The Best Laid Plans

by Lynn Schnurnberger

  “Ah, the Newmans, such a lovely couple,” Jeff Whitman tells Tiffany. “I met them earlier and we spent the most delightful time together. I feel like they’re practically family.”

  “Is this for real? Or is it another one of Naomi’s crazy schemes?” I whisper to Peter.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe anymore,” he says.

  The head masseur steps forward to swing a brass mallet against a flat metal gong, producing a roaring boom that sounds like waves crashing against the shore. “I am Kawikani, the Strong One. We start now,” he says.

  “And I am Alana,” says my masseur, “Hawaiian for ‘awakening.’ Or Alan.”

  Alana rests his hands on the small of my back. Kawikani stretches his arms toward the heavens to offer a prayer. “Renew, revive, revitalize,” he says, sounding like a spokesperson for Lancôme.

  Tiffany starts giggling, but Alana shakes his head. “Take seriously. The Lomi Lomi is not just to heal physical pain. It is to heal the heart, to bring mental and spiritual resolution. Whatever is blocked, let it out, get rid of it, go with the flow.”

  Alana motions for Kawikani to come over and the two of them spend a few moments whispering.

  “Okay, for this group, we give them the tea, too,” agrees Kawikani, who returns with a tray and four steaming cups. Obediently, we each take a sip.

  I settle back onto the cushioned table and close my eyes. Alana hums softly, telling me, “Take deep breaths and enjoy the rhythmic sensations.” Given the tension between me and Peter, it’s going to take more than some crazy Hawaiian massage to make me unwind, but as instructed I close my eyes. Alana’s hands move over me like gentle waves and I feel a small jolt of energy surge through my body. I feel deeply relaxed, yet energized at the same time. My back muscles are about a thousand times looser. And, strangely, so is my tongue. I haven’t felt this uninhibitedly talkative since the dentist gave me a shot of Sodium Pentothal—and I’m not the only one.

  “Alana, your hands are so strong and powerful!” I squeal in stream-of-consciousness admiration.

  “I love a man with strong hands. Peter has strong hands,” Tiffany purrs.

  “I do, don’t I?” says Peter. He spreads his fingers apart and flexes them into a fist.

  “Um,” says Tiffany. “Your hands are big, but Kawikani’s are bigger. Jeff, what kind of hands do you have, are they huge?”

  “Naomi used to say they were so large that I could hold the whole world right in my palm.”

  “Naomi has long fingers, perfectly shaped. She posed for a magazine ad once,” I say, recalling a moment of my mother’s faded glory. “Her index finger was polished a deep shade of red. And she was pointing to a toilet seat in the Ladies’ Home Journal.”

  “That’s why I love her,” says Jeff dreamily.

  “Tru grew up with a mother who took more pleasure out of pointing to toilet seats than raising her daughter. But that didn’t stop my honey from becoming a great wife and mother,” Peter says. “That’s why I love Tru.”

  “You do?”

  “Uh-huh,” says Peter, who’s unflexed his fist and now is staring at his palm.

  “He loves me.” I giggle. “Because I’m a wife and mother …”

  “And a businesswoman. A businesswoman with a stable of forty-year-old hookers.” Peter laughs, pressing his outstretched fingers against his face, as if he’s trying to locate his nose.

  “Hookers.” Tiffany giggles. “I’ve always wanted to learn how to give good head. Do the hookers give good head? Do they use BUBB?”

  “BUBB-de-BUBB-BUBB,” Peter sings. “I didn’t know from Adam but I’m married to a madam.”

  “And you’re okay with that?” I ask.

  “I’m okay, you’re okay, we’re okay,” Peter croons. “O-kaay!”

  For a moment I have to wonder if Peter’s talking from the tea. Or the massage. Or his true feelings. Then he wraps his sheet around his torso—his torso that is brown as a berry from having already been several days in the sun—and comes over to sit down next to me on the edge of my massage table.

  “I’m not as zonked out of my mind as I may seem. Well, maybe not quite as zonked out of my mind as I seem. I think your business choice is … unusual, honey. And I’m having a little trouble picturing you, you know,” he says sotto voce, “running a call girl operation.”

  “I would have said the same thing. But it’s not much different from running a benefit committee. You have to be organized and diplomatic. And you have to be sure you make your nut.”

  “Your nut?” Peter laughs.

  “Your number, your net, the figure that’s going to put you in the black. Though, frankly, I prefer thinking of it as being in the pink. Pink is a much more cheerful victory color.”

  “You’re the nut,” Peter says, bending over to kiss me. “I love you, Tru. I can’t say that I wouldn’t have liked it better if you’d opened a catering business.…”

  “Not really an option. Remember me? I’m the wife who doesn’t know a carving knife from a broccoli spear.”

  “Good point. And if running an escort agency makes you happy, I want to be supportive. God knows you’ve put up with my crazy hours and everything else about my work for all these years,” Peter says, pointing toward Tiffany.

  “You, sir, are very, very nice.” I say reaching up to wrap my arms around his neck to press my lips against my husband’s.

  “Nice, who’s nice?” Tiffany says, propping herself up on her elbow. “Jeff is nice.”

  “Yes,” I say with a laugh. “Jeff is nice.”

  Jeff looks over at us and winks. “Tiffany, what do you say you and I go find ourselves a quiet place to talk? You can tell me all about your makeup and I’ll show you around the island. You two skedaddle.” Jeff waves his hand in our direction—his strong, large, he’s-got-the-whole-world-in-it hand, which he’s got Tiffany eating out of.

  “Yes, you two skedaddle,” says Tiffany. “Peter, you can go home to New York now. I’ll see you next week when I get back. I’m going to stay in Hawaii and get to know Jeffy better. I always had a thing for Harrison Ford, and Jeffy, you do look a lot like Indiana Jones.”

  And just like that, Tiffany switches her affections from my husband to my mother’s ex-boyfriend, who’s old enough to be her father.

  “Who would have guessed that Ms. Glass was so fickle?” I laugh as I slide off the massage table and Peter enfolds his sheet around us both in a cozy cocoon.

  “Tiffany’s got a good head on her shoulders; she knows when something’s a lost cause.”

  “You’re not a lost cause,” I tease.

  “I am romantically as far as Tiffany’s concerned. I always have been. You know that, don’t you, sweetheart?”

  I nod. “And I’m not sure that girl’s going to have any more luck with Jeffy-poo. If he’s a cosmetics buyer then I’m Mahatma Gandhi.”

  “You do have pretty good peacemaking skills,” Peter says with a kiss. We move forward under our shared toga, feeling as young and carefree as a couple of preschoolers giggling themselves silly under a tent.

  “Kawikani, Alana, thank you. I wasn’t sure about the Lomi Lomi, but you’ve made me a believer.” We say goodbye and Peter and I start to walk down the sun-kissed beach toward a woman in a grass skirt who’s giving a hula demonstration.

  “Yes, Lomi Lomi very good, ancient Hawaiian tradition,” Alana says as he packs up his equipment. “But to make massage work even better,” he calls out as I turn around to wave one more goodbye, “always drink the tea.” Then he laughs and raises the cup to his lips.

  Nineteen

  Dog Day Afternoon

  DESPITE TIFFANY’S HAVING SAID that Peter was free to go back to New York, we stay in Hawaii for three more days on a mini-vacation. Once upon a time if I’d called to tell the girls we weren’t coming home I’d have had to promise to bring them back a present, but from the sound of their voices, I get the feeling that they’d be willing to bribe us to stay away. Naomi say
s not to worry, “Everything’s going swimmingly.” But just as I’m about to say goodbye, Molly gets on the line.

  “We have a surprise for you, Mom,” she says mysteriously.

  “Don’t tell!” says Paige, grabbing the phone from her sister as I hear some sort of tumult in the background and the girls hurriedly hang up.

  For the next couple of days Peter and I make a game out of guessing what the twins are up to—agreeing that it’s probably nothing as shocking as them having gotten body piercings or that Paige has cleaned up her side of their room. We enjoy exploring the island—hiking up twisty trails to Diamond Head; going snorkeling at the very same beach where Elvis Presley filmed Blue Hawaii; and swimming with dolphins, who, our guide tells us, shed their skin nine times faster than humans. “They must save a fortune on exfoliants,” I quip. With all of our time spent sightseeing—or closeted in our room making love—we only run into Tiffany and Jeff once, when we ride past them in our golf cart and exchange hurried hellos.

  “Jeff looks a little worse for the wear,” I say as we wave and I notice that his tan—and his patience—seems to be waning. Tiffany jerks Jeff’s arm around her waist while he tries to pull it away.

  “We owe that man a debt of gratitude and a box of cigars,” Peter says.

  “Havana cigars.” For his term of service in diverting Tiffany’s attention Jeff deserves only the very best.

  On our last night we’re walking down the beach with my friends from the plane, Harry and Elaine, when a young couple invites us to join their seaside wedding celebration. The bride is simply beautiful in a turquoise and deep blue tie-dyed sarong with a pale lavender orchid pinned in her hair at the nape of her neck, and the groom has a grin on his face as wide as the Pacific Ocean, which he just happens to be standing in front of. Dinner is a luau of roast suckling pig wrapped in banana leaves and, afterward, we break out into a spontaneous chorus of “Here Comes the Bride.” As the young couple walks toward the ocean to pose for photos, the bottoms of their sandals leave an imprint in the sand filled with promise—Just Married.

  Peter pulls me toward him and I cuddle my head in the crook of his arm. “I feel like I’m surrounded by Marriage Past and Future,” I say, pointing to the radiant newlyweds and then to our friends Harry and Elaine, who, having settled the inevitable differences that are sure to come up throughout an enduring union, seem happy and comfortable. “You and I are going to get to be an old married couple, too,” Peter says, hugging my shoulder.

  “That we will.” And then I look up into his deep blue eyes to make him a promise. “I’ll always love you. And I swear that even in twenty years, even if we come back to Hawaii, I’ll never wear a muumuu.”

  OUTSIDE OUR APARTMENT Peter fixes one last vacation kiss on my lips. On the other side of the door I hear loud music and the cheerful commotion that tells me the girls are at home. Peter picks up our bags and we walk inside.

  “Hello, we’re home,” I sing, when out of nowhere, a brown-and-white furball lurches through our legs and out the open door.

  “Brandon, you get back here!” Molly screams as the twins careen past us to catch the puppy flying down the hall. The forbidden puppy that’s obviously our welcome-home surprise.

  “Molly and Paige, you get back here!” I shout, racing after them. The elevator door opens and my ninety-six-year-old neighbor, Mrs. Pinchot—who’s survived the Depression, World War II, and the closing of Alexander’s, her favorite department store—steps out and surveys the scene. Mrs. Pinchot pulls back her shoulders and uses her still-solid body to block the puppy from making his way into the elevator and out of the apartment building.

  “Let him go,” I cry. “He looks resourceful, he’ll find a new family in no time.” But Mrs. Pinchot picks up the puppy and hands him back to the girls.

  “Having a pet teaches children responsibility,” Mrs. Pinchot says when I protest keeping the dog I’ve always been adamantly opposed to getting. “You’ll see, dear, soon you won’t be able to imagine your lives before Brandon was part of the family.”

  Peter rolls his eyes, but I know he’s almost as eager as the girls to keep the pooch.

  Naomi comes out carrying a bowl of water for Brandon, which she sets down on the oriental carpet. “The girls missed you. I just had to let them get the dog.”

  Paige makes the ultimate argument. “Mom, look at you. You’re wearing white jeans. How much more work do you think it is to take care of a puppy?”

  As if he has a sixth sense that I’m the one he has to win over, the puppy sits at my feet and eagerly wags his tail. I bend down to pet him, knowing that I’m going to have to give in. “But did you have to name him Brandon?”

  “Absolutely,” Molly says, tossing a rubber ball. “After all, the real Brandon’s a dog. Thanks, Mom, you’re the best,” she cries, not even waiting for my official answer, as the girls and Brandon scamper off toward the library where the dog is already making himself at home.

  Naomi settles down next to me on the couch. “I shouldn’t have let them get the puppy without your permission. I’ll never do it again,” she says with an unmistakable sparkle in her eye—because we both know that she’s only promising not to turn my house into a kennel, and not to never do anything else against my wishes ever again. Still, asking Naomi not to meddle would be like asking Barbra Streisand to stop over-enunciating. And besides, at this point life would be positively boring if my mother didn’t mix in.

  The six-hour time difference between New York and Hawaii is catching up to me. Peter volunteers to go into the kitchen to fix some coffee and several minutes later he comes back with a freshly brewed pot. He sits down next to us and tosses some newspapers and magazines onto the floor so he can put his feet up on the new coffee table that Naomi’s bought in our absence.

  “A little present,” Naomi says dismissively, “to thank you for all you’ve done.”

  “That was very nice of you. I even like it.” I take a sip of coffee and balance the cup on my knees. “So, Mom. Tell us about this Jeff Whitman.”

  Naomi blushes. Then she busies herself rearranging packets of Splenda into a diamond pattern.

  “Mom?” I coax, putting my hand over hers to get her to stop fidgeting.

  “We were both sixteen and his family moved into the apartment next to Nana and me. I was his first love.”

  “You mean you were each other’s first love?”

  Naomi clears her throat. “Well, we never really went out on a date together. Nana forbade it. She said Jeff was traif.”

  “Traif? You mean like shellfish or pork?” Peter says, translating the Yiddish word for forbidden food.

  “Jeff wasn’t Jewish. He was the ultimate forbidden food.”

  I put my cup on the table and clap my hands together. “Mom! That is so Romeo and Juliet! Didn’t Nana’s forbidding it just make you want to sneak off with him more?”

  “It wasn’t like today, it was a different time.” Naomi sighs. “But that Jeff, he wrote me beautiful love letters. He’d wait on the corner for hours just for the chance to say hello. He sent five hundred votes for me to the Miss Subways contest—he went all over the city to mail them from different postboxes so the judges wouldn’t think anything fishy was going on. Wasn’t that sweet? He even went to Staten Island.”

  “On the ferry?” I ask, and Naomi nods. “That’s love.”

  “Maybe I was in love with him, too,” Naomi says thoughtfully. “What girl wouldn’t be, a boy so beautiful who loved you so much? But I swear, I never so much as kissed him.”

  “And you kept in touch with him all this time?”

  “For years I didn’t know what had happened to him. But when your father died, he read about it in the paper.…”

  “And he got in touch with you!” I exclaim.

  “By then Jeff had become a big real-estate developer. He was divorced and living in Hawaii. He wanted to come to New York to see me but I wouldn’t let him.”

  “Why not?” Peter asks, as intrigu
ed as I am by my mother’s romantic history.

  Naomi places her hands squarely on her knees. “I want Jeff to remember me the way I was, a flawless sixteen-year-old.”

  “Oh Mom, no! So you’re not flawless. Big deal! You’re still beautiful. And you probably weren’t flawless even back then—what teenage girl doesn’t have the occasional outbreak of acne?”

  Naomi pretends to ignore me. She stands up and starts clearing the debris of our coffee klatch off the new table.

  “Mom, you have to let him come here. Jeff still idolizes you. You should see the look on his face when he talks about you.…”

  “Good! I want him to keep getting that look on his face, to picture me just the way I was. Enough now about Jeff Whitman,” Naomi says, declaring this particular conversation over. “Tell me about your trip.”

  I can’t believe that my cocky, confident, take-on-the-world mother is frightened of seeing an old boyfriend, especially one who still adores her. But I know that arguing with her right now won’t do any good.

  “The trip was great, we saw sea turtles, I learned to do the hula, and we ate so much pineapple I’m thinking of changing my middle name to Dole.”

  “That’s nice, sweetheart,” Naomi says, bending over to kiss each of us on the foreheads. She picks up the tray and heads toward the kitchen. “You’ve always been my favorite son-in-law,” she calls back to Peter.

  “Your only son-in-law, now and forever,” Peter says with a laugh.

  “That is so sad about Jeff,” I say, and then I let out a yawn. “I may have to go into the bedroom to take a little nap.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Peter says. But instead, I settle my head on his shoulder, and we stay rooted on the couch, too tired and comfy to move.

  I’m starting to doze off when I hear Paige holler across the apartment for Brandon to “come back!” I snap open my eyes just in time to see the pumped-up pooch scurrying over the carpet, underneath the couch, and out the other side to where we’re sitting. Before we can stop him, Brandon finds the pile of newspapers that Peter had strewn on the floor, squats down, and takes a large dump.