The Best Laid Plans (24 page)

S
TILL, IN THE
cab, things go a lot more smoothly than I anticipated. I even manage to turn the story about J.T.—as much of
the story as I’m willing to tell Peter, anyway—into a funny anecdote. “Just my luck. I finally go on a date with a thirty-year-old and he’s shorter than Martin Scorsese—and meaner than the characters in his movies.”

Peter accepts my story that Bill’s friend was in a fix about someone to take to the party and that Sienna couldn’t do it because she and Bill had theater tickets. And I—well, I try to, at least—accept Peter’s explanation that “Tiffany’s just flirtatious, it doesn’t mean anything.”

“I know you keep saying that,” I fret. “But can you imagine what it’s like to see that creature all over my husband?”

“I’m sorry. I guess it can’t be very pleasant. But after all those months of being unemployed I’m grateful for the job. And it’s going really well. You just have to learn not to take Tiffany too seriously, sweetheart. She’d bat her eyes at a totem pole if there was no one else in the room.” Peter frames his hands on my cheeks and gives me a long, sweet kiss.

“Okay,” I say, resting my head on his shoulder, wondering where I can find a totem pole—or a husband of her own—for Tiffany Glass. Peter strokes my hair and after a few moments he pulls away and turns around to face me.

“I have something to tell you and I’m afraid you’re not going to like it. But please, Tru, don’t read something into it that it’s not. Tiffany and I are going to Hawaii on a business trip. She just told me about it today.”

“You’re leaving?” I ask carefully, biting my lip, which just a few minutes ago was the source of so much pleasure.

“No, I’m not leaving. I’m going out of town for ten days. We leave tomorrow morning.”

“In the morning? For ten days? With Tiffany?”

“Tru, Tiffany’s my boss, this is business. It’s late,” Peter says wearily as the cab pulls up in front of our building and we walk past Terrance to the elevator.

“I have something to tell you, too. I’ve started a business with Sienna,” I say impulsively, as we step inside the elevator cab. Picking the worst moment and the worst way to tell him. “That woman at the restaurant, Georgy? You were right, she works for me. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you about it before—there are a million reasons, maybe really none. But I want to tell you about it now.”

Peter is quiet for what seems like an eternity. He turns the key in the lock and walks past me toward the couch. “What kind of a business?” he asks finally.

No, not now, I can’t believe that I blurted it out like that. One more complication, this is just what we need! I can’t possibly explain that I’m running an escort agency, especially since Peter’s just caught me out on a date. But I don’t want to lie and give him the cover story about a temporary help agency, either. Because soon, very soon, I’m going to find the right moment to explain everything—and when I do, I don’t want to have to wipe away one more lie.

“I don’t want to say too much about it until I know that something’s going to come of it,” I say anxiously. “You know me, I don’t want to jinx anything.”

“I guess we’re even,” Peter says, stuffing his hands in his pockets and concentrating hard on his thoughts. “I didn’t tell you when I got fired. You didn’t tell me when you started a new business. We’re quite a pair.”

“We’re quite a pair,” I say, hoping that as with Peter’s reading of “
ssh,
” I can transform a pejorative into something positive by the lilt in my voice.

But not even Mary Poppins could inject a note of optimism into the state of our relationship, not with all the things that have happened in the last few weeks. And in my vast—and these days seemingly unrelenting—experience with marital problems, the best a couple can hope for after a long, exhausting
fight-filled day is a temporary cease-fire induced by the overwhelming desire to just get some rest.

Silently Peter bends to untie his shoes. He strips down to his briefs and unfastens the buttons on his shirt. “I’m leaving in the morning,” he says as his head hits the cushion. Then he falls into a deep, undisturbable sleep.

A
FTER A FITFUL
night feeling dwarfed and very alone in our queen-sized bed, I get up at dawn to make us both a pot of coffee, but Peter’s already gone. I shuffle around the room straightening books that don’t need straightening, plumping up pillows, bending over to pick up the glistening silver locket Paige has been searching for for weeks, which is in plain view, peeking out from underneath a wingback chair. In the kitchen, I stand frozen at the coffeepot, unable to decide between decaf and double-strength espresso.

I’m leaving in the morning
. Peter’s last words run unrelentingly through my head. But Peter didn’t mean
leaving
, leaving. He meant leaving as in taking a train or an airplane. To go to Hawaii with Tiffany. For ten whole days.

“She’s my boss, don’t read something into it that it’s not,” I repeat Peter’s words, trying to convince myself that they’re true. And I really believe that whatever else is or isn’t going on between us these days, whatever missteps or mistakes either of us has committed, Peter’s not the kind of man to have an affair.

“He even said so once on TV,” I think, unable to choose a coffee I scoop four heaping tablespoons of cocoa into a cup and sit down at the table, remembering the on-air interviews Sienna did a few years ago with three middle-aged men about monogamy. One had cheated and the second allowed that he might. But Peter was steadfast. “I love my wife, I love being married, it’s just not worth the risk,” Peter said, making him
the poster boy for fidelity. And me, the envy of my M&M coffee klatch.

Distractedly I stir the cocoa, to which I’ve forgotten to add any liquid. Knowing that Peter would never cheat is a blessing. But there’s a harder truth that goes along with that. Somewhere in the deepest recess of my heart I’ve always harbored the fear that if Peter did have a midlife crisis—if he grew tired of me, or if he was inexorably pulled toward another woman—he wouldn’t fool around, and he would never have a fling. Peter, my upstanding, fidelity-thumping husband, Peter, would have to leave.

Naomi pads into the room just as I’m spitting out a mouthful of dry cocoa powder.

“Ugh!” I say, wiping the back of my hand across my lips and then running my cakey hand across my jeans.

“Tru,” Naomi says reproachfully. Then, seeing my face and thinking the better of attacking my lapse in hygiene, my mother makes her way to the stove to heat a saucepan of milk. She comes back to the table with a cup of cocoa for herself, and she splashes the rest of the warm milk into my cup.

“My mother—your grandmother—used to say that cocoa was the assimilated woman’s chicken soup, good for whatever ails you. Of course sometimes I would have liked a cup of chicken soup, but my mother wasn’t much of a cook.”

“I guess it runs in the family. But we’re damned good at takeout,” I say, taking a sip of the soothing liquid. “I’m sorry Nana died when I was so young. I would have liked to have gotten to know her better.”

“No, you wouldn’t have. She was a tough cookie,” Naomi says matter-of-factly.

“Mom … she was your mother, I mean, there must have been some good things you liked about Nana?”

Naomi folds her hands around her mug. “She made me
strong. For a little while there, when I was Miss Subways, I think she was even proud of me. But then I married your father and had you and she never let me forget that nothing about my life was anything but ordinary.”

The sins of the fathers have nothing on the mothers, I think as I look at Naomi, who’s so wrapped up in her own unhappy memories of her childhood that she doesn’t realize that she could be describing how she treated me. You have to be pretty clueless to be telling your only daughter that even her grandmother thought she was nothing special. But unlike Naomi, I’m past getting caught up in this family drama and meshuggeners. And rather than feeling sorry for myself, I feel sorry for Naomi.

“It’s too bad Nana didn’t appreciate how special you are,” I say, reaching across the table and taking Naomi’s hand.

Embarrassed, Naomi wriggles free. She concentrates on stirring her cocoa, brings the cup to her lips, and then sets it back down. “And it’s too bad your grandma didn’t realize how special you are, too.” Then she pauses. “I know it isn’t easy to have me here, Tru. I appreciate your taking me in. I know I’m not the easiest person in the world to get along with.”

“Mom, you, not easy?” I laugh, the first good honest laugh that Naomi and I have had together in … well, maybe ever.

“All right now, Truman, let’s not sit here wading up to our eyeballs in what might have been; there’s too much of that around here lately. I’ve decided to get on with my life. And from the looks of you sitting here sulking, it’s something you might want to think about, too.”

“Everything’s fine, I …”

“Oh please, we’ve just had one of those icky mother-daughter moments that Oprah’s so big on and now you’re going to clam up all CIA-not-talking-everything’s-okay?”

“It takes a brave woman to string the CIA and Oprah into the same sentence,” I say with a chuckle.

Naomi gives me one of her famous steely-eyed stares, the stare that kept me on the straight and narrow all the way through high school.

“Tru, don’t try to tell me nothing’s wrong. You and Peter have either been sniping at each other or walking on eggshells for weeks. And that Tiffany Glass woman.” Naomi clucks.

“What about Tiffany?” I say, pouncing on Naomi for any tidbits of information.

“She’s beautiful, she’s with Peter twelve hours a day, what more is there for me to say?”

“Nothing.” I slump down in my chair.

Naomi leans over and combs her fingers through the wispy top layers of my hair. “If you got a proper haircut, I think you could conceal some of the thinning,” she says.

“Thank goodness. For a minute there I was wondering if my real mother had been captured by aliens.”

“I can’t help it. If I criticize it’s only because I want the best for you. But maybe I could learn to criticize.…” Naomi stops, at a loss for words.

“Less critically?”

“Yes, I could criticize less critically. It will be a challenge, and right now, I’m into taking on challenges.”

I look carefully at my mother. It’s barely dawn, yet to make the trip from the guest bedroom to the kitchen she’s combed and styled her hair, meticulously applied lipstick and eyeliner, and although the unforgiving morning light is streaming through the window, there’s barely a crease on her well-cared-for, lasered-perfect skin. Despite Naomi’s bitterness, or maybe because of it, I’ve grown into a reasonably happy woman—a woman who’s smart enough, or always has
been up until now, to treasure my children and husband. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do about it yet, but I realize that no way am I going to sit back while Peter goes off angry for ten whole days, especially with Tiffany Glass. If I’ve learned anything from Naomi, it’s about survival.

I lift my mug and reach across the table to clink it against my mother’s. “I hope Paige and Molly have your resilience. And my sense of family. And Peter’s decency,” I toast. Even when I want to strangle Peter because he’s bent out of shape about being the Man of the Family and how he’s supposed to be the one to support us, I know that it comes from a good, if misguided, place.

“What, are you writing their commencement speech?” Naomi asks with a laugh.

“No, just feeling a little emotional.” Though at the moment, planning for my children’s futures—or anything more taxing than putting my head on the pillow—seems about as likely as a Beatles reunion.

I take a sip of cocoa and feel my head bobbing toward the cup. “It’s been a long night,” I say sleepily.

“Mom,” says Paige, bouncing into the room, as she simultaneously pulls the straps of her backpack over her shoulder and nabs a bottle of cranapple juice from the fridge. “It’s not the night, it’s the morning! Time to start a new day!”