Plan C by Lois Cahall Read Free Book Online Page B

case.”
    Wrapping the cord around my iPod, I feel accomplished, having just completed another chapter. I can now ask directions, converse about the weather, find a bathroom, or – the most important of all - order a glass of red wine. “Je voudrais de vin rouge, s’il vous plait.”
    Someone once said, “I love a society where it’s an acceptable occupation to sit in a café all day and drink.” I’m on lesson seventeen of my French CDs, year four, disk two, with about five years to go. I should be fluent long before I’m fifty, let alone sixty-five, which leaves me plenty of time for café-sitting and wine-sipping.
    A group of children in backpacks pass a street bum sprawled shamelessly on a bench. Upon closer inspection I can see it’s a woman. A bag lady! A sign - “Will dance for food” rests on her chest. The children’s teacher tells them not to stare, and suddenly I recall words that Kitty’s always saying to me: “Don’t call me when you’re a bag lady in twenty years.” Could be me. On this very bench.
    Tucking a five-dollar bill under her arm, I wonder what kind of dance she’ll do for money? Austrian Waltz? Moonwalk? Rapper’s delight? Foxtrot?
    A little girl with brown hair in pigtails catches me staring down at her. I run a finger under her chin, and then I’m off, glancing at my watch. A deep longing churns in my chest for the cozy familiarity of my daughters coming up the driveway to tell me about their first day of school. The empty nest pangs stab at my heart again - two pangs in one day but who’s counting? Maybe the freedom of the empty nest isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Maybe I do miss motherhood and those school bus stop mornings with lunches being made at the kitchen counter. It was Madeline’s last day of school in her senior year that she placed her hand on my shoulder at the kitchen counter and declared, “Hey mom, this is the last school lunch you’ll
ever
make.” It hadn’t hit me then. But it’s hitting me now...
    So I allow my mind to shift gears to Bebe. Making the leap from pet to child is like making the leap from houseplant to pet. Bebe gets that, right? At age forty Bebe has longed for a child more than any twenty-year old but she still has to realize that a child is not an accessory from Saks Fifth Avenue.
    It’s a funny thing about kids…Step kids are the ones we
didn’t
ask for, adopted kids people
do
ask for, but then that means somebody else
didn’t
ask for them. And naturally conceived kids – even they can be an accident. How did the business of children suddenly get so complicated?
    Older friends tell me that I’ll worry about my kids until the day I die. And then when I have grandchildren, I’ll worry about them, too. And even though all kids at one time or another are something of a nuisance, our biggest fear in our lifetime the death of our child. Ironically the same child we’d often like to kill for bad behavior.
    A woman bumps into me as she passes by me on her cell phone: “What if it rains?” she asks. “Do we have a plan B?” I chuckle at her choice of words. And I’m way ahead of her.
    Before long I arrive at the dog run and lift the little latch. It’s an enclosed area for doggies only. Sort of a Club Med where one pooch checks out another.
    Dodging the frisky tongue-wagging puppies and rudely drooling hounds, I find the only empty bench near a mud patch created by doggie digging. As I get comfortable, a dachshund races around my ankles, sniffing at the soles of my soles. Made in China.
    The Dachshund’s owner isn’t the least bit concerned that her dog might be annoying. That’s because most dachshunds seem to be owned by rich old ladies who are certain that just as they own their expensive Park Avenue penthouses, their dachshund’s
own
the doggie park. I’m more of a cat person, but dogs have always fascinated me. The twins who already own everything money can buy have been pushing Ben for a dog - which would in