Plan C (3 page)

“Can’t you two just get along?” I demand; desperation in my voice. They drop their hands to their sides, stop and stare up at me like orphans waiting for a porridge refill.

I look at each of them and exhale deeply. “Look, boys, I have to work. Okay? I have what they call ‘a deadline.’ Do you know what that means?” They shake their heads so I squat down to their level, one hand placed gently on each of their shoulders. “It means that I have to have the work done by a certain time. Like when you have a deadline to make the school bus, or a play date.”

They nod.

“So,” I continue, “After I read through my assignment, and after we talk about why we can’t harm God’s precious creatures by putting them in the micorwave, I promise with all my heart I’ll take you out for ice cream. Any flavor you want.”

“No. I
hate
ice cream!” says Jean-Christophe.

“We only eat gelato,” say Jean-Baptiste.

“And only in Milan with
Mom-mee,
” says Jean-Christophe.

“Milan,” I say. “Of course. Lovely.”

“I hate you, booger face,” says Jean-Christophe grabbing at his brother’s nose. The two of them are back at it again. “I hate you! I hate you!”

And I hate that you get to go to Italy. I hate that you’ve had gelato. I’ve never even
tried
gelato. What exactly
is
gelato? But I don’t say that. Instead I’m reminded by the good angel on my right shoulder that I must maintain being the sweet step-mother who defies years of fairy-tale stereotypes. So I opt for, “Okay, the heck with ice cream. How about popcorn and a movie? Sound good?” I’m hopeful.

But they’re ignoring me. Now Jean-Baptiste goes for Jean-Christophe’s belt, tugging it away from his waistline and grabbing down inside of his pants for a shiny blue device that’s poking out of his zipper. “See! It’s
my
ipod! Right there! Told ya!” says Jean-Baptiste pulling his brother’s unruly curls with his left hand and shoving his right hand deeper inside his brother’s pants to create a wedgie.

“No, it’s mine!” screams Jean-Christophe, pulling his brother’s hand out.

“You have an ipod?” I ask, snapping up the device. “But you’re only seven.”

“I have
two
iPods!” he declares with a hateful tone. “A blue one, a red one and now mommy is buying me a green one next week, so there.”

“Then you should donate one to the poor,” I say, carefully wrapping the cord around the blue iPod and placing it on my desk.

“Hey that’s my iPod, lady!” says Jean-Christophe grabbing at my arm.

“Excuse me?” I say.

You give it back to me or I’m calling the police!” says Jean-Baptiste.

“What?” I’m completely stunned. Not sure whether to laugh or cry or wash his mouth out with Ivory soap.

“Give it back to me or I’m calling the police and have you arrested!” he repeats.

I stare down at his evil dark eyes beaming up at me for the Star Wars challenge. “Oh really?” I say. “Well, I’ll let you call the police, little man, but first you’re both in the corner for a time out while I finish my article. I’m on deadline.”

“We don’t do time outs.”

“I bet you don’t,” I say.

Just then, their father, Ben, enters, hands on hips He stares me down. “What did you do to them?”

“What did
I
do to
them
?” I ask. “Are you kidding me, Ben?”

They dash to his side, clinging like flies to a screen.

“Daddy, she’s being mean,” says Jean-Baptiste.

“Okay, you know what?” I say. “
You
take them. I was supposed to hit the send button on my computer ten minutes ago.”

I escort them all out of my office door, easier said then done, dodging the hundred and fifty action figurines strewn across my floor - enough to entertain a village in Bosnia; enough to support an
entire
cancer wing full of children; enough to fund our nation’s financial bailout- and still send every hard working American on vacation.

Ben is out the door with both boys but looks back, “I’m going to take them out for lunch, to a movie, to the park, and then…”

I close the door before he can finish his thought. Then I fall back against it as my eyes tear up, my hand planted on the inside of the handle separating my world from theirs, as though I’m looking through the wrong end of a telescope and they’re fifty miles away.

And through the telescope I can see Ben’s pre-married life. The ski slopes in Aspen, the August trips to Italy – apparently eating gelato - the five star hotels and the Michelin starred restaurants. And never once having to pull a plug on the monitor of a dying Grandmother. Never once spreading his mother’s ashes on the shore - twisting the tin container’s top as you flung them into the wind and then trying to remain solemn; caught between the bittersweet tears and the granular crunch as they blew back in your tear-stained face.

This was not the life I had signed up for. I was finding out the hard way – like running your fingers along the blade grass at the beach – that life with Ben was going to be full of surprise paper cuts. I could use one of my Grandma’s ethnic remedies about now. “If you want to make a bad burn or poison ivy go away, squat down, pee on a cloth, add a little witch hazel and dab with it until…”

Rising up from the floor, my desk clock reminds me I now have seven minutes until my deadline. Life always seemed to be a ticking clock of deadlines. I move to my daughters’ high school and college graduation photos lining my fireplace. We had survived the test of time, we three women, but I had to have a Teflon heart to do it. Their days of little girl tea parties and frilly ankle socks were a lifetime away, though I clearly remember a specific night - a birthday sleepover with classmates, when I watched them evolve into teenagers. Such bizarre creatures at the age of fourteen - their brains exploding with ideas, so much of it devoted to the pursuit of silliness. They’re like fizzing electric wires, spurting energy but not hooked up to anything.

But now my girls were grown and had moved into respectable lives. They were concerned with the environment, creating universal peace, saving all the whales from extinction, and most of all, fighting for the legalization of marijuana.

I twist the lever on the blind and find that my window washer has left his bucket on the ledge. Staring down into its contents - the water blacker than Donna Karan’s autumn line - I can almost see a reflection of the person I once knew; a person who was supposed to be enjoying her empty-nest time. And then I look up. The window washer is back, staring in at me.

I mouth the words, “Why am I being tarred and feathered by stepkids?”

The washer shrugs. “I no speak-o English.”

“And I don’t speak Spanish,” I mouth back, plopping back down in my chair at my wet desk.

My window washer returns to his job and I return to my keyboard, which is now sticking from the tea spilled between the “R” and “U” keys. Damn it. Finally, after a lot of furious pushing, the keys begin to soften and finally move again. I breathe a sigh of relief and resume….

“As a stepparent do you often feel unappreciated, alone, and resentful? There’s little fulfillment in being a stepmother, but maybe there’s a farmer’s market nearby that sells poison apples….”

I remember a certain wintry morning many years ago. It followed the let’s-get-through-the-holidays-for-the-sake-of-the-kids phoniness, the weeks of my husband and I arguing, sometimes in front of the children, mostly after they went to bed. After more than a decade of “wedded bliss,” it was very clear the marriage was over. I could take the emotional torture no more. And now the moment was here: how would my husband move his clothes out of our walk-in closet without our daughters actually seeing him do it?

One day and a half-empty closet later, I moved my shoes to what had always been his side. As I did, the closet walls echoed and so did my head, with my fears – financial and emotional. We would be a household of three now, not four.

Surprisingly, I found comfort where I least expected it: from my daughters, Scarlett, age 14, and Madeline, age 9. It began that night in a lonely bed, where I experienced for the first time the cold silence from his side of the sheets. At 11 p.m., my door flew open. There stood my two beaming daughters. “I thought you two were asleep!” I sputtered. The girls didn’t answer but instead climbed up on the quilt. Brandishing a boom box, Scarlett said, “Mom, this is important. Do you think ’NSync or Backstreet Boys are better singers?” She pressed a button, and suddenly Justin
Timberlake was belting out a tune. Madeline began flopping around the mattress. Lots of giggles and pillow slamming ensued.

My lonely first night simply…wasn’t.

Had they come to me to ease their own sense of loss? Could they have been more aware of mine than I knew? Or did some instinct tell them that in making me feel better, they would soothe themselves as well?

Gradually I began to see that the roadmap to this new, uncharted life lay in my daughters’ faces. When Madeline studied my eyes while licking the cookie-dough spoon and asked with a crumpled jaw, “Mommy, you won’t ever leave me, will you?” a new kind of direction was born in me.

I learned that being “us girls” alone didn’t only mean we had lost something. We had gained something, too: independence. In the car Scarlett, pushing the radio buttons, back and forth, landed on the theme song from the “Charlie’s Angels” movie: “All you women, independent, throw your hands up for me!” She sang along with it, then she turned to me and said, “Hey, Mom, that’s you. Independent,” which prompted Madeline to ask, “What does independent mean?”

Years later I watched Scarlett take a clue from me and she grew up to be independent, too.

The day Scarlett graduated college it was pouring rain. As we splashed through the mud after the ceremony, she flung her arms around my neck and said, “You are the best mom a girl could ask for.” And in learning that, I had gained a lot more than a little extra closet space…

Quick! Write that all down. I stumble over my half-clothed self moving to my dresser to find a piece of paper and a pen. Great article for later…“How to Find Comfort in A Divorce from the Place You Least Expect It: Your Children…”

But then, startled by a ringing telephone, I lose the thought as fast as it arrived. I trip over my shoes and then the nightstand to get to it. I pick up. “Hello?”

“Took you long enough to answer the damn phone,” says an over-demanding voice on the other end of the receiver.

“Kitty?” I say, “I have to call you back.” I juggle the phone while trying to snap on my bra. “Five minutes, I promise. Don’t go anywhere. Five minutes…”

“But…”

But I’ve hung up. And my bedroom door handle begins moving. If I’m not finished dressing by the time the door flies open, I know the newspaper headline will read: “Twins Die of Fright upon Viewing Stepmother’s Fat Ass!”

The door handle comes to life, twisting and turning, the giggles on the other side of the door signifying determination more than amusement.

“Just a minute!” I scream out, “Do you mind? I’m getting dressed.”

Then everything goes silent. Then the sound of the lock being picked. I panic. It’s a race against time. I yank, pull and strain to shove my thunder thighs into the black fabric like sausage into a casing, all the while reminding myself that Beyonce, J Lo and Kim Kardashian were just voted America’s sexiest butts. I always
knew
one day fat asses would be in style.

Success at last, as I lower my black woolen skirt, smoothing it over my belly which is now tightly contained in a pair of black Spanx. The door flies open. The twins stare up at me, their look of mischief turning to disappointment. I slip a foot into my black stiletto. “Boys, that’s not very nice,” I say. “When somebody is trying to get dressed you have to give them privacy.”

Jean-Christophe narrows his eyes at me. “I told my brother he’s not supposed to use markers in the house.”

“What markers?” I ask. “Where?”

Jean-Christophe produces the evidence. A black Sharpie.

Truth is… even if Jean-Baptiste had covered all the walls with graffiti, I couldn’t be happier at this moment as my eyes traverse my full-length image in the mirror. An instant ten-pound-loss. God, I love the person who invented Spanx. Had to be a woman.

And then I glance at the clock. “Shit! I’m so late,” I blurt.

“You’re not supposed to swear,” says Jean-Baptiste.

I scoot around him, grab my purse, and notice the Sharpie mustaches drawn on the glass of all my relatives’ photos. Not that my Armenian grandmother didn’t have a moustache already….

“Oh my!” I say. “What did you do?”

What did you do?” he imitates me.

“Was it you?”

“Was it you?” he mimics.

“Or your brother?”

“Or your brother?” he mimics again.

The phone rings. I shoo Jean-Baptiste away to grab the receiver.

My annoyance is apparent in my “hello.”

“Libby?” says Kitty, “You said five minutes.”

“I’m sorry. It’s only been like four…”

“Oh, who’s counting,” says Kitty, anxious to dive in. “Especially when this is a matter of life and death…”

I stop in my tracks, frozen in fear. “Oh God! What’s happened?”

“It’s Bebe,” says Kitty. “Wasn’t it enough? First her bullet ridden husband and now some mobster’s baby in Russia!!”

“Kitty, calm down,” I say struggling to clasp my necklace. “I’m meeting Bebe in the park after work. I’ll talk to her then.”

“Well you better wear a bullet proof vest!”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”

“Fine,” says Kitty, switching registers. “But, I found him…”

“Found
him
who?” I say, moving to my purse and keys.

“His name is Helmut. Known for his paintings, but now he’s a sculptor. He’s unveiling the first Phallic Holograms at my gallery.”

“As in
penis
art? Damn!”

“Don’t be sarcastic. They’re not mere penises! They’re
Phallic
Holograms. He’s going to be
huge
!”

“Maybe he already is,” I chuckle.

“I’m being serious.” says Kitty.