Marrying Mom Page 9

  “We know how hard you’re trying,” Sharon soothed. “We appreciate what you’re trying to do. I’m sorry about Bernard.”

  “That was in the days when men didn’t come out of the closet,” Bruce said. “He’s out now. He’s way out in front.”

  “Mom could cooperate just a little bit, just a little bit,” Sig said angrily, brushing away at her eyes and her ruined eye makeup. “She could have tried with Bernard, for chrissake. She didn’t have to make herself Enemy of the People.”

  “She should have, she could have, but she won’t. That’s our Mom,” said Bruce.

  “On top of everything else, to spend most of the evening chatting to some minor director of a charity! Some loser in a dinner jacket that I saw Leslie Howard wear in 1939 …”

  “What was his name?” Sharon asked. “Monty what?”

  “God, I don’t know. It sounded like a game show host or a hairdresser,” Bruce added.

  Sig wiped her eyes and seemed to regain possession of herself. “Montague Dunleathe,” she said. “Mom’s Prince Charming. They could have danced all night. Look, I can’t bankroll Operation Geezer Quest based on these results. But check the Dunleathe guy out, Sharon. And check on Paul Cushing.” Sig looked over at her younger sister and just shrugged. “Bruce, you salvaged Bernard as best you could. Call him on some pretext or other. Anyway, Mom didn’t do what we wanted, but we’ll give it one more shot. After that, I swear to God, I’ll wash my hands of her.”

  Phyllis opened her eyes, didn’t know where she was, and for a moment had to recollect herself. The few times before, when she’d woken up disoriented, it had frightened her. But this morning—it was the morning—she felt not the slightest anxiety.

  Where was she? It felt like a puzzle to play with more than it felt like a diamond. The bed was enormous and the sheets were so smooth—she stretched her arms over her head as she tried to recall what she’d been dreaming and where she was. Something about dancing, and the song that still ran through her head was that old rock ‘n’ roll one that Bruce and his friends used to sing about: being under the broadwalk down by the sea. It was all so very pleasant.

  Then she awoke fully. It wasn’t a dream. She’d been dancing all night with Monty, the man she’d met on the plane. Unlike Ira, Monty was a very good dancer. Phyllis shut her eyes for a moment. Her legs hurt her—there was no doubt about it—but she didn’t care. Her feet hurt, too. Maybe that was a blister on the left heel? But Phyllis smiled. So? She’d put on a Band-Aid and take a couple of Motrin. It was worth it. She wasn’t under The Broadwalk yet.

  Her eyes swept across the vast white expanse of the bed. Then she remembered: the suite at the Pierre, the charity ball … the whole megillah. She pulled up the sheets to cover her shoulder. What size was this bed, anyway? It was bigger than any she’d ever seen. Was it bigger than a California King size? Maybe it was a Pierre Prince. Was a Pierre Prince more important than a California King? Who knew? There was room for all of Coxey’s Army in there with her. She rolled over, ignoring the pain in her right hip. She looked at the clock on the bedside table. It was early yet. If she had been in Florida she’d be about to begin the schlep along the beachfront with Sylvia. She smiled. Today, instead, she’d bundle up, walk along Fifth Avenue and look in all the store windows to see the Christmas displays before everybody else was up and out. She’d wrap herself warmly and she’d wear the new brown leather gloves she’d managed to buy herself at Bergdorf’s. But first, maybe, she’d just pull up the blanket and sleep for a minute …

  When the buzzer rang, Phyllis sat up. Who could that be? The chambermaid never came this early. And certainly the children wouldn’t be up yet. She’d already learned that New York was a late-rising town on the weekends. Phyllis gingerly swiveled her legs out of bed, grabbed the robe that the hotel had thoughtfully spread across the foot of the bed, and moved toward the door of the suite. The bell rang again before she could get to it, then there was a knocking. Forgetting to even look through the peephole, Phyllis threw the door open angrily. “What! What?” she asked, and then, as the door swung back she saw a huge bunch of flowers, taller than most bridal chuppahs, with Sylvia Katz standing behind them, in the hallway of the Pierre, dressed in a wrinkled green polyester jogging suit. The jacket was half unzipped and Phyllis could see part of the “I Love New York” logo on-Sylvia’s T-shirt.

  “You up yet?” Sylvia asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Phyllis told her. “I think I’m having a bad dream.”

  “Very nice. No ‘hello’ and you call me a nightmare,” Sylvia said, unperturbed, as she stepped in past Phyllis. She was carrying her patent leather purse and an Eckerd’s shopping bag. Sylvia left the flowers in the hall, but she set the bag down on the coffee table, appropriated a silk-covered club chair, and sat in it, her purse primly perched on her lap. “There,” she said.

  Phyllis carried in the flowers and turned to her friend. “When did you get here?” Phyllis asked. “How did you get here so early?”

  “I took the last plane last night. I got in at eleven forty-five, but I didn’t want to bother you.”

  “So where did you go?”

  “I didn’t go, I stayed. I stayed at the airport.”

  “At the airport motel? At La Guardia?” Phyllis was shocked. Sylvia didn’t spend money like that.

  “No. What motel? At the airport. I had a chair.”

  “You spent all night sitting up in a chair at the airport?”

  Sylvia Katz shrugged. Phyllis thought, with something close to a pang of guilt, of her huge comfortable bed. “You should have called,” she said.

  “I did. You were out. So I stayed at the airport. It was fine.”

  “But what are you doing here?”

  “I had to get away,” Sylvia said.

  “Away? Away from what?”

  “I couldn’t stand the pressure I was getting.”

  “What pressure? Who was bothering you?”

  “Ira. Your husband. You know how he can be sometimes. All I would hear him say when I’d visit was, ‘Sylvia, New York is a lonely and dangerous place.’”

  “Ira can’t talk. He’s dead.”

  Sylvia waved her hand. “You know what I mean.”

  “I’m not in any danger and I’m not exactly alone.”

  Sylvia rose from the chair, as if it was the webbed aluminum one at the Pinehearst. She walked slowly toward the bedroom door. She motioned with her head to the partially opened bedroom door. “Don’t tell me you’re … you know.”

  “Of course not. Not yet anyway.”

  “Are you even thinking about it? Feh!”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “Feh.” Sylvia repeated and then looked around the suite. “This is some place,” she said.

  Phyllis nodded, as if she were used to it. “The kids insisted,” she said. “You want a tour?”

  “I wouldn’t say no,” Sylvia told her.

  Phyllis opened the door to the bedroom, showed Sylvia the gorgeous bed, the huge closets, the four telephones, and the palatial marble and mirrored bath. “So why are you really here?” Phyllis asked as Sylvia rummaged through the bath products and shampoos on the vanity.

  Sylvia looked into the mirror and then down at her T-shirt, protruding stomach, and the sandals she was still wearing (though now they were complemented—if that was the right word—by a pair of thick red socks). “I didn’t want to spend the holiday alone,” Sylvia admitted very quietly. “Not again.”

  “But I thought the children were coming in from Cincinnati?”

  “They were. Then they weren’t. My daughter-in-law got sick.”

  “Hah! If you believe that, I have a dental bridge I want to sell you.”

  “You having dental problems again?” the literal Sylvia asked with concern.

  Poor Sylvia, Phyllis thought. Her daughter-in-law hated her and her son allowed it.

  “Should I go back?” Sylvia asked in a small voice. “I don’t want to horn in.
”

  “Of course not. You’re welcome. The children will love to see you.” Hoo-haa! Now there was a fib of significant proportions, Phyllis thought, but no one should have to spend the holidays alone. “Sylvia, come out of the bathroom. Sit on the couch, or maybe you want to lie down in bed.” Sylvia shook her head and went to the straight-backed chair that flanked the tea table.

  “This is fine,” she said, sitting down stiffly.

  “You want some breakfast?”

  “No. I had a bagel at the airport. I don’t want to be any trouble to you, Phyllis. I could go stay someplace else.”

  “Where?” Phyllis asked. “At a hotel? You know how expensive New York hotels are? Anyway, everything’s booked for Christmas.” Sylvia must be truly desperate if she was actually offering to spend money. “Look,” Phyllis said. “I’m calling room service. I’m getting myself some French toast and I’m getting you some, too. Plus coffee and fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice. It’s better here than in Florida. I don’t know how they do it.” Phyllis picked up the phone.

  “Can I help you, Mrs. Geronomous?” a voice asked. It was amazing how the hotel staff knew her name and everything about her. She’d only been there for five days.

  “Breakfast for two,” Phyllis said, a little self-consciously. As if she had something to hide. As if … “My girlfriend came to visit,” she explained. The room-service clerk made no comment.

  “Isn’t that expensive?” Sylvia asked. “Room service and all? At Howard Johnson’s they charge you an extra $2.50. Just to take it up the elevator.”

  Phyllis merely shook her head. “They don’t charge that here,” she said. No, they didn’t charge extra because the prices were already astronomical. She would pay for this herself. Susan didn’t have to pay for everything. But for the moment, looking at Sylvia’s glum but gallant face, Phyllis didn’t care if she spent her whole month’s check. “Sylvia, sometimes life needs some embellishment,” Phyllis said. “After all, this is your first trip to Manhattan in years, isn’t it?” she asked. Sylvia had lived in Queens, but she wasn’t much of a cosmopolitan. “You never came into the city, did you?”

  “Yes,” Sylvia said. “I was here with my sister right after the war.”

  For Sylvia there was only one war: World War II. Forget Korea or Vietnam or even Desert Storm. “Well, things have changed a little since then. The war is over,” Phyllis told her and picked up the phone again.

  “Yes, Mrs. Geronomous?” the kind voice asked. “Is mere something else?”

  “Please,” Phyllis said. “A bottle of champagne. We’re having a party.”

  Date: December 9, 1996

  From: Sharon@missioncontrol.com

  Subject: Operation Geezer Ouest

  To: Sig

  Sig, I haven’t finished all the backup, but Montague Dunleathe was listed as one of the ten richest men in Great Britain, according to Forbes International 1981 Yearbook. Born in Glasgow in 1921. A canny Scot. He made most of his money in airlines back in the seventies. He owns most of Montana. He was married for twenty-six years to one of the Guinness heiresses, but she died in ’89. No children …

  The E-mail message went on, but Sig didn’t need to. It was unbelievable. Somehow, Phyllis had managed to meet and attract a rich geezer. Sig shrugged. Go know.

  Sig had been feeling grim this Monday morning, as she had most Monday mornings the last few months. The market was jumpy, and so was she. One of the guys in the cage had bitten her head off, and she’d found that a restricted security had been accidentally (and illegally) transferred out of one of her clients’ positions. It would take her and a clerk an entire morning to straighten that out with a net gain of zero, but here, here on her terminal screen was the first really Merry Christmas greeting she’d received this season. She turned away from the screen and punched Bruce’s number into her speakerphone. “Houston?” she asked when he picked up. “We have liftoff.”

  “Have you been having another one of those private Tom Hanks film festivals, sister mine?” Bruce asked. “He’s happily married, Siggy. Forget Apollo 13.” Bruce groaned. “God, I should have known better than to trust Sharon. Do you know how many hours I spent trying to pull Mom together for that ball on Saturday night? And then Bernard just wanted to try on her dress. Do you know the crazy old queen has called me three times since last night?”

  “Forget Bernard. We’ve got a hot one.”

  “I know he’s hot, but he’s hot for me! And I’m not into older men.”

  “Bruce, I’m talking about Montague Dunleathe. He’s richer than God and he’s going out with Mom.”

  “You’re kidding me. Well, it won’t do any good. She’ll wreck it.”

  “I’m going to double with her.”

  “You’re what?”

  “I’m going to double with her. That way I can try to control her—well, at least as much as I can.”

  “Ha! Good luck. Control a tsunami, why don’t you.”

  “What the hell is a tsunami?”

  “A Japanese tidal wave, Sig. Amazing! You don’t know everything.” He paused. “All right. I’ll come up to the hotel early. And you can try your double-date control. But it’s hopeless. Anyway, I’m glad I’m the one with the easy job; you know, turning a sow’s ear …”

  “Bruce! She is your mother.”

  “I mean it in the nicest possible way.” A thought occurred to him. “Anyway, who are you going to bring? You haven’t had a date since Bob Dole was in puberty.”

  Sig decided to take the high road and ignore the comment. “I’m going with Phillip,” she told her brother. She’d broken it off with Phillip when he’d told her that they had no future. It would be a blow to her pride to ask him to see her, but she needed an escort and she had no one else.

  “Dead man walking.”

  “Bruce, just button it and be at the Pierre by three.”

  It was a quarter to eight and the Pierre suite looked like a tsunami had hit it: the bedroom was a beach strewn with the flotsam and jetsam of rejected wardrobe items. The bathroom was an impressionist painting, one makeup color melding into another all over the vanity and onto the floor. Sig, dressed in a severe navy sheath, was busy trying to straighten out the living room and simultaneously listen to her brother and her mother fighting in the bathroom. “I’m not putting on those goddamn Barbara Bush pearls again,” Phyllis was saying. “I’ll look like Nathan Lane in Birdcage.”

  “As long as you don’t look like Gene Hackman, you’re ahead of the game,” Bruce told her.

  Sig tried to clean up around Mrs. Katz, who sat placidly while she did so. What was the old bird thinking of? How long did she plan to hang around? “This must be Susan, and that must be Bruce,” she had said, looking at Todd, who was more effeminate. “And that, of course, is Sharon,” she said.

  “The fat one,” Sharon responded glumly.

  Sig was spending almost a king’s ransom—and the room looked worse than an adolescent’s dorm. Sig kicked a Bergdorf’s bag under the sofa with a vicious swipe. The afternoon had been three hours of constant argument. First Phyllis had wanted to go as she was; then she’d agreed to get dressed up, but she wouldn’t double with Sig. Finally Sig had prevailed, but then Phyllis wouldn’t let Bruce renovate her face and hair. “He met me plain, on the plane,” she said. “He likes me like that.” Bruce had finally ended the discussion by threatening to jump out the window. Sig picked up half an armful of newspapers, opened a closet, and chucked them inside violently. Then she threw her mother’s schlep bag, pilled cardigan, and assorted debris behind the floor-length curtain. Nothing with Phyllis was ever normal, easy, or painless.

  Even this stroke of luck with Montague Dunleathe seemed about to go down the drain. They had to make Phyllis appear financially secure, attractive, and at least minimally pleasant. An impossible task, Sig realized. Bruce wasn’t negative, he was realistic.

  Sig looked around at the suite. The hundred-and-sixty-dollar flower arrangement from
Renny was breathtaking. Sig added more water and picked up the card. “You fascinated me. I’d like to get to know you better. Paul Cushing.” Her mother fascinated a man like Paul Cushing? Sig opened her eyes wider, moved past the arrangement to the sofa, and plumped up the pillows. Then she pulled magazines out of her bag. Town & Country, Forbes, Fortune, and the British Country Life. She arranged them casually on the coffee table and lowboy. Then she took out a copy of the Wall Street Journal, folded it to the NASDAQ page, and left it lying over the arm of a club chair.

  At last everything looked perfect, including Phyllis. She entered the room, arrayed in a silvery beige St. Laurent pantsuit, a Hermés scarf tucked in at the throat of the jacket. Sig nearly shuddered thinking of what all that had cost her, but she had to admit her mother looked casually elegant. It was Bruce who looked like the wreck of the Hesperus, or whatever the hell the boat was that Phyllis always talked about.

  “Is she soup yet?” Bruce asked. Sig nodded. “Thank God,” Bruce said, and fell back into the bedroom, sprawling across the bed. “Bring me a blood transfusion.”

  “Mom, I have to talk to you,” Sig said brusquely. Sig took her mother into the bathroom, now filled with Phyllis’s new wardrobe and a few of Mrs. Katz’s shmatas. “Enough is enough. She’s not supposed to stay here,” Sig was telling her mother.

  “What do you mean ‘supposed to’? She’s staying. She doesn’t have any other place in New York to stay.”

  “Mom, New York is full of hotels.”

  “I have a perfectly good room here.”

  Sig tried to restrain the overwhelming urge to kickbox her mother in the spleen. She was edgy, no doubt about it. The clock was ticking and, though things looked promising with Monty, Sig would not be able to front this gig for much longer. To have Mrs. Katz here, always sitting calmly on a straight-backed chair in the living room, her purse on her lap as if she were riding the bus, was not conducive to romance. Her mother needed a duenna like Sig needed a credit check. Sig took a deep breath. “The room here is for you,” she explained as if she were talking to someone significantly younger than Jessie.