Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim (5 page)

How do you swing that?

I thought fairy tales didn’t come true, but they do. At least, sometimes. Kate kissed a frog, and he turned into a prince. I kissed a frog, and he turned into a jerk.

But I have hope.

I could become a princess, too.

If Prince William takes after his father, he’s already in the market for an older, less attractive bride.

Me!

I was in New York at the time of the wedding, so Daughter Francesca and I got up at the crack of dawn and watched it, live. She made real scones from scratch, and I wore a tiara. The dogs slept through the entire ceremony.

They knew they’d catch it on rerun.

Or they thought that the wedding of two complete strangers, taking place an ocean away, simply had no relevance to them.

Silly.

What do dogs know?

(Answer: Everything.)

If you’re wondering where I got the tiara, it was in Greenwich Village, where Francesca and I found a store called Fantasy World. We thought it was a costume store, because its windows had mannequins dressed in witch and cop outfits.

We didn’t notice that the witch’s costume came with fishnets.

Or that the cop’s came with extra handcuffs.

It didn’t register at first that it was strange for the store to be open at eleven o’clock at night. And full of men.

Also it wasn’t Halloween.

We went to the desk and asked the clerk, “Do you have any tiaras?”

And she asked us, “With penises?”

I’m not kidding.

This was verbatim. I exaggerate all the time, but Francesca never does, and she’ll back me up. And that’s when we realized that we weren’t in a normal costume store, but some kind of sex-costume store.

Yes, there are people who wear costumes for sex.

I’m guessing they all live in New York.

My advice? Stay home.

Evidently, they dress up as slutty cops, firefighters, nurses, doctors, and dentists. In Fantasy World, nobody’s unemployed.

That’s why it’s a fantasy.

Maybe that’s what gets these people excited. Their paycheck is on the way.

There’s no aphrodisiac like being able to pay the bills.

But that’s just me, and what do I know? I never dressed up to have sex. I dressed down.

Maybe that’s where I went wrong.

Okay, I dressed up as a wife, but I gather that’s not as sexy as dressing up as a witch. Of course, I’ve been called a witch, and that’s kind of confusing. I must’ve been a bad witch, instead of a good witch.

Or maybe it was the other way around.

Anyway, back to tiaras. Kate Middleton wore the Cartier “Halo” tiara, made of platinum and diamonds. It dates back to 1936 and is priceless.

I wore the Scottoline “PG-rated” tiara, which was fake-platinum, with pink rhinestone letters that read
BRIDE-TO-BE
. It was made in China and cost $5.99.

You don’t want to know what the penis tiara looks like.

Or maybe you do, but I’m not telling.

Moving On

By Lisa

I’m helping Daughter Francesca move, but we’re going nowhere.

Why?

Because we fight.

The trouble is the difference in our approach.

To everything.

And of course, we’re adamant. We get that from Mother Mary.

When in doubt, blame it on your mother.

Unless your mother is me.

We begin with a basic difference to moving, in general. My approach is that everything in one apartment has to be put in boxes to be carted to another apartment, there to be unpacked. By the way, what I’ve learned is that if you live in New York, you essentially live in a box, so you pack a box to move to a box.

Some people move to bigger boxes, like from a matchbox to a ring box. Rich people live in an earring box. Only Donald Trump has a shoebox.

Francesca isn’t moving to a bigger box, she’s moving to a safer box, which is fine by me.

Since everything has to be unpacked, I don’t think it matters how it gets packed, which box it goes in, how much tape it has, or how the box is labeled. So I don’t spend a lot of time on these details. I drive to New York and start putting things in boxes. It’s not rocket science. Any one of my dogs can do it, and if I had my way, I’d hand them a roll of tape and tell them to get cracking.

So, for example, if I see a stack of dishes I put them in the box and tape up the box. On the box I write
KITCHEN
.

You see my logic.

It’s like when you eat dinner. Does it matter whether you have the peas or the potatoes first?

Exactly.

To me, moving is like Thanksgiving dinner, with packing tape.

It doesn’t matter what it is, only where it goes, and it all goes to the same place. And when it gets there and somebody unwraps it, it will be a fun little surprise. Like Christmas morning, only with things you don’t want.

A spatula? For me? How did you know?

See how much fun I am? Every day is a holiday with me. That’s why I’m divorced twice.

It takes me five seconds to pack a box, and if I packed the entire apartment, I’d have it done in fifteen minutes.

I think I’m doing great until I notice that Francesca is wrapping each dish individually with white paper and putting it in a box, then wrapping the entire wrapped stack with more white paper, then putting it in a box and stuffing the sides of the box with even more white paper.

“That’s a lot of paper,” I say.

“I don’t want them to break.”

“They won’t break. We’re only going three blocks away.”

“Still. How are you doing it?” Francesca looks over, and I push the dogs in front so she can’t see my bare little plate stack, like pancakes without the syrup.

Suffice it to say that words are exchanged. Many words, in a fight that takes longer than packing ten boxes. Especially the way that I pack them. In fact, the fight ends up being about the fight, which is our favorite thing. We fight over who said what in the fight, and especially the tone that was used.

Tone is the enemy of the mother-daughter relationship.

Also eye-rolling.

By the way, if you were thinking that it’s Francesca who does the eye-rolling, you’re wrong.

It’s me. Guilty as charged. I’m a professional. I can roll my eyes, flutter my lids, and use the wrong tone all at the same time, which is a great example of multitasking by mothers.

Anyway, we resolve our argument by agreeing that I stop packing.

Fine with me.

Heh-heh.

There’s cleaning to be done, so I volunteer to go clean the refrigerator. She wraps, and I clean, and when I’m finished, we make up, all nice. Kisses and hugs and tears.

And she says: “Where’s the food from the refrigerator?”

I blink. “I threw it away.”

“What? Why?”

“You wanted me to pack half jars of strawberry jelly?”

“Of course. It’s only three blocks away.”

“Aha! Why does it matter for the jelly but not for the dishes?”

And we’re off and running.

Advertise Here

By Lisa

I just saw one of those new electronic billboards, and it advertised a bank, then switched to a wanted poster for a bank robber.

I swear, I’m not making this up.

This would be a full-service billboard.

Or, taken together, it’s an ad for where not to put your money.

This must be a new thing, putting bad guys on billboards. Driving to New York alone, I passed two billboards showing scary people wanted for murder. Their larger-than-life eyes glared at me as I drove by, and I hit the gas.

Yikes.

It’s like Lite-Brite, the Felon Edition.

I decided that all murderers look alike. Generally terrifying, with bad hair. But don’t tell them I said so.

For obvious reasons.

In the good old days, the bad guys were on the streets. Now they’re in the skies, staring down at us, and I’m not sure this is progress. I like my crooks eye level, so I can run away. If they get in my head, there’s no escape.

The geniuses among you will think immediately of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, glowering from the faded billboard in
The Great Gatsby.

The rest of you will look it up on Wikipedia.

But everybody’s welcome here.

Read on, literati.

I know we’re trying to catch bad guys, so advertising them on billboards probably makes a lot of sense.

Still, I’m not a fan.

Hear me out.

Billboards get the imagination going. In a world where we can fast-forward, tweet, and check our email during TV commercials, the billboard is the last bastion of old-school advertising. And you know what? It works.

Assuming that you’re not texting as you drive.

And I’m not. No joke.

I think it’s dangerous, and I took the Oprah pledge not to do it. Oprah’s the last person I want mad at me. She has superpowers.

Like Dr. T. J. Eckleburg.

So when I’m on the road, I read every billboard, and I remember them. I bet you do, too. If you drive the same route every day, you know the billboards.

Do you really want to know murderers?

I drove up to New York last weekend and it was all I could do to keep my eyes on the road, for reading the other billboards. I love the normal ones, with the shiny happy people selling us things, and I imagine myself as the gorgeous woman in the perfume ad or the energetic woman in the coffee ad.

Scottoline runs on Dunkin’.

That’s the point of a billboard, to capture the imagination. The perfume ad makes me feel gorgeous, and the coffee ad makes me feel energetic, two things I’m distinctly not.

Yay, imagination!

For this reason, my favorite billboard advertises the lottery, which is now at $300 million, according to two billboards I passed on I-95. Those billboards don’t have any pretty people to engage the imagination, but they don’t need them.

They have money.

And they keep my imagination going for hours. My endorphins fire like crazy as I think about winning the lottery, from the moment I realize I have the winning number, then to calling Daughter Francesca and Mother Mary with the news, and then imagining all the things I’d buy, mainly a house in Lake Como, next to George Clooney.

So I could borrow some sugar.

Or lend him some.

For one night.

Of course, the lake interests me not at all. I can’t even swim.

But I have a lot of sugar.

And I would buy more.

In fact, I would become a sugar baron, cornering the sugar market, and pretty soon, even Matt Damon would have to stop by.

It’s a plan, right?

Anyway, these billboards with the bad guys scare me, all the way to New York. They make me think of bad things like murder, and I already spend a lot of time thinking about murder, because I write murder mysteries. I don’t need to think about murder on the road. I need a murder break.

That’s why I think about George and Matt and Brad.

Sugar, for the brain.

Insecurity Clearance

By Francesca

I just moved into a new apartment. The new place is nicer than my old one in several ways, but the number one difference is my new building has a doorman. Even though my doorman is a normal security guard and not one of those white-gloved Plaza types, having a doorman makes me feel very fancy and grown-up.

More accurately, it makes me feel like I should be fancy and grown-up.

Don’t hold your breath.

My first week here, the doorman gave me a sheet of paper with a big, blank grid on it—this was my security list. He explained that I needed to list every person who had permission to use the doorman’s key to enter my apartment without me, and then return the form to him to keep in the Security Clearance binder.

This was the serious business of serious people. I took the paper with appropriate gravitas and told him I’d have it back to him as soon as possible.

Composing my list started out easily enough. The first person I listed was my mother. In the column designated “Dates/Times Permitted,” I wrote: “always.”

Just don’t tell her, okay?

Then I decided to put down my father next, because that seemed fair. I imagine being a mother to twins is very similar to being a child of divorce—we both know that every gift, perk, and opportunity must be perfectly duplicated or there’s bound to be hair-pulling.

I tapped my pen, struggling to think of anyone else to include. Maybe it was dumb that my only key users lived out of state. A responsible adult would have an “in case of emergency” contact nearby. But what emergency would necessitate someone getting into my apartment without me? The super already had a key in case there was a building issue, like a leak or fire. I guess it’s possible that some misfortune might befall me, and I’d wind up in the emergency room. I’d need someone to bring me a bra.

You know my family history.

So I added my close guy friend who lives down the block as my “in case of emergency” person.

I didn’t tell him he’s on bra duty.

That seemed to cover it. I felt good about my list.

Until I handed it to my doorman the next day.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“Well, yeah,” I said, suddenly self-conscious. Maybe it was babyish for me to list my parents …

“This can’t be it. What about your cleaning lady? Dog walker?”

“
I’m
the cleaning lady and dog walker.”

He laughed like I had made a joke.

He would have laughed even harder if he saw what a crummy job said cleaning lady was doing in my bedroom. He wouldn’t give her a key either.

“What about a significant other? You want to put a boyfriend on here?”

“No boyfriend.” My mouth was getting dry.

Sheesh, this guy was worse than my relatives. And while my mother wanted me to have a doorman to keep out criminals, I wanted one to keep out crazy ex-boyfriends.

Trust me, within every boyfriend is a crazy ex waiting to be born.

The one and only time I gave a boyfriend a key to my place ended in complete disaster. After we broke up, he’d let himself in to leave me apology notes and hate mail in equal measure. His parting gift was a shoebox with a note that read, “Please take your belongings so I never have to see you again.” The box contained some loose bobby pins, a hair elastic, and a plastic earring without its mate.