Plan C (15 page)

“You don’t think he’s told me?”

“Clive’s told you,” says Kitty, stunned.

Ben nods, signaling that Clive is making his way back to the table.

“Take a guy’s advice,” whispers Ben. “If men have to live in a world where we’re are condemned for these harmless indulgences, then we’ll indulge secretly. Men are taught to be ashamed of the visual sexual stimulation that they require and regularly use to stay sane, faithful and interested in gardening. So if they’re caught in the act, their first recourse is to lie, especially when the person who has caught them seems irate, accusatory and uncomprehending.”

“Are you suggesting I’m not the easiest person to be married to?” asks Kitty, as Clive squeezes by me to get back into our four-top.

“Who am I shagging this time?” says Clive, pulling up his chair. “Or has she managed to keep a lid on her fury?”

The museum is a maze of hallways – what else is new - and I seem to spend most of my time here clacking down them. The rhythm of my heels against the granite lulling me into a daydream. Where am I click-clacking to this time? Human Resources? Primates? Butterfly Conservatory? I glance down at my clipboard for a clue, and suddenly….

I’m in midair, my balance gone, on my way to a hard landing on the familiar floor. The electrical cord I’ve just tripped over is now at eye-level, and so is the light coming from under the metal door in front of me. The door opens, and a pair of rugged, dusty boots stride purposefully toward me. A strong, tanned hand reaches down, and I hear a familiar voice. “Good god, mate. Are you allright?”

“Sure,” I say, rubbing my head. “I think so…”

I look up. He’s staring. And when I look to see what he’s staring at, I realize my skirt is hoisted way up. Thank God I shaved. Thank God I bronzed. Thank God I wore panties!

The blue lace ones.

“Ah yes,” he says. “Just what I need. Another reel of you to add to the show already running in my head.”

He pulls me up toward him, lifting me clear into the air. His grip is powerful, his desire unstoppable. He tears open my blouse to expose my blue-lace pushup bra – it matches! And now we’re kissing, moaning, ripping each other’s clothes off. He savagely hoists me on top of a crate and buries his face in my breasts. I’m tingling all over, my heart pounding. His hands are all over me…

But wait! Can this be? There’s another pair of hands running over my skin – creamy-mocha hands caressing my calves, my thighs. I look down to find Jerome, my Terrence Howard lookalike from the… his pillow lips making their hungry way up my legs. What’s happening to me? Am I really in the midst of the world’s most thrilling three-way? The exhilaration lifts me, lifts me, so far up into the clouds I could earn frequent flier miles! I feel a ringing in my ears…I’m hearing bells…buzzers…

Hold on. It sounds more like a phone. Louder and louder, closer and closer. Oh, God, I know what that is.

No, no, and no! It’s a dream. Don’t let this be a dream. It rings more. Okay, I’d ring all you want. Just don’t let the dream come to an…

End. But it’s too late. Like that white light down that long tunnel of death, I bolt straight up in my bed, staring straight ahead, perspiring, and phone still ringing.

As I catch my breath, I glance at Ben asleep and snoring next to me. The clock reads 6:55 a.m. Flopping back down on my pillows, I do what any respectable and exhausted citizen would do on a Sunday morning after working four jobs. I go back to sleep. Probably a wrong number, I think to myself, turning in to spoon into Ben’s
backside - until the ring moves to my cell phone. Now I realize that somebody is anxious to reach me, and knows both my numbers.

Moving groggily through my apartment, cursing every step of the way, and practically tripping over my desk, I hit the voice mail button on my cell, already imagining the horrible emergency room message waiting for me on the other end. But instead of a daughter in distress, I hear:

“Hello, Libby. You don’t know me but this is Betty Carmichael.” Then a pause, a breath and she continues, “I know you’ve been sleeping with my boyfriend, Jerry. And I’d like you to stop.” Her voice trembles, yet still manages to maintain as much dignity as any fifty-something year-old voice can muster. “I don’t know if you’re aware, but Jerry and I
live
together. Thank you.” And then she hangs up.

I stand there staring at my cell phone in disbelief. Was I dreaming this? No. Indiana Jones I was dreaming. Jerome a.k.a. Terrence Howard I was dreaming. Betty Carmichael, I’m not. To prove my point there are those two little words “missed call” staring back at me from my screen. Clearly this Betty Carmichael didn’t want to hear from me or she’d have left a number in her message. I hit the screen again, and there’s her number, whether she likes it or not.

I replay the message – three times. It’s clear that Betty knows who I am, but who is this Jerry I’m screwing? I don’t know any Jerry’s – well, except for my realtor, the hottest realtor on Cape Cod. He’s the one marketing my cottage, the one that had been in my family forever on Cape Cod. But Jerry, the realtor? With me? I mean, we’d known each other for years. Besides, he has a cute, young wife now and they’ve just had a cute, young baby. Something’s wrong.

Then something clicked…

About a year ago, I did hire a local handyman, Jerry. I left him a key to my cottage so he could finish up some unfinished business. He was a jolly guy, trustworthy, missing a toe from an accident with a chain saw. Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever got my key back…

I picked up the phone and punched in the Betty Carmichael’s number. It goes straight to her voice mail. “Hi Betty? This is Libby. I just received your message.” I realize how impressed I am that she hadn’t suggested she’d bitch slap me. She had handled the circumstances, whatever they turn out to be, with dignity and class. “There must be some confusion,” I continue. “I live in New York.” And then I dropped the ball, “With my fiancée. I’m not
in
Cape Cod, though at times I wish I were, because I still own a small house there. I hired Jerry – if it’s the Jerry you’re referring to - to do some work for me about a year ago. We’ve swapped emails about having a drink or a dinner, but our schedules never coincided.” I felt I owed him for nailing that door shut on the shed during that hurricane last year. I
wish
I could see him to repay him with that dinner...” I realize my call will reassure her, but it might also make her realize: if it wasn’t me, then who? “I’m sorry this happened to you. As women we’ve all been there. If there’s anything I can do, don’t hesitate to call me back. And on Jerry’s behalf, I just want to say I hope you can clear this up. He seems like an awfully sincere guy. Well, good luck.”

Relationships aren’t easy, I think, as I click off the phone. Does this poor Betty Carmichael – whose Plan A has just ended – have a Plan B? Or was Jerry already her Plan B and now she needs a Plan C?

About an hour later my email dings and her boyfriend Jerry’s name appears in my ‘in box.’ Maybe Jerry would have some answers.

I click on the message: “Sorry about that, Libby. Huge misunderstanding. Was working all night. I’ll be in touch. Jerry.” Yeah, sure, I think to myself. Working all night. Who the hell works all night on a Saturday?

It’s now 8 a.m. and I’m wide awake anyway, so I switch on the coffee pot, hoping to lure Ben into waking up early. But when that didn’t work I email Jerry back. “This is really none of my business, so long as Betty knows it wasn’t me who was the other woman, and I hope you can work it out.” As I hit the “Send” button it occurs to me that a ride up to Cape Cod might be in order. Despite the “For Sale” sign out front, my cottage seems to have a life of its own.

Sipping my coffee I type out an idea: “The Dalai Lama once said ‘Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.’”

Bullshit, I think. That was then. How can we enjoy life now when everything we’ve worked for is diminishing? Our homes, our savings, our social security, even our love lives - all that discipline, all those years of hard work, gone. There’s something to be said for sipping café au lait in Paris. There’s something to be said for sailing off to the island of your dreams. Seems there is more risk in staying here than going there! And for me, that would be Paris…” Besides, aren’t I the one who once wrote a piece for a magazine that began with the words ‘The pillow on my bed reads I’d rather be in Paris?’” So why aren’t I?

“Women in their forties are slowly becoming the forgotten generation.” I type. “We’re no different than General Foods, RCA and E F Hutton, Eastern Airlines and Pan Am. Obsolete. When I was in my twenties there weren’t any nail salons. We just painted them at home with the only five colors that existed: platinum, white, mauve, red or bubble gum pink. Now salons have colors named ‘After Sex’ and ‘Bermuda Shorts’ and the color red comes in fifty-nine shades.” None of which Ben can see. “Our kids are the generation of all-natural, environmentally friendly, and pure without additives, while we are the generation of frozen dinners, artificial sweeteners, Sanka and Tang. And what do we have to show for it? Breast cancer…”

The phone rings again and I lose my thoughts. I grab the receiver. “Hello?” I say, hesitant about who it might be
this
time.

“Lib?” says a voice that sounds as if somebody’s died.

“Bebe?” I sit upright and twirl in my desk chair. “What’s wrong?”

“Libby, it’s not her.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s not my daughter.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s three years old, and well, she’s sweet, but she’s kind of a pathetic little thing.” Bebe’s whimpering now. “She’s heavy and pale and has sad brown eyes….”

“Oh…”

“The birth mother is having second thoughts. There’s a lot of confusion here, Libby. She’s a brunette and not the blonde and blue-eyed baby from the photo that they told me she’d be.”

“Oh, Bebe, I’m so sorry…”

“And the worst thing of all is that Bernie actually said, ‘The little porker’s cross-eyed!’ I know it shouldn’t matter, but in my heart, she’s not the one. I just don’t know what to do.”

“Get on a plane and come home,” I say in an instant. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll find you another baby.” I know better of course. Where am I going to get her a blue-eyed blonde haired baby, short or kidnapping my neighbor’s granddaughter at gunpoint?

*

Bebe had slept through most of the third of several flights to Kazakhstan dreaming of a normal life, of the backseat of her black sedan full of shopping bags, of her new little daughter playing next to her with a brand new Build-A-Bear.

Bebe was awakened by the announcement from the flight crew – first delivered in several other languages before they said in English that they were “landing in fifteen minutes. Please be sure your seats are in their full upright position, your seat belts are secured and your tray tables stored.”

Tired and disoriented, Bebe was greeted at the baggage claim by the facilitator, Irena, who brought Bebe and Bernie to the hotel where they’d take their first shower in twenty-four hours. Irena was about fifty-something, slim and shy. She smiled a lot at Bernie, who spent all his time checking her out – until Bebe caught him looking. More unfortunate for Bebe, she hadn’t had the time to figure out a way to dump Bernie before the trip. The agency had called her so fast.

After a shower and some less worse-than mediocre food, Bebe met three other couples at the hotel, all Americans, all in different phases of the adoption ordeal. The couple from Missouri had been there for two months – about to move into an apartment, tired of hotel meals that tasted like prison slop. They had been waiting for the final leg of the adoption process for their newly adopted son. Visiting and bonding – that was two weeks. Wait for court – two weeks more. Judges approval around the fourth week, with an additional two weeks after that to get passports. And that’s if you’re lucky and it all goes smoothly.

For Bernie, this seemed like the opportune time to suggest that since the couples would be waiting around in the hotel night after night, maybe they should have some fun. “Like in that movie ‘
The Ice Storm
,’” he said, rattling the ice in his glass of whiskey saying, “We can switch-a-roo room keys.” The couples ignored him, but Bebe spoke soothingly to him. “There, there, Bernie, you’re just jet lagged. It’s been a long journey.”

Bebe busied herself with shopping for her new daughter while Bernie occupied his long days soliciting the hotel masseuse, the female bartender, and even the maid.

It was finally, on the morning of the long-anticipated meeting with her new daughter, that Bebe packed a backpack with a beanie baby, crayons, coloring book and an
album of photos of the dog in her New York City Penthouse. Bebe even went so far as to find a little child’s dictionary of cuddly animal names that would delight a two-year-old.

The orphanage was uniformly rundown, but not dangerous. Laundry hung row upon row from the balconies, blowing into the broken windows. Nobody had any intention of anybody ever fixing the glass. When Bebe first walked into the orphanage, she was knocked out by the smell of borscht. To keep herself from gagging she covered her nose and mouth with her Hermes scarf.

She was led to the director’s office and seated at a long table across from a staff psychologist, her attorney and Bernie. The interior was circa early 1970s, with leftover orange shag carpeting and a retro gold couch.

Everyone spoke something other than English for a few minutes, and then a woman walked in with the baby girl in her arms. The baby was much heavier than the other little girls, which immediately struck Bebe as odd. She had, after all, been eating the same food as all the other orphans. Something wasn’t right. Within seconds, as instinctively as a mother bonds to her baby after just having given birth, Bebe knew this wasn’t her child. She could raise this baby girl who needed to so badly cut back on carbs, but in this ultimate of ultimate shopping experience, this item was clearly a return.