Mother Mary and brother Frank were getting ready to fly up for daughter Francesca’s graduation when trouble broke out in Miami. It began when I got a text from Frank, which read:
CALL ME ASAP ABOUT MOM.
I freak out. Mother Mary isn’t in the best of health, and Frank never texts me. I grab the phone and speed-dial him. “What’s the matter? Is she okay?”
“It’s really bad.” He sounds upset, and my heart pounds in my chest.
“What happened?”
“I got a tattoo.”
Huh? “And she had a heart attack?”
“No, she won’t speak to me. She won’t even look at me. She turns her head when I go to kiss her cheek.”
My blood pressure returns to normal, though I still don’t understand. “This is what you texted me about? This is nothing!”
“Really? You try living with her.”
An excellent point. The two of them battling in their little house gives new meaning to cage fighting. I say, “But you already have two tattoos. Why is she so upset?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s the tattoo look like?”
“It’s red roses under a sentence.”
“What’s the sentence?”
“ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE ME.”
I can’t help but laugh. “This is ironic. Doesn’t Mom realize she’s judging you?”
“It’s not funny. Do something.”
“I’m on it.” I hang up and speed-dial my mother. When she answers, I cut the small talk. “Mom, he’s 51 years old. If he wants a tattoo, he can have a tattoo.”
“It’s ugly.”
“So what? He’s upset.”
“So am I.”
“Why can’t you just let it go?”
“No.”
“But it’s ironic, isn’t it? I mean, his tattoo should say, ONLY MOM CAN JUDGE ME.”
“I don’t get it.”
I don’t explain. Evidently, irony doesn’t come easily to The Flying Scottolines. We’re too literal, or maybe insane.
Mother continues, “I don’t know why your brother has to be this way. What’s the matter with him? What did I do to deserve this? Why is he like this? Was he born this way?” She then throws the kind of fit that other parents throw when they find out their kid is gay. But that, she had no problem with.
Ironic, no?
She was fine with it from day one, when Frank told us that his friend Arthur was really his boyfriend. She even invited Arthur to move in with us, and she was happy to make extra meatballs for dinner. Now Arthur is gone and she lives with Frank in South Beach, where the two of them have a social circle of moms, gay sons, and meatballs. Their house smells like gravy and aftershave.
“Mom, you have to make up with him. Francesca’s graduation is coming up.”
“I won’t speak to him there, either.”
“You have to. You’ll be sitting with him.”
“No. You sit between us.”
I try to argue with her, but I get nowhere. When my mother sets her jaw, she’s an Italian Mount Rushmore. I cannot imagine them flying from Miami together, side-by-side, then going through the entire three days in Boston not speaking to each other.
Actually, I can, which is worse.
I have to prevent it, but I have only one weapon.
Guilt.
I choose my next words carefully. I don’t want to give her a heart attack. My brother and I have been worried about giving my mother a heart attack ever since we woke her up too loudly and she told us we could give her a heart attack. I’m telling you now, if my mother gets a heart attack, it’s my fault.
“Mom, think about it this way. None of us knows what will happen in life. What if something happened to you, or Frank?”
(By the way, I say this as if these two events are equally likely. To suggest otherwise would be tactless. Also I didn’t want to give her a heart attack.)
“Mom, do you want your son’s last memory to be that you wouldn’t speak to him? Or your last memory of him to be that you wouldn’t give him a kiss?”
“God forbid.”
“Exactly.”
“Make the call.”
She hung up. She was already on it.
And the last I heard, they were having meatballs.