Best Friends, Occasional Enemies

by Lisa Scottoline; Francesca Serritella

  I felt guilty accepting their kindness, but I didn’t have the heart to correct them that I wasn’t a serviceman’s sweetheart, I’d just been dumped.

  But I survived. I came home to my wonderful family and friends who swallowed their I-told-you-so’s and met me with support and understanding. And even while nursing a broken heart and a bruised ego, I felt satisfied. I had said the unsaid, laid my cards on the table, and taken my chance.

  It was my last great gamble, a loss, and yet I’d do it over again.

  With that in mind, casino games seemed like child’s play.

  My friends and I finally agreed that blackjack was easy enough for our comfort level. With beginner’s luck, we won the first three hands. On the fourth, we were dealt a low number, thirteen. High off our previous wins, we decided to take our chances.

  “Hit me!”

  Ten of clubs. Twenty-three. We lose.

  The player next to us snapped, “Why didn’t you stay? The odds were against you. That was so stupid!”

  The dealer, an older woman, shot the player a dirty look. Then she pointed a red-nailed finger in our direction and said, “Honey, don’t listen to him. That is your hand. You go ahead and play it however you want to.”

  Couldn’t have said it better myself.

  Clipped

  By Lisa

  If you raise your daughter right, eventually she will know more than you. Which is the good and bad news.

  We begin when Daughter Francesca comes home for a visit and finds me engaged in one of my more adorable habits, which is clipping my fingernails over the trashcan in the kitchen.

  This would be one of the benefits of being an empty nester. You can do what you want, wherever you want. The house is all yours.

  Weee!

  In my case, this means that everything that I should properly do in my bathroom, I do in my kitchen.

  Except one thing.

  Please.

  I keep it classy.

  Bottom line, I wash my face and brush my teeth in the kitchen. I’m writing on my laptop in the kitchen, right now. My game plan is to live no more than three steps from the refrigerator at all times, which gives you an idea of my priorities.

  Francesca eyes me with daughterly concern. “What are you doing?”

  “Making sure the clippings don’t go all over the floor,” I tell her, clipping away. Each snip produces a satisfying clik.

  “It’s not good for your nails, to clip them that way. You might want to use an emery board.”

  I know she learned that from Mother Mary, who carries an emery board everywhere, like a concealed weapon. “I don’t have one.”

  “I do, and you can use it.”

  “No, thanks. It’s too much trouble.” I keep clipping. Clik, clik. Hard little half-moons of fingernail fly into the trash. My aim is perfect, and wait’ll I get to my toenails. Then I prop my foot up on the trash can and shoot the clippings into the air. Now that’s entertainment.

  She adds, gently, “You clip them kind of short.”

  “I know. So I don’t have to do it so often.”

  “But your nails would look so pretty if you let them grow longer.”

  “I don’t care enough.”

  Francesca looks a little sad. “I could do them for you, Mom. Shape them, polish them. Give you a nice manicure. Look at mine. I do it myself.”

  So I look up, and her hands are lovely, with each fingernail nicely shaped and lacquered with a hip, dark polish. It reminds me that I used to do my nails when I was her age. I used to care about my nails, but now I don’t, and I’m not sure why I stopped. Either I’m mature, or slovenly.

  “Thanks, but no,” I tell her.

  She seems disappointed. It is a known fact that parents will occasionally let their children down, and this will most often occur in the area of personal grooming or bad puns. I’m guilty of only one of these. All of my puns are good.

  But to make a long story short, later we decide to go out to dinner, and since it’s a nice night, I put on a pair of peep-toe shoes, which are shoes that reveal what’s now known as toe cleavage, a term I dislike.

  If your toe has cleavage, ask your plastic surgeon for a refund.

  Anyway, both Francesca and I looked down at my unvarnished toenails, newly clipped though they were. I had to acknowledge that it wasn’t a good look.

  “I can polish them for you,” she offered, with hope. “I think they would look better, with these shoes.”

  “But we’re late,” I said, and we were.

  “It won’t take long.” Francesca reached for the nail polish, and I kicked off the shoes.

  “I have an idea. Just do the ones that show.”

  “What?” Francesca turned around in surprise, nail polish in hand.

  “Do the first three toenails.”

  Look, it made sense at the time. The other two toenails didn’t matter, and no one can find my pinky toenail, which has withered away to a sliver, evidently on a diet more successful than mine.

  But Francesca looked pained. “Please, let me do them all. We have time, and it’s cheesy to only do the ones that show. It’s like sweeping dirt under the rug.”

  So I gave in. Like I said, I raised her right.

  Mother Mary Hears The Worst

  By Lisa

  The best way to deliver bad news is to be direct, so when Mother Mary answers the phone, I tell her right away: “Ma, are you sitting down? Because they canceled Law & Order.”

  She scoffs. “That’s not funny.”

  “I’m not kidding.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “No, I’m not,” I say. I know there are five stages of grief, and the first is denial, so I had fully expected her reaction. She watches Law & Order all day long. Anytime I call her, I hear ba-bum in the background. Also, she has a crush on Jerry Orbach, and I don’t have the heart to tell her he’s been canceled, too.

  “This can’t be true,” she says in disbelief. “Everybody loves Law & Order.”

  No, Everybody Loves Raymond, I think but don’t say. “It was on for twenty years, so it lived a lot longer than most TV shows.”

  “Stop it. I know you’re joking. You’ll never fool me again.”

  She’s referring to the one practical joke I played in my life, to wit: She loves the lottery, and during my broke days when I was trying to become a writer, she encouraged me to buy a lottery ticket. This would be your basic Scottoline plan for financial success, and who could blame her, because she used to win all the time, like $500 a pop. So once, when the Powerball got up to two million bucks, I called her and told her I’d bought a ticket but I’d missed when they’d read the winning number.

  So you know where this is going.

  I read her the winning number, slowly, digit by digit, and by the time I got to the fifth, I thought she was going to have a heart attack. This was thirty years ago, and she has never forgotten. Forgiving was never in her vocabulary in the first place. To Mother Mary, forgiveness is for the weak.

  I try again. “I swear, it’s the truth. Think of it this way. You’ll always have the reruns.”

  “It’s not the same,” she says, finally believing me. She sounds so sad, my heart goes out to her.

  “I’m sorry, Ma.”

  “How can they do that? They’re so stupid!” she said, angry, which I know is the second stage of grief, and probably the one where she feels most comfy.

  “Well, I guess they know.” I want to move on to more important subjects, like her health. She’s supposed to be on oxygen therapy at night, but Brother Frank told me she hadn’t been cooperating. “Ma, how come you’re not using your oxygen?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You have to. The doctor said.” I was worried. The doctor found that her oxygen levels are too low, which surprises no one but her. We Scottolines have big noses, and she always says we get more oxygen than anybody in the room. Turns out one of us doesn’t. “You need the oxygen, for your blood.”

&nbs
p; Are you sitting down?

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Oh. Maybe … I do,” she says, pausing.

  I don’t understand. “What?”

  “It’s probably nothing, but the other night, I got a pain in my arm.”

  Oh my God. “Ma, you did? Your upper arm? Your left arm?”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “That’s a sign of a heart attack!”

  She scoffed. “No, it’s not.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “You’re joking. You think I’m stupid? My heart’s not in my arm.”

  “Ma, really—” I stop when I hear her burst into laughter. “That’s not funny.”

  She can’t stop laughing. “Yes, it is, cookie.”

  And she’s still laughing, when we hang up.

  Half-Full

  By Lisa

  I just read in the newspaper that an Italian lingerie manufacturer has instituted a program whereby women can return their used padded bras to the stores to be recycled into insulation for home construction.

  Bravissimo!

  I was wondering if this would work in the United States, but I don’t think so. Why?

  We don’t throw out our old bras.

  I don’t have evidence on which to base my opinion, but I bet I’m right. I confirmed my theory by asking my girlfriends if they throw out their old bras. All of them agreed with me, which is why we have girlfriends.

  I cannot throw away an old bra. I don’t know why. Even if I don’t wear it anymore, I keep my old bras in my drawer, where they ball up in a tangle of frayed lace, spent elastic, and underwires that could put out an eye.

  I can tell the oldest ones because they’re black and red, a veritable checkerboard of youthful enthusiasm. And they’re made of nylon or some sheer synthetic that was eventually replaced by good old-fashioned white cotton, like an old Maidenform commercial.

  From the days of maidens.

  One of my friends does exactly what I do. Rather than throw away her old bras when her drawer gets too full, she simply starts a new drawer. And she buys new bras more often than I do, as she has a more active personal life, if you follow. I don’t get a new bra unless I get a new husband.

  So right now, I have ex-bras.

  I don’t know why my friends and I save our bras, except that it may have to do with the price. I remember when a bra cost twelve dollars. Now, you need a second mortgage, especially if it’s what we used to call padded, which they now call formed. And instead of the soft cottony stuff they used to pad them with, they now use removable things called cutlets, which you can stuff in your bra if you like wearing veal.

  I like the old padding better, of course. I have one bra that’s padded with some sort of airy honeycomb. It used to make a minefield of bumps on my sweater, telling the world that not only I was wearing a padded bra, I was keeping bees.

  The price of bras reaches its peak with a brand known as La Perla. The more financially prudent among you might not know about La Perla, so you’ll have to trust me on this, as you should in all things. I’ve never lied to you, and will tell you now that a La Perla bra cost as much as a strand of pearlas.

  How I came to possess a La Perla is a boring story, but the short of it is that I was going on TV, and the saleswoman told me I needed a special bra for TV, so I tried it on and it fit me like a cupcake pan in which the cupcake doesn’t quite rise, if you follow.

  Though I prefer to see the cup as half-full, not half-empty.

  Anyway, the cup’s shape was amazingly breast-like, though completely fake, which made it perfect, so I told her to add it to my bag without really checking the price. And when I looked at the receipt, it was too late.

  But I have a solution.

  I’m putting it in my will.

  There’s financial planning for the future.

  Heirloom underwires.

  Mother Mary and the Terrorists

  By Lisa

  They say that the past isn’t even past, and that’s always true when Mother Mary is around.

  It all begins with a call from Brother Frank. “I got bad news,” he says. “We’re bastards.”

  “Wha—?”

  “Well, we went to get Mom’s driver’s license renewed.”

  So far, I’m following. Mother Mary doesn’t drive, but she carries an ID card issued by the Florida DMV. Her last ID card expired, which I found out on her last visit after I tried to put her on a plane back to Miami. They wouldn’t let her fly until they patted her down, which she enjoyed way too much.

  “The DMV says we can’t renew her ID card without her marriage certificate.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s a woman who’s using her married name.”

  “So what?” I’m trying to understand. I don’t see what a driver’s license has to do with a marriage certificate, especially at this point in my mother’s life. My father passed away in 2002, and my parents have been divorced forever. They were married in 1950, a time when people balanced spinning plates on TV. Now that’s entertainment.

  “It’s a new law, since September 11.”

  In the background, I hear my mother yelling, “Those terrorists, they should be ashamed of themselves!”

  I nod in approval. That someone should be ashamed of themselves is one of the worst things she says. And when she’s really mad, she’ll throw her shoe at them and shout, “Out of my sight!” I fear for the terrorists if they ever meet Mother Mary. She’ll order them out of her sight and throw her shoe. She always hits her target. There are missile launchers with less accuracy.

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Frank, can this be true?”

  “Yes. We were in line behind a ninety-two-year-old woman whose husband had been dead for fifty years, and they wouldn’t give her an ID card. She had taken two buses to get there, so we gave her a ride home. She said it was a mikveh.”

  “You mean a mitzvah, which is a good deed.”

  “What’s a mikveh?”

  “It’s a ritual bath. Forget it. Tell the story.”

  “So we called the hall of records back home, and they can’t find her marriage certificate anywhere.”

  “Do the records go back that far?”

  “Yes, but the certificate is lost. Or it never existed.”

  I blink. “It has to exist. They got married.”

  “Yeah, but there’s no proof.”

  Behind him, my mother’s yelling, “It’s all because of the terrorists!”

  I let it go. “So what now?”

  “She can’t visit you until we straighten this out.”

  Which would be the good news.

  Just kidding.

  I ask, “What about a passport?”

  “She needs the ID card. She’s gonna show a passport to write a check? And we’re illegitimate.”

  “Does it matter?” I wonder aloud. In the olden days, they used to call it being born out of wedlock. I never liked the word wedlock, though its faintly incarcerated air fit my marital history to a T.

  “I don’t think it matters. Everybody’s illegitimate, these days. I feel cool.”

  I smile. “I know, right? We’re like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s twins.”

  “I’ll be the girl.”

  I laugh. “Okay, I’ll be the boy.”

  Mother Mary shouts, “Bastards!”

  But I don’t ask which ones she means.

  Twit-Willow

  By Francesca

  My girlfriend recently took me to a barbecue with the hopes of setting me up with the host. He turned out to be a sweet guy, a great cook, and we talked all night. So I was disappointed when he didn’t get my phone number. He didn’t even ask for my email.

  However, he did start following me on Twitter.

  The next day, there was a tweet for me reading: “Nice meeting you last night. I’m checking you out 140 characters at a time ;)”

  I knew he was kidding, but all I could thin
k was, oh no.

  Are we doing this now? Do we really want to make Twitter the new frontier of having to be charming and attractive?

  Demi Moore may have the time and the body to tweet bikini-clad self-portraits, but she’s a freak of nature. I am a mere mortal.

  Admittedly, I learned to flirt on AOL Instant Messenger, and I’ve been told I write good text messages, but this social media boom is expanding faster than my learning curve. Simply being born after 1980 no longer confers sufficient expertise.

  I only recently opened a Twitter account, and right now, it’s about the least sexy thing ever. I mostly tweet links to articles on animal rights, jokes about pop culture and celebrities, and pictures of my dog.

  Are you turned on yet?

  I also use Twitter for communal TV viewing. I live alone, so sometimes when I’m watching a particular show, I’ll go on Twitter and search for other people watching the same thing at the same moment. I goof on dumb reality shows and watch Philly sports events with the greatest/angriest fans on Earth.

  So essentially, my Twitter account is a web incarnation of me on the couch in fleece pants.

  Not exactly first date attire.

  Even if I took the lead pursuing someone on Twitter, it’s an awkward medium for romance.

  To “follow” a crush sounds like stalking him.

  Which doesn’t work, by the way. I “followed” this one hot senior guy for most of tenth grade, and all I got to do was his French homework.

  Facebook is stressful enough. How do I make a profile that is friendly to friends, professional to professionals, and attractive to potential mates?

  I’m onto the code words. For instance, if someone lists “working out” as their interest, activity, or one of their “likes,” this is code for “I look good naked.” No one “likes” working out. We like how we look after we work out. Or more relevantly, we like how other people look after they work out.