Olivia Goldsmith - Marrying Mom

“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.”

“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!”