The Best Laid Plans (32 page)

“Yes, you two skedaddle,” says Tiffany. “Peter, you can go home to New York now. I’ll see you next week when I get back. I’m going to stay in Hawaii and get to know Jeffy better. I always had a thing for Harrison Ford, and Jeffy, you do look a lot like Indiana Jones.”

And just like that, Tiffany switches her affections from my husband to my mother’s ex-boyfriend, who’s old enough to be her father.

“Who would have guessed that Ms. Glass was so fickle?” I laugh as I slide off the massage table and Peter enfolds his sheet around us both in a cozy cocoon.

“Tiffany’s got a good head on her shoulders; she knows when something’s a lost cause.”

“You’re not a lost cause,” I tease.

“I am romantically as far as Tiffany’s concerned. I always have been. You know that, don’t you, sweetheart?”

I nod. “And I’m not sure that girl’s going to have any more luck with Jeffy-poo. If he’s a cosmetics buyer then I’m Mahatma Gandhi.”

“You do have pretty good peacemaking skills,” Peter says with a kiss. We move forward under our shared toga, feeling as young and carefree as a couple of preschoolers giggling themselves silly under a tent.

“Kawikani, Alana, thank you. I wasn’t sure about the Lomi Lomi, but you’ve made me a believer.” We say goodbye and Peter and I start to walk down the sun-kissed beach toward a woman in a grass skirt who’s giving a hula demonstration.

“Yes, Lomi Lomi very good, ancient Hawaiian tradition,” Alana says as he packs up his equipment. “But to make massage work even better,” he calls out as I turn around to wave one more goodbye, “always drink the tea.” Then he laughs and raises the cup to his lips.

D
ESPITE TIFFANY’S HAVING SAID
that Peter was free to go back to New York, we stay in Hawaii for three more days on a mini-vacation. Once upon a time if I’d called to tell the girls we weren’t coming home I’d have had to promise to bring them back a present, but from the sound of their voices, I get the feeling that they’d be willing to bribe us to stay away. Naomi says not to worry, “Everything’s going swimmingly.” But just as I’m about to say goodbye, Molly gets on the line.

“We have a surprise for you, Mom,” she says mysteriously.

“Don’t tell!” says Paige, grabbing the phone from her sister as I hear some sort of tumult in the background and the girls hurriedly hang up.

For the next couple of days Peter and I make a game out of guessing what the twins are up to—agreeing that it’s probably nothing as shocking as them having gotten body piercings or that Paige has cleaned up her side of their room. We enjoy exploring the island—hiking up twisty trails to Diamond Head;
going snorkeling at the very same beach where Elvis Presley filmed
Blue Hawaii;
and swimming with dolphins, who, our guide tells us, shed their skin nine times faster than humans. “They must save a fortune on exfoliants,” I quip. With all of our time spent sightseeing—or closeted in our room making love—we only run into Tiffany and Jeff once, when we ride past them in our golf cart and exchange hurried hellos.

“Jeff looks a little worse for the wear,” I say as we wave and I notice that his tan—and his patience—seems to be waning. Tiffany jerks Jeff’s arm around her waist while he tries to pull it away.

“We owe that man a debt of gratitude and a box of cigars,” Peter says.

“Havana cigars.” For his term of service in diverting Tiffany’s attention Jeff deserves only the very best.

On our last night we’re walking down the beach with my friends from the plane, Harry and Elaine, when a young couple invites us to join their seaside wedding celebration. The bride is simply beautiful in a turquoise and deep blue tie-dyed sarong with a pale lavender orchid pinned in her hair at the nape of her neck, and the groom has a grin on his face as wide as the Pacific Ocean, which he just happens to be standing in front of. Dinner is a luau of roast suckling pig wrapped in banana leaves and, afterward, we break out into a spontaneous chorus of “Here Comes the Bride.” As the young couple walks toward the ocean to pose for photos, the bottoms of their sandals leave an imprint in the sand filled with promise—
Just Married
.

Peter pulls me toward him and I cuddle my head in the crook of his arm. “I feel like I’m surrounded by Marriage Past and Future,” I say, pointing to the radiant newlyweds and then to our friends Harry and Elaine, who, having settled the inevitable differences that are sure to come up throughout an enduring
union, seem happy and comfortable. “You and I are going to get to be an old married couple, too,” Peter says, hugging my shoulder.

“That we will.” And then I look up into his deep blue eyes to make him a promise. “I’ll always love you. And I swear that even in twenty years, even if we come back to Hawaii, I’ll never wear a muumuu.”

O
UTSIDE OUR APARTMENT
Peter fixes one last vacation kiss on my lips. On the other side of the door I hear loud music and the cheerful commotion that tells me the girls are at home. Peter picks up our bags and we walk inside.

“Hello, we’re home,” I sing, when out of nowhere, a brown-and-white furball lurches through our legs and out the open door.

“Brandon, you get back here!” Molly screams as the twins careen past us to catch the puppy flying down the hall. The forbidden puppy that’s obviously our welcome-home surprise.

“Molly and Paige,
you
get back here!” I shout, racing after them. The elevator door opens and my ninety-six-year-old neighbor, Mrs. Pinchot—who’s survived the Depression, World War II, and the closing of Alexander’s, her favorite department store—steps out and surveys the scene. Mrs. Pinchot pulls back her shoulders and uses her still-solid body to block the puppy from making his way into the elevator and out of the apartment building.

“Let him go,” I cry. “He looks resourceful, he’ll find a new family in no time.” But Mrs. Pinchot picks up the puppy and hands him back to the girls.

“Having a pet teaches children responsibility,” Mrs. Pinchot says when I protest keeping the dog I’ve always been
adamantly opposed to getting. “You’ll see, dear, soon you won’t be able to imagine your lives before Brandon was part of the family.”

Peter rolls his eyes, but I know he’s almost as eager as the girls to keep the pooch.

Naomi comes out carrying a bowl of water for Brandon, which she sets down on the oriental carpet. “The girls missed you. I just had to let them get the dog.”

Paige makes the ultimate argument. “Mom, look at you. You’re wearing white jeans. How much more work do you think it is to take care of a puppy?”

As if he has a sixth sense that I’m the one he has to win over, the puppy sits at my feet and eagerly wags his tail. I bend down to pet him, knowing that I’m going to have to give in. “But did you have to name him Brandon?”

“Absolutely,” Molly says, tossing a rubber ball. “After all, the real Brandon’s a dog. Thanks, Mom, you’re the best,” she cries, not even waiting for my official answer, as the girls and Brandon scamper off toward the library where the dog is already making himself at home.

Naomi settles down next to me on the couch. “I shouldn’t have let them get the puppy without your permission. I’ll never do it again,” she says with an unmistakable sparkle in her eye—because we both know that she’s only promising not to turn my house into a kennel, and not to never do anything else against my wishes ever again. Still, asking Naomi not to meddle would be like asking Barbra Streisand to stop over-enunciating. And besides, at this point life would be positively boring if my mother didn’t mix in.

The six-hour time difference between New York and Hawaii is catching up to me. Peter volunteers to go into the kitchen to fix some coffee and several minutes later he comes
back with a freshly brewed pot. He sits down next to us and tosses some newspapers and magazines onto the floor so he can put his feet up on the new coffee table that Naomi’s bought in our absence.

“A little present,” Naomi says dismissively, “to thank you for all you’ve done.”

“That was very nice of you. I even like it.” I take a sip of coffee and balance the cup on my knees. “So, Mom. Tell us about this Jeff Whitman.”

Naomi blushes. Then she busies herself rearranging packets of Splenda into a diamond pattern.

“Mom?” I coax, putting my hand over hers to get her to stop fidgeting.

“We were both sixteen and his family moved into the apartment next to Nana and me. I was his first love.”

“You mean you were each other’s first love?”

Naomi clears her throat. “Well, we never really went out on a date together. Nana forbade it. She said Jeff was
traif.
”

“
Traif
? You mean like shellfish or pork?” Peter says, translating the Yiddish word for forbidden food.

“Jeff wasn’t Jewish. He was the ultimate forbidden food.”

I put my cup on the table and clap my hands together. “Mom! That is so
Romeo and Juliet
! Didn’t Nana’s forbidding it just make you want to sneak off with him more?”

“It wasn’t like today, it was a different time.” Naomi sighs. “But that Jeff, he wrote me beautiful love letters. He’d wait on the corner for hours just for the chance to say hello. He sent five hundred votes for me to the Miss Subways contest—he went all over the city to mail them from different postboxes so the judges wouldn’t think anything fishy was going on. Wasn’t that sweet? He even went to Staten Island.”

“On the ferry?” I ask, and Naomi nods. “That’s love.”

“Maybe I was in love with him, too,” Naomi says thoughtfully. “What girl wouldn’t be, a boy so beautiful who loved you so much? But I swear, I never so much as kissed him.”

“And you kept in touch with him all this time?”

“For years I didn’t know what had happened to him. But when your father died, he read about it in the paper.…”

“And he got in touch with you!” I exclaim.

“By then Jeff had become a big real-estate developer. He was divorced and living in Hawaii. He wanted to come to New York to see me but I wouldn’t let him.”

“Why not?” Peter asks, as intrigued as I am by my mother’s romantic history.

Naomi places her hands squarely on her knees. “I want Jeff to remember me the way I was, a flawless sixteen-year-old.”

“Oh Mom, no! So you’re not flawless. Big deal! You’re still beautiful. And you probably weren’t flawless even back then—what teenage girl doesn’t have the occasional outbreak of acne?”

Naomi pretends to ignore me. She stands up and starts clearing the debris of our coffee klatch off the new table.

“Mom, you have to let him come here. Jeff still idolizes you. You should see the look on his face when he talks about you.…”

“Good! I want him to keep getting that look on his face, to picture me just the way I was. Enough now about Jeff Whitman,” Naomi says, declaring this particular conversation over. “Tell me about your trip.”

I can’t believe that my cocky, confident, take-on-the-world mother is frightened of seeing an old boyfriend, especially one who still adores her. But I know that arguing with her right now won’t do any good.

“The trip was great, we saw sea turtles, I learned to do the
hula, and we ate so much pineapple I’m thinking of changing my middle name to Dole.”

“That’s nice, sweetheart,” Naomi says, bending over to kiss each of us on the foreheads. She picks up the tray and heads toward the kitchen. “You’ve always been my favorite son-in-law,” she calls back to Peter.

“Your only son-in-law, now and forever,” Peter says with a laugh.

“That is so sad about Jeff,” I say, and then I let out a yawn. “I may have to go into the bedroom to take a little nap.”

“I’ll go with you,” Peter says. But instead, I settle my head on his shoulder, and we stay rooted on the couch, too tired and comfy to move.

I’m starting to doze off when I hear Paige holler across the apartment for Brandon to “come back!” I snap open my eyes just in time to see the pumped-up pooch scurrying over the carpet, underneath the couch, and out the other side to where we’re sitting. Before we can stop him, Brandon finds the pile of newspapers that Peter had strewn on the floor, squats down, and takes a large dump.