Best Friends, Occasional Enemies Read online

  Harrumph.

  “Mom,” I say, smiling, on the fourth day of this. “Don’t you think it’s a little funny that with your entire closet full of blazers, the one thing you want to wear is the one item I also own?”

  “Don’t say, ‘it’s funny,’ when you don’t really think it’s funny. It’s passive-aggressive. If you’re annoyed, just say so.”

  But see, when your mother says, “Just say so,” she doesn’t mean it. She means, “Don’t you dare say so.” I knew this, and yet …

  “Alright, I’m annoyed!”

  Petty bickering ensued. And then, the inevitable:

  “I have a solution,” my mom said. “Why don’t we both wear the jacket?”

  I gave her some serious “seriously?” eyebrows.

  “It’ll be cute!”

  No. Just no. Mother-daughter matching outfits were barely cute when I was a baby, they certainly aren’t cute now.

  Somehow, after the fray, neither of us ended up wearing the jacket.

  Typical.

  But life goes on. We were both having a great time at the signing, and I had nearly forgotten about our wardrobe dysfunction when someone in the audience asked a very nice question:

  “You two seem to have the perfect relationship. Do you ever fight?”

  My mom shot me a grin. “Should we tell them?”

  She recounted (a slightly biased version of) our silly argument and then posed the question, “It’d be cute if we matched, right?”

  She honestly thought the crowd was going to side with her.

  That’s why I love my mother.

  Of course, our lovely, intelligent, reasonable audience shouted a chorus of “NO!”

  And that’s why I love our readers.

  Empowered

  By Lisa

  There’s nothing like a power outage to bring a family closer.

  To killing each other.

  Let me explain. Daughter Francesca came home because we’re about to embark on an eight-day trip to Rome, which is four days of book tour, plus four days of sightseeing. I’m a lucky author to have a European book tour, and luckier still to have Francesca come along, not only because she’s fun but also because she speaks Italian.

  All I can say in Italian is pasta.

  My books are translated into 30 languages, and I speak only carbohydrates.

  To get to the point, we’re set to depart on Sunday night, so I bring Francesca home on Thursday, with dog Pip in tow, and when we hit the house, we discover that the power is off from a summer storm.

  The good news is that I installed a generator last year, which means that five things in my house should still be running. I can’t remember which things, so I go around checking. You know where I go first.

  The refrigerator is fine.

  So’s the water and a TV in the kitchen.

  And so’s the oven, so you see my priorities immediately.

  But no air-conditioning.

  Not even a fan.

  I know this sounds spoiled, but it’s ninety degrees in the family room.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself, because at that moment, I’m thinking the outage is temporary and might even be fun. Francesca agrees. So we have a chuckle, go make dinner, and eat. It’s our candlelight adventure until the TV stops working, because the cable is down.

  Hmmm.

  This is usually the time when someone says how great it is when the electricity goes off, and people can really talk to each other, and blah blah blah.

  I disagree.

  I like electricity.

  I’m power-hungry.

  Plus the Internet and TV don’t prevent me from talking to my daughter. We’re a family of two women. We never shut up.

  By nightfall, there’s still no power. I’m bummed that the sink is full of dirty dishes. She’s bummed that its ninety-three degrees in the family room. And upstairs in the bedrooms, it’s even hotter.

  Long story short, by bedtime, we begin to disagree. Francesca wants to sleep in the family room with the screen door open, but I say no, because psycho killers will enter and do their worst.

  We have our first fight of the weekend.

  I win, which means we sweat upstairs, safe and sound, but it turns out that she’s right, because Little Tony, my black-and-tan Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, almost has heatstroke. We move downstairs to the family room.

  Psycho killers stay away, as they like air-conditioning, too.

  Day Two dawns, and we sweat and swelter. We can’t do much but eat and we did that already. We’re not fighting per se, but we don’t like each other’s tones. I know that I’m the cranky one. I whine and complain about the heat, the electric company, and the oil spill in the Gulf, for good measure. On the other hand, Francesca keeps coming up with ideas to solve our predicament.

  Who raised this child?

  Her Day Two idea is that we should go to an air-conditioned place to cool down, so we go to the mall and buy mascara.

  This is what girls do in an emergency.

  But I find myself cheering up, so we stick with her plan, and on Night Two, we go to the movies and see Knight and Day. We become friends again, as we like Tom Cruise. Francesca dubs the power outage Tom Cruise Appreciation Week.

  On Day Three, I call the electric company just to yell at the recording, but Francesca’s Night Three idea is that we go sit outside in the backyard, where it’s cool, and watch a DVD on my laptop, which still has some battery power.

  I start whining. “Are you serious? It’s dark and there are bugs.”

  She says, “We can watch Collateral. It’ll be like a drive-in movie.”

  “But what about the psycho killers?”

  “Mom, it’s Tom Cruise Appreciation Week.”

  And she’s right. So we go outside and sit on two beach chairs with five dogs and a laptop. The moon is full, casting bright shadows on the lawn, and the fireflies twinkle around us, like peridots in the air.

  Our power struggle is over.

  And we sit, happily, in the dark.

  Picture Day

  By Lisa

  I read in the paper that nowadays, the companies who take school pictures will retouch the photos to remove the kids’ cowlicks, missing front teeth, and freckles.

  This is not progress.

  Reportedly, ten percent of parents request such retouching.

  The other ninety percent love their children.

  Apparently, some parents like to see their children as they should be, instead of how they are. Or maybe they’re Photoshopaholics.

  I can’t think of a better message a parent can send a child than, “You’re almost good enough!”

  I never saw a photo of Daughter Francesca that I would retouch. I loved her face and the way it changed as she grew up. Plus the retouching cost seventeen dollars. Parents who request it should put the money toward their child’s eventual therapy bill.

  This doesn’t mean that some kids wouldn’t benefit from retouching, or even that some kids aren’t downright ugly. Lots of us have faces only a mother would love, especially during our Wonder Years.

  Me, especially.

  I look back on my school pictures with a queasy feeling, and that’s as it should be.

  Let me explain.

  I was smokin’ hot until I turned two years old, then it went from bad to worse, when my baby teeth fell out, only to be replaced by two front teeth that stuck straight out, defying gravity. They used to call them buck teeth, but that would be kind. No buck had these teeth. As a toddler, I could have built a dam.

  Also, my nose, which started out cute and little, grew and grew and forgot to stop. It popped out like Pinocchio’s, and I’m not lying. The Flying Scottolines have big noses. Mother Mary says that we get more oxygen than anybody else, and she’s right. If we breathe in, you’re dead.

  Plus, my eyes, which looked so round and blue when my nose was little, seemed to shrink and flatten as my nose got bigger, and then I got thick glasses, so I looked like
a beaver with corrective lenses.

  The proof is my school pictures, which reflect all those hideous stages of my life, all the zits and tinsel teeth and pixie haircuts and horrible clothes. Still, I don’t think Mother Mary would have retouched a single picture. She loved me the way I was and she would have spent the seventeen bucks on cigarettes.

  Plus, retouching a school photo would have taken all the fun out of Picture Day. Do you remember that excitement? In the Scottoline household, Picture Day was circled on the calendar, and it was a big deal. Brother Frank and I wore our best clothes, and we got combs at school.

  Free!

  It’s always exciting to get something free, even a comb. Now, we watch Oprah, where she gives away her favorite things, for free. Cars, TVs, lasagna pans. You know what my favorite thing would be?

  Yes, this is the retake.

  Being Oprah’s favorite thing.

  But back to Picture Day.

  I remember long lines of kids leading to a mysterious black curtain set up in the gym, and when you were finally ushered behind the curtain, you were in the presence of the photographer, as personable as the Wizard of Oz. He would order you to smile, blind you with a flash, and get you out of there, reeling.

  Then you would wait and wait until pictures came in, which was another day of excitement. There would be the various photo packages to choose from, and you’d end up with 383,898 wallet-size photos, even if you knew only four wallets.

  When those photos came back, if you looked good, you showed everybody. And if you didn’t, everybody knew.

  The dreaded Retakes.

  I was always a Retake. I dressed up for Retake Day, like a nervous batter on a second strike. Retakes were a mark of kiddie shame. All of us baby trolls, lined up and dressed to the nines, when nobody else was. And no more free combs. They knew we weren’t worth it. I would have been a Re-Retake if they had it, but there was only so much they could do, then.

  Now, I’d ask to be retouched.

  You have to be at least fifty years old to be Photoshopped.

  In other words, only adults can act childish.

  But those days are gone.

  My school pictures, as bad as they were, are some of the forty pictures that exist of me, as a child. Kids today already have 7,384,747 photos taken of them, even before they get to Picture Day. In fact, kids have their own cameras, webcams, camera phones, and Flip videos.

  Nowadays, kids get to be the Wizard of Oz.

  And you know what?

  That is progress.

  Can This Marriage Be Saved?

  By Lisa

  Breaking up is hard to do, especially with a credit card company.

  Our melodrama begins when I’m paying bills and notice a $50.00 balance on a credit card that I hadn’t used in a long time. When I checked the statement, it said that the charge was the annual fee. I was wondering if I needed to pay fifty dollars for a card I didn’t use when I clapped eyes on the interest rate.

  30.24 percent.

  Yes, you read that right. In other words, if I had a balance on the card at any time, they could charge me 30 percent more than the cost of all the stuff I bought.

  Like a great sale, only in reverse.

  I’m not stingy, but I could get money cheaper from The Mob.

  I read further and saw that the Mafia, er, I mean, the credit card company, could also charge me a late fee of $39.95, which was undoubtedly a fair price for processing the transaction, as I bet their billing department is headed by Albert Einstein.

  So I made a decision.

  I called the customer service number, which was almost impossible to find on the statement, and as directed, plugged in my 85-digit account number. Of course, as soon as a woman answered the phone, the first question she asked was:

  “What is your account number?”

  I bit my tongue. They all ask this, and I always want to answer, “Why did you have me key it in? To make it harder to call customer service?”

  Perish the thought.

  So I told her I wanted to cancel the card, and her tone stiffened. She said, “May I ask why you wish to close your account?”

  For starters, I told her about the annual fee.

  “Would it make a difference if there were no annual fee?”

  I wanted to answer, Is it that easy to disappear this annual fee, and if so, why do you extort it in the first place? But instead, I said only, “No, because you have a usurious interest rate and late fee.”

  “Will you hold while I transfer you to a Relationship Counselor?”

  I’m not making this up. This is verbatim. You can divorce your hubby easier than you can divorce your VISA card. I said for fun, “Do I have a choice?”

  “Please hold,” she answered, and after a few clicks, a man came on the line.

  “Thanks for patiently waiting,” he purred. His voice was deep and sexy. His accent was indeterminate, but exotic, as if he were from the Country of Love.

  Meow.

  Suffice it to say that the Relationship Counselor got my immediate attention. I was beginning to think we could work on our relationship, and if we met twice a week, we could turn this baby around. He sounded like a combination of Fabio and George Clooney. You know who George Clooney is. If you don’t know who Fabio is, you’re not old enough to read what follows.

  “No problem,” I said. I did not say, What are you wearing?

  “Please let me have your account number,” he breathed, which almost killed the mood.

  So I told him and said that I wanted to cancel my card.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. He sounded genuinely sad. I wanted to comfort him, and I knew exactly how.

  But I didn’t say that, because it would be inappropriate.

  “I have a suggestion,” he whispered.

  So do I. Sign me up for 5 more cards. You have my number, all 85 digits.

  “We can switch you to the no-fee card.”

  I came to my senses. “Can you switch me to the no-highway-robbery interest rate?”

  “Pardon me?” he asked, but I didn’t repeat it.

  “Thanks, I just want to cancel the card.”

  “I understand. And I respect your decision.”

  He actually said that. I made up the 85 digits part, but the rest is absolutely true.

  I knew what I wanted to say before I hung up. That we’d had a good run, but like a love meteor, we burned too hot, for too short a time.

  Instead I said, “Thanks.”

  Honestly, it’s not me.

  It’s you.

  Meow

  By Francesca

  The other day, I was walking my dog, Pip, and talking to my mom on the phone, like I always do. Dog walking is prime time for calls home. I speak into headphones that are plugged into my cell, so I’m one of those people who appears to be talking to herself. But this is New York, so that’s normal.

  Anyway, I was halfway through my route, yapping away to my mom, when Pip shot in front of me, jerking the leash. Then he whipped around to face me, ears up, eyes wide, looking ready to jump into my arms like Scooby Doo. I turned around to see what had spooked him.

  There stood a calico cat, back arched, tail bristling, green eyes glowering in our direction. So I thought: Oh, silly Pip inadvertently startled this nice cat.

  The cat emitted a low, rumbling growl.

  Correction: Pip inadvertently startled this not-so-nice cat.

  The cat took several slow and deliberate steps toward us.

  Okay, so this cat has an issue with dogs, maybe it was abused by a dog in its kittenhood. That’s okay, I’ll just take the dog out of the equation.

  I picked Pip up and backed away, but the cat locked eyes with me. The farther I retreated, the faster the cat advanced.

  I put on my best calm-assertive, dog-trainer voice and said, “Hey, hey, no. Bad cat. No!”

  Someone tell Cesar Milan that what works on a pit bull does not work on a feisty feline. I was shocked when the cat yo
wled and took a swipe at my shin, after which point, I did the only sensible thing.

  Turn tail and run.

  So there I was, running down the sidewalk, clutching Pip to my chest like some refugee puppy, with the crazy cat chasing me. The entire thing was so absurd, I started laughing as I ran, which made me seem even more maniacal to the startled pedestrians as I streaked past.

  Down the street at the corner, there was a giant puddle by the curb, and in it I saw my opportunity for escape. I leapt over the puddle in what could only be called a leap of faith, as Pip’s flying ears obscured my vision. We didn’t quite make it; my right foot landed in the edge of the puddle, splashing dirty street water all over myself.

  Great.

  But my water landing did succeed in thwarting Terminator Cat, who recoiled at the puddle and, with a twitchy kick of its hind leg, slunk back home to its lair.

  “What is going on? Are you okay?” my mother’s voice said in my ear.

  I had completely forgotten that I still had my earbuds in and my mom on the phone. I did my best to tell her the story, winded and spitting dog hair out of my mouth. “I don’t know what got the cat so mad! I love cats, and you know Pip, he never bothers the cats back home.”

  This last part was only half-true.

  Pip looks shaken, not stirred.

  “I’m sure you didn’t do anything to provoke it,” my mom said. “Some cats just want to take a swipe at you. Like that writing teacher.”

  “Huh?” I readjusted the headphone in my ear.

  “That jerky writing professor, the one who was so mean to you.”

  Gotta love mom-bias. I remembered now; in college, it took me two years to screw up the courage to apply for a creative writing class. I got into a workshop with my first-choice professor—a smart female author and single mother to one daughter.

  Sound familiar?

  I was sure we would get along.

  But we didn’t.

  Safe in Francesca’s arms

  I did everything I could to win her over. I arrived in class promptly, participated in discussion, devoted myself to each assignment, and turned pieces in on time, double-spaced, single-sided, Arial font, just like she’d asked.