IN RECENT YEARS, MANY PRECAUTIONS HAVE BEEN EXERCISED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST DISASTER. The calamity that loomed over Mrs. For trey was not the one that everyone else was afraid about. It was the damage and ruin that would swallow her home if she didn’t do the numerous tiny tasks of preservation and restoration that custom, direction pamphlets, and her watchful sister had recommended.
Soon after a new item was triumphantly brought into the home, whether it was a furnishing, an ornament, or simply a child, it began to succumb to a thousand effects of use, age, and chemistry, which could only be held in unwilling abeyance by the Chrome Hearts Dress prescribed rituals. Mrs. For trey did not feel deprived for a long time as she raced on a treadmill of minor palliative efforts that generated nothing, improved nothing, but only delayed the eventual decay of things or returned them to a state that was certainly not as good as new.
So, every Monday morning, Mrs.
For trey boldly set out with a pitcher of water and a can of 3-in-1 oil to execute eight prophylactic measures in one grand circle from the kitchen to the living room. To maintain their engines from burning out or worsening, the electric fan, vacuum cleaner, and sewing machine required only three drops of oil (after ten hours of usage). Oiling the wall can opener, the knife sharpening, the children’s roller skates, the flute keys, and the drapery pulley tracks took only a few minutes more.
Mrs. For trey poured some water into the philodendron plants, moistened the rubber plant and the ivy, put a bit in the parakeet’s cup. Poured some into the radiator pan to keep the air from drying the furniture, and poured some into a pan under the broiler to keep the stove from smoking up the white kitchen on her way back from the front room to the kitchen. She’d generally come to a halt after that to empty the pencil sharpener.
She once informed her sister that she oiled from the rear to the front of the apartment and watered from front to back.
A little Vaseline had to be smeared on the washing machine spindle every month or so to keep the agitator from sticking, and a little black stuff had to be rubbed on Mr. For trey’s electric razor to sharpen it while the electricity hummed and Mrs. For trey counted to sixty in a loud voice as ordered. She smeared ashes on the glass rings left on table tops, leather conditioner on the desk top, and soap on the edges of all the doors, almost gleefully.
only a week, as small inevitable spots accumulated despite their best efforts, their hearts hardened and their feet marched more brazenly. Mrs. For trey was the only one who grimaced at the dark patches in front of each door. She began sitting near to the walls and leaping from a point around two feet before each threshold to a point two feet within the room to prevent growing dirt and wear on the carpet’s most visited paths. She was ecstatic at the prospect of the carpet being spared hundreds of further scuffs as a result of her actions. Mr. Fortney, once upon a time,
