Plan C (5 page)

I shrug. For me it’s just going from one zoo to another. I squeeze past the howling bonobos – the ones having sex - and move to the mirror to wipe the foundation from my forehead. How did I miss the have-fun-screw-everything phase of my life? I guess that’s what I get for opting to be responsible and have children in my early twenties.

The bonobo that’s been rearranging the brushes swings over to examine me, closely puckering her lips, so close I can feel her breath on my cheek. She stares from my face to the mirror and back again before plucking a tissue from the box, imitating me, and then picking at my hair with her fingers. I’m pretty sure I don’t have bugs in my hairline, but she seems hopeful.

“Hello there,” I say, feeling I can relate to this endangered species of the Congo. She just stares back. Bonobo females are said to contain their emotions. If only we human females were so good at that game. Bonobo females even play a central and often dominant role in their social life. I stop wiping my makeup off and look at this one straight on. “If I don’t get a better contract in the New Year, I have no option but to find another job, assuming that in this economy there
is
another job out there.” The ape tips her head sideways, pouts, and then makes a whimpering sound. A girlfriend!

The “blind-man’s-bluff” bonobo senses our bonding even though he’s blindfolded. His coos are unsettling and I can sense trouble arising. Ripping off his drape, he steals the makeup brushes from my female companion, and she grabs them back,
thrusting the two into a high-pitched screaming and tugging match. Her puckered lips fascinate me. You couldn’t pay for collagen injections that good!

It’s clear that no matter what species we’re dealing with, the male thinks he dominates. But then the mood changes, as the male bonobo drops the brushes and moves in to hug her. She hugs back. He goes in for a mouth-to-mouth kiss. And just like that, peace is restored. If only human romance were so simple. Suddenly, right before my eyes, the male bonobo forces the female on top of his lap. Apparently she likes it. She squeals with delight. How can she get aroused so quickly? We humans require wine, dinner, flowers, foreplay and commitment.

As they move from one thrilling position to the next, I grab my pad to take notes. Substituting sex for aggression could save a lot of problems. Visions of Ben swinging from a vine and dancing naked, sashay through my head

Betty “Bebe Simmons” Simmonowski hailed from a blue-collar farm town in Connecticut, where she married her high school sweetheart. Well, kind of. Henry wasn’t in her class. He was the best friend of her American History teacher. And Bebe didn’t exactly graduate high school either. She dropped out in her senior year and ran away to California.

Two years later, Bebe played nanny to a Hollywood family whose best friends back east just happened to be Henry’s parents. Henry was older but had what in Bebe’s Bible were the four essentials: “good hair, good teeth, good penis and a private jet.” And for a girl whose mother owned the local town diner and whose father worked at the paper mill, this truly was her Gospel.

It was around the same time that a sweet old Jewish woman, Sylvia, who used to frequent Bebe’s mom’s diner in Connecticut, dropped dead. Sylvia used to tell Bebe her traumatic tales of the Holocaust. When she learned that Sylvia had died, Bebe was standing at a payphone in front of a convenient store on the corner of Sunset Boulevard. She hung up, looked up to the heavens, went inside, and played Sylvia’s Holocaust numbers.

The next day heaven paid off. The one million dollar jackpot turned Betty Simmonowski into Bebe Simmons of Beverly Hills with newly highlighted blonde locks to replace her mousy brown hair and contact lenses instead of bifocals. Her money became her high school diploma, and her field of study was certain advanced terms like Hermes (air-MEZ). Moet (mo-WET). Crudites (crew-dih-TAY). Ralph Lauren (LAWR-en.)

When Bebe finally flew back east with Henry and pulled up in front of Mom’s diner in a brand new BMW, she handed her mother the keys to the car and put a “For Sale” sign on the diner door. Then she packed her parents up and sent them to Florida for an early retirement.

Bebe could work miracles with money the way Jesus could work miracles with a few fish fillets and an un-sliced baguette. Gotta give Bebe credit, and lots of it - platinum, Black Card, MasterCard, American Express, she knew what she wanted and wasn’t ashamed to admit it: money. Within a month, Henry and Bebe settled on Cape Cod in a large ocean estate where the sea spray crashed onto the jetty

When Bebe moved to the Cape, I was already living there and raising my daughters. I first met her in the dermatologist’s office. I had a blister on my nose and I was afraid it might be skin cancer. It wasn’t. Bebe had a blister, too. But it turned out to be a fungal infection from the Harry Winston stacking rings she’d crammed on top of her “Rock of Gibraltar” wedding band. I glanced at Bebe over my magazine. She caught my eye and after we cold chatted about the warm weather, I asked, “Do you want to have lunch?”

“So lovely of you to ask, but I can’t,” she replied. “Have a gardener coming by because one of our three fountains isn’t working. But can you come over to my place? I’ll have Hosea, our chef, make you the best lobster salad!”

I had been planning just to make us tuna sandwiches from a can. “Sure!” I said.

By the time I polished off the crinkle-cut fries that went with the lobster roll, I had figured out that Bebe was like a naïve little girl sitting in a blue Tiffany’s box with a white satin ribbon about it, the kind you’d see on the pages of
Town & Country
that sit on her coffee table, right next to her empty bookshelves. In her defense, I quickly learned that while she wasn’t book smart, she was brilliant when it came to keeping up appearances. Take the Steinway baby grand that sits in the center of her living room not because she can play it but because her decorator put it there.

Bebe is the most fragile person you’d never want to break. But she’s also tough as nails. She’s the kind of person you’d call at 3 a.m. to say, “I’ve been arrested for shoplifting and then I burned and abandoned a car,” and she’d never question why, but instead would rush over be there to bail you out, probably with a gift-wrapped box from Barneys to make you feel better about your jail time, and probably with a set of keys to a new Mercedes to help out the burned-car-victim get to work on Monday morning. I often say to the people who judge her, “So what if Bebe spends her life at shopping malls, and reads Neiman Marcus catalogues instead of Saul Bellow. There are worse things. It’s not cancer.”

And then one day it was. My very first mammogram. I was sure they had made a mistake. It seemed completely unfair. Having just racked up five of my family members’ funerals, and now my gynecologist was calling with the bad news. I was the last one who
needed a lesson. But what a lesson I got. Bebe taught me that she would never leave my side, and she didn’t. When the hospital asked who was my “In Case Of Emergency” and I had nobody to put down, because my children were too young and my parents were now dead, Bebe said, “You’ll never be alone. Put me down.”

And so while they performed the lumpectomy and cleared the margins on my left breast, Bebe sat in the waiting room. Then she transported me home in her black sedan with driver, the car full of more packages and flowers than two sisters would have at an Italian double wedding. Suddenly all her money didn’t seem so reprehensible and, somehow, I knew this was her version of love. As for the cancer, I was one of the blessed ones. No chemotherapy only radiation. But let’s suppose I did undergo chemo, you can bet your last Burberry trench coat that Bebe would have spent every waking second shopping online investigating the best wig shops from here to Paris.

They say money doesn’t buy happiness but I suspect the people who say that don’t have money, because money can certainly cushion most problems. “When in doubt go to a spa and let your worries and cares disappear,” said Bebe one Saturday afternoon as we lay at the Four Seasons in Boston. That was the day she confessed “I want a baby” and I removed my cucumber slices from my eyes to stare at her – in her monogrammed 800-count Turkish robe. “A blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby,” she whimpered.

Unfortunately Henry didn’t share the same desire. His real passion was jetting back and forth to Miami, where he was setting up some commercial real estate development. That’s where he was on the stormy night that Bebe decided to get pregnant. Our friend Kitty the art dealer might be married to a British man named Clive, but it was Bebe’s Big-Ben-of-a-biological-clock that was doing the ticking. “If Henry won’t bring
his penis to me, I’ll have to go to his penis,” she declared, more determined than I’d ever seen her as she snapped the clasps on her Tumi luggage. “And I’ll even take a commercial flight if I have to.”

But fog was moving up the east coast from D.C. and right into Cape Cod, so the only thing Bebe could get was a commercial flight that took her via Chicago, delaying her arrival into Miami by hours. Thank God. It was the flight that saved her life. It also sadly
changed
her life. While she persisted in ringing Henry’s cell phone to inform him that her flight was delayed, Henry was…

…having a night like any other with a huge extravaganza on his yacht: Palm Beach socialites and deep-pockets all dressed to the nines, showering one another with an air-raid of air-kisses, cavorting and comparing their ice-cube size jewelry, practically bleeding in their six-inch Ferragamo sandals, all while the cameras clicked wildly for the society pages. The event was to support the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, with a $1,000-a-head ticket price. Henry was known for his fundraisers. He was also known for the pages they filled in
W
Magazine and “Palm Beach Today,” a website that even toots “click here to see 6,000 + society event photos” - because in Palm Beach, sadly, there are that many.

But what Henry didn’t know was that nearby, in a beat-up Chrysler, with windows down and watching like a hawk, was a gang leader who was certain that the event would raise more than just money. You see, to get initiated into this particular gang, a young thug would be handed a pistol and sent to a big-bucks party to pull the trigger on some random victim – shooting but not killing him. “If you shoot ‘em in the
knees or the gut, they gonna live,” is how the gang leader explained it to the trigger-happy teen nicknamed “L’il Freaky.” ‘And then you in the gang. That’s the game.” Freaky examined the weapon that lay silently in his right palm, turning it left and right, and admiring it like a fine piece of china in the Bridal Registry at Bergdorfs. L’il Freaky was seventeen but could easily pass for twelve. The gang leader could sense his inability to stay in control and said, “Don’t you go shooting no white dude in the heart, you hear?” L’il Freaky nodded. “Or you do, you gonna be doin’ hard time.”

The five gang members slammed their car doors in synch and crossed the street with purpose into the well-lit yard of the mansion. They ran up the plank onto the yacht out back, pushing forcefully past guests, knocking into hysterical women who clutched frantically at the pearl and diamond necklaces on their leathery, tanned necks, certain this was a robbery.

That’s when something clicked in L’il Freaky’s head. He knew who would be his initiation target. It was Henry who moved in toward L’il Freaky, his hands out in front of his chest, in a gesture that meant, “Please don’t.”

L’il Freaky began twitching and pointing the shaky gun at Henry.

“What is it you want?” asked Henry cautiously. “Money? I can give you money. Food?” Henry stepped in a little closer to the teen and begged, “Just don’t hurt any of these ladies. They’re….”

The gun exploded three times. One shot missed, but the other two pierced straight into Henry’s stomach. Blood began to ooze from his side. A distinguished man in a Navy pinstripe suit stepped forward and dropped to his knees. “I’m a doctor,” he announced as he ripped open Henry’s blood soaked shirt, while somebody screamed out “Call 911!” As
the doctor bent over Henry to help him, another thug grabbed a bottle of vodka from the catering table and slammed the glass contents over the doctor’s head.

Later, the town’s stories differed but they went something like this: the ambulance arrived; then the cops, and even the firemen, but the thugs had long-since split, not even leaving tire tracks for the detective’s investigation. Henry and the Doctor were taken away on stretchers as party goers looked on, shaking their heads and consoling one another. It was the biggest event to happen since Trump turned Mar-a-Lago into a country club.

Henry spent the next week in intensive care with Bebe crying and praying at his side. He was finally released from the hospital three weeks later, only to find himself in and out of the emergency room for six more months, his blocked intestines failing to function on their own, so the doctors kept having to cut another inch. Every snip represented a piece of Bebe’s broken heart and a realization that life for them would never be the same.

We later learned from the police investigator that gang shooters opt for the stomach because, as their leader put it, “the dude lives, man, but you fuck ‘em up for good.” And fuck ‘em up for good he did. By the seventh month, Henry had changed not only physically but emotionally. He was angry at the world, now staring for long hours out the window from his tobacco-colored wing chair. He had become mean, distant and unavailable to Bebe; so much so that he seemed to cheer up only when she agreed to his suggestion to leave him.

It wasn’t what she wanted, but it seemed to her, that it was what
he
wanted. He wanted her to have a life. He didn’t want another victim in his. He wanted her to meet a new man and have a baby, something we all knew she would never be happy without.

Maybe the most surprising thing was that L’il Freaky proved to be as much a victim as Henry. I had decided to write an article about the case for a Boston paper. I called it “The Ripple Effect,” and the more I researched the history of L’il Freaky, the more I saw the sorry product of a ghetto that would never release him. But then it did. Two weeks after his assault on Henry, L’il Freaky was shot dead for giving information to the police about the gang leader who had masterminded years of these brutal attacks. L’il Freaky had been promised a lighter sentence. He never lived to see it.