17.
"Ma, you ate the whole box of Twinkies?" whined Fran as she stood in some baby blue heels, searching through the cabinets in her mother's kitchen.
Fran chucked the empty box into the nearest trashcan and then went back, slamming the cabinet door. Sylvia jumped at the sound and realized that her daughter was really bothered.
"Sorry Frannie, I know how much you love those…" apologized Sylvia with a slanted, guilty smile on her face.
Fran sighed upsettingly and plopped her dismayed self down at the small table in the center of the room.
"I'll be going to the supermarket later you know…"
"Oh Ma, I need to eat away the pain now."
"Bad idea!" exclaimed Sylvia while chewing on brownie she had removed from a plastic container.
"Like mother like daughter!" retorted Fran.
Fran went to the fruit bowl and took out an apple. She thoroughly cleansed it with water from the kitchen sink, dried it off with a paper towel, and then shined it up on her shirt. Apple in hand, she made her way back to the table to sit once again.
Sylvia rushed over to the table and grabbed the apple from Fran, just as she was about to bite off a piece, and threw it into the garbage.
"Ma, I wanted that! It was only a little apple, and it's good for ya!"
"Yeah now maybe… until later on it all comes back to ya and fills out your thighs in the worst possible way. You have a gorgeous figure and I won't let you ruin it."
"Maybe if ya ate like twenty melons, but otherwise I'm sure I would have been fine with just one apple. It's only fruit… better than that brownie you're eating."
Sylvia ignored her and continued to eat her snack while she smeared some mayonnaise on some bread she got out to use for making her husband a sandwich.
"So what do you expect me to eat? I didn't have time to catch a lunch today! Besides I thought you were the one who told me when I was little that an apple a day keeps the doctor away."
"I did!" responded Sylvia. "But I changed my mind starting today."
"What? Why?" asked a bewildered Fran.
Sylvia turned around to face her daughter, hands on her hips.
"I changed my mind after this morning when I saw this cute, fairly young, Jewish surgeon move in across the street," she clarified. "I'd rather you not keep the doctor away, if ya know what I mean. You see, he's a back-up in case things don't work out with Julian."
Fran rolled her eyes.
"Speaking of Julian, I just don't know what to do," revealed Fran, hoping for some motherly advice.
"Morty!" shouted Sylvia into the living room, "Turn the damn TV set down I can't hear Fran!"
The volume only went slightly lower.
"Don't know what to do with what Frannie?"
"The whole Mr. Sheffield business Ma! You know…"
"No I don't know Fran," admitted Sylvia, worried and setting down a plastic bag of turkey deli meat she had just opened. "I thought you were happy and things were going well with Julian."
"I am—at least I think I am… I dunno it's so complicated."
"Still in love with Mr. Sheffield?"
"Of course! That's the problem, I just can't get him outta my head… and he isn't helping either! I'm such a schmuck."
Fran rested her head down on the kitchen table.
"No you're not; just a fool playing the game of love."
"Syl, where's my sandwich? The wrestling match is on!" yelled Morty.
"…And let me tell ya, it doesn't get any easier as you age either," finished Sylvia as she exited the kitchen, delivering Morty his lunch before he really, seriously had a cow.