Marrying Mom Read online

  Sig looked past Monty’s chest, matted with white hair, and over to her mother, who sat coolly with her cards arrayed in front of her. She hadn’t even lost an earring. None of the garments and accessories on the table belonged to her. Thank God! But what did Paul Cushing think? The idea of these superannuated delinquents misbehaving made Sig feel crazy. She wasn’t sure if she should laugh or cry, but whichever she chose, she knew she didn’t like it. “Who started this?” she asked accusingly.

  Mrs. Katz looked up at her calmly. She actually seemed to have more clothes on rather than less, now that her heavy corset and long-line brassiere with all their structural underpinnings showed. No wonder her husband Sid left her: she seemed to have as much metal supporting her as the Tappan Zee Bridge. “It was my idea to play canasta,” Mrs. Katz said modestly, as if she should get credit instead of blame. “We needed a fourth, so we called Bernard.” She hiccuped. There were three empty whisky sour glasses in front of her. Had she been drinking?

  “And who suggested this gambling part?” Sig asked.

  “Well,” her mother said calmly, “Sylvia never likes to gamble for money, so Monty suggested we play it like strip poker. Since he’s never played canasta before and he doesn’t wear jewelry, we gave him a handicap.”

  “I’ve got my Cartier cuff links riding on this hand,” Bernard said, with more enthusiasm than he’d shown during the whole Winter Wonderland evening. “I haven’t played canasta since my mother died.”

  Sig turned to Monty. “You talked them into playing strip canasta?” she asked, her voice rising in disbelief. “What’s next? Spin the bottle? Truth or dare?”

  “How do you play those?” Monty asked, obviously interested. “I don’t think we had them in Glasgow.” Sig averted her eyes from Monty’s chest. His neck hung like a wattle from under his chin and joined his chest at some place that she didn’t care to see. His jowls were imperfectly shaved, his eyebrows wilder than Brooke Shields’s in a twister. Growing old was a terrible thing. It was a disgusting disintegration, a humiliation of the flesh.

  Sig promised herself she would double up on her aerobics and lose three pounds. She would not ever let her flesh sag, her skin bag, her step drag. She would rather die first. She looked across at her mother.

  “How was your evening?” Phyllis asked.

  Sylvia Katz lay mounded on the Chesterfield sofa, nursing a glass of Maalox and holding a plastic bag of ice against her forehead. Phyllis couldn’t help but smile, though she tried to suppress it. The wages of sin were costly for Sylvia, but the improvement to her personality that alcohol brought was, at least from Phyllis’s point of view, well worth it. Sylvia had shown another side of herself the night before and Phyllis had certainly enjoyed it. She suspected that Monty and Bernard Krinz had enjoyed it even more. “You better think of getting up soon. Sig and Sharon are coming over to pick you up for the birthday party preparations. They want to make a big deal out of it.” Sylvia slid the ice back onto her forehead. “So,” Phyllis asked, a wicked grin beginning to spread across her face, “would you like some scrambled eggs and cheese for lunch? Or maybe some eggs benedict. The hollandaise is delicious.”

  “Oy gevalt. I must be coming down with the flu,” Sylvia said. “Even toast would …” She shuddered.

  “Maybe it’s morning sickness,” Phyllis laughed.

  “Such a joker.”

  “Who’s joking? That was some night you had last night. Three whisky sours.”

  “I don’t remember everything, but I think Monty and I were losing.”

  “I think the two of you melded,” Phyllis said.

  “Don’t be disgusting. Anyway, he’s your boyfriend.”

  Phyllis shrugged. It was odd: Monty was bald and unattractive. He certainly drank too much, and his nose was veined with blood vessels to prove it. He was short and had a potbelly. But when he had taken off his shirt, Phyllis had felt a certain … Well, she couldn’t exactly put a name on it, not even for herself. His chest was furred with grizzled white hair. His breasts were almost the size of hers. Yet Phyllis hadn’t been able to stop thinking of what it might feel like to have her own torso pressed against his.

  “Excuse me. It’s none of my business, but …”

  Whenever Sylvia was about to make something her business, something which she had no business to make her business, she prefaced it with those words. Phyllis smiled. Amazing how she could be endlessly patient with the bluntness and stupidity of Sylvia, yet totally intolerant of even the slightest dumbness from Susan or Sharon. Why was that?

  Sylvia cleared her throat with a noise that sounded like the one her dishwasher used to make, just before it went on the fritz. “If you keep seeing him, this Monty, especially only late at night, do you know what he’s going to think?”

  “That I’m a vampire?” Phyllis asked.

  “Joking. Always joking. Well, I want to tell you this, and I mean it: he’s going to start to think that you’re asking for it, and then you’ll be sorry. It’ll end in tears.”

  “Asking for it?” Phyllis wondered if Sylvia had somehow overheard the children’s plans for Monty. “Asking for what?” Phyllis asked.

  “You know,” Sylvia lowered her voice. “S, E, X,” she spelled.

  “Yeah, and then what?” Phyllis asked.

  “Then what? Then he might want you to do it. You know, Oscar Bernstein wanted Natalie Schwartz to do it with him after they went out the first month. She told me. She was horrified. First he stuck his tongue in her mouth. Then he asked her to …” Sylvia lowered her voice again and leaned forward. She had to sip her Maalox again to gather strength. “He wanted her to kiss his dickie bird,” she whispered. Sylvia let herself fall back on the sofa. “Ecch!” she gargled.

  “Listen, Sylvia, Monty’s already stuck his tongue in my mouth.”

  “See! See how I knew about this! Oh my God! You have to stop it now. He’s not like Bernard. Bernard is a perfect gentleman. But that Monty … I think he spiked our drinks.”

  “Really?” Phyllis asked.

  But Sylvia was really taking this seriously. “It’s not too late. Nip it in the bud.” Sylvia straightened up, clutching her purse to her bosom. “Lunches. Daytime. Nothing in the dark. Otherwise they get ideas, these men.”

  Phyllis shook her head. “I’m the one with ideas, Sylvia. I liked it when he kissed me.”

  “With a tongue? He kissed you with a tongue and you liked it? Come on. Don’t be crazy. Do you eat snails, and other traif, too? I’m warning you, Phyllis, you’re playing with matches. What are you going to do when he wants to go to bed with you?”

  “Go to bed?” Phyllis laughed. “I should live so long. Sylvia, I want to have sex with him. I like him.” As she said it, Phyllis realized it was true.

  “I liked Sid,” Sylvia admitted. “That didn’t mean I enjoyed … you know.”

  Phyllis paused again. She knew she wasn’t like a lot of women she had known, but now, here, with Sylvia Katz, the gap widened into a chasm. “So what exactly are you telling me? That you didn’t like sex with your husband?”

  “Who could like it? His thing—it was purple. And the rest of it was wrinkled and it hung and shook like President Nixon’s jowls.” Sylvia shuddered and finished the Maalox. “Remember how his jowls would tremble when he talked? Just for that they should have impeached him. Every time I looked at the president I thought of Sid and his …” Sylvia winced. “Why would a man want to show that to anyone? There’s a reason they call them private parts.”

  Phyllis thought about Monty and the way he put his hands on her shoulder and her back when he moved her around the dance floor. He was a very good dancer. She’d always felt that that was an indication of … possibilities. Not that she’d ever tested her theory. She’d never slept with anyone except Ira. But the thought had entered her mind. Not often. But once, when they had vacationed with Kitty and Norman Steinberg and she’d thought Norman was … well, interested.

  Ira had never been a good dancer, but
he’d stopped dancing altogether long before his heart disease. And once he got the diagnosis, there was no more hanky-panky. When had he been diagnosed? Phyllis wondered, for a moment, when the last time she’d had intercourse with Ira had been. Certainly not in this decade. She wasn’t sure if it had been in the eighties, either.

  As best as she could figure, it would have been in Lake George the summer of 1979. If she had known it would be the last time, she would have paid more attention. Phyllis sighed, remembering the sun coming in the hotel window, Ira on top of her. She used to like it when Ira would hold her breasts. By then they were already sagging, but he didn’t seem to mind. His touch had always been very gentle, tender. When she was younger she’d worn her hair long, and Ira would take out the pins slowly so that her hair fell down to her waist. If he wasn’t very imaginative or creative he had at least been affectionate.

  Phyllis shook her head. Now her breasts were down to her waist and her hair was short. She wondered what Monty, no pinup himself, would think about her body. And what she’d think of his. She knew what she looked like, and the news wasn’t good. But somehow, when she’d seen his hairy chest and when he’d held her up against him, when his hand on her lower back moved her commandingly around the dance floor, she felt a shiver in the old places. Phyllis blushed. She was about to turn seventy. It was ridiculous to think this way, to feel this way at her age, she told herself. But it felt very good.

  Phyllis looked at her friend Sylvia across a divide almost as wide as death itself. She knew it was laughable for her to have these feelings, but the tips of her breasts tingled in a way she hadn’t even wanted to remember. And down there, there … well, she felt alive again. Maybe it was the old way and she just didn’t remember. Like riding a bicycle, it seemed, you never forgot. Then the fact that she’d never learned to ride a bike occurred to her and she smiled. She liked the feeling she had, and it was sad that Sylvia didn’t. After all, what were these areas of feeling on her body but life itself, concentrated into three intense points?

  Sylvia was talking again. Phyllis forced herself to focus. Sylvia was in the middle of a lecture. “Not only that, but you know it isn’t safe anymore,” Mrs. Katz said. “You have to worry about what could happen.”

  “What’s going to happen? Morning sickness like you’ve got? I’m going to get pregnant?”

  “Very funny,” Sylvia snapped. “No. I mean you could get the AIDS. You could die.”

  Phyllis looked directly into Sylvia’s eyes. “I’m about to turn seventy. I’m going to do that anyway, Sylvia,” she said. “But I think I’d like to live a little more first.”

  Sharon and Sig arrived at the Pierre to pick Mrs. Katz up and take her over to Sig’s apartment to help with setting up for tomorrow. This way Sig could be certain that Mrs. Katz was safely out of the way later, and with any luck Sig could convince the elderly woman to stay over, giving Phyllis and Monty some much needed privacy. She had volunteered to bake one of her special angel food birthday cakes, and Sig had accepted the offer. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to spend the money on a professional cake, and she did want to break in her oven, since she had never used it. Sharon was her stolid self, only waiting to see if she could get through Hanukkah and Christmas without disappointing the children too badly, or throwing Barney out of her house.

  “Ready to go?” Sig asked. Monty was due to arrive and take Phyllis out yet again.

  “Pssstt,” Mrs. Katz said as she was putting on her coat in the suite foyer. “He’s not a nice man. He tried to get fresh with your mother,” she whispered. “It was a good thing I was here.”

  “What do you mean, fresh?” Sig asked, with her heart lifting but her stomach churning.

  “I heard a noise. I was almost sleeping, but I heard a noise. So I came out of the bedroom and they were here on the sofa and he was trying to …” Mrs. Katz stopped. “He was getting fresh,” she reiterated.

  At that moment Phyllis stepped into the foyer dressed in a knit suit and matching toque. Sig raised her eyebrows. “I know,” Phyllis said with a shrug. “The hat. Bruce made me.” Sig wondered how much the hat cost and wondered if it would look equally good on her. “Bruce insisted. And Monty said he likes hats.”

  He was fresh with her mother and her mother wanted to please him? This did sound promising, Sig thought.

  “It’s adorable,” Mrs. Katz said about the hat. “So are you.”

  “You see why I keep her around?” Phyllis asked.

  Just then there was a knock at the door. “He’s early,” Sig said, “that’s a good sign.”

  “It can’t be Monty. He didn’t ring up. It must be one of the chambermaids.”

  When Sig went to the door and opened it, she found her brother, Todd, and Bernard Krinz before her. For a moment Sig was disoriented. Bruce hadn’t seen Krinz since the benefit fiasco, had he? And what was Krinz doing here now? Todd seemed to wonder too, because he was holding on to Bruce in a possessive way. Bruce smiled and pecked him on the cheek.

  “Hi,” Bruce said casually, walking past Sigourney, with both Todd and Bernard in tow. “Hello, Sylvia. Hi, Mom,” Bruce said. “Tilt the hat.” He approached his mother, kissed her on the cheek, and then angled the toque so that it was the perfect enhancement. The foyer was getting crowded. Bruce breezed into the living room. Once he sat down, they’d never get out. Then he threw himself onto the sofa.

  What the fuck was going on? Sig wondered. “Bruce, could I talk to you for a moment?” she asked as she glided toward the bedroom door.

  “Oh God. I can’t get up now. I’m exhausted.”

  “Now,” Sig said in the voice she used to use to wake him up on schooldays—the voice she used before she got the pot of cold water. Her glare levitated him off the couch. When the door was closed between them and the living room Sig started in. “What the hell is going on? What did you bring him over here for?”

  “Oh, he called. He invited me to a book signing he was doing and I bought one and invited him over for a drink.”

  “Are you insane?” Sig asked. “Monty is due here in ten minutes and you’re bringing Bernard back? I’m trying to get a proposal out of Monty, not another old-age orgy.”

  “Lighten up. Lighten up, Sig.” Bruce threw himself onto the bed. “This is not brain surgery here. It’s only dating. Anyway, the guy says he might want to get into my card company.”

  “What else of yours might he want to get into?” Sig asked. “You are incorrigible. You are such a little flirt. There’s no excuse for your behavior. Jeopardizing this whole thing for …”

  “Hey Sig, we’re not talking about a cancer cure. It’s not like you need the money.” Sig felt like strangling him right there on the bed. “Anyway, I need the money. And Krinz isn’t such a bad guy, for an old pooftah.” Too furious to talk, Sig turned and stomped into the living room where she found her mother being helped into her coat by Monty.

  “Tempus fugit,” he was saying. “I’m taking your mom to a little concert.”

  “The opera?” Bernard asked longingly.

  “No.”

  “The San Francisco Orchestra at Carnegie Hall?” Bernard asked.

  “No. Warren Zevon down in the Village.”

  “Have a good time,” Sylvia said brightly.

  Monty raised his eyebrows and leered at her. “You have a good time, too,” he said. “Who sleeps with cats?” he asked in a teasing voice, obviously repeating a joke between them.

  “Mrs. Katz,” Sylvia giggled.

  “And sometimes Mrs. Nussbaum,” Monty reminded her and laughed.

  Bruce had joined them. “Monty, you got tickets to the Warren Zevon concert?” he asked in disbelief. “They’re almost impossible to buy.”

  “It’s a little prebirthday present.” Monty put his hands on Phyllis’s shoulders. “I understand tomorrow is your mother’s natal day.” He smiled at her. “You’re adorable in that hat. Very Betty Bacall.” He picked Phyllis up and spun her around the room while Bernard, Sig, Bruce, an
d Sylvia looked on, stunned.

  “I guess he’s just an excitable boy,” Bruce said, and they watched their mother and Montague Dunleathe leave for a night of rock and roll.

  Sharon, Barney, Jessie, and Travis were gathered in Sig’s apartment. Sharon and Sig were busy putting out the final touches for the big do. Todd was in a napkin-folding frenzy, ready to perform origami miracles of the season. He seemed to be in some kind of a snit. Well, why not? Sig was. It was Phyllis’s birthday—her seventieth, though she kept insisting she was only sixty-nine. In previous years Sig would have sent her mom a check and a card, but since she was here in New York and since her romance with Monty had blossomed, Sig and Bruce and Sharon were hoping that a family gathering might force Monty’s hand, while getting a ring on their mother’s.

  Despite the bustle, Sig became aware that it was unusually quiet. Where were the kids? “Who’s watching your children?” she asked Barney. Mrs. Katz was still diddling with the birthday cake and Barney seemed totally uninvolved. Sig pushed past them.

  “Oh my God! They’re throwing things over the railing.” Sig imagined poor Travis making a very quick trip down thirty-two stories. Sig brushed against her sister on her way by, strode across the festive dining room, through the immaculate living room, and out onto the tiny terrace. Travis had just launched a linen cocktail napkin out into space and Jessie was about to pitch a crystal champagne flute.

  “Freeze,” Sig told the two children in a voice that stopped both of them dead. “Give me back that glass, Jessie,” Sig told her niece.

  Mutely, Jessie shook her head and clasped the flute behind her.

  “Jessie,” Sig asked in her sweetest voice, “have you ever been spanked so very hard that your tushie turned red?”

  Jessie shook her head again.

  “Today might be the day. Now give the glass to your Auntie Sig.”

  Jessie thrust the Baccarat crystal at Sig, who smiled and took it gently from her hand. “Good choice, Jessie,” Sig said approvingly. “Your tushie is safe for one more day. Now go inside and behave or you and your brother won’t get your Hanukkah presents from Auntie.” The two kids preceded her into the apartment. “Barney, where are you?” Sig yelled. Barney came out of the kitchen, an olive martini in one hand and a clutch of hors d’oeuvres in the other. “Everything under control?” Sig asked him in a pleasant voice.