Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog

by Lisa Scottoline

  And she is still here.

  The sole survivor.

  Strong and on her feet, with all of her marbles. She lives in a world that changed from colanders that never break to razors that get tossed after only a week. She expects things not to break because she has not, after all.

  She alone remains.

  Unbreakable.

  Mirror, Mirror

  There’s things I won’t spend money on and things I will. For example, I spend money on pretentious clothes for book tour, and that’s fine with me. I earn the money and I never judge people’s spending habits, especially my own.

  I learned this lesson when I met a man who had spent several thousand dollars on toy trains. You couldn’t pay me to spend money on toy trains, but that’s me. I could see it made him happy, which makes absolute sense, because he’s not me. Turns out that money can buy happiness, if it runs on a miniature track past tiny fake shrubbery, and who am I to judge? Now, when I buy shoes, I think, at least I’m not blowing money on little model boxcars, for God’s sake.

  That would be really stupid.

  To return to topic, here’s what I don’t spend money on:

  My skin.

  I wash my face with a three-dollar jug of Cetaphil that I buy at Walgreen’s. If I’m feeling fancy, which I never am, I buy whatever drugstore moisturizer they’re marketing for old broads. You know the one. They call it age-defying or age-defining or some other euphemism, but we weren’t born yesterday, and we all know what it is—the menopausal moisturizer.

  I’m thinking that the world divides into two groups: women who buy their skin-care products at CVS and those who buy them at the mall, which is where today’s adventure starts in earnest.

  I’m with daughter Francesca, standing at one of the nicest makeup counters at the mall, which also has a skin care line. Oddly, for the past few years, I’ve been getting free samples of this skin care line sent to me in the mail. I have no idea who sends them to me, whether it’s the department store, the Skin Care Gods, or someone who has seen me on the street and been secretly revolted by my skin. But they’ve been sending me these products for a long time, and I’ve been giving them to Francesca. She’d told me that she liked them, and if I cared enough I would have found out why, but it’s probably the one conversation we didn’t have, until I found myself on the paying side of the glistening counter, listening to a gorgeous salesgirl with the most perfect skin ever describe how they put diamond dust in the face wash.

  “Did you say diamonds?” I asked. If I had a hearing aid, I would have checked the battery.

  “Yes, the dust exfoliates the skin.”

  “With diamonds?”

  “Yes, and you have to make sure you wash it all off, or your face will be sparkly.”

  “Like a stripper?” I asked, and Francesca added:

  “The richest stripper in the world.”

  Then we listened to the rest of the pitch, and in five minutes, I felt myself mesmerized by the salesgirl, or maybe by her skin. Her pores shimmered like precious gems, never mind that she was twenty years old, which means that she wasn’t a salesgirl, but a saleschild.

  Then she showed us a toner, which I had always thought was something you put in your computer printer but was actually applied to the face after diamond-exfoliating, and she also helped me understand that I needed both a day cream and a night cream, though I had never before thought about face cream having a time limit, which shows what a complete rube I’ve been.

  She asked, “Do you ladies have an eye cream?”

  Francesca had the right answer, which was yes, but only because she had cheated and had gotten the free sample, which I must have been insane to give to her, as my eyes now clearly thirsted for their cream. I wondered if there were special creams for other things on your face, like lip or nose cream, but I was too spellbound to ask.

  The saleschild turned again to me. “Which serum do you use?”

  “Serum?” My mind flipped ahead to the possibilities. Truth serum? Serum cholesterol? Huh?

  “There comes a time when every women needs a serum.” The saleschild held up a tiny green bottle from which she extracted a medicine dropper. “Now, hold out your hand.”

  “Yes, master.” I obeyed, and she let fall a perfect teardrop of serum onto the back of my hand, leaving a costly wet spot that dried sooner than you can say, Charge it!

  “The infusion is absorbed instantly into the skin, leaving it revived and refreshed.”

  “Like a magic potion,” I said, awed, when I felt Francesca’s strong and sensible hand on my arm.

  “Mom, we should go.”

  But I could only hear her as if from far away. I had slipped over to the dark side, and by the time we left the mall, I had a shopping bag full of bottles and tubes, jars and gels.

  In other words, toy trains.

  Disastrous

  I don’t know what kind of conversations you had around your dinner table growing up, but ours were generally about disasters. Mother Mary could make a disaster out of anything. Our kitchen was an accident waiting to happen. I reprint below her most important warnings, in case you’re sitting in your breakfast nook, blissfully unaware.

  If you put too much spaghetti on your fork, you’ll choke to death. If you don’t chew your spaghetti twenty times, you’ll choke to death. If you talk while you’re eating spaghetti, you’ll choke to death. Bottom line, spaghetti leads to perdition.

  Spaghetti isn’t the only killer. If you load the knives into the dishwasher with the pointy tip up, you’ll fall on them and impale yourself. Also you’ll go blind from reading without enough light. Reading in general ruins your eyes. If you eat baked beans from a can that has dents, you’ll die of botulism. This was before people injected botulism into their faces. Nowadays, the dented can will kill you, but you’ll look young.

  You should know that electrocution, a go-to Scottoline hazard, will result from many common household items. You’ll be electrocuted if you use the phone during a thunderstorm. If your nighttime glass of water spills onto your electric alarm clock, you’ll fry in your sleep. In fact, any small electrical appliance, given the chance, will leap into the nearest sink to kill you. Trust me, blow dryers lie in wait. Your toaster has murder on its mind.

  A closely related disaster is fire, and almost anything can start a five-alarmer. Birthday candles. Lightning striking the house or the car. The stove left on. A cigarette butt tossed unpinched into the trash. Oddly, nobody in my house worried about smoking. If you smoke, you’ll be fine.

  Exercise is lethal. If you play a sport, the ball will hit you in the breasts, presumably deflating them. You’re a goner if you run with scissors or sharpened pencils. Swimming less than an hour after you eat is out of the question, but if you want to play it safe, better to wait until tomorrow. And if you don’t listen and sink like a stone, don’t come crying to me.

  It’s your funeral.

  As a result of my valuable childhood preparedness training, I’m the lady stockpiling milk, eggs, bread, rock salt, and snow shovels before a storm. And during the anthrax scare, I was first in line at the hardware store. I bought the requisite cord of Saran Wrap and a gross of duct tape, with which to seal the house, and all of it sits in my basement, at the ready. The deadly cloud of anthrax never came, and for that you have me to thank. I pre-empted it. I scared anthrax. I had enough Saran Wrap to protect all of us, if not keep us fresh for days.

  Now that you know how prepared I am, you can imagine my dismay when I read something recently reiterating that all manner of disasters could happen—wildfires, hurricanes, and tornados—and I should go online to test my “readiness quotient” (RQ).

  Uh-oh.

  I’m terrified to report that even though I unplug my blow dryer after each use and load my knives correctly, my RQ score was a 0 out of 10.

  I knew I should have studied.

  The report said that the average RQ score for Americans is 4, and that only two other people in my zip code h
ad taken the test. Here’s where I went wrong, so you can learn from my mistakes:

  Not only did I not know how to find the emergency broadcast system on my radio, I couldn’t even find my radio.

  I don’t have a disaster supply kit, and duct tape doesn’t count.

  I don’t have a “Go” kit. I have only a “Stay Home And Wait It Out” kit.

  I don’t have a “family communications plan.” Honestly, who does? Communications are hard enough, but family communications are impossible. You have a better chance of surviving a tornado than communicating with your family.

  In event of a disaster, I haven’t established a specific meeting place, but that’s easy to choose. The mall.

  I don’t drill my family on what to do in an emergency. Scream Hysterically was not an option. Nor was Hurry Back To The Mall.

  Nor do I know first aid. Evidently, a box of assorted Band-Aids, even the kind with the antibiotic, isn’t enough. This surprises me. When the earthquake hits, my money’s on Neosporin.

  So you know where this is going. I suggest you log on to www.whatsyourrq.org, test yourself, and get your act together before the apocalypse.

  See you at the hardware store. I’ll be the one in the gas mask.

  In a gas mask, I look young.

  Dog Days

  Because I lectured you in my commencement speech to slow down and savor the moments of your life, I thought you should know I’m doing nothing like that.

  I flunk savoring.

  I know it’s the drowsy dog days of summer and I’m supposed to enjoy sitting around watching the tomatoes ripen and noticing the particular hue of the sunlight as it hits the leafy trees and blah blah blah. Summer sounds like literary fiction, but I write books with car chases.

  In other words, I got a new summer project.

  Let’s see if you can guess what it is. It involves wood, nails, and feathers.

  Give up?

  A chicken coop.

  With chickens.

  Here’s how it happened. You know how I am about home decorating, and I just finished with the house, to mixed results. The good news is that the aluminum siding is gone, the stonework looks fantastic, and the clapboard is fresh Bavarian Cream.

  The bad news is that the shutters are painted a bright yellow called Candleglow, which is a misnomer. This color is Solar Energy. This color could power a small city. A tactful friend of mine called it “sunny,” but sunny doesn’t come close. If you broke off a piece of the sun itself and stuck it on either side of your windows, you would still only have half of this color. Now you need sunglasses to look at my house, and when you do, you understand instantly why yellow was Vincent Van Gogh’s favorite color.

  Because he was crazy.

  Look at my shutters and you not only want to cut your ears off, you want to gouge your eyes out. But you couldn’t, because you’d be blinded by the color. Your face might even melt off, too. It’s like Atomic Blast Yellow, and you get the idea. It’s a man-made disaster.

  Correction. Woman-made, even better.

  I’m trying to live with it, until I get the money to repaint or detonate.

  To return to my point, fresh from my success with the house, I saw a picture of a chicken coop. It was adorable, like a doll-house with a little wooden door and two tiny windows, with shutters. It reminded me of the Little Tykes playhouse that daughter Francesca used to have when she was little, or those green plastic houses in Monopoly that you put on Baltic Avenue. I always preferred the houses over the hotels, even though the hotels earned more rent, which gives you an idea of my money management skills.

  Anyway when I saw the picture of the coop, I said to myself, I want that little housie, so I guess I have to get some chickens. So now we know which came first, the chicken or the coop.

  As it happens, this summer project is fun for everyone in my family, meaning Francesca and me. We went and picked out seven adorable chicks, and we learned new vocabulary words—Brown Sussex, Wyandotte, Araucana, and Australorp, which is a black chicken and not a resident of Australia. They’re all pullets, which means girls, so it took us days to pick their names because we wanted a theme. First we went with Miss Pennsylvania, Miss New Jersey, Miss Delaware, and so on, but they peep like crazy so we tried Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morrisette, Barbra Streisand, and Judy Garland. Then we couldn’t agree on seven girl rock stars, which is clearly what these chicks are, so we decided the dominant one should be Princess Ida and the rest are all other characters from Gilbert & Sullivan, which classes up my house.

  We hang with the chicks all the time, watching them grow, singing to them, and trying to get them to love us. The first week they fled from us in fear, flocking at the corner of the cage, but now they’re eating out of our hands, literally. They coo, cluck, and gurgle, and today I’m going out to buy a baby monitor so I can hear them in the house. I’m sure this has nothing to do with Francesca’s graduation from college and undeniable adulthood, but call the police if I try to nurse these chicks.

  Ouch.

  We obsess on raising and lowering their heat lamp, and we clean their butts, called “vents,” with mineral oil so they don’t “paste up” or, well you guessed it. We also talk about painting the chicken coop pink, since it was an all-girl production, or drawing fake flowers and vines on it, because why not, then considered painting it like a sorority house with Greek letters above the door, or maybe a little theater, since the chicks are all Drama Queens.

  So I’m back to paint chips and shutter colors.

  I’m thinking Egg Yolk Yellow.

  What I Did on Summer Vacation

  I had originally decided that daughter Francesca and I would skip a vacation this year in favor of a staycation, but that was before I realized how much I hated saying staycation, which isn’t even a word. So I grabbed my VISA card and made a few phone calls, and we were off to a place no Scottoline has ever been.

  Hawaii.

  The excitement started before we even got there, because of Michael McDonald. Please tell me you know that Michael McDonald sang with the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan, who made the soundtrack of your life, or at least your freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania, circa 1974. I spotted him in the airport, recognizing him instantly from my fantasies. You know you’re getting older when the grayest head in the place is the one man who does it for you.

  Of course, I made Francesca go over to him with me, which she did, and I introduced myself and started gushing, though she pulled me away before I suggested anything untoward.

  Who raised this kid?

  So then of course I have the best luck ever and Michael McDonald shows up on our very flight, which lasts like 29,373 hours so I can stare at him as he watches the movie (Prince Caspian) and gets up to go to the bathroom (only three times).

  I like a man with a strong bladder.

  And then how great is it that when we get our baggage, the only luggage left is his and mine, which shows that we were meant to be, if you don’t factor in his wife.

  What a fool believes, a wise woman has the power to reason away.

  And then Francesca and I end up on Maui, which is ridiculously pretty, if only I could enjoy it. Because all I like to do on vacation is sit on my butt and read in the sun, which is what distinguishes a vacation from a staycation, wherein I sit on my butt and read in the sun for much less money.

  But Maui offers so much to do and Francesca is the adventurous sort, so in no time, I find myself snorkeling in its teal blue water, watching green-striped eels and spotted manta rays. By the way, I can’t swim, a fun fact about me you may not know. So I’m the only adult in the Pacific wearing an inflatable vest.

  Six-year-olds point and laugh.

  At one point, I have to struggle out of the water to shore, so I do my best doggy paddle while Francesca waits on the beach for me. She tries to be patient but by sundown, it gets old. She says, “Dead bodies wash up faster.”

  I cannot disagree. Glug.

  Then we sign up fo
r the snorkeling cruise, which means that we spend two hours on a catamaran sailing to the island of Lanai. In case you don’t know, a catamaran is a two-hulled boat that causes you to throw up, which I do.

  The next day we are scheduled for a horseback ride down the crater of Haleakala. FYI, Haleakala is a dormant volcano that rises 10,000 feet into the air, and another fun fact about me is that I’m afraid of heights. I’m too terrified to drive the road to the summit, which snakes along various lethal cliffs, so I pay an extortionate rate to be driven there, only to realize that I cannot pay anyone to ride the horse down into the crater for me. So I suck it up for the next five hours, over trails that go up and down for three thousand feet, over lava rubble and coarse sand. Francesca tells me it was starkly beautiful—a rust, black, and green landscape that looks like Mars, dotted with unusual silver sword plants that grow only in Hawaii—and I’m taking her word for it.

  My eyes were closed.

  I survived only by placing my trust in my sleepy old mare, who can do Haleakala with her eyes closed, just like me. Her name is Princess, so there’s something else we have in common.

  Much later, back at the hotel, I order drinks that are also found only on Hawaii. The Lavaflow, a pina colada with strawberries, and a perfect Mai-Tai, and the next day I am sitting happily on the beach, reading James Michener’s Hawaii.

  Now that’s a vacation.

  Shake It Up, Baby

  Okay, I’m officially confused, and it’s not rocket science. It’s about my latest trip to the food store.

  Here’s what happened:

  I shop at Acme and Whole Foods, because I can’t buy everything I need in one place. Acme doesn’t know from wheatberry salad, and God forbid that Whole Foods sell Splenda. I even have to go to a third store for pet food, but that’s not the point.