Bachelor Degree

ONE Marriage is an institution in which a man loses his bachelor's degree and the woman gets her master's. Anonymous I remember the first time she said it. We were in a taxi hurtling down Park Avenue on a steamy August afternoon. "Boyfriend," my mother, Madeleine, was saying, not in a mocking, judgmental tone of voice but matter-of-factly, as though she could be referring to the weather or an item on a menu. "Mark Robbins would make a very nice boyfriend, don't you think?" I was applying mascara at the time. The taxi lurched, and the brush slipped from my eyelashes onto my eyebrow, extending my brow line all the way over to my right ear. "Boyfriend? I don't quite picture Mark Robbins as boyfriend material." "Oh, not for you, darling," my mother said, "for me." And then I knew: My mother, Madeleine Krasner-Wolfe, had crossed over to the dark side. I come from a long line of family members who are crazy, each in his or her own way. "Not crazy," my mother said (who had begged me to refer to her on a first-name basis since I was three), "eccentric." "Why can't I have a mother who's normal?" I had implored throughout my adolescence. "Don't be ridiculous, Samantha. Anyone can have a normal mother. Eccentricity is so much more appealing. Someday you'll understand that." But I could never adjust to the fact that when my friends' mothers were puttering about their kitchens, mine was lying on a table getting a bikini wax or sipping champagne in the middle of the afternoon. On this particular Tuesday we were on our way to lunch, a pastime my mother considered an occasion, not because she loved to eat but because it allowed her to parade herself in front of the world in her latest fashion ensembles. "It's so festive dining in restaurants," she said, "eating at home is absolutely dull." My mother took daily living to new heights and considered Auntie Mame her fictional role model. She watched the film over and over, often quoting Rosalind Russell's famous line: "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death." Fortunately, my mother could indulge her fancies because she was loaded. My father, her first husband, Henry Krasner, whom she professed to be the love of her life, had croaked at forty-five on the sixteenth hole at the Rock Ridge Country Club, leaving my mother with a gaping hole in her heart, along with a small fortune that Dad had made in disposable diapers for adults, and an art collection worth millions. As we were leaving the cemetery, my mother told me through a barrage of tears sprinkling down the front of her black veil that she could finally live the life she was meant to lead. "Your father was a wonderful man," she said, "but frugal was his middle name. He wouldn't part with a cent. Of course," she mused, "in the end that was probably a wise move, because now I won't have to be a bag lady." That was certainly true. My mother was not one to make do. The only bags she paraded were designed by Gucci, Fendi, and Louis Vuitton. Cutting back was not something she could gracefully handle. And so, before my dad's body was even cold, she went out and bought herself a sporty little Mercedes SLK350 Roadster that she rationalized would help her through the grieving process. Her accountant, Sheldon Glick, had assured my mother that she would be fine as long as she lived within reason. "Within reason? WhMarks-White, Judith is the author of 'Bachelor Degree' with ISBN 9780345492395 and ISBN 0345492390.