Plan C

by Lois Cahall

The officer snickers and picks up her walkie-talkie. “Yeah, George. You’re set. Friend’s here to pick up the loud one. Yeah, the one that looks like a mummy.”

  “Is my friend in some kind of trouble?” I ask, but the officer nods me forward.

  A minute later I’m at a desk with two other officers and a chief named George. “Sign here and here. This time it’s only a D.A.T.”

  “A what?” lifting my pen.

  “Desk Appearance Ticket. Your friend Kitty Morgan has been driving them crazy in the cell block.”

  “Officer, are you saying Kitty’s being difficult?”

  “Pain in the ass,” says the Chief.

  “Why is she in jail?” I ask.

  “Because her penis was projecting clear across 72nd street and into the neighbor’s window.”

  “I told her to get a bigger gallery.”

  Kitty approaches with the bailiff. “I heard that!” she yells. “Did you hear me?” she says not yet visible but, sounding like General Schwarzkopf screaming commands during the Persian Gulf War. The bandages from her face lift are soiled and frayed, barely covering her jaw and neck. Her eyes are bruised, as if she’s been gang raped and beaten. “I told you!” she says, “It’s not my penis! It’s a hologram goddammit! Why do you think it’s so huge?!”

  “Yeah, sure, lady, whatever you say. It was 3 in the morning.”

  “I couldn’t sleep. The pain killers weren’t working,” says Kitty lowering her voice to a mumble and murmuring to me, “They even took my Blackberry.”

  I pat her hand.

  “I’m not supposed to twist,” she says. “I could pop a stitch.”

  “I’m here now,” I say, rubbing her matted hair.

  “ Have you any idea how humiliating it is to have people see me this way?” whimpers Kitty.

  “Lady, calm down,” says Chief George, removing her cuffs. “You’re lucky we didn’t send you to the fourth floor.”

  “You mean where the off-Broadway theatre is?” I ask proudly.

  The officer shoots me a look.

  “What’s she charged with, Chief?” I ask.

  “Nothing now. But she was down for two counts of indecent exposure.”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” says Kitty, rearranging a piece of white gauze. “I know a thing or two about the law. My father was arrested every time he was on tour. My penis might get cited for public lewdness. But, it was a flaccid penis. It has to be erect for indecent exposure,” she says, folding her arms firmly.

  “I don’t even want to know why your father was arrested,” I say.

  The officer reads from a book. “According to Penal code 245.01…”

  “Oh it’s a Penal Code alright!” says Kitty.

  “I don’t think your penis rises to the level of indecent exposure,” says the Chief snickering. “Your bigger problem is Penal Code 205.30 - Resisting arrest.”

  “Kitty! You resisted arrest?” I ask.

  “I did not! I learned from my father, Screamin’ J Pepper Morgan, never to resist arrest,” says Kitty. She rearranges her dignity. “I went calmly.”

  “Listen, lady,” says the officer. Open your mouth again and you’ll be doing community service up in Washington Heights. I’ll put you on kids’ daycare detail.”

  “Don’t. You. Dare,” says Kitty.

  “Wait, did you say your father was Screamin’ J Pepper?” says Chief George.

  “Yes,” says Kitty, sheepishly.

  “Screamin’ J Pepper?” he repeats in awe.

  “Yes.”

  “Loved Pepper’s Pickled Pepper double album.”

  “I suppose,” she softens. “But it wasn’t as good as Holy Jalapeno,” says Kitty. “That went platinum in two weeks.”

  Another officer grabs my arm and confides, “You may want to get her some therapy.”

  “Yes, officer, But it’s been a tough week. She’s on… medication.”

  “She was mounting a giant penis in her window.”

  “Oh,” I say, concerned.

  “It’s my gallery!” says Kitty. “I mount things!”

  “You mount your art work?” says the officer.

  “Oh Christ, here we go again,” says Chief George.

  “I told you already,” says Kitty. “I was holding onto the hologram because I was trying to reposition it for better penetration and then it shot straight out the window and….oh never mind.”

  Thank you for your patience officers,” I say, taking Kitty by the arm and leading her out of the precinct. I turn back. “Oh, and we’ll drop off some autographed Screamin’ J 8 x 10s tomorrow.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I know I look at if I’m in the middle of a biological war zone, but don’t let the mouth and nose mask fool you. I’m just dusting the cobwebs and dust mites off Ben’s bookshelves.

  It’s been twenty years – if anybody’s counting - since anyone’s done this job, and there are four-thousand-plus books in Ben’s office. Each time I pull a hardcover from the shelf, my eyes tear up more than they did at my daughter’s high school graduation. My frustrated inner librarian urges me to carry on. I’m not just dusting, oh no – I’m alphabetizing the books within categories: biography, fiction, non-fiction. Half of these books were housed in Ben’s bedroom, the bedroom we now sleep in. No wonder he and his ex never had sex…they were too busy reading! The year I moved in, I carted the books downstairs by the armload. It’s time to clean up the good ones and throw some others in the trash.

  Whenever Ben isn’t looking I always toss away the old, ratty paperbacks. Who keeps paperbacks anyway? You can’t give them away, not even to the woman across the street who owns the thrift shop – the one who stands on her stoop every morning feeding the pigeons.

  I’m not some kind of a monster, honestly, throwing away his books. I’ve even offered to replace some of his favorites - like To the Finland Station, by Edmund Wilson or Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov - with fresh hardcover editions. It was when he said “no” to my buying him new ones that I realized he wasn’t into the books at all. He’s just into being a packrat. You can’t even find his desk. I think I once caught a glimpse of mahogany peeking out from beneath years of collected paperwork. But that’s all changed. Since I moved in, now it smells of freshly dusted lemon Pledge.

  Sliding the stepladder to the next section, I pull a book off the shelf and inspect it. It’s talking to me, and I can hear it begging to be thrown out. It’s ready for death row – awaiting lethal injection to the nearby trash bin. I read the cover: The Aspects of the Novel, by E.M. Forster. I flip it over. Attached to its stained back is a sticky note that says, “Don’t do it, Libby. It’s the greatest 20th century critical essay on the novel.” I laugh to myself, wipe it off and put it back.

  In Ben’s old marriage, the “I do” one with Rosemary, the clutter in the house was physical. With me, the house is immaculate: the cutter is emotional. About Rosemary. She allowed no pocket for passion, and now our passion is being suffocated by her neediness.

  The phone rings. I climb off the stepstool and answer it.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Mom, can you send me some money?”

  “Well, hello, Scarlett, I’m very well, darling, and how are you, honey?”

  “Fine,” she says. “How’s my sister?”

  “Madeline? She’s fine,” I say. Maybe she should ask her sister for the money.

  “What’s she up to?”

  “Your sister?” I ask. “She’s on a boat cruise on the Hudson with Ludacris.”

  “The singer? What kind of college is this? How come I didn’t go there?”

  “Because you didn’t want to be an environmentalist. But that’s okay. Business major was a good option afterall. I never saw you as a psychologist. Look how it’s paid off.”

  “Two promotions in one year, Mommy.” She always says “Mommy” whenever she’s angling for a favor.

  “You can go back for your law degree next year,” I say. “We talked about that.”
>
  “I know,” she says, already bored with this conversation and anxious to get to the money point of this call.

  “Whatcha up to?” I ask her.

  “Nothing. I need a haircut and an oil change.”

  “Oh…”

  “How’s Ben?”

  “He’s fine,” I say. Still no asking how I am. Me, The Bank of Mom. “Ben literally just landed from China. He was in a performance and then gave a lecture on ‘Eastern Tonality in Early Twentieth Century Western Music.’”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Yeah, exactly, that’s nice. But he’ll be home any minute. I’m making him his favorite Greek dish, Moussaka. Wish you were here…”

  “Grandma’s recipe? I do, too.”

  “Any chance you might come visit soon? I’ll send you a train ticket….”

  “Yeah, maybe. Work’s kinda crazy, but….” Her tone implying “no.”

  “Well, we’ll be together for Thanksgiving….” My tone telling her I’m grateful for what I can get. I’ve never been one of those parents who pressure a kid to visit. If they want to, they will. And they’re more likely to, if you don’t pressure.

  “So…” she says, trailing off again.

  “How much do you need?”

  “Just a hundred bucks would be great. I have like no spending cash,” she says. “All I do is work and pay bills.”

  Welcome to real life, kid, is what I want to tell her, but I don’t. She’s still too young and hopeful for me to destroy her dreams with the hard truths about life. “Well, honey, I know the cost of living has gone up so high, but have you considered maybe doing a waitress shift one night a week? Like you did in college? I know we talked about this before. You’re calling me every month for money. I know you love to hear this, but when I was your age….” She’s not listening. So I begin again, “When I was your age, we had to walk five miles to get high and have sex.”

  “Ha, ha, ha, Mommy! I’m listening.”

  “Okay, so just get a small job one weekend night to make the fun cash, you know?” As I doll out advice I think of myself, a product of the forty-something’s – us – that generation of Patriotic suburbanites that followed some false sense of security by buying all the material possessions we didn’t need anyway - fancy cars, expensive jewelry, label purses, designer shoes – all in an effort to keep up with the Jones’s. Scarlett’s generation just wanted to make ends meet. She didn’t even know the Jones’s. I have to give her that.

  Just then, one floor above, I hear the cat thump off the bed and the sound of luggage dropping to the floor. “Just this once, I’m going to send you $100,” I say, knowing full well that it’s what I said the last time. “But I gotta go. Ben just walked in. Let me call you tomorrow. Love youuuuu.”

  “Love you too, Mommyyyyy,” she says, thrilled that we’re cutting it short. “Bye.”

  Packing up the evidence of my bookshelf cleaning, I quickly move the ladder to the side of the closet door, before running up the stairs like a newly licensed sixteen-year- old about to see her first set of wheels. Ben heads for the stairs to meet me, and when I land at the top, he sweeps me into his arms.

  “I missed you,” he says. “This has been the longest two weeks of my life.”

  “I missed you, too,” I say.

  “I missed you, and missed you,” he says.

  “No, I really missed you,” I say, grabbing at his zipper playfully.

  He stops me. “Honey, let me just check messages and shower first. Then I’m all yours.”

  I dash into our bedroom to grab something off the comforter that I had intended for later. He lights up at the sight of the sticky roll of tape wrapped inside a package displaying a girl with whips and chains.

  “Is it red?”

  “Yes, it’s red. Kind of crimson. Your version of color blind red.” My tone has turned to a sexy come-hither in my voice reserved for playtime. “But it’s not the color that matters. It’s what I’m going to do with it.”

  I lift a brow, and he grabs at my ass, kissing me hard on the mouth.

  “What’s for dinner? I’m starving!”

  “Greek dish,” I say. “Running to the store to grab a couple things for the salad.”

  “Great! I’ll even open the ‘98 Forman.”

  “Is that a white? From the Loire?”

  “Nope. Good ole USA. California chard. But Forman really understands non-malolactic fermentation.”

  “Sure, whatever you say…” I grab my purse from the ledge, his lips follow mine all the way to the door. “Bye,” I giggle from outside the door, and he opens it wider, smiling after me. “Hurry back.” He winks and then watches me swagger all the way down the hall.

  *

  Juggling the groceries on my knee, I open the door to an unexpected two-by-four across my face. Okay, a figurative two-by-four. It’s the look on Ben’s face as he places his thrusts his arms into the sleeves of his trench coat.

  “What’s wrong?” I say, dropping the grocery bags to waist level. “Did somebody die?”

  “I’m sorry, honey, our little romance dinner will have to wait ‘til later.”

  “Later?”

  “I have to pick up the twins.”

  “But our weekend with them starts tomorrow…”

  “Rosemary just called. She’s got to go away for the weekend beginning tonight. Something came up.”

  I smell something suspicious in his urgency, and something fishier than three-day-old haddock in his vagueness.

  Ben is fiddling with the sex package of red tape on the ledge. Our relationship has a lot of it. “Look. Apparently she’s being um, rebirthed,” he says.

  “Re-rebirthed? Wait, she already got rebirthed! And it cost us $1,000!”

  “It didn’t work. She’s being re-rebirthed. Through the canal of life or some darn thing. It’s at her yoga retreat.”

  “Oh. Oh. I seeeeee,” I say, removing my jacket. “God forbid she misses a week day of yoga.”

  “I tried to tell her…”

  “Okay, you know what? I’m done,” I say, stomping into the livingroom, my fists planted on my hips. “Can she pull her head out of her ass, or rather her birth canal, and maybe volunteer to drop the kids off for a change!”

  “Libby, please, I’m so jet-lagged.”

  “Exactly. You just landed from China. You shouldn’t be driving. What if you crash?”

  “I’m not going to crash….”

  “How do you know?” Then a light bulb goes off in my brain. “You know what, Ben? I’ll go get the boys.”

  “You can’t. She gets angry every time she sees you.”

  “Too damn bad. Tell her to get over it. You’ve been apart for years.”

  He gives me a look that says he’s torn between his love for me and his fear of her taking his kids away.

  “And don’t give me that look,” I say.

  “I’m just trying to make everybody happy.”

  “No, you’re not, Ben. You’re kissing ass. The more you give - correction, the move we give her, the more she takes.”

  “Well, I know but…”

  “But nothing. I mean, what will happen if she actually volunteers to drop them off? Will she miss her bank manager job? Her school teacher job? No. And you know why? Because she doesn’t have a job!”

  “Look, I’m exhausted. It was a twenty-hour flight. I can’t do this right now. I have to go…” He heads for the door.

  “Wait! What if you fall asleep at the wheel?!” I say, going after him. “This is insane! I don’t want to fight!” I cling to him like a mother to a child as enemy soldiers march through their village. But Ben pulls away raising his eyes to the sky for answers. Apparently God doesn’t give them. He moves to the door handle and says, “I love you. I’ll see you tonight.”

  I stand there staring at the back of the front door, feeling like I’m staring at a shower curtain and can see Ben’s silhouette with another woman through it. It’s the beginning of the end for us. As much
as I love Ben, it just isn’t working. The only way this could work is if I were willing to live a life of accommodating some bitter ex-wife who doesn’t even have a life. My mind begins formulating my next article…

  There are a lot of little daily divorces that occur in a relationship before it’s over… It’s a slow process – like falling off a cliff in slow motion and you wish you’d just hit the ground already.

  My cell phone rings. It always surprises me when it does that. As though it has some sort of radar for when I’m annoyed and don’t want to talk.

  “Hello?” I say, picking it up with a growl.

  “Libby?”

  “Bebe?” I say, my tone softening. “You at the airport? On your way back…”

  “No,” she says, crying.

  “Why not? Just come home. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Everything…”

  “But I told you to come home…” Truth is, I’m not in the mood for anybody else’s problems right now. I fall silent.

  “Hey Lib?” she sniffles.

  “Yeah?”

  “I think I have a daughter….”

  “You what?” Suddenly Ben and his wacky ex-wife are a million miles away.

  *

  Bebe had been about to take my advice, had been about to head to the airport, when the orphanage phoned her. Yes, the sweet but sickly two year old child had been a mistake. Apparently they felt bad about the misunderstanding and the huge disappointment that Bebe must have felt. We won’t even get into the amount of money she’d spent.

  The orphanage director asked Bebe if she could come back and allow the girls to perform a show on her behalf. There were other little girls who wanted to meet her.

  Bernie said, “No way, no show! We’re going home.” But something in Bebe relented. She let him take that flight back to America without her. Something was telling her to stay on despite the poor air quality of the city and the gritty film on everything she touched. Bebe felt she had to see her way through the dust.

  Bebe waited in the parking lot of the orphanage for over an hour, when a woman emerged to conduct her to a different part of the Borsht-smelling orphanage. There were children everywhere. The facility housed maybe two to three hundred kids, and, on her way to the office, Bebe stopped to use a bathroom. She was stunned to see that they used crepe paper for wiping. Worse than that were the germy barrels overflowing with urine-soaked paper from the occasional notebook pages the little girls used when crepe paper wasn’t available. You couldn’t flush these, of course; they would clog the already overburdened plumbing system.