Significant Others (4 page)

“I believe that,” I assured my brother. Inevitably, my thoughts drifted back to what my father would have wanted me to do about the sale of Palladino Properties. It was hardly the right time, but someone had to confront the elephant in the room. It was a topic I knew was on both of our minds.

“Do you think Mom is really going to sell the company?” I asked, motioning for Donny to follow me into the guest bedroom, out of hearing range.

“She has her mind made up. It’s really too good an offer to pass up, don’t you think?” Donny reasoned, walking behind me and closing the bedroom door.

“But is it what Dad would have wanted?” I asked.

“Probably not. But Mom’s plan was for them to sell the company so she and Dad could retire, travel, take time to live life. She didn’t expect him to die. But Mom thinks that’s still what Dad would have wanted. It’s not what we want, but we have to respect her wishes. It’s her decision.”

“Dad would have wanted her to move on with her life, to find happiness again, but she’s not ready. And I don’t think she’s ready to make any decisions about the business, either,” I insisted.

“I think she’ll come around, once we get her back to Atlanta,” Donny said. “Look, I’m heading back to the hotel to see Barbara and the kids. I’ll say goodbye to Mom and apologize because I can’t stay for lunch. I promised I’d take the kids swimming. Let Mom know we’re taking her out to dinner at her favorite place. I made reservations at The Addison for seven o’clock tonight. Meanwhile, you talk to her about the possibility of a merger. She listens to you.”

After Donny left, I walked into the living room and found my mother sitting in the dark on a yellow chintz couch.

“Hey, Mom, let’s let some light into this place,” I suggested gently, walking toward the sliding glass doors and pulling up the honeycomb shades.

“The light hurts my eyes,” Dee Dee said, holding up her hands in front of her face. Seeing my vital, vibrant mother like this was so unbearable, I thought I was going to cry, and I couldn’t cry in front of my mother. I was supposed to be supporting her. I’d left her alone way too long. She needed me and I needed her. But I wasn’t about to dump my marital problems on my mother when she didn’t even have a husband anymore.

I turned around.

“Honey, don’t step on the fringe,” she warned as I approached the Oriental carpet. “I just combed it.”

“You comb the fringe on the Oriental carpet? Since when?”

“It gives me something to do.”

The situation with my mother was much worse than I’d ever imagined.

The wall phone in the kitchen rang. I walked over to answer it.

“Yes, this is the Palladino residence. Who’s calling? She did? Well, thank you so much for letting us know. Just leave it at the Service Desk, and we’ll be by later this afternoon to pick it up. I appreciate it.”

“Who was that?” Dee Dee asked from the club chair.

“A woman calling from Sam’s Club. Apparently you left your wallet at the register yesterday, and she turned it in to the manager.”

“Oh,” said my mother, her face twisting in an embarrassed frown. “I was shopping for your visit, and I had to get out my ID at the checkout, and, well, I—”

“Don’t worry. We’ll go over and pick it up after lunch,” I said smoothly, adding, “Does this happen a lot?”

“It’s happened before. I...sometimes forget things.”

“We all do,” I said, not wanting to sound critical.

“You won’t mention this to Donny, will you? He hovers enough already. I don’t want him to think...”

“It will just be between us,” I assured her.

“I wish you had brought Hannah.” Dee Dee sighed.

“Hannah has finals,” I said. “Then she’s going to Aruba with her friend’s family for Christmas break.”
The only way I’d get Hannah here would be to tell her that Grandma Dee Dee had seen Channing Tatum’s face on that live oak tree.

I could really use my daughter’s support now, and I’d really love to see her, but I’m not ready to tell her what is happening between her father and me.

“I know you’re anxious to see the tree,” my mother said.

“If you want to show it to me, after lunch,” I answered evenly, like I wasn’t chomping at the bit to get down to the golf course. But I needed to stop eating so much or those Lewis hips would come roaring back.

“Actually, you can see it from here,” Dee Dee said, “if you stand out on the screened-in patio.”

I followed my mother out to the tiled patio and opened the sliders that overlooked the golf course, offering a scenic view of the lake. The birds were chattering madly and they seemed to be mocking me. Even the birds were louder in Boca. Apparently it was mating season all year round here. There was a foursome playing under the window and golf carts traversed the green in the distance. I guess these people are retired and don’t have to—or don’t want to—work anymore. I squeezed around the glass coffee table and the padded lounge chair to get a better view.

“Most of the trees were uprooted in the last hurricane,” my mother explained, straightening the cushions on the chair, her hands fluttering nervously across the leaves of one of the potted plants. “I can’t even remember the name of the storm. We were at the end of the Greek letters, I think. Half of those trees were damaged by lightning. I remember the night the lightning hit this particular tree. There was a big flash, and the boom shook the whole building. It sounded like the earth was coming to an end. It nearly scared me to death. And when I looked outside, I saw smoke and the tree was on fire. The rain finally put it out, but the lightning bolt had stripped the bark completely off the tree. The trees that weren’t hit by lightning lost a lot of foliage. My Jesus tree was one of the only ones left standing. It’s almost completely denuded. The leaves are beginning to grow back, and I’m afraid they will hide His face.”

From this vantage point I could see uprooted trees scattered around the golf course. No one had come to collect them after the storm. There was a lone, leafless live oak tree directly in the path of my mother’s line of sight. The bottom of the tree was charred. The top branch was thick and pure chalk-white. But I couldn’t really see much from where I was standing.

“You can see it better if we go downstairs,” my mother suggested.

So we took the elevator four stories down and walked behind her building onto the golf course.

“Watch out for these dead branches,” I cautioned, taking hold of my mother’s hand to help her negotiate around the uprooted trees. “I don’t want you to fall.” When older people fell, it was the beginning of the end. Their brittle bones never healed. Then they had to be put into a home. And before you knew it, they were gone.

I’d already lost my father. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing my mother, too. She wasn’t just my parent. She was more of a friend. Working together builds that kind of closeness. At least it used to. Some phone calls between us were strictly mother-daughter. Some were business-related. Some calls were more informational. Some were, “Why didn’t you call me?” She was a wonderful mentor and a great role model. I imitated everything she did. How many people got to spend working daylight hours with their mothers? It was pretty special. I hoped to repeat that experience with my own daughter, when Hannah came to work at Palladino Properties after she graduated. If there still was a Palladino Properties.

I had so much to pass on to Hannah, lessons that Dad and Mother taught me. Lessons about honesty and integrity and ensuring that our clients come first. My mother treated every client like she was
their
mother, and she took care of them like she’d always taken care of me. Now it was my turn to take care of her.

When I moved closer to the live oak, the sunlight filtered through the tree to warm my face, and I was surprised to find a figure etched into the bark.

“It looks like John F. Kennedy,” I said in awe, squinting as I looked up.

“No, it’s definitely Jesus,” my mother stated, pointing. “It’s there as plain as day. Can’t you see those two branches forming his outstretched arms? I know it’s strange for a Jewish woman to see Jesus on a tree, but I know what I see.”

I took a deep breath and tilted my head this way and that, circling the tree, approaching it from various angles.

“I don’t see it,” I apologized. “I mean I see a face, but...”

“Then maybe you weren’t meant to see it,” my mother snapped abruptly as she turned and stomped back to the condo.

Chapter Three: Swimming with the Sharks,

or, Who’s Stirring the Pasta?

“I’m starving,” I announced to Donny and Barbara.

“Well, tonight is your night,” Donny said.

“Every night is my night,” I interrupted with a smirk.

“Where do you want to eat? There’s a nice Cuban restaurant we just discovered, but it’s pretty far away. Or there’s a closer place with authentic Italian cuisine. The chef is from Naples.”

“I’m in the mood for Italian.”

“You’re always in the mood for Italian.” Donny laughed. “I don’t know why I even suggest other options.”

“It’s too bad your mother couldn’t make it,” Barbara said. “She claims she was too tired.”

“She’s always too tired,” Donny complained. “We’ll take her to The Addison tomorrow night. And anyway, I think we need this time to talk alone.”

“I agree.”

The hostess at Café di Napoli made the appropriate, expected fuss over The Slugger. Her eyes never left Donny’s as she nearly tripped over herself leading us to our table. Of course Donny took the time to autograph a menu with a special message to her son. I wondered whether the woman’s son would ever see Donny’s signature. Or if she even had a son.

The hostess was reacting the same way all women reacted around my brother—either they were tongue-tied or their tongues were hanging out, panting. I am used to women giggling, gawking and gaping at, even groping, my brother in public. Whenever I take Donny on an appointment with a client, the wife inevitably spends more time leering at Donny than looking at the house and the husband is so star-struck talking sports with The Slugger that they literally trip over each other to sign the contract.

Apparently the chef’s head had been stuck in the manicotti for the past thirty years, because he had no idea who Donny Palladino was. Nevertheless, he was properly solicitous.

“We have a lovely simmered octopus,” announced Chef Ricardo, after Donny, Barbara, and I were comfortably seated at a cozy table. “It looks scary, but it’s really wonderful. And you should try the lasagna, just like my mama makes it in Napoli.” He gestured with his hands, smacking his lips lightly with an air kiss.

I took my food seriously, so it was a little disconcerting to see the chef out here talking to us when he should be back in the kitchen stirring the pasta. It reminded me of the pilot who walked the aisles making small talk with the passengers when he should be flying the plane.

In the middle of the chef’s presentation, Donny’s cell phone rang incessantly and my BlackBerry didn’t stop burping. My daughter Hannah called the sound “making raspberries.” Marc called my BlackBerry by the more popular term, a CrackBerry, because he thought I was addicted to it. Maybe he was right. But the BlackBerry was my lifeline. Like Donny, he also urged me to get one of the new iPhones, but I wouldn’t give up my BlackBerry.

“What wine do you suggest?” I asked Ricardo. “Or maybe I won’t have wine tonight.”

“A woman without wine is like a flower without water,” Ricardo gushed.

Jeesh! What a flatterer. But he
was
really cute. I wondered what he thought of my trim new butt. I was starting to notice other men now. I had to, in my current situation. I had to start putting myself out there.

“Let’s try an appetizer,” I suggested. “How about fried calamari?”

“We don’t deep fry anything here,” Ricardo admonished, as he reviewed the list of antipasti. “Our
Frittura di Calamari
is flour-dusted, only lightly fried, and served with marinara.”

“That sounds great,” Donny said. “We’ll start with that.”

“We have two entrée specials tonight,” the chef continued. “Our
Prosciutto e Mozzarella
with imported buffalo mozzarella and
Parma Prosciutto
. It’s in the shape of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Or our
Pasta Tri Coloré
—homemade ravioli covered with tomato sauce, pesto sauce, and a seafood sauce, in red, green and white, arranged on the plate like the Italian flag.”

I rolled my eyes and ordered the
Linguine Al Frutti di Mare—
a mix of seasonal shellfish, sautéed with extra virgin olive oil, garlic, white wine, and cherry tomatoes, served on a bed of linguine. Donny and Barbara both ordered the
Brodetto Di Pesce
with shrimp, scallops, calamari, clams, and mussels, poached in their own broth, with a touch of marinara served on the pasta of the day—Ricardo’s favorite. They always ordered the same thing because they were so in sync.

Even before the meal arrived, I was seriously studying the dessert menu. Since I discovered that my husband prefers women with big asses, I’d decided to quit this ridiculous diet I’d been on. I lost a ton of weight so he’d like me more, and now he thought I was too bony.

The slimming-down process didn’t happen overnight, either. For weeks I carved time out of my hectic schedule to go to the gym, and forced my best friend Vicky to sweat along with me. I even cut down on potatoes and their evil spawn, potato chips. The trouble with diets was you had to exercise restraint, and I hated to exercise. In the end, the result of my dedication and deprivation was a trim new butt. But by then my butt was no longer of interest to my husband.

Since I no longer had to worry about what Marc thought of my butt, I considered the Tiramisu for dessert. Or maybe something else from the
Dolce
menu—
Torta Caprese, Crème Caramella, Panna Cotta, Cannoli,
or maybe a sampling of all five of them.

If Mom decided to sell the agency, I wouldn’t even be able to snag a job as one of those double-wide Wal-Mart greeters, not without the Lewis hips.

But hey, if men liked younger women, I should be able to do pretty well at Millennium Gardens—a classy, forty-something chick like me with a trim new butt. And, I could drive at night. Apparently, that was a big commodity around there.