by Sue Margolis
There were no tubes, no monitors, just the oxygen mask on his face. His eyes were closed. Mum sat on the bed and took his hand. After a moment or two, Dad’s eyes opened. He took off the mask and with a weak movement of his fingers beckoned her closer. She leaned in and they exchanged a deep, passionate kiss. Any other time, Scarlett and I would have blushed and told them to get a room. Standing there in that hospital room, though, we started to weep in silence.
Mum was sobbing again, begging him not to die. Dad reached out and managed to stroke her head. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “For what happened to us. It was my fault. I neglected you, but I never stopped loving you.”
Mum touched his cheek and gently shushed him. “I love you, too.”
Then he looked over at Scarlett and me. “I love you both—so much. You have been such wonderful daughters. Look after your mum.”
Mum beckoned us over, and Scarlett and I gave him a final hug. He felt warm and he smelled of Dad. I don’t think that either of us could believe he was about to die.
The nurse came in and felt his pulse. She asked him if he was comfortable. Dad smiled at her. “I make a living,” he murmured, managing a shrug. Then he looked at Mum. “OK, maybe it’s not the greatest joke in the world, but it’s the best I can manage under the circumstances.”
He closed his eyes, took one last, difficult breath and died. The smile was still on his face.
Mum managed to hold it together for the funeral, but a few days later, the strain got too much and she took to her bed. Nana Ida moved in to look after us. It was hard on her, too, because Grandpa Joe had been gone only a year or so. He’d finally had that stroke he was always promising.
Eventually Mum started seeing a bereavement counselor, which seemed to help. Plus all her friends rallied—particularly Aunty Brenda, who wasn’t our real aunt. She was Mum’s best friend. They’d known each other since kindergarten. She’d been part of our lives since we were babies, so she just became known as Aunty Brenda. In that first year after Dad died, they spoke on the phone nearly every day. On weekends Aunty Brenda would pop in for coffee or take Mum out shopping.
In the beginning, Scarlett and I were still in shock and took to sleeping in the same bed for comfort, but we were teenagers and even though the dad we both adored had just died, we had so much living to do. Despite her own grief, Mum didn’t hold us back. She said it cheered her up to hear us gossiping on the phone to our friends and to know we were still going to parties and gigs.
A couple of months after the funeral, Mum went back to work. Her job and looking after Scarlett and me were all that mattered to her. It would be five years before she started dating, but to this day, almost twenty years later, there had never been anybody serious. The way she saw it, men her own age wanted sexy, slim twenty-and thirtysomethings. “And as an older, curvy woman, I end up with all the dross—self-obsessed bores, old enough to remember when the Dead Sea was only ailing a bit.”
Besides parties and friends, the thing that kept me going was school. I’d always been a bit of a bookworm, but now I threw myself into my studies—partly because I knew that’s what Dad would have wanted me to do. Scarlett couldn’t be bothered. Not that she’d ever been very interested when it came to school.
My sister was certainly as smart as me, if not smarter, but she’d always found school tedious. Instead, she had put all her energies into her after-school drama classes and learning her lines for her latest dramatic role.
After Dad died, she seemed to lose all interest in acting. She carried on going to drama classes, but her heart wasn’t in it. What’s more, she was spending hours alone in her room watching TV. Mum thought she might be depressed and threatened to send her to a shrink.
This forced Scarlett to come clean and explain that although she was still sad about Dad, she wasn’t remotely depressed—quite the opposite, in fact. She explained that she’d been recording all the late-night stand-up comedy shows and was watching them over and over again, studying the technique and timing of people like Roseanne and Ellen DeGeneres. It seemed that Scarlett had a new ambition—to be a stand-up comic.
When she wasn’t watching videos of women comics, she was trying to write her own material.
As she got more confident, she would try out her act on Mum and me. “OK, guys, I have a new bit. Tell me honestly. Does this work? … I’ve been painting my room, so I got out my stepladder. I don’t get along with my real ladder.”
At sixteen, Scarlett wanted to leave school and get a McJob to support her comedy writing and performing. With echoes of Nana Ida and Grandpa Joe, Mum insisted that Scarlett stay on until she was eighteen and take her final exams.
She did pretty well with minimum effort and could have gone on to university, but Scarlett was having none of it. She got a job as a runner with a Soho film company and started trying to impress the bookers on the comedy circuit.
Meanwhile, I was in my second year at Leeds, studying law. I chose the subject because it fascinated me and because, more than anything, I wanted to be a lawyer. I also knew that Dad would have approved.
Although she’d loved Dad to bits, Scarlett understood that I felt his loss more than she did. We talked about how, growing up, I had “belonged” to Dad and she had “belonged” to Mum. As kids there had been no jealousy between us. It was just how our family was.
After Dad died, that changed—at least as far as I was concerned. Although I never said anything to Mum or to Scarlett, and Mum went out of her way to be loving and affectionate, I felt very alone without Dad. I began to resent the relationship Scarlett had with Mum. I knew, and I think they both knew deep down, that they would always have a special connection.
The hurt I was feeling had an effect on my relationship with Scarlett, and I cooled towards her, particularly after I went to university and she was left at home. Then one night, not long before her eighteenth birthday, Scarlett came into my room (I was home for spring break). She asked if she could try out a couple of comedy bits on me. “I’ve been experimenting with some new material,” she said. I asked her what kind and she said, “Lesbian.”
“Lesbian? Isn’t that a bit risky? I mean, what do you know about being a lesbian?”
“Quite a bit, actually.”
I didn’t say anything for a couple of seconds. It was dawning on me that she was serious. “Hang on. Are you actually telling me you’re gay?”
She nodded. “You’re the first person I’ve come out to.”
After all the mean, shitty thoughts I’d been having about my sister, she’d chosen to confide in me. I felt privileged and very loved, but at the same time it was like I was a kid being given a Christmas present that I knew I didn’t deserve because I’d been bad all year.
We stayed up talking until five in the morning. Scarlett told me that she’d known she was gay since she was eight. I was astonished that a person could know before they hit puberty, but she was adamant. She described standing in the school playground and it suddenly hitting her that she wanted to spend her life with a girl. “I knew nothing about sex,” she said, “but I was in no doubt that I wanted to live with a girl. I also had this sense of it being wrong and that people would disapprove.”
She had kept her secret for all these years. I couldn’t begin to imagine the confusion my little sister must have felt. I hugged her and we both started to cry.
“But why haven’t you come out to Mum?” I said at one point. “You know she’ll be cool with it.”
“Yeah, too cool. I wouldn’t put it past her to put an announcement in the Jewish Chronicle: ‘To Shelley Roth—a beautiful lesbian, Scarlett Poppy, just out. Proud mum and daughter doing well.’ ”
I said that I took the point. That night, my relationship with my sister began to change. As we talked, I started to acknowledge how hard it had been for her, living with a pushy stage mother. Of course, Mum would have had a fit if she’d heard herself described as “pushy” and “a stage mother.”
“Pushy? Me? I d
on’t know what you’re talking about. Now, come on, Scar, do your Celine Dion … ‘The first time ever I saw your face …’”
It took her a couple of days before she could pluck up the courage to come out to Mum. Afterwards, she reported back to me. “I don’t know why I was so worried. She was great. She hugged me, told me how much she loved me and how proud of me she was and that as far as she was concerned, my sexuality was neither here nor there.”
But it was too good to be true. That evening, while Mum was preparing dinner, we heard her on the phone to Aunty Brenda. She’d put Brenda on speakerphone, presumably so that she could carry on peeling potatoes.
“Bren, you will never believe it … I’ve got one.” I hadn’t heard Mum this excited since she wangled an invite to one of Sting’s rain-forest fund-raisers.
“One what?” we heard Aunty Brenda say.
“A lesbian.”
“My word. How exotic. So what are you feeding it?” Scarlett and I corpsed. Aunty Brenda wasn’t remotely homophobic. She simply “got” my mother and enjoyed teasing her.
“Very funny. I’m trying to tell you that Scarlett’s just come out as gay.”
“Good for her. Tell her Aunty Brenda says mazel tov.”
“Isn’t it wonderful? I’m the mother of a lesbian. I can’t believe it. It’s just so … cool.”
“Shelley.”
“What?”
“Do me a favor. Please don’t hold a street party to celebrate. You’re in your fifth decade. Perhaps the time has come to stop trying to scandalize the neighbors.”
“Who said anything about scandalizing the neighbors?”
“Come on, it’s your hobby. Scarlett’s coming out is about her, not you. Being a gay woman might be trendy in certain circles, but she’s going to come up against prejudice and bigotry and you need to be there for her.”
“I know that, Bren. I’m not a complete fool. Can you imagine me not being there for her?”
Scarlett and I never doubted Mum’s sincerity, but there was no getting away from it—our mother was high on pride. Pretty soon she was bandying about “insider” words like femmie and butchie and had bought an I HEART MY GAY DAUGHTER shopper and k.d. lang’s Greatest Hits album.
Mum had been overjoyed when Scarlett came out, but a year or so ago when she discovered that Scarlett was dating Grace, who wasn’t just a successful newspaper and magazine photographer but also black, she was positively euphoric. It was as if all her Christmases had come at once. A few months later, when Scarlett and Grace moved in together, Mum confided in me that she fantasized about them having babies and her being a grandmother to mixed-race children. “And of course we’d invite all of Grace’s family to stay for the holidays.” It was clear she was imagining pans of jerk chicken simmering on the stove and Grace’s parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters gathered around the tree, boogying to a reggae version of “O Holy Night.”
A few days after I’d told her that Josh and I were getting married, I was back at Mum’s for Friday-night dinner. She’d invited me over because there was something she wanted to tell me. “Look, I don’t have a lot of money, but I made sure I put a bit away from your dad’s life insurance to pay for weddings for you and Scarlett. There’s enough to give you a nice party. I know it’s what your father would have wanted.”
“Mum, are you absolutely sure? Josh and I were planning on getting a bank loan.”
“Stop it. I’m not having you start your married life in debt. Now, I don’t want to hear another word.”
I got up and gave her a hug. “Thanks, Mum.”
“My pleasure. So, come on, what sort of dress have you got in mind … ?”
Mum and I had just finished coffee and I was thinking about heading home, when the phone rang. Mum went over to the kitchen counter and picked up.
“Hello. Yes … If you need to talk … I’m listening.”
God, now she was doing Frasier impersonations.
“Mum, you can’t keep on doing this.”
Mum waved a hand to shush me. “OK … Harold, so has anything happened to make you so depressed? … I see. Your fake plants died because you didn’t pretend to water them … And because your lucky number never comes up, you think you’re cursed … What is your lucky number? … Three million, seven hundred and forty-eight thousand, nine hundred and thirty-one. Uh-huh … So, how’s that working for you?”
I picked up my jacket and gave Mum a wave to let her know I was leaving. “Speak to you during the week.” She nodded and went back to the unfortunate Harold.
I got into my car and was about to start the engine when my cell rang. It was Scarlett. I wasn’t expecting to hear from her, as she and Grace were away for the weekend in Dorset.
“Omigod, I just read your e-mail.” She sounded really excited, as I’d hoped she would. “Grace and I would absolutely love to be bridesmaids at your wedding.”
Since that night in my bedroom when Scarlett came out to me, our relationship had grown and matured and we were closer than I had ever thought possible. I had also come to think the world of Grace. Josh loved both of them, too, and agreed that they should absolutely be bridesmaids at our wedding.
“Oh, Scar. That’s fantastic. I’m so pleased, and I know Josh will be, too.”
“But lesbian bridesmaids? You sure? I mean, aren’t some of Josh’s family really orthodox? Don’t they still stone people for being gay?”
“It’s only his old aunts and uncles who are religious. And his mum says they’ll be fine. She says it’ll give them something to gossip about.”
“Great. Then we’re on, but I have to warn you that dresses are totally out of the question.”
“O-K. That’s not a problem.” There was no way I wanted them to wear outfits they weren’t comfortable with. On the other hand, this was my wedding day. I didn’t want my bridesmaids in sneakers. Plus, Scarlett and Grace were gorgeous. We were talking full-on lipstick lesbians here. These were not the kind of women who favored trucks and mullet haircuts. I asked her what she had in mind.
“I’m thinking maybe an early thirties, transgender, Cabaretslash-Weimar vibe—you know, men’s pinstripe suits, long cigarette holders and monocles. Mum would love it.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
Scarlett started laughing. “I’m joking. Of course we’ll wear dresses. I’m sure that whatever you choose will be great.”
“Hooped lavender crinolines it is, then,” I said.
“Great. We’ll bring the curds and whey.” She paused. “So what did Mum say when you told her the news?”
“Well, she’s insisting on paying for the wedding, which is really generous. I think she’s doing her best to be happy for me, but she’s struggling. The bottom line is I’m getting hitched to a boring doctor instead of a performance poet or some artist who marinades brains in lark’s spittle.”
“What do you do with her? You have to let me speak to her again. I hate the way I get all the maternal plaudits. I mean, look how she reacted when she found out that Grace was black. It wasn’t just ridiculously OTT and embarrassing; it was so insensitive to you … and to Grace, for that matter. I’m going to call her.”
“No, don’t. She’s trying. We have to give her credit for that. Whenever either of us tries to speak to her, it always touches a nerve and she gets herself worked up trying to pretend there’s not a problem. You and I know her feelings towards Josh—and me, for that matter—are all tied up with her relationship with Dad. I take after him, and even though she denies it, she has real problems with that. It’s not always easy, but I know she loves me. Let’s just leave things as they are.”
“You sure?”
“I think so.”
“OK, hon. But if you change your mind, you only have to say.”
“I know. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
I got home and put the kettle on. While it was boiling I texted Josh. He was about to catch a flight home from Sydney, where he’d been g
iving a series of lectures on the latest techniques in treating childhood leukemia. I was due to pick him up at Heathrow the following evening. Hey, J, hope final lecture went well. Can’t wait to have you back. Safe journey. See you Heathrow Terminal 3. Love you forever and ever and then some. T XXX.
I spent the next few hours lying on the sofa, drinking mugs of tea and reading case notes. When I’d finished, I got some cheese and crackers and ate them in front of Antiques Roadshow. By half past nine I was thinking about having a bath and an early night.
I’d just gotten out of the tub when I heard my mobile going. Without even grabbing a towel I ran to get it. I thought it could be Josh phoning from Sydney to say there had been a delay. Naked and dripping on the carpet, I pressed CONNECT.
“Oh, Tally, I’m so glad I reached you.” It was my best friend, Rosie, sounding more than a tad hyper. “I don’t suppose you happen to have a cabbage?”
“Er … not on me, no.”
“Look, I know it’s late, but you couldn’t possibly bring one over, could you? I wouldn’t ask, but it’s a real emergency.”
Chapter 2
“I don’t get it,” I said to Rosie. “How does a person have a cabbage emergency? What are you doing, bulk pickling sauerkraut?”
“Duh. It’s for my breasts.”
“Of course. That explains everything.”
“Actually, it does, and if you were a nursing mother, you’d know that. My breasts are hot, red and engorged with milk. I’m in agony. I think I’ve got mastitis. Cabbage leaves help relieve the pain and swelling.”
“God, you poor thing. OK, I’ll be straight over. I’ll pop into Tesco on the way.”
“You sure you don’t mind?”
“Rosie, you’re a two-minute drive from me. Of course I don’t mind.”
Rosie Thomas had been my best friend since university. She started off in the law department with me, and we hit it off straightaway. We bonded over Friends, the X-Files (with particular reference to David Duchovny, after whom we both lusted) and the fact that we shared the same liberal political views.