gold. She ran to luxurious ornamental fabrics, velvets and brocades bought as remnants, and the sumptious effects of tassles and draping. “You don’t need money,” she used to say, “if you have taste.”
Taste. Taste was what the neighbours didn’t have. Taste and imagination. All they ever did, she scoffed, was open the Eaton’s catalogue and order rooms full of mail-order furniture. And if they were short of cash they put up with faded curtains when all they had to do was buy a packet of dye from the chain store. (She herself frequently went on the rampage with dying. Perhaps my great insecurity springs from nothing more serious than the fear that my pink cotton scatter rug might be snatched from me at any minute to reappear later in vivid, startling, foreign purple.) The neighbours didn’t know what taste meant, she said, or were too lazy to make any improvements. All they needed was to get busy and roll up their shirt sleeves. “Just look,” she often sighed, “look what I’ve managed to make of this house.”
Our bedroom, Judith’s and mine, was a vision of contorted femininity. For us she favoured shirred taffeta or dotted swiss, pale chintz or nylon net. I remember one summer morning, perspiration streaming down her face, dark circles staining the arms of her housedress as she knelt on the floor of our stifling bedroom off the kitchen, her lips grim with zeal and full of pins, attaching an intricately ruffled skirt to our dressing table. Once, for wall hangings, she framed squares of black velvet to which she appliquéd (the discovery of applique opened a whole new chapter in her life) stylized ballet figures. A McCall’s pattern, twenty-five cents plus postage. She made us a bedroom lamp from an old, pink perfume bottle from Woolworth’s and covered the shade with white tulle; this was one of her least successful ideas, for the tulle began to smoke one evening while Judith was studying, and our father had to carry it outside to the backyard and spray it with the garden hose. Our mother watched its destruction with a minimum of sorrow, for any sign of wear or tear or obsolescence immediately opened a hole in the house which her furious energies conspired to fill.
Our father: what did he think of it all? He was so silent and laconic a man, so shy, so nervously inarticulate that it was impossible to tell, but he seemed to sense that the compulsive forces of her personality were cosmic manifestations which must not be interfered with; to stop her was to invite danger or disaster. All I can remember is his occasional resigned sigh: “You know your mother and her house,” as once again we were plunged into chaos.
While she was working on a room she was in a state of violent unrest, plagued by insomnia and shocking fits of indigestion. She planned her rooms as carefully as any set designer, bringing into life whole new environments. Finally, as the metamorphosis was nearing completion, she would become almost electrically excited, impatiently dabbing on the last bit of paint, taking the last stitch, and, with breath suspended, unveiling her creation.
Later she would suffer agonies of doubt. Was it in good taste or was there something maybe just a little bit tacky or gawdy about it? That pink vase, was it a little too much accent? Too bright? Too garish a shade? Maybe if she spray-painted it dusty rose, yes. Yes.
No one except a few out-of-town relatives and the occasional neighbour ever witnessed her decorating marvels although she always talked of having something, a tea perhaps—the exact type of entertainment was never decided upon—when she got the whole house organized. Organized! And the telephone on the gilded gossip bench seldom rang; she never used it herself except to phone our father at the screw company to ask him to bring home another half quart of enamel for the kitchen cupboards or to tell him she had a headache from the varnish fumes and could he come straight home after work and get
Taste. Taste was what the neighbours didn’t have. Taste and imagination. All they ever did, she scoffed, was open the Eaton’s catalogue and order rooms full of mail-order furniture. And if they were short of cash they put up with faded curtains when all they had to do was buy a packet of dye from the chain store. (She herself frequently went on the rampage with dying. Perhaps my great insecurity springs from nothing more serious than the fear that my pink cotton scatter rug might be snatched from me at any minute to reappear later in vivid, startling, foreign purple.) The neighbours didn’t know what taste meant, she said, or were too lazy to make any improvements. All they needed was to get busy and roll up their shirt sleeves. “Just look,” she often sighed, “look what I’ve managed to make of this house.”
Our bedroom, Judith’s and mine, was a vision of contorted femininity. For us she favoured shirred taffeta or dotted swiss, pale chintz or nylon net. I remember one summer morning, perspiration streaming down her face, dark circles staining the arms of her housedress as she knelt on the floor of our stifling bedroom off the kitchen, her lips grim with zeal and full of pins, attaching an intricately ruffled skirt to our dressing table. Once, for wall hangings, she framed squares of black velvet to which she appliquéd (the discovery of applique opened a whole new chapter in her life) stylized ballet figures. A McCall’s pattern, twenty-five cents plus postage. She made us a bedroom lamp from an old, pink perfume bottle from Woolworth’s and covered the shade with white tulle; this was one of her least successful ideas, for the tulle began to smoke one evening while Judith was studying, and our father had to carry it outside to the backyard and spray it with the garden hose. Our mother watched its destruction with a minimum of sorrow, for any sign of wear or tear or obsolescence immediately opened a hole in the house which her furious energies conspired to fill.
Our father: what did he think of it all? He was so silent and laconic a man, so shy, so nervously inarticulate that it was impossible to tell, but he seemed to sense that the compulsive forces of her personality were cosmic manifestations which must not be interfered with; to stop her was to invite danger or disaster. All I can remember is his occasional resigned sigh: “You know your mother and her house,” as once again we were plunged into chaos.
While she was working on a room she was in a state of violent unrest, plagued by insomnia and shocking fits of indigestion. She planned her rooms as carefully as any set designer, bringing into life whole new environments. Finally, as the metamorphosis was nearing completion, she would become almost electrically excited, impatiently dabbing on the last bit of paint, taking the last stitch, and, with breath suspended, unveiling her creation.
Later she would suffer agonies of doubt. Was it in good taste or was there something maybe just a little bit tacky or gawdy about it? That pink vase, was it a little too much accent? Too bright? Too garish a shade? Maybe if she spray-painted it dusty rose, yes. Yes.
No one except a few out-of-town relatives and the occasional neighbour ever witnessed her decorating marvels although she always talked of having something, a tea perhaps—the exact type of entertainment was never decided upon—when she got the whole house organized. Organized! And the telephone on the gilded gossip bench seldom rang; she never used it herself except to phone our father at the screw company to ask him to bring home another half quart of enamel for the kitchen cupboards or to tell him she had a headache from the varnish fumes and could he come straight home after work and get
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