automobiles.

When our furnace died that famous night, Don went in search of a jersey (sweater). My sweatshirt, it turns out, is his sweater.

“One of those things with a logo on it! Part of a tracksuit,” he explained. Which I knew, at least then, as a jogging suit.

Those, I believe, have gone the way of the dodo bird.

We spent months in linguistic bafflement. Just when we were progressing, we visited South Africa for Christmas. Now the tables were turned.

The only snow Don had ever seen was in the Drakensberg Mountains during winter — our summer. But it seemed South Africans liked nothing better than decorating windows with fake snow and cavorting snowmen as vibrant yellow acacias and tree-sized poinsettias bloomed.

The family Christmas tree reminded me of Charlie Brown. A pitiable, sorrowful thing.

I resisted snapping a shot to show folks back home, mesmerized by a line of ducks walking a plank into the swimming pool to escape the sweltering heat, while awaiting my first South African holiday dinner.

For dessert, the tour de force: fruitcake encased in a shell of marzipan, and a flambéed Christmas pudding. Unbeknownst to me, silver heirlooms, lucky tokens, were baked inside.

I swallowed mine before noting others raking through each morsel. Mortified, I concealed all evidence and prepared to walk the plank. The Diamette, like the silver token, was a lost cause, and it appeared that in the culture wars between a South African and an overly smug American, so was I. OH

Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O.Henry.

2022 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

Chalk and Cheese

A tale of Dutch — and Southern — hospitality

By Cynthia Adams

There I was, in the Netherlands, shivering in the attic room that a university contact (who called it an “apartment”) had found for me. Hardly an apartment, its highlights were a sink and a tiny window. And it was winter . . . so cold I looked up the meaning of chilblains.

My refuge from the cold room was either the university or the living room, which was also the refuge of my landlady, a blue-eyed, blonde-haired, cat-loving chain smoker who was rather thick in the middle, and favored sensible low heels and navy skirts. I’ll call her Anke. The uniform was a throwback to Anke’s KLM air hostess days, which were the highlight of her life. Laid off long ago, most of Anke’s forays were daily shopping for ciggies, cat food, wine and cheese.

As time wore on, we began to forge a tenuous relationship. She had resisted at first, given I was, in Anke’s words, “a stupid tourist” renting an overpriced, unheated attic. I needed proximity to Leiden and she needed cash. Yet the very idea of my presence galled her.

The Dutch are blunt.

She was astonished I had been hired to teach writing at a local university. How could I possibly take a job away from a good Dutch instructor, she wondered aloud?

Then there were the strict household rules: when to use the kitchen and fridge; when to bathe, and in which bathroom; daily airing of the duvet because a detested prior tenant had “sweat feets.” No matter how cold, the garret window was to be left opened in daytime. Ditto for the bathroom window.

As winter progressed, I shivered in bed with a couple of hot water bottles and the duvet tucked under me. It was impossible to get warm. She alone controlled the thermostat.

Yet I learned that Anke loved and knew good wines. Eventually, she agreed to join me for a nightcap of delicious wine after work. Slowly, we came to a rapport — of necessity. Briefly warm, I pretended I didn’t mind endless episodes of Neighbors, the Australian sitcom, or the wreaths of smoke encircling her cropped hair.

“Chalk and Cheese,” she called us, as in the Dutch expression “as different as chalk and cheese.” I presumed I was the chalk . . . and she was her favorite, Gouda.

Ultimately, Anke would invite me to share dinners. I learned to bring good chocolates, flowers, or wine home.

Anke thawed, and introduced me to her Jewish family. Few males had survived the Holocaust.

This explained the ubiquitous picture windows, pointedly left uncovered after years in hiding. And the ever-present bicycles, which the Nazis had confiscated.

She took me on shopping forays for “more premium” toilet paper in Belgium. I went with Anke to source white asparagus, pannekoek — a pancake smothered in thick syrup — and mussels.

When my semester ended, we parted as friends, although inscrutable to one another.

Months later, Anke called to say she was coming to the states. On arrival, she wanted use of my car. This wasn’t possible, I explained. Upset, she settled on my driving her wherever asked. I took her to IHOP for pancakes, which she bluntly and loudly declared “shit!” Our many churches troubled her. “There’s one on every corner!”

Anke hated every meal and found Greensboro was a total washout until I took her to a big box store.

Delighted, Anke found a staggering bag of cheese puffs — at least 2 feet high — to lug home. She visited McDonald’s and adored the Big Mac.

Anke, seafood and wine connoisseur, approved of American fast food and snacks.

This time when we parted, she hinted at a future visit. I smiled, unnerved, yet confident I could find enough snacks and bad food to please her. Certain that America would deliver, I gave “Cheese” a thumbs up as she ambled down the concourse in her squatty heels.

Still baffled yet grinning, “Chalk and Cheese” had reached an international accord. OH

Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O.Henry.

2022 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

Picture This

Adventures in leveling up a home

By Cynthia Adams

As the homeowners run errands, a TV Land remodeling team sneaks in and transforms their grubby home.

Junk is hurled out and carpet ripped up! But guess what else? Someone eventually has to hang the damn artwork.

Inspired, I launched our own home refresh, reorienting furniture, dragging sofas and chairs from one room to another.

Which eventually necessitated moving artwork. Picture hanging inevitably involves hammering nails into our plaster walls, something that hasn’t always gone well in the past.

Nails are trouble with a capital T.

Trouble, as when a construction worker consulted a dentist, who found a six-inch nail in the roof of his mouth, shot clear into his brain. (No doubt, he had been farting away with a nail gun.)

The dentist – also male – congratulated him that if you had to have a nail in the brain, his was lodged in the ideal place.

Strangely, picture rehanging seemed to suddenly interest my husband for one reason: a new laser level. He ripped it from the package, casting a glowing red line, like Star Wars weaponry. I wanted to rehang the pair of pictures, not destroy them.

He hung the first. “’Bout right?” he muttered manly, nails held in his mouth, eyeing the second.

Then he placed the fist-sized gizmo onto the wall. The red line snaked around the corner, leading into the hallway.

Grunting slightly, he held the second picture wire by yet another gadget.

“Now,” he announced, squinting appraisingly, “I will align the next picture.”

The red laser was so mesmerizing I fell to thinking of ways to harness its powers. Before suggesting things that required aligning, like the washing machine, my husband commanded, “Now!”

“Now what?!”

“Now you must help me determine if the second frame aligns properly with the first.”

Well, duh! It suddenly seemed that the project was tipping unfairly from he who possessed fancy tools to me, who possessed only naked vision.

As I spied with my little eyes, the pictures appeared altogether wonky.

“Why aren’t you helping?” he complained.

“Helping how?”

“Can’t you make sure the pictures are STRAIGHT?” He perched on the top of a chair, dangling the second picture from the picture hanging tool. “Look, I can’t hold this much longer,” he panted.

“Hmm,” I said uncertainly.

“Hmm – what?” he shouted. “Is it STRAIGHT?”

“Isn’t that what the laser thingy is for?” I retorted.

He climbed down from the chair, fixing me with a stare. “It probably IS. But…” he floundered. “I didn’t . . .”

A long pause.

“. . . read the instructions before I hung the first picture.”

Taking the picture from his hands, I gave him a dirty look.

He shot the laser around the room, taking aim at a sleeping schnauzer.

“Stop it!” I commanded.

Sheepishly turning off the laser, he chewed his lip.

“What good is that thing?” I scoffed.

“Well. It’s a great tool,” he retorted.

With our bare eyes and hands, heaving and fussing, we managed to get the heavy pictures reasonably realigned.

After which, I noticed a series of braille-like puncture marks in the wall.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing.

“Uh, that’s where I affixed the laser level to the wall,” he replied.

“You mean it makes holes in the wall!?”

“That’s the only thing I don’t like about it,” he answered. Dead serious.

“Well, I never!” I huffed, before suggesting we plug the holes with toothpaste, a trick I’d read somewhere. He scowled and retreated to the basement. As I repaired to the bathroom for toothpaste, I grabbed my sonic toothbrush, too. I returned to find my husband swiping paint across the puncture holes.

Removing the pulsing toothbrush, I gurgled through the froth, “Look!”

“What now?”

The paint he’d dabbed over the puncture marks was a different shade.

Next year, I swear, he’s getting the Handyman Paint Matcher for his birthday. OH

Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O.Henry.

2022 Department Home Grown