Plan C

by Lois Cahall

  Bebe had climbed more stairs in her Stuart Weitzman stilettos in the past few days then she had in her entire life. When she finally arrived breathless at the main office, she was greeted by a translator, an attorney, and a woman from the Department of Education.

  Three little girls were brought in – a one tow-headed blonde, a strawberry blonde, and a honey blonde with blue eyes and a big smile. They were told that they were going to do a performance for the visiting American lady. The three little girls were part of a small dance group that performed around Kazakhstan to make money for the orphanage.

  And so they began to perform, singing songs, doing gymnastics and even reciting a poem which Bebe couldn’t understand anyway, though she smiled and clapped with such delight you’d think Shakespeare were reciting. And then the little one, the one of the end, with the honey blonde hair and blue eyes; the one in the red pants with the sequin halter top tied around her frail, swan neck, caught Bebe’s attention. Their sweet and hopeful blue eyes locked like a key in a deadbolt. Bebe felt her chest swell, and she stretched into the translator without pointing. “What is her name? The petite one? On the end?”

  “Tamara,” said the translator. “Why?”

  “Tamara looks just like I did when I was little girl,” said Bebe, her eyes tearing up just as they might if she’d been looking through the glass in the hospital maternity ward to see her baby snuggled in a pink blanket. Tamara stopped dancing the moment Bebe burst out crying, certain she’d done something to upset the pretty American lady. Her eyes darted from Bebe to the translator. She was sure she’d be punished.

  “I’m sorry,” said Bebe, excusing herself. The translator and the attorney quickly followed her out into the hallway. Bebe held up the stucco wall for support as all her hopes and dreams of her entire life flashed before her. But this wasn’t death. This was about to be life - her life - a life like she’d never known but always imagined.

  “See,” said the interpreter, putting a hand on her shoulder. “You just know when it’s right.” Bebe could only nod, the short shallow breaths moving in and out of her. Chills circled around her torso – the clinging of reality was about to set in.

  It took a few more minutes before she could return to the room, just as the other two little orphan girls were being escorted out. One of them stopped to look into Bebe’s face with her sad almond eyes. She said something as she tugged on Bebe’s sleeve, but was quickly shooed away by the house mother.

  “What was she saying?” asked Bebe.

  “She asked ‘why didn’t you pick me?’” the translator said.

  Bebe’s heart sank, and she watched the little girl, who kept turning around all the way down the hallway until a metal door slammed between them.

  Within moments Bebe rejoined little Tamara. She took Tamara by the hand and sat with her on a thrift-shop-looking tweed sofa. Bebe’s heart pounded. She was so close to this little girl who smelled as if she’d been left out in the rain. Her hair all matted flat. She’d later learn that the children get to bathe only once a week…and only on Sundays. Today was Saturday.

  Bebe smiled at little Tamara and ran a hand over her darling face. Then she started asking questions. The interpreter did all she could to keep up. Questions like “how is school, what’s your favorite color, your favorite food, do you like kittens?” Then more serious questions to Tamara like, “Would you recognize your mother if she walked into the room?”

  “No,” said Tamara, as though she’d been prompted.

  “Do you want to be adopted?”

  “Yes!” she’d said, lighting up.

  And when Bebe pulled out her iPhone and showed Tamara a photo of her cats and her dog back in New York, Tamara giggled with pure delight. She’d never imagined that you could have animals actually live with you in a home. She stared at the photo and then took the phone from Bebe’s hand. Tamara began pushing buttons, and before Bebe knew it, Tamara was accessing her entire photo library. Tamara would point to a photo on the screen, and Bebe would explain who the person was. The photos included Kitty and me at one of Kitty’s art shows. Not that Tamara understood a word of what Bebe was saying.

  Then Bebe reached into her purse and pulled out a small square of Ghirardelli chocolate and handed it to Tamara, who in turn looked at the orphanage director for permission before unwrapping it. She stared at the foreign-looking square in her lap. Finally, Tamara reached down and took it in her tiny fingers, breaking off a piece. She handed it to Bebe. Tamara said, “Spasiba” which means “thank you.”

  “Spasiba,” said Bebe. And that is how Bebe ended up with an instant daughter. Bebe was about to have the bite-size version of parenthood. She’d be a mother to an eight-year-old for about ten years before she was off to college. More of a snack than an entire meal, but still her very own daughter.

  Chapter Nineteen

  You know the way some people have their own personal shoppers? Well, until you live in New York, you probably haven’t experienced your own personal street bum. My street bum, Jacob, greets me every day, offers me a bite of doughnut or hot dog he’s rummaged from a nearby trash barrel, and delivers a complete weather report. “Libby?” he says, with breaking news. “You go put your galoshes on, ya hear? Gonna rain. Did you bring an umbrella?”

  Jacob startles the hell out of me whenever I find him resting on the long bench in our building’s entry. It’s not that he’s a scary. Quite the contrary. He looks like Uncle Remus – round cheeks, curly white beard, and brown knapsack pants that hug his waistline. He even whistles a happy tune.

  Instead of hibernating on a cardboard box or living out of a shopping cart full of junk, Jacob has managed to secure a life inside an entire street of apartment buildings without paying rent. Whether he’s hanging Christmas lights for the hair salon, or sweeping sidewalks for the doormen, he’s made a lot of something out of a lot of nothing.

  “Hi, Jacob!” I say, breezing by.

  “Why, hell-oo Miss Libby,” he says with his usual jovial lilt. Jacob got something on me. On all of us, actually. He lives by the Dalai Lama’s rule “Want what you have, don’t have what you want.” Because he doesn’t have much besides that slice of pizza that he’s happily gnawing.

  “Like a bite?”

  “No thanks; you enjoy,” I say, whisking by him to the glass door entrance. And then, thinking twice, I turn back to tuck a dollar inside his flannel shirt pocket.

  “Why, thank you kindly, Miss Libby,” he nods. “Waiting to walk Lady Shelby.” Shelby is my neighbor’s dog. He’s given her a title.

  Jacob is undoubtedly the nicest bum I’ve ever met. He’s also the only bum I’ve ever met.

  The entry door closes behind me and I’m sucked into the vortex of New York City. The energy here is much different from what you’d experience during a weekend visit. As you walk, you absorb the warmth that either the streets permeate, from the arms you brush by, the people you dodge - some nodding, some smiling, pouting, or eyeing you, all of them bustling toward their next big destination.

  You have to consider all that overhead water, too, as drops from second-story air conditioners fall on your head. Dodging them makes you appear to be suffering a mild seizure.

  And if you think you know noise, you don’t. Since we mainly walk and don’t drive, eight million people are all on their cell phones at once.

  Yet Frank Sinatra said it best. “If you can make it there, you’ll make it – anywhere.” Everybody’s at the top of their game and ironically, they want you to be, too. Even in my little Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood – even if you’re just the corner drycleaner, like Mr. Kim - he’s sort of the Mister Rogers of the neighborhood. And when he’s not starching your shirts he’ll notarize your divorce document for a mere two dollars. Jacob sweeps his sidewalks. Or Miss Lee, the Acupuncturist who does Qi Gong and Rub-A-Dub foot massage out of a makeshift office next to the building that sells Steinway pianos. Jacob waters her plants.

  In a city of over eight million people, it’s a
ll about the tiny neighborhood. My neighborhood runs between 8th Avenue and the Hudson River from by 34th Street to 59th Street. Its dignified official name is “Clinton,” but don’t let that fool you – we still call it “Hell’s Kitchen,” but it comes with nicknames like “Hellsea” - a combo of Hell’s Kitchen and Chelsea - to the adorable Hell’s Kitty and Hell’s Kitchenette. These hint at the fact that is’s become a center of gay life in Manhattan, which also means the neighborhood is cleaning up - because let’s face it, gay guys make great neighbors. They love to paint buildings unusual but elegant colors like “greige” – half gray and half beige. Around here, “vanilla bean” is the new white. Although my neighbor Raphael swears – on top of his lungs to Frederico the hair dresser - that it should be referred to as “irredescent honeysuckle cream.”

  The neighborhood has everything within a four-block radius. There’s the pizza guy, the self-proclaimed “Best burger in New York” joint, the take-out sushi place with the delivery men who ride their bikes the wrong direction on our one-way street, and a Starbuck’s. There’s a convenient store to buy magazines and lottery tickets, a post office, another Starbucks, a bank on each corner, a Brazilian hair salon, and a barber with one of those candy-cane-colored twirling poles outside his door. There’s the junk shop where the proprietor feeds the pigeons to pass the time, and the hardware store, where the proprietor screws you on the price of a screw. There’s the florist who tells me “buy a money tree and good things will happen.” I bought two. Nothing happened. There’s the guy who walks around with his cell phone held above his head so we can all hear “Jesus Christ, Superstar” his ring tone. On weekends he switches over to the theme from “Rocky.” And there’s another Starbucks because I suppose if I need my coffee that badly I shouldn’t have to wait in any lines at the other two.

  Just a short stroll from our apartment, on Ninth Avenue at 51ststreet, is a neighborhood bar that feels like home. Not everybody knows your name, but they know what you do for a living and what your co-op costs.

  Going out for happy hour in Manhattan is serious business. For starters, women wear whatever the season’s heels are – this year it’s Gladiator, last season was Peek-a-boo toes, year before was witch booties. Somehow we lost sexy stilettos, though my Mary Jane tap-shoes go nicely with everything, including the see-through Lucite barstool I’m sitting on.

  I rearrange my skirt, tucking it under my butt, before moving my fingers to nervously fiddle with the edge of the tiny paper napkin left by the last patron. Folding it back and forth to make an origami airplane, I’m thinking how divorce is supposed to stimulate a woman into reconnecting with her old ways, take a new path, maybe even a new lover. So how did I end up with a man whose ex-wife is the poster child for angry-blood-sucking-alimony behavior?

  Oh, and Ben was Rosemary’s second ex. Her first was a French guy, Jean Francois. Clearly he had a Plan B of his own, because he moved out, moved on, ditched the alimony, and left Rosemary with the twins. Merci beaucoup.

  “Just whose divorce is it anyway?” a voice pipes up, startling me from my self-indulgent moping. I look up to see a smiling bartender – a masculine woman in boy jeans running a hand through her frosted bangs. She places a glass of sauvignon blanc on a fresh napkin square in front of me, before confiscating my napkin airplane and my bent little straws.

  “Excuse me?” I say sitting up at attention.

  “You feel like you’re going through her divorce for her. She should move on and leave you and her ex-husband alone.”

  I nod and sip the wine, searching her eyes for espionage secrets. Can she read my mind? Am I imagining this? I look over my shoulder.

  “Yes, you,” says the bartender. “You’re pretty transparent. See a lot of your type,” she says. “Every night about this time.”

  “Oh,” I say, burying my nose in my wine and taking a second sip that’s turned into a gulp.

  “Women who just finished their first shift before moving on to their second job, so they stop in for a Happy Hour drink to help keep their sanity. Excuse me.” The group of women to my left are salivating for a martini, and the bartender grabs the shaker and vodka. “I thought I knew what I was getting into when I married mine,” she says. “I have a day job at an accounting firm, but it’s not enough to help with my husband’s alimony. His ex sits home watching soap operas. And I work here until 1 a.m.”

  “I bet your third job must be as a mind reader,” I add, trying to make light of her circumstances.

  “My step kid goes to Dalton,” says the woman to my left grabbing across me at a distant martini glass. “Thirteen years old and spoiled rotten, but her parents don’t see it.” She takes a big swig of her drink before extending her hand. “Laura,” she says. “Nice to meet you.”

  I extend my hand back. “Libby.”

  “My husband is always questioning the way I reprimand his daughter. Why should I change who I am to accommodate somebody else’s kid? I raised four daughters on my own and ran the PTA. What the hell does he know?”

  “Exactly,” chimes in Laura’s friend. “Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing. Do you know my guy missed my surgery over a damn fourth-grade Christmas recital? Give me a break! She wasn’t Blessed Mary, she was just one of fifty kids in the chorus. I was having a full hysterectomy, but he needed to hear his kid sing, ‘Here Comes Fucking Santa Clause?!’” She points to her glass, and the bar tender fetches a refill.

  “Okay, ladies, you know what?” I say, “You’re scaring me.” I polish off my wine. “I don’t think I ever want to marry him.” And I certainly didn’t come here to listen to this. I search my purse for my wallet.

  “Don’t get married. It’s pointless,” says Laura, nodding to the bartender who nods back in agreement. With a fierce snap, Laura drags her olive stick across her teeth and drops it into the martini glass.

  As I find my wallet to pay and get ready to pay, I glance up to find Yvette entering with Jerome. My heart begins pounding like the bass drum in the Macy’s parade. My posse of bitching companions follow my gaze. But my view is suddenly blocked by a famous couple who have just come in. It’s Woody Allen and Soon Yi and they casually stroll by us on their way to the hostess.

  “Gee,” I say to the bartender, “that Soon Yi is really cute in real life.”

  Another couple – Asian – joins them for a round of hugs.

  “That must be Soon Yi’s parents,” I say.

  “No. They can’t be,” says the bartender. “Woody’s her parent!”

  “Oh my God! That’s right,” I say. “He married his step-child.”

  “Adopted child,” says the other woman.

  A look of surprise and recognition crosses Yvette’s face as she catches sight of me. “Heyyyy girl! Fancy meeting you here! I thought you were cooking a romantic dinner….”

  “Plans changed,” I say, not wanting to tell her the embarrassing saga of the rebirthing ex. Or maybe I just want to seem single for a night. Especially when Jerome’s musky aftershave has just rebirthed my inner tramp.

  But it’s foolish to cave in to desire, because here’s the thing….sex ruins everything. Have an affair with a guy and you’re screwed in more ways than one. If the sex is bad, you did it for nothing. If the sex is good, then you’ve complicated your life, his life, everybody’s life. From that moment on, every time you see each other you want more. Every time you see each other, the heat between you dominates everything. The friendship changes. It’s never the same. And, eventually you get caught anyway, probably because you wanted to, and…”

  “Well, your day couldn’t have been worse than Yvette’s,” says Jerome, snapping me out of my reverie.

  “Don’t you go starting…” says Yvette.

  “Oh, c’mon, you know you’re dying to talk about it,” I say, nudging Jerome.

  “Does this mean I have to hear this story again?” says Jerome, pulling up a stool for Yvette who refuses to sit. The group of martini-gulping women gather around. Apparently, they’ve also
noticed how hot Jerome is.

  “About a month ago I tried online dating…” she begins, and we all let out a big moan. I signal the bartender to get Yvette a drink. “Man named Owen responded,” she continues. “Seemed nice. Even wore expensive suits - Armani. For our first date, we went to my very first ballet. Ever. Right up here at Lincoln Center. The tickets were actually comp, because I worked for some endowment and they gave me the best seats in the house. Anyway, I felt like a princess with Owen. There I was outside the New York City Ballet in front of the fountain, taking photographs and having a glass of wine before the show. I kept thinking, ‘If my mother were alive to see me now…’

  “We strolled and sang all the way home. We met for a second and third date. He said he had an upset stomach the second time and left me with the bill at the restaurant. Third time he said he had an office emergency and left me standing on the corner. But worse than that, he was wearing the same suit on all three dates. That’s when I started getting suspicious and asked him if I could see his apartment.

  “So off we went down to SoHo to see his ‘loft with sprawling floor plan,’ the way Owen had described it. But when we got to his door, Owen realized he’d left the house key in his jacket at the office. So I said, ‘No problem. We’ll see it another time.’ Well, another time came, and this time I stopped down at Dean & DeLuca’s for some fresh flowers and baked goods. Thought I’d show up unannounced and surprise him. Except I knocked on the door, some woman opened it. ‘Can I help you?’ she said. ‘I’m here for Owen,’ I explained. But I knew by her look she had no idea who Owen was. The woman told me she had lived there for twenty-three years. I handed her the flowers and the Danish pastries and said, ‘Thank you for your honesty.’ She just looked after me down the hall and hollered out, ‘And thank you for the goodies and flowers.’