Mary [Shiff] Francis
(c) 2000
The little-girl response I had been biting back all week finally escaped, �Just shut up, Alice. Just shut up.� Mumsie and Alice stared at me with their mouths open.
�Molly . . .� For once, my mother was at a loss for words. �Molly . . .�
Alice�s face turned scarlet when my outburst was followed by wild laughter. If Alice is capable of any emotion other than embarrassment, then I�m quite sure she has resented me since the day I was born for disturbing the peace in the house. For six years she had Mumsie and Daddy all to herself. Then I came along. Laughing has been my only escape from the mothering and smothering I have received from Mumsie and Alice. �I�m sorry,� I managed to say. �I don�t know what came over me.�
�All I said was that you spend more money on useless junk than anyone I know in New York. And you know how my friends adore that kind of stuff.�
�You�re just upset because I can afford it.� I wanted to add �and you can�t� but forty-six years of being my mother�s daughter restrained me. �I�m sorry.� I tried to sound sincere. I needed to get away from my family and talk about them with my therapist. A whole week with Mumsie and Alice had presented me with enough material to keep me in my weekly therapy sessions for at least another year.
�Molly, you know better than to pick on your sister.� Mumsie was gearing up for her prime occupation: the defense of her number one daughter. �You�ve been jealous of Alice ever since you were born and I just don�t understand why. She�s been the best big sister that anyone could have asked for.�
I bit my tongue. I knew better than to say, �I didn�t ask for one. My dearest wish has been to be an only child. Or a child with only brothers.� I tried saying that once when I was eleven and ended up on a stool facing the corner of the dining room for what seemed like days while Alice sang with the radio and sewed on her prom dress. She couldn�t carry a tune in a bucket. And the dress would have been a disaster if Mumsie hadn�t ripped out her work and re-stitched the dress every night after Alice went to bed.
The announcer at the gate mumbled something in her microphone about Flight 694 and boarding. We couldn�t make out whether she wanted people to get on the plane or not. We weren�t the only ones confused by the announcement. A clear, low-pitched voice then came over the loudspeaker. I was glad to hear that it wouldn�t be long until Mumsie and Alice would be among the dearly departed.
I really don�t know what came over me at the airport. I haven�t told Alice to shut up since I was twelve. It felt good back then, but not as good as it did now. Sometimes I amaze myself. I wonder if Mumsie and Alice will come back for another visit. It took them a long time to get up the nerve to fly out to Los Angeles, the sinkhole of crime that the next major earthquake will send crumbling into the ocean. My therapist tells me that I shouldn�t be so hard on them; they really believe they love me and that everything they did was for my own good. If that�s true, they need therapy more than I do.
I sang in the high school choir�the one that was good enough to win awards so we got to go on overnight trips to state and national competitions�and I actually learned how to sew in my Home Economics classes. When I made my Junior Prom dress, Mumsie never put one stitch in it. The dress was a beautiful poof of pink chiffon over cream satin. And when it was finished, I helped my girlfriends fix their store-bought dresses so they would flatter young breasts and show off narrow waists. I had dreamed of going to the prom with the sports hero who distracted me during World History on the days when he didn�t skip class, but I agreed to be escorted by my best friend�s brother. He had talked his college roommate into taking his sister and then decided that he should be around to keep an eye on his buddy. If he had trusted his roommate, I wouldn�t have had a date for the prom. As it was, his roommate had to keep reminding him that I was jailbait. I thought it was cool to be kissed and petted by an older man. He had overwhelmed Mumsie with his college charm when he came to pick me up. She was absolutely convinced that I was in good hands with my best friend�s big brother. Well, I would have been if my friend and her date had left us alone for long enough. After the prom, we went to the drive-in for hamburgers and Cokes. Then the guys took us home, me first because Mumsie had said that 1 a.m. was as far as she could stretch my curfew�and that was granted like a special dispensation from the Pope.
Alice was away at college when I was in high school, far enough away that she couldn�t come home except for holidays and summer vacations. The summer before my Senior year, she worked days as a receptionist for the local attorney and I worked evenings at the drive-in so we got along fairly well�except when she woke me up in the morning to ask if I would loan her bus fare. It wasn�t really a loan. Mumsie said that we needed to help Alice out because she was saving all her money for college. Well, I was putting half my earnings in a savings account for college. At least in June and July I was. I loaned most of it back to myself in August when I went shopping for school clothes, but it was my money so I didn�t charge myself interest on the loan. I never paid it back either. When I finally went to college, I had to survive on student loans and whatever part-time jobs I could scrape up, but I had nice clothes to wear while I was scrambling toward my degree.
It took Alice nine years to earn a four-year degree because she wouldn�t go into debt to pay for classes. I just kept filling out applications and signing papers and taking as many courses as my advisor would let me sign up for. I got out in four years with a B average and a great desire to have a day job that paid very well. I didn�t want to ever again have to ask the price of anything or count my change in public. I did have to for a few years while I worked days and attended Masters classes evenings and occasional weekends. Then my career started paying off. Alice is still plugging away. Now she does legal research for the local law firm. And she lives at home with Mumsie. I would rather die than be buried alive like that.
So I ended up in LA with a career and enough money to be able to spend some foolishly and not regret it. And finally Mumsie and Alice made their long-dreaded visit. Mickey moved out for the week that Mumsie and Alice were here. They said they would have been willing to share the bed in the guestroom so Mickey could have stayed in her own room, but I said that Mickey was overdue for a visit to her sister anyway. Actually, Mickey said that she wouldn�t be able to keep her hands off me for a whole week so if I wasn�t willing to acknowledge our relationship then I was going to have to sleep alone for a week.
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