Marrying Mom

“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.

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 about 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.”