Expensive People by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

young and beautiful, and you must know that most of our mothers, the mothers of kids at school, are sort of getting along. My mother is at that age now, you know, where I have to watch out for her.”
    “How?”
    “Oh, tag along like this, eavesdrop, make sure she doesn't lose something or burst into tears,” Gustave said casually. As if to demonstrate, he got up and went to the doorway, pretending to check a book on a shelf near the door.
    In the other room our mothers were sitting on the sofa, chatting. Nada's black hair was growing out; she had missed one of her appointments, and the salon owner, a Monsieur Freytag, refused to take her back. Bebe Hofstadter had silvery hair that was very stylishly done. She wore an expensive yellow wool suit and a few too many bracelets on one wrist.
    “My mother is inclined to hysteria,” Gustave explained. “It's the change of life, you know. You can't be too careful with them at that time.”
    “What's wrong with her?”
    He stared at me coldly. “It is a biological condition,” he said.
    Biological conditions of mothers always frightened me, so I said nothing.
    “It began a few months ago, and I knew at once what it was. I had had sense enough to be reading ahead. Father doesn't have the slightest idea what's going on—he wouldn't want to admit his own age—andI can't possibly tell him. How could you tell your father anything so personal? I've left a copy of the
Reader's Digest
around with a lead article on the subject, but… My mother gets upset all the time, she cries if the toast is cold for Father, she's always picking on our maid Hor-tense, and she's always on the telephone, it's embarrassing, and yesterday her parakeet Fifi died and she spent all day crying, then accused Hortense and me of not giving a damn about the parakeet. So she took the corpse into the kitchen and put it in the garbage disposal, and before I could stop her she had turned it on. She was hysterical about that. This is a difficult time of life for both of us,” Gustave said vaguely.
    “It's nice you … you're caring for her,” I said. I wanted to tell him that I too took care of my mother; but everything I did was a failure. I admired Gustave's strength. You got the impression that when the time came he would get up and go get his mother and lead her home, safely.
    After about thirty minutes of our leafing through old
Business Weeks,
Gustave craned his head around. “Uh-uh,” he said grimly. He did indeed get up and stride into the living room. He was a small, skinny kid, nothing much, but he knew what he was doing. “Mrs. Everett, thank you so much for an enjoyable hour,” he said to Nada, bowing his head slightly, “but Mother has to leave now. I think she's forgotten her hair appointment.”
    “My hair appointment is Thursday,” Bebe said.
    “Mother, it's today at five-thirty You always do forget,” Gustave said.
    “It isn't. It's tomorrow,” said his mother. “I can't have a moment to myself. He's always … he—”
    “Mother won't have time for that drink,” Gustave said. “I'd better be getting our coats.”
    And he went to get the coats and, still chatting away while his mother whimpered, he helped her into her mink coat and stooped to pick up one of the gloves that had fallen from a pocket to the floor, doing everything smoothly and confidently, simply raising his voice to drown out his mother's complaints.
    “Very nice to have met you, Gustave,” Mother said.
    “Enchante,”
Gustave murmured at the door.
    We could hear his mother whimpering as they walked down our bone-dry walk. “Isn't that strange,” Nada said, closing the door slowly.
    That was one of her “friends,” Bebe Hofstadter. In a novel you would get to know such a woman better, but in real life you never do— women like her are perennially about to age but never quite do, they're always at a distance no matter how close, etc. Though Mrs. Hofstadter will return again in this memoir she will never