Read Online Fate and Ms. Fortune by Saralee Rosenberg - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Saralee Rosenberg
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up. But guess when I go to sleep if I’m not on the comedy circuit or watching Jeopardy!? Seven o’clock. Yep. I have the bedtime of a two-year-old, though no one to read me a story or rock me to sleep until I stop crying.
So on that Sunday when my mother established that mi casa was su casa, by evening she was acting like the new camper whocouldn’t wait to find out the evening activity. Maybe dinner and a movie, she suggested. Or a walk through Prospect Park.
“Another time,” I said. “I’m wiped out.” You know how some weekends just fly by? Well, this wasn’t one of them.
Sorry, but I wasn’t one of those daughters who could spend the day with her mother and be sad when it was over. I was more the type who turned to Lamaze breathing to get through her painful zings, which, like contractions, came closer and closer together as the day progressed.
“Do you brush your teeth every day? Maybe have your father bleach them again.”
“Is your left breast larger than your right? Aunt Marilyn’s are lopsided like that, too.”
“I saw this machine on TV that’s good for flabby arms. I wrote down the number for you.”
So you can imagine that after a disastrous Saturday night together, Sunday was hardly a reprieve, as I spent it dodging insults while looking for places to put all her belongings: her iron cookware (they would double as weapons should we return while a robbery was in progress), her books (did the fact that half of them were about sex tell you anything?), a planting from her rubber tree (I swore I killed that thing when I watered it with a bottle of Asti Spumante), a seven-foot high antique desk that she’d bought off a truck (hopefully nobody reported one stolen), and finally, her new computer, which came accompanied by a kid who thought he could make a quick hundred by hooking up four wires and a plug.
But out of pity for us both, I finally agreed to a two-hour dinner break, knowing I wouldn’t be able to sleep with her yakking on the phone or watching TV. “We’ll get a bite to eat, maybe share a bottle of wine, and then it’s lights out,” I said.
To my surprise, dinner was very pleasant, considering we were seated two tables away from a man I’d recently tried topick up who rejected me on the observation that my wallet and my breasts were equally flat.
Man: Why do you wear a bra? You’ve got nothing to put in it.
Woman: You wear pants, don’t you?
Granted, it was odd referring to an outing with one’s mother as pleasant when she had just announced the breakup of her marriage. But it spoke to the consolation powers of brick oven pizza and a bottle of Pinot Noir…until the conversation clouds thickened.
“What do you mean you’re searching for a man?” I nearly knocked over my glass. “It’s too soon for that. It’s like the handgun law. You have to fill out a permit and wait two days.”
“Not a new man. An old man.”
“You already have one of those. His name is Harvey.”
“No. No. Someone I once knew.”
“Like who? An old boyfriend?”
“Exactly. An old boyfriend…I was engaged to.”
“I get it. You mean you want Daddy to be like he was when he first proposed.”
“Okay, buckle up, Toots. This ride’s a little bumpy…I was engaged before I met your father. A young fellow I knew at Queens College. We fell in love, he proposed, then he gave me this tiny little nothing of a diamond, but according to my uncle Mort, it was a perfect stone so who cared…Close your mouth or you’ll catch flies…Right after that, he goes into the army and ends up serving in Cuba…Anyway, I was thinking it might be nice to find him, say hello…”
I looked to see if anyone else had heard this confession. “That so did not happen…did it?”
“Of course it happened. Who makes up a story like that?”
“Then why didn’t you marry him?”
“’Cause a year later he comes back to the States, and P.S., now he’s got this Filipino gal he met at a bar in Miami, and
So on that Sunday when my mother established that mi casa was su casa, by evening she was acting like the new camper whocouldn’t wait to find out the evening activity. Maybe dinner and a movie, she suggested. Or a walk through Prospect Park.
“Another time,” I said. “I’m wiped out.” You know how some weekends just fly by? Well, this wasn’t one of them.
Sorry, but I wasn’t one of those daughters who could spend the day with her mother and be sad when it was over. I was more the type who turned to Lamaze breathing to get through her painful zings, which, like contractions, came closer and closer together as the day progressed.
“Do you brush your teeth every day? Maybe have your father bleach them again.”
“Is your left breast larger than your right? Aunt Marilyn’s are lopsided like that, too.”
“I saw this machine on TV that’s good for flabby arms. I wrote down the number for you.”
So you can imagine that after a disastrous Saturday night together, Sunday was hardly a reprieve, as I spent it dodging insults while looking for places to put all her belongings: her iron cookware (they would double as weapons should we return while a robbery was in progress), her books (did the fact that half of them were about sex tell you anything?), a planting from her rubber tree (I swore I killed that thing when I watered it with a bottle of Asti Spumante), a seven-foot high antique desk that she’d bought off a truck (hopefully nobody reported one stolen), and finally, her new computer, which came accompanied by a kid who thought he could make a quick hundred by hooking up four wires and a plug.
But out of pity for us both, I finally agreed to a two-hour dinner break, knowing I wouldn’t be able to sleep with her yakking on the phone or watching TV. “We’ll get a bite to eat, maybe share a bottle of wine, and then it’s lights out,” I said.
To my surprise, dinner was very pleasant, considering we were seated two tables away from a man I’d recently tried topick up who rejected me on the observation that my wallet and my breasts were equally flat.
Man: Why do you wear a bra? You’ve got nothing to put in it.
Woman: You wear pants, don’t you?
Granted, it was odd referring to an outing with one’s mother as pleasant when she had just announced the breakup of her marriage. But it spoke to the consolation powers of brick oven pizza and a bottle of Pinot Noir…until the conversation clouds thickened.
“What do you mean you’re searching for a man?” I nearly knocked over my glass. “It’s too soon for that. It’s like the handgun law. You have to fill out a permit and wait two days.”
“Not a new man. An old man.”
“You already have one of those. His name is Harvey.”
“No. No. Someone I once knew.”
“Like who? An old boyfriend?”
“Exactly. An old boyfriend…I was engaged to.”
“I get it. You mean you want Daddy to be like he was when he first proposed.”
“Okay, buckle up, Toots. This ride’s a little bumpy…I was engaged before I met your father. A young fellow I knew at Queens College. We fell in love, he proposed, then he gave me this tiny little nothing of a diamond, but according to my uncle Mort, it was a perfect stone so who cared…Close your mouth or you’ll catch flies…Right after that, he goes into the army and ends up serving in Cuba…Anyway, I was thinking it might be nice to find him, say hello…”
I looked to see if anyone else had heard this confession. “That so did not happen…did it?”
“Of course it happened. Who makes up a story like that?”
“Then why didn’t you marry him?”
“’Cause a year later he comes back to the States, and P.S., now he’s got this Filipino gal he met at a bar in Miami, and
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