'70                                         

Spring Sale

Herb was always handy with tools — well, most of the time, unless his thumbs got in the way. This Saturday he finally wrapped up the job of painting their bedroom after incessant prodding from his wife, Sadie, who had selected the paint at Sears two years ago, hoping he would get around to covering up the discoloration loitering for thirty years. Sadie had painted the room then─ still a youngster of thirty-six. To Herb painting was for women and faggots. A man was designed to do something more utilitarian with his hands than to waste their strength on meeting the cosmetic needs of women. Their bedroom served them well regardless of the original cream color now sick yellow with puffs here and there of nicotine mist and sharply outlined variations from changing family pictures on the wall and furniture locations over the years. Sadie, however, reminded him that the bedroom had been freshly painted when they moved in forty years ago and was apparently conducive to a more vital life, since they had conceived five children within six years. "Though I surely don't long for anymore children and certainly don't wish to carry on like honeymooners in bed, it would be pleasing to gaze up at soft pastels before drifting off to sleep."

Anyway, he dumped all the rollers, brushes and cans and roller pans in the garbage can out back, muttering good riddance to them. He strolled through his yard and checked the ravages of winter. He raked up some twigs and acorn shells that the squirrels left behind. "Why can't those little buggers shell them in their nests?" he grated to himself. "If those bushy-tail rats shake the bunches off my grape trellis again this year, I'm putting poison around."

For thirty-five years, he had been threatening to do that, but Sadie would never allow him "to offend God's creatures"─but more importantly, she observed, it was too dangerous with the children, and divers dogs they had had over the years.

When he had reminded her that there was no dog anymore since the kids had grown up and married off, she countered, "Well, we have to think of the grandchildren now and their dogs." Then she added peevishly, "of course, we never see the children anymore." Herb always shook his head over this comment she habitually made─especially one day last August when she reflected this sentiment, and he had not yet recuperated from having the kids over for a barbecue on the Fourth; the twenty-two grandchildren had run him ragged to the point that during the summer he hoped that the Labor Day sales come-ons would be so outrageously and attractively misrepresented that the whole crazy brood would spend their day shopping and stay away—they didn't.

He decided it was still too chilly to be doing outdoor work so he headed for the basement and gathered up his plumbing tools to undo his son-law's botched hook-up in his absence last fall when he was hospitalized for gall- bladder surgery. Sadie had talked her unskillful son-in-law into installing an old faucet that her husband had lying around the garage with the rest of his forty year accumulation of hardware and lumber from the endless projects he saddled himself with after every annual IRS refund check. The first thing Herb did when released from the hospital was to check his son-law's work. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Sadie, why did you ask him to this? It leaks more than the other one. Not only that he's got the cold water on the left! Damn teachers what the hell do they know about plumbing—or anything for that matter!"

After bending over the kitchen sink for forty-five minutes installing new washers and then turning the valves under the sink back on, he was satisfied that the washers worked perfectly—except for a drip now and then. He said—-he thought to his wife—who earlier had been at the kitchen table browsing through a Sears sales catalogue, "There, Sadie, good as new." He turned around and she was no longer there. He walked through the house and found her in the bedroom. She had been shampooing the blue carpet to remove the pink paint stains and was now busy scraping the globs off the windows. She was pleased that the faucet no longer leaked, but added, "I almost burnt my lips last week drawing a glass of water—can't you do something about switching the cold water where it belongs? The grandchildren could scald themselves. They're all coming over next week for Easter dinner, you know."

"Don't our kids ever spend a holiday in their own homes?—at least you'd think they'd go to the in-laws once in a while; it's always us!" He went back into the kitchen and squeezed himself under the cabinet. Forgetting to turn the valves back off, he applied torque to a compression nut, instead of turning to the left. His powerful hands and arms cracked the slip washer and it started raining down on him. Frustrated and swearing at his daughter for marrying a teacher, he tried tightening it more and he cracked the nut as well. He turned off the valves and stuck his head out of the cabinet looking disgusted just as Sadie returned to resume her thrill-reading of the spring sales. "Well, he said, "I guess it's time to buy one of those new fangled single-lever faucets you've been pestering me about. Is there one on sale in the catalogue?"

Noise and confusion thundered from the back door and his middle daughter's brood jumped the steps into the kitchen, the mother following. "Oh, what a pleasant surprise!" Sadie rhapsodized as she bounced about the kitchen hugging all five of her daughter's energized children before accepting a kiss from her daughter, Jean. Being the "middle child" Jean always had to make the overture in kissing her mother, who, on the other hand, always gestured melodramatically in greeting her other children—especially the boys. "So what brings you here today?"

Jean said, "Oh, the usual; I've come for the discount card...have a lot of Easter shopping to do." Sadie, a retired Sears employee, had a lifetime 10% discount card and whenever her children shopped they took advantage of it— charging their purchases in her name and then when the statement came in they would settle up. Sadie was a whiz at keeping records and whenever there was a question like—"Gee, Mom, are you sure that was my purchase and not John's wife?"—they would always yield to her wisdom.

   "Ah, yes, never pay full price! As long as the ticker holds up, eh?" She had said that a thousand times to her children the thousand times they came to use the card. Though utterly delighted that they used the card freely, she would always remind them of her heart condition and that someday the card, if not her, would be missed. "Well, since your father needs a new faucet I think I'll go to Sears with you."

Jean seemed disappointed. "Well, I hadn't planned on taking the children. I thought I could leave them here with you; it's so much easier...so much more can get done that way."

"Fine, leave them here. You're father can't do anything until the faucet is here anyway, right Herb?"

Herb looked up with ambivalence as he was greeting his grandchildren who were busily tugging on his work pants and belt or jostling with him. Herb was always elated to see his grandchildren as long as he was not stuck with them and could head for the cellar or garage on the pretense of a "project". He masked his scowl with a nod and a vacant smile. "But don't take forever—I know how you two get lost in the store."

He headed for the TV in the living room to turn on pro-bowling. The kids followed him in after they raided the cookie boxes and the grandmother broke out the soda cans before she and her daughter left for the store. The kids were fascinated with bowling for about two minutes; then each took turns getting up from the floor to change the channel whenever a commercial came on. Each time the grandfather bellowed that they change it back, but after some twenty minutes he yielded, dividing his time watching an old movie with them and staring at the digital clock that incongruously stood along side a thick 78rpm album on a long forgotten console phonograph.

After another hour elapsed the movie ended to his relief—and much to the relief of the middle child who had been pouting through-out because the others would not let her watch old re-runs.

Restless, he ordered them to put their coats on and he paraded them out to the garage, handing a man-size lawn rake to the next eldest and two toy rakes to the tiny tots. He rolled out the light garden cart for his favorite, the middle child. Her broad smile overrode her perennial pout. Pruning shears went to the oldest boy. Not much got done; but at least plenty of play-time and energy were expended outside the house—tossing weathered acorns at each other as they rolled and wrestled on the lawn. Their coats were littered with dry, mulched leaves. After a half hour the kids one by one started disappearing into the house under the pretense of having to go to the bathroom. Of course, Herb knew they were raiding the cookies again and watching TV. Left alone, he put the things away, fiddled with some junk then went back inside. He looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall and moaned. He chanced dismantling the old faucet, hoping they would be home soon. The faucet was so corroded that he stripped the threads on the fitting under the sink where the supply tube connected, but he managed to remove the faucet without chipping the porcelain sink too badly. He was certain the new faucet would cover most of the chipping. Looking up at the clock again and shaking his head and mumbling profanities, he sat down at the table and rustled through the catalogue. He was delighted to see that the ball-action faucet was indeed on sale. After a while and growing impatient, he went into see what the children were doing. In spite of the cookie crumbs, leaves and acorn shells littering the floor, and soda cans making rings on the tables and on top of the TV, he was content—at least they were quiet.

The little ones jumped up when they heard their mother pull into the driveway and ran to the kitchen door. Sadie and Jean returned with half the inventory from Sears. {It is miraculous what a 10% incentive, together with a sale, can do for the shopping spirit of women.} Mountains of bags and boxes were deposited on the dining room table as Jean opened each before her children to check her expertise in estimating sizes. Of course, each pair of shoes, each dress, sweater and jacket jelled with the intuitive, measuring eye of motherhood. Sadie, too had to break open the bags to show her husband the wonderful bargains she had gotten for all their grandchildren.

With each bag he expected a box to emerge so he could get right to work installing the shiny new and modern faucet. His patience at an end he demanded to see his faucet.

"Oh, that...," she said as though the farthest thing from her mind, "they can't deliver till Monday."

"Deliver?...What the devil are you talking about?...a little faucet you couldn't carry after carting all this home?" he queried in a distressed tone, gesturing to the mountains of sales items on the dining table.

"Oh, yes, that's right the faucet!...Well, they didn't have it in stock. Besides, I couldn't resist the offer—what with the fabulous sale and the 10%, I saved all of thirty dollars!"

"Are you telling me we have to go the weekend without water in the kitchen— why didn't you just forget the sale item and buy whatever they had?"

"Oh I wouldn't pay list price!"

"Sadie, for God's sake, this is an emergency and you still get your 10% off! And how could you save thirty dollars on a fifty-nine dollar item? Furthermore, what's the difference?—just what you bought for the grandchildren could have paid for a crate of faucets!"

"I'll have you know everyone of these was on sale—and I still got my discount," she said as she held up to her breast a toddler's sweater.

He shook his head in disgust and reached out his hand. "Give me the card, I'll go get it myself."

"Oh, no, you can't now! Everything's signed for. I 'm not passing up a thirty dollar saving because you can't wait a few days. Why, do you realize the deal? Heavens, along with the single-lever faucet and a beautiful walnut-stained cabinet with a Formica top, they're throwing in a new kitchen sink!"