The Best Laid Plans (34 page)

“Neither will I.” Sienna laughs. “But I also found out I’m not a very good team player. I need to tell you I’m sorry, Tru. I really thought I could keep the blog anonymous, but I never should have done something so irresponsible.”

“It’s okay, I forgive you,” I say, popping one final plastic
bubble and telling Sienna to wipe the stricken look off her face. “We were probably lucky to get out when we did. There was no love lost between me and the D.A. I’ve been jumpy ever since Colin Marsh made that threat. And if nothing else, at least I found out that I like working.”

“Well, that’s a switch.”

“I’m glad I got to stay home all those years when the girls were younger. But now I’m ready to start Act Two. Although I haven’t a clue about what to do next.”

“Something will come to you,” Sienna says.

“What about you?”

“Not sure. I got an email on the site this morning from an agent who thinks I might be able to turn the blog into a book. Nothing definite. But maybe Madame XXX will bring me better luck in business than it has in love, since it seems to have totally destroyed my relationship with Bill. Oh well,” Sienna says, picking up a box and carrying it across the room to a stack of others. “
Que será, será.
”

“Whatever will be, will be? Is that all you can say about the only man I’ve ever seen you truly in love with?”

“Bill’s too young. Besides, he’s furious with me.”

“Forget about your age. Find a way to make Bill unfurious. A good man is as hard to find these days as a Javan Rhino. There are only about fifty of them left in the whole entire world. I can’t believe you’re not going to fight for him.”

“I said I was sorry and he refused to accept my apology,” Sienna says briskly.

“That was in the heat of the moment—not to mention it was a pretty lame apology. I’m sure Bill would forgive you if tried again.”

Sienna shakes her head. “Here,” she says, changing the subject and tossing me a marker. “Before you dream up your next
project and become a titan of industry, think I could get you to do some manual labor?”

I’m just uncapping the Sharpie to start labeling boxes when my cellphone beeps. “Paige just scored a goal!” I say with a whoop.

M
OLLY HAULS A BLUE
-and-white-striped golf umbrella out of a gigantic tote bag and positions it over her grandmother’s head.

“Do you have an ark in there?” Naomi frets. “This rain is coming down in buckets.”

“Relax, Grandma, I’ve got you covered.” Molly smiles.

Paige, who’s standing under the awning next to her sister while we wait for the downpour to stop long enough for all of us to dash across the street without being drowned, jams her hand into Molly’s bag to see what other emergency supplies her twin sister has brought along. She pulls out a tweezers, a curling iron, and the same brand of double-sided tape that Jennifer Lopez used to keep her Oscar dress in place—the dress that plunged in an open V down to her navel.

“Impressive. Looks like Molly has thought of everything.” Paige whistles, ripping off a strip of tape and unzipping her slicker to stick it between her skimpy mini and the very uppermost part of her thigh.

“What, they charged you for this dress by the inch, and you
couldn’t afford something longer?” Naomi complains. She squeezes Paige’s hand and apologizes. “Sorry,
bubbala
, I’m just nervous about the reunions—I mean the Miss Subways reunion,” Naomi quickly says. She reaches into her own bag—a small beaded clutch shaped like an old-fashioned subway token that the girls found at Target to celebrate the occasion—to retrieve a pretty pearl-encrusted comb, which she sticks into her hair at the side of her chignon. Then she pulls the comb back out again.

“You look beautiful, Mom,” I say.

“Thank you, you girls look beautiful, too.” Naomi sighs, stuffs the comb back into her purse, and fidgets with the clasp. “I’m sorry I made you go to so much effort. Maybe we should all just go home now?”

“Not after I found a parking space.” Peter laughs, ducking under the awning to join us. Like a wet Labrador who’s just escaped from the bathtub, he shakes his head and water goes flying everywhere.

“Ew!” Paige shrieks. She grabs the copy of
Town & Country
that Peter had been holding over his head but as she starts rolling it up to swat him, I snatch it out of her hand.

“Let me see that,” I say, recognizing the picture on the society page of my very own former employee Georgy, looking lovely in a jade necklace and a chiffon lavender gown. I’m glad to see that she’s still working, although I hope she’s charging this particular client a mountain of money—she’s on the arm of the sleazy Colin Marsh. Colin Marsh, the power-abusing D.A. who threatened to dig up dirt on me if I dared breathe a word about his double-dealing two-timing son. Ha, let’s see what he can do to me now that I know he’s dating a call girl!

“Molly,” I say sweetly, “you know that essay that you’re supposed to write for English class called ‘The Most Courageous Thing I Ever Did’? It was stupid of me to tell you not to
write about Brandon. In fact, why don’t you enter it in the national competition?”

“Thanks, Mom, I’ll think about it. But right now it’s Grandma who has to be brave. C’mon, Grandma, let’s show them what the Finklestein women are made of!” Then, before Naomi has a chance to protest, Molly takes her grandmother’s hand and tugs her toward the celebration.

W
HEN NAOMI FIRST
told me about the reunion I didn’t understand why it was being held in a diner—even a hip, retrofitted 1950s theater district favorite—until she explained that the owner of Ellen’s Stardust was a former Miss Subways herself. Inside the front vestibule guests are shedding trench coats and stowing umbrellas. And then there are those who are balancing themselves on one leg to slip out of rain boots into more elegant footwear. “They look like a bunch of flamingos at a designer shoe sale.” Molly giggles.

About fifty of the former Miss Subways winners are expected here this evening, and although they range in age from their fifties to a now-ninety-year-old who was crowned in 1941, a quick look across the room reveals that the only silver fox in the bunch is a real fur one. In a sea of blondes, brunettes, and redheads and by the dint of soft lighting, Botox, and sheer will, it’s hard to distinguish the septuagenarians from their offspring. The diner is playfully decorated with a drive-in movie theater screen and a choo-choo train that whistles its way around the mezzanine. The walls are filled with framed posters of the former Miss Subways. I give Naomi a nudge and, with Peter and the girls trailing behind us, I push her toward the center of the room. Within seconds, she’s surrounded by a circle of women.

“Naomi Finklestein, it’s good to see you!” a big-haired
blonde gushes. She hugs my mother, then runs her hand down the hips of the scoop-neck cocktail dress the girls picked out for Naomi to wear. “No girdle,” the blonde reports approvingly. “As I live and breathe, you look fabulous!”

“I hope you should live and breathe—we should all live and breathe for the next one hundred years! Or at least the next fifty!” a redhead jokes.

With obvious relish, the women banter about their conquests—remembering the smitten fellows who proffered orchids, diamond rings, and the one who sent a proposal hidden inside a three-foot-wide lemon pie. “Can you imagine how much weight the girl who married him must have gained!” The big-haired blonde giggles. Naomi’s laughing, too, and despite my mother’s worrying—over coming or not coming, what she was going to wear, and even how her pelvis might measure up—within moments she’s clearly feeling at ease in this sorority of former beauty queens.

As I listen to their stories I realize that while none of them became the next Doris Day, Naomi was right. They’re an accomplished group of women, including a supreme court appellate judge, a former FBI agent, a woman who worked with the Red Cross after 9/11, and of course Ellen Hart Strum, the owner of the nostalgia-filled diner. When a svelte brunette who’s a senior dancer with the Nets asks what Naomi’s been up to, I hold my breath. After all, this is the question she’s been dreading. Still without missing a beat, my mother points to me and the girls. “These are my proudest accomplishments.” Naomi beams, and from the easy, infectious smile on her face—the one that for all those years I had so much trouble coaxing from her—I know that she means it.

Molly guides me over to the wall of posters. “Says here that three decades before Vanessa Williams was crowned Miss America there was an African-American Miss Subways. And
look, there’s Grandma! ‘Beautiful Naomi Finklestein has appeared in school plays and plans to pursue a career in modeling. She is also devoted to children and helping make the world a kinder, gentler place,’ ” Molly reads aloud. I always thought that last part was a lot of malarkey. But now it has the ring of truth.

“Check this out,” says Paige, looking at a photo of the Keehlers, the only pair of twins to reign simultaneously. “This says they were ‘as identical as two cigarettes in a pack.’ Nobody could ever say that about us,” my blond, straight-haired daughter says, pointing to her sister’s curly brown locks.

“Thank goodness,” Molly teases. “I wouldn’t want to grow up in Manhattan looking like a California surfer girl.”

“And I wouldn’t want to be a slave to detangler.”

“And I wouldn’t change either of you for the world,” I say, drawing the girls in for a hug.

“Okay, Mom,” Paige says, moving a step away from my clutches. “We know, we should ‘celebrate our uniqueness!’ Yikes, you said that so many times when we were growing up I used to think it was like the state motto.”

“It’s the Newman motto.” Peter laughs as he brings me a Perrier. “Whether it’s about looks or personalities. Or,” he says, with a wink, “career choices.”

“O-M-G, you guys are so weird,” Paige says. “But now that we’re talking about careers, you never really explained why you and Sienna closed your temporary help agency. Did it go bust?”

“Not exactly. Let’s just say that it was a learning experience. A chance to get my feet wet. And I’m looking around for something else to sink my teeth into.”

“Mom, could you use a few more clichés?” Molly, my budding writer, asks.

“Okay. Whatever. One day we’ll get it out of you,” Paige wheedles. Although I know they never will.

I take a sip of water and hand it back to Peter. The ice-filled glasses at these parties are always too cold to stand around holding, although Peter’s happy to be of service—just another of about a thousand reasons I can think of these days that I’m grateful for my husband. A waiter wheels out a four-foot-high chocolate fountain and Molly gasps. “That must be the Magic Mountain. I think I saw it once in a Disney movie.” Paige takes her sister’s hand and the two of them walk off trancelike toward the cascading tiers of velvety liquid.

“Bring me back a strawberry, dripping in chocolate,” Sienna calls after the girls as she joins me and Peter.

“Oh no, no, no, no, no! I know you’re not on television anymore, but you never know, somebody might let you be a newscaster again. Just in case, you should stay in shape,” coos Tiffany Glass, who’s followed Sienna over to our little group. Tiffany’s wearing one of her trademark body-hugging dresses and she’s arm in arm with the “plus one” that Naomi invited her to bring along to the reunion. The “plus one” I so helpfully introduced Tiffany to—our old Veronica Agency client Gary, the sexist stallion.

“I just signed a book contract. My figure can go to hell; nobody cares what an author looks like.” Sienna laughs. Tiffany dispatches Gary to get her a drink. Then emotionally she clasps my hand between hers.

“Tru, thank you again for Gary. I have to tell you, after striking out with Peter and Jeff Whitman I was starting to wonder if I’d ever trap, er, I mean,
attract
a man again. But Gary calls me his treasure.”

“He also calls her his cheap date,” Sienna whispers, as Tiffany leaves to go congratulate Naomi. “Gary must still
be pinching himself that a woman will sleep with him and he doesn’t have to pay for it.”