Plan C (23 page)

Ironic that the song “Who Let the Dogs Out” is still playing overhead.

“Dear Lord,” I say to Madeline. “I hope Ben tells his son to apologize to Bebe.”

The music stops, the clowns stop, and the entire party comes to a standstill to see what Ben will do next.

‘Well,” says Ben, surmising the situation. “We need to take responsibility for our actions, don’t we, boys?”

“Does that mean they’ll be going to reform school now?” whispers Kitty laughing at her own joke. I stifle a giggle.

“What do you think we should do?” says Ben to the boys.

“I think we should put the dog in the car,” says Jean-Christophe. The dog in the car? The dog in the car! Are they kidding? The dog moves to a corner where he buries his face in his paws, shaking like a leaf under the fica tree.

Madeline asks, “Did you ever hear of that show
Super Nanny
?

“I was just thinking the same thing,” says Kitty. “Call that show and have her whip their asses into shape!”

Bebe heads over to help Madeline and me, who have now dropped to our knees, dabbing seltzer on the frosting that’s about to stain the Boteh design on the antique Seraband runner. Ben squats down to assist, too.

“Good thing it was vanilla,” I say, suggesting how clueless can you be to think that the dog did this when it was clearly your kids?

“I’m so sorry, Bebe. I’ll put the dog out on the deck,” says Ben.

Bebe smiles as though nothing’s wrong. “Oh, its okay, Ben. They’re just children,” she says. “It’s just a rug. He’s just a dog.”

“Dog, my ass,” says Kitty.

“Does your dog have a name?” says Bebe, glancing up at the twins.

“Darth Vader,” they sing song. More of an insinuation than an answer.

“Oh, hello, Darth Vader,” says Bebe. “Is it okay to just call him Darth?” Now the nervous dog is standing up, and lifting his leg on the cabriole-chair leg, as though he’s about to pee.

“Darth, no!” says Ben. “Sorry Bebe, he does that whenever he’s nervous.”

“Honey,” I say to Ben, busy scrunching up dirty paper towels in my hands, “Why don’t you and the twins tie the dog on the outdoor patio over by the flower pots.”

“Good idea,” he says, kissing my cheek and then looking at the boys. “Boys, let’s take Darth out on the deck.”

Bebe, Kitty, Madeline and I watch them miss crashing into the patio door by a narrow margin.

“Did I tell you what happened when they were with the sitter last week in Connecticut?” I say.

“I can only imagine,” says Kitty.

“You don’t have to imagine. She’ll tell you,” says Madeline sarcastically. Kitty’s all ears.

“Ben walked into the country club to pick up the twins, who’d been left there all day with the sitter,” I explain. “Rosemary had dropped them off that morning and Ben was picking them up. The President of the country club was talking to the receptionist and said, ’Oh, I just heard what happened with the twins.’ Ben assumed he was talking about the fact that Jean-Christophe split his head open at soccer practice a few days earlier. That’s when the President said, ‘Well, ‘the Donald’ isn’t here often but he decided to take the golf cart down to the pool for a swim…’”

Kitty’s eyes widen. “The Donald? As in Trump?”

“Uh huh,” says Madeline, her voice loving the mischief of the entire saga.

“Oh myyyyy…” says Bebe.

“That’s when Ben’s heart sank. He knew the words golf cart and twins do not belong in the same sentence with ‘The Donald.’ Sure enough, Jean-Christophe stole the cart, sat on the floor, and pushed the gas pedal with his hands. Jean-Baptiste sat on the seat doing all the steering. They went up on the curb, knocked over the handicap signs, smashed into the bike racks, and finally bottomed out inches from the steps of the pool. All the guests ran out screaming.”

“Oh, Libby, thank God nobody was hurt,” says Bebe.

“Hurt! Forget about hurt!” says Kitty. “
Killed
is more like it!”

“Poor Ben,” I say.

“Was his membership revoked?” screams Kitty.

“No,” I say, shaking my head and looking out at Ben out on the deck with the dog and the kids wrapping the leash around his legs. The whole situation smells like a carton of sour milk whose expiration date is long past.

My friends and I can only stare, though Kitty is first to break the silence. “You know, Ben is like the Impressionist Courbet – adored yet despised.”

“Ben has more luggage than an African safari!” says Bebe. “But at least it all matches.”

“The sad part about it,” says Madeline, “Ben is such a cool step-dad but it’s clear that when my mom isn’t around he lets those boys get away with way too much. And then when mom’s around and she tries to train them, she’s left to look like the bad guy. Truth is my mom is the coolest mom on the planet.”

“Coolest mom and stupidest woman,” says Kitty, polishing off her drink. “I better see what Clive’s up to.”

“I think I saw him,” says Madeline. “He’s over with the Ballerinas.”

“Of
course
he is,” says Kitty, shaking her head. She grabs a half-full glass of wine left by somebody else on the bookshelf, sniffs its contents, and lifts the glass in the air saying, “Mature yet adolescent.”

“Slow down, Princess,” I yell. “It ain’t prom night!” Kitty flips me the bird and heads inside.

Tamara comes over and takes Madeline’s hand. “Want -- see – Tamara room?” she says.

“Sure do,” says Madeline, putting her juice glass on the coffee table and following Tamara.

I’m left alone. Before another person, dog or twin can invade my personal space, I grab a glass of sauvignon blanc, dab a celery stick into the hummus dip and push through the glass doors, heading to the south side of the deck. Ben and entourage are on the north side. Thank
God
it’s a big deck.

Sipping my wine I gaze out at the Manet palette of leaves spreading across Central Park, with the grey and white high-rise buildings providing backdrop. I love New York, but I long for Paris. And while I’m loving the crisp autumn breeze crossing my cheekbone, I can’t help but open my eyes wide to the balcony’s edge, my hands grasped tightly on the rail.

Glancing over the thirty foot drop to Park Avenue I think of one question, “What color should my parachute be when I jump?” I’m emotionally much closer to the edge than I realize. Though given my stuck situation I can only teeter on the edge rather than
jump. And that wouldn’t provide the benefit of the rush I’d get from actually jumping. At least that’s a powerful and kinetic motion as opposed to just being stuck.

My feeling-sorry-for-myself moment is broken by a tap on my shoulder. I turn to see a woman, though my fingernails remain dug into the railing.

“Hello,” says the woman next to me, glancing down to where her pedicured toes stick out of $1,000 Gucci sandals. “What kind of a sadistic
nut
invented these things?” she says.

“Blisters?” I ask.

“Oh, the price of beauty,” she says, extending her hand and slipping out of both shoes. “I’m Simone. I think we’ve met.”

I try to place her, but I can’t. Her twinkling brown eyes draw me in. “Oh, wait!” It clicks. “Maybe Nantucket a few summers ago. You own several inns…”

“That’s me,” she says. We shake hands vigorously.

“ Of course!” I say. “It was a fundraiser - Parkinson’s disease. In memory of your uncle…”

“The National Geographic…”

“Man.Yes. You were the one who put a Lucite floor over the pool so we could walk across it. I loved how you strolled around in your sarong -- let it all hang out.”

“Must be the French in me,” she says.

“You’re French?” I smile.

She nods. “Part. Mostly Italian. But Europeans are different, you know. We’re not so….airbrushed.”

“You mean like us Americans who worry about every bump and bulge.” Oh, I love this woman already.

She jiggles her glass. “But I haven’t lived in Paris since I was young. Love New York though.” She raises her glass to toast the skyline. “Come here every chance I get - which isn’t often. Work has me everywhere...”

“Oh,” I say, “I always thought innkeepers were stranded in one spot. Although if you’re going to be stranded, it may as well be on Nantucket…”

“No,” she chuckles. “My husband runs the inns on ACK.”

“You call the island ACK like me. Love the sound of the prop planes.”

“Except when you’re fogged in,” I say, and then knowing where this is going, we both sputter: “Fog happens!”

We both chuckle and then sip our wines. “So you get around…” I add.

“My grandson says ‘Grandma, why do you have so many houses?’ And I say, ‘It’s complicated honey. Besides, Grandma’s bored.’”

“That’s funny.” She has my interest now. For an innkeeper she leads a pretty big life.

“I’m an attorney - corporate law. Some divorce law. Practice is in D.C.”

“Part of that old boys’ network...”

She nods.

“And your husband doesn’t mind when you’re gone?”

“Oh no. He closed the inns over Labor Day. He’s down in Palm Beach now where all those young girls in string bikinis asking older men what ails them just in case they’re about to keel over. But he’s not. He keeps up with all the social events there.
Then in two weeks, I have a wine tasting. I have to go to Spain. He’ll fly to meet me in LA after. A friend is having a big restaurant opening before a wedding on a yacht in St. Tropez.”

“You’re racking up the frequent flier miles.”

“You have to live life, not just survive it,” she says, glancing inside at the twins.

“You’re so right! That’s how life should be!”

“Yes, but I stopped contemplating how life should be sometime back in my forties. Life is too short for regrets.”

She’s too good to be true. “So you took your original plan A and ran with it.”

“Something like that…wrote a letter to myself once – what my life might have been if I took a different route.”

“And?”

“I wasn’t crazy about that other person. I like this one. The one who took this path. I have a lot of miles left to walk. So far it’s worked.”

I’m speechless.

“No court tomorrow, so I can drink,” she says, raising her glass.” Her warm smile has sucked me into some sisterly vortex. And those twinkling brown eyes are saying “Jump inside and be my friend.” She runs a hand through her frosted blonde hair. “Got the travel bug from that uncle of mine - Italian explorer. Uncle Luigi used to say to my mother when I was five years old, ‘Forget the milk. Start her on wine!’” She jiggles her empty glass. “Refill?” she asks. “I’m drinking a fabulous rose. Whispering Angel.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s from a vineyard in Provence. Brought Bebe a case for the party.”

“Shall I come with you?” I say, eager to please.

“You enjoy the view. Relax,” she says. And before I can object, I watch her move to the inside of the apartment.

This woman is what I want to be at sixty. Vibrant, sexy –someone who reached her goal and then leaped beyond it. But Palm Beach? She didn’t seem the type. And her name wasn’t Mitzi, Bambi or Tiffany… Maybe she just liked the warm weather. Palm Beach is the land of so many events, so much money, and such boring people. Not
bored,
but
boring.
Though I can say if you have to spend a night sleeping in an airport, Palm Beach
is
that airport. And with all the sugar daddies shuffling around with their LV luggage, it’s certainly a place you could hold up a sign that reads, “Will marry for money.”

I watch Simone shaking hands with a group of people at the bar. She’s so well put together in her big red hat and pant suit with the Hermes scarf. Life is full of surprises – I’ve just met a woman who is down-to-earth, genuine, funny, whip-smart, and capable of keeping her head above water while the rest of us sink. Maybe she can throw me a life raft.

Simone is a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a lawyer, and an entrepreneur. And me, like someone who has just fallen in love during one of those three minute dates, I’m anxious to explore this new relationship. But what I don’t yet know is how generous she can be. I don’t know she’s about to give me….

“Paris,” she says, handing me a glass. “I take back what I said before. I love New York, but
ah,
Paris. It was and always will be my first true love.”

“To Paris,” I say, my voice shaking a bit. Our glasses clink. My eyes tear up.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No. Well, yes,” I say, trying to smile and wiping my tears.

She reaches into her purse and hands me a tissue. I dab my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s just that Paris has been my dream destination my entire life. I had a plan and I can see I’m beginning to see the cracks in it.” She catches my quick glance toward Ben. She can sense that I don’t want him to see me from where he’s standing on the other side of the deck. Jean-Baptiste has stolen the fake mink shawl of some five-year-old party guest, and Jean-Christophe is tossing the model’s eye shadow kits over the banister.

“Oh, I see…” she says. “Your kids?”

“No. Mine are grown. Two daughters.”

“So these must be the stepsons…”

“Yes. And they’re father is for the most part wonderful. But his situation is holding me back.”

“So go…”

“I can’t completely go right now.”

“I mean go to Paris. Just for awhile. You said your girls are grown.”

“But the euro is so…”

“Use my place. It’s in St Germaine des Pres. It’s a fabulous - A Pied-a-terre. I’m never there. Use it. Just pay the cleaning lady when you’re done.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Stay as long as you want. Place could use a little TLC.”

“But I can’t…”

“Can’t what? It only costs the plane ticket. I’m offering; you take. Listen. I
learned about wanting and getting something years ago. I wanted an apartment and wanting turned into looking. Then looking turned into buying… I should get their more often. I dream of staying a month sometime before I’m too old to climb the stairs.”

“You’re not too old.”

“But you’re young. Go climb the stairs for me.”

“Maybe, but I…”

“It’s in the 6
^th
. One block from the Seine. Let me know the dates. Stay a month for all I care. Stay two!”