She felt it unfair to fire Julian, who had done such a good job protecting her life, so she kept him on as a live-in bartender. This way when Cliff came home from a hard day of looking for work, Julian was there to mix him a drink. Not wanting Julian to sit idle all day, she got up as early as possible and drank until Cliff came home. And still the marriage didn't last. One day, for unknown reasons, Mom fired both Julian and Cliff and decided to put herself back on the market.
My mother is the reason I screen my calls. And yet tonight I'm so caught up watching NYPD Blue that I pick up the phone when it rings.
"Sis, I've met someone." (My mother calls me her sister -- don't ask.)
It's only been a few weeks since Cliff hit the road, and I can't help but wonder how my attractive, functional and single friends go months on end without meeting someone, yet my one-eyed mother who shits herself reels them in.
"Sis, this is it. He's 43, his name is Rudy. He's a jazz musician and very sexy."
She can't see me cringe over the phone as she describes the gory details of their sex life. After she boasts that she no longer needs her vibrator, she comes to the point.
"I'm thinking of getting married again, Sis."
I can hear the ice in her glass hit the side as she takes a drink.
"But, the thing I'm worried about is -- he's never had any kids."
This is what she's worried about? She drops the phone and falls out of bed. As she bangs around on the floor, I'm able to catch up on the NYPD Blue plot. The snitch who Franz got his information from on the guy he's holding in custody for homicide might actually be the perpetrator. Love this show.
After a while my mother rights herself. "Sorry, the damn maid puts so much lemon oil on my bedside table that everything just falls off. Anyway Sis, I need a favor -- will you have Rudy's child for me?"
"What?"
"Be our surrogate. You don't have to have sex with him if you don't want to."
She assures me that she'd pay for me to be artificially inseminated -- even though it's more expensive than the old-fashioned way.
"It's a win-win situation, Sis. Will you do it?"
I can't wait to tell my friends about this. Their parents are boring compared to mine. They don't projectile vomit, or hold conversations with bits of blood leaking out of their mouth, let alone ask them to birth their own brothers and sisters.
"I don't understand why you're not jumping at this chance Sis. You know I'd do it for you! I love you and if you don't do this for me then ... I'll know you've never loved me."