Benjamin’s Women
“Stop it! Are you nuts? Let go of me!” Elaine fought to break free. She stood at the top of the stairs in off-white organza, a little crepe hat with ostrich feathers already sliding at a perilous angle across her forehead.
“You are not marrying that… that man! Not if I can help it! I simply won’t have it!” Mrs. Hubbacock’s voice rose to a screech as she wrapped both arms around her daughter’s wasp waist.
“Let go of me, you nasty old bat!” The makeup Elaine had spent nearly two hours perfecting began to fail—shine on her chin, nose, and cheeks. Fuming, she twisted against her mother’s unrelenting grip.
“I married once to please you. Now I’ll please myself for a change. Let go—damn it!”
With a ferocious double–elbow shove, Elaine pried herself loose, lost her balance, and tumbled down the stairs, yelping like a suckling pig. She landed face-first in the bridal bouquet—pink orchids and yellow tea roses—reducing it to a bent, woeful tangle.
Dark eyes flashing, Elaine rose, straightened her dress, flicked the little hat back over the fresh highlights in her perm, and charged up the steps, howling.
“I’m going to kill you! This is my day, you evil witch! And I am getting married whether you like it or not!”
Mrs. Hubbacock was not easily cowed—least of all by her own mad daughter—but this time she squatted behind the banisters, ensconced and scolding, her voice issuing prophecies of doom should Elaine ignore a mother’s wisdom.
“He is no good for you, my sweet child! He is the wrong kind of man! I didn’t sacrifice my life to see you throw yours away. There’s still time—call it off and think what marriage implies!”
Elaine reached the landing and shook her mother, who clung white-knuckled to the banisters, never pausing in her admonitions.
“You are so mean! Why must you spoil everything? Benjamin is the most wonderful, giving, caring, fun-loving person I’ve ever met. How can you not like him? Everybody adores him! You’re doing this to spite me—like you’ve always done! I’m sick of it—and of you!”
“I am your mother! I love you, and I know what is best. When will you see the light, my child?”
“Don’t ‘child’ me! I have grave doubts you’re even my real mother. I’m going to marry Benjamin, we’re leaving, and I don’t care if I never see you again.”
“Sweetheart, be realistic! You can’t mean that. You’re overwrought, that’s all.”
“Yes, I’m overwrought—and whose fault is that? If you’d stop pestering me—”
The doorbell rang. Shock wiped across Elaine’s face. She let go; Mrs. Hubbacock slumped to the floor, legs poking through the rungs like an old-age pensioner gone amok.
Elaine forgot her nemesis at once, dashed to the bathroom, and spackled her face back together.
“I’m coming!” she called, then skipped down and flung open the door, throwing herself into Benjamin’s arms. He looked maddeningly dashing in tails and a top hat.
“Darling, you look smashing!” he beamed.
“So do you. Wonderful! Let’s go!” Elaine burned to be out of that house, cursing the day she’d moved back in after her first marriage fell apart.
From above, Mrs. Hubbacock cried, “Elaine, I’m stuck!”
Benjamin glanced up, then dissolved into helpless laughter at the sight of his future mother-in-law wriggling to free her elephantine legs from the banister rungs.
“What is she doing up there, for Christ’s sake?”
“You know she’s crazy. Ignore her. It serves her right—let’s go!”
“Why? What did Mummy Dearest do this time?”
“Oh, nothing—only destroyed my wedding day. She wrapped both arms round my waist and tried to talk me out of marrying you. Do you believe such lunacy? I pulled free, fell down the stairs, and ruined my bouquet… Look!”
Ever the optimist, Benjamin stroked the pitiful roses. “It’s fine,” he said fondly. “Still lovely.”
“Oh, darling, you’re an angel.” Elaine rested her head against his chest, her obstinate mother nearly forgotten.
“Elaine! Help! I’m stuck!” came again from above.
Indecision flickered over Elaine’s face. “Oh, damn—let her stay,” she muttered, but Benjamin was already taking the stairs two at a time.
“Mrs. Hubbacocky”—his teasing nickname for the quarrelsome old lady—“what on earth are you doing?”
Even in her undignified pose, Mrs. Hubbacock turned away with pursed lips. “My daughter has no sense, that’s obvious. But…it is out of my hands. Unfortunately.”
“You’re a poet and don’t know it, Mrs. Hubbacocky. Here, let me help. We mustn’t be late for the service—all this playing and carrying on! When will you ever grow up, Mrs. Hubbacocky, really!”
Easier said than done. What goes in must come out, but her legs resisted the principle. The lovebirds pulled hard and long before her trunks finally slid free of the rungs.
Dignity in tatters, Mrs. Hubbacock mumbled a stiff “Thank you,” then retreated to her boudoir to lie down and nurse a splitting headache—brought on, as she put it, by the childish, uncivilized behavior of her almost-thirty-year-old, stubborn daughter who would never amount to anything and would surely send her to an early grave.
“The only one sent to an early grave was Daddy,” Elaine shot back, “because you drove him to it. He’d rather die than spend another minute in your nauseating company. And, Mother, that’s exactly how Benjamin and I feel, so—”
Benjamin, who found their rows comical, chuckled. “Leave me out of it, darling. I think your mother is a true original.”
“Original sin, yes,” Elaine sniffed. Then, louder: “Are you coming, Mother, or not?”
A frail whimper leaked from the boudoir.
Despite everything, Elaine loved her mother. She squared her shoulders and managed a little smile at her husband-to-be. “Well. I’ve done all I could. That’s it—she’s not coming.” Her voice almost broke into a chilling sob, but she caught herself in time.
She swallowed the tears, slipped her left arm through Benjamin’s, and, smiling up at him, they stepped out to be married—and to live, at least for this moment, happily ever after.