Marrying Mom

“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.”

“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.”