Guest Post

Last week I asked Son2 (the journalism graduate) to write some stories about the characters I draw. I thought a new/different/younger slant would be interesting. 
He didn't disappoint. 
So here, without further ado, is his first character study.

Mrs. Rothschild

It is well known, though seldom said, that the people who most often say “In my day…” are usually the ones with the least valuable experience to share.

Mary-Ellen Rothschild is most definitely one of those people.

If your most common practice in life is to measure the changes between then and now, how can you ever enjoy yourself presently? It is on this basis that we join Mrs. Rothschild in her Naples condo on the morning of the day she would die.

Upon rising every day, Mary-Ellen Rothschild would slip into her matted terrycloth sandals and shuffle into her bathroom to begin her morning beauty regiment. After a shower so hot some might suggest she died years ago from daily blanching, she would brazenly step in front of her 8 foot, bare-bulbed vanity mirror completely nude, and perch on her closest life-long companion: the powder pink upholstered stool that she swears to this day she bought for a bargain from Cher’s road manager back in ’79.

Her first husband loved it, her second never noticed, but now that she was all on her own it was the one piece of furniture she relied on to set her at the perfect height to drown her wrinkles in pore reducing oils, creams, masks, and some ill-gotten gels from deep in the orient (she had surreptitiously stocked up in ‘92…)

After slipping into her threadbare silk robe, she would saunter into her kitchen to mix a mimosa at her heavily mirrored bar.

The kind of people that drink first thing in the morning are typically those who don’t, wont, and never will need to work a day in their lives. Her first husband saw to that, her second didn’t hurt. 

It becomes apparent within just a few minutes near Mrs. Rothschild that though she is very learned in the ways of etiquette, the true philosophy of being a lady entirely escaped her – or maybe it was that Staten Island never left her.