Irvine Welsh - The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins

If numbers count in my game, then my mom, Jackie Pride (58, 5’8", 130 lbs), through being in real estate, is probably even more subject to their capriciousness. The market has tanked; she sold twelve condos in Miami two years ago, three last year, and so far none this year. Two years ago she ran around in a big Lincoln; its predecessor was the one she bought to replace the Caddy I inherited. It was the era when real-estate guys imitated lawyers and nobody laughed. Now that she’s driving a Toyota and staring hard into the demise of another long-term relationship, zero is a troubling statistic.

She’s already seated, laptop fired up Sorenson-style (ha!), and rattling into her cell phone. As I approach she looks up, — Hey, pickle, and she gives me an apologetic nod, her shaved-and-penciled brows arching as she snaps her Apple Mac shut. She’s wearing a white top, with a checked skirt and pair of shoes, both black and white. She wears glasses on the bridge of her strong Saxon nose (not like my little button Paddy thing, inherited from Dad), and a pair of shades pushed back on her head to keep her still-brown collar-length hair in place. Mom ends her call and scrunches into her plastic chair, which slides a few inches along the sidewalk. — Oh my God. . she groans. She looks good; the only really noticeable ravage of age is where the jowly flesh around her chin and neck has sagged to a crumpled bag. Mom keeps talking about getting “work done” but being “too busy even for Lasik.”

A young blond chick I recognize (I think one of Mona’s clients at Bodysculpt) swaggers by, wearing a yellow string bikini bottom and matching yellow T-shirt, with MS. ARROGANT emblazoned on it in big blue letters. SoBe remains a sun-drenched refuge for strutting grotesques and desperate narcissists. Mom’s phone goes again. — Lieb, she pleads. — I’ll take this, sweetie, then I’ll switch the goddamn thing off, I promise.

— Cool, I say, picking up the menu.

— Lieb, sweetkins. . Yes. Gotcha. . Gotcha. Just keep them entertained. Gulfstream Park or the like, you know the drill. . Check. Just keep them believing that it’s a rock-solid investment, which, to all intents and purposes it is. . Yes, I love you. . Her brows arch further north. — Gotta go now, sweetie, Lucy’s here. Ciao. She flicks the iPhone into silence. — Men. The toughest of them seem to need the most hand-holding. It’s so weird. I mean, he can take those squeaky assholes to a bar or a strip club. I don’t care. She shakes her head. — God, people are just losing their nerve! That investment is solid!

— I’m sure it is.

— But listen to me go on. . let’s get some food, she says, then looks right into my eyes, following the line of my vision. — You were checking out my sagging jowls! Oh, you cruel child!

— No, I lie, — I was just think of how well you look!

Mom lets out a long, deflated sigh. As she speaks, her eyes, by turns vapid and intense, always seem to be gazing past me into the disenchantments that lie ahead. — I’m thinking of having work done. It’s just time. That and money. She shakes her head bitterly as the busboy pours our glasses of iced water.

— Things still bad in your game?

— Let’s not even talk about it, she says, as a hovering, Botoxed, failed model approaches and robotically grates out a list of specials.

No, Mom’s putting on a positive face as we order, and then she starts regurgitating some self-help book she’s devoured (her personal version of Sorenson’s cakes) back at me. — Real estate. . it’s such a bitch in South Florida. I need what Debra Wilson — have you read her?

— No. Have you heard of Morning Pages? They’re supposed to be great.

— Marianne Robson at Coldwell Banker says that they’re essential. I must try them, once I get to make some time for me.

— What about this Debra Wilson thing?

— Well, I need what she calls a “compelling personal project,” and Mom’s face creases sweetly in a smile. — Of course, my most wonderful project is my beautiful baby girls, she says, as I think: spare the fuck out of me , — but those babies have grown up now. Her brow ruefully creases. — I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Jocelyn lately?

— Still in Darfur with the same NGO, last I heard, I tell her, trying to check out, perhaps a little too ostentatiously, a ripped surfer guy who ambles past.

— Still doing good deeds, Mom sings wistfully. — I swear that girl shames us all.

I feel like telling her if she actually got out of Jocelyn’s face while she was trying to do shit growing up, she probably wouldn’t be hanging out in the crappiest corners of the globe playing Mother Teresa. But Mom has gone back to her own drama. — So I told Lieb that I really need something else in my life.

— You got real estate, I say, unable to resist it. Mom never wants to talk about anything else when the real-estate market is lively. Now that it’s dead, it’s practically all I want to discuss with her. If you aren’t put on this Earth to subtly make your mother’s life one suffering hell, then what the fuck is the point of human existence?

— I mean, outside of work, she says as the Stepford-bound server chick brings our tofu salads. They are sorry-assed affairs, the lettuce as limp as bad-back Miles’s dick, and the smoked tofu tastes like sweaty old gym socks. Mom winces under the first mouthful. Then she gives me a piercing look. — How is your father? I’m ashamed to admit it, but I frequently google him.

— Well, it’s natural that you’re curious. But if you google him regularly, you’ll know more than me.

— C’mon! You were always his favorite, the sporty one.

— Mom, he was always his favorite.

— Ain’t that the truth! I still can’t believe it about him. She shakes her head, that lacquered mop not shifting a inch. — It’s almost like being successful with those books was your father’s last great act of spite against me.

— C’mon! He’d always talked about being a writer!

— Everybody talks about being a writer, angel. If every novel conceived on a bar stool made it into print, there would not be one tree left standing on God’s green Earth. No, as soon as he left me—

— As I recall, you left him. For Lieb.

Mom exhales and rolls her eyes. She explains, in labored tones, as if I’m still a kid, — I physically left him, yes, but only because he didn’t have the balls to get out first. But he engineered the split. Then, after me supporting the bum for years, through all that inquiry shit with the BPD, he actually got off his fat Irish ass and wrote .

— You get on your ass to write.

— Exactly, that’s why it’s the perfect occupation for him, she says, then her mouth turns down as a grim thought insinuates itself. — I suppose there will be a younger woman in tow, some vacuous bimbo—

— Several, I’d wager, I acknowledge as I raise a forkful of tofu to my mouth, hoping it’ll taste better than the last. And being immediately disappointed.

Mom’s jaw falls as she gapes at me.

— Well, it’s the human condition. How do you get older? You behave with restraint and dignity, and then life becomes a colossal bore. If you indulge yourself, then it looks sad and pathetic. Pick red or black, cause ain’t nobody leavin this casino with a full stack of chips, baby.

— God, Lucy, catch yourself! You sound so like him.

— Well, that’s a quote from Matt Flynn.

My mother goes through the client database in her head, before coming up with a blank expression.

— His Boston gumshoe protagonist, I tell her.

She tuts and lifts another forkload of soggy spinach leaves to her mouth. Poor Mom, such a breadhead, and the very guy she thought would never be able to cut it, made good as soon as she fired his ass. Must be doubly hard when everything is turning to shit for her. And she lives and breathes this motherfucker of a real-estate gig. That woman will do anything , within certain parameters she says (and I have to take her word at that), to close a deal. Mom will get out of bed in the middle of the night to pick up groceries for a client. She’ll provide them with any sort of services. Yes, and where the line gets drawn there, I’d rather not even speculate. Her long-term partner, Lieb, seems all but cast adrift, lost to the dive bars of SoBe in much the same way my dad once sauced through the maze of Southie watering holes.