Houseguests

"Every house guest brings you happiness. Some when they arrive, and some when they are leaving" – Confucius

When I was eleven and we lived in London, I was invited to spend the weekend with a school friend. What I remember was the family spoke Hebrew and never translated anything and also they ate weird food. It was not a happy experience. At eighteen, the summer before I went to college, I spent a month in Ireland, travelling around and ended up as a house guest to a family friend, a very famous writer with a wife who was much younger and would eventually run off with an even richer man. Anyway, I arrived at the gate of their massive manor house and as I walked up the driveway with my backpack, two of the largest dogs I had ever seen in my life silently appeared on either side of me to escort me to the front door of what resembled a palace. When I knocked, a window above was opened and this woman, a very pretty, naked women draped in the curtain, came out on the balcony and told me to wait.

photo by Brooke Balentine

Every evening before dinner I was summoned to play football (soccer) with the husband. Since I played soccer in high school it was a fairly even match although I was wise enough to let him win. After all, the thread count on those sheets was very high. His wife spent her mornings driving around to visit local farmers in her Daimler, a full thermos of screwdrivers on the floor. I had never been in a car that purred before. Frequently our quest was to pacify an irate farmer whose sheep had been terrorized by the wolfhounds. Occasionally there would be a pile of sheep carcasses and she had to be charming and apologetic. 

Another experience was being invited to spend the night in a castle belonging to a very old, Anglo-Irish family who were aristocrats but had what I viewed as sketchy manners. During dinner the husband, a colonel or a hon of some sort insisted on showing me the stump from his amputated leg while their dogs were given seats both under and on the table. When I left in the morning I was instructed to place cash in the hands of a person I could not see behind a kitchen window. It was all rather Upstairs, Downstairs but since I was an impoverished backpacker with nary a respectable thing to wear, I could not cast aspersions on their hospitality.

When I was about twelve my parents were invited to stay in Lillian Hellman’s house on Martha’s Vineyard. A friend of my father’s was the executor of her will and we were well taken care of by Hellman’s housekeeper who told us Hellman forbade her to attend church even though she was deeply religious. This seemed harsh. I snooped around the library looking at all her signed first editions and also a fair amount of soft-core pornography. It was very educational albeit another example of the weirdness of adults. 

One summer on Cape Cod my Uncle Brendan arrived with his coffee can filled with pot and persuaded my oldest sister and her friend visiting from Harvard to bake brownies. The first report was that our neighbors were happily watching static on their television. There was a threatened hurricane so we all piled into my father’s car and drove to the beach where we stood together on a dune watching the surf. Uncle Brendan was a frequent house guest in Princeton where we lived. He was wonderful but very poorly behaved, making passes at married women friends of my parents and snoring so loudly, the house shook. In the morning, he had an egg in beer which was totally gross.

I enjoy visitors but feel intimidated by the miniature Martha Stewart wannabe whispering in my ear about the state of my towels, the lack of bedside amenities, the lack of scheduled meals, and a dearth of that Hamptons/Cape Cod vibe. Should I provide activities, ignore them, not take it personally that they find all my suggestions lame? It’s hard to be a calm and resourceful host although I have a fantasy of myself wafting around in nicely wrinkled linen pointing out the organic garden and the lake. Instead, there is swimmer’s itch and my husband insisting we play annoying games because we are supposed to be those people. I hate games most of the time especially Scrabble which everyone thinks I’m brilliant at because I’m a writer. I have been known to end up with seven vowels, none of which is worth more than two points and it doesn’t matter because they don’t fit on the board. I keep inviting friends to visit but when they arrive the pressure of our expectations is crushing. I want to watch bad reality TV and snuggle the cat. I assume they are only there out of pity and would prefer to stay in a nice hotel. I prefer to stay in a nice hotel.

—Molly Moynahan