A Gemel Ring--Discussion Thread

Charity has an Advanced Driver's Certificate. Aside from being able to flash the chic little certificate around all the rope lines at all the swanky nigh spots in town, I'm trying to figure out what it's for and why anyone would go through the trouble.

Mrs. Boekerchek is a woman who knows her man. ...she even pondered the advisability of a visit to the hairdresser. "I have a rinse, you know," she confided. "It needs to be done every week or so--Arthur is dead set on me not going grey, I reckon." Let's leave alone the Neels tick of having her American characters (from Pennsylvania!) drop the word 'reckon' all over the place so that we can discuss haircare. I don't...er...rinse yet but the grey hairs springing up like dandelions all over my once nubile head do give me pause. I just don't think I've got a disciplined Mrs. Boekerchek (no I will NOT post another picture of Evan Lysacek merely because it sounds like it could be from the same family of names...okay, yes I will) inside me--not enough to rinse every week. So, thumbs up to Mrs. Boekerchek--still preserving herself nicely for her fella and working hard to do it. [Betty Debbie] A rinse every week or two...now that's commitment. I trot out the Miss Clairol approximately every 3 or 4 months...about the word "reckon". Maybe she picked up her Americanisms from the telly. I don't know if it ever ran on the BBC, but "reckon" was used an awful lot in a few tv shows from the 60's (Sherriff Andy Taylor, Opie and Barney used it quite a bit on The Andy Griffith Show, and pretty much all of the Clampett's from The Beverly Hillbillies used the word "reckon" in every other sentence, I reckon.)

The ambulance carrying Mr. Boekerchek to and from the hospital is described as "an elegant sleek model, built for speed." Perhaps this tricked out 1974 Cadillac would fill the bill. Part of the nice thing about Ms. B. Neels is her ability to be so vague about cultural markers (except hemlines--she could be dated to within months if we're going by hemlines) that my 2010 brain sees something by Mercedes as elegant and sleek without veering into glorified hearse (see left) territory.

Our heroine's name is Charity but her nickname is Cherry which thin end of the wedge I will use to link to Neil Diamond--because this Betty can't listen to Neil too much.

I don't agree with Betty Debbie that she has no basis for falling in love with our hero. When in the operating theatre she notices that he was relaxed and concentrated, "he has no pernickety ways" and "for so large a man he moved in a very self-effacing manner". If that isn't a mark of a sterling character, I don't know what is. His penmanship is probably dreadful. Sure, he's fine with unconscious bodies - so maybe Charity can expect him to be nice to her when she's sleeping? I'd like a guy that could be nice when I'm awake too.

Grandmother is quite the out-spoken one, isn't she. Elderlies get a free pass in the land of Neels to be as disagreeable or as outrageous as they wish--often to advance the plot but occasionally because I think The Venerable Betty was living out some fantasy she had of being able to say whatever she wanted, cloaked in the unassailable fortress of Seasoned Maturity. The Grandmother at one point says, "He is no monk, Charity Dawson!" I'm not going to discuss the possible Brighton-ish-ness of this remark and will only say that my own mother bids fair to become this kind of sprightly octogenarian.

Charity carries an old man into the secret home for the elderly. I live near a massive retirement home. We call it The Death Star. ("Death isn't funny, Betty Keira," says my conscience. "I know," I reply, mumbling under my breath about what a spoil-sport my conscience is.) It is a great big monolith of a building. I would much prefer it if Shady Oak-y Glen-ish Retirement Land would adopt the Everard van Tijlen approach to nursing homes--low-key and looking nothing like a Death Star, I'm sure.

The estimable Juffrouw Corrie Blom (guardian of the aged) was such a similar name to Corrie ten Boom--famous hero of the Dutch Resistance--that I wonder if Madame Neels was consciously referencing her. Corrie ten Boom has many interesting facets to her life and three (of varying importance) are that her sister had pernicious anemia (that is the best name for a physical ailment ever--it even sounds like a character in Alice in Wonderland--"The Pernicious Anemia"), her release from prison camp seems to have been a clerical error (all the other women her age were killed the following week) and when her sister Betsie (I am NOT going to have another child just so I can use this name. I am NOT.) died in the camps her last words were, "There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still." So, it's nice to think that La Neels was saluting a Dutch hero. I think she might have been.

Grandmothers who fake illnesses. I'm for it. This brings to mind the very handy "coronary" that Mom faked so we could leave a certain cousin's pre-wedding picnic...

I like where you're going here, Betty Debbie. Though I am sad that myopic women are viewed as default doormats that must prove themselves out of that paper bag. I, myself, can't see past the end of my nose but would willingly go toe to toe with Everard--though I suspect my schoolgirl German is way worse than Charity's.