Not all our rental experiences are disasters. For several summers we leased a cunning gray-shingled summer cottage directly on the beach on Cape Cod. Renting somebody else’s life is the most convenient way to have our fantasy and leave it too. Living in other people’s homes, cooking in other people’s kitchens, even doing other people’s dishes, has the allure of novelty that is at the heart of any leased vacation experience.
We intentionally chose a place that was a total contrast to the way we live at home. The furniture was authentic battered wicker. The once-flowered cushions were bleached to a pastel wash by years of insistent sunlight. Chaste white muslin curtains flapped at the windows. In the kitchen, cups and dishes of various sizes and patterns, some fetchingly chipped, were arranged in cozy stacks on open wooden shelves. The paint on the pine-plank kitchen table had been worn away by years of scrubbing, leaving only faint traces of Wedgwood blue clinging to the grain. On top of the table sat a sparkling glass pitcher of chilled lemonade, beads of condensation clinging to its curved surface. The place was three thousand dollars for the month of August. Ralph Lauren would have paid a lot more for a one-day photo shoot.
We would leave behind our workaday lives of rushing, getting, spending, and narcoleptic television viewing. Clothing wouldn’t matter. We would spend the day in our bathing suits. Nor would food. We’d buy our dinner from the local fishermen. Instead of swimming a mile’s worth of laps at the Westport Y, we’d swim in the bay, to the lighthouse and back. We’d read on the deck, walk on the beach, pick up shells, and watch the stars. The idea was to reduce life to its basic elements and simple joys.
We didn’t count on the houseguests. It is not possible to rent a beach house within five hours’ drive of one’s hometown without being visited by people. This is especially true if I have actually invited them.
One of my problems is that I like to be nicer than I actually am. While this personality discrepancy is better than being unkind, it does create a lot of confusion and pain for me as well as for others. I mean well, at least initially. I miss my friends. I want to see you. I want to show you this darling cottage and share all the fun we’re having. Then, after about an hour, I want you to go home.
After the Labor Day weekend, when the last of the summer houseguests has thanked us for a lovely weekend, gotten into the car, and driven away, leaving us with an empty refrigerator, dirty sheets, soggy towels, and something we will have to find a box for and mail back to them, I am moved to boot up my laptop and bang out a hostess note that, if I had the nerve to mail it, would solve my summer houseguest problem forever.
“Dear Summer Houseguests,
“Now that the summer season has passed, here in our rented beach house, Larry and I want to take this opportunity to thank you for being such perfect guests, and to reiterate the house rules so that your visit next summer, should we rent again, may prove to be an even greater success.
“What to bring. You will need a bathing suit, a toothbrush, dental floss in case of native corn, your own sunblock, and proof of passage back to where you came from. Travel lightly. Steamer trunks will be confiscated. I am not Jane Austen. Yours is not to be a visit of nineteenth-century duration.
“The house gift. It is necessary to bring a small offering, preferably a large, cooked meal that can be eaten cold with the fingers, along with a good supply of paper plates. An SUV-ful of zucchini from your garden is not welcome and will be considered a hostile, provocative act. A new blender is an especially thoughtful idea. Last summer’s blender, you will remember, burned itself out in a valiant five-speed attempt at pesto sauce. This is probably as good a time as any to let you know that we lied about the chewy little white chunks that clung to the linguini. They were not unosterized pignoli. A white rubber spatula also makes a nice house gift.
“Meals. There will be a traditional welcoming dinner of corn on the cob and lobster. Further meals will not be provided. Do not be fooled by the splendor of this meal or the graciousness of your hosts. You are on hospitality death row. Make the most of it. Let me butter your corn. Larry will insist upon cracking your claws.
“Help. Do not offer to help us clear the table. Don’t even pretend to get up from your place; we’ll slam you back down in your chair. By Saturday breakfast, even before the zinnias we put on your night table begin to wilt, you’re on your culinary own. The coffee’s in the refrigerator, and the filter papers are on the pantry shelf. I take mine black with half a teaspoon of sugar. Larry likes a little milk.
“Make yourself at home. Whenever you get hungry, you should feel free to help yourselves to whatever is in the pantry or the refrigerator. Now it is our turn to pretend to hoist ourselves up from our lounge chairs and yours to insist that you will not be waited upon. Make your choice quickly. Do not open the door and stare. Whenever the refrigerator door is opened, a light goes on in me. Although as a hostess I am by now certifiably brain-dead, the twenty-five-watt glow reflected off the white interior enamel produces the same effect upon me, splayed out on my chaise, as an electrode applied to the nerves of a formaldehyde frog on a laboratory table. I twitch with phantom hostess guilt. (Larry doesn’t do guilt; he just won’t get up.) If you do not conclude within seconds that there is nothing to eat except baking soda, I will feel compelled to assist you to that conclusion by reciting the contents of the refrigerator and the pantry: ‘Mayo, but no tuna; salsa, but no chips; a humid box of Grape-Nuts—and if I were you, I’d smell the milk.’
“When you’re at home and you have no food, you go shopping. When you’re making yourself at home in our home and there’s no food, you should also go shopping. The A & P, which is air-conditioned, is a mile and one-half down the road on the right and is a nice place to visit, especially at low tide. Remember, I don’t eat bluefish, Larry doesn’t eat anything that flies, and you use a lot of paper towels. While you’re there, would you please pick up two copies of the newspaper so that Larry won’t have to erase your crossword puzzle?
“Laundry. There is no laundry. There are no towels. In the event that wetness occurs after swimming or showering, guests are requested to jump up and down on the deck until the condition clears up. In order that subsequent guests may also enjoy clean sheets, please sleep on top of the bedspread.
“Conversation. We will not ask you if you had a good night’s sleep if you will not ask us. Keep all remarks before 9:00 A.M. to a simple ‘Good morning.’ Since we are not responsible for the weather but only feel as if we are, statements like ‘I love a rainy day at the beach’ are regarded as insincere and passive-aggressive. So are the questions ‘Is there anything I can do?’ and ‘Where do you keep the ice cubes?’ Unwelcome topics of conversation include periodic reports that you are ‘unwinding.’ (You are not unwinding; you are feeling the first heady symptoms of malnutrition.) Larry particularly resents estimates of the height of the stack of mail that awaits you on your desk. Please be especially careful not to tell us how lucky we are to be able to be on vacation for a whole month. We are not on vacation. We are entertaining you. Permissible subjects of conversation include our dreams, my tan, and your stretch marks.
“Weather. After two consecutive days of rain, the impulse to go home is a healthy one and should be acted upon.
“Your departure. Do not strip the bed. (See ‘Laundry,’ above.) Do not leave anything behind. If you do, you may buy it back next Wednesday between 11:00 A.M. and 4:00 P.M. from the Sisters of the Immaculate Visitation at Saint Mary’s by the Harbor thrift shop.
“Off-season communications. If either of us should, in the course of speaking with you during the winter months, even suggest the possibility that we might rent a cottage again next summer, please be good enough not to remind us of it next spring.”