Have a Nice Guilt Trip

by Lisa Scottoline

  They called my name at the desk, and I went back to the examining room. The vet was tacking up the X-ray results on the light board, but they hadn’t brought Pip up. I braced for the worst.

  “Well, we took four different angles on him—he’s a very sweet boy, very cooperative—and I don’t see any bone.”

  I was stunned. But he explained to me that any bone particles would show up white, and there were none. I asked him to double-check that it was the right dog, but it was true. No bone. Either it was a false alarm or the power of prayer works.

  Then a tech walked in with my Pip, his tail wagging like crazy. I scooped him up and kissed him, thanking everyone in sight.

  On my way out, I hugged the woman waiting on her poodle and wished her the best. She seemed steadier.

  With the crisis averted, I saw my own behavior in greater clarity. Both of our guilt—his for making an honest mistake, mine at the prospect of communicating my fear and making him feel worse—completely got in the way of us leaning on each other. If I had asked my boyfriend to come with me, he would have. Even if he couldn’t fix it, he might have made me feel better. And we could have gone through it together.

  I learned that protecting someone by keeping him away from me doesn’t shelter either of us. I learned that feeling other people’s feelings for them doesn’t bring us closer, it only separates me from myself and my needs. I always thought being codependent meant being too emotionally glued to someone; I didn’t realize the way I was doing it was setting me adrift.

  I called my boyfriend and told him the good news. We were both relieved and elated.

  “So when can you come over?”

  Mrs. Uncle Sam

  By Lisa

  I found the perfect man for Mother Mary:

  Uncle Sam.

  Why not?

  They’d be great for each other. Uncle Sam may be over two hundred years old, but he’s got plenty of life left in him. After all, we found out that he sicced the IRS on Tea Party groups and spied on a hundred AP reporters.

  In other words, he’s an active senior.

  A very active senior.

  Or maybe a hyperactive senior.

  But still, he’s just the type of man that Mother Mary needs. He’s tall, handsome, and he spends money like there’s no tomorrow.

  By the way, did I mention there’s no tomorrow?

  I smell New Daddy.

  And because I know a good man is hard to find, I’m not going to be too picky about him. In fact, I did some research on the Tea Party business, and while it bothers me, it would be worse if he went after the Coffee Party.

  Or the Chocolate Cake Party.

  Then the party would be over.

  Also I read about what he did to the Tea Party people. When they applied for tax-exempt status, he sent them lots of red tape.

  Miles and miles of red tape.

  Obviously, Uncle Sam keeps a lot of red tape on hand and maybe he just got carried away.

  He does that all the time.

  Like when he goes shopping, he doesn’t worry about price. I heard he paid five hundred bucks for a screwdriver once. Obviously, he likes screwdrivers and he gets carried away easy.

  He has no governor, for a government.

  Anyway, back to the red tape. Maybe Uncle Sam mistook it for red ribbon. Maybe he thought he was wrapping gifts for the Tea Party.

  Lots and lots of gifts.

  He must really like tea.

  You have to consider that Uncle Sam apologized for sending the red tape to the Tea Party, and that counts in his favor. Mother Mary needs a man who will say he’s sorry.

  Because he will be.

  If he brings flowers, Mother Mary will become Mrs. Uncle Sam.

  I also looked into that business with the reporters. It turns out that Uncle Sam secretly got the records for twenty different phone lines that belonged to Associated Press, which included the cell, office, and home phones of about a hundred reporters.

  See what I mean?

  He’s crazy active.

  Just because he’s older, he’s not sitting around on his duff. He’s busy getting phone records.

  Hundreds and hundreds of phone records.

  You have to put what he did in context, and I read that Uncle Sam got the records to find a leak. So Uncle Sam is handy, and who doesn’t like that in a man?

  Plus, you know how hard it is to find a leak?

  I have a leak in my kitchen celling, and it’s really a problem. I’ve called plumber after plumber but none of them can find the leak, much less stop it. One had a small videocamera that came on a long hose and he stuck that in the pipe, but even he couldn’t find the leak.

  At least Uncle Sam didn’t use the camera hose on the reporters.

  Ouch.

  The plumbers charged me a fortune to find the leak, but Uncle Sam didn’t charge the AP reporters anything at all. He got their phone records for free.

  What a guy!

  So are you with me, should we put those two crazy kids together?

  Maybe Uncle Sam will take her name.

  Mr. Mother Mary.

  Mother Mary Twerks It Out

  By Lisa

  This weekend I had 1,000 people over. And Mother Mary.

  Guess which put me over the top.

  Just kidding.

  We begin with some background. For eight years now, I’ve been giving a book club party at my house, for book club members who read my Spring hardcover.

  Yes, you read that right.

  If your book club reads my April book, and you email or send me a picture of everyone holding the book up, then you’re invited to the book club party at my house. Daughter Francesca speaks, Amazing Assistants Laura and Nan speak, and I speak, and you get the idea. We have you all over, feed you, and yak at you for an afternoon.

  I believe I am the only author on the planet who does this.

  Because I’m just crazy enough.

  Security risk?

  I pray not. Also I have an excellent security system.

  Five yapping dogs.

  Really, any evildoer will get the biggest headache of his life.

  *

  When we started the book club party, we had it for one day and we hosted almost a hundred people. We served homemade chocolate chip cookies, which were underdone, and plugged in coffee urns that blew every fuse in the house.

  But a good time was had by all.

  Happily, the book club party has grown to 1,000 people over two days, and we keep it to 500 a day, because that keeps us in brownies.

  Brownies are the life of every girl party.

  And now there’s a wait list, which makes me just as happy as a bestsellers list.

  Thank you, dear readers!

  This year, the book party was special because it fell so close to Mother Mary’s 90th birthday, which was a huge milestone.

  For me.

  I have lived with her all my life, which feels like 90 years.

  Again, just kidding.

  Mother Mary loves coming up for the book club party, because it’s her chance to tell everyone that I’m a pain in the ass.

  So this time I thought celebrating her birthday would be an added bonus for everyone, especially Mother Mary, who would have 1,000 new friends to sing Happy Birthday to her. But no, she said, when I asked her.

  “Ma, you don’t want to have the book club people sing Happy Birthday to you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I said no.”

  “But it will be so much fun. These people have read about you and they would love to celebrate you, and so would I. I’ll get you a nice cake.”

  “No.”

  “Ma, it’s a very big deal, turning ninety. Not everyone gets that chance.”

  “No.”

  “What if I have somebody jump out of the cake?”

  Mother Mary lifts an eyebrow. “Who?”

  “Telly Savalas.”

  “He’s dead.”

&
nbsp; “My point exactly!”

  “I. Said. No.” Mother Mary scowled, which is her default expression. As she gets older, she has come more into herself, which is Yosemite Sam on blood thinners.

  But you know where this is going, because possession is nine-tenths of the law. I was hoping that once I had her in my clutches, I would get my own way, because the only way I can ever get my way with my mother is if she’s captured and caged. Then I figured I would wheel her out in front of the cake, on a dolly like Hannibal Lecter.

  Happy Birthday, Mommy!

  And when I picked her and Brother Frank up at the airport, my optimism soared because she was so cooperative. Case in point, she arrived as usual in her white lab coat, but she agreed not to wear it to the party because it had a tomato stain from the Bloody Mary she had on the plane.

  Surely, you have these problems in your own family. I bet your aged parents spill drinks on their Halloween costumes, too.

  Anyway, to fast-forward, she came to the book club party with Brother Frank, climbed up on the little stage, and said hello to the crowd.

  Then she refused to give up the microphone.

  She told jokes, showed off her back scratcher, and twerked, AARP-style.

  And she didn’t even curse at me when we brought out the birthday cake.

  Francesca dolls up Mother Mary for her birthday celebration.

  Every single person sang Happy Birthday to her, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the place. I know that some of the people were thinking of her, and some were thinking of their own mothers, whom they weren’t so lucky to have around anymore.

  Ninety Years of Mother Mary.

  To me, it’s still not enough.

  My Grandmother Is Not the Same

  By Francesca

  My grandmother is not the same.

  It’s not something I allow myself to say often, and I wouldn’t want her to know I thought so, but it’s true. She’s going to be ninety years old in two weeks, so I guess I should’ve expected changes.

  But we never expect our loved ones to change. They are the rocks, the solid foundation upon which we build our lives. For my entire life, I have defined my grandmother by the way she is feisty, willful, contrary, and irrepressible.

  In other words, not all that open to change. She’s not exactly known for her wiggle room.

  But the last several years have been hard on my grandmother; she battled and won a fight against throat cancer, and she’s suffered a heart attack and strokes. Whenever someone asks me how she’s doing, I say something like, “Great! She’s still her old self! No keeping her down!” or, “You know how she is. Cancer shouldn’t mess with her!”

  It’s what I told myself.

  But while her resilience has been an absolute marvel, I know her struggles have taken their toll. Talking—always my grandmother’s favorite pastime and greatest liability—has become difficult for her. She works with a speech therapist to get her smack talk back up to speed, but it’s been hard to get the words to match that wit.

  I know all of this, but I try not to think about it.

  So when I heard she was coming to visit last month, all I thought of was how excited I was to see her. Last year, she wasn’t well enough to travel, but this year she wanted to come up and celebrate her ninetieth birthday with all of us. She was at my mom’s house for three weeks, and I came down from New York so as not to miss a day with her.

  There has never been a time that my grandmother visited and we didn’t cook together, and I didn’t want this visit to be any different. We decided on eggplant parmigiana, a perennial favorite in our family.

  And a particularly good choice for my grandmother, because ever since she had radiation on her throat, she can only eat soft foods and finds most pastas too chewy.

  We got the family all together in the kitchen: My grandmother was installed in a chair at the island, the catbird seat for recipe supervision; my uncle Frank was helping to organize the ingredients; my mother manned the bubbling tomato sauce; and I stood at the stove, frying the eggplant slices.

  I’ve learned and relearned these recipes over the years, so much that I even make them at home for friends now. But making them on my own isn’t as special as making them with my grandmother. It’s more fun to do as a family, and my grandmother always coos over me.

  But this time I couldn’t do anything right.

  “Looks good, doesn’t it?” I said, showing my grandmother the growing pile of golden brown fried eggplant.

  “No,” my grandmother said.

  “No? What’s wrong with it?”

  “Not dark enough.” Her speech was halting, as if the “d” in “dark” got caught in her throat.

  “Ma, they’re perfect, she’s doing a great job,” my mom said in my defense. “You don’t want her to burn them.”

  “Not burnt, brown!” My grandmother was angry now, and the words were almost indistinguishable. She has always been quick to sass you, but quick to anger was new.

  The eggplant was cooked to the exact shade of toasty brown we’ve always made them. I have the timing down perfectly, three minutes in the oil each side, just like she taught me. The only possible explanation was that she couldn’t see them clearly. Her eyesight has gotten much worse, and she can no longer read type or see most pictures in a magazine.

  “But they are brown, Muggy,” I said as gently as possible, trying to think of an excuse for her. “I bet it’s the light over the oven that’s making them look lighter.”

  My grandmother frowned. “How ’bout the sauce?”

  “You want to taste it? Hang on, here I come.” I cupped my hand beneath the wooden spoon and brought it over to where she was seated.

  But when she reached for the spoon, her hands shook. Her face twisted in frustration and she banged her fist on the table.

  “It’s okay, Muggy,” I said, using my pet name for her. “Take your time.” I remembered my uncle’s warning about her “intention tremors,” shaking that comes on with volitional movement, like reaching. But seeing the tremor wasn’t nearly as troubling to me as it was to see her upset.

  My grandmother shot me a look from over her glasses, as if to say, “Can you believe this s—t?”

  “I’ll help you hold it, okay? Try again.”

  Her hand steadied this time, and the sauce was approved.

  My mother caught my eye as she went over to my grandmother. “Ma, I think you’re tired. Why don’t you take a nap now? You can rest while we finish up.”

  But Muggy waved her off. She wanted to stay and make sure we didn’t mess anything else up.

  We ran into trouble again after I had finished frying the eggplant. I brought the heaping plate of them over to the kitchen island to begin assembling the stacks in the casserole dish.

  “Did you count them?” my grandmother asked.

  Of course, I hadn’t. We never did that, and it would be terribly tedious to do now. “No, why would I?”

  “To make the sta—, the sta—” Her mouth was open, but the words weren’t coming out. Suddenly she shut her mouth and she shook her head, frustrated again.

  “Don’t get upset.” I was more than happy to wait. “You don’t have to rush, I’m listening.”

  She took a breath and tried again. “To make them even.”

  “I’ll make sure the stacks are even by keeping track of how many layers as I go along, okay?”

  That seemed to satisfy her, but her unusually exacting directions continued. When my uncle began sprinkling shredded mozzarella on the first layer of eggplant, my grandmother, words failing her, rapped a spoon on the table.

  “Ma, what?” he said.

  Her wide eyes were magnified by her glasses as she glared at him. “Spoon!”

  “My hands are clean, I just washed them.”

  She shook her head. “To measure.”

  I have never in my life seen my grandmother use conventional measuring tools. She has taught me how to make ravioli, ricotta gnocchi, tomato sauce, an
d the best meatballs I’ve ever tasted, and she has never measured a thing. Instead she cooks by look, taste, and above all, texture: They should look golden brown. It should not stick to the table. The knife should cut it cleanly. Season to taste.

  The joy of Italian cooking is that it is not an exact science. You know who taught me that?

  My grandmother.

  My uncle said, “Mom, we have made this fifty times at home, we’ve never used a tablespoon to measure.”

  I knew he was right, and I suspect my grandmother did, too, but she wouldn’t admit she had made a mistake. Either that, or perhaps she was just craving control when so many things in her life that we all take for granted—the power of speech, the ability to see, to swallow—were newly out of her control. Getting a recipe exactly right took on heightened importance.

  I got a tablespoon to measure.

  We finally managed to get the eggplant parm into the oven, but we were all a little more exhausted than I remember us being in the past. My grandmother finally went to take that nap.

  Ironically, she slept through dinner and didn’t have any eggplant at all.

  It’s not easy for me to adjust to my grandmother’s changes, but it’s a lot harder for her. I wish she would realize we don’t mind being patient, and I wish she would be more patient with herself. There is no shame in letting us see the cracks in her tough-girl façade; she doesn’t have to be tough with us.

  Sometimes I catch myself looking away when she has a coughing fit, not because I don’t want to see it, but because I don’t want her to feel like I see it. I catch myself finishing her sentences for her when her speech falters, not because I can’t wait, but because I don’t want her to get frustrated. She’s a proud woman, and I want to let her save face.

  But that isn’t helping.

  What I need to show her is that I love her regardless, and that I can be patient regardless. Love, like Italian cooking, has a lot of give in it. We don’t need to be exacting with the ones we love, there’s wiggle room. And likewise, she doesn’t need to worry so much. She can give up control, because we’ve learned the lessons she taught us so well. She built this family, and now I want her to take her time and enjoy it.

  None of the changes in her make any difference in the way I feel about her. When it comes to my grandmother, the world can wait, as far as I’m concerned.