argument that wasn’t fully cold in its grave when we arrived at Grand Central and she launched into an unprovoked attack on several hapless passersby for ignoring a homeless man on the sidewalk, to whom she gave a ten dollar bill.
It was ever thus. I know my parents sure didn’t earn the big bucks as instructors at Columbia, especially not in those early years, but they were profoundly aware of those who had less, to the point where their socialistic consciousnesses weren’t at peace unless they’d given away so much of their earnings to this or that cause, we were barely better off than the poor wretches they supported. Generosity is all well and good—don’t look at me like that, I give to charity, jeez—but weeks of living off lentils and boxed macaroni and cheese night after night because we couldn’t afford anything else got old real fast.
I suppose they thought, or at least hoped, their altruistic example would instill a like-minded spirit of sacrifice for the common good in their daughter. Instead, a childhood of forced culinary deprivation has only fostered an insatiable craving for prime rib and ridiculously expensive, ugly little fruits that are only in season like two days a year.
So. I pretended I’d never seen her before in my life as I sauntered into Grand Central as gracefully as one can with a trio of soft-sided canvas bags in assorted sizes hanging about one’s person. I was also profoundly grateful it was ninety degrees and therefore highly unlikely we’d pass somebody wearing a fur. Don’t even think about walking down Fifth Avenue with Nedra anytime between October and April. Dead things as fashion statement send her totally postal.
Which is why she must never know about the Blackglama jacket hanging in my closet, an indulgence I succumbed to, oh, four years ago, I think, when I got my First Big Client, a dot.com entrepreneur who basically waved a hand at the SoHo loft he was thrilled to have “only” paid a million five for and said, “Just do it.”
At least I’ve got a mink jacket to show for it. The client, sad to say, is probably lucky to still have his shirt.
But I digress. Once I got Nedra past all the potential land mines and onto the train, I realized having my mother with me did have certain advantages. For one thing, I couldn’t bicker with my mother and moon over Greg at the same time. For another, men were far less likely to hit on me with my mother gesticulating wildly beside me, which was a good thing because I was seriously uninterested in fending off the deluded. Although one or two intrepid souls tried to hit on her. For the most part, however, I could count on my fellow New Yorkers to stay true to type and basically ignore the dutiful daughter escorting the crazy woman back to Happy Acres after her little field trip to the city. And while I still cringed at the thought of Phyllis in the face of my mother’s Open Mouth Policy, at least there wouldn’t be any long stretches of awkward silence. Although there would undoubtedly be a legion of short ones.
Although, really, I have no idea what I’m so nervous about. Phyllis and I have always gotten on together just fine. And after all, I’m the dumpee. If anything, she should feel embarrassed about seeing me, not the other way around.
And while I’m mulling over all this, I notice my mother’s been oddly subdued for the past half hour or so. Of course, applying that word to Nedra is like saying the hurricane’s been downgraded to a tropical storm. But it’s true: she’s actually been reading quietly, the silence between us punctuated by nothing more than an occasional snort of indignation. I glance over from the racy novel I’m reading, something with heaving bosoms and flowing tresses adorning the cover. The heroine’s not too shabby, either.
“Whatcha reading?” I say, noting that the tome on my mother’s lap weighs considerably more than I do.
“Hmm?” She frowns at me over the tops of her reading glasses, then tilts the book so I can see the cover. Ah. Some feminista treatise on menopause, which is definitely the topic of the hour these days, since Nedra apparently stopped having periods about six months ago. When she passes the first year without, she says, she’s going to have a party to celebrate her official entrée into cronehood.
She refocuses on the book, the corners of her mouth turned down. “You have no idea,” she says in a voice that would carry, unmiked, to the back row of Yankee Stadium, “the insidious ways the medical establishment tries to foist off the idea that every natural function of the female body should be regarded as a disability. It’s absolutely outrageous.”
At least four passengers across the aisle give us disapproving looks. Except for one middle-age woman who nods.
I “hmm” in reply and look back at my book, suppressing a long-suffering sigh. The odd thing is, it’s not that I don’t agree with her about a lot of what she gets so fired up about—I’ll probably read that book myself—it’s just there are quieter, more dignified ways to make one’s point. After all these years, Nedra still has the power to embarrass the hell out of me. You would’ve thought I’d become inured to her outbursts by now. I haven’t.
Many’s the time as a child I was tempted to call Social Services, get a feel for what the adoption market was for skinny, Jewish-Italian mutt girl-children of above-average intelligence. Of course, I do understand that parents’ embarrassing their kids goes with the territory. But there are limits. Nedra, however, never seemed to learn what those were.
Since we’ve already discussed the fact that I’m not going to kill my mother, I do the next best thing: I pretend we’re not related.
When the train pulls into our station, my stomach lurches into my throat and stays there. I wrestle out from underneath my seat the three bags into which I intend to pack the essentials, although the plan is to ask Phyllis to stop by the local Mailboxes, Etc., on our way for some boxes so I can pack up and send the rest back to Manhattan via UPS. And yes, it would make more sense to simply rent a car and drive everything back. But neither Nedra nor I drive, since both of us were raised in Manhattan, where cars are a liability, not a convenience.
Of course, Greg insisted I’d have to learn how to drive once I moved out to the suburbs, and because I was blinded by love and basically not in possession of all my faculties, I plastered a game smile to my face and said, “Why, sure, honey.” He even tried to teach me. Once. Let’s just say, the roads are safer with me not on them. I do not, apparently, possess any natural aptitude for steering two tons of potentially lethal metal with any degree of precision.
We and the cases spill out onto the platform, where we both remark how nice it is to breathe without the sensation of trying to suck air through a soggy, moldy washcloth.
The train pulls away. We are conspicuously alone on the platform, with nothing but a soot-free breeze and bird-song to keep us company.
“You did tell her you were coming up on the 11:04?” my mother says.
I refuse to dignify that with an answer.
“Her hair appointment must have run over.”
“Don’t start,” I say on a long-suffering sigh, but she either doesn’t hear me or chooses not to respond. Instead she treads over to a bench, sinks down onto it, drags her book back out of her tote bag and calmly resumes her reading. Not ten seconds later, however, I nearly jump out of my skin at the sound of a male voice calling my name from the other end of the platform. I whip around, shielding my eyes from the glare of the sunlight bouncing off the tracks, nearly losing my cookies—literally—at the sight of the tall man in khaki shorts and a polo shirt loping down the platform toward us.
I swear under my breath, thinking it’s Greg, suddenly giving serious consideration to the idea of swooning onto the tracks in the path of an oncoming train. Except the next train isn’t due for at least an hour and as the man gets closer, I realize the man’s hair is too long and dark, his shoulders too broad, to be Greg. Instead, it’s Bill, his younger-by-ten-months brother.
Persona non grata in the Munson clan. In other words, a Democrat.
He is also apparently a leg man, given the way his gaze is slithering over the area south of my hemline.
When Greg and I were together, Bill simply never came up in the conversation. In fact, I nearly gagged on my white wine when, at our engagement party,