Why My Third Husband Will Be A Dog (46 page)

Or laziness.

For example, I never used to be able to take a nap, but now I’m a big fan. I love naps. When I told a friend about this, she called them power naps. She said, “After you take one, you can work harder.”

Not exactly.

To me, the term “power nap” is an oxymoron. I don’t take power naps. I take out-of-power naps.

I don’t nap to work harder. I nap because I’m tired and I need to lie down.

I used to have all manner of sleep quirks. I couldn’t sleep at night unless the room was completely dark, absolutely quiet, or if there was a man next to me.

Then I got over it. My second divorce cured me.

Nowadays I have no curtains on my bedroom windows, and daylight streams in at dawn, but it doesn’t wake me. Nothing
wakes me, these days. Here is a true story—a few years ago, a fire broke out in a field next door to my house, and it took ten firetrucks all night to extinguish. I slept through it. Why?

I was tired.

But I relapsed on book tour, in different hotel rooms for four weeks, and I got to thinking that I couldn’t sleep unless it was dark. Hotels have those double curtains; you know the ones, the top curtain made of some lovely fabric and behind it the secret curtain, made of gray impermeable rubber to block out light, noise, and nuclear war.

I closed the curtains, using that weird plastic wand, went to bed, and settled down. Then I noticed the flashing red lights on the fire detector and my BlackBerry. The phosphorescent glow of the digital clock. The red switch of a surge protector. The ghostly whiteness from the bathroom nightlight. The hall light spilling under the door. The bright pinpoint of the laptop. The green of the thermostat.

Christmas in Room 373.

I got up and started unplugging things like crazy, turning over the BlackBerry, covering the thermostat with a towel, and tilting the alarm clock to the wall, but when I went back to bed, no dice. I reached for a pillow to burrow under, which was when I realized there were twenty-six of them on the bed. They were of all types and sizes; some were thick rolls like logs, and others were soft and square as ravioli.

I tried all the pillows, found some too hard and some too soft, then threw them off the bed like a latter-day Goldilocks, until I came to the widest and tallest pillow I’d ever seen, maybe six feet long and two feet wide. I turned on the light and called the front desk, “What’s this big thing in my bed?”

“It’s an organic body pillow.”

Huh? For organic bodies? “What’s that?”

“Our guests love our body pillows. They hug them. It’s a sleep aid.”

“Really? Thanks.” I hung up, turned off the light, and flopped back down. After a minute, I leaned over and gave the body pillow an awkward hug. I admit it, I felt silly, looping an arm around an inanimate object. But it was kind of cuddly, and after a few minutes, it felt like a warm and friendly thing that I didn’t have to marry and divorce.

I named him George.

As in Clooney.

Luckily I was in town for two dreamy nights, during which George and I slept happily together. I snoozed like a baby. So did he. It was hard to leave him, but we vowed there would be no strings. We made no promises we couldn’t keep. When I had to move on, he didn’t ask me to stay. In fact, he said nothing. He couldn’t. He knew the way it was from the beginning.

I bet he’s already sleeping with someone else.

With the curtains closed.

The Flying Scottolines are zooming around everywhere, like protons spinning crazily out of control. I may be wrong on the science, but I think this why we just had a familial nuclear explosion.

It started because I’m on book tour, brother Frank is visiting daughter Francesca in NYC, and Mother Mary is left at home in Miami.

Alone.

Without a cell phone.

In other words, she could fall and not get up. No one would know but two toy Pomeranians.

I find this unacceptable. I’m not her daughter for nothing. Mother Mary raised me to understand that the American home is a perilous place and lethal accidents can happen at any time. I’m still afraid my blow dryer will jump in the sink and electrocute me. Also I could choke if I eat too fast. Plus if you read without enough light, you could go blind.

I warned you. Don’t come crying to me.

So you would think that she would understand my concern that she’s home alone, with no cell phone in case of emergency.

But no.

Mother Mary resists getting a cell phone, on reflex. She
fought a battle over the second hearing aid, and this is World War III. Her arguments are many: She doesn’t need one. She won’t fall. If she falls, she wouldn’t want to get up right away, anyway. She could just lie there for a few days. It’s cool on the floor. Bottom line, it’s none of my business.

I rant, rave, and beg, but none of it works. I try scaring her. I tell her that if she didn’t have a cell phone and she fell, she could die.

I actually said, “Ma, you will DIE!”

That’s right, I threatened my own 84-year-old mother with the prospect of her own demise.

She said, “I’m not afraid of death. Death is afraid of me.” Finally I used my ultimate weapon. Guilt.

I told her, “You’re worrying me, when I have to do my job on the road. I can’t do my job because of you.”

So now she has a cell phone. Or more accurately, a Jitterbug, which is like a cell phone for mothers. Of course, we fought over it for so long that brother Frank is now home, but never mind. She has it and that’s good, though she doesn’t agree. She describes it as “very pretty” but she has already decided not to use it, ever again. The buttons are big so she can see them, and she’s supposed to wear it on a neck chain, but she won’t. She admits it’s easier than dialing the regular phone, but she hates it.

Let me tell you why.

Frank programmed it, then taught her how to answer and make a call. While he talked, she took notes in Gregg shorthand.

There is an irony to this, of course.

My mother was a secretary and always writes in shorthand, by habit. Most people don’t even know what shorthand is, nowadays. I tell them it’s like Swahili, without Africa.

Frank programmed five people on the Jitterbug’s speed
dial—himself, daughter Francesca, cousins Jimmy and Nana, and me. There’s a big button for 911 and another for Operator, though I wonder how effective that can be. I tell my mother to forget the Operator button. I’m sure her call is important to them, but they will leave her to DIE.

Also let’s not worry about the fact that the phone has a Philly area code and she lives in Miami. I don’t want to think that the closest ambulance it calls is five days away.

Back to the story.

For their trial run, brother Frank told her to use the phone to call me and watched while she did it, with one gnarled finger placed purposefully on the button. But she seemed confused when the call connected. She said the phone wasn’t working and tried to hand it back to Frank, but he insisted she use it. She kept trying to hand it back. It almost came to fisticuffs.

“Just talk into it!” he said.

“I don’t know what to say,” said she.

“Tell her we finally got the Jitterbug!”

So she did, telling about the new phone and its features. Then she hung up and handed the phone back to Frank, disgusted. “Throw this away.”

“Why?”

“It didn’t call Lisa. It called somebody else.”

Frank checked the phone. He had programmed my number in wrong, off by a digit. So Mother Mary had called a complete stranger and told her all about the new phone. He informed her as much.

“Told you,” she said. “It sucks. It called some lady.”

“So why did you talk to her?”

“You made me.”

So for now, the phone remains in the wastebasket.

I think I’m a woman “of a certain age,” though when I tried to find a definition of the term, I couldn’t. I checked online at
dictionary.com
, but it wasn’t there, so I gave up.