Remembering the Music, Forgetting the Words (eBook)

So Sue Me

'I'd like to sue my daughter,' my mother says to the attorney.
'Is that something you can handle for me?'
'Mom--ahh--I don't think he's that kind of lawyer.' I smile, hoping the attorney and witnesses we have gathered will assume my mother is kidding.
In fact, she has been threatening to sue since she slipped off the stool in my kitchen. I was at the sink across the counter, and I saw her take the fall, but I can't say for sure what happened. She moved from sitting to almost standing before she appeared to crumple to the floor. My friend Bruce, who was occupying the other counter stool, reached for her. But she went down too fast.
'Mom, are you okay?' I was on my knees next to her.
'My hip, goddamn it.'
'What about your back?'
'My back is fine, but my fanny is killing me. Why are your floors so damn slippery? I'm going to sue you!'
'You probably bruised your tailbone, Mom. You didn't hit your head, did you?'
'No, goddamn it! I landed on my fanny. Ouch!'
'You'll be sore for a few days, but I don't think you've broken anything. How about some ice?'
'Ice! Your house is already too goddamn cold!' She sat down on the loveseat in the living room. 'My fanny hurts like hell! Ouch! I'm going to sue you!'
'Well, there's not much you'd get out of a lawsuit, Mom. Kind of like blood from a stone?'
A smile, and then a shift of position. 'Ow! My fanny hurts! I'm going to sue you, Kathleen.'
My mother has threatened legal action every time she notices that her butt hurts. As best as I can figure, she forgets about the injury until she sits on her tailbone a certain way, and then-- bam--she remembers she fell, determines my slippery floors are to blame, and feels the impulse to sue me all over again. This has been happening, on average, about twenty times a day for the past six days. It's getting on my nerves.
If I were less annoyed by her repeated threats to sue me, I might find it more interesting that she has reinvented the story of her fall. She begins to tell the attorney that she was walking down the hallway when she fell. The cause? Not her hip. Not her balance issues. My slippery wood floors. She seems to have forgotten falling off the stool, but she is clinging to this new version of events, which, I have to admit, does more to support her claim. My kitchen floor is covered in nineteen-year-old linoleum with no shine left in it. Slippery, it is not.
The attorney to whom she relates her tale of household injustice is, thank God, a man. A tall man who is wearing a suit. 'Well, Anne, I am that kind of attorney too. But what do you say we get these documents in order before we discuss your lawsuit against your daughter?' My mother is satisfied and charmed. When he chuckles, she does too. On the whole, and despite her own impressive career, my mother prefers men, especially in positions of authority, and especially tall men, who remind her of my father.
We're meeting at my accountant's office. Kathey has been doing my taxes forever--since she was a one-woman show sharing her crowded quarters with a computer business run by the man who is now her ex. These days she has nicely appointed offices, several folks working for her, and a new husband. She also looks about ten years younger than she did when I first met her, which means she has reversed her aging process by about twice that many years. I'm pretty sure her secret is happiness.
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