Marrying Mom. Olivia Goldsmith

was sometimes so controlling, especially when she was frightened. He interrupted her chatter. “Sig, if I called Sharon, which I wouldn’t, she’d just tell me how it was going to be even worse for her than for us, that it was always worse for her.” Bruce sighed again, this time explosively. “I know it’s the middle-child syndrome, but you’d think at thirty-seven she’d get over it.”

      Sharon was their disappointed and disappointing sister—four years younger than Sig, and only a year older than Bruce. But she looked twice his age. She had let herself go—it wasn’t just her weight, it was her frosted hair that looked ten years out of date, the Talbots clothes in size sixteen that even a skinny Connecticut WASP couldn’t get away with, and more than anything else it was the way her eyes and her mouth and her shoulders drooped in parallel, descending bell curves.

      “We have to call Sharon,” Sigourney said, ignoring her brother. “This is too big to handle on our own.”

      “Well, she’s bigger than both of us,” Bruce laughed. “Not that she’ll be any use.”

      Sigourney knew all about it. Bruce had almost no patience for Sharon, but Sigourney felt sorry for her fat, whiny, frustrated, younger sister. Maybe it was because Sharri made her feel guilty. Maybe it was because Sig herself was so successful. Whatever the reason, she had no time now to listen to Bruce’s usual sniping. “I’ll call her,” Sigourney said. “Can you meet here Saturday? I’m giving a pre-Christmas brunch at eleven for my A-list clients. Sunday I’m doing the B-list with the leftovers. But three on Saturday would be good for me.”

      “Well, don’t put yourself out,” Bruce said nastily. “What does that make us? C-list?”

      Sig knew he was probably hurt because she hadn’t invited him and Todd to either brunch. Bruce didn’t realize how badly her own business had fallen off and she was too proud to tell him. She was also embarrassed about her necessary small economies, like using the catering firm for one party and making it do for two. But this wasn’t the eighties anymore. And she couldn’t afford to have Todd and Bruce acting up and alienating prospects and clients.

      “I’ll come,” Bruce finally agreed, “but there’s nothing we can do.” He began to recite aloud in a singsong: “Roses are red / Chickens are white / If you think you can stop her / You’re not very bright.”

      “No wonder your greeting card business is in trouble,” was all Sig answered. “I’m hanging up and calling Sharon.”

      “Well, don’t let Barney come,” Bruce begged, defeated. Barney was not just Sharon’s loser husband; he was also a blowhard. He was big and barrel-chested and balding. But what Sig and Bruce found intolerable was that he managed to lose every job he’d ever had while making Sharon feel like a failure. Barney was the kind of person who explained to heart surgeons at cocktail parties some new technique he’d read about in Reader’s Digest. In short, he was an asshole.

      Now it was Sig’s turn to sigh. “I’ll try to make it just us, but lately Sharon hasn’t been driving. She gets those panic attacks when she has to cross a bridge.”

      “Oh, come on. She’s a victim of faux agoraphobia. She’s just too lazy to drive into the city. She’s probably just trying to get a handicapped parking permit. Totally faux.”

      “Bruce! That’s not true.”

      “Oh, Sig, Sig, Sig, Sig! Sometimes life could do with a little embellishment.”

      “My God! You sounded exactly like Mother then.”

      “I did not.”

      “You did.”

      “It’s started,” Bruce sang out.

      Sig paused, biting back the need to tell him it was his fault. “You’re right,” she admitted. “Okay. It’s Saturday at three and now I’ll call Sharon.”

      “See ya. Wouldn’t wanna be ya!” Bruce yodeled. Sig merely shook her head and hung up the phone.

      Sig stood silently for a few moments in the center of her immaculate living room. She knew she shouldn’t do it, but she was drawn irresistibly to the vanity in her bedroom. She looked around at the room and its beautiful decor. She’d have to sell the co-op, no doubt about it. She was behind in her maintenance payments and starting to get nasty looks from the coop board president when she ran into him in the lobby.

      Her client list had dropped, her commissions were down, and her own portfolio had taken a beating. Welcome to the nineties. Sig had done her best to downsize her expenses—she hadn’t used her credit cards for months, had paid her phone bill and Con Ed on time, and had spent money only on the necessities. But it wasn’t enough. Business had slowed to a trickle and even if she sold her stock now, she’d take a loss and have no possibility for the future. She’d just have to sell her apartment.

      But this apartment was more than just equity: it was her haven. Maybe that was because she felt her mother had never made a home for her. As Phyllis had often said, “I’d be happy living out of a suitcase in a clean motel.” The very thought made Sig shudder. Besides, the apartment was her visible sign of success, her security, and a place she could come after a long hard day of gambling with other people’s money to lick her wounds. It was beautiful. It was perfect, and she’d have to face the fact that it was empty and she would have to sell it. The money would evaporate faster than good perfume out of an open flask and she would wind up destitute. Or worse: she’d wind up in an apartment in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

      Sig looked into the mirror as she knew, irrevocably, what she would have to do. She didn’t like what she saw. Was Bruce right? She wasn’t just getting older, but also bitter? Were those new lines forming at the corner of her mouth? She stared more deeply into the mirror. And then her eyes flitted to the reflection in one pane of the three-sided glass. For a second something about the softness in the line of her jaw reminded her of … what? She was puckering, decaying, and withering. She was going the way of all flesh. Sig shuddered. But it wasn’t just the age thing that gave her the shivers; she had looked like … her mother.

      Sig moved her head but the trick of light, or the angle, was gone. Jesus, she would wind up alone. She wouldn’t even have the comfort of three children to annoy and be annoyed by. Tears of self-pity and something else—a deeper sorrow—rose to her eyes. She was getting older, but she was also getting bitter. The thought of Phillip Norman made her sad. Sig had known he was no genius, but he was presentable, fairly successful—if a corporate lawyer could be considered that—and his warmth for her made up for some of her coolness. It was nice to be wanted, and Phillip seemed to want marriage and a child. She would have to at least compromise—she’d give up the idea of a soulmate for a friend, a partner, and a family. But she was starting to believe that Phillip was even less than a friend: he was an empty suit. He and all of the other empty suits and bad boys who had preceded him made her mouth tremble. She looked like shit and she felt worse.

      It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been trying to find somebody, someone to settle down with, to marry. Even to have a family with, if it wasn’t too late. Her mother acted as if it was Sig who was stopping it from happening. But the truth was there were no men who were interested. Despite her good haircut, her visible success, her careful makeup, her Armani suits—or maybe because of them—Sig couldn’t remember the last time a new man had expressed any interest in her. The truth was, it wasn’t like she had a choice except Phillip. Oh, she could have affairs with any of the more interesting but very married men she worked with, but she wasn’t a Glenn Close/Fatal Attraction kind of girl. She didn’t steal other women’s husbands. And other than other women’s husbands, who had looked at her lately? The Gristede’s delivery boy? Her elevator operator? Women over thirty-five started to become invisible. She was losing it, and she was losing it fast.

      She picked up a lipstick, about to paint a little color onto her lips when her hand froze in midair. Why bother, she thought. Why bother to paint it on. She was losing it—she had lost it. The bloom of youth, the promise of fecundity that attracted men, that even on some unconscious level promised them a breeder, was disappearing. Perhaps men