Marrying Mom

“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.”

“Oh my God! You want us to murder her,” Sharon gasped. She clapped her hands over Jessie’s ears to protect her. “You’re going to make us help you do it, aren’t you? We’ll all go to prison.”

“Nope. Murder’s out,” Bruce said. “Not on moral grounds, mind you. It’s just that the woman wrecked the first thirty years of my life. I’m not going to spend the second thirty in jail for her.” He shuddered. “Can you imagine me in prison? God, every night would be prom night. I’ll bet Todd wouldn’t even visit.” He looked seriously at Sigourney. “With all of those shady clients of yours, don’t you know someone who will bump her off and keep us out of it?”

Sigourney rolled her eyes. Couldn’t Bruce ever be serious and couldn’t Sharon ever make sense? “We can’t kill her,” Sigourney explained through clenched and beautifully bonded teeth. Sometimes Sharon was a complete ditz. “First of all, she’s our mother and, more importantly, I have no intention of taking up residence in the Menendez Brothers’ Wing at the nearest correctional facility. Fill or kill is just market talk for completing an order right away or dropping it. You have to help me with this. This is an immediate fill.” She looked at her younger siblings sternly, the way she used to do when they were kids and she forced them to play Monopoly until she landed on Boardwalk and Park Place and had hotels on both. “We need a plan, a strategy, and I’ve got one. But we’ll have to work together to get it to happen.” Finally, for the first time, silence reigned and Sig had everyone’s complete attention. That was just the way she liked it.

Her mind had been working at lightning speed, doing what she did best, when she was trading: pulling together a wide and diverse bunch of information and coming up with a cohesive, realistic program. She could deal with their weaknesses and play to their strengths. She knew she could motivate them, and maybe, for once, they could all work together. She saw, as the Iron Duke must have seen the Waterloo battle plan, the roles that each of them could play in not just winning this battle but ending the war. As it always happened when she was trading, she grew calm and it felt as if time stopped. She knew she could cover the short.

“Sharon, aside from more money coming in, you need something to do. You’re bright, and you used to be a great librarian. We can use your skills.” Sharon opened her small eyes as wide as she could. “Bruce, you need an investor for your rapidly failing business. And you also have a sense of style second to none. I need some new clients. And we all need Mom distracted so that she won’t be driving us totally nuts.” She paused again for the drama of it. “I have a way to accomplish it all.”

Bruce cocked his head. “How?”

“We marry her off.”

“We what?” Sharon, Bruce, and Barney asked simultaneously.

“We marry her off. Preferably to a wealthy guy with bad health and no heirs.”

“Ahh,” Bruce said, light dawning. “The old Anna Nicole Smith ploy.”

“I prefer to call it ‘Operation Geezer Quest,’” Sig announced with dignity. “If we work together, it could happen.” She warmed to the sale, just the way she did when she was pushing OTC equity or TFI bonds. “We set Mom up like a jewel in a velvet box. We dress her right. Bruce, that’s your job. We put her in a good hotel—no, not just good, but the best. I’ll take care of that. And then we present her to the prospects. Finding them is your job, Sharon. If we work it right it’s a short sell—we get someone to go for it before Mom’s price goes down.”

“But what if it doesn’t work?” Bruce asked.

“Then we got a street-side buy-in,” Sig said, rolling her eyes. “I lose a lot of money covering the short.”

“But what about Daddy?” Sharon asked. They all turned to look at her.

“Sharon, Dad’s dead,” Bruce reminded her.

“I know that! But that doesn’t mean he would like it. And what does she want with an old guy? She never even took care of us. Why would she want to take care of some old geezer?” Sharon’s eyes filled. “They’re sick and they usually don’t smell very good.”

“Not for her to take care of him. For him to take care of her,” Sig explained. “We want ’em sick. We have to marry off Mom to somebody really old and really wealthy. Somebody who likes us—likes us a lot. He can introduce me to some rich, powerful clients. He can give Barney a job, and pay for Jessie’s and Travis’s private school. He could even bail out Bruce’s semibankrupt business.”

“He’d have to be deaf, dumb, and blind,” Bruce said.

Sigourney nodded. “That would be good,” she agreed. She began counting off on her fingers. “Deaf, dumb, blind, old, and rich.”

“Oh, come off it, Sig,” Sharon almost sneered. “You’re only forty-one. You’re thin, you’re successful. You have a weird first name, you’re beautiful, and you can’t get a decent date. Phillip Norman is a jerk. He doesn’t even appreciate you. Men want young, beautiful, fresh girls. How in the world are we supposed to find a rich man for Mom?”

Sig recoiled. Phillip Norman had come to her A-list brunch and afterwards, as she cleaned up the mess and waited for Bruce and Sharon, he had told Sig that though he truly liked her he thought it was important for her to know that he didn’t believe there was a future in their relationship. Sig hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry. Phillip was such a compromise for her, such a corporate drone. She’d been with him mainly because of his enthusiasm for her. To find that he wasn’t avid was almost a joke, but one that had an unpleasant irony to it. How low would she sink? Could she find another man anywhere? Next she’d be sleeping with Eldin the painter.

“Right,” Bruce agreed. “If I haven’t found one, why should she get one? And even if we could get ahold of such a commodity, how could we possibly get Mom to date him? You know what she’s like.” He shrugged. “To know her is to be permanently irritated.”

Sigourney pulled herself together. It was now or never. She tried to do her best Andy Hardy imitation. “Oh, come on, kids. I’m not saying it’s easy, but we’re not licked yet. You haven’t lost all your librarian skills, Sharri. You can do the research, finding the geezers. And Brucie, you still have all those dresses in your closet.” He grimaced at her. “Okay. We’ll buy costumes! But we can use your makeup. I’ll write the script and direct the rehearsals. And Barney …” She paused, momentarily losing her enthusiasm. “Well, we’ll find something you can handle. So, come on, kids. Let’s put on a show!”

She dropped the fake energy and her tone became cold and as frightening as she could manage. “Because if we don’t, let’s face it: our lives will become even worse than they are now.”

although it was seventy-eight degrees and sunny, the Miami airport was incongruously decked out in fake firs and Christmas tinsel. Sylvia Katz, forlornly schlepping her oversized purse, looked at Phyllis and shook her head. “First class? It’s such a bad idea. And a waste of money,” she said.

“What the hell.” Phyllis shrugged. “I’ve never flown first class in my life. And that travel agent of my son-in-law’s looked at me with respect.”

“For wasting money, she respects you?”

“Oh, life can always use some embellishment. If I play my cards right, I’ll never fly again. Might as well go out with a bang, right, Sylvia?”

“God forbid. Don’t even joke.” Sylvia paused. “You sure you won’t change your mind? I’ll give you back the magazine rack.”

“Tempting, but no cigar.”

“Cigars?” Sylvia said. “What do cigars have to do with this?”

Phyllis leaned forward and kissed Sylvia on the cheek. She’d never known anyone as literal as Sylvia. Nine-tenths of what Phyllis said went right over Sylvia’s overpermed head. “You’re in a world of your own, Sylvia,” Phyllis told her friend. “That’s probably why you can stand me. I don’t get on your nerves because you don’t have any.”

“Nerves? Who cares about nerves? I won’t have any friends now.” A tear began to run down Sylvia’s very wrinkled cheek.

Phyllis fished into her jacket pocket and pulled out a key chain. “Keys to the Buick,” she said. “Stay off I-95 and don’t get carjacked, if you can help it.”

“You’re giving me your car? Your car?”

“I won’t need it in New York. No one has cars in New York. It’s a civilized place. We have taxis.”

“Your car?”

“Sylvia, stop repeating yourself. You sound like a demented toucan.” Phyllis reached out, took Mrs. Katz’s plump and wrinkled hand and put the keys in them. “A little Christmas present. From me to you.”

“But you already gave me so much. The magazine rack, the plants …” Sylvia took out a crumpled handkerchief and noisily blew her nose.

“Sylvia, who uses handkerchiefs anymore?” Phyllis asked and looked at the wet cloth distastefully. “What are you going to do with it now?”

“Put it in my purse.”

“Feh! You’ll get mucus all over your wallet. Get with the times and get yourself some Kleenex.”

“Don’t you think you should call the children?” Sylvia asked. “Tell them.”

“You mean warn them. No. Why should I? So they’ll argue with me?” She paused. “Sylvia, did you interfere?”

Sylvia cast down her eyes guiltily. Phyllis didn’t need to ask any further and let her friend off the hook.

“You still giving me your car?” Sylvia asked.

“Yes. And I won’t put any of them out, Sylvia. I’ll stay at a hotel. I’ll get my own place. It will make a nice surprise.” Phyllis wasn’t altogether sure that “nice” was the word any of her three children would use, but it was a free country.

“I’m going to miss you, Phyllis.”

“I know.”

“If it doesn’t work out, you can come back down and stay with me any time.”

“I know.”

The fat woman fumbled in her purse. “I only got you a little something. A token.” She handed Phyllis a small box.

“I know. A woman who hasn’t picked up a check for more than seven years is not going to suddenly begin handing out Harry Winston.” Phyllis took the little package and opened it. “Oh. Handkerchiefs. What have I done without them?”

“What will I do without you?” Sylvia sighed, the sarcasm lost on her.

“Play a lot of canasta. The girls will let you back into the game now that I’m not around to insult them.”

“They never should have banned you,” Mrs. Katz said with fresh indignation.

“Sylvia. It was four years ago. Forget about it. Play canasta. Meld. May you draw many red threes. Go to Loehmann’s, schlep around the Saw Grass Mall. You’ll be fine.” Phyllis had never been good with emotions. What was the point? Most things she deflected with a wisecrack. The rest she ignored.

Mrs. Katz mopped at her eyes. “I’m going to miss you.”

“You’re repeating yourself, Sylvia. I have to go.” The two women hugged one another briefly, and then Phyllis turned and walked with the crowd, moving toward the security checkpoint and the waiting flights.

Phyllis passed under a big sign that said: “Come Back to Miami Soon. We’ll Miss You.” “Fat chance,” she answered out loud to herself, her voice caustic. “I’m getting out alive.”

Sig sat at her dining room table, a tumbler of Chianti beside her. She was secretively filling in the real estate broker’s form to put her apartment up for sale. She didn’t know if she could renegotiate her home equity loan or if she could get a hiatus on her mortgage. But while she was trying both of those strategies it was best to take this frightening step. She was not in a good mood. She’d actually considered calling Phillip last night before she’d regained her dignity and sanity.

“This isn’t easy,” Sharon said from her seat at the other end of the table. She had spread its lacquered surface with dozens of files as well as her laptop and printer. “I don’t know why I always get the hardest job.” Before Sig had a chance to launch into just how difficult it was for her to conceive of and finance Operation Geezer Quest, the doorbell chimed. Before Sig could even rise, Bruce had turned the lock with his key and had come in and collapsed onto the love seat under the dining room window.

“I’m busy doing the research.” They both looked at Sig.

“Yeah, and I’m busy working to pay for this entire sting operation,” she reminded them. Each of them looked resentfully at their siblings. There was a pause that could have gone either way: they could all disintegrate into endless childish bickering or move on. Bruce decided to make a heroic effort.

“So, how is the research coming?”

Sharon, with some difficulty because of her bulk, got up, found her huge canvas sack, and pulled out even more armfuls of files, magazines, and clippings. Sig thought she might go mad.

“Okay. Operation Geezer Quest. Cross-referenced in different categories.” Sharon began to sort colored folders, laying them in various piles on the coffee table. “What I have here are all unmarried men in the tristate metropolitan area, seventy or older, with a net worth of more than fifty million.” She looked up at Bruce and Sig with a worried expression. “I didn’t know if I should make the cutoff fifty million or a hundred million. But there weren’t many at a hundred, so I arbitrarily picked fifty. I did keep an initial reference list so I can go back if you want me to.”

“I think you made the right decision, Sharon,” Bruce told her.

Sharon merely nodded into her categorized stack. “I sorted them by geographical location, religious affiliation, previous marriages …” She looked up. “I separated the widowed from the divorced. I wasn’t sure, but I thought it might make a difference down the road. Among the divorced I listed the settlements, if any. I also categorized them by whether or not they require a prenuptial. Lastly, I listed their philanthropic histories. I figured we wanted to find the generous ones.”

Sig poured the last of the coffee into the bone china service. She might order takeout, but she ate off porcelain. Sharon pulled out a list and handed it to Bruce and Sig as a justification. “Okay, here’s my initial analysis. Bernard Krinz’s on the list. So is John Glendon Stanford and Robert Himmelfarb. I thought those three would make a good first cut. They’re all here in New York.” She paused. “Well, Himmelfarb is out in Sands Point, but he socializes in Manhattan.”

Sig looked over Sharon’s findings. “Good targets,” she agreed.

“This is where having an anal compulsive as a sister finally pays off,” Bruce said.

Sharon’s face crumpled like an empty beer can against a jock’s forehead. “I worked very hard on this. You don’t have to be so critical.”

“Sharri, he’s not being critical,” Sig assured her. “It’s Bruce’s way of saying he thinks this is good.”

Sharri looked at her brother. “You do? You think it’s good?”

“I think it’s superb! Sharri, it’s wonderful.”

“Honestly?”

Bruce put up a hand in a crossing-guard stop sign. “Sharon, shut up. You always go too far. No more praise. It’s good, so now let’s get to work.”

Sig called out for more coffee—she never made her own but ordered it instead from the Greek joint at the corner. Mostly in silence, together the Sibs pored through Sharon’s findings. They devoured the dish, whistling or exclaiming every now and then at the numbers of homes, numbers of ex-wives, and numerous offshore accounts.

“Sharri, this is really outstanding,” Sig finally said. “You’ve done an excellent job.” Sharon glowed from the praise.

Bruce looked at her appraisingly. “You know, Sharon, I need market research like this for my company.”

“Sharon, why don’t you get a job? Forget Barney’s downsized career,” Sig said. “You certainly need the money.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that. Libraries aren’t hiring.” Sharon shrugged. “Anyway, Barney is the one who needs to boost his self-esteem.”

“Just call her Cleopatra, Queen of Denial.” Bruce shrugged.