So, what was to be the happiest day of his mother’s life became the worst of his, and the champagne he drank to toast the happy couple tasted bitter on his lips.
But drink it he did, and in such quantities that his mother had the gall, the utter gall, to instruct the barman to stop serving him.
‘I’m drinking myself out of a bad mood.’ Cohen leaned against the counter, his head spinning, his tuxedo crumpled and stained.
‘From one bad mood into a worse one,’ Esther remarked, casting a disapproving eye over her son.
Marilyn, smoothly and without hesitation, shook her head sadly. ‘You have so many issues already, Cohen honey. Don’t add alcoholism to the mix.’ She gave a sudden, melancholy sigh. ‘You make me feel so sad inside.’
‘Thank you, Dr Berg,’ Cohen slurred. ‘You are astute, as always.’
‘Actually,’ Marilyn replied. ‘You don’t have to call me ‘Doctor Berg’ any more. In fact, your mother and I thought it might be nice – healthy even – if you gave me a maternal name. I’m your mother now too, of a sort at least, and it would be odd for you to refer to me as ‘Doctor Berg’ all the time. Of course, it would have to be something you’re comfortable with. I don’t want you to feel awkward, Cohen honey. So, how about something you can call me on a daily basis? Maybe Mama Marilyn?’
Mama Marilyn.
A sober, rational Cohen would have found the whole conversation absolutely mortifying. After all, this was the woman he briefly discussed his unsatisfying sexual history with. The woman to whom he’d confessed, in a hushed whisper, that he sometimes dreamt about becoming a rabbi, if only to shut his mother up. But rational Cohen was currently buried under the Cohen who was three sheets to the wind, and as such, he found the whole conversation to be absolutely hilarious.
‘Mama Marilyn?’ He grinned, slipping off his seat. ‘Why not? It does just roll off the tongue, I suppose. Mama Marilyn Ford-Berg,’ he mused. ‘I’m sure your patients will love calling your office – sorry, I meant yoursafe space. Marilyn Ford-Berg is just so easy to say through broken voices and thought-doctored tears.’
He laughed until salty streams began to run down his face.
But Esther remained stone-faced.
‘Actually,’ his mother told him, her tone razor-sharp. ‘I’m dropping Ford.’
Cohen stopped laughing. Suddenly, there was nothing funny about this whatsoever.
‘What?’ he stuttered. ‘What do you mean, you’re dropping Ford?’
‘I can’t very well ask my new wife to take my dead husband’s surname now, can I?’ Esther huffed. ‘Use your head, Cohen.’
‘So, what? Are you going to use your maiden name? You’ll be the Sedler-Berg family? Or the Berg-Sedlers?’
‘Actually, Cohen honey,’ Marilyn said smoothly, taking Esther’s hand and planting a kiss upon it. ‘We’ve decided to blend our names.’
‘Yes,’ Esther replied, smiling up at her new wife. ‘We’re going to be the Bergdler family.’
‘You have got to be kidding me,’ Cohen muttered. God, why did his mother have to spring this upon himaftershe’d instructed the barman to close up shop? Because he could reallyreallyuse a measure of whisky to get through this Bergdler nonsense.
No, forget the measure.
He needed the whole damn bottle.
‘Bergdler?’ He shook his head. ‘That sounds like a Jewish brand of condoms. You cannot be serious, Mother.’
‘As serious as I’ve ever been. And you watch your mouth, Cohen. I didn’t raise you to speak like that.’
No, you didn’t raise me to speak at all.The words, fully formed in Cohen’s mind, didn’t quite leave his lips.
Words he wanted to say were never quite leaving his lips.
Well, what did it matter anyway? All Cohen knew was that yesterday two women shared his surname, while today, all he had was an ex-wife who would share only her bank details – hungry for alimony payments – and his mother, the new MrsBergdler.
It was no wonder he took off for Paris, and then London, as soon as work would allow him.
Not that his mother gave him much space, even from a distance of five thousand miles.
He arrived at The Great Greenwich Ice Creamery that following Tuesday, just as his phone chimed in his pocket. Looking down, he groaned when he saw Esther’s name light the screen. Normally, he had no hesitation in declining her calls, in swiping left and boxing his mother’s thoughts into a voicemail which he would never listen to. But today, luck was against him. He pressed upon the ice creamery’s door, only to find it locked, with a pastel-green sign taped to the window withBe back in fifteen!scrawled messily upon it.
