Why Moms Are Weird Read online

  Acclaim for Pamela Ribon’s novel

  Why Girls Are Weird

  “Full and hilarious….”

  —Miami Herald

  “Truly funny…. Anna is…more real than most chick-lit heroines.”

  —Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TX)

  “Light and entertaining.”

  —Booklist

  “Witty, wonderful and wise.”

  —Maryland Gazette

  “I absolutely loved [it]!”

  —Pop Gurls

  “Online or offline, this girl is funny.”

  —Calgary Herald

  “With wit and spark, Ribon hopscotches through the high-bandwidth dramas of the modern girl’s life.”

  —Pagan Kennedy

  “A muscular, sexy ride through the irresistible thrills of online flirting and the all-too-familiar heartaches of real life romance. [The] writing is as moving as it is funny, with a shock and a delight on every page.”

  —Claire LaZebnik, author of Same As It Never Was

  “Reading the irresistible Why Girls Are Weird is like hanging out with your best friend just when you need to most.”

  —Melissa Senate, author of See Jane Date

  Also by Pamela Ribon

  Why Girls Are Weird

  Available from Downtown Press

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  DOWNTOWN PRESS, published by Pocket Books

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2006 by Pamela Ribon

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce

  this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue

  of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-1039-0

  ISBN-10: 1-4165-1039-7

  DOWNTOWN PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  For Dad

  Acknowledgments

  I only get one page and there are too many people to thank, so these are the people who were a part of this book, in countless ways:

  The big four: Amy Pierpont, Megan McKeever, Kim Witherspoon, and Alexis Hurley.

  The big three: Todd Christopher, Amy Schiffman, and Erin Searcy.

  My best man: Daniel J. Blau.

  The best people: Adam Blau, Rebecca Russell, Andrew Kamenetzky, Brian Kamenetzky, Steve Skelton, Jessica Kaman, Tyson Heder, AB Chao, Allison Lowe-Huff and Chris Huff, Todd and Hilary Anderson, Sara Morrison, Tom Hargis, Evany Thomas, Frank Stokes, Stephanie Markham, Josh Lanthier-Welch, Jami Anderson, Brently Heilbron, Liz Feldman, Jason Allen, Laura House, Patrick Srail, Maureen Driscoll, Tara Ariano, Dave Cole, Sarah Bunting, Ray Prewitt, Andi Teran, and Jeff Long.

  The girl crushes: Kimberly Wright, Kimberley Helms, and Kara Baker.

  My first family: Paula Ribon, Natalie Ribon, and Chris and Marcy Kelman.

  My second family: Jeff Schimmel, Chris McGuire, Brian Rubenstein, Steve Trevino, David Lucky, Brian Hartt, Cristela Alonzo, Blaine Capatch, Bob Oschack, Ted Sarnowski, Tim Jennings, Robert Morton, and Carlos and Amy Mencia.

  My broken home: Suzanne Martin, Andy Gordon, Sebastian Jones, Anne Flett, Chuck Ranberg, Christian McLaughlin, Valerie Ahern, John Davoren, Ken Andrade, Jennifer Shaklan, and Chris Shiple.

  Thank you, Richard Breton, John Wolcott, and Florence Clark. Thank you, Swork.

  Thank you, pamie.com.

  And, as always, everything is because of my sweet stee. I love you.

  “I won’t be happy till I see you alone again.

  Till I’m home again and feeling right.”

  —C AROLE KING

  “Sid and Nancy’s relationship forever

  illustrates the worst part of being in love

  with anyone, which is that people

  in love can’t be reasoned with.”

  —C HUCK KLOSTERMAN,

  KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE

  Why Moms

  Are Weird

  To Whom It May Concern…

  I thought I should write this just in case I ever accidentally kill my mother on purpose.

  Charles Whitman did this, before he climbed the tower at the University of Texas in Austin and shot all of those people. He wrote a letter, to whoever found it after his death, because he had a feeling he was about to kill his mother and then a whole bunch of other people for good measure.

  I’m not as positive as Whitman was. In fact, I think he ended his letter with “P.S.: By the way, I’m pretty sure there’s a gigantic tumor pressing against my brain.” (Which there was.)

  I wanted to write all of this down just in case somehow something horrible happens to my mother. This is for if the coroner says, “It looks like she fell down the stairs. Three times.” If the cops all look at each other with stern concern because they know this was a case of accidental matricide (a second- or third-degree offense, I’m sure), this will be something tangible in my defense.

  And no, this isn’t a confirmation of premeditation. This is anti-premeditation. A preretraction. A remnant from before I went crazy, before I do all of the things the little voice in my head tells me to do. I don’t mean “little voice” like Whitman’s tumor voice, either. This is the little voice that says, “This isn’t how your life is supposed to be! Now go shake your mother!”

  Just in case. You understand.

  Your honor. Kind jury. Dear reader. Whoever it is holding this book, wondering what the hell happened to that nice girl Belinda Bernstein. The one with the pretty brown hair and the big, blue eyes. Just in case I have to run away to Mexico after accidentally feeding my mother rat poison.

  I’m not going to do it. I’m totally not going to do it.

  I’m writing this all down, though.

  Just. In. Case.

  Exhibit A.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, honey, it’s just your mom.”

  This is how my mother starts all of our phone conversations. Actually, I knew it was her long before I said hello. I can tell by the ring. It has a certain need to it.

  “Hi, Ma.”

  “You sound busy.”

  She always says this no matter how I sound. It’s so I can say, “No, I’m not busy.”

  I hear her suck on her front teeth. “I never know what time it is over there.”

  “I’m three hours back.” I once made the mistake of joking that Los Angeles was “in the past” compared to Virginia, and Mom’s understanding of time shattered forever. “What’s up?”

  “Are you sure you’ve got time?” she asks.

  “I do.”

  “You’re not busy?”

  I was microwaving a bag of popcorn, ready to watch the entire fourth season of Mr. Show on DVD yet again. I was busy according to my own terms, but maybe not by anyone else’s.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I think I have chlamydia.”

  That can’t have been what she said. I must have misheard. Bad connection. Terrible reception. Ear infection. Temporary mental retardation. Any and all other explanations are preferable to the possibility that my mother has just told me she has contracted a sexually transmitted disease.

  “What? Ma, what?” I’m yelling like I’m actually in the past now, holding a giant horn to my ear while screaming into the machine hardwired to the wall. Operato
r! Give me Poughkeepsie 5–472!

  “Boobs? Are you alone?”

  That’s my nickname. It’s short for “Benny Boobenstein,” which is what she started calling me when my chest arrived at thirteen. I know; it’s fucking hilarious.

  And the answer to her question is, of course, “Yes.” This is Mom fishing for info on my personal life without coming right out and asking, “Are you dating someone yet?” I swear, sometimes she calls the house and holds the receiver up to a ticking clock. I cannot seem to get through to my mother that I have no desire to get married anytime soon.

  I know you’re thinking, “She just asked three words. ‘Are you alone?’ It’s a simple question, Benny. I might ask you that myself if I called to discuss chlamydia.” But you’re new, and you don’t know my mother never says three words without five different intentions behind them. You’ll see.

  Now Mom’s saying, “I have this thmurmur?”

  She mumbles. She does this a lot. It also often sounds like she’s falling, or putting the phone down midsentence. It’s as if she gives up, right in the middle of the conversation, the phone too heavy to continue. Or maybe she gets bored with me.

  Actually, I think Mom gets distracted. She’s probably still talking, but she’s remembered she needs to take some clothes out of the dryer. So she’s still talking to me, but from down the hall. She hates that I won’t let her put me on the speakerphone.

  “Chlamydia? Isn’t that how you say it?” She sounds it out, like English is a second language. “Chlam…clam…clam-mid?”

  “Hold on, Ma.” I put the phone between my knees and glance at the smirking faces from the DVD on my coffee table. Bob and David seem to be taking great joy in my suffering. I take a breath and put the phone back to my ear.

  “Boobs?” she says. I wonder how many times she said that while I put her on hold. I clearly indicated I was going to put the phone down. Why does that not mean anything to her? Why does she have to call out my name like I’ve abandoned her?

  “Ma. I need you to repeat what you just said you had.”

  “Chlamydia?”

  “Now I need you to never say that again.” With the heel of my free hand I rub my eyes, one after another. I have to figure this out. There’s an explanation for all of this. Perhaps she’s finally entered dementia. Is that how you say it? Do you “enter” dementia, or do you “come down” with dementia, or is it more of a “hit with” kind of thing?

  Mom’s succumbed to dementia.

  “I hate bothering you, honey,” she says. She goes into the martyr thing pretty easily. “I know you’re busy. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not bothering me, Ma.” Not if my mother’s vagina is in peril. Holy fucking shit, I have to think about my mother’s vagina. There aren’t enough curse words to handle this current situation.

  I haven’t had to think about this place since I left it, since that eviction notice was tacked to the inside of the womb and the tongs pulled me out of there. Mom said I was stubborn—not only was I a week late, she was in labor for thirty-six hours. So long, in fact, that Dad had gone to work. Even my grandparents missed showtime, assuming if I had taken a day and a half, a few hours more weren’t going to make a difference. They were at a Denny’s, eating breakfast. Gramma wanted to name me after her eggs Benedict, even after she found out I was a girl. Mom had the good sense to name me Belinda. Gramma was stubborn, though, and called me Benny. It stuck. A girl named Benny. Crazy families sure know how to jack up a girl’s name, don’t they?

  I’m Belinda “Benny” Boobenstein Bernstein. Sometimes I’m simply known as “Boobs.” Clearly I’m going to kill someone someday. It’s just a matter of time before I snap, and everyone will understand.

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” Mom says, referring, I suppose, to her calling me for medical advice.

  “Did you ask Jami?” That’s my younger sister, who currently lives with my mother in a Grey Gardens way. Neither of them has ever seen the documentary, and I hope, for their sake, it stays that way. I don’t want them picking up any tips on how to let a hundred cats live in their home.

  If my mother mumbles, Jami shouts. She’s the opposite of me in many ways. Jami’s favorite things include tattoos, cigarettes, and boys who have stood in front of courtrooms pleading “Guilty.”

  “It doesn’t itch,” Mom says.

  “What doesn’t?” I ask, already dreading the answer.

  “The bumps. On my legs.”

  “And the bumps are from that thing you said you had?”

  “I don’t know. Didn’t you say you had it, too?”

  “No!” I don’t care that I sound insulted at having some-thing in common with my mother. This isn’t something I’d like to bond over, and I can’t believe she thinks I’m the one to call when bumps appear. “When did I say that? No!”

  “From your…last…boyfriend.”

  Okay, here’s where it’d be so easy to say to Mom that there is no way she has chlamydia, because I’m pretty sure you can’t get it without having sex with someone who has chlamydia. I’d like it to be easy as pie to say, “Ma, you can’t have it.” But the truth is I can’t say that, and it’s the fact that I can’t say it that I hate more than anything on earth.

  My father died three years ago. This means my mom is now “entertaining gentlemen.” This is how she puts it. It sounds like she’s dancing in front of a row of horny men, pulling her clothes off to the sound of a three-piece jazz band.

  My mom? Oh, she’s a “Gentlemen Entertainer.” Yes, it’s a real job. She makes her own hours.

  She is entertaining gentlemen because legally, morally, and spiritually she’s supposed to be “out there” searching for other men who could make her happy. I can’t stop using quotation marks when I talk about it because I’d like to keep as much distance as possible from my mother’s love life. Unfortunately, my mom doesn’t have the same desire. She’d rather have me create her a MySpace page, and then help define the parameters of her sexual interests. I say this only because last year that’s exactly what happened. And that’s the first time I ever hung up the phone in the middle of a conversation with my mother. And no, I still don’t feel guilty about it.

  My father died of cancer. There’s a long story I don’t have to tell, because you get this one word, cancer, and everybody can picture it—the hospital visits, the chemo, the sound of machines counting down the moments you have left with the person who brought you into this world (even if he was behind a desk at a mortgage company at the time of my arrival). He died of cancer, and he died rather quickly. They had airplane tickets to see Paris for the first time. It was going to be their thirtieth anniversary present to each other. You know how people say, “We’ll always have Paris”? Well, my parents won’t. As far as I’m concerned, I won’t either. Paris is every missed dream, every broken promise. You only have Paris when you didn’t get what you actually wanted. That’s when people say, “We’ll always have Paris.” When it’s over. When everything is ruined.

  An Interlude. A Tangent, If You Will, Since My Mom’s Still Talking about Her Infected Girl Parts.

  Ever have someone say they’ll wait for you? And I mean this in the emotional, “We’ll always have Paris,” kind of way. Has someone ever looked you in the eye and said, “I’ll wait for you”?

  Don’t let it happen. Right there, right when it’s said, you should take his or her hand and reply, “Don’t.”

  Waiting for someone is impossible. It can’t be done. It’s nobody’s fault, but eventually the waiting stops. One has to, in order to save face. There might be a spectacular, last minute, desperate attempt right before the supposed waiting period starts or ends where someone makes a grand gesture, probably at an airport before a plane takes off. Well, really that stopped once we weren’t allowed to run to the gate anymore. So many grand gestures never happen now that we can’t get past the loading zone. On one hand, it’s sad, but it’s keeping a lot of people from making assholes out of themselves in
front of the Cinnabon.

  My point is: the waiting won’t last. It can’t. I’ve tried. This is why I’m giving you this advice, even though we barely know each other. I’m sure you’re a nice person, and I bet all kinds of people like you. I don’t want anyone to think you’re a dick. So allow me to share my wisdom. I don’t know much, but what I know is all yours. Hey, maybe one day you’ll say:

  “Belinda Bernstein may have killed her mother accidentally on purpose, but she also kept me from pining for Chris Harrison for another month. That guy was never going to love me back.”

  When someone’s waiting on you, it creates a certain amount of resentment. Why should someone have to wait on another person? Wait for what? To be good enough? To be better than all the other options in the world? To be literally the last opportunity?

  Waiting on someone, for someone, drives you crazy because all you can do is (a) think of all the things you’d be doing together if you weren’t waiting; (b) think of all the things you should be doing with your time instead of waiting; and (c) listen to every song that plays on the radio and assume it’s being sung just for you.

  It’s (c) that did me in. When I was waiting for a certain man to realize that we belonged together and he was the one person who made me happy and I didn’t want to really live my life without him, there were many minutes, hours, days, weeks when I was alone and stuck with option (c). This is when you hear a dumb-ass song like Samantha Mumba’s “Gotta Tell You,” with the chorus: “Don’t wanna love you if you don’t love me / Don’t wanna need you when you won’t need me too.” Normally, you wouldn’t even notice. You’d probably absentmindedly change the radio station while changing lanes. But if you’re waiting on someone, your brain works very differently. The wrong synapses fire, and you find yourself thinking, “I have to find a way that he can hear this song. I wonder if it’s on iTunes.”

  I shouldn’t know a single lyric to a single Samantha Mumba song. But that day I ended up listening to the song all the way through, and then I Googled the lyrics, and then I cried all night while I cleaned out my bedroom closet. I had to clean, because it’s the only thing that effectively disguises what I was actually doing, which was waiting.