Loose Screws (5 page)

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, Greg grudgingly produced this handsome, charming, six-foot-something sibling of whom I had no previous knowledge. He seemed like a nice enough guy to me, but Greg's family acted as if the man ran drugs in his spare time.

If only.

From what I was able to glean from pumping Greg's friends, seems Little Bill backed Big Bob's opponent's campaign in the last election.

Ouch.

However, now that I owe Greg basically no loyalty whatsoever, I decide to like his brother, just for spite. After all, I don't even live in that congressional district—what the hell do I care who represents it? Besides, don't look now, but my po' little ol' trounced Ego is just batting her eyes and sighing over the way the man's grinning at me.

Not that I'm ever going to have anything to do with another man, ever again, you understand. A fact that Pru
dence and Sanity, in their prim little lace-collared dresses and white gloves, remind that hussy as they snatch her back from the brink of disaster, shrieking something about frying pans and fire and let's not go there, dear.

Of course, even if they hadn't stepped in, my mother did. I may have legs, but she has that whole Earth Mother/Goddess thing going on, and once Bill catches sight of her, I might as well go ahead and leap onto the tracks, nobody would miss me.

I watch her—or more important, I watch his reaction to her—and I think, Jeez-o-man…a body could get knocked down by the waves of sexual awareness pulsing from this man. Except then he turns back to me, and his smile widens, and the tide heads for my beach, and I think, whoa. Okay, so maybe Billy Boy is just one of those men who gets turned on by every stray X chromosome that crosses his path. Either that, or just when I finally give up trying to figure out what It is that provokes the kind of male response Nedra has effortlessly provoked her entire life, It lands in my lap.

Talk about your lousy timing.

“I happened to stop by the house today,” Bill was saying with a whiter-than-white smile aimed at first my mother and then me, “and Mother said Ginger was coming up to pack up some things from Greg's?”

So Billy Boy talks to Mama, huh? Interesting.

“Yep. That's the plan,” I say, firmly telling my hormones to stop whining. “So I need to stop by someplace to get some boxes….”

“Don't worry about it.” He takes the bags from me. Winks. Starts walking away, which I presume is our cue to follow. Although the wink was kinda irritating, I can't help but notice he has a cute tush. When I glance at my mother, I have a sneaking suspicion she's thinking the same thing. Between my clacking mules and my mother's clomping Dr. Scholl's, we are making a helluva racket heading for the stairs, so much so I almost miss Bill's saying over his shoulder, “We can load up everything in the Suburban, if you like, and I can drive you back to the city.”

There is a God.

Thanking my almost-brother-in-law profusely, we tromp down the stairs and over to the car, which is only marginally smaller than the
QE II.
Excited barking emanates from what I can just make out to be a hyperactive golden retriever in the back seat.

“Damn.” Bill frowns at my outfit. “I hope my bringing Mike isn't a problem?”

I give a wan smile, shake my head, trying to dodge the effusive beast as he rockets out of the car when the door's opened, frantic in his indecision who to kiss first. We settle in for the ride to the Munson home—Mother has luncheon prepared for us, Bill says—my mother and I briefly skirmishing over who would sit in front. She wins.

No matter. I'd much rather have the dog than the man, anyway. Mike plops his entire front half on my lap once we've scrambled in, happy as, well, a dog with a human to use as a cushion. I sigh.

We start off. As always, it takes my head a while to adjust to the disproportionate ratio of cement to trees out here. But then, wiping dog pant condensation off my arm, something occurs to me.

“Oh, God. Greg's not there, is he?”

I see Bill shake his head, his nearly black waves long enough to actually graze his linebacker shoulders. I believe the appropriate adjective to describe him is
studly.
His cologne is a little too strong for my taste, his attitude a bit too self-assured. And overtly supporting the enemy camp is a little ballsy, even for me. But, hey, the man has a car and is willing to cart me and all my crap back to town. He could sprout fangs and fur at the full moon for all I care.

“All I know is he's
in seclusion
for a couple weeks. Nobody knows where.” Gray eyes glance at me in the rearview mirror. “Tough break about the wedding,” he says, sounding sincere enough.

Bill had been invited—I insisted—but he hadn't shown. For far more obvious reasons than his brother's MIA number, I suppose. I shrug. “It happens.”

I see his grin in the mirror, one a lesser mortal might
well fear. Did I mention that Billy here has been divorced? Twice?

“All for the best?” he says.

“You can say that again,” I think I hear my mother mutter as I, who have been around the block more times than I care to admit, say, “Ah.”

In the mirror, I see brows lift. “Ah?”

“You're flirting.”

Bill laughs, uncontrite. It's a pretty nice laugh, I have to admit. “And here I was doing my damnedest to sound sympathetic.”

Okay, so the guy may be cocky as all get-out, but his honesty is refreshing. Well, it is. And it's not as if I don't understand the compulsion to get one's parents' goats, even if his methods are a bit extreme. So little Miss Ego, who's been sulking in a corner of my brain since being banished there by her well-meaning, but self-serving, step-sisters, looks up hopefully. Not that it will do her any good. I've got other fish to fry.

“So…you and your mother do communicate?”

Bill shrugs. “From time to time. One of those maternal things, I suppose. She can't find it in her heart to write me off entirely. And my father simply pretends I don't exist.”

“Can you blame him?” I say.

That gets a laugh. “No, I don't suppose I can.”

Which somehow prompts a conversation between Bill and my mother I have no wish to participate in. So instead I find myself mulling over Bill's news about Greg's “hiding out.” What does this mean, exactly, especially in regard to all those invoices I've sent to his office? And don't I sound crass and insensitive, thinking about money barely a week after having my heart ripped to shreds?

Thank God I've got a nice chunk of change coming in from last month's billings. It won't be enough to get me caught up, but at least I'll be able to stay afloat.

I lapse into semi-morose silence while my mother and Bill keep chatting away about who looks good for the Dems in the next national election. Which leads to my pondering one of life's great mysteries: Why, oh why, if
God is so all-fired omnipotent, does He regularly bite the big one when it comes to sticking the right kids with the right parents?

 

The Munson manse is stately as hell. You know—gray stone, pristine-white trim, lots of windows, a few columns thrown in for good measure. Very traditional, very classy, probably built somewhere in the fifties. Bill pulls the Suburban just past the front entrance, parking it underneath a dignified maple hovering over the far end of the circular drive. Before either my mother or I can get it together, he's out of the car and around to our sides, opening first my mother's, then my door.