Why My Third Husband Will Be A Dog (4 page)

Everybody has their pornography, and mine is the real estate ads. I don’t know when this happened or why, but I read the real estate ads with the absorption of a pervert.

At the outset, I should make it clear that I love my house. I have no intention of moving, ever. But I still can’t wait to get the Sunday paper and start house-shopping.

I gaze lovingly at ads for condos in town and new construction in far suburbs. I look at duplexes and ranchers, Cape Cods and mansions. I look at houses that are way too expensive as well as ones that aren’t half as nice as my house. I study the photos of the Featured Properties and wonder if the stone front is only a façade or goes all the way around. Is that front lawn as big as it looks?

It might be cool to live in a Featured Property instead of a normal house, presumably featureless.

And then there’s the ad copy, which can’t be deciphered without a decoder ring. What is a “Custm/grmt/KIT/isl/Cor”? I translate “custom kitchen with a Corian island” because I’m a professional. But the “grmt” stumps me. A misprint for granite? And what about a “new LL rec rm/wine clr?” I understand a new recreation room with a wine cellar, but what’s LL?

It’s a mystery, delicious and tantalizing, which only enhances the sensuality of the ads. It’s real estate, semi-nude.

I flip to the shore properties and read about the beach houses. It would be nice to have a beach house, wouldn’t it? I love the beach. Lots of people have second houses, why shouldn’t I? Today there’s a sold stamp over the photo of a four-bedroom at the Jersey shore, and the sight fills me with dismay. Now I couldn’t buy the beach house even if I wanted to.

Which I didn’t.

This is what I think about as I scan the ads for homes that I will never buy. It’s like daydreaming about how I’d spend Powerball winnings though I never play the lottery, which is another of my fantasies.

I know that none of this makes any sense. When I finally bought my house, I was so glad that I wouldn’t have to read the Sunday paper anymore and go house-shopping. But that was years ago, and I’m still house-shopping.

Why?

And before you answer, I should disclose that I do the same thing with the pet ads. I read all the dog ads, each one, even for bull mastiffs, Rottweiler, Boston Terriers, and Boxers. I check out the new breeds like goldendoodles and maltipoos. I imagine these little furballs as I skim one ad after the other.

Of course, I’m not in the market for a new dog, much less a bull mastiff. I have four dogs, yet I compare prices of shihpoos, whatever that is.

I love the doggie ad copy, too. Special Little Friends. Cute N’ Cuddly. Precious Little Bed Bugs. The one line that always gets me is Needs Good Home. If a puppy Needs Good Home, I consider buying whatever breed they’re selling. I can’t take the guilt.

I have Good Home, even though I could have Better Home, according to the real estate ads.

If I had Featured Property, I’d buy two puppies.

What is the matter with me? Why do I do this, and am I the only one?

Before you render your diagnosis, you should have all the facts. I don’t read the classified ads for jobs or cars. This might lead you to conclude that I’m more satisfied with my job and car than with my house and pets. But that’s not true.

I like my job and car just fine, but not more than everything else. In fact, if I were to list my Top Ten Necessities, they would be:

  1. family

  2. dogs

  3. house

  4. job

  5. car

  6. Starbucks vente iced green-tea latte, breve, no melon syrup, light ice

  7. Caesar salad, dressing on the side, no croutons

  8. strawberry preserves

  9. Splenda

10. oxygen

So, clearly I’m looking at the ads of things I love the most. I guess it’s so I can dream about more of a great thing. Or maybe it’s because I’m a woman.

I wonder if men read car ads for porn the way women read real estate ads.

My guess is, are you kidding?

I am a mother, I have a mother, and I love mothers. I think mothers are a natural force, and maybe an alternative source of fuel.

Observe.

My mother, Mother Mary, lives with brother Frank in South Beach. She awoke one morning with a start, convinced that her bed had moved during sleep, as if there had been an earthquake. But nothing was out of place in her bedroom, and it was a cloudless Sunday, still as a postcard. Nevertheless, she was sure there had been an earthquake. She went and woke up my brother, who told her to go back to sleep.

She didn’t. She scurried across the street like an octogenarian Chicken Little, to warn their neighbor. He told her to go back to sleep, too.

Instead she went home and called the
Miami Herald.

She told the reporter about the earthquake, and he told her that the sky wasn’t falling and suggested she go back to sleep. He also took her name and telephone number, which turned out to be a good thing, because he had to call her back, later that day.

She had been absolutely right. There had been an earthquake, at the exact time she had felt it.

The clincher? The earthquake occurred 397 miles from Miami, in Tampa. And the only person who felt it in Miami was my mother, Mary Scottoline.

I’m not kidding.

Soon, TV newsvans began arriving at my mother’s house. My brother, who you may remember is gay, told me he put on his “best tank top.”

The Scottolines have style.

The reporters interviewed my mother, and under her picture on the TV screen, the banner read
EARTHQUAKE MARY
. They asked her how she felt an earthquake that took place so far away. She answered that she “knows about these things.”

The
MIAMI HERALD
published the story, as reported by Martin Merzer and Aldo Nahed. My favorite part reads, “It was a pretty nice weekend in Florida. Except, you know, for the 6.0 magnitude earthquake . . . In South Florida, the event passed virtually unnoticed, though Mary Scottoline, 82 . . .”

If you don’t believe me, go and find the story online. Google “Mary Scottoline.” Or “I-Told-You-I’m-Not-Crazy Scottoline,” “Nobody-Ever-Listens-To Me-Scottoline,” or “You-And-Your Brother-Think-You-Know-Everything-with-that-Cockamamie-Computer Scottoline.”

It wasn’t the first time that Mother Mary had something in common with a natural disaster. Once I made her fly north to me to avoid a hurricane, and she wasn’t happy about it. When she got off the plane, a TV reporter stuck a microphone in her face and asked if she was afraid of the hurricane. She answered:

“I’m not afraid of a hurricane. I
am
a hurricane.”

So you see what we’re dealing with. A force of nature. A four-foot-eleven bundle of heart, bile, and moxie.

And superpowers.

I’ve known for a long time that Mother Mary has superpowers. She used to cast off the evil eye when somebody gave me a “whammy,” by chanting a secret spell over a bowl of water and olive oil. She dipped her fingers in the water, made the sign of the cross on my forehead, and whispered mysterious words that sounded like
osso bucco
. This spell was handed down to her by another Italian Mother/Witch on Christmas Eve, which is the only time it can be told. She won’t tell me the spell because I’m a lawyer.

But I digress.

Your mother may not smear olive oil on your face, but she has superpowers, too. Spider-Man has nothing on mothers.

We don’t think of mothers as having superpowers, but they do. Mothers can tell what we’re doing when their backs are turned to us. They know we have a fever without a thermometer. They can be at three places at once, a soccer game, a violin lesson, and the high school play, even if it’s
Annie.
They can tell we’re sad by the way we say, “I’m fine.”

And, magically, they can change us into them, without us even knowing how or when. Mother Mary used to make me call her when I got home and let the phone ring three times, as a signal. (This, in a time when long distance calls cost money.) I thought it was silly, but she said, “When you’re a mother, you’ll understand.”

And finally, I do.