get me hot water NOW

Oh, it’s ON! I can take a show­er for the first time since Mon­day!! Cold soapy wash­cloths have not been very sat­is­fy­ing I must say, or is
that TMI? Would you believe that we suf­fer all week, then John walks in the door from New York and three hours lat­er every­thing is fixed? I seem to remem­ber he was away the last time the boil­er went? And the cook­top? Grrr. But how won­der­ful to take a show­er this evening!

Yes­ter­day was entire­ly giv­en over to the hang­ing of art. I had com­plete­ly for­got­ten what we brought with us, and had kind of got used to liv­ing with blank, imper­son­al walls. Even when I went around to the stacks of framed things piled against the liv­ing room walls and placed them where they should go, I did not get the lit­tle fris­son of “ah, I remem­ber you” that I got once every­thing was hung. The art installer was one Mark Williams, a con­cep­tu­al post-Pop artist (his words, not mine!) who is a friend of our would-be/will-be shelf elf, Tes­sa. Tes­sa, after fits of bill infla­tion and lost email replies, has come through, we think, and the shelv­ing for the liv­ing room Wall of Books is due to be installed on Thurs­day next. I am very, very excit­ed for that, hav­ing com­plete­ly exhaust­ed my capac­i­ty to reread even Mary Wes­ley’s deli­cious “Not That Sort of Girl” one more time.

Some­thing art­sy about Tes­sa sug­gest­ed to me that she might know an installer, and sure enough, Mark, whose kind of piti­ful but sweet invoice was head­ed “Dec­o­rat­ing Con­cepts,” arrived ear­ly this week to take stock of what he need­ed in the way of mate­ri­als, and then came
yes­ter­day and spent the entire day, 10–8, hang­ing art. I ran around after him hold­ing up the end of the mea­sur­ing tape, mak­ing lit­tle pen­cil marks at the tops of things, and stand­ing around a lot look­ing quizzi­cal and mak­ing judg­ments about the height of some­thing, “sight lines” as we used to say in the gallery busi­ness, and argu­ing with Mark about fem­i­nis­min the art world. Mean­while, a grand suc­ces­sion of lame elec­tri­cians, plumbers, porters and what­ev­er else parad­ed up and down the steps to the boil­er room, scar­ing Keechie to death, track­ing in mud since of course it was p***ing rain all day on top of every­thing else. Every­thing else being my FACE which mys­te­ri­ous­ly turned bright red and incred­i­bly itchy overnight! I can­not fath­om what I’ve done to it, and I can’t say it’s bet­ter or worse today, but real­ly odd. I think it’s fate get­ting back at me for pre­tend­ing that John’s face cream was mine so as to get the pre­scrip­tion renewed. I was trip­ping all over myself lying to the doc­tor when I called her to find out what she thought was wrong with me, had to call John in New York to find out what symp­toms “I” had that made “my” med­i­cine nec­es­sary. Real­ly, it was one of those days.

By five o’clock when the last plumber announced that he could do no more for the patient and it would prob­a­bly be the mid­dle of next week when the water came back on, I was about ready to spit. In the mid­dle of all this I went to school pick­up and fetched Avery and her new friend Sophia, tak­ing time to chat with Ava’s moth­er Jill about Avery’s horse­back rid­ing, since Jill wants to get her daugh­ter back in the sad­dle. After a few com­ments from me about Trent Park, Jill laughed and said, “I have to tell you you’re not sell­ing me on this con­cept.” I have got to get a bet­ter atti­tude about the whole endeav­or, clear­ly. Sal­ly and I chat­ted about our trav­el­ing hus­bands, and Amy com­mis­er­at­ed over my boil­er, and I real­ized HEY! I have friends!
Pick­up is, while not the social whirl­wind that PS 234 was, get­ting to be friend­ly and chat­ty. A big improve­ment, although it would be John’s worst night­mare. He always claims to be so shy and retir­ing, but no one real­ly believes him.

I took the kids to Vil­landry, and sat with them lis­ten­ing to their inane con­ver­sa­tion, half in Eng­lish accents and half not. They had enor­mous help­ings of ice cream, served in big flut­ed crispy cook­ie bowls with a lus­cious-look­ing rasp­ber­ry coulis driz­zled about, and topped with a spun-sug­ar sort of but­ter­fly wing, which of course they each had to drape over their shoul­ders, putting paid to their already-skanky Thurs­day uni­form cardi­gans. I con­fid­ed in them about my face, and they each solemn­ly felt my cheeks and agreed that I was quite hot, but insist­ed that a very, very pink face was quite fashionable.

The sky, which had light­ened up for me to walk to school, sim­ply let loose dur­ing the cru­cial five min­utes when we wait­ed for a cab to roll by, so we were com­plete­ly soaked by the time we got home. Mark was in full form, with lots to say about Janis Joplin, was she a genius for writ­ing that one great song or a los­er for writ­ing 100 more songs that sound­ed just like it, and did I have Neil Dia­mond’s Great­est Hits CD, and he was going out for a fag and would come straight­away back. The boy rolls his own cig­a­rettes, yum.

Once at home Avery and Sophia ate their weight in pop­corn and at least four apples and then repaired to the low­er lev­el where I did not, unfor­tu­nate­ly, fol­low them, until it was too late and the whole enor­mous box of dres­sup shoes and clothes that I hoped Avery would for­get about if I hid it under the guest bed, had emerged in all its glo­ry. They did look real­ly fun­ny draped in scarves and Vic­to­ri­an hats, trip­ping along in lit­tle plas­tic stilet­to heels. Susan came for Sophia at 6 and was pressed into ser­vice to judge the height of the
last instal­la­tion, the huge red Kate Teale. She also came up with the name and address of a framer, for the big Dus­ton Spear whose plexi split in ship­ping. Mark had, incred­i­bly, been able to repair the two
Aman­da Guests that came loose from the threads they hung from. The lit­tle blue Mako­to Fujimu­ra, his love­ly gift to me after his last show, hangs in the foy­er, and the Michael Myers pho­togravure of the
Wool­worth Build­ing is over the din­ing table. The pair of small Kath­leen Kuckas hang by the win­dow over­look­ing the gar­den, and lots of Avery pho­tographs down­stairs. She was very hap­py to get her Ulfert Wilke draw­ing back up over her bed. That cal­li­graph­ic draw­ing was a gift from her Iowa grand­par­ents just after she was born, since she would stop cry­ing every time she saw their piece by that artist! A mag­i­cal baby-calmer, it has hung over her bed in all four of her homes.

Susan dragged Sophia out the door, over her protests, “You’re not my mum­my, I want to live here,” only half in jest, and we arranged for Avery to go to them for Sun­day lunch. I can’t wait to see where they live, some gor­geous place in Kens­ing­ton, I think. When Sophia walked into our flat she looked around care­ful­ly and said, “You have a love­ly flat.” Can you imag­ine the com­po­sure? I hope Avery will remem­ber all her man­ners. Mark left, in a hail of post­cards invit­ing me to his
show, the mono­prints of brassieres dipped in ink (right up my street, as the Eng­lish would say). I’m just grate­ful he did­n’t ask me to review the show. Although that could still be com­ing. Avery and I went around the cor­ner for a piz­za and a sal­ad, and unfor­tu­nate­ly she brought along her lat­est obses­sion, lit­tle tiny flocked ani­mals called Syl­va­ni­ans. In Amer­i­ca I remem­ber they were called Cal­i­co Crit­ters, but no mat­ter, the nomen­cla­ture can­not mask the cloy­ing cute­ness of these lit­tle things, all dressed inex­plic­a­bly in aprons and over­alls. I heard in mind-numb­ing detail over din­ner that you can get fox­es, bad­gers, bun­nies, cats, and they come in twins or triplets, sit­ting or stand­ing, and some can even move their legs! Cal­gon take me away.

My reward at the end of the day was watch­ing the direc­tor’s com­men­tary (MY new obses­sion) of the BBC dra­ma “Per­fect Strangers,” which aired in Amer­i­ca as “Almost Strangers.” Great fun, and the direc­tor Stephen Poli­akoff, a tru­ly great dra­mat­ic tal­ent, made the obser­va­tion that the Eng­lish are divid­ed into two groups: those who try to hide every­thing, and those who try to seek out every­thing. An inter­est­ing possibility.

TGIF! A well hus­band returned from his trip, heat and hot water, a clean house since Dor­rie is just fin­ish­ing up, and a nice qui­et week­end planned! We’re giv­ing Trent Park Eques­tri­an Cen­tre anoth­er try on Saturday.