Marrying Mom Read online

  Sig ignored her. “So back to this marriage plan. You see why we think it would be nice for you? No matter how much money you have, it would make the financial burden easier. Not just on you, but on us, too.”

  “Have I asked for a penny? For one penny?” Phyllis demanded.

  “That’s not the point. You need some security. And you need companionship. You need attention, and time. The three of us are so busy. It would be nice for you to have someone in your Ufe who—”

  “Cut the crap. You want me to marry for money and get out of your hair. But I’m not that kind of a girl.”

  “You haven’t been a girl in sixty years, Mom.”

  “Oh, you know what I mean! I never mixed money in with it. You know, I could have had a stage career if I was willing to play hanky-panky for profit.”

  “Hanky-panky?” Bruce yodeled. “Hanky-panky?” He leaned back to laugh.

  Phyllis ignored him. “Anyway,” she said with some dignity, “I’ve never been attracted to a wealthy man in my life. They’re all so arrogant. They’re so controlling.”

  “Unlike anyone else in this room,” Bruce muttered.

  “We’re not saying you should marry someone you don’t like,” Sharon said, trying to be helpful. “You could like him and he could also be rich.”

  “I was already married. Been there, done that.”

  “Exactly. You were married to Daddy, and you liked it. So why not get married again?”

  “When I married your father, we married for life. Everyone did. Only movie stars got divorced, and even when they did, there was a scandal. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with divorce,” Phyllis added and looked pointedly at Sharon. “Some people need one. I wouldn’t want to discourage it.” Sharon, choosing to ignore Phyllis, picked a luscious, chocolate-covered strawberry and put half of it into her mouth. “Nowadays things are different,” Phyllis continued. “Nowadays every woman should either stay single or make four marriages.”

  “Four?” Sig asked. Four weddings? She hadn’t even had one. Her mother was as unpredictable as an Oklahoma twister, and almost as disorienting. “Four weddings and a funeral,” she said sarcastically.

  “Four,” Phyllis repeated with the maddening assurance she always had about everything. “Let’s face it: the first is always a mistake.” Phyllis smiled at Sharon again and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “You marry a Barney,” she said to Sharon. “Or, in my case, I marry an Ira. Who knows anything?”

  “Mom! What was wrong with Daddy?” Sharon bleated, her mouth full of the other half of the strawberry.

  “He was a man. Other than that, nothing. Not for a first marriage. A first marriage teaches you how disappointing a man is.”

  “Thanks, Mom. No wonder I’ve had such gender confusion,” Bruce said.

  “Oh, don’t take it so personally,” Phyllis told him.

  “So what should women marry again for?” Sig couldn’t stop herself from asking.

  “The second is for love. Ha! At least that’s what they think it is for at the time.” Phyllis shook her head. “You gotta work that stuff out of your system, or else you’re doomed. Everyone with brains finally gives up on it.” She looked at Bruce. “Except for you. You just keep chasing rainbows.” She gestured with her chin toward Todd, who was taking pictures from the balcony.

  The criticism slid off Bruce’s well-moisturized back. “What about number three?” Bruce asked. His mother occasionally fascinated him, like O. J.’s ride in the Bronco. You knew it would end in tragedy, but you couldn’t tear your eyes away.

  Phyllis sat back in her chair. “The third marriage should be for L.F.S.—lifetime financial security. Somebody who will take care of you and make sure you won’t ever be living on Social Security.”

  Sig felt mesmerized, a snake before the snake charmer. “And what’s the fourth one for?”

  “Companionship.” Phyllis smiled, almost wistfully. “After all, a Sylvia Katz only goes so far.”

  “Well, all this just proves our point: you do need to get another husband. You’re three short.”

  “It’s too late for me. I was talking about you. I don’t want a husband! I want more grandchildren.”

  “You have two already,” Sharon reminded her. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Yes, Sharon. You’ve delivered,” Phyllis said, then lowered her voice. “It’s the smart ones who never breed,” Phyllis said bitterly, under her breath.

  Bruce and Sig exchanged looks. “Not this again,” Sig muttered.

  “I thought you finally gave up on me, Mom,” Bruce told her. “I mean once I came out.”

  “Once you came out! You made such a drama out of it. Like I didn’t already know! Who used to sneak my mascara? And what other fourteen-year-old boy knew the name of every shoe designer in France?”

  “You knew?” Bruce asked, truly shocked. His mother nodded.

  “That’s why your greeting-card business is going nowhere. Gay men don’t need funny ‘I’ve come out of the closet’ announcement cards. Or queer Santas for Christmas. And lesbians don’t need anything funny.”

  Bruce sank into a chair. “I have to take this in. I’m so confused I can’t think straight.”

  “You never could, Bruce.”

  “But you were always nagging me to get married.”

  Phyllis lowered her voice. “Yes. Because I want you to be settled down. Pick someone and make a commitment.” She jerked her head toward Todd snapping pictures of Central Park. “He seems nice. Did I ever say it had to be a girl?” Phyllis stood up. “Gender, shmender. Look at your sisters. Definitely not a recommendation for my sex.” She raised her hand in a placating way to both Sig and Sharon. “Don’t blame yourselves. You did the best you could for brunettes,” she told them.

  Then she leaned toward Bruce and put her hand on his knee. “I screwed up with them,” she admitted sotto voce. “What’s his name again?”

  “Todd.”

  “Todd? You sure he’s Jewish?”

  “Yes, he’s Jewish, but he’s also too young and probably too dumb. He’s a visual kind of guy. He looks a lot like David Hemmings in Blow-Up,” Bruce sniffed. “Not to be confused with the remake. Travolta’s adorable, but DePalma can’t compare with Antonioni.”

  “Nothing wrong with young and dumb. They make good wives. Better than I was. You serious about him?”

  “Ma, would you leave me alone? I like him. He’s nice. But he needs his own space.”

  Phyllis shook her head. “I ought to rent a loft in New York for all the men who need more space,” Phyllis said. “You and your sister Susan have run into at least a dozen of them. But you know how to have fun. Now, though, it’s time to settle down. Find a nice decorator who cooks. Stop living out of takeout boxes. Adopt a nice Chinese baby. You know?”

  “Well, if you’re so hot for marriage, why won’t you get married?” Sig asked, totally exasperated. “Why aren’t you cooperating?”

  “Darling, I was married. I drove your father crazy for forty-seven years. Then he died. I think that’s enough. Now it’s your turn to drive somebody crazy.”

  They had come to a stalemate. Sig, as always, tried to think fast to come up with an approach—any approach—that might work.

  “I want you children to know: I’m here for you. I’m going to make up for all the times I didn’t stay home with you when you were sick. I’m going to make up for all the PTA meetings and the Girl Scout meetings I missed. I’m going to make up for—”

  “Mom,” Bruce said. “I understand you have regrets. I think all parents do. But you can make it up to us by going back to Florida.”

  Phyllis tried hard not to react. After all, Bruce was deeply hurt. Ira hadn’t paid enough attention to him. Or maybe she hadn’t. Or maybe she’d paid too much. Whatever it was, hadn’t she or Ira made him into what he was? She turned to Sig.

  “Mom,” Sig said, “this is very important to me.”

  “And to me,” Bruce added. Sharon was silent, but she
was watching Phyllis intently, as if her life depended on it.

  Then, suddenly, Phyllis realized what this was all about. She’d been on the right track. The children did need a mother, but that wasn’t all. They needed a father, too. This was their cry for help, and this time she had to recognize it. She wouldn’t fail them again the way she had before, or the way her mother and father had failed her.

  But what would Ira think? In her whole life, Phyllis had never had any man but Ira. Wouldn’t Ira have been hurt? And would any man but Ira have her? She considered the idea and bit her lip.

  Maybe, just maybe, if she could serve as whatever they called it—a rolling model or something—then Sig could find a decent man, Bruce would finally settle down, and Sharon would leave that shlub Barney. Phyllis wasn’t sure she could make it happen, but at least she could try. “I’ll consider it,” Phyllis said.

  “So you’ll cooperate? You’ll meet some of these men we’ve searched out. You’ll be nice to them?”

  “Nice?” Phyllis asked. “I don’t think we said anything about being nice.”

  “You’re right. That would be too much to expect. But you won’t immediately pull a Lorena Bobbitt? You’ll encourage them, as best you can?”

  Phyllis sighed. “Garage space here is really four hundred a month?” She paused, ruminating. “If I hadn’t given Sylvia Katz my Buick, I could have lived in the car.” She stared for a while out the window onto the park. “Maybe I’ll call Sylvia.”

  “Are you going to do it?” Sig asked after the silence had lengthened.

  “Please, Mom,” Sharon begged.

  “With sugar on top,” Bruce added.

  God, when was the last time her children had been united on anything? This was important, deeply important to all three of them. And if a man would make them happy, if a surrogate father would do the job, who was she—or Ira for that matter—to object? Phyllis at last nodded.

  “Then you’ll do it?” Sig asked.

  “Does the Pope write bestsellers?” Phyllis asked.

  Bruce was sy doing the researchgarding his mother critically, as he always did. But this time there was a purpose. Sig had given Bruce some cash, a budget, and authorization to use her department store charges. Today was the day the transformation was to begin.

  Bruce and his mother had met at the Pierre and the two of them were walking down Fifth Avenue past Tiffany’s, the Plaza, and the Sherry Netherland. All the doorways and windows were dressed up in elegant New York Christmas decor—silk ribbons, real balsam, and ever-so-subtle dustings of artificial snow. It was only the crowd that looked bad. Bruce observed them in parkas, sweatpants, and ugly, lumpy winter gear and shuddered. His mother was as bad as any of them. Heterosexuals—they didn’t know a thing about style. “We start with the hair.”

  “My hair? What’s wrong with my hair?”

  “Only everything,” Bruce told his mother calmly.

  “The color. The cut. The …” he shuddered, “the perm. Why do all old women think ‘blond’ and ‘perm’? We need a genius for this.” He lifted a strand. “This is worse than the Hindenburg disaster. And you call that a part? Moses couldn’t fix this. We need to get to an emergency room.”

  “Mount Sinai?” Phyllis asked sarcastically, because of the Moses wisecrack, but Bruce ignored her little joke.

  “Flex. The Einstein of hair color.”

  “Flex? His mother named him Flex?”

  “His real name is Angelo. Flex is his professional name.”

  “A hairdresser with a nom des cheveaux? Forget about it.”

  “You’re going, If we can get an appointment.”

  “Bruce, if I can get an appointment with a genius, I’m not going to talk about coiffures. I’ve been dying my hair myself for twenty years and I already know how.”

  “You’re always the expert. You know more about hair color than Flex, the style coordinator for Dramatics for Hair.”

  “Well …”

  Bruce, always quick to give up his anger, took his mother’s arm in an affectionate way. “Come on, Mom, cooperate. You’re as stiff as Charlton Heston in Ben Hur. I know it’s against your religion, but just this once, break a commandment.”

  “Excuse me. Isn’t there one about honoring thy father and thy mother?”

  “Yes, but not my mother’s hairstyle. Come on, girlfriend. I’m taking you to Columbus Avenue.”

  Columbus Avenue had been a blur of those new kind of boutiques, ones that Phyllis never went into, that seemed to either be crammed full of an overwhelming selection of insane choices or stripped down to empty, displaying only three black T-shirts each costing four hundred bucks. There was construction on the street, and piles of dirty snow, and Christmas crowds of young people all making their way easily through the chaos and cold. Phyllis hated to admit it, even to herself, but the temperature and the people were all a lot cooler than she had remembered. When was the last time she’d been in New York in the winter? The bustling and pushing and the temperature sapped her strength. After moving through three blocks of it, she was grateful to have Bruce take her arm and lead her into a warm haven.

  Well, a kind of haven. The beauty parlor wasn’t anything like the ones Phyllis was used to. There were no rows of women sitting in their own bell-shaped dryers. Instead, the music was blaring so loudly that Phyllis could hear nothing else. The very strange thing was that she also couldn’t hear the music. It was that loud, or it was the way the singers—if you could call them that—sang. Skinny kids were running up and down the long, narrow shop wearing black and white outfits, clients were constantly coming in, conversing in shouts, being seated, and getting washed and blow-dried. Each workstation was framed with colored Christmas garlands that swayed whenever the gunlike hair dryers were on. Lights, those little white Christmas tree ones, were blinking all over. And that was aside from the hot pink and blue neon that outlined the reception desk and waiting area. It wasn’t just her. The place, she decided, would definitely throw an epileptic into a seizure.

  But it wasn’t the conversations or lights that were so disorienting: it was the damn blaring noise over the radio, or hi-fi, or whatever they called it. It made a buzz in her ears and a kind of confusion in her brain. Phyllis didn’t like it. After all, she prided herself on being alert. She wasn’t one of those dotty old ladies—a Sylvia Katz—who barely knew what was going on. Yet she’d been robed and shampooed and coated with chemicals and rinsed and conditioned and she still couldn’t hear what the loud music was about. She stopped thinking and concentrated on the words.

  “Did that singer just say ‘Hot tramp, I love you so’?” she asked.

  Bruce, who had been deep in a shouted conversation with Flex, looked up. He cocked his head and listened effortlessly for a moment. “Yeah. It’s Bowie. ‘Rebel, Rebel.’”

  “You like Bowie?” Flex asked Phyllis.

  “Who is she? Is she new?”

  The two guys laughed. “Mom, he’s a really famous rock star. He’s been around forever. You know, Ground Control to Major Tom.” Phyllis hadn’t a clue, but she nodded. She wondered if this was what it would feel like if the Alzheimer’s kicked in. She was tired. She had to admit to herself that, despite her temperament and her intentions, she didn’t have the stamina that she used to.

  Well, she was almost seventy, she told herself. What did she expect? These kids—no one in the beauty parlor seemed older than thirty—these kids were listening to their Frank Sinatra and using their energy just the way she had used up hers. Nothing to regret. Nothing unusual.

  The music changed to a rap tune that Phyllis tried to hear. She actually thought it was “Jingle Bells,” but it was such a different beat that she wasn’t even sure if that was what she was hearing. She sighed. “Just a little longer,” Flex said kindly. “Are you happy with the color?” Phyllis shrugged. She couldn’t see in the mirror, though it covered the wall in front of her from ceiling to counter, but she wasn’t going to ask to put her glasses on again because Flex had
taken them off when her hair was washed and Bruce wouldn’t give them back. He’d made that very clear. She squinted at the wall.

  “Very nice,” she said, feeling a little defeated by it all. Flex squeezed her shoulder kindly. He was really a very nice boy: his name wasn’t Flex. It was Angelo, and all the other kids there had weird names that weren’t their real ones—Ice and Storm and Electric and Heater. Why, Phyllis wondered, did children change their names? Why did Susan insist on being called Sigourney? It hurt her. It was an ugly name. Susan was so pretty. Why would someone want to be called Sig, or Flex, or Heater? You were given a name by your mother. After all, it wasn’t easy to give birth, and naming seemed the least a mother could expect in return for a life she had created. Phyllis sighed again and felt all of her sixty-nine years.

  Flex tapped her shoulder gently, as if in response to her sigh. “All done,” he said. “What do you think?” She looked toward the mirror, but could see nothing.

  “Unbelievable,” Bruce said. “Flex, you’re a genius.” Then he handed her glasses back to Phyllis. A woman stared out at her from the mirror, but—for a moment, in her fatigue and disorientation—Phyllis didn’t recognize herself.

  “My God,” she said. “Not bad for a woman in her sixties.”

  “Yeah. And great for one about to be seventy.”

  “Seventy? Really?” Flex asked.

  “Sixty-nine,” Phyllis snapped. Seventy frightened her. She avoided their eyes and instead focused on her image in the mirror.

  Her hair had been completely re-created. Instead of the permed, blondish mound that she wore, hers was now a thick, straight, silvery crown. She shook her head, just to clear it. Her hair moved around her face, leaving Urde wisps against her cheeks, where the ends curled, just slightly, onto her face. She stared, and almost dropped her jaw. Light bangs covered the deep wrinkles on her forehead and somehow the color or the cut made her skin seem brighter.

  Behind her glasses, her eyes were nearly popping out. You could still see her chicken neck and she still looked like an old lady, but not so old and more like … a lady. Phyllis blinked behind her lenses.