by Warren Adler
"Well, you have the biggest mouth," Leonard chimed.
Sophie smiled, enjoying their discomfort.
"You know, just because I have a big mouth it doesn't mean I'm the strongest. You know how it is with Mama and me. If I say black, she says white. Marvin has more influence with her. Sometimes I wonder if she actually likes me."
"Mama?" Sandy said.
"What's the rule," Marilyn said, "that says a mother must like a child?"
"She loves you, Marilyn. She loves us all."
"Equally?" Marilyn wondered aloud.
"I never thought about it," Sandy said.
"Leonard was always the favorite," Marilyn said. "My Leonard this. My Leonard that. Little Lord Fauntleroy, Leonard Berger."
"You're exaggerating," Leonard said.
"Deny that you're the favorite," Marilyn pressed.
Sophie heard the long pause.
"See?" Marilyn said.
"Well, I was the boy," Leonard said.
"She still favors you," Marilyn said. "You can see it in her eyes every time she looks at you. My Leonard. My wonderful Leonard."
"If it was just up to me, she could live with us," Leonard said. "You both know that."
"With that bitch you married? I think she might wish she were dead," Marilyn said.
Sophie thought she was certainly right about that.
"She could live with me, too," Sandy said. "She knows that she's welcome in my house."
"Oh, she's welcome, but I don't think she'd want to be bored to death."
"Bored? In my house?"
"Bored, Sandy. Bored by your boring husband and your boring children. What do you want her to do, sit in the corner and twiddle her thumbs?"
Sophie smiled again. Marilyn might have a big mouth, but she knew how to put her finger on a situation. My poor Sandy, Sophie thought. Poor, boring Sandy.
"Am I glad I live in Florida and not near your big mouth," Sandy fired back.
"I didn't mean it," Marilyn said, her contrition filtering through the thin walls. "I was exaggerating to prove a point."
"Well, it's no exaggeration that Mama would not want to live in the immediate vicinity of your fishwife mouth."
"That I know," Marilyn said. "God, I'd love her to be near me. But she'd have a nervous breakdown in a week."
"That's for sure."
"So, what are we going to do?" Leonard said.
"We could get her a maid, a companion," Sandy suggested.
A keeper, Sophie thought. Never. She would be the laughing stock of Sunset Village. That was worse than a home, she felt. She wanted to shut off her hearing now, to tell them all to go away. Who needed them? Lifting her arms from under the blanket, she pressed them against the sides of the bed, straining against the mattress to raise the upper part of her body. The gasping of her breath drowned out the sounds of her children's voices as she raised herself with effort to a sitting position and slowly swung her legs over the side of the bed. Pausing, she caught her breath, gathering her strength and searching in the darkness for the sight of the walker, the outlines of which she could make out at the foot of the bed. Pressing down on her palms, she tried lifting her torso, moving sideways, inching her way in the direction of the walker. It took all her strength. She felt her heart beating in her chest as she strained the muscles of her upper body, compensating for the pain in her hip and the weakness of her legs. Sweat poured down her back as she paused to recover her energy. She heard the voices again.
"Look," Leonard was saying, "she is an intelligent woman. She knows the realities, the burden that she is putting on the three of us."
"Play to her guilt, right, Leonard?" Marilyn said with contempt.
"Well, she plays to ours," Sandy said. "That's why we're all here."
"Guilt?" Marilyn said. "I thought it was love."
"Are you saying that I don't love Mama?" Sandy asked, the pitch of her voice rising. "Who do you think has been taking care of her?"
"I didn't say you didn't love her," Marilyn said, turning to Leonard. "She's so damned sensitive."
"If you went through what I went through in the last few weeks, you'd be sensitive too."
"I didn't say you didn't love Mama," Marilyn said, her voice reaching the fringes of gentleness, but proceeding no further.
"I love her more than you do," Sandy said.
"I doubt that." The attempt at gentleness was gone.
"We all love her equally," Leonard said.
"What the hell does that mean?" Marilyn said.
The strain of her movement made Sophie gasp again. The voices became incoherent. Her progress was slow as she moved her body to the foot of the bed, every tiny progression taking a major effort and, with it, all of her resources. When she felt her endurance slacken, she rested, waiting for her heart to slow, her concentration to clear. I must not be discouraged, she told herself, taking comfort in even the most minuscule progress. She had, after all, traversed nearly the entire bed by herself. She suddenly thought of the story of the tortoise and the hare, which she read to them when they were children, feeling elation now as she looked sideways to measure the distance from her pillow.
"Well then, it's decided," she heard Leonard say. "We'll suggest it together, a kind of unanimous committee decision. Then we'll make arrangements to take her out for a visit. The one in Lauderdale, the Seaview. It's the best in the area, I'm told. And she'll still be close enough for Sandy to visit and we'll promise that we'll visit her at least three times a year. At least that."
"More," Marilyn said. "It's three hours by plane. No big deal."
Sophie reached the foot of the bed, reaching out with her hand for the walker, gripping its cool metal, then drawing it as close to the bed as possible to insure a firm grip. The crisis would come at the moment when she had to pull herself up, when for a second her arms had to support her full weight. She waited quietly in the dark room, her body poised at the edge of the bed with both hands on the metal frame of the walker. She knew that if she did not make it, she would fall, and they would hear the sound of her helplessness, confirming their worst fears. Her hands tightened on the metal frame as she closed her eyes, gathering her thoughts, and willed her aging body to give her this one victory. She tightened her eyes, feeling the backwash of tears and the quickness of her breath, a signal perhaps that her body was rejecting her will. Then suddenly the will exploded and she felt her arms tighten and her body lurch upward. There was a brief dizziness, a momentary faintness, and then she was standing, standing proudly. She stood there for a long moment, catching her breath and listening to hear if they had heard the inner explosion, the gasping breath, the beating heart.
When she realized that they had not heard, she arranged the walker before her and calculated the distance to the door. They would hear the light thumping, but she hoped that they would not notice until she had opened the door, an exercise that she knew she could perform. Pausing, she listened again.
"It's the only logical solution," Leonard said. "Otherwise, we'll drive ourselves crazy with worry. We must make her see that."
She moved cautiously, lifting the walker. She felt the strength return to her arms as she slowly moved forward, but had to ignore the twinge of pain in her hip.
When she opened the door, the light momentarily blinded her and she squinted into the room where they were sitting.
"Mama!" Sandy cried. "My God, you'll fall."
"Go on talking," Sophie said, taking a step, feeling her energy surge, the power of her victory. "I'm just going to the bathroom."
She felt their eyes on her as she quietly, but slowly, opened the door of the bathroom, maneuvering the walker ahead of her. When she was fully in the room, she pushed the door closed behind her, extracted herself from the rails and slowly moved her bottom to the closed seat of the toilet on which she sat for an appropriate time, smiling to herself, not listening to their voices anymore. The flush of the toilet when it came sounded like music to her ears.
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Warren Adler, Never Too Late for Love
