| ||||||||
|
|
Mrs.
Midas PAGE
TWO: Alex's
cousin Pandora, aged 60, was a blonde sumo wrestler who bunked with
her mom and dad, and dedicated the bulk of her time to servicing
Mother D. She hovered over her with the grace of a linebacker, trying
to separate us from our benefactor. After two foodless hours of cognac, we were officially starving. What had happened to the intimate tête-à-tête Mother D requested with her only child? On the phone she had made a point of saying there were many things she needed to discuss with Alex privately. But now the rabid Rottweilers were guarding her as if their lives depended on it, and in many ways they did. We were finally taken to a restaurant for lunch. Pandora was clearly in charge. She propped Mother D up when her shrunken form left her chin level with the tabletop. Pandora told her what she was allowed to order and what was forbidden. I had been taught that when you can't see the beauty in something, you should look for the deficiency within yourself. But there was no way I could find beauty in this tableau vivant. The conversation covered riveting topics such as the escalating property values in Nevada, Pandora's plans to put an in-ground pool in her backyard, the gas/mileage ratio of Serge's new Porsche, and how it was a damn shame Alex didn't have a job that paid six figures. Pandora insisted that Mother D have a glass of red wine. Insisted. Even though I had been starving through our high octane liquor reception, I had to fake an appetite during lunch. When did she plan to sequester herself with Alex and talk business? We were only in Las Vegas for the day. After lunch while we stood in the parking lot, Alex finally got a chance to separate Mommie Dearest from the pack. Pandora and I sat in her parked car and watched. "Mom, what about the papers you brought me here to sign?" "Oh! My head is spinning from the wine. I can't think." "Then why did we make this trip?" Dazed and glazed she responded, "If you find any papers, don't burn them." (What? Don't understand the comment? Neither did we.) We returned to Pandora's house and watched in horror as Mother D planted herself on the couch and proceeded to sleep for the next five hours. With her mouth wide open and a death rattle gurgling in her gullet, she gave a good impression of someone with hours left to live. But we knew better. Serge, a retired cello teacher, took advantage of these five hours to describe to us, in no small detail, the joys and trials of each and every student he'd ever taught. While spellbinding, we couldn't help but be distracted by the cadaver on the couch. As if to underscore this travesty, every thirty minutes the bird came out of the clock to scream, "Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" At 9 p.m. the collective yawns of our hosts indicated that this rampage of good will was over. The cuckoo signaled the end of our abortive journey. There was no chance that Mother D would wake up with a clear head and desire to get down to business. The clock had run out. What hurt worse than the loss of our fortune was the fact that she had duped us once again. Pandora gently summoned Mother Drachma to say goodbye to us. Mother D sleepily smiled and gave her benediction. "This is all like a beautiful dream." We were then briskly hustled out of the house before we could wake her up. Pandora drove us back to the Hilton, and wasted no time with her terse farewells. I returned to our room where I officially parked my dream. We had been conned. The old biddie still had enough energy to torture her son. She must have planned this travesty with great glee. She used money as a lure because love wasn't possible; Alex had suffered her cold hatred for over fifty years. How foolish to think she could understand motherhood now. Still crazy after all these years. With full closure I surrendered my life as an heiress. There is no place more surreal than Vegas to nurse your wounds. In a culture built on despair, the fantasies are myriad. Look, there's the Eiffel Tower! There's the Brooklyn Bridge! There's the Temple at Luxor! We staggered from casino to casino, determined to make the best of our remaining time. Periodically, I popped into a restroom to cry. This was, after all, the formal retirement of my shopping sprees, the finish to my brownstone dream, the finale of my philanthropy. We read the menus of the elegant restaurants in the casinos, then got in line with the other slobs at Fatburger. Upon our return home we sent Mother Drachma a thank you card brimming with gratitude for her hospitality. Was she capable of appreciating irony? Months passed without a response, and the silence felt blessed. Ding-dong the witch is dead, at least to us.
God bless the Child who's got his own…. In October, four months after our trip, Alex received a birthday card from Mother Drachma. The card urged him to let bygones be bygones, and to look to the future. Along with the card was a check for $10,000. Oh happy day! Justice was semi-served! Alex raced to the bank to deposit his gift before MD could stop payment. Imagine his humiliation when the teller announced that it was not a real check, but an excellent photocopy. When my mother died in 2004 she left me an inheritance. It was my 61-year-old developmentally disabled cousin, Terri, who had been living with her for decades. Terri functioned at a ten-year-old's level, so she needed me to watch out for her, pay her rent, and monitor her food shopping. It's ironic that someone as militant as I was about being childfree was now responsible for a dependent. Terri had a refreshing take on life. She was a complete stranger to self-pity. She knew everyone in her neighborhood, got a kick out of each day, and found the most amazing treasures in her garbage dumpster. She also had a knack for fearlessly speaking the truth. After I told her of our misadventures with Mother Drachma, I said, "The woman is sick." Terri didn't miss a beat. "If she's so sick, she should go to the fucking hospital." The Sicilians have a saying, "Out of good comes evil, out of evil comes good." Mother Drachma's dramedy offered me the chance to play the heiress, with all the power and glory that the role enjoys. For a short time life loved me. My mantra was the line from a Patti Smith song, "I hold the key to the sea of possibility." But Mother Drachma can't take that away from me. Like most prized qualities, rare and immeasurable, my heiress is inner.
PAGE 1 2
|
Serge
drove our happy quartet to Mother D's manse. After a brief tour
of huge rooms stocked with pyramids of Advil bottles, and a wing
devoted to her file cabinets filled with financial records, she
sat us down in her designer kitchen and opened up a bottle of Courvoisier.
It was 11 a.m. She forced shot after shot on us, while she abstained.
She casually mentioned that she was sorry that she had no food to
offer us, but she hadn't gotten around to shopping. (I remembered
that when we returned to her house on the morning she buried Stavros,
she offered us an apple.) She summoned her sister Clytemnestra and
her niece Pandora to join us. Since they lived across the street,
they arrived in seconds.
