Mama and the Conduits

Mama cools off

Before company came on Thursday night, I was turning off the light next to the TV in the living room and thought of the ritual Mama followed when she gave cocktail parties forty years ago.

It had been hot and sunny for days on end and Mama’s grass was getting scorched.  The clumps you could pull up had the texture of the translucent stuff in an Easter basket.  Another week of this and it wouldn’t be a lawn, it’d be a hayfield.

Mama was going to have six couples over that night for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.

She planned to put the guests in the living room.  Taking inventory of her liquor, she thought, “Vodka for Lilly’s martini and gin and tonic for Rich and Sarah and Thaddeus Milton.  Bourbon for the Battles, Blacks and McGoverns plus Daddy.  Mary and I will have two Canadian Blends apiece.  Joe – Scotch.”

The hall bar would serve as the main station, where there already was an open half-gallon of blend and a half-full quart of vodka.  In the cabinet underneath there was gin and a half a bottle of bourbon.  The two bottles of soda were fine but she knew the tonic was flat because the last tonic drinker, her son-in-law Frank, had come over most recently back in February.

Mama looked up from the small blue oriental where she stood in the living room. She looked vacantly between the open drapes through the picture window, past the pink stone patio.   A second set of drapes was open to sliding glass doors that served as the entrance to the porch, a slate affair surrounded on the remaining three sides by screen windows.  There were six-foot plastic panels that fit into the screen windows for the extreme seasons.  They were in now.

“The other half-gallon of bourbon is out there, “ she thought.  She flipped up the catch of the sliding door to the porch and strained to move it the first few inches.  A short burst of irritation hit her.  Frustratingly, there might still be something stuck on the rail -- the door had been oiled the week before.

Earlier this month, she had had a dream that pictured the halves of the door perched askew in the air under dark red blossoms, with a dozen plastic panels splayed out below and the slider track bent and laid across two saw horses.  A giant white glove was hanging in the place of the moon. She waked up at that moment with a sore neck. 

“I have to remember the vermouth, too,” came to her mind as the images dissolved.  For an instant she recalled a photo in last month's Horizon feature on Marc Chagall.

Mama stepped across the large green tiles to the stand-up bar.    Seeing that the last panel on the southern side had come loose, she walked over and tried to push in the bottom corner.  As she did the diagonal corner above popped out; the panel began to fall on her.  She stepped back surprised: like a parachute, the panel filled with air and fell in slow motion, barely missing her and clattering awkwardly over a glass table and wrought iron chairs.  “Dammit. These things are so amateurish.  I wish we’d thought …” and she suppressed an old tiresome thought, returning to focus on the party.  She seized the bourbon and vermouth from under the bar.   

Things were already organized on the indoor bar.  Mixers stood to the right of the ice bucket and pitcher of water, liquor bottles stretched out along the wall with the jigger in front of them.  Cut lemon and a slim bottle of olives sat on the tray with the ice bucket.

In the kitchen, Myrtle had just finished the circles of white bread for cucumber sandwiches.  Nuts had been poured into a wooden bowl.  The Havarti, Gouda and Cheddar cheeses stood out on a cutting board to soften.  Myrtle appeared to be in steady mode and was in the process of changing from one gospel radio station to another. When she had rotated the dial, Mama said, “What do I smell? “  Before Myrtle could answer, she said, “Oh yes, bacon for the water chestnuts.  Those always go over well.  Would you please use the bigger cutting board for tonight?  I guess you saw the crackers I got this morning?”

“I did.  I’ll use it.  Do you see anything else that we need for tonight?” 

Mama paused, her eyes quickly surveying the counters.  “You’ve handled everything, I think.   And beautifully, as always. ”

“Thank you, Mrs. Calhoun.  And, I’ll be leaving at 5:15 as normal.  Tony will be along to park cars.”

“Very good.”

With food and drinks covered, Mama went to look at the thermostat in the hallway.  Seventy-two degrees. This was barely cool enough; the front door would be opening and closing in an hour and a half.  

She stared at the thermostat for a moment more.  The dull brass fixture had survived the twenty-three years since 1949, when the house was built, four years after Alan had returned from Germany and two years before he went to work for his father.  The store had given them the steady income that Alan supplemented with real estate and stock trading.  

Her short interlude in the 1940s evaporated.  Moving around the room, she turned off the five lamps, including the standing model by the piano opposite the entrance.

Having saved about two degrees, she reckoned, she went downstairs to close the door to the playroom to shut off any warm updraft.  She climbed back up the staircase and turned a few yards back to the children’s room.

Their doors were open and she realized she was losing some coolness to Daisy’s room.  The drapes were open and it was bright and warm there on the southeast corner.  

Once it was attended to, she considered Penelope’s room.  It was cool, darkened by the boxwood outside its window and the shade that the afternoon sun granted to the east side.  She concluded there was no loss here. 

After these measures Mama turned to the room of extremes, the den.  Although the sun might have fled the room, some residue might remain:  in the furniture, in the carpeting, the converted closet – anywhere.  She closed the door to the offending room.

After consideration, Mama viewed her latest moves as preventive but not producing cooler air.  She thought hard: her door was shut, heat leaving the kitchen had become minimal, and the dining room was amplifying the cold air.  She sat down in her chair in the living room, the blue-green Queen Anne, and cogitated. 

Mama pondered with her eyes alternately settling and flicking around.  They alighted suddenly on the track that ran above the closed drapes. “Fluorescent generates practically no heat,” she thought,  but she rose and flipped their switch.  The tubes flickered off.   

Myrtle left at quarter after five.  Mama said goodbye to her from the Queen Anne. Mama stayed there for fifteen minutes more and went to check the thermometer.

It read sixty-eight degrees.   

Victorious, Mama floated to her room and put on her make-up.