Plan C

by Lois Cahall

  A few minutes later I pull into my driveway, the one with the “For Sale” sign out front. The house isn’t budging and neither is the economy – though my realtor assures me that even when business is slow, “there’s always death and divorces. Somebody’s buying!”

  Opening my car door, I step out in the center of my driveway to stretch my stiff back. The smell of scrub pine in the air reminds me of the details of childhood of this small cottage…memories of the old outdoor shower that forever drips, the poison ivy, the doves’ nest, the empty bird feeder, the tree where my mom marked my height those summers when I shot up a full inch.

  The seashell driveway crackles under my feet as my house welcomes me. It’s cheery. Easy to see why Jerry the contractor decided to make my home his home during his affairs on Betty Carmichael.

  Passing the dormant perennial garden, the brown-eyed Susans tipped and trampled and made golden dry by autumn’s crisp nip, I’m reminded how odd it is to walk the sidewalk without the sound of my daughter’s screaming some question out the back door. “Mom, can we go to the drug store? I’m out of sunblock.” “Mom, can Robert come with us to the beach? Just for an hour? Can we pick him up?”

  A sudden tapping on my car’s window. Oh my God, Beatrice! She was sound asleep in the passenger’s side of my front seat. I sprint sheepishly back to her, open the passenger’s door and take her arm.

  “There, there, Beatrice. How was your nap?”

  “I didn’t sleep, did I?” she asks. “I never sleep.”

  How did I end up with a senile eighty-six-year-old riding shotgun in my car? Something to do with Jerome, that cute Terrence Howard look alike from the shelter. He volunteers on Saturdays at a soup kitchen and told me that Beatrice had no electricity in her apartment. Her daughter was away on business, her son lives in Hawaii, and she was cold – and oh, yes, she’s scared to be alone. If she could only get a ride to Boston – I’m going to Massachusetts anyway anyway, aren’t I? – she’d be able to stay with her niece, who has a lovely guest room in the Back Bay. So sucker Libby, I took her.

  Well, it’s only for the weekend. How difficult can an eighty-six-year-old woman be? Once I change the locks on the cottage, and board up the windows, I’m off to Boston to visit Scarlett, dropping old lady Beatrice at her niece’s en route. Simple enough.

  Of course, driving the three hundred-and-twenty-some-mile drive to Cape Cod, Beatrice managed to turn my Florence Nightingale efforts into a dreadful sacrifice. There was even a moment around Fall River when I felt as if I were channeling Lizzie Borden. Where’s my ax?

  Beatrice is childlike. She loses everything. She never shuts up, because she thinks out loud. She gathers up leftovers in paper napkins instead of requesting doggie bags, and she thinks Organic tea means decaf every time we stopped at a rest area and I asked if she’d like a cup. She collects antique dolls with porcelain faces that look possessed – I know this because they sat with their heads chattering in my backseat, staring back at me like Satan whenever I glanced in my rearview mirror. Beatrice spends most of her time telling me why I should live my life her way. Apparently if I left my artificial tree up all year in the livingroom for instance, it would save me from unwrapping and rewrapping ornaments for Christmas. Then I “wouldn’t have all this stress that plagues me.” That’s what Beatrice said.

  As the town hums about the approaching storm, everyone gathering candles, first aid, and generators, I decide to take Beatrice out to dinner at my favorite restaurant, the Roadhouse in Hyannis, which is bustling with familiar locals and unfamiliar tourists. We sit in a booth and Beatrice gives me a conspiratorial look. “Do you think after dinner we’ll go swimming in the pool?”

  “We’ll see, Bea,” I say, appeasing her. Again. She’d been talking about some imaginary pool since Hartford, Connecticut.

  “You taking me to dinner – it makes me feel so gay!” Then, whispering, “Expensive.” She lifts a plate from the table, flips it over and reads where it’s from.

  “I’m happy to have your company,” I say, smiling.

  Now she examines the silverware. “If we go to Boston I’ll miss the Sisters of the Hydrangeas Committee of Cape Cod, you know. It’s a big flower show. I used to be on the board. I was about thirty-six.” She goes into happy-go-lucky, memory-lane mode. “Oh you know…we’d summer here and I was always fascinated by the big blue, puffy, balls in my neighbor’s front yard. Tried to steal ‘em with my gardening scissors. Course I didn’t know they were called hydrangeas because they are hydrated by water, and well…”

  I’m bored, I think to myself as the waitress approaches to take our order. And I can’t help but wish Ben were with me, though also I can’t help but think if he hadn’t had the accident, he would be.

  “Good evening” says the bubbly blonde waitress, “Getting windy out there, eh?”

  “Wind’s whipping so bad I could hardly open my car door,” I say.

  “Have you heard the storm update?” asks the waitress. “Still supposed to hit in about thirty-six hours?”

  “I’m protected. I have my rubbers!” says Beatrice.

  The waitress shoots me a look that says, “Did she really just say that?”

  “She means her galoshes.”

  “Ohhh,” says the waitress. Relieved.

  Beatrice’s eyes scan the restaurant as I order her broiled scrod and mashed potatoes, mindful of her dentures. Her eyes fall upon a man at the bar. She squints as though she might recognize him. “Is that your first husband?” she asks, and I have to remind myself she doesn’t even know my first husband. My line of vision follows hers, and I gasp - it’s Henry, Bebe’s ex-husband. He sits alone on the end stool, eating dinner all by himself. He pretends to busy himself by concentrating on the television above the bar, but how long can somebody gaze at the meteorologist’s scroll on the Weather Channel?

  “No, Beatrice,” I say, “It’s not my ex husband, it’s Bebe’s!”

  “Oh? Do I know her?”

  “Henry!” I call, so happy to see him.

  He glances up and smiles recognition. I hurry to him and we instantly come in for a warm hug. I notice the cane at his side.

  “Libby, so good to see you. How are you?” he says, pulling back first.

  “Busy, busy….” I say, trying to act normal despite the shock of that cane. . “And you? Gosh, it’s good to see you.”

  “Busy, too.” So much to say, and so hard to find the words.

  “Hello,” says Henry, to Beatrice, who has made her way to our side.

  “Do I know this man?” she asks.

  “Beatrice, this is Henry. Henry, Beatrice. I’m dropping her off with her niece in Boston.”

  “I don’t have a niece,” says Beatrice.

  “Yes, you do,” I say.

  Henry changes the subject. “House sell? Saw it’s listed.”

  “No,” I say. “Bad market. Fingers crossed.”

  We find each other’s eyes. “So,” I say, bobbing my head around like one of those doggy toys in the back window of a Pontiac.

  “So…..” says Henry.

  “Henry…” I blurt out. “Bebe adopted a little girl.”

  “So…she finally did it,” he says, inhaling deeply through the spaces in his teeth. “I bet she’s beautiful.” He lowers his head and stares at his plate of half eaten food.

  “She’s in Kazakhstan right now,” I say. “It’s some waiting period before the courts let her come home. I’ve only seen a photo online.”

  He’s speechless, but the tear I detect in the corner of his sky-blue left eye says enough. “I just thought you might want to know…” I say, trailing off, and hoping he’d know that Bebe’s realized that there’s more to life than sinking on this sandbar.

  “Thank you,” he says, squeezing both of my hands. “Thank you for telling me.”

  “And she misses you!” Oh, god, I spilled it. My hand leaps to cover my mouth. But the words can’t be covered up. They hang in the air like Grandma’s plus-size
panties on a clothesline.

  “Who misses him? My niece? I don’t have a niece,” says Beatrice, but we ignore her.

  “I miss her too, Libby, but the reality is…well, look at me,” he says. “I’m like one of those warnings in a prescription drug ad. Side effects may include weight gain, hair loss, loss of bladder control, depression, anxiety disorder, Alzheimer’s and erectile dysfunction.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I say, smiling. “About the Alzheimer’s, I mean,” and then I wink. “And I don’t think Bebe would care.”

  He sighs. “Can I get you ladies a drink?”

  “Lemonade by the pool,” says Beatrice.

  “Okay,” I say, my voice softening. “That would be nice.” He keeps gazing at me, wanting more. And like a child confessing to a parent about the broken vase on the floor, I spill one long and fast line. “I-know-this-sounds-crazy-but-Bebe’s-going-to-have-a-celebration-for-Tamara-when-she-gets-home-to-America-and-I-wondered-if-you’d-consider-coming-because-I-know-her-life-hasn’t-been-the-same-without-you.”

  Henry’s eyes meet mine, searching to see whether it’s really true. “Maybe. Maybe I can.” He sighs again and picks at his dinner, shifting it around his plate. “I came back from Florida,” he says. “I’m here now. Full time and…”

  “Oh no! We can’t have that drink,” says Beatrice, cutting him off in mid-sentence. “We have to go get in our pj’s. It’s almost ten p.m.! Murder She Wrote! I never miss an episode of Angela Lansbury. Do you get A & E?”

  “You never miss an episode?” says Henry.

  “Never. Don’t know what you’re missing, mister.”

  “I agree Beatrice. He certainly doesn’t know what he’s missing.” I kiss his cheek, but not before reaching into my purse and pulling out a business card.

  “Look, think about it. Call me if you change your mind.”

  He squeezes onto the card as if it were a lucky rabbit’s foot. “I will.”

  “You will what?” says Beatrice. “Oh, you’re coming in the pool, too?”

  *

  Three near collisions and one red-light run later, Beatrice is in my bedroom changing into her flannel nightgown, and applying her cold crème, her foot warmers, her cuticle gel, and her hair net. Then she’s tucked herself into my bed – in the very spot Ben would share with me if he were here.

  For whatever reason Murder She Wrote begins at 9:55 p.m., five minutes earlier than its scheduled time. Call it a cable glitch in a sleepy seaport town, but call it a major disaster for Beatrice; whatever the reason Beatrice pops up in bed and calls out to me as I floss my teeth in the bathroom.

  “Why is it starting five minutes early?”

  I turn off the water. “What?”

  “I said why is the show starting five minutes early?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Do you think the station made a mistake?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Did the TV man fall asleep? Is your cable box set wrong?”

  Like some weary game-show contestant, I have to answer fifty more questions, until finally I climb into bed next to her. “Bea, honey,” I say, “Why don’t you stop asking questions and just watch your show.”

  “I can’t now!” she snaps like a hysterical child.

  “Why not?” I say.

  “I was talking so I missed the first ten minutes. Now I don’t know what’s going on…”

  “Oh well…”

  She slumps against the pillow pouting and then turns to her side and stares at the wall. I flick the remote frantically trying to find another show to placate her.

  “Libby?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why is there a hole in the wall?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was there a nail there?”

  “I think so,” I say.

  ‘Did you hang a picture there?”

  “I don’t remember…”

  “Did somebody steal it?”

  “Maybe,” I say. “It was probably Jerry, my contractor, while he was banging his mistress in my bed!”

  “That’s nice,” she says, and reaches over to click off the light.

  There’s silence for a moment, then just before she slips out her dentures she whispers, “Do you think we can go in the pool tomorrow?”

  *

  The alarm clock reads 2:45 a.m. I can’t sleep. I can’t take Ambien because I left it in New York. I can’t drink wine because I don’t have any. I can’t drink hot milk because Beatrice finished it all. I can’t count sheep, because I have A.D.D. So I begin counting my financial woes - my house that won’t sell, my mounting debt, my medical bills, my big needed root canal I can’t afford because I don’t have dental insurance, my daughter’s college tuition - all to the tune of Beatrice’s snoring.

  And then a lightbulb ignites in my brain. Tossing the cotton sheets aside – enough of this – I do what any respectable hard-working American woman would do. I open my freezer, and attempt to shake loose the bottle of frozen vodka that has adhered to the ice chips on the bottom. After several attempts it comes loose. I pour a shot in a papercup, and then I creep into the old easy chair and check my email messages. There’s one from Bebe with a subject line that reads: “I want to come home.”

  Bebe it seems is stuck in a hotel room in the middle of East-Bum-fuck Egypt, or more specifically Kazakhstan, for the mandatory fourteen-day visitation with her would-be-daughter.

  Every day, you must show the adoption agency – via multiple photographs - that the child is learning. Bebe has sent me the jpeg photos of Tamara and her holding up fingers to demonstrate how many days it’s been – this is day six of them being together. Bebe tells me it’s important to smile in the photos, so it looks as if you and your child are bonding. But there’s no need to fake it. Bebe has never looked more relaxed and happy. And the little girl looks genuinely thrilled to have a mommy.

  The email goes on to explain that after this ordeal there’s a court date and then a fifteen day appeals process. You hope and pray you won’t lose your kid.

  I hit the reply key and say, “I can’t wait to meet Tamara. She looks beautiful, and she looks like you. The waiting period is worth it. You can’t help but grow from all of this, Bebe. What an experience! I’ve never been more proud of you, and I can’t wait to finally be an aunt. Love, Libby.” I hit the send button.

  Seconds later it’s in Bebe’s inbox in a Hyatt Hotel on the other end of the world. Tamara hits Bebe on the head several times with a plastic beach ball that I later learn has been their entertainment savior. Bebe rubs her head and says, “Ouch, Tamara. That hurts. You can’t do that to Mommy.” Tamara lowers the ball and pouts. The problem is, Bebe can’t reprimand her new daughter because they can’t understand each other. It’s as though Tamara’s a pet who can only respond to tone. Bebe’s tone tells Tamara she’s tired of being slammed in the noggin.

  Tamara starts crying. Bebe goes to her side desperately trying to console her. But the little girl pushes her away - “no, Mommy no” and curses her new mother in her native tongue. The word “Mommy” sounds glorious to Bebe, but the attitude that follows concerns her for a brief fleeing moment.

  Bebe goes back to her computer, where she finds a “P.S.” from me. She hits the email to read it: “En route to Boston but ran into Henry tonight at the Roadhouse. He misses you, too. Godnight.” And with that, my second shot of vodka kicks in.

  *

  The ride to Boston is a severe mix of rain pellets pounding on the windshield and Beatrice screaming, “Are we going to die before I go in the pool?” The car moves at a snail’s pace over the Sagamore Bridge – apparently the weatherman got it wrong and the hurricane came early. My fingers tighten their grip on the steering wheel, and I’m feeling very Naomi Campbell, longing to bash Beatrice with my cell phone. She’s the reason we’re stuck. If she hadn’t been such a “slowpoke, fuss budget” as she called herself this morning, I’d have dropped Beatrice to her niece’s hours ago. Right about now
I should be sharing a pot of tea with my oldest daughter, Scarlett, on her sofa in Boston.

  Getting to Plymouth, normally a twenty minute ride proves to be an endless chore. It’s been two-plus hours in the car, and there’s no rest area in sight. Beatrice needs to pee. She’s needed to pee every five minutes since we’ve left the Cape.

  Through the windshield wipers I squint to see a motel’s neon sign. I pull the car into the parking lot and turn to Beatrice. “I’m going to make a run to the office. You sit here. I’ll see if I can get us a room.”

  “Find out if they serve lunch by the pool.”

  “Not today, Bea. There’s a hurricane.”

  “Oh, rats!” she says, slamming her body against the seat.

  *

  I wouldn’t want to put even my ninth grade music teach who stole my rights to the musical lead of “My Fair Lady” through the torturous twenty-four hours that follow… Blowing rain, no TV and, far worse than that, no liquor store in sight. We live on pizza from Stella’s pizzeria, which Stella operates on a gas lit stove out of her home right next to the motel. I won’t be seeing my daughter, Scarlett now.

  I started reading Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop by candlelight since working at my computer is impossible. Beatrice sits upright against the headboard knitting. She complains after every other chain stitch. “I only wanted to go in a pool more than anything in the world.”

  It’s her trembling chin that does me in. “Fine, we’ll do it tomorrow,” I say. “Before we pack up the car, and if the rain has stopped, I’ll have my morning cup of coffee and then we’ll jump in the pool. The motel has one out back. I saw it.”

  Beatrice smiles and then pulled the covers up to her chin. I stare at her – she’s sound asleep in seconds. What am I, nuts? It’s November! It’s not more than forty degrees outside. The manager’s had the pool covered by a plastic tarp since Labor Day.

  Wasn’t it Eleanor Roosevelt who once said a woman is like a tea bag? You never know how strong she is until you get her into hot water. Or, in my case, freezing water…