This Thanksgiving Day, we’re treating you to a healthy dose of Lisa Scottoline, the New York Times bestselling author of 15 novels and two essay collections: WHY MY THIRD HUSBAND WILL BE A DOG and, most recently, MY NEST ISN'T EMPTY, IT JUST HAS MORE CLOSET SPACE, which she co-wrote with her daughter, Francesca Serritella. Below, Lisa offers a glimpse into a typically atypical Scottoline Thanksgiving --- and sheds light on why it’s sometimes okay to pimp out your family.
Last Thanksgiving, I pimped out my family.
As you may know, my book of these columns is entitled WHY MY THIRD HUSBAND WILL BE A DOG: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman, and it was published on November 24th, which was two days before Thanksgiving in 2009. I was doing a short tour for the book and thought it would be a great idea to get Mother Mary to come along to a few signings, because she gets more fan mail than I do.
By the way, the order of email love goes: Mother Mary, Daughter Francesca, Little Tony and me.
I’m good with that.
In fact, I agree.
Mother Mary said she’d shill for me in return for her free turkey dinner. She also agreed to stay at my house through December, though I didn’t make her sell books on Christmas. She’s 86, and you can lash your mother only so much.
On Christmas, I gave her the day off.
So she could cook.
Santa might not approve, though if he reads this column, he knows that I’m the Nice one and she’s straight-up Naughty.
But arrangements needed to be made to fly her up from Miami, namely a single reservation, which for some reason necessitated five phone calls, with much discussion about the best day to travel. I wanted her to come up on November 20th.
“Why so early?” she asked. “I’m busy.” “Doing what?”
“None of your business.”
I begged to differ. Actually it was my businesses. It was exactly my business. “Okay, when can you come up?”
“Earliest is the 22nd.”
“How about the 20th?”
“The 22nd.”
“How about the 21st? We can relax a little before the book tour.”
“The 22nd is fine.”
I gave up. My mother could negotiate peace in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East, all at once. She’d make them surrender. She’d take their guns and stop making their women wear burkas. Which reminds me that Mother Mary has been known to don a lab coat, impersonating Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, so I asked, “Ma, what are you going to wear to the signings?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“What about your lab coat? You’re leaving that at home, right?”
“Of course. I don’t wear that in public.”
“Okay.” Just checking. Then I reconsidered. “On second thought, maybe you should bring the lab coat. You could wear it to the signings. That would be cute. If they read the columns, they know you’re an amateur doctor.”
Silence.
I remained undaunted. My imagination took over. The notion of dressing my mother up for a signing struck me as marketing genius, so I tried to convince her: “Ma, we could get you a toy stethoscope. A fake prescription pad. You could prescribe meatballs. You could be your own health insurance company, called Independence Blue Cross-To-Bear.”
Suddenly I realized that she wasn’t being quiet, but the call got dropped. For a minute, I wondered if she hung up on purpose, but that’s not her style. Now the fun begins, because if I’m on the phone with anyone other than my mother and a call gets dropped, somebody calls somebody else back, no big deal.
But not with Mother Mary.
Usually, it takes her 10 minutes to realize that the call was dropped, during which I try to call her back five times, each time getting her voicemail. Then, an hour later, when we finally reconnect, our discussion will always go like this, as it did this time:
“So, Ma, I was saying that ---”
“What happened?” she asks.
“The call got dropped.”
“I didn’t hear you anymore.”
“I know. It disconnected.”
“Did you hang up?”
“No, it’s just dropped. Calls get dropped.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Mind you, she wasn’t confused. She was angry. A dropped call is either a personal affront or a government wiretap.
“We shoulda kept the Jitterbug. You said this new phone would work, but it doesn’t.”
“It does, but calls get dropped. Just because the call gets dropped doesn’t mean the phone doesn’t work.” As soon as I finished saying it, it sounded ridiculous. A phone costs plenty, so maybe it’s reasonable to expect it to work, but never mind, I had to get the Thanksgiving conversation back on track.
To fast-forward, I didn’t. We never recovered from the mystery of the dropped call.
So you know where this is going.
Mother Mary came to visit, we went to a few book signings, and we celebrated Thanksgiving.
And you know what I’m thankful for.
Another holiday with my family.
Especially Dr. Bunsen Honeydew.
© Copyright 2009, Lisa Scottoline. All rights reserved.
Look for Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Serritella's collection of essays in MY NEST ISN'T EMPTY, IT JUST HAS MORE CLOSET SPACE and WHY MY THIRD HUSBAND WILL BE A DOG. You can visit Lisa at www.scottoline.com and Francesca at www.francescaserritella.com.
Tomorrow, we’ll hear from Francesca, as she talks about spending Thanksgiving with her mom…and a special neighborhood “Ham” named Harry.
