20/8/93

The Battle of All Mothers

My mother was on the phone. ג€˜This is important. Itג€™s about all that awful stuff youג€™re writing. About your wife.ג€™

    The game is about to start. "Open me a beer, will ya," Roy says. It's gonna be some game. "Aw, don't make me move," I say from the lazy chair, "I haven't been up from here since morning." And anyway, my leg was asleep. Bernie had told his wife he was going out to get the car washed. Roy's wife understood him to be indisposed at the office. Harry sneaked out when his girlfriend was in the shower. It was gonna be some game, I told my wife sternly, and the guys are coming over, and that's final. And one more thing, I warned her: don't pull that shtick with the vacuum again. 
    "Great woman ya got there," Eddie says to me. He was divorced. "Shaddap," says Dave, "they're playing the anthem already." My wife was I don't know where, making us brownies or something. Maybe she'd left me. I wouldn't even know. But I'd sure want to know about it after the game.
    The phone rings. "Aw, jeez," someone says from the back of the room. Bernie is closest, so he answers. "It's your mother," he says.
    "My what?" Doesn't she always know when there's a game on!
    "Ma, it's --"
    "Never mind the game, this is important," she says. "It's about that awful stuff you're writing. About your wife."
    "Ma --"
    "What is it with you comedians? You can't write funny things without embarrassing your wives?"
    "But --"
    "If it's some kind of pathological revenge against the opposite sex you want, write about me instead, I'm your mother."
    "Not now, Ma..."
    "She's an angel, you lout, none of what you write is true."
    "Ma! Don't say that here, people are reading. You want they shouldn't believe me anymore?"
    "Big shot. You think anybody believes you have such a witch like you write about? You're like all the rest of them. Jackie Mason, telling all the goyim that every Jewish wife is a short fat yente with a mustache, Henny Youngman and his 'Take my wife -- please.' And Woody Allen, feh, he's not even married but he says his wife poisons him with Nazi recipes. Is Nesvisky's wife such a terrorist? Mother-in-law jokes, dumb-blonde remarks, nagging mothers, snot-nosed little girls: is that how you men see us? Where did I go wrong? And another thing. Stop writing this like I have such a Yiddish accent. Wait, I'm not finished, your father wants to talk to you."
    "Dad --?"
    "Listen to your mother, son."
    "But Dad --!"
    I was suddenly aware that the guys weren't exactly straining to hear every word of my family quarrel. In fact, they made it clear they were straining to hear the game. I was sent off for interference.
    My mother was back on the line. I grabbed my chance. "Now look, Ma, I don't know what you're talking about and there's a game on and my beer is getting cold. I mean warm. Do you think we could talk about this on a better day?"
    "There will be no better days for you unless you apologize to your wife. In the newspaper."
    "Ma!"
    "Don't 'Ma!' me, young man. You're not ashamed to humiliate the poor girl in public, it shouldn't be so hard to humble yourself the same way. Go on. Write something nice about her. Anything."
    "She's a good cook. Okay?"
    "Now, you know that's not true. C'mon, tell the world about her virtues."
    "Awright, here's one: she never complains about the way I portray her in the newspaper. She understands the woman's valiant role as fodder for a humorist, and she doesn't take it personally. She sees herself as a symbol for the voiceless oppressed of this country, men and women both. She is heroine, not victim, in a joke shared by the characters and the readers at the expense of the writer himself."
    "Fancy words. So why can't a lady comedian make a husband look like a shnook?"
    "Because, Ma, such roles are not societally reflective. Women just don't run down their husbands to each other like men do their wives. At least until those fundafeminists tamper with the rules of human nature, that's the way it is, right or wrong."
    "A pox on human nature. If you can't, I will. Start a new paragraph."
    "But Ma!"

 

My Son

By Mrs. Orbaum

    They sit in front of the TV, blobs with nothing better to do than watch a game. The head blob I recognize as the boy I cooked and cleaned for, scrimped and saved for so he could get an education, taught manners so he could marry a respectable girl. Sacrifices. And he ends up spending his life watching a game.
      He has seen his children learn to walk and talk, but his greatest joy is when total strangers run around with a ball. Then they talk about it for days like it was a moon landing.
    A psychiatrist I know says my son is normal and healthy and I shouldn't worry. In that case I worry for the whole world, if the good-for-nothings are the normal ones and we're the crazies. The psychiatrist is probably a blob himself.
    I should be grateful my son gave me three wonderful grandchildren, but why am I kidding myself: it's not as if one night he said to his wife "honey, take off your clothes, I would like to do something special for my mother."
    They say that men marry women who remind them of their mothers. That's not true: they marry innocent girls who have to become like their mothers.
    You think he hears a word I'm saying? If I shout "What a play!," he'll come running.
    And then he writes in the newspaper what a fine husband he is. Hah! You think he lifted a finger to clean for Pessah? "Inaminit," he said, for three solid weeks while she was slaving. Another time he has the chutzpah to write how hard it is to be a father. Well, between you and me, I think they made a deal: he conceives them and she does the rest.
    Maybe it was my fault -- I should have had a girl instead.

    "Terrific, Ma, you're a real comedian, now can I get back to the game?"
    "Go. Go back to your game. I hope they win. Just try to write nice things about your wife in the future."
    "Yeah, okay," I mumble. What a marvel; the mother-in-law of all mothers.
    She says goodbye, I say goodbye, and Roy comes in to say the game is over and goodbye, thanks for the beer. The score was 3-2.
    Suddenly I'm alone in the house, and I think maybe I'll surprise my wife and mop up the spilled beer and empty the ashtrays. Well, I really meant to, but before you know it she's come back.
    "Honey, I'm home!"
    "About time." I kiss her on the cheek.
    "Were there any calls?"
    "Nah," I say. "Just my mother."