SHALIMAR WISHES . . .

A gift of Shalimar from Chris brings many sweet memories: (from August 2010)

  It’s of equal sweetness to all my favorites, with notes of vanilla (perhaps the drawing-card of all the ones I’ve ever really liked---my first experiments with fragrance were furtive visits to the baking cupboard. When Mother or Mammaw weren’t looking, I’d dab a bit behind my ears and in the “crooks of my elbows” and sail off to third grade, confident in my beautiful aura and aroma).

I haven’t bought Shalimar for myself since that day in the 80’s that the duck flew down the chimney and broke the fancy bottle in my bathtub. Cleaning up duck poo and broken glass can change your mind about a lot of things.

 

Of A Gracious Plenty:

(January 2014)

 

Sinking into a deep old clawfoot tub, into the Shalimar-perfumed bubbles, with Spem in Alium on the Bose, or perhaps Tom Waits.    A good book for whiling the time, though this precious NOOK is gripped tighter, held drier, than the decades of John D. MacDonalds with their pulp pages and one-stage-from-lurid covers, which sometimes fell prey to damp fingers or errant drops of fragrant water, emerging from the steam with pages some thicker than before, words a bit wavery and dim.  

 

 

And of one of the Paxton People,  Harliss MacIntyre:  (February 2010)

 

Harliss hit her forties with hairstyle wider than her skinny hips; she toddled through life in three-inch heels below her tiny Chic jeans, leaving Shalimar and whispers in her wake. And one of the wonders of a small town is that she just went where she pleased, and hardly anyone really ostracized her---life went on for Harliss despite her inglorious reputation.

 

Of Mammaw’s sister Aint Eddie who was from the big city where we live now, and came to us for the Summer every year.  (August ’09)

 

  I just loved her, and I know she must have grown tired of an eager child monopolizing her every free moment. I loved to see her get off that bus; she’d step down with a great sigh, breeze her face a bit with her Last Supper fan, and pop up her big black umbrella (parasol, to all the ladies of the family) for the walk to the house, and start talking.

She regaled us with tales of all the city doings, the streetcars and the taxicabs and all the stores. I always tried to steer her to stories of “Ellis Airs”---the biggest, nicest department store in town. And she always obliged, telling of beautiful dresses and shoes and handbags which her daughters brought home from a day of shopping. And they ate their lunch in the store. There was an actual restaurant right there inside the building, and you could just take your shopping bags in, set them beside your chair, and order your lunch.

 

Auntie's stories went into delicious detail about the ladies’ hats, and of their gloves (removed for eating, of course--- a lady never ate with her gloves on---that was TACKY. And those movie stars with the long gloves with diamond bracelets and rings OVER their gloves in the movies, lifting those champagne glasses or caviar-on-toasts to their bright-red lips---that was a confirmation of their hussydom right there).

The world of aspics and toast points and tomatoes stuffed with chicken salad seemed to be a preview of Heaven. I longed to sit at that dainty table just once, to see beautifully-dressed patrons with the demure bearing of a religeuse in a dainty topknot---the ankles-crossed, mouth-corner napkin-dab ladies who breezed in with the auras of Shalimar and Chanel and Pall Malls, and exited in a fluff of air-kisses and shrugged-on mink.

 

And I've been to Ayres for lunch---wearing Shalimar of my own, by the way---for the incomparable chicken salad and the aura of gently-fading sophistication, in the days before the Tearoom was relegated to a museum, where the lunches are treated somewhat like the other exhibits---relics of another time, another kind of life, to be sampled as would be a sip of Elizabethan mead or a deep-crusted game pye from a hunter's board.

 

 

Of the two ladies who had a “Round Table” restaurant in their immense old ancestral home, with their Mama’s cook’s recipes, and descendants of their former staff in the kitchen:   (April ’09)

 

That one would qualify as a meat

'n' twelve. Tables seat about ten or twelve, with plates set on the perimeter, and a huge, spinning round shelf in the center. You sit with whoever's there, catch a bowl or platter as it spins past you, help yourself, and try to find a setting-down place for it next time around, so you can pick up another dish. Super food, lovely proprietors---two ladies who own and supervise; not an immaculate curl out of place, and pristine dresses creased just SO as they sit down, take a sip of their 40-weight tea, and speak toward the kitchen: "Mighty good tea today, Margrit!"

I tried to imagine the life they must live, just supervising all those wonderful cooks every day---I thought of them as waking to their coffee, reading the Jackson Daily Ledger in their silky robes, a bath and dusting powder and teensy dabs of Toujours Moi or Shalimar in the crook of the elbows, then dressing, stockings rolled just below their knees, and drifting downstairs to take in the delicious aromas and the serene temper of the white-draped dining rooms, ready to receive their guests with the aplomb and ease of royalty, confident in their long-time retainers in the kitchen.

 

And the most memorable, and regrettable: (March ’09)

 

Once a pretty lady mallard---not one of our own, unless her homing device was REALLY accurate---invaded our house for a Spa Day. One day when the work crew had been installing some kind of insulation in the ceiling at the office, I got home feeling itchy and scratchy and rashy all over, and couldn’t WAIT for a nice soak in my big tub. As I went in the door, I saw the dog and the cat, side by side on the floor, just exhausted and panting. I couldn’t figure WHAT was wrong with the poor things, until I saw the equally-tired duck sitting over by the fireplace, all nested down and resting.

She had apparently come down the chimney and provided jump-and-chase amusement for those two for quite some time. I gently picked her up and took her outside, where she slowly waddled over to the field and took off. I went back in, tearing off my itchy clothes, ran into my bathroom and reached for the faucet-handle.

My lovely tub was smeared with duck poop in several places, and right in the middle of the tub, my coveted bottle of REAL Shalimar perfume---the pretty bottle with the elegant glass fan for a stopper---was on its side in several pieces, with that glorious scent filling the room.

I said several particularly nice words, gathered up the glass, scrubbed the tub--I’d have bathed in the perfume, but the glass and poop ruled that out---and as I knelt there in my bra and underpants, flinging the Comet---hot, sweaty, swearing under my breath and wanting my bath, something in my wastebasket caught my eye. I had had a Tab as I dressed for work that morning, and had stuck the can upside down into the wastebasket. And nestled in the hollow aluminum bottom was a little round pinkish egg.

I cannot imagine how that lady duck managed to elude cat and dog long enough to leave me that little tribute, nor how she managed to perch her hiney up there just right to lay that egg. And I don’t think the kids would have believed me if not for that odd little egg, pink and round and with a glow like porcelain.

I blew it out and washed it and kept it for years.