Free Significant Others by Marilyn Baron Page A

busy to go to the salon in Atlanta. So, Mom, what do you say?”
    “I say I need more than a new hairstyle and a dress. What I need is a facelift. All of my friends are getting facelifts.”
    “Well, aren’t you lucky you don’t need one,” I replied, licking the hot tears from my mouth. Losing confidence was a sure sign that my mother was growing old. A facelift was the last thing she needed. Touching up my mother’s face would be like marring the Mona Lisa. Only my mother never smiled anymore. Maybe because she had no more secrets.

Chapter Five: The Silent Bullfrog
    “Mom, I think we have to talk about this merger,” I said after Aunt Helene went home.
    “You mean the sale,” she answered stubbornly.
    “Well, that’s what we have to talk about,” I replied.
    “Why don’t we go out to the pool, relax a little bit before our hair appointments,” my mother suggested. “We can talk there. Did you bring a bathing suit?”
    “Yes,” I acknowledged, thinking, Who has time to swim? I was going to be gone the entire afternoon, between shopping and the salon. But this day was about my mother. “I’ll go change.”
    After a restless night in a strange bed, listening to ’40s music in the background, I woke up disoriented, with big band sounds pounding in my head. No wonder my mother was on the verge of insanity. Marc was not the only one going through a midlife crisis. But Marc didn’t have to deal with an internal furnace that woke him up several times a night, never able to get comfortable enough to fall back to sleep. And Marc’s bedclothes weren’t drenched in sweat. But since I was a woman, I guessed my midlife crisis didn’t count, because I didn’t go acting out all my fantasies for the whole world to see.
    I had been too tired to unpack last night, but now I started hanging my clothes in the closet. My hand paused on the frothy lime green cocktail concoction that had originally belonged to Vicky. I planned to wear it when we took my mother to The Addison. The one Marc called my “mildew” dress. Vicky had purchased it for a Holy Land Foundation Dinner at her church, but when she put it on the evening of the event, she decided it was too risqué even for her, and especially for the bishops and monsignors. But I didn’t have Vicky’s cleavage problem. When I’d tried to return it, Vicky refused to take it back.
    This dress should be worn to shake things up, I thought. Marc doesn’t like me in flashy colors. But after what he did to me, I shouldn’t have to answer to him anymore. And I wasn’t going to see Marc on this trip anyway.
    I squeezed into a leopard-print, figure-hugging bathing suit. Not that anyone here would be alert enough to notice my figure, but it never hurts to look your best. I put on a long black eyelet cover-up, grabbed my wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses, and a file folder, and pulled my cell phone and BlackBerry from my purse.
    When I returned to the living room, my mother was staring at my manila folder.
    “You’re not going to bring work out to the pool are you?”
    “Well a few Faxes came in that need my attention. I have some phone calls to return, and I brought the thumbnails that the agency did on the TV campaign I want to show you.”
    “Honey, why can’t we just be a mother and daughter going out to the pool for a relaxing swim? Does it always have to be business between us?”
    “We’re going out there precisely to talk about the business. You have a deadline coming up in a few days. I want to make sure you’ve considered all the consequences of an outright sale.”
    “I’ve already been over this with Marc, and he says that is what’s best for—”
    “Marc doesn’t speak for me,” I said abruptly. “He has nothing to do with this.”
    “He’s been helping me structure the deal,” my mother said.
    “I don’t want him involved in my business,” I said.
    “Honey, maybe there’s something else we need to talk about. Is there something going on