Marrying Mom Read online

  “What a tragedy,” Sylvia tsked. “And in such a family.”

  “It’s in my family, too,” Phyllis snapped. “What are we, belly lox? Nothing wrong with it.” Plenty was wrong with it, in Phyllis’s opinion, and with Susan and Sharon, too, but it was no one’s job but hers to point it out.

  If Phyllis ever took Sylvia seriously she’d be offended. But, luckily, she knew how ridiculous it would be to be offended by anything Sylvia said. The woman had a strong constitution, a good heart, and a weak mind.

  “I heard the Queen Mother had a colostomy,” Sylvia said in a lowered voice. “Like my Sid.” For the decade before Sid left her, Sylvia had coped with not only her own heart condition but also Sid’s colon cancer. “Can you imagine? All those garden parties.” Phyllis ignored the non sequitur. Who knew how Sylvia’s mind worked?

  They had reached the end of The Broadwalk and, as always, Sylvia had to touch the post implanted in the macadam to stop vehicular traffic.

  “What would happen if, just once, we walked to the end and you didn’t hit the barrier?” Phyllis asked.

  “Everybody touches the post,” Sylvia said. “You have to touch the post.”

  “No you don’t. I don’t.”

  “You. You’re different.”

  “Nu? Tell me something I don’t know.”

  Phyllis sighed. Different was fine. It was lonely that was the problem. She didn’t know how long she’d been lonely. Certainly way before Ira died. After a while, it became a fact of life and you just didn’t notice it any more. That was the danger. It was like smelling gas: if you didn’t pay attention to it, it could kill you. In Florida, Phyllis hadn’t had a really good friend, one who understood her and got her jokes. Even Ira, long before he died, had stopped responding much. But nobody talked to their husbands. What was there to say after forty-seven years? “Do you still like my brisket?” “Do you think that I ought to shorten this skirt?” “Should we pull our troops out of Bosnia?”

  Phyllis still had a lot to say, but who wanted to listen? And who had anything interesting to say back? Which was why she was now walking down The Broadwalk with Sylvia Katz. Sylvia was no Madame Curie, didn’t understand half of what Phyllis was talking about, but at least she wasn’t offended by Phyllis’s wisecracks.

  Most of the women that Phyllis knew were offended by her. She had to face it, she had a big mouth. She always had. And if she offended most of the women she met down here, they in turn bored her. They’d talk about recipes, grandchildren, shopping, and more recipes. They bored her stiff. Sylvia was a relief. No kids, no recipes, no aggravation.

  Phyllis’s own children interested her, but not just to brag about. They interested her because they were interesting, not because they were hers. Susan was brilliant, Bruce was remarkably witty, and Sharon … well, Sharon, she had to admit, favored her father’s side of the family. Still, she loved them. Like Queen Betty must love her brood. It didn’t mean she approved of their behavior, or that they approved of hers.

  “This means you’ll be with the kids for the holidays. Nice for you.” She sounded wistful. “Nice for them.” Sylvia paused. “Do they know you’re going up?” she asked.

  Phyllis was silent.

  “You haven’t told them, have you?” Sylvia asked accusingly.

  “Not yet,” Phyllis admitted.

  “You have to. You have to,” Sylvia said. Her own son had both refused a Thanksgiving invitation and not extended one to her. “If you don’t tell them, I will.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Phyllis warned.

  “When are you going to tell them?”

  “Next Purim,” Phyllis said, and opened the gate to Pinehearst for her friend.

  You’re joking.”

  “You wish.”

  “Come on,” Sig Geronomous said cavalierly. “It’s just one of those empty threats. One of those nutty things she says that get us all jerked around for nothing. Like the time she corresponded with the Asian bride and wanted to import her for you.”

  “She means this,” Sig’s brother, Bruce, told her. “Todd, get over here and tell her that it’s true.” Bruce didn’t live with Todd, but they had been spending a lot of time together. Whenever Sig asked if it was serious Bruce evaded the question.

  “Bruce has the proof,” Todd shouted into the receiver.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because she gave Mrs. Katz the rattan magazine rack,” Bruce responded.

  “The magazine rack? Oh my God!” Susan Geronomous—now known to her friends and business associates as Sigourney—accidentally dropped the telephone receiver. It crashed so hard against her granite countertop that her brother Bruce, at the other end of the phone, winced.

  “What was that? Did you hurt yourself?”

  “I wish.” Sigourney had gotten control of the phone; now she just had to control herself. This couldn’t really be happening … nothing was ever as bad as it seemed … absence made the heart grow fonder … too many cooks—she stopped. She was going crazy. This couldn’t be true. Christmas and her mother both coming? She might as well pull out the razor blades now. Sig looked down appraisingly at her elegant wrist. “She just casually mentioned that she gave away the rattan magazine rack?”

  “I’m way ahead of you,” Bruce sang. “Mom didn’t tell me. It’s not a setup. It was Mrs. Katz who called.”

  “When?”

  “Twenty minutes ago.”

  “Mom could have put her up to it.”

  “I already called the building manager. Confirmation. And there’s a garage sale this week.”

  “A garage sale? She doesn’t even have a garage, for God’s sake.”

  “Yard sale, lawn sale, tag sale. Sigourney, don’t play your word games now. It’s happening. So, what are we going to do?”

  Sigourney tried to regain some control. “What did Mrs. Katz say when you talked to her? Exactly. Word for word.”

  “That Mom was leaving Florida for good. That she’s packing up and moving to New York. She’s getting a ticket today. She wants to arrive on Wednesday.”

  “Wednesday! That’s only six days from now.”

  “Mmm. Good counting, Sig. That’s why you earn the big bucks. Actually, it’s five, since you don’t officially count—”

  “Don’t be so anal, Bruce. And sarcasm is not necessary at this moment. We’ll have more than we can handle starting Wednesday.” Sigourney tapped the countertop. Her mother, living here in New York again. Calling her. Looking in her closets. Commenting. Criticizing. Oh God! Fear gripped Sig’s chest like a Wonderbra. “This is the end of life as we know it, Bruce. How can we stop her?”

  “Hmmm.” He paused, ruminating. Bruce was smart. Maybe he’d have a solution. “How about plastic explosives in the cargo bay? We’d take down a lot of innocent lives, but we would know it was a small price to pay.”

  “Bruce!”

  “Come on, Sig. It would be an act of kindness. People love tragedies at holiday time. It gives them something to watch on TV. Makes them feel better about the tragedy unfolding under their own Christmas trees.”

  “Amen, brother!” Todd yelled in the background. Todd had been raised a Southern Baptist in Tulsa, Oklahoma, before he ran off to New York City to become an agnostic photographer.

  “Bruce!” Sigourney forced herself to exhale while simultaneously staring up at the immaculate blue ceiling of her seventy-thousand-dollar kitchen. Her home, her beautifully designed, luxurious, and comfortable home, was her haven, her safe place where perfection reigned. It comforted her as nothing else did. She breathed deeply. Then her eyes focused on a tiny line. Was that a crack right in the corner? Was the glaze going already, despite Duarto’s assurances that the fourteen hand-lacquered layers would last ten lifetimes? She had picked up the pen and jotted a note to herself to call him before she realized what she was doing. This news, this shattering news had come, and she was writing notes to her decorator? Where were her values, her priorities? It could only be denial kicking in.
She’d better focus. “Did you speak to Sharon yet?” she asked her brother.

  “You are losing it. I don’t bother to call her with good news—not that I’ve had any of that lately.” Bruce, at his end of the phone, eyed his shabby brownstone apartment. The two rooms, though neat and cozy, were cluttered not only with all his worldly goods but also with what remained of his entire business stock—the gay greeting card line he’d created and marketed until his partner had absconded with most of the money last year. And the season wasn’t going as well as he’d hoped. It had really only just begun, but already stock had started being returned by Village shops. Queer Santa wasn’t selling as he’d expected. Bruce sighed. Sig was buzzing in his ear. He adored his older sister, but she was sometimes so controlling, especially when she was frightened. He interrupted her chatter. “Sig, if I called Sharon, which I wouldn’t, she’d just tell me how it was going to be even worse for her than for us, that it was always worse for her.” Bruce sighed again, this time explosively. “I know it’s the middle-child syndrome, but you’d think at thirty-seven she’d get over it.”

  Sharon was their disappointed and disappointing sister—four years younger than Sig, and only a year older than Bruce. But she looked twice his age. She had let herself go—it wasn’t just her weight, it was her frosted hair that looked ten years out of date, the Talbots clothes in size sixteen that even a skinny Connecticut WASP couldn’t get away with, and more than anything else it was the way her eyes and her mouth and her shoulders drooped in parallel, descending bell curves.

  “We have to call Sharon,” Sigourney said, ignoring her brother. “This is too big to handle on our own.”

  “Well, she’s bigger than both of us,” Bruce laughed. “Not that she’ll be any use.”

  Sigourney knew all about it. Bruce had almost no patience for Sharon, but Sigourney felt sorry for her fat, whiny, frustrated, younger sister. Maybe it was because Sharri made her feel guilty. Maybe it was because Sig herself was so successful. Whatever the reason, she had no time now to listen to Bruce’s usual sniping. “I’ll call her,” Sigourney said. “Can you meet here Saturday? I’m giving a pre-Christmas brunch at eleven for my A-list clients. Sunday I’m doing the B-list with the leftovers. But three on Saturday would be good for me.”

  “Well, don’t put yourself out,” Bruce said nastily. “What does that make us? C-list?”

  Sig knew he was probably hurt because she hadn’t invited him and Todd to either brunch. Bruce didn’t realize how badly her own business had fallen off and she was too proud to tell him. She was also embarrassed about her necessary small economies, like using the catering firm for one party and making it do for two. But this wasn’t the eighties anymore. And she couldn’t afford to have Todd and Bruce acting up and alienating prospects and clients.

  “I’ll come,” Bruce finally agreed, “but there’s nothing we can do.” He began to recite aloud in a singsong: “Roses are red / Chickens are white / If you think you can stop her / You’re not very bright.”

  “No wonder your greeting card business is in trouble,” was all Sig answered. “I’m hanging up and calling Sharon.”

  “Well, don’t let Barney come,” Bruce begged, defeated. Barney was not just Sharon’s loser husband; he was also a blowhard. He was big and barrel-chested and balding. But what Sig and Bruce found intolerable was that he managed to lose every job he’d ever had while making Sharon feel like a failure. Barney was the kind of person who explained to heart surgeons at cocktail parties some new technique he’d read about in Reader’s Digest. In short, he was an asshole.

  Now it was Sig’s turn to sigh. “I’ll try to make it just us, but lately Sharon hasn’t been driving. She gets those panic attacks when she has to cross a bridge.”

  “Oh, come on. She’s a victim of faux agoraphobia. She’s just too lazy to drive into the city. She’s probably just trying to get a handicapped parking permit. Totally faux.”

  “Bruce! That’s not true.”

  “Oh, Sig, Sig, Sig, Sig! Sometimes life could do with a little embellishment.”

  “My God! You sounded exactly like Mother then.”

  “I did not.”

  “You did.”

  “It’s started,” Bruce sang out.

  Sig paused, biting back the need to tell him it was his fault. “You’re right,” she admitted. “Okay. It’s Saturday at three and now I’ll call Sharon.”

  “See ya. Wouldn’t wanna be ya!” Bruce yodeled. Sig merely shook her head and hung up the phone.

  Sig stood silently for a few moments in the center of her immaculate living room. She knew she shouldn’t do it, but she was drawn irresistibly to the vanity in her bedroom. She looked around at the room and its beautiful decor. She’d have to sell the co-op, no doubt about it. She was behind in her maintenance payments and starting to get nasty looks from the coop board president when she ran into him in the lobby.

  Her client list had dropped, her commissions were down, and her own portfolio had taken a beating. Welcome to the nineties. Sig had done her best to downsize her expenses—she hadn’t used her credit cards for months, had paid her phone bill and Con Ed on time, and had spent money only on the necessities. But it wasn’t enough. Business had slowed to a trickle and even if she sold her stock now, she’d take a loss and have no possibility for the future. She’d just have to sell her apartment.

  But this apartment was more than just equity: it was her haven. Maybe that was because she felt her mother had never made a home for her. As Phyllis had often said, “I’d be happy living out of a suitcase in a clean motel.” The very thought made Sig shudder. Besides, the apartment was her visible sign of success, her security, and a place she could come after a long hard day of gambling with other people’s money to lick her wounds. It was beautiful. It was perfect, and she’d have to face the fact that it was empty and she would have to sell it. The money would evaporate faster than good perfume out of an open flask and she would wind up destitute. Or worse: she’d wind up in an apartment in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

  Sig looked into the mirror as she knew, irrevocably, what she would have to do. She didn’t like what she saw. Was Bruce right? She wasn’t just getting older, but also bitter? Were those new lines forming at the corner of her mouth? She stared more deeply into the mirror. And then her eyes flitted to the reflection in one pane of the three-sided glass. For a second something about the softness in the line of her jaw reminded her of … what? She was puckering, decaying, and withering. She was going the way of all flesh. Sig shuddered. But it wasn’t just the age thing that gave her the shivers; she had looked like … her mother.

  Sig moved her head but the trick of light, or the angle, was gone. Jesus, she would wind up alone. She wouldn’t even have the comfort of three children to annoy and be annoyed by. Tears of self-pity and something else—a deeper sorrow—rose to her eyes. She was getting older, but she was also getting bitter. The thought of Phillip Norman made her sad. Sig had known he was no genius, but he was presentable, fairly successful—if a corporate lawyer could be considered that—and his warmth for her made up for some of her coolness. It was nice to be wanted, and Phillip seemed to want marriage and a child. She would have to at least compromise—she’d give up the idea of a soulmate for a friend, a partner, and a family. But she was starting to believe that Phillip was even less than a friend: he was an empty suit. He and all of the other empty suits and bad boys who had preceded him made her mouth tremble. She looked like shit and she felt worse.

  It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been trying to find somebody, someone to settle down with, to marry. Even to have a family with, if it wasn’t too late. Her mother acted as if it was Sig who was stopping it from happening. But the truth was there were no men who were interested. Despite her good haircut, her visible success, her careful makeup, her Armani suits—or maybe because of them—Sig couldn’t remember the last time a new man had expressed any interest in her. The truth was, it wasn’t like she had a choice except Phillip. Oh
, she could have affairs with any of the more interesting but very married men she worked with, but she wasn’t a Glenn Close/Fatal Attraction kind of girl. She didn’t steal other women’s husbands. And other than other women’s husbands, who had looked at her lately? The Gristede’s delivery boy? Her elevator operator? Women over thirty-five started to become invisible. She was losing it, and she was losing it fast.

  She picked up a lipstick, about to paint a little color onto her lips when her hand froze in midair. Why bother, she thought. Why bother to paint it on. She was losing it—she had lost it. The bloom of youth, the promise of fecundity that attracted men, that even on some unconscious level promised them a breeder, was disappearing. Perhaps men her age wanted younger women not only for their looks but because of the hormonal message a young girl sent: that she could still carry their child. That she could demonstrate their virility to the world with her upright breasts and a bulging belly. Sig’s periods were still regular. But how long would it last? She wasn’t a breeder. The bloom of youth was gone, and she’d grow old alone.

  She looked deeper into the mirror. Under her mother’s brittle veneer, wasn’t there a desperation? Wasn’t there a gallantry that seemed to say to Sig that it was better to go down fighting, to be feisty and annoying, than to ever be perceived as pathetic and lonely?

  Sig looked around once more at the bedroom and rose and wandered through all her perfect rooms. She wound up, as usual, in her kitchen. Her eyes immediately focused on the one flaw—the tiny crack in the lacquer finish. Had it grown? Perhaps she should have spent the money on smoothing her own wrinkles, in lacquering her own finish. Perhaps if she lost a few pounds more, did a little more time on the treadmill, and had her eyes done, she could attract someone more acceptable, more interesting, more human than Phillip Norman. Then again, maybe not. Sig reached for the door of her Subzero refrigerator, pulled open the freezer, and grabbed a pint container of Edy’s low-fat double Dutch chocolate ice milk. She sat on the floor and, using a tablespoon, began to eat it all. She rarely gave herself over to this behavior, but the sweetness in her mouth was comforting. She understood how her sister had ballooned to over two hundred pounds. Thinking of Sharon, she realized she hadn’t yet called her. Well, she’d call her later. After the Edy’s was gone.