Best Staged Plans

by Claire Cook

  “The weather here is amazing,” I said.

  “Talk to me in August,” Shannon said, “when you’re sitting on the beach enjoying a sea breeze and it’s a million degrees here, but mostly it’s great.”

  I paid and tipped. Someday I’d like to meet just one woman who went Dutch on dates with her daughter. Maybe once you moved into senior housing and started eating cat food, the tables would finally turn. Shannon pulled in gobs of money, as did her husband, and in my daughter’s defense, she sent lovely, generous gifts on all gift-giving occasions. I wondered if even the mothers of millionaires still picked up the mother/daughter tab.

  “Clothes or shoes?” I said.

  Shannon shook her head. “I’m a new woman. If a store doesn’t have home in its name, it’s dead to me.”

  “Okay. HomeGoods or Home Depot? Wait. Do you want to swing by the hotel so you can check it out first? I’d love to hear your thoughts on where to start and take another peek around myself. Then I can keep an eye out for finds while we shop.”

  Shannon was already halfway out the door. “Absolutely. I can help you do a spreadsheet when we get back to my house.”

  “You might want to save that for your father and brother,” I said.

  Both Shannon and Luke were good drivers, but I had to admit I still got a little bit nervous when I was a passenger and they were driving. There was just something so unmotherly about giving up control like that. I soothed myself by air braking and pointing out potential accidents.

  “Calm down, Mom. I know what I’m doing.” Shannon drove the way she did everything, like she was on a mission.

  “It’s not you I’m worried about, honey. It’s the rest of the crazy world.”

  “You’re the one who’s acting crazy. Relax.” Shannon put on her blinker and swerved into the next lane.

  I leaned back and tried to close my eyes. I couldn’t do it. “Whoa, look out for that guy. He’s on his cell, and he’s way over the line.”

  Shannon shook her head. “Can’t you call Dad or something? You know, just to keep yourself busy?”

  In lots of ways your daughter can be like a girlfriend, even your biggest BFF in the whole wide world, no offense to Denise intended, but there’s always that family line. A good mother doesn’t step over it, and I really believe that no child, no matter how grown up, ever wants to hear her mother trash-talking her father, or vice versa. So I did what I always did—I bit my tongue and kept my mouth shut.

  But what I really wanted to say was this: I can’t call your father because I’m not speaking to him. He’s driving me crazy, and if I do call him all this not calling him will be for nothing because he’ll think I don’t really mean that I’m not coming back till he gets the house finished. Do you think I mean it? I really think I do, because the other thing I’ve been thinking about a lot is that maybe after all these years we’ve reached the point that we just want different things and maybe even different lives. There doesn’t have to be any big drama, does there? I mean, you and Luke are too old to be traumatized, aren’t you? Do you actually think I could just walk away like that? You know, leave him and start a new life? And if so, do you think he’d be okay? Would I?

  We pulled off the highway, and I gave Shannon the street address again.

  She took a right. “Oh, I know where this is. There’s a tapas place about two blocks away. Maybe we can grab something to eat after we see the hotel.”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “I’m starving.”

  I twisted in my seat to look for landmarks. “If we see a parking spot, we should snag it. I think the hotel is just past the next intersection.”

  “Give me a heads-up if you see something before I do.”

  A couple was walking toward us past a long row of flowering Bradford pear trees, popping in and out of view as if they were playing peekaboo. They were both wearing jeans, and the man had his arm wrapped casually around the woman’s shoulder. They were holding Starbucks coffee cups and laughing like they were in love. I wasn’t sure why I was so drawn to them. Maybe they could have been Greg and me a long, long time ago.

  They stepped into the gap between two trees. The man pulled the woman close.

  I squinted at the man. It was Josh.

  “Oh, boy,” I said. I whipped my head around, partly so he couldn’t see me and partly so I wouldn’t have to watch. But it was like trying to turn away from a car wreck. I looked back just in time to get a glimpse of them kissing.

  “Do you see anything?” Shannon asked.

  “That’s an understatement,” I said.

  I pulled my shoulder bag to my lap and started fumbling through the contents.

  “Bummer,” I said. “You’re not going to believe this, but I think I forgot to bring the hotel key.”

  “Is there anybody there who could let us in?”

  “Just a couple of rats,” I said. “Come on, let’s go get some lunch instead.”

  CHAPTER 22

  NOT LONG AFTER we moved into our new old house, Greg and I found the wooden steamer trunk at an estate sale and decided to give it to each other for our anniversary. It was in rough shape, with split leather straps and handles, and dented metal trim, so we got it for a song. But it fit the age of our house, and it still had its original long brass key. Plus we could also use it to store clothing. The house was big on charm, but short on closets.

  We carried it right up to our bedroom and put it at the base of the bed. Greg sat down on it. “Great place to tie my sneakers.”

  “How romantic,” I said. “Happy anniversary to you, too, honey.”

  He reached for me. “Hey, have I told you lately—”

  Shannon and Luke raced in to sit on either side of Greg.

  All four of us looked up as a shard of paint hit the floor. The clean white ceiling of our beautiful master bedroom sanctuary had begun bubbling like an angry rash. Then about a week ago it had begun to flake. Now every time we went into the room, we’d find new splinters of white paint on the bedspread or the floor.

  Greg held up the paint chip. “Do not, I repeat, do not, put one of these in your mouth.”

  Shannon rolled her eyes.

  Luke was two and spent most of his waking hours testing limits. He crawled from the trunk to our mattress and grabbed his own paint chip. He popped it into his mouth and waited to see what would happen.

  I screamed.

  Greg scooped him up, and we all ran to the bathroom.

  We washed out Luke’s mouth as best we could and put in a call to the pediatrician. Massachusetts law didn’t prohibit the sale of properties containing lead paint or other potentially hazardous substances, and our Realtor had talked us into waiving our right to have the house inspected for lead. “It’s an old house,” she’d said. “Just don’t let the kids gnaw on the windowsills.”

  I watched Luke’s eyes for signs of brain damage while we waited for the pediatrician to call back. It turned out Dr. Murphy owned an old house, too, and he quickly diagnosed a calcimine ceiling.

  Calcimine paint, sometimes called distemper paint, was a kind of inexpensive whitewash made with dried calcium carbonate, essentially chalk, that was popular in the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century. Since coal and woodstoves heated the houses back then, calcimine was a quick fix for soot-stained walls, and especially ceilings. The good news for Luke’s brain was that calcimine paint was lead-free. The bad news for us was that harder, stronger modern paints like the one we’d just used pulled it away from the ceiling.

  Greg and I spent our anniversary carrying the trunk and all three mattresses down to the living room floor. We covered the dressers and the floor with cheap plastic drop cloths. We scraped the ceiling. We washed off as much of the calcimine as we could. We opened the windows wide. Greg went into our one semifunctioning bathroom to get cleaned up enough to go pick up the special calcimine coater paint we’d finally tracked down at a paint store almost an hour away.

  I wove my way through the three mattress
es on the floor of our former front parlor/new great room to the kitchen. I was too exhausted to deal with the steak we’d splurged on for a late romantic dinner after the kids had fallen asleep, so I threw it into the freezer and plopped two boxes of macaroni and cheese on the kitchen counter.

  The kids looked up from playing with their LEGOs.

  Shannon crossed her arms over her chest. “This day is no fun,” she said.

  Luke crossed his arms over his chest. “Yeah,” he growled.

  I crossed mine, too. “Yeah.”

  We ended up piling the kids into the minivan and taking a family trip to the paint store. We picked up pizza on the way home and drove with it to the beach. We ate sitting on the edge of a seawall, the seagulls swooping around us, biding their time as they eyed our crusts. After dinner Greg and the kids went out to the yard to play. They picked a bouquet of mostly weeds to surprise me.

  We finally crawled into bed, the kids’ mattresses flanking ours like bookends. A mattress on the floor had never felt so good. The white paddle fan circled lazily above us in the dark room, and when I squinted I could almost pretend it was the moon.

  “So,” I whispered. “Happy anniversary.”

  Beside me, Greg let out a long, ragged snore.

  Decades of proper anniversary celebrations would follow: breakfasts in an actual bed; dinners in fancy restaurants; weekend jaunts to the Cape; a wild, childless week in the Caribbean. But whenever we strolled down the memory lane of our anniversaries, this would be the one we remembered first.

  SHANNON REACHED FOR one of the tapas. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve just had your identity stolen.”

  There was possibly more truth to that statement than my daughter intended, but I let it go. Then I thought for a moment about whether I should tell her about Josh and the woman, but I let that go, too. Somehow it felt like saying it out loud might make it more real.

  I picked up a serving spoon and eyed my choices. “I was just thinking about Denise. Trying to figure out how to tell her the guy she’s dating is an idiot. Ooh, what’s that?”

  Shannon scanned the little tapas map on the table between us. “It must be the Queso de Cabra. Baked goat cheese in tomato basil sauce.”

  I put a scoop on my little red plate and tasted it. “Mmm, to die for.”

  “So what else is new?” Shannon said. “All the men Denise falls for are assholes. She’s probably connected the dots by now.”

  I’d never really thought of it that way. “Then why does she date them?”

  “People choose what they think they deserve. Otherwise they’d drop that zero and get themselves a hero.”

  “I don’t think it’s that simple,” I said.

  “Of course it is,” my daughter said. “Look at Whitney. Even when we were in high school, she always had to pick the one guy in the room things would never work out with. She thinks she can change them, they break her heart, she has high drama, her friends come to the rescue, and then she does it all over again. I have to tell you, it’s getting old. I mean, she’s twenty-six. Get your shit together.”

  I tried to remember the time in my life when I’d thought I had all the answers the way my daughter did.

  “Remember when Luke ate the rabbit poop?” Shannon said.

  “Don’t remind me.” I reached for my iced tea.

  “I told him it was chocolate,” Shannon said. “I have a lot of guilt about that.”

  “Oh, please,” I said. “My brother asked me to hold his football while he practiced kicking field goals and broke my finger.”

  Shannon took a sip of her iced tea. “Totally different—that was an accident.”

  “It most certainly was not.” I put on my reading glasses so I could identify the tapas. “Ooh, ‘Artichoke rice cakes with Manchego, a tart melted cheese center made from sheep’s milk.’ ”

  We ate for a while in silence.

  “So, if it bothers you,” I said, “apologize to him.”

  “It doesn’t bother me that much. He did plenty to me. He used to scare the shit out of me whenever you left us with a babysitter.”

  “Yeah, all three times.”

  “What? You guys went out all the time.”

  “That’s ridiculous. We almost never went out. We were too busy chauffeuring you and Luke around.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Right. And you fed your brother rabbit poop.”

  “You and Dad were the only parents I knew who even wanted to go out together. My friends used to think we were this freakishly perfect family.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “You should have spoken up. We could have fought more or something.”

  Shannon put her fork down on her plate. “A trial separation would have really helped me out. I was the only one in my third-grade class who always knew where I was sleeping that night. I had such a low drama quotient.”

  We both reached for the last shrimp fritter.

  “Take it,” Shannon said.

  I cut the fritter down the middle and gave Shannon the bigger half.

  “Dad and I will try to make it up to you,” I said.

  Shannon speared her shrimp half with a fork and pointed it at me. “Don’t even joke about it. Chance and I talk about you guys all the time. You’re our model.”

  “What about Chance’s parents?”

  Shannon tucked her hair behind her ears and opened her eyes wide. “OMG, they hate each other. You know, that southern thing, where they’re nice as pie in front of everybody, but they haven’t slept in the same room for years. Chance thinks they just stay together because his dad’s girlfriend doesn’t cook, and his mom’s boyfriend has cats and she’s allergic.”

  “Really?” I said. “They seemed so crazy about each other when we met them.”

  Shannon dabbed her mouth, then put her napkin on the table. “Trust me, Mom, you’re it. You and Dad are the last real marriage standing.”

  I twirled the straw around in my iced tea and tried to read my next move in the ice cubes. I took a deep breath.

  I met my daughter’s clear green eyes. “Your father and I aren’t doing so great these days. I’m starting to think we might have reached our expiration date.”

  Shannon held my gaze for a moment, considering.

  She let out a quick laugh and turned to look for the waiter. “You’re just hormonal. Every relationship has its ups and downs. Come on, let’s get some shopping in before it’s too late.”

  CHAPTER 23

  SHANNON WAS DRESSED to travel in tight designer jeans, a crisp button-down blouse, and a pair of Ann Roth heels. If I ever tried that, someone would have to cut off my clothes at the end of the flight. If you’re past your first bloom, allow for the possibility of swelling when you travel. Think ballet flats or flip-flops you can kick off. And yoga pants, or a bohemian skirt, or at the very least some spandex threaded discreetly into the fabric of your jeans. No one will even notice the rest of your outfit if you wear nice earrings and throw a pashmina over your shoulders or knot it around your neck as camouflage, the added bonus being that you can use it as a travel blanket.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to take your GPS with you?” I asked after we finished our good-bye hug. I’d offered to take Shannon to the airport, but Chance wouldn’t hear of it. So my plan was to make a quick getaway to give the newlyweds a few minutes alone together.

  Shannon rolled her eyes like she was still thirteen. “Mom, I used to live there.”

  I used to live there, too, almost slipped out of my mouth, but I caught it just in time.

  My daughter reached for the coffeepot. “If you want to return the rental, you can borrow my car.”

  “Thanks, but I’d much rather bill Denise’s boyfriend than put wear and tear on your car.” I grabbed the rental keys from the back-of-the-door organizer. “Okay, well, have a safe trip and, uh—”

  “I know, kick Dad and Luke’s butts for you.”

  Shannon unplugged her iPhone and its charger from the sleek b
lack charging station on the kitchen counter. She’d given me one just like it for Christmas, and every time I looked at hers a little wave of homesickness broke over me.

  By the way, if you don’t have a charging station yet, you should get one. The design has come a long way, and you can even find them with stainless drawer pulls to match your appliances and a hidden surge protector power strip. Not only will its integrated drawers and slots help do away with clutter, but it will also eliminate the hassle of all the cords of your life getting tangled up like spaghetti.

  Then all you’ll need to do is find a way to separate the tangled cords on the inside of your life, the ones that don’t show so much.

  Chance strolled into the kitchen all dressed for work, with his damp hair freshly combed. If he harbored any resentment about the fact that Shannon wasn’t taking me with her, he hid it well.

  “Good morning,” he said pleasantly.

  “Beautiful day,” I said.

  “It sure is,” he said.

  He looked up from pouring a cup of coffee. “What time were you thinking about for dinner, Mom?”

  I had a sudden vision of myself all tied up in that goofy apron, cooking three squares a day for my son-in-law.

  “I wasn’t,” I said. “I was thinking I’d try to survive the day first.” In case that sounded a bit prickly, I softened it with a smile.

  “Love you,” I said to Shannon on my way out the door. If Chance wanted to think he was included in the sentiment, whatever.

  A morning chill almost made me feel like I was still in New England. But the trajectory of the day’s heat was different here. At home, whatever warmth we’d get would hit its peak around noon. In Atlanta, the day would just keep getting warmer and warmer until the temperature reached its hottest point around 4:00 P.M. I pictured myself buying a little brick ranch with a pool down the street so I could jump in to cool off at the end of a busy day.