Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman Read online

  But have no fear. I checked the website, and Spanx has the solution: “slimming camis.” That is, camisoles that look like Ace bandages, which presumably pick up the fat roll at the waist and squeeze it upward, so that, having nowhere else to go, it pops out on top, as breasts.

  Ta-da!

  Or rather, ta-tas!

  This is interesting, for physics. Natural law says that matter cannot be created or destroyed, but that was pre-Spanx. With these babies, you could destroy the matter at your waistline and increase it at your bustline, merely by turning your body into a half-squeezed tube of toothpaste.

  And of course, you’ll need a new bra to catch all your homeless fat, so the website sells “the Bra-llelujah!” It even states, “So, say goodbye to BBS (Bad Bra Syndrome)!”

  Thank God. I hate it when my B is B.

  I looked at the other articles of slimming apparel, and there were even tights for pregnant women, which was great. I wouldn’t want my baby to be born with VIL (Visible Infant Lines).

  And there were Power Panties, which made me smile.

  If women had power, we wouldn’t need Spanx.

  Defeated

  I was driving down the street the other day when I saw a sign on an empty storefront that read, FISH PEDICURES COMING SOON!

  It was the kind of sign that got me thinking. Do fish need pedicures? You’d think they would do without, in this economy.

  Unless they were goldfish.

  I went home and plugged “fish pedicures” into Google, and I learned that this is a new kind of pedicure for women, whereby you plunge your feet into a tank of water and fish eat your dead skin off.

  I’m not joking.

  The article said that fish pedicures use doctor fish, who evidently love this sort of thing. You have to wonder why they didn’t put their medical degree to better use. To me, the only thing more disgusting than putting your feet in a bucket of flesh-eating fish is being a fish who has to eat dead skin for dinner.

  Yuck.

  I don’t have time to get pedicures, though I love them. The last one I had, my feet came out clean and smooth as a saint’s, except for the red nail polish. I opted for red because if you’re going to get a pedicure once a year, you have to make it count. Red toenail polish signals that you’re single and ready to mingle, at least in your mind.

  Otherwise, the sight of a middle-aged woman’s foot is not for the fainthearted, especially in mid-winter. Only women have the constitution to deal with it, like childbirth and diaper genies.

  I can barely stomach trimming my own toenails, which I do with one of those cheapo stainless-steel clippers from CVS. I try to cut them evenly, but they always end up pointy enough to qualify as a lethal weapon in most jurisdictions.

  Plus, my scientific observation is that nails thicken with time, so that a fifty-year-old toenail has the thickness of a ram’s horn and is almost as pretty. My toenail trimming would go a lot faster if I replaced the clipper with a chainsaw.

  And then there are calluses, which are fun. I can’t imagine a doctor fish eating through my calluses, unless he was a surgeon fish.

  Or a sturgeon fish.

  Plus my calluses have toughened as the years have gone by, adding layer after layer, like the Earth’s crust. Sometimes the calluses sprout cracks like fault lines, and when they finally split open, I have my own personal earthquake.

  My feet are a natural disaster.

  Daughter Francesca is grossed out by my feet, but they have their advantages. I don’t have to wear shoes, as I appear to be growing my own pair of wooden clogs.

  I don’t need a pedicurist, I need a blacksmith.

  Of course, my toes are no picnic, either. I don’t know when this happened, maybe at about age 40, but all my toes have been become one. In other words, where I used have five vertical toes on each foot, I now appear to have one toe on each foot, but it’s horizontal.

  Please tell me this happened to you, too.

  And what’s up with our little toe?

  Do you even have a little toe anymore? What happens to that little toe, when we get older? Has it been ignored for so long that it simply decides to vanish? Does it say to itself, I wonder if anybody will even notice that I’m gone?

  If you ask me, that little piggy is going to market and never coming back.

  The saddest thing about the little toe is the littlest toenail.

  Can you even see yours, ladies?

  I don’t know if you have the Amazing Disappearing Toenail, but I do. About 10 years ago, it was normal size, then it magically cut itself in half, then in half again and again. Now it’s a toe sliver. If I could lose weight like my littlest toenail, I’d be Lindsay Lohan.

  Bottom line, the fish pedicure isn’t for me.

  Even a shark would throw up his hands.

  Classified Porn

  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?

  Earthquake Mary

  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.

  Topless

  You know how they tell you to wear clean underwear in case you’re in an accident? Well, this story is almost like that.

  Until Sunday night, my weekend was terrific. I went to New York for an opera marathon; Friday night was Madama Butterfly, Saturday matinee Le Nozze di Figaro, and Saturday night, Lucia di Lammermoor. Bottom line, for most of my waking hours, people were singing to me.

  And if that’s not great enough, chocolate was involved.

  Opera candy isn’t as good as movie candy, in that there are no Raisinets, but at least they have vaguely European chocolate bars that taste pretentious. I made do with the dark chocolate for the nighttime shows and switched to milk chocolate for the matinee, but in any event, as you can tell from the opera and the chocolate, I tend to overdo things. Which is why I have four dogs, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

  So I came home and on Sunday night was having a wonderful time poring over my Playbills when a fight broke out between my old golden retriever Lucy and Ruby The Corgi. I leaped into action to break it up, stuck my index finger into the canines of some canine, and got bitten. Not to be a diva about it, but this was no little baby puncture wound. When I looked down at my finger, it no longer had a top.

  And there was blood. Not as much as Lucia di Lammermoor, but enough to send Madame Butterfly running for her car keys and flying to the hospital. I hustled into the emergency room with one hand held high, which was when I remembered something:

  I was braless.

  Kind reader, my adventures can get personal from time to time. It’s never been quite this personal, but I think it’s important to deal with this subject, to be sure you girls out there learn from my mistake.

  Here’s my lesson: you have to wear your bra all the time, even in the house when you’re relaxing by yourself after a busy weekend eating chocolate to music. Because you never know if something untoward is going to happen and you’re going to find yourself in a hospital emergency room in no bra.

  At the same time that you’re middle-aged.

  The first clue that I had forgotten my underwear was the running part. Yes, that’s it, running into the emergency room with my hand up in the air. The second clue was the look on the face of the hot male nurse when he came into the room to examine my finger. Because, of course, on the night that your dog bites your finger, the nurse will be male and hot. (Lately, I’m thinking that men divide into two groups: Married or Learner’s Permit. The nurse was the latter, which is more entertaining, if equally off limits.)

  Anyway, I could tell from his look that I’d crossed the line.

  You know which line I mean. The Point of No Return, Bralessness-wise.

  When I was younger, going braless was fun and sexy. I wasn’t above resorting to bralessness, as needed. It was one of my female bag of tricks. The other was whining. Men love that.

  The point is that bralessness used to work. But that was then, and this is now.

  Now, I wouldn’t be caught in public without a bra. Now, I buy costly bras that not only lift and separate, but also hoist, buttress, cantilever, and generally defy gravity and other natural laws. Isaac Newton had nothing on my underwear.

 
; Einstein’s Theory is no match for Victoria’s Secret.

  In my younger days, I scorned padded bras. Now I demand them. Although now they’re called “formed,” which costs twenty dollars more than padded, but we both know what we’re talking about:

  Extra credit.

  A little help.

  False advertising.

  Except that here I was sitting in front of a hot male nurse, and I was wearing crappy jeans and a sweater that wasn’t slouchy enough. Truth to tell, no sweater is slouchy enough for my breasts, unimproved. The nurse gallantly averted his eyes, or maybe he was just nauseated. To his credit, he tried to stop the blood flowing from my finger and made small talk to distract me from the horror of the situation and also the fact that my finger was bloody.

  He asked me, “Why do you have four dogs?”

  “That’s just how I roll. And don’t get me started on opera and chocolate.” Silence followed, so I asked, “What do you think happened to the top of my finger? I didn’t see it on the floor.”

  “Your dog probably ate it. They’re carnivores, you know.”

  Yuck. I couldn’t speak for a moment. That my dog bit my finger is one thing. That my dog ate my finger is quite another. Not only was I grossed out, I wondered how I would be able to write. I type with two index fingers, and only one was open for business. Then I considered the bright side. If I missed my deadline, I wouldn’t have to say to my editor, My dog ate my homework. I had a much better excuse: My dog ate me.

  But the nurse was shaking his head. “Looks like you need a skin graft. Tomorrow, you’ll have to see a hand surgeon.”

  “Thanks,” I said, but this is what I thought:

  Now that calls for an underwire.

  Getting Religion