Marrying Mom

by Olivia Goldsmith

  “You don’t like it?” Flex/Angelo asked in a voice full of concern.

  The boy really cared about his work, she realized, just as she once had. But she was still speechless. She stared again at her image in the mirror and tilted her head to one side. Her hair moved, each strand, in a kind of waterfall. She was trying to define what this change had done, exactly. It wasn’t that she was younger looking, but she looked … She paused. Phyllis looked the way rich women looked when they got older. She had never been beautiful, and she wasn’t beautiful now, but she was transformed nonetheless.

  “Come on, Mom, what do you think?” Bruce questioned.

  “Not bad,” Phyllis told him.

  “Bergdorf’s, Bruce? Are you crazy? Isn’t that fortune we spent on my hair enough?” Of all the department stores in New York, Bergdorf Goodman was the most elegant. And now, with only twenty shopping days before Christmas, the place was thronged with exquisitely dressed clientele. It was definitely not the Saw Grass Mall.

  “You need something to wear, Mom.”

  “I have something to wear. I have lots of things to wear. Look through all my luggage.”

  “I did, Mom. Frightening. I didn’t know they still made Naugahyde jackets. You have nothing. Not a single decent thing. This is not Collins Avenue.”

  “What am I missing?” Phyllis asked.

  “For one thing, you have no sportswear.”

  “Sportswear? Why do I need sportswear? Do I look like Andre Agassi?”

  Bruce stopped next to the Plaza fountain and looked at his mother coldly. “Don’t you know it’s not appropriate to wear your old cocktail dresses for early morning grocery shopping?”

  “Why not? Recycling is the modern thing to do, isn’t it? Anyway, if I do need something why can’t we go to Loehmann’s?”

  “Because, Mother, right now Loehmann’s only has the things that didn’t look good on anybody at Bergdorf last season.” He paused and glanced beyond the fountain toward the Plaza Hotel. “This is the very spot where Barbra Streisand ran into Bob Redford in The Way We Were,” he said with a sigh. “So poignant.”

  “Poignant? He was a putz and she was an idiot not to notice it.”

  Bruce dragged Phyllis past the Salvation Army band playing carols and through the revolving door. The Christmas season was upon them. Bruce threw five dollars of Sig’s money into the pot. As he hustled his mother up the escalator, he looked her over. “You know, Mom, now that we got rid of that atrocious haircut, aside from your horrible makeup and frightening clothes, you’re really not bad looking.”

  “Thank you, darling,” she said coldly. “I can’t tell you how much your approval means to me.”

  Bruce took another step up the escalator to give him some distance and squinted his eyes. “I’m looking at Phyllis Geronomous,” he hummed, “but I’m seeing Carolina Herrera.”

  They stepped off the escalator onto the designer floor. Phyllis surveyed one of the mannequins dressed in yards of tulle and silk jersey. “Nipples? The dummies have nipples now?”

  “Big deal,” Bruce shrugged and took her by her upper arm.

  Phyllis pulled it away and stopped to regard the dummies distastefully. “Listen, if you’re going to get anatomically correct, how about potbellies or saddlebags?” she asked bitterly as she pointed to the mannequins’ legs. “How about varicose veins and hammertoes and bunions?”

  “God! Spare me!” Bruce cried. All he needed was for Phyllis to pull what he always thought of as her “Bella Abzug” in the middle of Designer Formal Wear.

  But Phyllis merely shook her head. “America hates the reality of what women truly are,” she said sadly.

  “No they don’t. Look at movie stars. Look at models. Women are making more money, they’re more visible …” He took her arm again and began to move her to the designer sections.

  “Get a grip! Men control everything and don’t you forget it. They own the magazines that women edit and write in and read. They own every channel on television. They pick a few genetically female mutants to shill for them and mortify the rest of us. They hate aging women. They hate sagging and drooping and menopause. Old bellies. Old thighs. Men, no matter how old, how bald, how fat, think they’re great. Unlike women, they don’t have a biological clock. So they don’t know what the hell time it is. They deny death.”

  Bruce had taken her arm and—with difficulty—was able to move her away from the mannequin and lead her through a maze of garments. They approached a rack of clothes. “This could be nice,” Bruce said, trying to lift the tone and lifting up a hanger holding a black satin suit. “Satin is big this year.”

  “Nah. Too dull. I like more drama.”

  “It’s a Karen Kahn. It’s not dull, Mom. It’s classy.”

  A thin, young saleswoman approached them. “Maybe I could help?”

  Bruce smiled at her. “I think we’re looking for a dinner suit. Something in black satin, perhaps.” He looked down at his mother’s slightly bulging stomach. “With a peplum,” he added.

  “I have just the thing,” the saleswoman chirped. She went to another rack and lifted up a beaded jet jacket and dress. “Escada.”

  “Black. Why black?” Phyllis asked. “Nobody died. At least not yet. What’s wrong with color, here? Let’s be festive.”

  “Oh great. You probably want something red and green. You want to look like a psychopathic Christmas elf?” Bruce complained. He pushed the Escada suit in front of her. Phyllis looked at the price tag.

  “Oh my God, Bruce. This is more than your father’s entire annual pension check.”

  Bruce put his hands on his hips. “Why do you always go for the price tag first? Since I’m a kid, whatever I wanted, first it was ‘how much’! You haven’t even looked at the dress.”

  The saleslady turned from one to the other, seeing her quick sale evaporate. “I’ll let the two of you work it out,” she said. “Talk among yourselves.”

  “That’s what’s wrong with you!” Bruce went on. “It was never the quality, always the price. When I was eleven and I wanted those two perfect Izod shirts, you bought me a dozen from J.C Penney.”

  “Bruce, I could buy an entire condo in Del Ray for this!”

  “Yeah, but you’d feel like shit in a condo in Del Ray. In this, you’ll feel like Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver. You’ll feel like a queen.”

  “Isn’t one queen enough in any family?” Phyllis sighed.

  Bruce pursed bis lips and put his hand on his hips. “Mother, are you going to cooperate?”

  “No.” Phyllis seemed impervious. Bruce paused and actually tapped his foot. “Bruce, I am not going to try on a dress that costs forty-seven hundred dollars. I’m not going to do it.”

  Bruce looked up to the ceiling as if the writing on the wall wasn’t crystal clear. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll try again, Mom. I don’t think you understand the concept yet. You see, to attract money you have to look like you already have it. Don’t think of this as spending money, think of it as an investment in our future.”

  “My future isn’t long enough to amortize a forty-seven-hundred-dollar dress.”

  “Yeah, but my future is, and I’m going into bankruptcy court if something doesn’t change.” He looked at her, his face serious for the first time. “Mom, this company means something to me. It really does. I got three kids working for me, all out of my apartment. I got so far with the company. I was doing so well. And then that son of a bitch—”

  Phyllis looked at him with a scolding expression. “You took out bank loans? You’re paying interest?”

  “Well … loans. Not from a bank, exactly. Banks wouldn’t lend after Bill absconded. I had to borrow from a guy named Lefty. He has a lot of interest in this.”

  “But no principles, I bet,” Phyllis tsked and shook her head. “Bruce, Bruce, Bruce.” Giving in, at last, she followed Bruce to the dressing room.

  The interior of the dressing room on Bergdorf’s third floor was as disarrayed as the inside of a schiz
ophrenic’s mind. A three-thousand-dollar sequined jacket lay crumpled on the floor. An Italian silk evening stole and matching turquoise gown hung disconsolately from a single hanger clasp, its four-figure price tag dangling. And the floor and the hooks were littered with enough rejects to rival Bruce’s own suitor list. A faux leopard strapless sheath with matching bolero was thrown over one of the two tiny upholstered chairs, while Bruce sat on the other one, calm and resplendent.

  Phyllis, exhausted, was struggling into yet another dress, this one in red accented by gold trim and buttons. She looked in the mirror. “Dowdy, dowdy, dowdy. Holy Baby Jesus! Am I supposed to be doing a Nancy Reagan impersonation?”

  Bruce looked her over from head to foot, ignoring her comments completely. He turned to the saleswoman. “You know,” he said. “For once she’s not all wrong. It’s a little too St. John. Too many buttons. I want something sleeker. Don’t think Adolfo—think Lacroix as done by Calvin Klein.”

  The saleslady stood stock-still for a long moment.

  “What language are you talking in?” Phyllis inquired. Bruce just sat there and the saleswoman didn’t respond either. They seemed to be communicating on some deeper level.

  “I think I know exactly what you mean,” the saleswoman told him.

  “That’ll be a first,” Phyllis said, sitting down on the other tiny chair, waiting for the next phase of her transformation.

  “Mission accomplished! God! I’m exhausted,” Bruce said to his sisters as he collapsed onto a fauteuil and dumped a collection of glossy shopping bags around him. He lit a cigarette.

  “God! How much did you spend?” Sig asked nervously.

  “Don’t worry. You can afford it.”

  “Where’s Mom?” Sharon asked.

  “She said she wanted a drink. She’s in the bar.”

  “Mom wanted a drink? She doesn’t drink,” Sharon reminded her brother.

  “I told you not to leave her alone,” Sig added.

  “She’s not a child,” Bruce said defensively. “Anyway, she’s just here in the hotel.”

  “Drinking alone? Do you think she’s been drinking alone down in Florida?”

  “Alcoholism? Are you worried Mom’s a lush? Hah! That’s the least of our problems. I wish she would drink. It might take her edge off. Nothing like a nice gin and tonic at four or five o’clock to give one that false sense of well-being. If you could describe what was wrong with Mom, we could join some kind of support group. You know, like Adult Children of Alcoholics.”

  “Yeah. That might be a comfort,” Sig said bitterly. “But first we have to diagnose her. How about ‘Adult Children of Extremely Annoying, Stubborn, and Sarcastic Mothers Who Come Back Home to Live?’”

  “A little long, but we could use an acronym,” Bruce laughed. “You have no idea what I went through at Bergdorf’s.”

  “Never mind Bergdorf’s, where’s Mom now?” Sharon whined. “You’ve lost Mom.”

  “Look, if you don’t like the way I’m doing my job, you do it.”

  “I’m busy doing the research.”

  They both looked at Sig, as if she’d been tack-free.

  “Yeah, and I’m busy working to pay for this entire sting operation,” she reminded them. Each of them looked resentfully at their siblings. It was all so familiar. Sig had a sense of déjà vu. There was a pause that could have gone either way: they could all disintegrate into endless childish bickering or move on. This time it was Sig who decided to make a heroic effort. “Let’s go find Mom,” she said, and they did.

  Sig had worked behind the scenes since the Sibs had found a candidate. She had wangled three tickets to the Winter Wonderland Ball, held at the Plaza Hotel. Her firm had a table, but Sig had managed—through more than a dozen phone calls to people who were not altogether happy to hear from her—to get the seats moved to table eleven, the table that Bernard Krinz would be sitting at. That is, if he attended. During the holidays, a high point of the social season in New York, lots of people bought tickets but preferred to spend the season in the Caribbean. Sig would like to herself, and in the glory days of the eighties she had. But that was then and this was definitely the nineties.

  Now, the day before the Wonderland Ball, all they had to do was indoctrinate Phyllis and then introduce her to Bernard or another rich, eligible old coot. Drag the guy to the Pierre, set the wheels in motion and hope that Cupid’s bow would not misfire. They had to cast a spell, project the illusion that Phyllis Geronomous was a wealthy, stylish, charming, and available woman. It was a long shot, but Sig had long been used to playing the odds. It wasn’t a bull market for rich widowers, so they’d have to make the most of this opportunity.

  Sig got to the Pierre before work on Friday morning. She was almost wet through from the sleet that had been falling. She only hoped it hadn’t spoiled the dress she had schlepped along with all her other accoutrements. She found that Bruce wasn’t yet there with Todd, but that her sister had just arrived by train from Westchester.

  Sharon took out a bag almost as large as she was. It wasn’t full of formal wear. Instead it held research data. She began riffling through file folders. She finally pulled out a large one and snapped it open. “His name is Bernard Krinz. The architect,” she explained to her mother. “Well, he started out as an architect. Then he became a developer. He built the Thompson building on East Fifty-fifth. He was the one that built the new wing for the museum; you know, the one that everyone talked about? He’s done headquarters buildings for close to a dozen of the Fortune 100. We have pictures of them right here. Anyway, before all this he already had family money. As if that’s not enough, his wife died eight years ago and left him more. They had no children, and he’s never remarried.” Sharon moved her finger down her notes. “Net worth in excess of fifty million dollars.” She pulled out a clipping and handed it to Sig. “Here’s his picture.”

  Sig looked at the photo. As Bruce might say in his movie mode, definitely not Gary Cooper in The Fountainhead. But then Mom was no Patricia Neal. “Your architect, Mr. Right,” she said and handed the picture on to her mother. Phyllis eyed the wizened face, the bald pate, the narrow eyes.

  “Looks like Frank Lloyd Wrong to me. Feh! Forget about it.”

  “Mother! You promised you were going to try. You haven’t even met him.”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “The next possibility would be John Glendon Stanford. He’s about eighty-eight years old. But I couldn’t get a picture of him,” Sharon told them.

  “That’s perfect. One foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. We can all imagine what he looks like,” Bruce said from the doorway. He and Todd had arrived, schlepping makeup, hair dryers, brushes, and God knows what else. They were going to do a dry run.

  Sharon ignored her brother. “And last but not least is Robert Himmelfarb. He’s younger than Stanford, but his net worth is lower.”

  “Well, if I really have to …” Phyllis began.

  “You want us settled?” Bruce interrupted. “I need a father’s influence.”

  “And more grandchildren? Don’t you want that?” Sig joined in, jumping on the guilt bandwagon. Sometimes Bruce was shrewd. “You weren’t there for us when we were kids. You go to the dinner and get a date with this guy now,” Sig said.

  Phyllis sighed. “What do I have to do?”

  “Pull out the portfolio,” Sig commanded. The spell was working and the preparation had to begin.

  “To review, what’s a corbel?” Bruce asked.

  Phyllis crossed her eyes. “A cross between a corner and a dumbbell.”

  “Come on, Mom. Concentrate.” Sharon had been prepping Phyllis all morning on architectural terms. “A corbel is a piece of stone or wood projecting from a wall and supporting a cornice or arch.”

  “Okay. If you say so,” Phyllis shrugged.

  “What’s a dentil?”

  “A female dentist? Or maybe the cousin of a corbel?”

  “Mom! How are you going to impress Mr. Kri
nz if you’re architecturally illiterate?”

  “With my expensive haircut,” Phyllis said.

  “What’s Bauhaus?” Sharon continued relentlessly.

  “Corbels and dentils and Bauhaus with noodles, these are a few of my favorite things,” Phyllis sang, parodying Maria in The Sound of Music. Sharon didn’t even crack a smile. It was an endless mystery to Phyllis how she could have raised a daughter so completely devoid of humor.

  “Would you stop it! Would you stop it and just concentrate!” Sharon moaned, exasperated. “Here’s a portfolio of his buildings. Would you just study those at least?”

  “Buildings? They look like melting ice cream.”

  “Another thing. Krinz loves the opera. He’s a fanatic.”

  “Forget about it, I’m not doing opera,” Phyllis said sternly.

  “Now you know what I’ve been going through.” Bruce said as he and Todd emptied their bags. Phyllis made sure to smile in a positive way at the boy. He was sweet. What did it matter if he wasn’t successful? He’d make a nice wife for Bruce, and photography could become his hobby. “Time for a dress rehearsal,” Bruce called. “And Todd is going to help.”

  It was Saturday evening, and almost zero hour. Sig paced nervously, waiting for her mother to appear. Sharon sat on the sofa, eating cashews by the handful. We shouldn’t have done it, Sig thought. It’s ridiculous. I’m wasting time and money. “Are you almost done?” she yelled into the bathroom for what seemed like the fiftieth time.

  “Almost,” Todd sang out. Sig smoothed down the skirt of her dress. With all this pacing her feet would ache and she’d be a wrinkled mess before they even got to the party.

  “I don’t know why I can’t come,” Sharon said resentfully as she popped another handful of cashews into her mouth. They must be at least a thousand calories, Sig thought. Sharon was impossible. Sig looked at her watch. “We’ll be late,” she called.

  “Fashionably late,” Bruce said and stepped into the room, turning toward the dressing-room door. “Ta-da!” he announced.