Marrying Mom

“This means you’ll be with the kids for the holidays. Nice for you.” She sounded wistful. “Nice for them.” Sylvia paused. “Do they know you’re going up?” she asked.

Phyllis was silent.

“You haven’t told them, have you?” Sylvia asked accusingly.

“Not yet,” Phyllis admitted.

“You have to. You have to,” Sylvia said. Her own son had both refused a Thanksgiving invitation and not extended one to her. “If you don’t tell them, I will.”

“Don’t you dare,” Phyllis warned.

“When are you going to tell them?”

“Next Purim,” Phyllis said, and opened the gate to Pinehearst for her friend.

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You’re joking.”

“You wish.”

“Come on,” Sig Geronomous said cavalierly. “It’s just one of those empty threats. One of those nutty things she says that get us all jerked around for nothing. Like the time she corresponded with the Asian bride and wanted to import her for you.”

“She means this,” Sig’s brother, Bruce, told her. “Todd, get over here and tell her that it’s true.” Bruce didn’t live with Todd, but they had been spending a lot of time together. Whenever Sig asked if it was serious Bruce evaded the question.

“Bruce has the proof,” Todd shouted into the receiver.

“How do you know?”

“Because she gave Mrs. Katz the rattan magazine rack,” Bruce responded.

“The magazine rack? Oh my God!” Susan Geronomous—now known to her friends and business associates as Sigourney—accidentally dropped the telephone receiver. It crashed so hard against her granite countertop that her brother Bruce, at the other end of the phone, winced.

“What was that? Did you hurt yourself?”

“I wish.” Sigourney had gotten control of the phone; now she just had to control herself. This couldn’t really be happening … nothing was ever as bad as it seemed … absence made the heart grow fonder … too many cooks—she stopped. She was going crazy. This couldn’t be true. Christmas and her mother both coming? She might as well pull out the razor blades now. Sig looked down appraisingly at her elegant wrist. “She just casually mentioned that she gave away the rattan magazine rack?”

“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.”