That's why, also, when Grandma comes to visit us every other week, we don't give her one of the cabins. She can sleep in our cabin, even if it is a little crowded; but, obviously, the customers can't. She sleeps on David's bed, and David sleeps on the floor, using Donna's playpen pad for a mattress; and everyone is happy--except, possibly, David.
Grandma suffers from customerphobia far more acutely than I ever did. The trembling and quivering I suffered were mild compared to the tremors, amounting practically to convulsions, she goes through at even the mere thought of waiting on a customer. I know better now than to attempt to break her in to the gentle art of renting cabins, but there was a time when I was not so wise. That was on one of her first visits, when I thought I'd teach her to be a substitute motel manager, in much the same manner of the man who teaches his little boy to swim by throwing him shrieking into six feet of cold water.
Grant had tossed David and Donna into the back seat of the car and taken them along for the ride on a trip to the drug store. They were going to buy a jar of salve for David's nose, which sunburns, peels, and sunburns all over again, with painful persistence. Grandma and I were alone. I hoped that a customer would come during the brief time that Grant would be gone, for I had mapped out a campaign for ridding Grandma of her fear of customers for once and for all.
I was sitting in the kitchen reading, wearing a dress that had a zipper all the way down the front. Grandma, unsuspecting and happy, was bustling about the living room with a dustdoth, searching for dust.
It wasn't long before I heard the sound I had been hoping for--the scrunch of tires on the gravel, and a squeak of brakes. Faster than I had ever done it before, I stood up, zipped down my dress, took it off and tossed it under the table.
About that time Grandma noticed that there was a car outside, and that a fat, middle-aged couple were getting out of it. She came rushing into the kitchen with that near panic that always overcomes her when customers approach, even when she knows perfectly well she won't have to talk to them.
"My land, here's a customer! Come on, come on!" She hurried into the kitchen, her black eyes sparkling with excitement in her unwrinkled face.
I gasped with what I hoped sounded like dismay. "A customer? Oh, dear, and I was just getting ready to take a shower! See, I'm in my slip. I can't possibly wait on them like this. You'll have to do it, I'm afraid."
"Good Godfrey Mighty," Grandma breathed. "I can't--"
The doorbell pealed a strident summons.