The Best Laid Plans (12 page)

“My broker, he leaves a message every time the market goes down another hundred points. Which is about once an hour. I’m worried that he won’t be able to afford his phone bill,” Sienna says wryly. “Not to mention how I’m going to pay mine.”

“The company will pay for your phone, your Con Ed bill, your cab rides, and those silly little luxuries you’ve gotten used to, like food,” Bill says, seizing the opening to reassure Sienna that our plan offers financial security. “I think we could be highly successful. If everything goes according to my estimates, you should be able to rebuild your nest egg and buy that apartment of yours within the next couple of years.”

“And it would be fun. You’ve said yourself how now that you’re out of work you don’t know what to do with yourself,”
I add, knowing that more than anything, Sienna likes to be going one hundred miles a minute.

Sienna looks at me, and then Bill, and then back at me. Optimistically, Bill crosses his arms in front of him and reaches for each of our hands in a Three Musketeers–like handshake, a move that no one but our Bill, as I now think of my new business partner, could get away with.

“Oh hell. It’s not like I have anything better on the horizon. My TV career’s in the toilet, the rent’s due, the whole world’s on the brink of financial disaster, and the way the two of you make it sound, this is practically my feminist duty. Count me in,” Sienna says gamely. “What do we have to lose?”

O
N THE WAY
home I stop at Chelsea Market to buy lobsters, double-baked potatoes,
haricot verts
, and a bottle of sparkling cider to celebrate. It’s the same meal that Peter and I ate when he got his first big promotion and when I found out—after years of waiting—that I was pregnant with the girls. Fueled by the flush of yet unachieved but as far as I’m concerned inevitable success, I spring for chocolate truffles and two pounds of ripe red cherries.

I hop in a cab and despite the fact that it’s rush hour, I enjoy a charmed trip uptown—if there are potholes, we fly over them, and miraculously we make every light. My timing today is impeccable. The driver is hooked up to a friend at the other end of his telephone headset—a driving hazard to be sure, but less deadly than the old days, when, starved for conversation, they insisted on sharing everything from rants about the mayor to raves for Dr. Laura.

Terrance offers to carry my packages upstairs, but I tell him it’s not necessary.

“It’s good exercise,” I say, hoisting the heavy bags effortlessly in the air as if they’re filled with sunshine.

I put my groceries down beside the antique umbrella stand outside the apartment and dig around my pocket for my key. Unnecessarily, because Molly hears me and yanks my arm inside.

“Mom, you have to see this, Dad’s making dinner,” she says, pulling me into the kitchen where Peter—who doesn’t know a blender from a box of macaroni—is dumping a bag of precut lettuce into a big wooden salad bowl. There’s a collection of pots on the stove and from the corner of my eye, I spy a pouch of ninety-second Minute Rice. It takes thirty seconds longer to make, but you can put it in the microwave.

“Hm, honey, smells good in here,” I say reflexively, though after a moment I realize that there aren’t actually any food aromas—good or bad—wafting around the room.

Peter winks and points to a package of frozen lasagna. “Nothing like a home-cooked meal.”

“It’s the thought that counts.” I reach into the refrigerator, open a jar, and playfully swipe a fingerful of mustard onto his pristine chef’s apron. “A touch of authenticity.”

Peter grins and whirls me around, pulling me closer for a kiss.

“What’s all this about?” I say, feeling a flush of relief and excitement to see Peter happy after weeks of moping around. “Don’t tell me you saw Halle Berry today on
The View
?”

“Better,” he says, running his hand caressingly down my hip.

Paige comes into the kitchen and rolls her eyes. “Oh, please, would you two just cut it out? Don’t you know that PDAs can scar your children for life?” Then she filches a carrot from the salad and twirls it in the air. “Daddy got a job,” she
says as matter-of-factly as if she were announcing the train schedule.

“Yes, Daddy got a job!” sings Molly, wrapping her arms around Peter and giving him a congratulatory hug.

“Tell Mom who he’s working for, why don’t you?” says Paige slyly.

“Yes, tell me everything, I want to know all the details.”

“It all happened so quickly,” Peter says, searching for the right words. “I hardly know where to begin.”

“Oh I’d start with the gorgeous single woman,” Paige says. “You know, Mom, that woman Tiffany who moved into 3A?”

“Tiffany, Tiffany Glass? The woman in the skintight minidress whose moving truck almost flattened me like a pancake?” I ask with a start. “She just moved in! How did you two get to know each other well enough for her to even borrow a cup of sugar?”

“Actually it was detergent, she needed a cup of detergent.” Peter laughs nervously. “I met her in the basement and she asked me to show her how to use the washing machine. We got to talking and she invited me up to her apartment for a cup of coffee. She said we seemed simpatico.”

“I told you not to let Daddy do the laundry,” Paige mutters.

“What will you be doing for this Tiffany Glass?” I ask as equably as I can.

“Tiffany has a line of makeup that’s been selling well in Seattle and she wants to expand the business. I’d be head of New York operations. The job doesn’t come with the kind of paycheck I’m used to, but there’s huge growth potential.”

“Her makeup’s called BUBB,” says Molly, encouragingly. “ ‘Be U But Better,’ cute, right? I read about it in
Teen Vogue.
”

“And she hired you because?”

“She doesn’t do animal testing and she needs your two beautiful teenage daughters and your middle-aged wife to be
her guinea pigs!” Paige says sarcastically, since it’s obvious to all of us that Peter knows as much about makeup as he does about heating up dinner. Which is apparently nothing, since I smell the lasagna burning. I fling open the oven door and Peter steps in front of me to seize the remains of the ruined frozen casserole. As he slaps the pan on the top of the Viking range he yells “Oh shit!” and sucks on the tip of his now-burned finger.

“I need this job,” Peter says tightly. “It doesn’t matter if I’m selling stocks or makeup or widgets, whatever the hell widgets are. I’m a successful businessman with—up until a few months ago—a stellar track record.”

I open the kitchen cabinet stocked with Advil, Band-Aids, and other emergency medical supplies (including four cans of chicken soup) and take out a tube of aloe vera to rub across Peter’s hand. Being unemployed has been quite a blow to Peter’s ego. Getting this job could be just what we all need to restore some equanimity around here.

“The last few months weren’t your fault. This is great news; I’m sure you’ll do a terrific job,” I say, putting aside my suspicions about Tiffany. Just because she’s a beautiful woman is no reason to think this isn’t a bona fide offer. Or that she zeroed in on Peter because he’s the most attractive man in the building.

“I think it’s a terrific opportunity,” says Peter, with an excitement in his voice I haven’t heard in a long time. “I’ve already started mapping out strategies and working on financial projections. Tiffany’s taking care of the back-due mortgage and maintenance on the co-op as an advance against my salary. My earnings will be barely enough to live on for the next year or so, but I think this cosmetic thing could really be big and at least you won’t have to go to work. I know you’d rather be home with the girls. And from the looks of it,” he says, laughing, tossing the lasagna remains into the garbage, “we need you back.”

“It’s nice to be back,” I say hesitantly. Just a few hours ago I knew the thrill of being charged up with plans of my own. Still, Peter doesn’t know that, and I don’t want to eclipse his news. Besides, he’s right, it will be good to get back to some semblance of normalcy. Peter kisses my cheek and goes into the den to TiVo the Mets game while the girls set the table. I open up the refrigerator, defrost four small steaks in the microwave, and dither between making green beans and broccoli. I take out the chopping board and, going for broke, mindlessly dice all of the vegetables, every last carrot, cauliflower, and celery stick in the crisper. “It would never have worked,” I say to myself as I’m hacking away at a particularly tenacious Brussels sprout. Sienna was right, my plan was crazy. She’ll be so relieved when I call in the morning to put the brakes on this thing. Still it was fun to be back in the library; I’ll have to go there more often. And maybe I’ll call Pamela and Melissa to see what charity events are on the docket. It’s always good to be busy. I put the steaks under the broiler and pile the vegetables into the wok—and I do mean pile; they’re spilling out all over the place. I tamp them down with a big splash of teriyaki sauce and set the flame on high. Then I sit down at the kitchen table and slip off my shoes. Suddenly I’m very, very tired. It’s been a long day and it’s still not over, though all I can think about is putting my head down for a few minutes, just a little rest.

Moments later Paige and Molly come running into the kitchen and shake me awake. “Mom, are you okay?” asks Molly, putting on a pair of oven mitts to pull the burning wok off the stove and retrieve the charred steaks.

“You’re no better at this than Daddy,” says Paige, nabbing a folder of take-out menus from the kitchen drawer. She reaches into her pocket for her cellphone. “I guess I’m the only one in this family who’s capable of getting us fed.”

We end up eating pizza and it’s not until the middle of the
night that I remember the celebratory lobsters, which are still sitting bagged in an ice-filled Styrofoam container outside the front door. I put on a robe, take the elevator downstairs, and hand over all the grocery bags to Terrance. “Enjoy,” I say, without even waiting around for a thank-you. It’s too late for me to cook the lobsters and, suddenly, anything sparkling, even a bottle of cider, sounds positively exhausting.

W
ITH NOTHING BETTER TO
do the next morning than worry about Peter’s new working arrangement with the vampish Tiffany Glass, I threw myself into the task of reorganizing my closet, dragging every skirt, dress, and pair of paisley hip huggers I’d ever owned off their hangers and hurling them into piles of “definites,” “maybes,” and “what was I thinking?” Then, when I still couldn’t bear to part with anything, I wrapped all the clothes I knew I’d never wear this season in tissue paper.

“Ew, that looks like a coffin,” Paige said, when she saw the cedar-lined box where I was storing my sartorial treasures.

“You’re right, but you never know when fashion is going to rise from the dead.”

“Lame, Mom. Can I have some money to go shopping after school with Heather to buy some stuff that I might actually wear?”

“Daddy just got a job last night and already you want to go shopping?”

“With my birthday money, from last year. I still have some left over.”

I fanned out a white shirt with wide puffy sleeves. “One day you’re going to be
thrilled
that I saved this poet’s blouse.”

My daughter looked at me pityingly and I reached for my purse.

“Okay, but you have to pay me back from your savings account,” I said, handing Paige three twenty-dollar bills. “Let’s see what your kids have to say in twenty years about those toeless boots you’re all so crazy about.”

“That I’m cool. C-o-o-l.” Paige laughed as she thanked me and headed off to school while I went back to my thankless sorting. By the time I was fingering a stash of fashion mistakes with the tags I’d never even cut off and the slinky size-4 Badgley Mischka gown that I’d never be able to wear again (at least not sitting down), I was grateful to get a call inviting me out to lunch. Even if it was from Naomi.

“Can you and Sienna meet me at noon?” she asked and I readily agreed. It’s always easier to see my mother with my best friend in tow. And afterward, I could tell Sienna that I was putting a kibosh on that harebrained idea to start a call-girl operation.