Loose Screws by Karen Templeton

Nedra anytime between October and April. Dead things as fashion statement send her totally postal.
    Which is why she must never know about the Blackglama jacket hanging in my closet, an indulgence I succumbed to, oh, four years ago, I think, when I got my First Big Client, a dot.com entrepreneur who basically waved a hand at the SoHo loft he was thrilled to have “only” paid a million five for and said, “Just do it.”
    At least I’ve got a mink jacket to show for it. The client, sad to say, is probably lucky to still have his shirt.
    But I digress. Once I got Nedra past all the potential land mines and onto the train, I realized having my mother with me did have certain advantages. For one thing, I couldn’t bicker with my mother and moon over Greg at the same time. For another, men were far less likely to hit on me with my mother gesticulating wildly beside me, which was a good thing because I was seriously uninterested in fending off the deluded. Although one or two intrepid souls tried to hit on her. For the most part, however, I could count on my fellow New Yorkers to stay true to type and basically ignore the dutiful daughter escorting the crazy woman back to Happy Acres after her little field trip to the city. And while I still cringed at the thought of Phyllis in the face of my mother’s Open Mouth Policy, at least there wouldn’t be any long stretches of awkward silence. Although there would undoubtedly be a legion of short ones.
    Although, really, I have no idea what I’m so nervous about. Phyllis and I have always gotten on together just fine. And after all, I’m the dumpee. If anything, she shouldfeel embarrassed about seeing me, not the other way around.
    And while I’m mulling over all this, I notice my mother’s been oddly subdued for the past half hour or so. Of course, applying that word to Nedra is like saying the hurricane’s been downgraded to a tropical storm. But it’s true: she’s actually been reading quietly, the silence between us punctuated by nothing more than an occasional snort of indignation. I glance over from the racy novel I’m reading, something with heaving bosoms and flowing tresses adorning the cover. The heroine’s not too shabby, either.
    â€œWhatcha reading?” I say, noting that the tome on my mother’s lap weighs considerably more than I do.
    â€œHmm?” She frowns at me over the tops of her reading glasses, then tilts the book so I can see the cover. Ah. Some feminista treatise on menopause, which is definitely the topic of the hour these days, since Nedra apparently stopped having periods about six months ago. When she passes the first year without, she says, she’s going to have a party to celebrate her official entrée into cronehood.
    She refocuses on the book, the corners of her mouth turned down. “You have no idea,” she says in a voice that would carry, unmiked, to the back row of Yankee Stadium, “the insidious ways the medical establishment tries to foist off the idea that every natural function of the female body should be regarded as a disability. It’s absolutely outrageous. ”
    At least four passengers across the aisle give us disapproving looks. Except for one middle-age woman who nods.
    I “hmm” in reply and look back at my book, suppressing a long-suffering sigh. The odd thing is, it’s not that I don’t agree with her about a lot of what she gets so fired up about—I’ll probably read that book myself—it’s just there are quieter, more dignified ways to make one’s point. After all these years, Nedra still has the power to embarrass the hell out of me. You would’ve thought I’d become inured to her outbursts by now. I haven’t.
    Many’s the time as a child I was tempted to call SocialServices, get a feel for what the adoption market was for skinny, Jewish-Italian mutt girl-children of above-average