Plan C (6 page)

Tired of walking on egg shells as the yolks might stain the oriental runner - Bebe agreed to Henry’s demand for a trial separation. Within days Henry moved to his Florida yacht, leaving Bebe the house and the business of selling it. “I don’t understand, Libby,” she said to me as she packed up her fine bone china. “I’ve done nothing wrong, except to love him. But he’s so angry at the world. He’s so
angry
at me.”

With her lottery winnings that had been tucked away and since gained a lot of interest during her marriage to Henry, Bebe moved to New York City where she rented a Penthouse just off Park Avenue. It had a magnificent view of Central Park though in today’s chic world of Manhattan everybody knows that
nobody
rents on the sterile upper east side of town. The place to be is downtown. But I wasn’t going to tell Bebe that. She fit into the quiet dog-walking-flagship-shopping arena, figuring it would be a temporary oasis until Henry came to his senses. It was at about the same time that I moved to New
York and moved in with Ben in the neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen. It’s been over two years now, and Henry still hasn’t come to his senses.

Until you’ve lived in New York, and crossed Fifth Avenue into Central Park, you wouldn’t know that this city has everything you could
wish
for; everything you could ever need
,
and also everything you
don’t
need. Like a polar bear. His black eyes meet mine from behind his barricade in the middle of the Central Park Zoo. I can relate to the claw-hold he applies to that ice block he’s on. He thinks it will be there forever. Where is my ice block? What can I hold onto? Or is my world just melting away….

Tossing my woolen wrap around my shoulder, autumn makes me feel incubated and safe, unlike springtime which leaves me feeling as exposed as a mannequin in some two-for-one thong sale at Victoria’s Secret. Autumn is my favorite season, though the four o’clock sun is playing peek-a-boo through the gold tipped branches signifying imminent nightfall. A cool chill passes under my skirt, wrapping around my kneecaps and leaving goose bumps. If this were Cape Cod, the setting sun would cast purple shadows over the wild beach plums and dune grasses beckoning the attention of that last lone swimmer to come back in the water. The sandbars would be smaller now, and the
seagulls out in full force, looking for food left over from summer’s beach blanket picnics. But this isn’t Cape Cod…

Picking up my stride on the west side of the Park, I fantasize that I’m walking through the Luxembourg Gardens of Paris. I’ve brainwashed myself and every friend in my life to believe that when I’m sixty-five I’ll buy a small Pied-a-terre there. I was so sure of this decision that I began studying the history of France again, even brushing up on my French through the language CDs that I’ve now stored on my iPod Favorites List for the “just in case.”

Wrapping the cord around my iPod, I feel accomplished, having just completed another chapter. I can now ask directions, converse about the weather, find a bathroom, or – the most important of all - order a glass of red wine. “Je voudrais de vin rouge, s’il vous plait.”

Someone once said, “I love a society where it’s an acceptable occupation to sit in a café all day and drink.” I’m on lesson seventeen of my French CDs, year four, disk two, with about five years to go. I should be fluent long before I’m fifty, let alone sixty-five, which leaves me plenty of time for café-sitting and wine-sipping.

A group of children in backpacks pass a street bum sprawled shamelessly on a bench. Upon closer inspection I can see it’s a woman. A bag lady! A sign - “Will dance for food” rests on her chest. The children’s teacher tells them not to stare, and suddenly I recall words that Kitty’s always saying to me: “Don’t call me when you’re a bag lady in twenty years.” Could be me. On this very bench.

Tucking a five-dollar bill under her arm, I wonder what kind of dance she’ll do for money? Austrian Waltz? Moonwalk? Rapper’s delight? Foxtrot?

A little girl with brown hair in pigtails catches me staring down at her. I run a finger under her chin, and then I’m off, glancing at my watch. A deep longing churns in my chest for the cozy familiarity of my daughters coming up the driveway to tell me about their first day of school. The empty nest pangs stab at my heart again - two pangs in one day but who’s counting? Maybe the freedom of the empty nest isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Maybe I do miss motherhood and those school bus stop mornings with lunches being made at the kitchen counter. It was Madeline’s last day of school in her senior year that she placed her hand on my shoulder at the kitchen counter and declared, “Hey mom, this is the last school lunch you’ll
ever
make.” It hadn’t hit me then. But it’s hitting me now...

So I allow my mind to shift gears to Bebe. Making the leap from pet to child is like making the leap from houseplant to pet. Bebe gets that, right? At age forty Bebe has longed for a child more than any twenty-year old but she still has to realize that a child is not an accessory from Saks Fifth Avenue.

It’s a funny thing about kids…Step kids are the ones we
didn’t
ask for, adopted kids people
do
ask for, but then that means somebody else
didn’t
ask for them. And naturally conceived kids – even they can be an accident. How did the business of children suddenly get so complicated?

Older friends tell me that I’ll worry about my kids until the day I die. And then when I have grandchildren, I’ll worry about them, too. And even though all kids at one time or another are something of a nuisance, our biggest fear in our lifetime the death of our child. Ironically the same child we’d often like to kill for bad behavior.

A woman bumps into me as she passes by me on her cell phone: “What if it rains?” she asks. “Do we have a plan B?” I chuckle at her choice of words. And I’m way ahead of her.

Before long I arrive at the dog run and lift the little latch. It’s an enclosed area for doggies only. Sort of a Club Med where one pooch checks out another.

Dodging the frisky tongue-wagging puppies and rudely drooling hounds, I find the only empty bench near a mud patch created by doggie digging. As I get comfortable, a dachshund races around my ankles, sniffing at the soles of my soles. Made in China.

The Dachshund’s owner isn’t the least bit concerned that her dog might be annoying. That’s because most dachshunds seem to be owned by rich old ladies who are certain that just as they own their expensive Park Avenue penthouses, their dachshund’s
own
the doggie park. I’m more of a cat person, but dogs have always fascinated me. The twins who already own everything money can buy have been pushing Ben for a dog - which would in turn push
me
over the edge or at the very least serve Ben his walking papers.

Victor Hugo once said, “Forty is the old age of youth. Fifty is the youth of old age.” When they say life’s too short, they ain’t kidding. I have a time table, and it’s a scary one; in dog years I’d already be long gone. If I only live to be as old as my mom did when she died then I have less than twenty-five years left, which meant I can toss the Paris idea farther than the dachshund’s owner just tossed that bone.

I drop my face into my hands, resting my elbows on my knees. If I leave Ben, will another man comes along to grow old with? This fairy tale doesn’t happen twice in a
lifetime. Does it? Aren’t I lucky it happened once? You really do have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find the perfect Prince….

And just then a big Rottweiler comes over and laps me across the face with his sloppy tongue. I wouldn’t mind except I had just watched him sniff a Shih-Tzu’s butt, which in turn gave the Shih-Tzu’s owner a complete meltdown.

The way animals and people behave in New York is a far cry from Cape Cod. I can’t imagine how tough it is to be a dog here. No summer porch or backyards. No mailmen to terrorize at the front door. No fire hydrants on secluded suburban corners. When it comes to doing your ‘business,’ you have to perform in front of hundreds of people, as the Rottweiler is now proving while staring at me.

Being a dog in New York means you wait all day by the front door of your shoe-box apartment, panting for the sound of the key in the lock, signifying that your owner, or the dog walker, has arrived. With tongue hanging, tail wagging and that you-made-me-wait-all-day-and-I-held-it-look, you happily let the newly arrived human leash you up for today’s adventure.

A tanned, toned and shirtless guy runs by me, almost stepping on my toes. I prepare to shoot him a dirty look but he’s already mouthing the words “sorry” before flashing a killer grin. I flutter my eyelashes back at him, my big toothy smile working its magic as he performs his perfect oh-golly-shucks move by whisking his bleached bangs off his forehead.

“Cute dog,” I call out, insinuating it’s
him
who’s hot. A Labrador retriever is a real athletic dog owned by a real athletic guy, the kind who’s forever dragging surfboards, rollerblades and climbing gear from the roof rack of his Land Rover. Just now
that very guy is right here in front of me, tossing a Frisbee and calling, “Go-get-it-Bud!” They’re both wearing bandanas. The cute guy and “Go-Get-It-Bud!”

And then I see her – my friend Bebe – waving from across the street as she sprints with “Millie,” her English Springer Spaniel. She whisks through the gate and is at my bench in seconds, dodging dog mess and mud holes in a way that appears impossible by scientific measure.

Bebe pecks my lips hard before plopping down breathless, dropping the leash so that Millie can run with the dogs. Millie goes for Bud. Can you blame her?

“Hey, Lib, sorry I’m late. But I had to take the stairs because the elevator is broken. Again.” She sits forward and flips over her calf to examine the bottom of her shoe for doggie poop. Red soles. Louboutins. I grin.

“Having a rough day?” asks Bebe patting my hand, her 200-watt blue eyes penetrating mine. If “
Gone with the Wind’
s” Miss Melanie were reincarnated, surely she was sitting here next to me. Not a vicious bone in her body.

“Oh Bebe, I’m a mess. When it comes to Ben’s kids I feel like I’m fighting the war while he’s sipping champagne in the trenches.”

“Oh, dear, dear, dear,” she says, patting my hand harder. “It can’t be that bad. Surely they’re darling little boys. I wish I had a child.”

“Well…”

“And how blessed are you to have your health and the man you love.”

“Yes, but….”

“And you’re healthy again, Libby.”

“I know, it’s just that….”

Don’t I know it,” she says giving my hand one last pat and looking at me with that I-saw-you-after-surgery look. Somehow Bebe has deflated me in the most positive way. Bebe is the total opposite of Kitty. They make for a nice balance. And for three Libra women, balance is everything. Bebe sees the glass half full, Kitty sees it half empty, and me, I don’t care how you see the glass, so long as it contains a fine Cabernet. Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy a great bottle of wine.

“You’re happy, right, Libby?”

“If by happy you mean trapped with no means of escape….then sure, I’m happy.”

“Good. Now are you ready for this?” says Bebe, as though we’re going to hold hands and jump into a crashing wave. Her eyes begin to fill with an ocean full of tears as she hits the button on her cell phone and hands it to me. I have a feeling I already know what the voice mail is going to say. The tears are contagious, suddenly waterworks. Eight years of waiting for this one damn stinking message:

“Bebe? Good news. It’s Katrina from the overseas agency. I think we found you a baby…”

I drop the phone to my side and pull her in for a long hug. We hold onto each other for a long time, laughing and crying as though from our wrecked ship we can finally see the Coast Guard approaching, carrying a life preserver that says, “Live!”

Until you’ve lived in New York, you haven’t really experienced the phenomenon known as the yellow cab. In other cities, you have options. Like driving. Other cities even have parking garages that don’t cost $25 for fifteen minutes. Imagine the possibilities.

When you move to the Big Apple, the first thing to say goodbye to is your car. Which means, I suppose, I could walk to lunch. But I never walked nineteen blocks to any destination in the suburbs in my life, so why start now. And besides, walking just forms blisters on top of last week’s blisters because nobody wears flip flops to lunch meetings here. Back home in Cape Cod we wear flips flops to the clam shack. Come to think of it, there aren’t any clam shacks in New York, either.

I can’t seem to get used to stiletto heels – and it’s even harder balancing myself as taxis fly by at record speed, refusing to stop. It took me a while to figure out that a light on top that reads “on/off duty” means a completed shift; no light at all means they have somebody else in the taxi, but a light on in the center means they will pick you up.

Finally, I can lower my arm as a cab slams on his brakes barely millimeters from my burgundy-painted tootsies. I hop in, slide across the smelly, torn vinyl and lean
toward the driver - “72
^nd
and Lex please” - and then am slammed back against my seat as he violently accelerates. Glancing around the interior, I clutch my purse closer to my side. Don’t expect the taxi to be, um, sanitary. The backseat is usually coated in a substance best described as God-knows-who-was-sitting-here-before-you-or-worse-what-they-were-doing.

I learned something else the hard way last week. Do not under any circumstances pick up the newspapers on the floor! Those are there to absorb wet shoes from rain. Not to read. I often turn to my driver for entertainment, but he’s either frighteningly outgoing or completely hostile. He speaks so little English that it rarely matters anyway. Occasionally a man named Hossain or Muhammad will offer a geography lesson on “the world’s smallest country” – his. Sometimes, Francis O’Laughlin from Queens will regale you with tales of his hard-scrabble childhood and how he almost became a Priest.