cap–like thing with a gel pack—you could put it in the freezer then snap it onto an electric fan and voilà — personal air-conditioning. A long catch-and-release Bug Buster Wand. The Blanket Support was a jinky under-the-covers rig that kept the feet of restless sleepers from touching the bedding. Even weirder was the personal between-the-sheets Bedfan that for only $79.95 “creates a cool personal microclimate between your bed’s sheets.” What was that really about—bed farts? Some products bordered on snake oil, like the Episal Overnight Drawing Salve which purported to “draw out foreign substances from beneath the skin” while you slept, so that in the morning acne and ingrown hairs would be gone.
As if American products weren’t overpackaged anyway, there were plastic containers for plastic containers. A pancake dispenser for “accurate” pancakes. A brush with more than a thousand bristles for removing corn silks. Forks with serrations on the inside edges of the tines to “stop slippery noodles from falling onto the table or your lap.” Maybe this stuff was for the handicapped and she should feel bad for ridiculing it. Maybe one day she would actually need the Acid Reflux Pillow (on sale for only $59.99). Possibly the purpose of the catalog was to give meaning and purpose to life in geezerland. She imagined the process: waiting for the catalog, perusing new products, deciding that there were pressing needs and good bargains, ordering over the phone, taking time to ask a lot of questions and meticulously describing problems. Waiting for the order and the excitement over its arrival, trying to open boxes with arthritic hands (where is that special Big Grip Box Cutter ordered last month?), phoning friends to describe a product’s success or failure, maybe going to the P.O. to return an item with a long, dissatisfied note. Days could be filled. Why didn’t they think of the things she needed: an engraving tool for putting ineradicable IDs on eyeglasses or bicycles, or contact paper art, maps, or TV screens for the ceilings of gynecologists’ offices, or lady-size Bobcats for big garden jobs. Ha. For burying nosy reporters.
She appreciated the fact that Home Trends didn’t carry things like that horrible torture tape for mice, whose tiny feet stuck to it making them struggle to death for days. She wouldn’t even wish that on moles. Or voles. She thought about her mother’s zealous hatred of squirrels. Her mom bragged about trapping them in her Havahart trap and then popping them with her BB gun as they quivered there. Mary Byrd had asked her to please not do it around William and Eliza, who loved Beatrix Potter when they were little—and besides, she had said to her mother, did she want them to think Nana was crazy? Her mom did scare her sometimes. What was the difference between chipmunks and mice, squirrels and rabbits, deer and horses? What was a squirrel but a bunny in Spandex, with short ears? They were all just trying to make it, right?
The car behind her honked, jolting Mary Byrd out of her Home Trends musings, and she rolled the car forward to first in line. The school doors disgorged William, entangled with his guys, and then the girls. Mary Byrd focused on William—eight years old, she thought, nine next October. Stevie had been only nine, and was still only nine. Precious in a 1950s way, Stevie, so pink and golden, easily sunburned, had looked nothing like William, whose eyes and hair were deep brown and whose skinny body turned so dark in the summer that they called him the Brown Skeleton. Her heart gave a big chug, and she couldn’t be sure if it was guilt, anxiety, or love, or for which boy she felt it. Both.
The boys body-slammed the car, pretending she’d hit them, and William clambered in. The usual carpool boys, Other William and Justin, peeled off to catch a ride to their Boy Scout meeting. She’d had misgivings about Boy Scouts, and William hadn’t seemed to care about
As if American products weren’t overpackaged anyway, there were plastic containers for plastic containers. A pancake dispenser for “accurate” pancakes. A brush with more than a thousand bristles for removing corn silks. Forks with serrations on the inside edges of the tines to “stop slippery noodles from falling onto the table or your lap.” Maybe this stuff was for the handicapped and she should feel bad for ridiculing it. Maybe one day she would actually need the Acid Reflux Pillow (on sale for only $59.99). Possibly the purpose of the catalog was to give meaning and purpose to life in geezerland. She imagined the process: waiting for the catalog, perusing new products, deciding that there were pressing needs and good bargains, ordering over the phone, taking time to ask a lot of questions and meticulously describing problems. Waiting for the order and the excitement over its arrival, trying to open boxes with arthritic hands (where is that special Big Grip Box Cutter ordered last month?), phoning friends to describe a product’s success or failure, maybe going to the P.O. to return an item with a long, dissatisfied note. Days could be filled. Why didn’t they think of the things she needed: an engraving tool for putting ineradicable IDs on eyeglasses or bicycles, or contact paper art, maps, or TV screens for the ceilings of gynecologists’ offices, or lady-size Bobcats for big garden jobs. Ha. For burying nosy reporters.
She appreciated the fact that Home Trends didn’t carry things like that horrible torture tape for mice, whose tiny feet stuck to it making them struggle to death for days. She wouldn’t even wish that on moles. Or voles. She thought about her mother’s zealous hatred of squirrels. Her mom bragged about trapping them in her Havahart trap and then popping them with her BB gun as they quivered there. Mary Byrd had asked her to please not do it around William and Eliza, who loved Beatrix Potter when they were little—and besides, she had said to her mother, did she want them to think Nana was crazy? Her mom did scare her sometimes. What was the difference between chipmunks and mice, squirrels and rabbits, deer and horses? What was a squirrel but a bunny in Spandex, with short ears? They were all just trying to make it, right?
The car behind her honked, jolting Mary Byrd out of her Home Trends musings, and she rolled the car forward to first in line. The school doors disgorged William, entangled with his guys, and then the girls. Mary Byrd focused on William—eight years old, she thought, nine next October. Stevie had been only nine, and was still only nine. Precious in a 1950s way, Stevie, so pink and golden, easily sunburned, had looked nothing like William, whose eyes and hair were deep brown and whose skinny body turned so dark in the summer that they called him the Brown Skeleton. Her heart gave a big chug, and she couldn’t be sure if it was guilt, anxiety, or love, or for which boy she felt it. Both.
The boys body-slammed the car, pretending she’d hit them, and William clambered in. The usual carpool boys, Other William and Justin, peeled off to catch a ride to their Boy Scout meeting. She’d had misgivings about Boy Scouts, and William hadn’t seemed to care about
Similar Books
