Marrying Mom. Olivia Goldsmith
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CONTENTS
Ira, I’m leaving you.” It wasn’t easy for Phyllis to give her husband of forty-seven years the news, but she was doing it. She had always told the truth. All her life people had called her “difficult” or “tough” or “insensitive,” but actually she was just honest.
“I can’t take it, Ira,” she told him. “You know I never liked Florida. I came down here for you, because you wanted to.” She paused. She didn’t want to blame. It was a free country and Ira hadn’t forced her. “Well, you’d always supported me,” Phyllis admitted. “Let’s face it: you earned the money, so I owed it to you. But it was your retirement, Ira, not mine. I wasn’t ready to retire. But did you give me a choice?” Ira said nothing. Of course, she didn’t expect him to. The fact was that in their forty-seven years of married life he’d rarely said much. Still, by some marital osmosis, she always knew what his position was on any given subject. Now she realized that the wave of disapproval that she expected to feel had not materialized. This meant that either Ira was sulking or that he wasn’t there at all. She paused. Even for her, considered a loud mouth by everyone all her life, even for her it was hard to say this. But it had to be said. “You didn’t pay enough attention to them, Ira. You needed me at the company, and I did what I had to do. But the children needed us. And I don’t think they got enough of us, Ira. Things have gone wrong for them. Sharon with Barney … Susan unmarried … and Bruce!” Phyllis paused and bit her lip. There were some things best left unsaid. “I don’t want to criticize you, but I don’t think you were there for them, Ira. You paid for the best schools, but they didn’t learn how to live. They don’t know what’s important. And I think they need their mother. I’m going up to take care of the children, Ira. I wasn’t a good enough mother to them then, but I can try and make up for it now.”
Phyllis sighed deeply. The sun was merciless, and she thought of the skin cancer that Ira had developed on his bald head. She should wear a hat, but she couldn’t stand hats or sunglasses or any of the extra chazerai that most people schlepped around in Florida: sunscreen, lip balm, eye shades, visors. Who had the time? Florida was the place that looked like paradise but wound up deadly. “Ira, Thanksgiving was unbearable. Eating a turkey in the Rascal House yesterday and having the kids calling only out of a sense of obligation? What kind of holiday was that? It wasn’t good for them and it wasn’t good for me. It was depressing, Ira.” She lowered her voice. Phyllis wasn’t vain, but she lied about her age. “My seventieth birthday is on the twelfth, Ira. It scares me. Then there’s Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Year’s coming, I won’t survive if I try to do it down here. Do you understand?”
Nothing. No response. Phyllis told herself she shouldn’t be surprised. Always she talked, he listened. But at least at one time he had listened. In Florida, in the last several years, he seemed to have collapsed in on himself. His world was only as large as his chest cavity and the illness that resided in it. Phyllis had made sure he took his pills, watched his diet, and that he’d exercised. But conversation? A luxury. Phyllis sighed again. What did she expect?
Phyllis turned her back on Ira and wiped moisture out of her eyes. She wasn’t a crier. It was ridiculous to get all emotional. She knew that and fiercely told herself to stop it. She turned back. “You won’t be alone here,” she said. “Iris Blumberg is just over there by the willow tree, and Max Feiglebaum isn’t far away.” She paused. “I know you don’t have patience for Sylvia, but she’ll visit every week to tidy up.”
There wasn’t anything more to say. They had had a good marriage, she and Ira. There were those who saw her as pushy, as too outgoing, as egocentric. Not Ira. And he’d been wrong because she was all those things. You couldn’t reach the age of sixty-nine, she mused, without knowing a little bit about yourself. Unless you were very pigheaded, or a man. Ira,