Mom called just after 8:00 yesterday morning to tell me that the government shutdown was over.
“Yes, I know,” I told her. “It ended over a week ago.”
“I wanted to make sure you knew,” she said.
I thanked her and told her I needed to get to work.
She said she was planning to have a quiet day at home watching movies on TV. I didn’t notice that her usual flurry of calls stopped after that. I was working on a pivotal scene in the second act. I was in the zone. That space where entry is usually denied, and it’s only the rare occasion I get granted a visa. When I’m in the zone, time stops. It treads water. It levitates. It does all sorts of wonderful circus acts.
Aunt Rosemary called around 2:30 and yanked me out of the zone.
“Elise, something has happened. We need to talk. I know you’re working on your play, but this is urgent. I have to pee. Can I call you back?”
Sure, Aunt Rosemary. Go ahead, use your bladder as a device to create dramatic tension. I waited for almost ten minutes before she called back. Peeing doesn’t take this long unless you’re Aunt Rosemary. She can turn a simple trip to the bathroom into a urinary tract infection. When she called back, she reminded me to whom I was speaking with.
“Elise, it’s your Aunt Rosemary. The doorman called from your mother’s building. You know the one I’m speaking of, the short one. Most doormen in the city aren’t so petite. But what he lacks in size, he makes up for in charm. Every time I visit your mother, he asks how I am and whether I’ve been acting in anything recently. Of course, women my age have a terrible time getting cast in anything. We are secondary characters at best. We’re either sassy old lady set dressing or fidgety and forgetful widows. Darling, I do hope you’re writing a strong part for a woman my age in your play.”
“I am.”
“And I do hope you’ll grant me an audition for it. Of course, I understand that you can’t cast me just because I’m your aunt.”
“I won’t have any say over the casting, I’m sorry Aunt Rosemary. But why did Alan call you? I was around all day yesterday, so I don’t know why he called you and not me.”
“He’s very discreet of course. He wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t time sensitive and urgent. We gave him my phone number after your mother had her incident. For emergencies. And between you and me, Elise, darling, he told me you looked awful when you were here last week. Of course, I wouldn’t know because you didn’t tell me you were in the city. But I understand, you’re busy and you can’t always fit me in.”
“Alan thought I looked awful? But I’d just had a haircut.”
“Elise, please, don’t make this about you. We have an emergency situation.”
Aunt Rosemary refuses to get to the point. She is an obsessive preluder.
“Did you know that I once rode in an elevator at your mother’s building with the actress Diahann Carroll?”
“She used to live there. She was very nice.”
“A magnificent talent and a pioneer. I asked her if she thought she might find a role for me in her next film.”
“You asked her that in the elevator?”
“Elise, darling, I’ve learned to seize every opportunity and treat everything I do as an audition. I once saw Paul Newman walking down Fifth Avenue near 66th Street and I dazzled him by performing the dance scene from the Three Faces of Eve. Right there on the street. He was beaming. But my incompetent agent didn’t have the nerve to follow up with him. She was useless. I hope you have a good agent, dear. You really can’t get anything done without one.”
“Aunt Rosemary, you said there was something urgent you wanted to tell me.”
“You’ll want to brace yourself. Your mother went out for a walk, you see. She put on her winter coat. I don’t know why. It’s October, for Christ’s sake. Your mother is an extremist though. A spit of wind and she dresses for the Arctic. But of course once she got outside she realized she didn’t need her coat. The doorman saw it all.”
“Saw what?”
“Trudy took off her coat.”
“But she didn’t need a coat.”
“She didn’t stop with her coat. She continued to shed her habiliments.”
“Habiliments?”
“Trudy took off her shirt.”
“What? What did she do?”
“I’m not certain which shirt she was wearing. Did I mention that just a few weeks ago your mother and I had our yearly clothing swap? I don’t know why we still partake in that exhausted ritual. Honestly, I already threw out the few antediluvian schmattas I took. I suspect your mother was probably wearing one of the shirts I gave her. They weren’t one bit bad.”
“She took off her shirt?”
“She released her bosoms.”
“Aunt Rosemary? What? Fuck! Shit!”
“Try to refrain from such base vulgarities, dear. You sound like your mother. The doorman saw it all. He yelled out to her, ‘Mrs. Hellman, do you need help with anything?’ I think she must have been in a trance, and he broke her out of it because she put her shirt back on and sauntered back inside.”
Aunt Rosemary’s floral flourishes will withstand any emergency.
“The doorman called me. He really is a gem, and naturally I took a cab right over. I was so out of sorts after getting such a call, well you can imagine, that I left the apartment without my purse. He had to pay for my taxi.”
“Alan paid for your taxi?”
“You’ll have to reimburse him. Your mother was in an absolute rage when I arrived.”
“I’m heading to the city now.” I was already making my way toward the car when Aunt Rosemary clicked her tongue into the phone at me and said, “I don’t know how to say this without sounding hurtful, Elise, but I think your mother needs real help, not you.”
I reached down deep to pull out any zen-in-residence, and in an almost absurdly measured voice replied, “Okay, Aunt Rosemary. I understand. What would you like me to do?”
She took an exaggerated breathy moment before answering. “Hire someone to come over and be with her. Elise, I can’t do it all anymore.”
I held my tongue. Lassoed it up and wrestled it into submission and listened to Aunt Rosemary yammer on.
“Yesterday I was barely able to calm your mother down. She forced me to go home. Practically threw me out of the apartment. Wouldn’t even lend me money for a taxi.”
When we hung up, I called Mom. She downplayed the entire event, even suggested that Aunt Rosemary made it up, “You know how your aunt is. Everything is a crisis. I’ve been home all day and can’t talk now. I’m watching Gilda. Rita Hayworth is absolutely marvelous in it. Can we talk later?”
But she didn’t call back. And I didn’t call her.