My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman (11 page)

I’m grateful to my readers, so every year I have a contest for book clubs who read my latest book, as a thank-you to them. They enter the contest by sending me a picture with their members holding up my book. The winner is chosen at random, and the prize is dinner with me.

I’m more fun than you think, okay?

The consolation prize is even better. Everybody who enters the contest gets to come to a big party at my house. I’ve been doing this for four years now, and we have a great time, eating, drinking, and yapping away.

It’s mostly women, except for a few enlightened men. Chocolate flows like wine. Well, if chocolate could flow, it would.

What really flows is estrogen.

We start out talking about books and end up talking about our husbands, dogs, children, hair, and carbohydrates.

Fun for girls!

By way of background, the first year I gave the book club party, there were 100 people. My assistant Laura and I ordered some pastries, served it ourselves on paper plates, and made coffee in two electric urns that blew every fuse in my house.

It was what they call a soft opening. Perhaps because you have to be soft in the head to open that way.

The second year, 200 people came, and I hired a caterer and rented a tent. The book club party turned professional, and we got our act together.

The third year, 300 people came, and I kept the same caterer and rented a larger tent. All good.

The fourth year, which is this year, guess how many people entered the contest and said they were coming to the book club party?

Given the pattern, you would think 400, right?

Me, too.

But the answer was 700.

OMG.

This is a good problem to have, because it means that more book clubs are reading my books, but at first I didn’t know what to do. I called Laura in a panic. I wailed, “What do we do?”

“We remain calm.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“We’ll be fine.”

I wanted to believe her. Laura is always right, and she knows when to panic. The answer is never. She’s the mother of two little boys and she never, ever panics. But I’m me.

“No, we won’t be fine.” I was freaking. “We can’t change the date and split the party up over two days, can we?”

“This late?”

“Then I’m praying for rain.”

“God forbid, “Laura said, but I didn’t listen.

I prayed very, very hard.

Harder than I’d prayed for a pony when I was little.

I didn’t think I could fit 700 people in and around my house, and even if I could, I wouldn’t get to meet and hang with my guests the way I like, which is the whole point of the event. In fact, I always greet every guest as they arrive, and Laura and I figured that if I spent only a minute with each person, at 700 people, it would take—

Well, you can do the math.

I can’t. It gives me the heebee-jeebies.

So I prayed for rain, and we ordered a tent that would house a circus, doubled the food order, and nixed the hot drinks, even though it was October and chilly.

I’m an author, not a restaurant.

I watched the weather reports. They were talking rain, and my spirits lifted. I hate to say it, but I hoped it would keep a few people away. But two days before the party, the forecast was for a nor’easter, which would keep more than a few people away. And then there were reports of a second nor’easter, which would hit at the same time.

In other words, the perfect storm was going to hit my book club party.

Be careful what you wish, right?

I called Laura in a bigger panic. “I’m so sorry I prayed for rain. They’re talking gale-force winds. Twenty-degree temperatures. Tons of rain.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Will the tent blow away? How will we get the food truck through the mud? Where will we park the cars?

“It will all work out okay.”

Well, what do you think happened?

Did the two nor’easters come as predicted?

Was it a disaster?

Yes, and no.

Laura was right, yet again.

Two nor’easters did strike, converging right over my tent, which withstood the high winds and torrential rain. The food truck got through the mud, we covered the grass with hay, and a little over half the crowd showed up. I was able to greet every one of my guests, and give out more than a few hugs.

Yay!

We all had a great time, not just despite the storm, but because of it, and the hardy few that made it to the party proved they were the type of women that I admire and write about—strong, resilient, and fun.

Like Eleanor Roosevelt said, “A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she’s in hot water.”

Well, these women were tea bags, to the max.

And what happened to me?

I’m praying for George Clooney.

This Thanksgiving, I’m pimping out my family.

My first book of adventures was published two days before Thanksgiving. I did a short tour for the book and thought it would be a great idea to get Mother Mary to come along to a few signings, because she gets more fan mail than I do.

By the way, the order of email love goes: Mother Mary, Daughter Francesca, Little Tony, and me.

I’m good with that.

In fact, I agree.

Mother Mary said she’d shill for me in return for her free Thanksgiving dinner. She also agreed to stay at my house through December, though I won’t make her sell books on Christmas. She’s eighty-six, and you can lash your mother only so much.

On Christmas, I’ll give her the day off.

So she can cook.

Santa might not approve, though if he reads me, he knows that I’m the Nice one and she’s straight-up Naughty.

But arrangements need to be made to fly her up from Miami, namely a single reservation, which for some reason necessitates five phone calls, with much discussion about the best day to travel. I want her to come up on November 20th.

“Why so early?” she asks. “I’m busy.”

“Doing what?”

“None of your business”

I beg to differ. Actually it is my business. It is exactly my business. “Okay, when can you come up?”

“Earliest is the 22nd.”

“How about the 20th?”

“The 22nd.”

“How about the 21st? We can relax a little before the book tour.”

“The 22nd is fine.”

I give up. My mother could negotiate peace in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East, all at once. She’d make them surrender. She’d take their guns and stop making their women wear burkas. Which reminds me that Mother Mary has been known to don a lab coat, impersonating Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, so I ask, “Ma, what are you going to wear to the signings?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“What about your lab coat? You’re leaving that at home, right?”

“Of course. I don’t wear that in public.”

“Okay.” Just checking. Then I reconsider. “On second thought, maybe you should bring the lab coat. You could wear it to the signings. That would be cute. If they read me, they know you’re an amateur doctor.”

Silence.

I remain undaunted. My imagination takes over. The notion of dressing my mother up for a signing strikes me as marketing genius, so I try to convince her: “Ma, we could get you a toy stethoscope. A fake prescription pad. You could prescribe meatballs. You could be your own health insurance company, called Independence Blue Cross-To-Bear.”

Suddenly I realize that she’s not quiet, but the call got dropped. For a minute, I wonder if she hung up on purpose, but that’s not her style. Now the fun begins, because if I’m on the phone with anyone other than my mother and a call gets dropped, somebody calls somebody else back, no big deal.

But not Mother Mary.

Usually, it takes her ten minutes to realize that the call was dropped, during which I try to call her back five times, each time getting her voicemail. Then, an hour later, when we finally reconnect, our discussion will always go like this, as it does this time:

“So, Ma, I was saying that—”

“What happened?” she asks.

“The call got dropped.”

“I didn’t hear you anymore.”

“I know. It disconnected.”

“Did you hang up?”

“No, it’s just dropped. Calls gets dropped.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” Mind you, she’s not confused. She’s angry. A dropped call is either a personal affront or a government wiretap.

“We shoulda kept the Jitterbug. You said this new phone would work, but it doesn’t.”

“It does, but calls get dropped. Just because the call gets dropped doesn’t mean the phone doesn’t work.” As soon as I finish saying it, it sounds ridiculous. A phone costs plenty, so maybe it’s reasonable to expect it to work, but never mind, I have to get the Thanksgiving conversation back on track.

But to fast-forward, I don’t. We never recover from the mystery of the dropped call.

So you know where this is going.

Mother Mary will come visit, we’ll go to a few book signings, and we’ll celebrate Thanksgiving.

And you know what I’m thankful for.

Another holiday with my family. Especially Dr.

Bunsen Honeydew.

My grandmother, whom you know as Mother Mary, just turned eighty-six years old, and so I gave her a call. I sang Happy Birthday, we discussed the usual topics, and then she asked me one of the questions she always asks: “Kitten, are you having fun?” And for once, I had a real story for her.

I answered, “I had the best night of my life.”

Last weekend, my cousin invited me to a charity ball. I expected it to be a formal, bordering on stuffy, occasion, one that intimidated me. But I had a red dress in my closet, and sometimes that is reason enough.

The night turned out to live up to every possible promise a red dress can make. The event was held in a beautiful, old New York building. There, I met a British man who was so handsome, so debonair, I could hardly speak when he started talking to me, much less move when he asked me to dance.

He led me to the dance floor, where we remained for the next two hours. He spun me around like a pro, and on the last beat of every song, he’d toss me into the most daring, thrilling dips, the sort of trust-me-or-die, hair-grazes-the-floor dips that make other people stop and look.

A group of us, including Prince Charming, ended the night at an authentic piano bar—a tiny place where a gifted pianist played song after song and the waitress and bartender took turns singing long after last call.

Finally, it was time for me to bid my reluctant farewells. I stepped outside and saw that my golden coach was once again a yellow taxi, and the evening rain had released smells of the city not found in fairy tales.

Driving home, replaying the evening in my mind, I could barely believe such a night could be real. As I stepped out of the cab, I looked down at my feet and saw that both of my shoes had an ugly bit of glue exposed over the peep-toe. And then I realized I had my proof that the night had really happened:

I had danced the bows off my shoes.

“Oh, Kitten, that’s marvelous!” my grandmother cried. Her tone turned serious, “But did you sing at the piano bar?”

I laughed. “No.”

“
No?
Why not?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I’d be too embarrassed. I don’t think I even know all the words to any song.”

“You know
all
those Sinatra songs! I always used to sing at piano bars when I was young. Anywhere I went, if there was a piano, I would sing. You see, I was a bit of a show-off then.”

“Oh yeah?”

“
Oh
yeah! I would go to a party in a great dress, and I’d dance all night in the center of the room, and I’d always sing at a piano. That was sixty, seventy years ago, but I loved it. You should never be embarrassed. You should have sung your heart out.”

The picture she was painting of herself was far different from the grandmother I knew, but it was one I could see clearly. I realized that inside the woman who survived an impoverished childhood, who selflessly raised two kids and worked when few women did, who, despite arthritic fingers and worsening eyesight, can still assemble one hundred perfect ravioli on any given afternoon, was a woman who loved the limelight, who could dance all night, and who sang at a piano, always.

We said goodbye, and when I hung up the phone I had a different perspective on my night at the ball. At the time, I had tried my hardest to live in the moment, to savor every minute of that night. The next day, I had rushed to tell my friends before I forgot a detail. I’d even been tempted to write it down in a journal, get it on the record, anything to preserve a magical evening that was over too soon. But now I know that it was a night I will carry with me. A night I will tell my grandchildren about—the night I danced the bows off my shoes.

I know I will remember that night, because my grandmother still does. But the next time I’m in a piano bar, I’ll sing.