Mum put down the phone and let out a sigh. “Bloody hell. For a moment there I thought she was actually going to do in her old man.”
“She still might,” I said.
“I know. It always bothers me that I never find out how the story ends.”
“Mum, you have to stop doing this,” I said, topping up her mug with tea. “For starters, it’s irresponsible. You’re not a counselor. You’ve had no training. You can’t stop people committing suicide by using shrink jargon and quoting Dr. Phil.”
“OK, what do you suggest I do?”
We’d been over the problem a dozen times. Mum’s home phone number and the number of the local branch of the Samaritans differed by a single digit. She averaged about four calls a week from people who had misdialed and wanted to talk. She refused to change her phone number on the grounds that informing everybody she knew would be a major hassle. A mass e-mail didn’t appeal because she was convinced she’d end up leaving people off and they would get offended.
“If you won’t change your number,” I said, “you have to redirect these callers to the Samaritans.”
“Tally, I’ve already told you why I can’t do that. You don’t get it. These people believe they suck at life. By redirecting them, I’d be telling them they suck even more than they thought because they can’t even dial the right number for the Samaritans.”
“I do get it, but I also get that it can’t be healthy spending hours at a time trying to talk people down from ledges.”
Mum drank a mouthful of tea and looked thoughtful. “Maybe you’re right. Perhaps I should change my number.”
That would be the day. If I knew one thing about my mother, it was that she couldn’t resist involving herself in other people’s troubles. Even though she was hooked on the drama, and the counseling skills she possessed had been picked up from listening to radio shrinks, she meant well, and she was always saying that before callers hung up, they rarely failed to thank her and say how much better they felt.
“So, anyway,” I said, “I have news.” Pause for dramatic effect. “Josh has asked me to marry him, and I’ve said yes.”
“Wow.” I watched Mum struggle to arrange her face into a smile. It was the underwhelmed reaction I’d been expecting. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t let it get to me, but it already had.
“He got me this. Isn’t it beautiful?” I was holding out my left hand and wiggling my ring finger.
She took my hand and peered at the engagement ring. “A square-cut solitaire. That is stunning, but I didn’t think people bothered so much with engagements and engagement rings these days.”
“Well, Josh and I are more traditional.”
“I never had an engagement ring.”
“Mum, you’ve never even had a wedding ring. You just borrowed one for the ceremony.”
“Yes, because I found it demeaning. A wedding ring on a woman is about being owned. It says you’re somebody’s property.”
“Well, thank you, Gloria Steinem, but FYI, these days a wedding ring is seen as a symbol of love, not a mark of oppression, and in case you haven’t noticed, most married men and women wear them. Josh and I will both be getting wedding bands.”
“Well, I guess if he’s going to wear one, that’s not so bad . . . So, have you set a date?”
“Sometime in June. We haven’t picked an actual day yet . . . Mum, why can’t you be pleased for me?”
“Of course I’m pleased for you! My thirty-four-year-old daughter is finally getting married. What’s not to be pleased about?”
“You don’t look pleased. I mean, here I am telling you that I’ve managed to snare a handsome Jewish doctor—a pediatric cancer specialist, no less—and we’re getting married. According to the Jewish mother handbook, you’re supposed to weep tears of joy and tell me that finally you can go to your grave a happy woman. Then we’re meant to break open the cherry brandy and bond over a chorus of ‘Wind Beneath My Wings.’”
Mum was laughing. “Well, pardon me for not being a yenta straight out of central casting.” She got up and gave me a hug. “I’m sorry, darling. Of course I’m happy. Josh is a lovely boy.”
“But not what you had in mind for me.” I couldn’t let it go.
“Oh, who cares what I had in mind for you?” she said. “You’ve chosen Josh, and if you’re happy, I’m happy. I can’t believe it. My first baby is getting married. If only your dad were alive.”
“So you don’t wish I was marrying Frank O’Rourke?”
Frank O’Rourke was this drop-dead gorgeous wannabe actor I’d dated for a few months during my final year of high school. Mum adored him and kept dropping heavy hints about us getting engaged even though we were way too young. I’m not sure what she loved more—Frank or the idea of one day being able to say to her friends, “Meet my son-in-law, the big Hollywood actor.”
Believe it or not, the other major point in Frank’s favor as far as my mother was concerned was his Catholicism. He went to church regularly and had an uncle in Ireland who was a bishop. Nothing would have amused Mum more than to send out wedding invitations requesting the pleasure of the company of her Jewish family at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Dublin.
But Frank and I didn’t work out. Our relationship fell apart when he was cast as Danny in the school production of
Grease
, and he and Dawn Braithwaite, who played Sandy, ended up onstage, snogging for real—with tongues—in front of the entire audience. So much for Frank being a nice Catholic boy.
“Why on earth would you bring up Frank O’Rourke?” Mum went over to the stove and opened the oven door. “That was years ago. The boy was a yutz.”
She took a look at the chicken and roasted potatoes and said that they would need another twenty minutes.
“Mum.”
“Umm.” She was rummaging in the freezer now.
“I wish you could get over this problem you have with Josh. You’ve known him for over a year now, but you’re never at ease with him. It’s like you’re always holding back.”
“Oh, not again. We’ve had this conversation. Peas or green beans?”
“I’m easy.”
“Or I’ve got some cauliflower florets.”
“Mum, honestly, I don’t mind . . . This whole thing is upsetting both of us. Josh feels that you’re judging him without trying to know him.”
“Maybe we’ll have cauliflower for a change. I could make cauliflower puree. You like that.”
“I know it upsets you that I’m with a ‘boring’ doctor,” I said, “but Josh isn’t remotely boring. He can be funny and witty. He often makes me laugh.” Josh was my hero. I adored this handsome, gifted doctor who devoted himself to saving the lives of children and spent a month each year in India or Africa, helping out in remote village hospitals. I was always bragging and telling people how proud of him I was.
“And since you’re the one marrying him, that’s all that matters, but I don’t always find him easy. Sometimes he can be a bit aloof and standoffish.”
“That’s because he’s so involved with his work,” I said. “His mind is often on other things. He doesn’t mean to be rude. You need to cut him a bit of slack.”
“OK, I guess it must be hard for him, doing the job he does. And you’re right—I haven’t gotten to know him. I promise to make more of an effort.” She put the bag of cauliflower florets down on the counter.
Even though I wasn’t sure how she’d take it, I decided to say something that had been on my mind for ages.
“The way you feel about Josh,” I said. “It has to do with Dad, doesn’t it? To you he was boring, conventional, cerebral—and there were times when he made you miserable. You’re worried because you think I’ve chosen somebody like him.”
Mum dropped a handful of cauliflower florets into a pan. She didn’t look at me. Although she was more than happy to advise other people, she could be surprisingly reticent in her own relationships. “I think I probably am,” she said. Her expression was thoughtful—sad even.
“But I take after Dad. I’m a boring lawyer. I’m not an overgrown teenage rebel like you.”
She rolled her eyes, but not without humor. The remark didn’t offend her. She’d heard it from Scarlett and me many times.
“I guess my outlook on life is pretty conventional,” I went on. “I’m engaged to be married. I want to settle down, have kids, live in a nice house. What’s wrong with that? I wish you could respect me for who I am.”
“I do respect you. How could you even think that I don’t? Look at the work you do. You’re a human rights lawyer. One of the things you do is fight for people who are escaping persecution and trying to get asylum in this country. You challenge government decisions on a daily basis.”
“Yes, but you’d prefer it if I did something arty and creative or performed onstage like Scarlett.”
Mum was standing at the sink now. “Now you’re just being ridiculous,” she said. But we both knew I wasn’t. She turned on the tap and covered the cauliflower with water. “It’s funny, because when your dad and I first met, he was such fun. On our second date he took me canoeing! Me, in a canoe—can you imagine? I have no coordination and I practically get seasick in the bath! But he insisted I had to go. And as it turned out, I wasn’t too bad. Back then, he was so full of life and up for anything—that’s why I fell in love with him. We had all these plans. As soon as I’d mastered the art of canoeing, we were going to learn to sail. We were going to fix up an old yacht and go round the world. Afterwards, we were either going to open a bed-and-breakfast in Mexico or emigrate to Israel and live on a kibbutz. But once we were married and I got pregnant with you, real life took over. Your father changed, but I didn’t. I made the mistake of holding on to our dreams. He accused me of refusing to grow up. I guess he had a point . . .” Her voice trailed off.
Mum and Dad spent the first few years of their marriage living with Mum’s parents, Nana Ida and Grandpa Joe. Dad had refused to go to university after school because he had all these great plans to travel the world and wouldn’t waste three years studying; then, however, he began studying for a law degree. Afterwards, he joined a small, local firm of attorneys who specialized in property and divorce. He stayed there until he died twenty or so years later.
It was Dad who insisted on raising Scarlett and me in a middle-class suburb and putting money aside so that we could go to private schools. Mum—who had no time for
sensible
—would have been happy to bring us up in one of the poor, crime-ridden, but oh-so-boho areas of east London and let us take our chances at the local state school. She would have seen it as character building. What was more, it would have horrified her parents and she would have gotten a kick out of that.
Nana Ida—whom Scarlett and I often pumped for information about the family—said our mother had always been a bit of a rebel. At sixteen she was spending her Saturday mornings standing outside the town hall, selling
Militant
, the Marxist newspaper. The same year, she formed an all-girl punk band called Angry Zit Chicks. Even now Nana slapped her hand to her chest in despair when she recalled Mum’s shaved head with the huge red-and-purple Mohawk running down the middle.
It often occurred to me that Mum didn’t have it easy, growing up with German immigrant parents who were so grateful to the government for allowing them to come to this country that they practically turned convention and conformity into their second religion.
They trimmed the hedges, mowed the lawn, kept their flower beds neat and never hung out washing on a Sunday. Grandpa Joe joined the Rotary. Although they didn’t “keep” Christmas, every Christmas Day, they showed their respect by watching the Queen’s traditional TV broadcast. Even now, Nana Ida kept a portrait of the young Queen Elizabeth on her mantelpiece.
By the time she was eighteen, Mum was over her
Militant
punk phase and focusing all her energy in a new direction. She wanted to perform on the West End stage and sing in musicals. Even though her music teacher at school said she had a remarkable voice and deserved a shot at trying to break into showbiz, Nana Ida and Grandpa Joe were horrified by the idea. They called it mad, ridiculous, outrageous. It couldn’t possibly work out. She was bound to fail. What would she do then? What would she have to fall back on? Nothing—that was what. It didn’t occur to them for one minute that she might succeed.
Nana Ida and Grandpa Joe were determined that she should get a “proper” job. They wanted her to learn shorthand and typing and become a secretary or go into personnel at Marks and Spencer. When Mum refused, Grandpa Joe threatened to have a stroke.
Mum got her parents off her back by enrolling at the local secretarial college. Only she never showed up. Nana Ida would wave her off every morning, but instead of going to the college, Mum caught the Tube up to the West End. She had a job working as a receptionist for a Mayfair clairvoyant-slash-astrologer who was happy to let her take time out to go to auditions.
Mum finally landed a part in the chorus of
Hello, Dolly!
The clairvoyant was sad to lose her but said he had seen it coming. Nana Ida and Grandpa Joe did an astonishing and immediate about-turn and became their daughter’s biggest fans. Our Shelley? Singing on the West End stage? They were ecstatic. On her first night they came to see her and brought the entire family.
When the show finished its run, Mum started auditioning again. This time she wasn’t so lucky, and work came in dribs and drabs—mainly short stints in underwhelming, provincial versions of
Godspell
and
Jesus Christ Superstar
.
She bashed away for two or three years—not nearly long enough, she would later admit—but the rejections and living off cornflakes and cold baked beans had started to get to her. Plus, once again Grandpa Joe was threatening to have a stroke if she didn’t move out of that flophouse she called an apartment.
In the end she did the secretarial course for real and started applying for office jobs. To their credit, my grandparents chose not to rub her nose in her failed showbiz career. After six months she got a job working as a receptionist at Fein Management, one of the largest film and theatrical agencies in the world. Dad was the Lou Reed look-alike, leather-clad dispatch rider who used to deliver scripts and contracts.