Marrying Mom

by Olivia Goldsmith

  Sig, who had been very quiet watching the two older women friends, came to join her siblings to peek into the money bag.

  “So how much do you need, Susan?” Mrs. Katz asked, and pulled out a packet of bills. It was a big packet, all fresh, with a $10,000 unbroken brown band around it. Mrs. Katz began to take out more of them, stacking them like children’s bricks on the table.

  “Oh, I couldn’t …” Sig said. “I don’t know when I could repay—”

  “Borrow the money,” Phyllis rapped out at Sig. She turned to Sylvia. “Thank you, Sylvia,” she said. “I never loved you for your money, but it doesn’t hurt.” She looked back at Sig. “I didn’t realize how things were with you. I came up here to be a good mother to you, not to be selfish. I want to help. Call one of your other candidates. I’ll see him.” Then, with dignity she sat herself down, alone, at the other end of the room.

  Meanwhile, like a snake fighting a snake charmer, Sharon managed to tear her eyes away from the contents of Mrs. Katz’s purse. “I’ll go back through the files,” she said. “We made a mistake with the first, but we’ll do it right this time. I can find the right guy.”

  Bruce looked over at Sharon. “Not a bad idea,” he said. He looked over at Mrs. Katz. “Maybe you could help us with this project,” he said. “Then we’ll pay you back.”

  Sig crossed the room to her mother. She thought of how content her mother had looked in Monty’s arms, though the man was a liar and crook. “You mean it, Mom?” Sig asked, her voice low.

  Phyllis merely sat there, her head down. “If that’s what I have to do, I’ll do it.”

  Sig was back home from work, exhausted and drained. Her mother, Mrs. Katz, and all their possessions had been transplanted from the Pierre to Sig’s library, which now looked like some bizarre cross between a college dorm and a convalescent home. Sig had taken one look at the pill and medicine bottles, Mrs. Katz’s denture holder, the damp socks over the radiator, the prunes in a plastic jar on the bureau, along with all the other detritus of the two old women’s lives and simply closed the folding doors on the whole thing.

  Sig’s buzzer rang. She shut the door on the room with the intention of not showing it at all. Sharon had gone home to her still unemployed husband, promising to dig out the files for new marital candidates, and Bruce had dropped her at the train on his way to Chelsea. Sig was on watch. Their mother and Mrs. Katz were lying down in her spare bedroom, but Sig was still awake, finishing the little touches to the apartment that she’d been told would help make it sell quickly. She had straightened the pillows, put out flowers, and scented the air with two bowls of Floris potpourri. If she knew how, she’d bake a cake, just so that the welcoming smell of sweet batter rising would entice a buyer. She was still in shock over Mrs. Katz and her incredible bag. It couldn’t save her, but it could buy her some time so she could save herself. For the first time in weeks Sig found herself humming: when she realized she was humming the theme to Felix the Cat she had to smile. “Whenever he got in a fix, he reaches into his bag of tricks.”

  Sig went to the door to meet Cornelia, the agent from Stirling & Ross, the primo residential brokers in New York. She knew it was best not to be in when people came to look, but since there was no place else to stash her mother and Mrs. Katz, this time there really was no alternative. She may as well be here, sitting nonchalantly in the library, while some witch who’d married money criticized her bathroom wallpaper. Sig took a deep breath and opened the door. Cornelia was there, another one of those residential-broker-ladies-of-a-certain-age who invariably wore important earrings and a belt with a gold-tone buckle. Cornelia swept in, her smile tight. “Well, hello,” she said, simultaneously raising her brows, looking around, and immediately flicking on the lamp in the foyer. “You’ve done a lovely job with this place,” Cornelia said. “It’ll sell quickly.” Goddamn it, Sig thought, she’d forgotten to turn on the lamps, which was the number one broker trick. But the rest of her rooms were really light, it was only the foyer that was windowless.

  She looked up over Cornelia’s shoulder and started with surprise.

  “Paul Cushing,” Sig said and put her hand out to him. She experienced that moment of dislocation when she met someone she knew from another setting—like the time she bumped into her gynecologist’s nurse in Bloomingdale’s. She had completely forgotten about his promised visit and the news he couldn’t tell her over the phone.

  “Is this a bad time?” he asked.

  “No. Not really. I’m just letting this broker take a look at my place. I’m thinking of buying another one …” Sig tried not to blush. How embarrassing, for Paul Cushing to show up when Cornelia did and to know she was selling her apartment. Sig was acquainted with Cornelia well enough to know that to make a sale Cornelia would definitely tell a prospect—or even a stranger—when a property was distressed.

  He smiled warmly. “It’s so nice to see you again, Sigourney. I had no idea you were even considering selling your place.” He looked around. “So many of these New York apartments don’t seem very warm. But you’ve made a home here.” He looked directly at her. His eyes were very blue. “Why don’t you show us both around? I didn’t get a complete tour when I was here for your mother’s birthday.”

  Cornelia smiled brightly. It was clear to Sig that the woman wasn’t going to lose an opportunity here. “Well, let me begin by pointing out the two foyer closets …”

  “Oh, don’t bother,” Paul Cushing told her politely but firmly, and Cornelia wilted. “Sig knows what I like. She’ll show me around.” Then, to take out the sting, Paul Cushing smiled at Cornelia. His smile was really devastating for an old guy’s, Sig thought. Cornelia, an old babe, recovered and actually fluttered her lashes at him. So that’s how it is, Sig thought, as Paul took her elbow and allowed her to lead him into the living room.

  “I know you’ve been here, but I don’t think you saw the view, Cornelia.” Sig took them to the window and pulled aside the Scalamandre curtains. She looked out at the view she loved. “You can see three bridges from here,” she told them, staring at the river. “The bridges themselves are easier to see at night, but the park is best in the daytime.” She looked up—he was tall—to find that he wasn’t looking at the view.

  “How’s your mother, Sig?” Paul asked. “I have something I want to tell her.”

  “Oh, she’s just fine,” Sig said brightly. Maybe he’d do for Mom, she thought. “Actually she’s here. She got tired of the hotel. She’s resting now.” Sig pictured what her mother looked like without three hours of Bruce’s prep time and thought it best that she and Paul didn’t run into each other. Not right now. She’d show him the guest room later—on another visit. She’d make sure there was another visit. Was this more than some kind of coincidence? Was it some kind of holiday gift? Sig looked at Paul. He was much better looking than Monty, and Sig knew that he was legitimate—how many millions had Sharon said he was worth? Maybe Sharon didn’t have to go back to the files after all. Perhaps they had somebody right here.

  “What is it that you need to tell my mother?” Sig asked.

  “I looked up background information on Montague Dunleathe as I told you I could. I hate to say anything bad about a man, but he might not be as he seems.” He paused. “I say this to protect you and your mother. Like I protect Wendy.”

  “That’s very considerate of you. I appreciate it.” His timing couldn’t have been better, Sig thought. He didn’t know the half of it.

  “I wouldn’t like to see your mother hurt.”

  Sig smiled up at Paul Cushing. “Step into my parlor,” she told him.

  The Rainbow Room? On Christmas week? It will be a mob scene, nobody goes to the Rainbow Room,” Sig was saying to her mother.

  “How can it be a mob scene if nobody goes there?” Phyllis asked.

  “Nobody who’s anybody,” Sigourney said.

  “Well, we are. For dinner. All four of us,” Phyllis told her daughter. Sig shrugged.

  “Look
, you don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Phyllis told Sig. “I don’t want to go.”

  Sig narrowed her eyes. “No. You’re going. You’re going and you’re going to enjoy it. If you could like Monty, you’ll love Paul Cushing.”

  “Nah. He’s not my type. He’s more …”

  “More what? More classy? More rich? More sincere? He’s certainly more attractive. He’s very, very attractive.”

  “Oh, you think so?” Phyllis asked. She half closed her already hooded eyes. “What do you think, Sylvia?”

  Sylvia, sitting in the club chair as usual, shrugged. “I prefer Monty,” she said in a dreamy voice. “But maybe that’s because he played canasta with me.”

  Sig shook her head. She was surrounded by senile dementia. Well, she supposed things could be worse. Sylvia Katz could be her mother.

  So far, Sig the big Wall Street investment broker hadn’t been able to convince Mrs. Katz even to put her money in a bank, much less invest in even the most secure stocks and bonds. Mrs. Katz, plain and simple, was having none of it. Sig had even given up trying to explain about interest. Mrs. Katz didn’t care about interest. “I know from interest. When you have money everyone has interest in you.” All Sylvia Katz wanted was to keep hold of the contents of her patent leather purse, which she would never spend, not even to save her modesty in a game of strip canasta. “Don’t be mad, Susan,” Mrs. Katz said now. “Mr. Cushing is very nice, but I’m like your mother. Except for the S, E, X part. I prefer Monty.”

  “Montague Dunleathe is a crook,” Sig said, totally exasperated.

  “He played a good game of canasta,” Mrs. Katz said nostalgically. Then she pulled herself together and looked back at Sig. “He didn’t try a thing,” she assured her. “Not with me, anyway. It was just a friendly game.”

  Sig merely rolled her eyes. The junk from their room had spread into the living room and was now threatening even her foyer. Mrs. Katz’s shapeless sweater hung over a doorknob in the hall. Someone’s reading glasses, the earpiece held onto the frame by a safety pin, were lying on the lowboy. The Halls Mentho-lyptus lozenges (which Mrs. Katz perpetually sucked on) were on one sofa table. On the other was an equally fetid collection of objects: Phyllis’s brand of lozenges—billed as “curiously strong peppermints”—were spread beside their tin box. There was also an old Chap Stick, a stack of dimes—which Phyllis still collected, though telephones no longer used dimes—some coupons torn out of a magazine or newspaper or both, a pencil stub, a half-filled-in crossword puzzle, and two more pairs of reading glasses, one with a neck chain and one without.

  Sig thought she might go mad, but with some luck Paul Cushing would take Mom off her hands, while Mrs. Katz would eventually be weaned into a place of her own—or at least make a home with Phyllis.

  It seemed to Sig that—God knows why—Paul had been doing his best to woo Phyllis. He had taken both her mom and Mrs. Katz out for dinner yesterday, then he’d taken Sig, Wendy, and Phyllis to the Radio City Christmas show today. Sig had called in sick, and, anyway, nothing was happening these days right before the holiday.

  Of course, Phyllis had almost blown that for them by talking throughout the entire picture, but her comments were a lot funnier than the film, anyway. And it seemed that Paul Cushing could live with it because he’d given them this invitation. At least that’s what Mrs. Katz had told them after she took the call. Paul Cushing didn’t seem to Sig like the Rainbow Room type. He was much smoother, more sophisticated than that. Still, Sig had called up Bruce to do a job on Mom and now they were ready to go.

  “Paul’s very nice,” Sig said to her mom, fishing.

  “Very nice,” Phyllis agreed. “But he doesn’t like me.

  “Of course he does. He likes you very much.”

  “Not in that way,” Phyllis said. She looked Sig over. “Very nice,” she said approvingly. “But you should wear a shorter skirt.”

  Bruce stood over Mom, spraying in the last few touches to her hairstyle with a fixative strong enough to bond frogs to steel girders. “There,” he said, and gave the front of her hair a tug. “One final fillip.”

  “Speaking of Phillips …” Sig began and took a look in the mirror. “He should be here any moment.” She’d lowered herself again, but she had to. “I won’t see him after this,” she said aloud.

  “Well, thank God. Progress is being made,” Phyllis said. “Now, if you’d only open your eyes and date a real man, not a corporate clone too scared to commit or have kids.”

  “Mother, most men don’t want me. They say I’m too much to handle.”

  Phyllis smiled nostalgically. “Your father used to say that to me.” She lowered her eyes and her voice. “Monty said it, too,” she murmured.

  The Rainbow Room was crowded, but when they got off the private elevator and were greeted by the obsequious maître d’ they were immediately ushered to a desirable table for four right beside the dance floor. Paul Cushing obviously had clout. And they’d arrived just in the nick of time, because as they took their seats the lights dimmed, the small orchestra played an anticipatory drum riff, and then, one by one, Rockettes appeared at the top of the curved miniature staircase. The women tap-danced symmetrically and beautifully down the stairs, one more perfect than the next, one leg more shapely than the one beside it, until they were all on the dance floor and moved into high gear. They dazzled the crowd, not only with their tapping and kicks but with the mechanical perfection they performed in.

  Sig, however, was bored. She looked across the table. Phillip was looking on, also blasé and certainly bland, but Paul’s eyes sparkled and he led the applause. There was something about Paul—even though he was so old—that seemed always to find new pleasure in life. When he bent to his left and said something to her mother that Sig couldn’t hear, she wished she knew what it was.

  After the performance, once the applause calmed down, the band began to play “Night and Day.” When Phillip asked her to dance, Sig was surprised but pleased, at least until she got onto the dance floor. Sig could dance, but not with Phillip. He made her feel awkward. He couldn’t lead, and she actually found herself stepping on his foot. Each time she did, he apologized. Phillip was, without a doubt, the worst dancer north of the Mason-Dixon line. Probably south, too. Sig was very grateful when Paul Cushing tapped Phillip on the shoulder and cut in.

  “Thank God,” she breathed. Phillip relinquished her with only a slightly hurt backward glance.

  “It looked like you needed rescuing,” Paul said, “but I wasn’t sure.” Then he took command. He stepped back from her a bit and looked at her. “Nice dress. Very festive. Red is your color.” Sig blushed. “Did you like the flowers?” he asked.

  “They were lovely,” Sig said warmly. Then Paul pulled her closer. His hand on the small of her back, asserting a gentle pressure, felt delicious. “My mother was very touched.” Sig found it effortless to match her steps to his, to anticipate his moves and to relax. She hadn’t done that the first time they danced, at the Winter Wonderland Ball. Younger men didn’t know how to dance, but dancing became almost a participatory sport with Paul. They moved through the rest of “Night and Day,” and they continued moving together to “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” Sigourney relaxed, and leaned a little closer to him. Then she remembered her mother, and the whole point of the exercise.

  This is bizarre, Sig thought. I’m having a better time with Paul than I am with my date. Then again, Phillip was only nominally Sig’s date, or anything to Sig. “We have to go back to the table,” Sig said reluctantly as the band began to play “Just in Time.” “This has been fun, though.”

  Paul smiled at her, took her elbow, and began to lead her off the floor. It felt good to have him take charge and move them between the dancing couples. But the good time evaporated right at that second. Because just before they reached their table, Sig looked up and saw her mother dancing with Monty—Montague Dunleathe—halfway across the room. “Oh my God!” Sig said and dropped Paul’s h
and, stepping away from him.

  “What is it?”

  Sig could say nothing. She merely pointed. He followed her gaze and raised his eyebrows.

  “Your mother?” Paul asked. “Is she all right?”

  Sig shook her head. Then she got very, very angry. What was going on here? She’d been duped. Surely this wasn’t merely coincidence! “How did he know we were going to be here?” she demanded of Paul.

  “I haven’t a clue,” he admitted.

  Sig didn’t know whether she should believe him or not. She was filled with a furious energy. She’d been had, and she knew it. Paul Cushing had, most likely, been dancing with her merely to distract her. He must be plotting on Mom’s behalf, along with her other friends. “You picked this place,” Sig said accusingly.

  “Me? I didn’t pick it. I thought it was for you. Why would I want to come here?”

  “So that could happen,” she said, pointing. “Otherwise it’s because you like the Rockettes and enjoy being surrounded by people with bad haircuts. I don’t know. I just know that Mrs. Katz said that you had made the reservations. Did Monty ask you to do it?”

  “Mrs. Katz told me your mother wanted to come.” He paused. “Wait a second.” Paul’s face, when he concentrated, looked all of his seventy-one years. “No, actually, I think she said you wanted to come.” He grinned. “Frankly, I was surprised. Then I hoped it was for the dancing. You’re a great dancer, Sig.”

  Sig didn’t have time for any more talk. She had to figure out what the hell was going on with her mother. She strode across the dance floor and reached Monty and her mom. They had just executed a complicated-looking but graceful dip. Monty looked up. “Oh, cheerio,” he said, as if being there in his ratty old dinner jacket, her mother wrapped in his arms, was the most natural thing in the world.