The Woman Who Is Always Tan and Has a Flat Stomach Read online

  10

  The Mom Who Corrects the Grammar of the Policeman Who Pulled Her Over for Speeding

  In front of the school one morning, I ran into the Grammar Mom. My daughter was to be visiting her daughter that afternoon.

  “What time shall I pick up Caroline?” I inquired.

  “Oh, around five o’clock,” she replied. “At seven I’m giving a two-hour speech at the Grammarians of Denver meeting.”

  I had heard rumors of the Grammar Mom, but I had never realized the extent of her commitment to grammar.

  She went on, “I’ll be discussing the improper use of the word ‘like’ instead of ‘as.’ Mixing metaphors and similes is outrageous.”

  “Yes,” I replied, “it’s just beyond belief,” even though I was uncertain as to what she had just said.

  “Well, really. What’s more important than one’s grammar?”

  My mind flashed on world peace, a reduction in global warming, and an end to hunger and disease.

  She ranted on. “Adjectives substituted for adverbs, subjective and objective pronouns mixed—it’s simply criminal.”

  Thanking God for the grammar feature on my computer, I went home.

  At five o’clock I drove over to pick up Caroline. As the Grammar Mom went to call the girls, I entered the living room. On the walls, I noticed some new-looking artwork in blueprint-blue with white lines. Très chic!

  “Are you having some blueprints done for a new addition or something?” I asked when she returned. “These look beautiful.”

  “Aren’t they wonderful!” she exclaimed. “Thank you for noticing them. We had an artist do color renderings of three of our favorite diagrammed sentences.”

  I began to stare intently at her.

  “See, it’s abstract,” she said, “but if you look closely, you can see where the subject and predicate split.” She stepped up next to me. I could feel her excitement level rising. “And over here you can see the prepositional clause moves off at this angle. I believe one’s artwork should reflect one’s loves and values, don’t you agree?”

  Verbally paralyzed by the fear of making a grammatical faux pas, I loudly blurted out, “Okay.”

  She smiled. “Diagramming sentences has always been a little hobby of mine. I feel the alphabet is similar to molecular biology: the very building blocks of our lives. It has to be the next great science.”

  I murmured, “It seems you’ve been devoted to grammar for a long time.”

  “Oh, heavens, yes! I’ve been ‘into’ grammar since I was quite young. And my sisters have always enjoyed it when I’ve corrected their grammar. Whenever they send me letters, I send them back with the grammar corrected in red ink. A few months ago, when we all got together, they fondly referred to me as the ‘Grammar Bitch.’ Isn’t that darling?”

  “Cute.” I tried to sound believable.

  “And when I met my husband, it was love at first sight,” the Grammar Mom continued. “He’s a well-known lexicographer.”

  I was clueless.

  “You know,” she prompted, “a person who compiles dictionaries.”

  I nodded, bleakly.

  Just then our daughters ran in.

  “Grammar’s really fun, Mom,” my daughter said. “You know how you taught me to respond with ‘This is she’ when someone asks for me on the phone? Well, you were actually right!”

  A verbal miracle, I thought.

  “Yes, I was impressed.” The Grammar Mom gave me a conspiratorial smile. I guess we “Grammar Bitches” have to stick together.

  “Wasn’t it Mrs. Whitehead, your teacher, who taught you that?” I asked my daughter.

  The Grammar Mom snorted. “Mrs. Whitehead wouldn’t know a dependent clause from a dangling participle. That’s why my daughter goes to Grammar Camp every summer. Perhaps Caroline would like to attend… also.” She had a certain way of pausing where a comma should be and it was driving me crazy.

  Her daughter exclaimed, “Oh, please, could she? Last year we had a contest to see who could list the most superlative adverbs, and I won, and we slept in tents and this year I want to—”

  “Stephanie! You’re speaking a run-on sentence!” the Grammar Mom exclaimed.

  I thought back, remembering all the times I had used a run-on sentence that day.

  As we left, the Grammar Mom called down the walk, “Remember, a preposition is not a word to end a sentence with!”

  The three of them laughed. Apparently a little grammar humor. Caroline explained the joke to me on the way home.

  Within a mile of our house, a policeman pulled me over for speeding. I guess I’d been preoccupied thinking about the Grammar Mom. He took my license and registration and returned again in a few minutes.

  “I’ll just give you a warning, ma’am,” he said politely. “Please slow down, and drive safe.”

  My experience with the Grammar Mom had emboldened me. I said, “You mean, safely.”

  “My name isn’t Lee,” he said, perplexed.

  “No, I meant you should have said, ‘Drive safely.’ It’s very important to use correct grammar.” Converting him actually felt pretty good.

  He shook his head and wandered off.

  I looked at my watch. I’d still have time to get to that seven o’clock Grammarians of Denver meeting.

  11

  The Woman Who Decorates Her Yard for Columbus Day Using Replicas of the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María

  Little did I realize how substandard I was in the category of exterior holiday decoration until last year, when we moved to a new neighborhood and I encountered the Holiday Decorating Woman. Several days after moving in I was walking the dog when I came upon her house and yard.

  As I approached, I saw a wax statue of Martin Luther King, Jr., at a podium. Behind him was a mural of a crowd at the Reflecting Pool from the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

  A small sign read, PLEASE PRESS BUTTON, and I couldn’t resist.

  Suddenly, a loudspeaker began spewing excerpts from the “I Have A Dream” speech followed by the voice of Charlton Heston narrating highlights of Dr. King’s life.

  Stunned, I stumbled home to consult my next-door neighbor, Sue. She said, “Oh, that’s just Beverly. Today is Martin Luther King’s birthday. This town’s big on outdoor decorating. Beverly always wins the top prize. Sometimes she stays up all night putting up decorations.”

  “Is there a monetary prize for outdoor decorations?”

  “No, it’s pride of accomplishment,” Sue sniffed.

  “Oh, cool,” I said, backing away.

  During the second week in February, there was a wax figure of Lincoln giving his speech at Gettysburg. The side yard depicted Mary Todd Lincoln having a nervous breakdown back at the White House. I asked Sue if it was the display for Presidents’ Day.

  “Oh, I’m sure not,” she chuckled. “That’s just for Lincoln’s Birthday.”

  Sure enough, on February 22 the Holiday Decorating Woman had a model of Mount Vernon on the front lawn, including a live mule like the one Washington received from the King of Spain for his birthday. Unfortunately, the mule ate all the dogwoods she had flown in for the day.

  On March 30, there appeared a life-size statue of Secretary of State Seward shaking hands with the Czar of Russia for the anniversary of the United States’s purchase of Alaska. Upon closer inspection, though, I did think that the czar could have been a warmed-over Abe Lincoln.

  May 1 featured real actors depicting Flora, the Roman goddess of spring, and her entourage dancing around the maypole. I was hoping they’d expand the dancing into some exotic pagan rituals, but it never happened.

  On May 11, I was surprised to see a sign proclaiming, in both French and English, that it was Joan of Arc Day. The display could only be termed gruesome.

  “This is getting ridiculous,” I said to my husband one evening. “The whole town is totally engrossed in this. Yesterday, I couldn’t even get into our garage because it was so crowded at Beverly’s.”


  “You’re just jealous because you’ve never even hung a string of lights outdoors,” he replied. He had a point.

  I couldn’t take my daily walk on the Fourth of July because the exhaust from all the cars driving by made my dog cough too much.

  On Columbus Day, fog softly wafted around her yard. In the haze were eighteen-foot replicas of the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María, in a geographically correct position, sailing from Spain to the Bahamas. On the east side of the yard Spaniards waved good-bye and on the west side unsuspecting Native Americans ate the last peaceful ears of corn they would ever enjoy.

  Several holidays were culturally enriching, though. For example, neither my husband nor I knew that October 24 is United Nations Day. This featured about three hundred national flags, and a Henry Kissinger impersonator chatting amongst the neighbors and letting them kiss his ring.

  And then, sadly, one day, my lights flickered off and on followed by a booming sound outside. When I went out to check, I saw a cloud of smoke billowing up from the Holiday Decorating Woman’s backyard. The Quonset hut where all of her exterior illumination electrical lines came together had blown up. No one was hurt, thank goodness.

  Later that day Sue called and said it was all over. She said she had thought about taking up a collection for the $275,000 it would take to replace all the equipment. But then Sue reported that the Holiday Decorating Woman had decided to take a job consulting for Doris Kearns Goodwin on her first coffee table book: How to Make History Come Alive Through the Use of Exterior Decorations.

  It sounds kind of like a Doris-meets-Martha deal. We should have seen it coming.

  12

  The Wife Who Actually Knows How to Operate Her Victoria’s Secret Lingerie

  After purchasing a new little black dress for an upcoming party, I decided to splurge on something better than white cotton underwear. So I set out for a Victoria’s Secret store at my favorite mall. I had passed it many times, but could never picture myself in leopard print.

  Entering the store was like entering another world. Various shades of pink everywhere, including pink padded hangers. Large gold-framed mirrors hung in convenient spots. Classical music played softly. “I’ll bet Mozart had this kind of place in mind when he wrote his Concerto #20,” I reflected.

  A sleek Rachel Hunter–type salesclerk approached me. She had a measuring tape draped around her neck, which I hoped she didn’t feel the need to use on everyone.

  “May I help you find something special?” she inquired.

  “Well, yes. I was thinking about those black lace undies in your ad in this month’s Vogue.”

  “Undies?” She disdainfully pronounced the word as if it were an unfamiliar foreign verb.

  “Ah, yes, the black lace undies in the Vogue ad,” I explained.

  “Undies?” She stared at me, pretending not to comprehend.

  “Well, that’s what we used to call them back home,” I said. Didn’t she speak English? “It’s short for underwear,” I explained.

  “Sounds romantic,” she commented. “Here at Victoria’s Secret we don’t refer to it as underwear, we refer to it as lingerie.”

  And then, after sweepingly spreading out her arms to encompass the entire store, she exclaimed, “And it isn’t just lingerie, it’s a lifestyle.”

  As I walked into the dressing room to try on some twenty different bras, I quickly realized that I needed to be smarter than the lingerie to get into it. The front-hook bras were a special challenge. You had to put those on like you would a coat; after three tries, I still couldn’t do it. When I finally did manage to hook one of them, it must have been too tight because when I unhooked it, it propelled me backward into the pink wall.

  Finally, I decided on some of my new lifestyle and made my way to the counter. Another toothpick of a clerk intercepted me. “Do you need any stockings?” she said with a French accent.

  I said, “Where are you from?”

  “Tulsa,” she said, shrugging. “The stockings?”

  I thought back to the last pair my dog had chewed up. “Thank you, yes.”

  One type was particularly intriguing: long sheer stockings that had only wide black stretch lace bands at the top. I purchased them.

  I couldn’t wait to show them off to Michael. Of course, he was interested in them only from an engineering standpoint.

  Several weeks later, I donned the black-lace-banded stockings for an evening at a restaurant with friends. Things were fine during the evening as I sat there crossing and uncrossing my legs.

  As we all rose to leave, I felt the stockings loosen. As I crossed the room on Michael’s arm, I whispered, “Slow down! I think my stockings are falling down.”

  “What? Those engineering marvels with the lace tops?”

  “Yes!” I hissed, smiling for all I was worth.

  “Then shouldn’t we speed up?”

  “No! I have trapped the tops together with my upper thighs. All I have to do is make it out of here by walking with my knees plastered together.” Thank heavens I hadn’t lost any leg fat recently.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do stuff like this,” he said under his breath, smiling to the others.

  “Stuff like what?” I whispered loudly.

  He whispered back. “You are in over your head with all this sexy underwear. Last night you had the thin straps of that low-cut lace nightgown wrapped around your neck and I didn’t sleep all night because I was worried you were going to stop breathing.” He painted a bleak picture.

  “It isn’t underwear—it’s lingerie. And it isn’t just lingerie, it’s a lifestyle,” I shouted.

  All heads turned our way. We both smiled at everyone, and I continued to quickly shuffle inch by inch to the door.

  We got into the car and sped away. After about six blocks, Michael pulled over to the curb and I catapulted the stockings out of the window into a garbage can. You can only do so much.

  13

  The Husband Who Believes You Can’t Paint Over Wood

  A man can run several companies at once, travel all over the world on business, and remember dates and people with no problem. But when he walks in the door after work, scientific studies cited in the Journal of Brain Structure have shown that the male brain structure changes into the husband brain structure.

  This is how it works: studies have shown that putting a tight wedding band on a man’s ring finger cuts off blood to areas of his brain. However, the components of the husband brain structure only come out in the presence of his wife, and not in the presence of anyone else. In that respect, it is devious.

  One component of the husband brain structure is the inability to paint over wood. For example, my husband says to me: “You’re not going to paint that nightstand, are you?”

  Then I say, “Well, it looks terrible the way it is now.”

  He says, “But it’s wood. You don’t paint over wood.”

  “Well, what difference does that make?”

  And he says, “Well, you don’t paint over wood. It’s an unspoken agreement which has been passed down from generation to generation that you don’t paint over wood.”

  And I say, “I’ve never heard of that before in my life.”

  And he says, “Well, you don’t paint over wood.”

  There is no event in his family history that traumatized him, causing him to repeat the sentence “You don’t paint over wood.” Therefore, it is part of the husband brain structure.

  The theory stated in the Journal of Brain Structure is that during the twelveth through the fifteenth centuries (otherwise known as the Dark Ages, when painting over wood was frowned upon), the husband brain structure became firmly ensconced. Wives, however, have the kind of brain structure that has progressed to a level where we can now visualize how something would look painted virtually any color, including the bay leaf green that I have upstairs in the hall.

  But husbands have simply never developed this ability, and for hundreds of years now have instead rep
eatedly mumbled the statement “You don’t paint over wood.” When asked to explain, they will tell you they aren’t even sure what this means anymore.

  Another component of the husband brain structure is the tendency not to notice when the furniture you bought shortly after you were married seventeen years ago has started to look shabby.

  All you need to do to witness this behavior is to go to a furniture store. You can pick out a couple, any couple, and can hear the wife saying, “I think that hutch would look good in our dining room.”

  Her husband will reply, “I don’t know what’s wrong with the hutch we have now.”

  She will then reply, “The ‘hutch’ we have is a couple of crates with a board across it, and I’ve been waiting for the past fifteen years to buy a decent piece of furniture instead of that.”

  Then he replies, “Well, all of our beer mugs fit just fine on it and they’re easy to get to since I don’t have to open any doors.”

  The way she copes with this statement is to walk away from him and pretend she’s not really married, and eventually he wanders away to find a TV with a game on.

  This inability to notice what is tacky also includes not being able to recognize that what used to be shag carpeting throughout your entire house is now completely flat. He will, however, notice if your television/sound system/computer wasn’t manufactured within the last seventy-two hours.

  (Authors’ note: Many men believe that the wife brain structure also exists in the presence of husbands, but since we are the ones writing this book and we are women, we are under no obligation to explore this possibility any further. We will say that thus far, the Journal of Brain Structure offers no research to support the idea of a wife brain structure. We do admit, however, that this research has been conducted and paid for solely by women.)

  14

  The Woman Who Cleans Out Her Refrigerator Every Thursday Whether It Smells or Not