“Stop smirking. What the hell is going on?” I demand. “The officer outside told us you were called the Twin Hitters. The Twin Hitters? You and Molly said you were going to a party at Heather’s and that her parents were chaperoning. How did the two of you end up here with … him?”
“We were at Heather’s,” Paige says righteously.
“And her parents were chaperoning. Although they spent the entire night upstairs,” Molly admits. She looks at Brandon and starts to giggle. “Whatever happens, Mom, it was worth it.”
“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. My father is going to be here any minute,” Brandon boasts, pulling back the ice bag to reveal his very purple-black eye. “You shitheads are going to be locked up for the rest of your lives.”
Heather’s parents and a gaggle of agitated teenage girls traipse into the room along with a woman wearing ironed Levi’s and a white button-down shirt. We’ve always tried to give the girls the best of everything—orthodontists, tennis coaches, the top pre-PSAT tutors—but frankly, I never expected to be adding “Denise Rodriguez, social worker” to the list. Everybody starts talking all at once and Denise Rodriguez tugs at a red-and-yellow lanyard around her neck, blowing long and hard on a silver whistle. “One at a time, people. Let’s hear it. You first,” she says, pointing at Paige.
“Well, Brandon is my lab partner and he liked me but then he took my sister out to lunch even though it didn’t really mean anything and we got into this huge competition,” Paige says without taking a breath.
“Brandon was dating me first!” a girl in a silvery minidress gripes.
“He liked me best!” complains another, who I recognize as the party giver, Heather.
“When I asked Brandon why he was dating more than one of us he told me that all the other girls were just hamburger and I was the steak,” a girl in a pink leopard headband reports.
I can’t help thinking that’s it been fifty years since we women burned our bras and declared ourselves equal and yet some boys still look at a girl and all they see is a piece of meat.
Paige steps up to the front of the room and shakes her fist in the air. “Girls were not put on this earth to be boy toys!” she shouts to a rally of cheers. Then she turns toward me. “Mom, that same night, right after you caught Brandon kissing Molly, he met me in the back of the school gym and he was kissing me. Except he told me he wasn’t dating anyone else anymore and I didn’t know he was double-dipping until the next day.”
“Yeah, and then we found out that he was making out with everybody else in this room,” Heather says petulantly, stomping her stiletto into the police station’s gummy linoleum floor.
“Well, not everyone.” Heather’s mother chuckles uncomfortably.
“I mean all of the young girls.” Heather sighs.
“Don’t sass your mother,” Denise Rodriguez says. “Mrs. Hemmings, where were you when the assault took place?”
“In my bathroom, giving myself a home peel. Big mistake,” she says, fingering her lightly blistered cheek. “But Heather said it would be uncool for us to come downstairs.”
“Uncool is exactly what parents of teenagers are supposed to be,” Denise Rodriguez says, furiously entering notes into her case file. “Okay, can somebody cut to the chase and tell me how all of this happened?”
Molly steps forward and raises her hand. “We decided to teach Brandon a lesson. When he got to the party we acted all sweet and told him to wait for us in the den. We pretended like it was going to be something sexy. Then we came in and surrounded the little creeper and locked our arms in a circle so he couldn’t leave. We told him we’d wised up, that we’d made a pact and nobody was going to date him anymore. Ever again.”
“We took back the power!” the girl in the silvery minidress cries.
“It was going really well until Brandon decided he wasn’t going to listen anymore and when we wouldn’t let him out of the circle, he started shoving himself against our bodies,” says Paige. “I mean he purposely shoved his shoulder against Kristin’s boob. That’s when I let him have it and punched him in the eye.”
“I socked him, too!” squeals Molly.
“Girls, we applaud your politics, just not your methods. Violence is never the answer. We’ll talk about this more at home,” I say firmly. “But Ms. Rodriguez, can you tell me how this whole thing ended up at the police station? Kids have fights every day. I don’t mean to make light of it, but I’m not sure how it got so blown out of proportion, either.”
“My father’s the D.A.,” the oh-so-full-of-himself Brandon says, jumping up from his chair. “I called the police commissioner’s office and told them to come over and arrest everybody. You can’t just hit someone from my family and expect to get away with it.”
As if on cue, a man with steely blue eyes and a strong jaw swaggers into the room.
I’d never connected him to Brandon before, though he’s immediately recognizable from his frequent pictures in the newspaper.
“Sit down!” Colin Marsh grunts to his son. Then he pastes a politician’s smile on his face and makes a point to shake each and every one of our hands. “Colin Marsh, Colin Marsh, Colin Marsh,” he repeats so we remember who he is when it’s time to pull the voting lever.
Heather’s mother fawns over Colin Marsh and says that she’d love to throw him a fund-raiser. I’d love to throw him a left hook—the guy’s an obsequious phony and while I’d never in a million years admit this to the girls, I get why it was satisfying to deck his son. As the rest of us start yammering again, the no-nonsense Denise Rodriguez pulls the D.A. aside to make her assessment. After a few minutes, two reassuring phrases rise up from across the room. “Think the parents can handle it” and “You don’t want this story in the papers, not in an election year.”
Colin Marsh stands behind his punk of a progeny and anchors his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Apologize, now, Brandon! I raised you to be a gentleman,” he says a little too grandly. As if he’s speaking to a phalanx of cameras instead of five adults and a bunch of teenage girls.
The twins and their friends giggle smugly. Until I tell them they have to apologize, too.
Denise Rodriguez issues a strong warning not to get into any more trouble. “We have your names. I know your faces. Next time you won’t get off so easily!” she says in a voice that lets everybody know she means business.
I’m bounding down the station house steps to get my family out of there as fast as I can when Colin Marsh, D.A., pushes in front of me and pulls me aside.
“If you ever breathe a word about what happened—about how a group of simpering high school girls made my son look like a sissy—I’ll bring you down, Mrs. Newman,” he hisses.
“What?” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. Be rational, Tru. Don’t panic. Colin Marsh is just being a bully. If the D.A.’s office knew about the Veronica Agency, you’d already be in jail.
“You heard me. There must be something,” Colin Marsh blusters. “Everybody has something in their past they don’t want people to know about. And believe me, if I make it my business to, I’ll find it. Do we understand each other?”
“Just keep your son away from my girls!” I say firmly. Proud that I’ve stood my ground. And then, before my voice cracks or Colin Marsh can see me shaking, I gather Paige and Molly in my arms and tell Naomi to hail a cab.
Heather’s chauffeur pulls up as we step out onto the curb. “Good work, girls!” Heather says, giving the twins a high five. She’s about to join her parents in the limo, when Heather turns toward Naomi and looks her up and down. “Love the outfit, Mrs. F!”
“Thanks,” Naomi hoots, fingering her sparkly red dress. “You should see what my daughter’s wearing.”
AS SOON AS we get back home I head toward the bedroom. I want to splash some water on my face. Change out of this ridiculous bathing suit. Call Bill and tell him about Colin Marsh’s ominous threat.
Hurriedly, I unbutton my coat and throw it on the sofa. As I race p
ast Molly, she breaks into a giggle. “O-M-G, Mom. Don’t tell me you went out without your sash?”
I swivel around and plant my hands on my hips. “I assume you mean the one that says, ‘Mother of the Twin Hitters’? Never again, do you hear me, ladies?” I say angrily. At least I try to say it angrily. Paige and Molly start giggling. Naomi lets out a howl. And in a burst of relief, I start laughing, too.
I put on some jeans and a sweater and we sit down around the kitchen table. While I was dressing the girls made tuna fish sandwiches, and Naomi serves up steaming mugs of hot chocolate. I don’t ever remember my mother making her “assimilated chicken soup” when I was a kid, but ever since that pre-dawn heart-to-heart we had about Peter and Nana and how resilience can get you through just about anything, it’s become Naomi’s signature drink.
“I knew from the beginning that Brandon was a little turd,” Naomi says, wagging her finger. “You know, girls, men—even boys—tell you all you need to know about themselves in the first hour. It’s just that we women have to listen.”
“What do you mean?” asks Molly.
“I mean that Brandon told you he was dating both of you and you even knew he went out with other girls. What, did he have to wear a sign on his forehead?”
“But Grandma, when Brandon took both of our hands that day in the hospital you asked which one of us was going to win him,” Molly reminds her.
“That was the old Naomi; she didn’t always give good advice. But this is the new Grandma.” My mother laughs. “You should pay attention to her, she’s very very smart.”
“When I met Daddy …”
“Oh no,” Paige groans.
“Make fun all you want, but when I met Daddy I knew he would be good to me,” I say quickly and loudly, so despite the fact that they’re screeching like six-year-olds I know they hear me as they run to their room.
“Peter has been good to you. You’ve been good to each other. For each other. Every marriage has its bumps,” says Naomi. “You’ll go to Hawaii tomorrow, you’ll straighten everything out. Just one more thing,” my mother adds, grinning mischievously and handing me an envelope. “I told you we need a plan. When you get to Hawaii you call this number. I think it’ll be a big, big help.”
As soon as Naomi leaves, I pull out my cellphone to call Bill. “Colin Marsh doesn’t have a thing on us, I promise,” he reassures me. “He was just making an idle threat. You’re the one who has something over him. Go to Hawaii, straighten out things with your husband. Stop worrying, okay?”
“Okay,” I say, as Bill wishes me luck and clicks off the phone. I check my luggage to make sure my name tags are legible. I take Naomi’s envelope and stick it in my passport, then I carefully put my passport inside the pocket of my handbag. I know you don’t need a passport to go to Hawaii—but at the moment I feel like you can’t be too careful. About anything.
Eighteen
A Lei at the Beach
HAVING SURVIVED A SEVENTEEN-HOUR trip, two plane changes, and one rambunctious five-year-old who for the entire last leg of the flight used the back of my seat as a battering ram, I’m grateful to be touching down in Hawaii, even if our jumbo jet does land perilously close to the end of the runway.
“Wow!” the five-year-old shrieks with delight as the plane comes to a screeching halt. “Can we do that again?”
I’m as white as a sheet and my matted airplane hair is in serious need of an untangling product that has yet to be invented. Still, I’ve avoided major tragedy—we didn’t crash, I didn’t get a blood clot (I popped up and down so many times to pace the aisle I practically could have walked to Hawaii), and despite feeling occasionally homicidal toward him, I didn’t kill the boy sitting behind me. Though I did scold his mother.
“You know with those manners he’ll never get into Harvard,” I’d said primly. Of course for all I know the kid with the Michael Phelps kick is a legacy.
Now that we’re no longer in the air and there’s no chance that my $150 cellphone will screw up the workings of the $150-million plane, I turn it back on to check my calls. Nothing from Peter, but I’m buoyed by the inspirational messages from Sienna, who tells me, “Kick Tiffany’s ass!,” and Naomi, who reminds me that “You’re a Finklestein, you can do anything you set your mind to. Also, you shouldn’t forget to call Jeff Whitman.”
Jeff Whitman—that’s Naomi’s mystery man. I finger the envelope with his contact information, which Naomi stuffed into my purse for safekeeping. “Just call him,” Naomi had said when I pressed her for details. “If I say anything more it’ll ruin the plan.”
The five-year-old, pulling his mother’s arm, runs past me as I shuttle off the plane. So few people check their luggage these days that I get my bag in no time and go off in search of a restroom. I readily find the men’s room, but it takes me a couple of minutes to realize that the lettering on the door next to it is missing a “W.” I reach for the knob and laugh. The first place I’m visiting in Hawaii is the omen’s room, which I hope is a good sign.
Inside, I splash some water on my face and reach into my makeup bag to pull out an arsenal of three-ounce-tubes—an unexpected plus of the security rules forbidding taking larger bottles of liquids on planes is that I raided department store beauty counters for samples and got all my favorite products for free. Time-arresting, lineless, poreless, flawless potions vie for the chance to save my skin and I dab on some undereye cream, two moisturizers, and a large dollop of sunscreen—eschewing the grander-sounding “70” and “80” for a 30 UV SPF because anything higher offers less than 1 percent more protection and needs to be applied about ten times more frequently. Finally ready, I put on my tortoise-framed sunglasses and step outside into the beautiful sunshine where, just as I expected from all of pictures I’ve ever seen, dozens of Hawaiian greeters are waiting to bestow flowery leis on new arrivees. Fortified by the festive atmosphere, I line up behind a group of fellow tourists.
“Nice custom, isn’t it?” I say pleasantly to a balding, sixty-something man who’s already changed into a Hawaiian shirt. I’m so used to the luxury of casual conversation—between my family and Sienna there’s always someone around to exchange mindless banter with—that after my long solo flight I’m chat-deprived. “You know the Hawaiians say ‘aloha’ for ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye.’ Just like ‘shalom.’ ”
Before he has a chance to even open his mouth, the woman in a bright blue flowered muumuu standing next to him spins around.
“ ‘Shalom,’ is it? Stop hitting on my Harry!”
I point to my wedding ring to assure her she has nothing to worry about. “I was just making conversation. I had a fight with my husband and I came to Hawaii to make sure his beautiful lady boss isn’t putting the moves on him.”
“Well, don’t you go thinking you can replace your husband with mine,” she warns, still suspicious.
Harry leans in to whisper something in her ear. “Oh Harry!” She blushes. Then she turns to me. “Sorry, honey, it’s just that a wife has to keep an eye on her man. Not that my Harry would ever stray on his own, but look at that John Edwards fellow. That little homewrecker came along and seduced him, then she had his baby! How dare she say that to a married man, ‘You’re so hot!’ ”
Unless “the little homewrecker” incanted her spell while casting a fishing line onto the zipper of Edwards’s pants, I don’t think she deserves all the blame. Still, I know what Harry’s wife means about the lure of temptation. Particularly five-foot-six, creamy-skinned, blond-bombshell temptation. Which is after all why I’m here.
“I’m Elaine,” says Harry’s wife. “And shalom to you, too. My Jewish grandmother told me it also means ‘peace.’ ” Midwest Elaine has a Jewish grandmother? You just never know about people, I laugh to myself. Or, as it turns out, customs.
Harry and Elaine step up to get their leis and the greeter drapes a pretty strand of flowers around each of their necks.
“I’d like the double row of orchids,” I say, pointing to a luscious whi
te-and-purple necklace.
A look of dismay crosses the greeter’s face as he scans a list of names. “No, no Tru Newman,” he says. “Sorry, lady.”
“That’s okay, a single strand of carnations and shells looks fine,” I say, downgrading my expectations. But still no dice.
Harry reaches into his wallet and hands the greeter his credit card. The flowers, it turns out, aren’t free. I wonder what other surprises await me in Hawaii. Now that I’m within spitting—or hopefully kissing—distance of Peter, I cross my fingers and say a little prayer that he’s as happy to see me as I know I will be to see him. What husband wouldn’t be touched that his wife flew 5,000 miles to surprise him? I won’t even let myself consider an answer like “A husband who’s still angry.”
Elaine smiles and adjusts my lei so that, island-style, the fragrant flowers are equidistant front and back. “Welcome to Hawaii,” my new friends say, as I get into a taxi. “Go get your fella.”
IT’S NOT UNTIL I’m in the cab careening toward the hotel that my stomach starts doing cartwheels. We barrel past a skyline of skyscrapers that might lead me to believe I was still in New York if it wasn’t for the idyllic stretch of sandy beach and the emerald ocean that seemed fashioned by a different creator than the one who made Coney Island. Dramatic peaks rise out of a lush mountainside and the driver points out Diamond Head off in the distance. “The world’s most famous volcanic crater,” he says proudly.
No, it’s not, I think, clutching my stomach, which is churning 2,000 rpms with the intensity of a high-powered washing machine. Mercifully, just as I’m considering asking the driver to pull over, we arrive at the hotel. I pull my luggage up the steps and stumble into the lobby, where the very first thing I bump into is Tiffany Glass. A life-sized cutout of Tiffany, anyway, holding a BUBB compact in one hand and powdering her cheek with the other. She’s wearing a bikini and a bubble coming out of her head invites customers to sign up for free consultations. “Bubblehead,” I mutter, slapping past the sign and smack into a concierge. My luggage goes skating across the lobby and the entire contents of my purse empty onto the marble floor. I’m bending over to pick up a good luck tiger’s-eye charm and a tube of Frizz-Ease (which I’d hoped would tame my hair in the tropical humidity) when I feel my knees buckle.
The Best Laid Plans Page 20
