Show Me the Pillows

The burdens of a bourgeois affectation

Weekend house guests were due soon, so this meant cleaning down to the subatomic level.  Dusted every surface, and if you’re thinking “tables and windowsills” I mean “the top of the soup cans on the highest shelf in the pantry.” Cleaned the windows, including dog spittle in the sunporch - the mailman’s daily visit brings out the Cujo in Birch. Tweezered the small stones out of the tire treads of the car, in case the guests go into the garage and get on their hands and knees and examine the undercarriage.

It’s an odd set of assumptions. If you saw a bit of dust at a friend’s house, you might think “they’re busy, or missed a spot.” But we think the guests at our house will conclude “their lives are in dissolute ruin. I should check the trash for empty vodka bottles.”

Last stop: I made up the guest room, and thought: perfect! Looks nice.

But I was so very, very wrong. At the end of the night my sister-in-law came out holding a pillow, and asked . . . is this right? My wife was present, and from her expression I gathered I had committed a social blunder on par with giving the Queen a brisk Dutch Rub. What? What had I done?

I’ll tell you what I did. I had given them the Show Pillows. TO SLEEP ON.

The female need to pile a bed with useless pillows is an old and not particularly novel observation. It mystifies men.  It’s like serving a meal where the plate is loaded with Show Potatoes, and you have to remove ten tubers before you can start. It’s like having a workbench in the garage with Show Hammers. Don’t pound with that! That’s the nice hammer we want company to see! It’ll get nicked and dinged.  Or like going to someone’s house and finding out they have a Show Dog. No, no, don’t pat him on the head. Here, use this dog. And there’s some panting happy mutt they pull out of a closet. This is the company dog.

It reminds me of the bathrooms of my childhood, which were stocked with forbidden things: decorative soap in a nice dish engraved with intricate patterns that evaporated on contact with water, and decorative towels. You ended up drying your hands on the curtains, or patting them dry on the inevitable polyester shag toilet-seat cover.

Anyway. You’re wondering how I recovered from this grotesque embarrassment. I fetched two pillows from Daughter’s unoccupied room, apologized on behalf of the male side of the species, and figured the matter was closed. Oh no. Ohhhh, no. The next morning my wife made up the guest room, and emerged with an expression of despair.

The pillowcases did not match.

One was white. The other - and I tremble with shame to write these words - was ivory.

Well, an apology was in order. But how? Maybe bring it up in a roundabout way at breakfast.

“So . . . how’d you sleep?”

“Oh . . . okay, I guess. Weird dreams. I was in a paint store, looking at those strips with the different hues, and two of the shades of white looked different but I couldn’t really tell if they were and then I started crying tears in two different shades of white and when the tears hit the floor they burned like acid,  and then horrible off-white slugs oozed out of the hole and started singing ABBA songs in two different keys.”

“Huh. And you?”

“I had weird dreams too. There were two philosophers who agreed on everything except for one minor, obscure point, but instead of focusing on their agreement they argued about the small difference until they decided to have a duel, but the guns didn’t fire.”

“Ah, those would be the Show Pistols. Freud had something to say about those. Well, that’s on me. The pillowcase hues were not in sync. I hope we can get past this and enjoy the day.”

By the way, the repurposed pillows from Daughter’s room had once been Show Pillows, but had been demoted when my wife got new ones. It was probably the first time they’d ever known the weight of a human head. Ah, the indignity, like a member of nobility forced to toil in the fields after the revolution. At least we got some use out of them. In any case, all was well the next night. The room was made up properly. Not by me; couldn’t be trusted. My wife said she did it, but I can’t shake the feeling there’s a Show Husband in one of the spare rooms’s closets.