Best Friends, Occasional Enemies: The Lighter Side of Life as a Mother and Daughter (Reading Group Gold) (17 page)

The day I was there, the piazza was filled with a team of seventy-five men and women who were rehearsing their flag-throwing for a
La Quintana,
a jousting competition to be held the next month. The flags were the team colors, bright yellow and clear blue, the hues of the Italian sun and sky. We watched the silk flags swirl, dip, and fly though the air, each movement timed perfectly to the beat of music played on ancient trumpets.

It was an amazing way to spend a birthday, but I was missing something.

It was over ten years ago that my father and brother planned their trip to Ascoli-Piceno, and they asked Francesca and me to go with them, but I said no. I’d wished I could go but I thought I had too much work, and a deadline. They came home full of pictures and stories, and they’d met a slew of relatives who’d fed them for three days. My father got choked up when he told me that he saw his mother’s face in the features of his cousins, and how moved he was by walking the same cobblestones his parents had left behind, for the streets of gold in America. He laughed when he remembered that his mother had always wanted to move back to Ascoli-Piceno, even after living in Philadelphia for thirty years, because the food was better.

I told my father I’d go to Ascoli-Piceno with him someday, and I meant it. He said he’d wait, but cancer got to him first.

And so I found myself lighting a candle for him in the Cathedral of Sant’Emidio. It was a bitter moment, full of regret. I hadn’t gone with him, but I wished I had. I wished I still could. It was an unhappy sort of birthday wish, and a weird sort of birthday candle.

Lisa and her father, Frank Scottoline

I’d thought work was more important. It wasn’t.

I’d thought I had forever. I didn’t.

Life has a deadline, too.

Then I realized that maybe I had gotten my birthday wish, after all. Because standing at the cool altar of the stone church, in the place where my father had stood, and where his father before him had stood, and even his father before
him
had stood, I felt connected, still. To him, and to them all. And I stood there with my own daughter and could see in her glistening eyes that she would come back here someday, maybe with her own children, to this very same spot, which had existed for thousands of years and would continue to exist for a thousand more.

Happy Birthday, to me.

And
grazie,
Dad.

Love you.

Life in the Not-So-Fast Lane

By Lisa

I was driving home last night on the highway when that old Eagles song came on the radio, “Life in the Fast Lane.” At the time, I was in the middle lane.

Ironic.

I love the middle lane. If I could live my life in the middle lane, I would.

I avoid the fast lane at all costs, because I’m not that kind of girl.

I belong in the middle lane because I follow the rules and drive the speed limit. I don’t like to go too fast and I don’t like to go too slow. I’m Goldilocks, on wheels.

Also the middle lane is the safest. I like to keep my options open, so if there’s an accident, I can escape left or right. This reminds me of my divorces from Thing One and Thing Two. The middle lane is for people who understand the necessity for Plan B on the turnpike of life.

Life in the fast lane is too risky for me. Cars could cross over the divider. Also highway debris, or low-flying geese.

The slow lane is equally treacherous. Trees could topple onto me. Deer could dart in front of me. And don’t get me started on falling rocks. You ever drive by those
FALLING ROCKS
signs? They’re always placed next to a mountain composed entirely of loose boulders, which are held in place by chicken wire.

This is straight-up crazy.

Take it from me, chicken wire doesn’t have a chance against falling rocks. I know because chicken wire doesn’t even hold back chickens. I had to replace my chicken wire because one of my hens, Princess Ida, chewed it up, determined to fly the coop. In fact, if you ask me, we should put Princess Ida in charge of falling rocks.

She could stop them with one wing tied behind her back.

The only time the middle lane becomes dangerous is at night, when truckers get cranky. Let me first say that I love truckers. They’re the only men left who still flirt with me, and I suspect that’s because I look my best from a distance.

If you’re driving on I-95 and I’m driving on I-78, I’m superhot.

Also I love truckers because they send me lots of email, telling me that they like listening to my books on tape while they drive. It turns out that truckers are some of the best-read people around, which shows that you can’t judge an audiobook by its cover.

And if they read me, even better. I love anybody who reads me. Except when they try to run me off the road.

Truckers have to use the middle lane, and they tend to line up behind me, flashing their massive headlights to pressure me out of their way. This happened again last night, when it was proverbially dark and stormy. I was driving the speed limit, but the trucker kept honking and flashing his lights. I would have switched lanes, but the fast lane was full of speeders avoiding geese.

And the slow lane was clogged with people distracted by Falling Rocks.

Nobody would let me in, which was obvious to everyone but the trucker, who kept honking and tailgating me until my car flooded with light from his high beams. His big rig even had those scary shark-teeth, and a teddy bear was roped to his grill like a hostage.

Maybe Stephen King was driving.

My fingers tightened on the wheel, and I kept looking left and right, but couldn’t switch lanes.

Still, HONK! HONK!

At first, I felt bullied. Then angry. And finally, I admit it, I got so scared that I couldn’t even flip him the bird.

In time, I saw my opening and got out of his way, then he sped past me, spraying water and road dirt.

Maybe he didn’t like my audiobook?

No matter.

In time, I got back where I belonged, cruising calmly.

Whatever, Eagles.

Life in The Middle Lane has its own rewards.

It’s Not The Heat

By Lisa

Hot enough for ya?

That’s right. I like to talk about the weather. More accurately, I’m fascinated by the weather. We begin where I begin every day, on
weather.com
.

For me,
weather.com
is online porn.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m in the middle of writing a book, and I’m not sure where the plot is going or what the characters will do, but I love that if I log onto
weather.com
, I get answers.

Answers, answers, and more answers.

I click to
weather.com
, then click again to Hourly, to break down the weather for the coming day, complete with adorable pictures of shiny suns or thumbnail thunderbolts. At a glance, first thing in the morning, I can find out that it will be ninety-two degrees at 11:15
A.M.
today.

Wow!

Where else can you get someone to foretell your future, humidity index included?

Come to think of it, that’s what I love most about
weather.com
. It can tell all sorts of information about the future with precision, and I want to know everything I can about the future, especially if it includes when my hair will frizz.

For example, once I find out that the sunshine today will morph to light rain at 3:17
P.M.
, I click over to the Mosquito Index. Yes, on
weather.com
, you can click to find out when you’re most likely to get bitten by a mosquito, which turns out to be between 5:06
P.M.
and 6:37
A.M.
, tomorrow morning. And tonight, if you want to know, the Mosquito Activity will be between None and Limited, as opposed to the top of the scale, which is Very High. You don’t want to plan your picnic for when the mosquitoes are at their worst, which is Really Frigging Annoying.

And on the Mosquito Index page, there’s even a sidebar asking, Want To Know When The Fish Are Biting?

And suddenly, I do!

I want to know when the fish are biting, even though I don’t fish. In fact, I didn’t even know they bite.

I click my way to the Fishing Forecast, where you can search by zip code or by lake, and this astounds me.
Weather.com
can tell you when the fish will be biting in a particular lake?

How great is that?

It bodes well for our country, if we can foretell when fish will be biting in Lake Whatever, and at what time. If we can do that, we can put a man on the moon.

Or back on the moon.

Or at least make my hair not frizz.

The first lake that pops into my mind is Lake Winnipesaukee, because it’s mentioned in a movie I love,
What About Bob?
Of course, Lake Winnipesaukee is impossible to spell, which is a joke in the movie, so to get the right spelling, I have to navigate to Google, where I plug in the wrong spelling and it asks me, DID YOU MEAN … and supplies the right spelling.

Yes, Google, I did mean that. What you said. Thanks for saving my face, online. Google is almost as smart as
weather.com
. It can’t tell the future, but it can read your mind.

Anyway, I go back to the Fishing Forecast, plug Lake Winnipesaukee into the lake search, and am rewarded with a multicolored wiggly line showing that today, the Lake Winnipesaukee fish will be biting the most between 12:01
P.M.
and 2:06
P.M.

Ouch.

If I were you, I’d stay away.

And the same webpage also informs me that the Moon Phase tonight will be Waxing Gibbous.

See? Toldja! Answers, answers, and more answers.

I’m so happy to know this about the moon, though I have no idea what Waxing Gibbous means. I could find out, but I don’t need to to marvel at how great it is to know it, precisely.

And I’m not talking about horoscope-level precision. I’m talking, real, no-joke, scientific-type precision. In my experience,
weather.com
is never wrong. Or if it’s wrong, it changes its forecast right away, which is still kosher.

Politicians do it all the time.

Moms Say the Darndest

By Lisa

Everyone takes different risks in life. Some people defuse bombs. Other people juggle knives. I give a microphone to Mother Mary, in front of 350 of my readers.

If you ask me, it’s safer to skydive than to ask Mother Mary to speak in front of an audience. You never know what she’s going to say. Remember kids say the darndest things?

Mother Mary says the darndest things, too.

Here’s what I’ve observed. When you’re young, up to the age of seven, you can say anything you want and people will think it’s adorable. Everybody loves the honesty of children. They get automatic immunity.

Same way when you’re older, over the age of seventy. You can say anything you damn well please and everybody will think it’s great. You’ve earned the right to be completely honest and get out of jail free.

It’s between the ages of seven and seventy that you get sued, slapped, or fired from your network TV job, but that’s not the point herein.

The point is that Mother Mary never met a microphone she didn’t like.

And I made the first mistake, by inviting her to my Big Book Club party. Francesca came, too, and we held it at the house, with a tent, catered food, music, and a full floor show.

Well, the floor show is me talking about myself. Just like here. And at my signings. I begin by giving a speech about myself, then I segue into a question-and-answer period about me.

Now you know why I’m divorced twice.

I invite book clubs who have read my most recent novel, and I’ve been doing this for the past five years. I started with 23 book clubs, and the party has grown to 112 book clubs over two days, and boy, am I happy. I’m thrilled that book clubs like my novels, and I appreciate their reading me, which is the purpose of the party, to say a very personal thank-you.

In fact, thank you, readers everywhere.

I don’t think of the book club members as my customers, but in a sense, they are. So you have to imagine the panic that squeezes my heart like a fist when Mother Mary goes off script, keeps the microphone, and tells the crowd the following:

That I hurried her off the toilet when it was time to come to the party.

That I hurry her around in general.

That I can be bossier than you think.

That I was on the scale, cursing, that very morning.

That I bought her her hearing aids and make her wear them because I want to get my money’s worth.

That I scratch my back with the backscratcher the wrong way. I do it from the bottom and reach up, but you’re supposed to do it from top and reach down. Then Mother Mary actually demonstrates the correct procedure, with a backscratcher she wields like a scepter. She wears black stretch pants, her lab coat, and a thirty-year-old bra.