That's why, also, when Grandma comes to visit us every other week, we
don't give her one of the cabins. She can sleep in our cabin, even if
it is a little crowded; but, obviously, the customers can't. She sleeps
on David's bed, and David sleeps on the floor, using Donna's playpen
pad for a mattress; and everyone is happy--except, possibly, David.
Grandma suffers from customerphobia far more acutely than I ever did.
The trembling and quivering I suffered were mild compared to the
tremors, amounting practically to convulsions, she goes through at even
the mere thought of waiting on a customer. I know better now than to
attempt to break her in to the gentle art of renting cabins, but there
was a time when I was not so wise. That was on one of her first visits,
when I thought I'd teach her to be a substitute motel manager, in much
the same manner of the man who teaches his little boy to swim by
throwing him shrieking into six feet of cold water.
Grant had tossed David and Donna into the back seat of the car and
taken them along for the ride on a trip to the drug store. They were
going to buy a jar of salve for David's nose, which sunburns, peels,
and sunburns all over again, with painful persistence. Grandma and I
were alone. I hoped that a customer would come during the brief time
that Grant would be gone, for I had mapped out a campaign for ridding
Grandma of her fear of customers for once and for all.
I was sitting in the kitchen reading, wearing a dress that had a zipper
all the way down the front. Grandma, unsuspecting and happy, was
bustling about the living room with a dustdoth, searching for dust.
It wasn't long before I heard the sound I had been hoping for--the
scrunch of tires on the gravel, and a squeak of brakes. Faster than I
had ever done it before, I stood up, zipped down my dress, took it off
and tossed it under the table.
About that time Grandma noticed that there was a car outside, and that
a fat, middle-aged couple were getting out of it. She came rushing into
the kitchen with that near panic that always overcomes her when
customers approach, even when she knows perfectly well she won't have
to talk to them.
"My land, here's a customer! Come on, come on!" She hurried into the
kitchen, her black eyes sparkling with excitement in her unwrinkled
face.
I gasped with what I hoped sounded like dismay. "A customer? Oh, dear,
and I was just getting ready to take a shower! See, I'm in my slip. I
can't possibly wait on them like this. You'll have to do it, I'm
afraid."
"Good Godfrey Mighty," Grandma breathed. "I can't--"
The doorbell pealed a strident summons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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