Best Friends, Occasional Enemies: The Lighter Side of Life as a Mother and Daughter (Reading Group Gold) (23 page)

I’m no Option Virgin.

But they’ve never made it to any screen.

So I’m a Success Virgin.

Still, this time, if it does happen, you know whom I’d suggest to play me.

Angelina Jolie.

Done deal, right? I’m sure she’d say yes. And while she’s out filming the show, I could take care of Brad Pitt.

Uh, I mean, the kids.

And whom should we cast as Daughter Francesca? I say nobody is sweet or smart enough, but she thinks I’m biased. Guilty as charged.

And who should play Mother Mary?

I’d say the Tasmanian Devil, but his hands are too little to hold a backscratcher.

My second choice would be Yosemite Sam, but he’s usually in too good a mood. Though he has two guns, which makes him almost as lethal as Mother Mary.

Send in your casting suggestions. Think out of the box. Be not afraid. I won’t tell her where you live.

I haven’t even gotten to the point where I visualize which stories they would use for which episode. All of them show me in such a flattering light. There’s the Story of My Gray Chin Hair. The Tale of My Braless ER Visit. The Saga of My Crusty Feet and Amazing Disappearing Little Toe.

Stay tuned for more celibacy.

And if you’re wondering, I won’t be writing the TV series. I don’t want to leave the house, much less go to LA. I know my fleece-pants-and-clogs ensemble wouldn’t go over on Rodeo Drive.

It ain’t my first rodeo.

Heh heh.

I broke the news about the TV series on book tour, and seriously folks, that’s when I realized how it cool it would be if it did become a TV series. Because I felt honored to meet everyone who read the books over the past few years. They started as the stories of my life and grew organically to encompass stories from the lives of Francesca, Mother Mary, Best Friend Franca, and assistant Laura. And by some amazing alchemy conjured by reader and writer, it became stories of the lives of ordinary women.

In other words, all of us.

I know this is true because of all the people I met at the signings, more and more of them mothers, daughters, and grandmothers, who see themselves in our relationship, because they feel the same way about each other. It turns out there are many other Mother Marys in the world.

And more than enough gray chin hairs.

And I’m not the only Spanx-hater.

And joking aside, I’m so happy to have some positive images of the mother-daughter relationship out there, and if it makes it onto TV, all the better.

For this reason, the TV series won’t use my real name for the main character, or for Mother Mary or Francesca.

It really isn’t about us, it’s about you.

So thanks for reading, and for your loyalty.

And stay tuned.

In Which We Get A Woman President

By Lisa

I’m having a change of life, but I’m not sure it’s the one you’re thinking of:

I’m incorporating.

Yes, I’m becoming a corporation, and I’m not even on flaxseed.

Long story short, after writing almost twenty books in about twenty years, it’s time for me to become a company. It was a lawyer who told me this, and the reason was to protect me from other lawyers.

Which sounds like Ted Bundy warning you to stay away from Jeffrey Dahmer.

The lawyer convinced me that incorporating was a good idea by saying the words
lawsuit
and
exposure,
which scared me. I never want to be exposed. If you had my cellulite, you’d understand.

And I have to admit, the idea of incorporating appealed to my ego. After all, if I became a corporation, you know who would be the president.

Ruby The Crazy Corgi.

No, me.

Call me President Me.

But don’t tell Ruby. She scares me more than
exposure.
She’s the dog that ate the top of my finger, biting the hand that feeds her, literally.

Anyway, to stay on point, it also seemed like I’d be taking a step up, going from being self-employed to becoming my own company. I felt suddenly more legitimate, like a couple who had been living together but decided to get married. Except I was marrying myself.

This time, I’m sure it’ll work!

My third husband won’t be a dog or a big TV, it’ll be me. After all, we never fight, we always agree, and we have the same religion, which is worshipping chocolate cake.

So during the big meeting to discuss the particulars, the first question the lawyers asked me was, “What do you want to call your corporation?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. During any big meeting, I’m always the one not knowing. “What should I call my corporation?”

“Just pick a name you like,” they answered, so I told them:

“Microsoft.”

They didn’t think it was funny. Or maybe they hear it 300 times a day. They asked, “How about Lisa Scottoline, LLC?”

It had a familiar ring, but it wasn’t much fun. I thought about it. I always notice the company names at the end of TV shows and movies, and a lot of them are fun. I needed to think of a fun corporate name. After all, I envisioned myself as a fun company president, like the corporate version of the Cool Mom.

Also I realized that was failing the first test of President Me, in asking them what to name the company instead of making an Executive Decision, all by my presidential self. So I told them I’d think about it, which meant I went home and asked Daughter Francesca.

She said, “How about Smart Blonde?”

I loved it immediately, and I decided to become Smart Blonde, LLC. Instead of Dumb Blonde, get it? Changing the world, one stereotype at a time.

Very presidential.

I’m the change candidate.

By the way, don’t ask me what LLC means. I know that LL Cool J means Ladies Love Cool J. So maybe LLC means Ladies Love C something.

I know.

Ladies Love Chocolate Cake!

I should have named my corporation LLC, LLC, then only those of us in the know would get it. Everybody else would think I was drunk.

Back to the story. After I had the corporate name, the lawyers said they’d draw up the papers, but oddly, I found myself lying awake at night, anxious about my life change. I didn’t know if I was ready to be President. I feel more comfy being Class Clown.

And I’d never had a woman president, much less been one.

Then I realized.

Like many women, I run a household. All moms have.

We’re all presidents of our homes. We plan and run everybody’s schedules, we coordinate the pick-ups and the deliveries. We authorize certain expenditures and disallow others. We make sure there’s heat, clean clothes, packed lunches. We make sure there’s something other than pizza for dinner.

So it’s not as if we’ve never had a woman president.

In fact, we always have.

She’s us.

Now all we need is a raise.

The Hardest Job in the World

By Francesca

I’ve always known what it’s like to have a great mother, but I had no idea what it’s like to
be
a great mother. Having one dog can’t really approximate what it’s like to be a mom.

That takes at least three dogs.

My mother was recently traveling on tour with her latest book
,
and it was a grueling schedule; a different city every other day, high-energy signings, meetings with booksellers, and greasy airport food. She loves it, but it’s a tough job.

Still, it ain’t nothin’ compared with being a stay-at-home-mom.

I should know, I was taking care of our three dogs while she was away.

In addition to my own dog, Pip, I had
two
of my mother’s dogs, Little Tony, and the new baby, six-month-old Peach. I’m happy to help my mom whenever I can, so I told her it wouldn’t be a problem. But it was much harder than I anticipated. It was like caring for human children.

Maybe it was the diapers.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I grew up as an only child, but I’d heard the clichés about sibling dynamics—the oldest golden child, the attention-loving baby, the overlooked middle child. I never knew they were true:

Peach is tiny, adorable, and accident-prone. I carried her wherever I went and otherwise kept her on my lap so I could make sure she didn’t get into stuff, put anything in her mouth, or pee on the floor.

Pip, my oldest, is the best behaved and my first love, so he was on his own with occasional praise for being a very good boy.

As for Little Tony, the middle child, I forgot he existed until he did something bad.

They have therapists for dogs, right?

While I struggled to divide my time and love equally, I nearly missed a major milestone in my little girl’s life—Peach’s first period.

I know, I couldn’t believe it either. But call it a mother’s intuition, or call it a red spot on my couch, I just knew.

But what do you do when a dog becomes a woman?

Are you there, God? It’s me, Francesca, and I have this dog …

The first problem is that Peach is tiny. The puppy weighs less than ten pounds, so I had to try a slew of pet stores to find doggie diapers small enough to fit.

Not that she allowed them to stay on her body. Peach tried to pull, squirm, and chew herself free from her diaper.

Babies are so fussy.

During the brief moments when Peach tired and left the diaper alone, Tony bothered it for her.

Mother’s little helper.

On top of it all, I got sick as a dog, no pun. The unpredictable spring weather left me with an awful head cold. But as every parent knows, moms can’t get sick. Rather, if they do, it doesn’t count.

I needed Sudafed but I didn’t want to leave the little ones at home, so I found myself standing in the pharmacy line, holding the puppy on my hip, with the two others wrapped around my legs.

People were staring, but I didn’t care. All I could think about was how much time I had before Tony needed to go to the bathroom, how many diapers we had left at home, and whether Pip ate a wad of gum that I could’ve sworn was on the floor a minute ago.

I had crossed a threshold. The dogs had become my priority.

Although dogs, even three of them, aren’t the same as children, the priority shift is the same as every mother’s. My mom changed her career, her entire life, to stay home with me. She has put me first in every decision she’s ever made. And as a result, she is the first person I turn to in every one of mine.

I want to thank the mothers who do the difficult, tiring, messy, comical, selfless work of putting us first. You’re number one to us.

Until we have kids of our own.

Just like you taught us.

This Land Is My Land

By Lisa

I’m still on book tour, which means that by the time you read this, I’ll be eating my 307
th
airport burrito.

That’s not the bad news.

I’m in love with airport food. I’m on a different plane every day, sometimes two, so I usually eat in the airport, and my book tour is an excuse to have Auntie Annie’s pretzels, TCBY vanilla fro-yo with jimmies, and Sbarro pepperoni pizza. It’s America on 5000 Carbs a Day, only literary.

By Day Eight, I thought I should try to eat healthy, so I settled for an apple with a barcode sticker. You haven’t lived until you’ve eaten fruit you can scan. I tried to take off the sticker, but it was affixed with Krazy Glue, because God forbid it falls off and some unfortunate cashier has to hit a key. Or worse, God forbid there’s no sticker but the cashier has to memorize the price of the apple, which is like twenty dollars.

In the end, I eat around the sticker, after I take the apple to the women’s restroom in Terminal B, where washing it only makes it dirtier.

Airport food is just one part of the fun of travel.

I find myself standing behind a very old man in line at airport security, and he has never flown before, so he has never done the drill of shoes off, jacket in bin, spare change in plastic bowl.

He turns to me and says: “A thousand bucks for a ticket and I gotta take my sneakers off. Sheesh!”

“I know, right?” I say, which is an all-purpose response that indicates agreement, commiseration, or affability in general.

Still, he asks, “Why I gotta do that?”

I blink. “It’s because of the terrorists.”

“What terrorists?” he asks, raising a gray eyebrow.

Obviously, I’m in line behind Rip Van Winkle, but I take pity on him. I could be him when I get older, under the testy stares of the TSA types and the undisguised grousing of the travelers behind us. He keeps going through the metal detector, but it beeps every time, sending him back to the line.

He turns bewildered to me, his hooded eyes shining unhappily. “What do I do?”

“Let me help.” So I ease him out of his shoes, then his jacket, then his clunky ancient watch. Still the metal detector beeps, and he comes back. Like a child, he lifts up his shirt, revealing a fake-silver belt buckle the size of Texas.

Which is where I draw the line.

I tell him, “You have to take off your own belt, sir.”

He looks disappointed, but I stand firm. I don’t take off a man’s belt unless he buys me an airport enchilada.

Call me old-fashioned.

But my favorite part of travel is the gift shop. If you’ve ever wondered who’s the idiot that buys all that dumb junk, she would be me.

Bottom line is that I love airport gift shops. There’re the only places in the country that are still regional. Think about it. If you go out for a drive, everywhere you look, you’ll pass a Chili’s, a Gap, and a McDonald’s, so that the whole nation looks the same, one state to the next.

Real America awaits you in the airport gift shop.

There you can find T-shirts from the hometown baseball/basketball/hockey team, or all-cotton T-shirts bearing the city’s name, with sexual innuendos in local motifs. For example, the New York T-shirts have apples over the breasts, the Detroit T-shirts have tires over the breasts, and the L.A. shirts have Hollywood sunglasses over the breasts.

See? Regional.

Plus the gift shops sell other local items. The gift shop in the Houston airport sells bottles of five-alarm barbecue sauce, the gift shop in the Chicago airport sells the four-pack of bratwurst, the gift shop in Dallas sells the straw cowgirl hat, and the gift shop in the Phoenix airport sells the plant-it-yourself cactus kit. I buy the cactus kit for Daughter Francesca, who’s delighted. She pours the fake-orange sand into its adobe-hued pot and plants the miniature bulb of prickly cactus. The cactus kit even comes with a tiny wooden sign that reads
ARIZONA
, in burnt brown letters like an Old-West brand.