On the theme of Epitaph
Ma Brimley
Weird things going down next door; a mild-mannered tech exec gets kicked out by his pregnant wife and a surly mother-in-law with a rural Montana accent that makes Wilford Brimley look like a pussy. This mother-in-law’s voice is a shot of whiskey, flat as a church pew, cold as a frozen cod. This grande dame means business when she tells the tech guy, “How old arr ya? Thirty? Where’d yer brains go? You got no brains, have you? Thirty years old and you’re a big baby.”
The wife hollers, “This is it! This is it! I’m done!” As I listen I discover the nasty truth. The husband has spilled fish juice in her new 40,000 dollar SUV. A lot of fish juice, she insists, and I envision gobs of semi-absorbed juice trailing along the upholstery as if the vehicle has been taken over by a giant squid.
“Did ya think to double bag? Triple bag? NOOOOO! I’m done! I’ve had it! I’m done!” The wife’s voice is like a film heroine, tragic and hysterical, as she faces the charge of a mad gorilla.
She is weeping with words. She is done. Her husband must go, this man who has spent months slowly but surely hammering things and mowing lawns and hosting parties for nerds who look like they were bussed in from Intel, a costume party reminiscent of a masked superheroes ball, with all the dip trays and stiff pinata games. This big nerd, this tall Irish goombah with his tousled black hair and rosebud cheeks speaks in a calm voice, telling her that they dragged his friend off by the hair. Yes, apparently the mother-in-law tried to pull the husband’s buddy out of the car by his hair because he didn’t get out the first time she asked. It is convoluted, the yelling, the stern oldster presiding over all, and the nerdy husband (who does look like a big baby, Buddha-rotund at 300 pounds in a fresh seersucker button-down) insists they calm down and that he wants his father-in-law’s phone number.
Apparently the mother-in-law has been visiting for two weeks and the husband has swallowed a lot of abuse. He tells her she doesn’t know the meaning of no, and he has done a lot to make her comfortable, and the wife interjects that she has gotten a second job and worked 70 hours a week for four years… well you know, no one really breaks up over spilled fish juice, do they? She’s pregnant and slaved for his schooling, his deed on the house. And the husband is left on the sidewalk as the wife storms in and out of the house and I hear old female Brimley presiding as the daughter tells her, “I’ve got it ma… I’m throwing this mat in the washer.”
And the homestead is secure, with the piles of someone’s belongings pitched under a tarp in the driveway, the disarray without reflecting the disarray within, and all I know is that I am a long way from New York, with these accents and this coldness and these dry summer days, and I am instead where the buffalo once roamed.
Who does this female badder-than-Brimley look like, you may ask?
Joan Didion, of course.
Author Biography
Jennifer Robin is a novelist and essayist. Robin’s first novel, Bouzi, was released in 2000, and her short stories have appeared in various literary journals. She has performed at Bumbershoot, The Olympia Experimental Music Festival, and miscellaneous other events. Contact her at jenniferistheone@yahoo.com.