Olivia Goldsmith - Marrying Mom

“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.”