PEOPLE WHO MANAGE motels shouldn't throw stones, for they live in glass
houses just as surely as does any goldfish. In fact, a goldfish in a
bowl placed in the center of Grand Central Station would live a life of
privacy and seclusion, compared to the life of a motel owner.
I am so inured, by now, to the lack of privacy, that I can calmly
continue dusting furniture or changing Donna's clothes if a couple of
strange men barge into the living room, mistaking it for the office. I
am not in the least upset if, after I have gone to bed, someone rings
the bell and asks to use the telephone. Since the telephone is in our
living room, the person who makes the call cannot help seeing that I am
in bed. The fact usually proves more embarrassing to him than to me.
Repeated occurences have toughened me to the sight of a stranger
telephoning a few feet away from my bedside, and regarding me curiously
or nervously.
Having a normal amount of feminine vanity, I like to cream my face at
night, and do up stray wisps of hair in curlers and bobby pins, after
removing every trace of makeup. That same feminine vanity, though,
makes such a praiseworthy routine impractical. If people must see me
after I'm in bed, I like to look as attractive as possible. So, after
conscientiously removing all my makeup, I add a quick dab of lipstick.
I rub the face cream into my skin until it disappears. And if any stray
locks of hair need doing up, I fix them the following morning, when
they can be hidden under the confining bandana that Banning's whirling,
incessant wind makes a desirable accessory anyway.
Grant wants to get an extension cord for the telephone, so that when
customers want to use it it can be taken into the office. Whenever he
brings up the idea, though, I discourage it. I don't mind the intrusion
of strangers nearly as much as I would mind missing the chance to
overhear their conversations! When people make calls in the daytime, I
yield to the dictates of etiquette, and ostentatiously absent myself.
(Sometimes I go only as far as the next room, however, where, if I try
hard enough, I can usually hear most of what is being said.)
At night, though, when I am in bed, of course there is no question of
my leaving politely so that the person who is telephoning can talk
without being overheard. However private the nature of the
conversation--and there have been some ear-sizzlers!--Emily Post
herself could find no fault with my remaining to listen.
Continual interruption has become as ordinary, and usual, as the sight
of strangers in our living room. The doorbell and the telephone ring
intermittently all day long. Customers who are staying over want ice
cubes, information, or an audience for the recital of their grievances,
successes, or favorite jokes. Prospective customers want to know if we
have kitchens, and if not, whether we'll show them a cabin anyway, so
that in case they come out this way again in a year or two, as they may
quite possibly do, they'll know exactly what they have reason to
expect. Salesmen try to sell us weatherstripping, paint, fire
extinguishers, rugs, lawn furniture, and DDT. Neighboring motel owners
drop in to discuss business. Bees in their hives have nothing on us.
Nothing reveals just how impossible it is to do one thing from start to
finish without interruption (unless it is a thing that takes only a
split second to do) more accurately than a letter I wrote to Miss
Nestleburt a few weeks after she had left. (I knew their honeymoon must
be over, and so I sent the letter to their Burbank home, the address of
which she had given me before she was married, before she had ever seen
the place.) Rereading it, when at last I had signed my name to it, I
felt that it was a masterpiece of revelation of our kind of life.
"Dear Miss Nestleburt--or, rather, Mrs. Hawkins," I had written. "It's
ten o'clock, a beautiful morning, and I hope that