Plan C (2 page)

But that didn’t come easily…

Once a beautiful wife with a beautiful family, Libby was suddenly a single mother. And where there had once been two incomes, there was now only one.

Meanwhile Libby’s little cherubs had grown into two teenage girls with bellybutton rings and driver’s licenses. And whenever Libby needed help curbing their escapades, the mean ole ogre stayed under his - newly constructed - bridge. Libby found herself working two jobs, sometimes six days a week. On the seventh day, her only day off, she would dutifully wake at 6 a.m. to landscape the yard before the sun rose to its peak, making it unbearably too hot to weed the hillside. Running the back of her hand over her bug-bitten brow, Libby quietly reflected that while other women were screwing their gardener, she was being screwed by his bills. So she decided to just mow the grass herself.

Then one very special day, while she was opening a pile of ‘past due’ bills with her in-need-of-a-manicure-fingers, a bonus check arrived. It was for an article called “Celibacy by Choice” that Libby had written for a women’s magazine.

So she put down the Hoover, plopped her feet on the coffee table, ate some bon bons, and hired Lena – a certified Fairy Godmother - to do her housework. But the bonus check only lasted a few months before it was tax season, prom season and then college tuition season. That’s when Lena had to go. And so did the house.

At night Libby cried herself to sleep - too tired for the ups and downs of match.com; too wide awake to put up with the neediness of the few village idiots she did date. The last thing Libby wanted was a “man child” except for the material he could provide in her next magazine article.

When her daughters were sound asleep, Libby closed her laptop and sat at the window edge of her lonely castle- the one with a “for sale” sign planted by the front moat. She let down her long auburn hair and dropped her martini olives into the moon- lit liquid below. The olives sunk. Just like her. With one large swig, she polished off the contents of the martini glass, tossed it against the bricks and watched it shatter. She was nowhere. Yet she knew deep inside of her very being, that
somewhere
, someday, her Prince would come.

The first year of being divorced turned into the second, and then in the second year an editor said, “We’re giving you your big chance” and assigned her a cover story in New York City. And “big chance” it turned out to be. For it was at a fancy restaurant where she attempted to order a French wine that she unexpectedly met a wonderful man - a musical composer named Ben Taylor – who, from the next table, assisted in her selection. It was love at first sight, but Libby lived in Cape Cod, so that meant only one thing….a long-distance romance.

As any fair maiden should be courted, Ben courted Libby. The bouquets and chocolates began arriving daily on her doorstep. Libby flew to meet Ben and Ben flew to meet Libby as the absences made their hearts grow fonder. They cavorted in hotel rooms during his business trips, ordered room service, and drank fine French champagne, laughing and breathless and fondling each other as though nothing in the world could
come between them except distance. When they were apart, they would count the days, keeping each other in their thoughts. Over and over she could hear Ben say, “I think of you every 1.2 seconds.”

The handsome Ben Taylor was sophisticated and successful, part of the inner circles of New York’s literati. He could speak several languages, and order Chateau Lafite-Rothschild without mumbling. He could probably even slay dragons, though that talent remained untested. Yes, he was indeed her Prince Charming.

But there was something else. Handsome Prince Ben was a dad. Unlike Libby, whose daughters were now teenagers, Prince Ben had twin toddler boys. Libby had yet to meet them, though Ben was proud to exhibit their existence in wallet-photo size. Safe under plastic lamination, the children melted her heart. Such precious-looking little sweeties. Nobody warned Libby that wallet pictures can speak a thousand false words. Perfectly polished in their cobalt-blue-matching-cable-knit-sweaters-with-button-down Oxford-shirts - their polo mallets held upright - what trouble could they possibly be?

Exhaling happily and separated by multiple state borders, Libby didn’t think about it. Instead, she pondered the frequent flier miles they were accumulating in their haste to fall once again into each other’s arms.

By the third year, the long distance had taken its toll. Libby’s time had come. After twenty-one years of raising children she had earned a big dose of happiness. But beyond that, she no longer felt the guilt of motherhood – let alone the shortcomings. Libby knew she had done the best she could. With her oldest daughter, Scarlett, graduating cum laude, from college and the younger, Madeline, dying to attend a university in New York, it seemed only logical that the ocean mouse of Cape Cod should
consider relocating to the city to be with Prince Ben. Madeline, in fact, adored Ben, so Libby graciously accepted the Prince’s offer. He sent the Royal Movers to pack her up. Amidst trumpet fanfare and the mysterious disappearance of various small valuables, they brought her many boxes to the Big City.

It was their first night in New York. Sitting on a cardboard box and placing his take-out chop sticks to one side, Prince Ben asked Princess Libby, “O fair maiden, will you be mine forever?”

“Yes, I will be yours forever!’ exclaimed Libby, as she fell sobbing with joy into his big strong arms.

In an instant, Ben placed the engagement ring on her finger. She stared at the clarity, color and cut of the flawless Harry Winston diamond as it sparkled up high in her face and then said, “No.” Ben was taken aback. Hadn’t she read the fairy-tale hand-book? Libby shrugged her shoulders, removed the ring, placed it in his palm and said, “I’ll happily marry you, but can we sell the diamond and donate the jewelry money to charity?” Ben said, “Yes,” kissed her hard, pulled her to the floor where they made wild love and
they both lived happily ever after.

“Happily ever after my
ass!
” But my editors would stab me to death with red pencils if I actually wrote that. So “Happily ever after” it is. My fingers move frantically over the typewriter keys. Like a marathon runner approaching the yellow ribbon, I crash through to my two favorite little words in the English language: “The End.”

“Yes!” I pump my arms overhead and then tip back in my swivel chair, massaging the back of my neck before reaching for the comfort of my long-gone-cold Earl Grey tea, the bag label still swinging on the side of the cup. Just as my lips hit its ceramic rim, I’m startled by a tapping on the glass pane outside my office. It’s a window washer. He resembles that coffee guy, Juan Valdez - but without the coffee, and without the mule for that matter. He’s smiling in at me, suspended on his scaffolding, gliding his squeegee across the glass with insinuating strokes.

My orange tabby cat, Brad - so named because he’s the Brad Pitt of gorgeous male felines - presses his nose against the window in an effort to spread pheromones. The cleaner pretends to tickle Brad, who behaves as though he can
feel
it. Window Washing Man lifts his hands to the sky to motion “nice day, eh?” before locking my eyes like a game show host awaiting my million-dollar response.

But he’s already lost me - my attention wanders off to a potential article brewing in the back of my mind…

Until you’ve lived in a city like New York you’ve probably never hired a window washer. Back on Cape Cod I just cleaned the windows myself, folding down the double-hung pane as I dangled from the ledge above the front yard, one story up. Neighbors would bike by, gathering in a crowd to watch as I suspended like an acrobat in Barnum & Baileys Circus. One day I contorted myself enough to wind up at a chiropractor’s office, after being rescued by my neighbor. “I missed a spot!” I screamed as she lowered me into her backseat. “C’mon! Look at those streaks!”

How come
this
guy doesn’t have streaks, I think, gazing out at Juan Valdez as he makes perverted Marcel Marceau mating gestures with his fingers. Lovely. I’ll bet he mimes that to all the girls. But my annoyance inspires me to turn back to my keyboard to change a few lines on that article…

“Well, they didn’t
quite
live happily ever after…..Insert the sound of
SCRREEEEEEEEECHING
brakes. Because I don’t remember the fairy tale handbook including two small twins running their chocolate-covered fingers across my white suede couch.”

It was about a year ago that I told my cousin Godfrey, the celebrity chef, “I
wish
that my boyfriend, Ben and I could just live together. We’d be so happy.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” he said, while mixing a batch of the steak tartare that made him famous. I knew he had a point. I’ve won the Grand Prize in Ben. But now
I’m a mom for the second time, only the kids aren’t mine. Ben and I had gone from broken families to a blended family. Nobody said it was going to be easy…

I had had my daughters way too young - raising them for what seemed like my entire life. The irony is that Ben was ten years
older
than me but has
younger
kids, and I was ten years
younger
than he but have
grown
kids. Considering our ages, his kids should be my kids and mine, his. Of course the truth is they aren’t technically Ben’s kids at all. He had married Rosemary later in life, and adopted the two twin boys she’d had from a previous marriage to an eccentric Parisian. The boys’ biological father, Jean- Francois, had split but had left her with the twins – Jean-Baptiste and Jean-Christoph. Wonder where Jean-Francois is now? Probably in some French café sipping wine, smoking endless unfiltered cigarettes, surrounding himself with beautiful young starlets in bandage dresses, the kind that require the girl to stand stick still and hold her breath or a breast might pop out. Wonder if he wants to meet for a martini? Compare notes? I’d be willing to go to Paris for Happy Hour…

The window washer taps to get my attention as he lowers his scaffolding to eye-level. I choose to ignore him before realizing he’s warning me about something else. And as I come to, I hear that something else outside of my office door.

Growing faster than a freshly-watered Chia pet, spreading more rapidly than poison ivy, more powerful than a loco-motive, it’s a plane, it’s a bird it’s….

Jean-Baptiste… rounding the corner straight toward my desk, causing me to retract in my seat the way an audience patron might from some exploding creature in a
bad B movie. As he charges toward me like a bulldozer, my teacup goes flying across my keyboard and into my lap.

“Shit, shit, shit!” I scream, as its cold contents find a home on my bare thighs in cut-off shorts. I jump around dabbing at my wet crotch like an Indian tribal leader in a rain dance. “Shit! Shit!”

“My mommy says you’re not supposed to
swear
,” says Jean-Baptiste.

As I pat at my crotch with tissues from the nearby box, the window washer raises an interested brow. He lifts his foot to move in closer but instead, moves his foot into his steel bucket. He begins to topple, grabbing the building’s façade for dear life, his eyes widen as he falls backwards. Good thing Ben and I live on the first floor.

“Libby,” Jean-Baptise sing-songs, “It’s just, just, just that…um, just…”

“Honey, remember we talked about gathering your thoughts before you speak in order to help you from stuttering?”

He nods. I go back to my keyboard as he stands there “gathering.”

“Okay, Libby,” Jean-Baptiste sing-songs. “I, um, um, I um, gathered my thoughts…”

“Good,” I say spinning my desk chair his way and giving him my undivided attention.

“It’s just that it’s been a long time and he’s still not hot.”

“Who’s not hot?”

“Ohhhhhhhh,” he says exhaling deeply as though he’s just dropped off a ton of stone at the top of Acropolis. “I just want to know how long do we sunbathe a cat? We don’t want him to burn and then peel.”

Leaping from my chair I dash to the kitchen to find the other twin, Jean-Christoph standing at the counter. His devil eyes narrow at the microwave door waiting for it to ‘ding.’ My heart falls to my bottomless pit of what was once called a stomach. I press the release button and Brad comes storming out, shaking his body and meowing, his fur a bit electrified. He’s slightly tipsy in his step before gaining his composure and bolting from the counter to the next room.

“Are you out of your minds?” I say to the twins staring up at me.

Jean-Christophe head butts Jean-Baptiste and the two fall to the kitchen floor wrestling, biting and clawing like a scene from Animal Planet. Imagine that British narrator with his exaggerated
enunciation:
“And
now
the cougar fights the jaguar over the almost dead
cat.
It’s Jean-Baptiste who wins this round by
poking
his brother straight-away in the eye
socket
!”

“Owwwww!” screams Jean-Christophe at the top of his lungs, “That hurts!”

“It’s not supposed to hurt,” says Jean-Baptiste, poking him in the other eye. “It’s supposed to
kill
you!”

“No, boys!”I call out. “Stop! I said stop that biting!”

“I’m
not
Jean-Christophe,” he explains. “I’m Jean-Baptiste!”

I move to the window and twist the lever on the blinds, blocking the view of our window washer who has since climbed back on board. Then, dropping to the floor, I take the child’s arm with one hand, using my other hand to cover his snapping mouth. Now he’s biting my hand. I retrieve it instantly, shaking my fang-marked fingers into the air.

“Ouch,” I say, “That
does
hurt!” I examine the boy’s face. - I’ll be a monkey’s
uncle - it
is
Jean-Baptiste! So easy to confuse the twins except for the beauty mark on his left cheek.

“Promise me you’ll stop, honey,” I say.

He nods, his eyes looking up at me as though he’s been enlightened. I trust him. I smile. I let go. Whereupon Jean-Baptiste digs his teeth into his brother’s arm, this time drawing blood. I’m stunned. The little liar! Now I’m down on my knees using my arm to separate them like some hockey referee on the rink.