Marrying Mom Read online

  Phyllis Geronomous. A ticket to New York,” she announced. “One way. For a December fourth arrival.”

  “Do you have reservations?”

  “Plenty of them, but I’m going anyway.” The agent didn’t look up from her keyboard or even respond to Phyllis’s little joke. Phyllis shrugged. She knew this type. Old women were usually invisible to them.

  They were in a tiny, tacky office, desks lined up facing each other, and in the center was a small white Dynel Christmas tree with tiny pink Christmas bulbs hanging down. The travel agent had been recommended by her son-in-law—she was the young woman who owned the agency. Barney had said, “She’ll get you a deal. She owes me.” Phyllis didn’t like to think of what this annoying Floridian with the big hair could possibly owe Barney for, but she had to get a ticket somewhere. The clerk looked at her for the first time, as if she now knew something was expected but wasn’t sure what. “So … you’re going to The Big Apple?” she asked.

  “It looks that way.” She smiled sweetly. The only advantage to being an old dame was that if she smiled she could get away with murder.

  The agent consulted her screen, then made a baby mouth. “You should have planned ahead. Do you know that a one-way ticket costs as much as a round trip?” She spoke in a condescending, louder voice, as if Phyllis were both stupid and hard of hearing.

  “We’re in peak season for the holidays. You can’t meet the fourteen- or twenty-one-day advance ticket purchase deadline.”

  Tell me something I don’t know, Phyllis thought, while the agent continued. Where was the help or break in price Barney had implied? Typical. Barney Big Mouth. Phyllis certainly wasn’t going to ask this woman for any favors. “Anyway,” the agent continued, “don’t you want a round trip, for when you’re coming back?”

  “I’m never coming back!” Phyllis said vehemently. “I only moved down in the first place because Ira wanted to. But he’s dead, so why stay?” Phyllis immediately realized she’d said too much. God, next she’d be telling strangers on buses her entire life story. The potential humiliation of loneliness was like a direct kick to her pride. She took a breath. She’d fight back with the only weapon she’d ever used—her tongue. “Who needs to live in a place where everybody talks, but they’re so deaf they can’t listen? No one was born here, they just die here. Feh! Nothing has roots here, except the mangrove trees. I hate Florida!”

  “I was born in Gainesville,” the younger woman said. “I like Florida. Especially Miami.”

  Phyllis crossed her arms. “How can you like a city where the local rock band is called Dead German Tourists?” she asked.

  The condescending younger woman recoiled. “Well, the violence is bad for my business …” she began.

  “Not too good for the German tourists, either,” Phyllis added. “But the survivors are enough to make you homicidal. And the retirees!” Phyllis rolled her eyes. “I didn’t like any of these people when they lived up in New York and were important and pushy. Why the hell I should like them now, when they’re just hanging around all day and still being pushy, is beyond me.”

  “Florida is a nice place for retirement. The weather’s good and—”

  “You call ninety-nine percent humidity good weather?” Phyllis asked. “Compared to what? Djakarta? You should see the fungus garden growing on my winter coat! And another thing: Who says that everyone the same age should hang out together? I don’t want to be anywhere near these people. It’s an age ghetto. This place isn’t God’s Waiting Room; it’s Hell’s Foyer. It’s an elephant graveyard.” Phyllis straightened herself up to her full height. “Well, I’m no elephant. I’m a New Yorker.”

  Coldly, the agent looked at her. “New York is a dangerous place, especially for an older lady alone.” She was acting now as if Phyllis were incompetent, a doddering old wreck.

  “You mean you think I’m incapacitated?”

  “Uhh—no.” The witch raised her brows. “Certainly not,” she said, with the sincerity of a surgical nurse saying the procedure wouldn’t hurt at all.

  Why did every person under the age of fifty feel they could talk to an older woman as if she’d lost her marbles? Phyllis wondered. It made Phyllis feel more ornery than usual. “Look, just book me a seat. In first class. I’ll get all the bad advice I need from my children.”

  Phyllis waited while the ticket printed out and took comfort in the idea that this girl would some day also be postmenopausal. In forty-five years she’d be plucking whiskers out of that recessive chin—if she could still see her chin, and had enough eye-hand coordination to hold a tweezers.

  “Oh,” the young woman cooed as she handed Phyllis the ticket. “Your children are up there. That’s different. Well, I’m sure they’ll be happy to see you.”

  “My eldest is a very successful stockbroker. She’s got a gorgeous apartment on Central Park. And my youngest, my son, is an entrepreneur.” Phyllis paused for a moment. She couldn’t leave out Sharon. “My middle daughter has two adorable children.”

  “Which one will you be staying with?” the agent asked.

  “Oh, I’m sure they’ll all be fighting over that,” Phyllis told the agent. “As soon as they know I’m coming.”

  “Don’t they know?”

  Phyllis shook her head. “Surprise is an essential part of the art of war.” Mrs. Katz choked a little behind her. Phyllis turned her head. “Sylvia. Did you—”

  “Do you want this?” the agent said, interrupting in a rude way.

  Phyllis snatched the ticket from the agent and shook her head again. “Certainly. Just take the time from now on to show a little respect to your elders. Osteoporosis is in your future, too, you know.” Phyllis got up from the chair, turned, and walked away.

  Who’s going to pick Mom up at the airport on Wednesday?” Sharon asked. The three siblings were together at their elder sister’s, but Sharon was doing most of the talking. She was a big woman, though her hands and feet were dainty—almost abnormally tiny. Her eyes, buried in her pudgy cheeks, were the same dark brown as the unfrosted parts of her hair and darted nervously from side to side. She’d already obsessed about the airport for two and a half hours.

  Sig sighed. Between now and Wednesday she had a lot to cram into four days. She had to prepare for the marketing meeting, complete a newsletter, start her Christmas shopping on a nonexistent budget, and prepare Christmas cards for her clients, as well as coping now with the arrival of her mother. She always had to do everything, she thought, including making all the arrangements, dealing with their mother’s minimal finances, and regularly lending money to both her siblings. Sometimes you just had to draw the line. She waited. She knew that Sharon, like nature itself, abhorred a vacuum. She’d break the silence, and once she did …

  “I’m not going to do it,” Sharon responded, filling the gap. Her voice sounded firm, though her chin wobbled. “I’m not,” she repeated. The sureness was already gone, a whine beginning. Sharon was an expert in fine whines. Sig continued to wait. When she closed a large order she used this technique. “Don’t you have to go over the Triborough Bridge?” Sharon asked anxiously, waiting for a response. There was none, except a groan from Bruce as he exhaled cigarette smoke. “I don’t think I could do a three-borough bridge,” Sharon said in a little-girl voice. Sig began to feel sorry for her. “Let Bruce get her.”

  Bruce snorted. He was a greenish color, but it didn’t stop him from smoking, Sig thought, annoyed. One sibling ate. One smoked. Oh well.

  Before Bruce could react further, Sig intervened. “Bruce says he can’t. He’s meeting with some new potential partner.” He always was, and nothing ever came of it, but…. “I’ll just send a car,” Sig said wearily.

  “You can’t do that! Mom will talk about it for the next ten years.”

  “Look, Sharon, I can’t go, Sig can’t go, and you can’t go. What do you suggest?” Bruce asked nastily.

  Sharon ignored her brother. “Sig, she’ll never step into a limo. You know how she is abo
ut money. She’ll try to get all of her luggage onto a Fugazy bus. And she’ll have a stroke doing it. Then we’ll all have to nurse her.”

  There was a long pause as all three siblings graphically imagined it.

  “You’re right. We’ll all have to go,” Sig said. She was feeling queasy. The brunch had not gone well and then Phillip had shocked her by—

  “That’s settled. Now what do we do with her once she’s here?” Bruce asked, crushing out his cigarette in Sig’s pristine Steuben crystal ashtray and lighting another.

  “I have an idea.” Sharon looked up from the sofa, which she was weighing down with her bulk. Despite her frightened eyes, she smiled hopefully at her two siblings. Bruce, sunk in his chair, was still recovering from a big Friday night. The upcoming holidays, the low reorders, and the news about his mother’s imminent arrival had pushed him to overdo it.

  Sig, overwhelmed by it all, stood up and began fussily picking up tiny specks off the rug, moving the holly-decorated candles and napkins around and wiping microscopic smears from the cleared-up remains of her client brunch. She had to keep things in order for her B-list brunch tomorrow. Neither Sig nor Bruce even looked over at Sharon, but Sig—in a voice that sounded less than interested—at last asked, “So?”

  “Mommy, can I have some juice?” Jessie interrupted as she rubbed Sig’s white cashmere throw compulsively against her cheek. Despite Sig’s request to the contrary, Sharon had brought Barney and her daughter, though the former wasn’t minding the latter as Sharon had promised.

  “Here’s my idea,” Sharon said, ignoring her relentless daughter. “We put Mom in a home.”

  “Yeah. Right,” Bruce said with disgust.

  “Sharon, no home would take her. She’s not physically incapacitated,” Sigourney pointed out. “She isn’t sick or crippled …”

  “… Except emotionally,” Bruce agreed. “Anyway, there’s not a pen that could hold her. She’d start food riots. The Big House. Mom’s Wallace Beery in drag. She’d tunnel her way out with her dentures.”

  There was a pause. “We could tell them she’s mentally unstable,” Sharon suggested.

  “Hey. It just might work,” Bruce said, opening his eyes to narrow slits. “We take her to some high-security retirement home and say she has senile dementia.”

  “She’s always been demented, Bruce. It has nothing to do with her age,” Sigourney reminded him. “Anyway, she knows what day of the week it is. And who the president is.” Sigourney laughed bitterly. “When they ask her that one, they’ll get a fifteen-minute tirade!”

  “Mommy, can I have some juice?” Jessie asked again.

  “Barney, would you give Jessie a drink?” Sharon nearly shrieked. Both Sig and Bruce recoiled and winced. Barney had planted his own bulk in the kitchen and was simultaneously scarfing down every bit of the leftovers and watching the Rams game. Bruce clutched at his head. Sharon didn’t notice, nor did she move off the sofa. She certainly didn’t lower the volume. “Jessie, be patient or you’ll have to go sit in the thinking chair in the corner,” she warned in a little-girl voice. Jessie hung her head, then went to hide behind Sig’s eighty-dollar-a-yard Scalamandre silk curtains, taking the throw with her. “What if we say she’s delusional?” Sharon continued desperately. “We could say she’s not our mother—she only thinks she is.”

  For the first time Bruce sat up straight and fully opened his eyes. “Why Sharon, I’m proud of you. That’s a truly devious idea. I like that in a person.” He paused. “Gaslight. Mom as a small, Jewish Ingrid Bergman. We all play Charles Boyer. ‘But Auntie Phyllis, you know you have no children!’ Then we start hiding her hat in the closet.”

  “I hope you’re having a good time with this nonsense,” Sig said. “But Mom doesn’t have a hat, you’re out of the closet, and this nightmare begins in three days. Don’t encourage Sharon, Bruce.” Sig turned to her younger sister. “Sharri, no home would take Mom, and even if they did, she can’t afford it. I can’t afford it. Do you know what the DeWitt charges? Twenty thousand a month.”

  “Well, she doesn’t have to be on East Seventy-ninth Street,” Barney said, finally entering with the juice. His bare belly hung out under his Rams T-shirt. Despite his own girth he still criticized Sharon’s weight. “She doesn’t need anything that fancy. She’s no friggin’ duchess.”

  “Shut up, Barney,” Sig and Bruce told him simultaneously.

  “Just put her in a mental institution,” Barney said as he was about to hand the brimming glass to Jessie. “A place for the criminally insane. That’s where she belongs anyway. She’s crazy.”

  “She’s not crazy, Barney,” Sig began in a voice calibrated to be understood even by four-year-olds. “She’s not crazy: she’s hostile. To you. There is a difference.”

  “Well, I say she’s crazy.”

  Bruce raised his brows at his brother-in-law and looked over at Sharon. “Maybe it’s time for Barney to go sit in the thinking chair in the corner?” he said in a little-girl voice. Without a word, Barney turned and walked toward the kitchen. “Ah, that’s better,” Bruce said, closing his eyes. “Now I can die in peace.”

  “Bruce, stop it. Have you got any ideas?” Sig asked, watching Jessie and the juice nervously. Was her niece wearing a hole in the cashmere? And why did she worry herself about material things when her whole life was coming apart?

  “Well, I’ve been thinking. Mom is a kind of negative Auntie Mame.” He paused. “Eureka! That’s it: she’s the Anti-Mame. Not to be confused with the Antichrist, although in the South I understand she has been.” He paused. “What to do, what to do? Maybe we could spray her gold and sell her as a standing lamp at the Twenty-sixth Street flea market. She’s very fifties.”

  “Would you get serious?” Sig snapped. Bruce wasn’t stupid. It was just that he was always joking, right until he went bankrupt. She thought of a way to focus him. “Mrs. Katz called me, too. Apparently Mom told her she was planning to be at the Chelsea.”

  “Oh my God!” Bruce cried and nearly dropped his cigarette. “That’s only three blocks from my apartment!”

  “Isn’t that where Sid Vicious and all those rock stars died of overdoses?” Sharon asked.

  Bruce nodded, starting to feel well and truly panicked. “We should be so lucky. What would she die of? An overdose of Provera? The only way that stuff could kill you is if a carton of it fell on your head.”

  Sigourney ignored the two of them. She would have to handle her mother and the holidays and the end of her relationship with Phillip all at once. “Would both of you stop with the jokes and hysteria and try, for just a minute, to get a grip?”

  Bruce looked up at his older sister through bloodshot eyes. “Only if you’ll stop being so superior!” He clutched at bis aching head. “You know, the minute Mom gets here she’s going to start calling you ‘Susan’ again and you’re going to lose it. She’ll call you ‘Susan’ in front of all your brunch-eating, bond-dealing friends. And she’ll follow you to the bathroom after you eat to make sure you don’t vomit. You’ll balloon back up to a hundred and seventy pounds in no time.”

  “Pthew. Phtew.” Jessie said as she sprayed juice all over the carpet and drapes. “Pthew! This has stuff in it!”

  “Yes, sweetie. It’s called ‘pulp.’ It’s part of the orange,” Sharon explained serenely.

  “It’s fresh-squeezed,” Sig said through clenched teeth, attempting to avoid a cerebral hemorrhage. “Barney, would you bring some paper towels and club soda in here?” she called, managing not to scream. “I’ll wipe off your face and take away the juice,” she said to her niece.

  Jessie began to wail. Then, to Sig’s astonishment, so did Jessie’s mother. Sig and her brother looked at Sharon and then at one another in astonishment. Sig raised her brows in the international gesture for ‘what gives?’ Bruce shrugged in die answering symbol, ‘who knows?’ Even Jessie stopped crying and looked at her mother. Sig forgot about the stains and gingerly perched beside Sharon on the sofa. “What is it,
Sharri?”

  “I know you want Mom to come live with us. That’s what this is about. I know it. But she can’t. She just can’t!” Sharon sobbed. “We don’t have a place to put her. We don’t have a car for her to drive. Barney is using the spare room as his office until he gets a new job and, anyway, it would just be too much for me.”

  Sharon continued sobbing, and picked up the corner of the cashmere throw to wipe her eyes. “I know you’re going to try and make me, but I won’t. I just can’t. I can’t let her live with Jessie and Travis,” she whimpered. She fumbled in her voluminous purse for her inhaler. When she was upset she reached for her asthma medicine. “Last time she did we had to have six double sessions with the family therapist. Do you know what that costs?” Sharon wiped her nose on the throw, and Sig winced. “Travis was having nightmares every night. He thinks ‘Nana’ is a curse word. And Jessie went mute.”

  “Well, that would be a relief,” Bruce muttered. “Worth every penny.”

  Barney reentered the living room. It was too late. Jessie had cleaned her mouth and tongue with the other end of the white cashmere throw. Sharon’s sobs grew louder and uncontrollable. Sig now divided her concern equally between her sister and her afghan. She patted Sharon’s bloated shoulder, and gently handed her a paper towel.

  “Sharri, we don’t expect that. We know it would ruin your life.”

  “Not that it isn’t already ruined …” Bruce added. Sharon’s wails increased.

  Sig threw a now-look-what-you’ve-done look at Bruce. “We’re not trying to trick you into taking Mom home with you. First of all, it wouldn’t be fair. Secondly, Mom wouldn’t go. She doesn’t like Westchester.” Sig figured it wasn’t necessary to add that Phyllis also didn’t like Barney. “Thirdly, it wouldn’t really solve our problem. When she wasn’t nagging and interfering in your life, she’d come into town and ruin ours.” Sharri looked up. Slowly, her tears abated. “Listen,” Sig continued, “we have to find a permanent solution. A way to really neutralize her and separate her from us once and for all. And I think I have the way to do it. It’s got to be done right away. It’s a fill or kill.”