The Perkins lady/man!
Byrne, Katharine
WHO'S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR? THE PERKINS LADY/MAN! THE PERSUASIVENESS OF GUILT offering housewives something to buy, someone was at home to hear the doorbell. Willing to open the door; open as...
...A golden "P" on his lapel says that he's been doing this for fifty years...
...Miss Fleming, on our side of the street...
...And I found myself soon afterward in Commonweal 22 May 1992: 5 possession of a jar shaped like a teddy bear, filled with sugar and cinnamon, although the last child had grown up and moved away at least five years earlier...
...I was relieved when Miss Fleming turned in her heavy cardboard case and moved to Florida, but without pause in the service, the Perkins Man appeared...
...Can I deny this man a chair on which to set his sample case...
...Hardly had the moving van exited the alley than she was knocking at the front door...
...She's coming down the block," she announced...
...I'm on my way to the hospital...
...In our lives, first there was the Perkins Lady, who seemed to come with the house...
...Just enough to preserve a favorite sweater," he explained as he flipped through the colored pages of his catalogue...
...In her flowered hat and white gloves, you could have mistaken her for a Barbara Pym character on her way to a tea at the rector's garden...
...Cinnamon sticks, double-strength imitation vanilla, peppercorns, miraculous dusting compounds said to act with magnetic power on dog hairs...
...Just in time I was able to shout to an unwilling accomplice, "Tell her your mother's taking a nap...
...The frilly holders for miniature muffins I will never make...
...This innocent exchange sealed and defined our relationship...
...Thereafter I was unable to say "no" to her gloved hand on the brass knocker...
...One hot August day many years ago, I did refuse to see her, but not directly...
...As though I didn't already know: one of those purposeful women I envied but could not emulate, never snuck-up-on by somebody's birthday, always ready with appropriate gift, card, and ribbons...
...Inevitably I had to buy something...
...One of the children ran in from the hopscotch grid she and a friend were drawing in pink chalk in front of the house...
...My husband is very ill," I explained...
...I simply can't think about buying anything right now...
...The aromatic room-freshener--even though the local opinion has been voiced: "It smells worse than the left-over broccoli...
...Nor could I on this steamy day, already heavy with household disasters, face Miss Fleming's cheerful news of the world as she knew it: whose children in the next block had chicken pox or who had remodeled her kitchen or who had just bought six boxes of these adorable potpourri sachets for Christmas presents...
...KATHARINE BYRNE Katharine Byrne, who appears frequently in these pages, lives in an old Chicago neighborhood...
...My wife died last week," he said softly, handing me a tiny bag of moth crystals...
...In truth, she was an intrepid and formidable adversary...
...Until she retired a few years later, her seasonal visitations led to pantry shelf additions needed or not...
...open as well to the possibility that life could be enhanced by the purchase of a bottle of vanilla, a box of herbal bubble bath, or a tin of floor polish...
...As soon as the vegetable scrubber was in my hands, I was in hers...
...Only once did I consider refusing him access...
...I am your neighbor, Miss Fleming," she beamed...
...The relationship between seller and prospect was personal, an eye-to-eye confrontation, often fraught with guilt for the one who refused to buy...
...Enthusiastic, jaunty, and well beyond retirement age the first time I saw him...
...Here's something the children will love to use on their toast," he assured me...
...I have a gift for you...
...I ran upstairs, kicked off my gym shoes, pulled a sheet over my head in someone's unmade bed...
...Can I refuse to buy one more half-pound of Hungarian paprika...
...I would not ask one of the young Catholic legalists who lived here in those times to lie on my behalf...
Vol. 119 • May 1992 • No. 10
