Summer Dreams Summertime Blues/Kokomo/who's That in the Itsy-bitsy, Anyway?

Late May "Are you out of your mind?" my friend and partner in our decorating business, Bobbie Lyons, asks me as we come in from the heat and I plop down on the stool in her kitchen. Considering the fact that I've just told her that Carmine De'Guiseppe has offered to foot the bill for four weeks at sleepaway camp for all three of my children so that I can move into his house in the Hamptons and renovate it, her reaction isn't exactly surprising. She reaches into her fridge and hands me a nice cold can of diet soda which I hold against my throat. "Because I'm considering doing it? Or because I haven't accepted it?" I know, I know. It sounds like a slam dunk. But it's more complicated than it sounds. For starters, there's the fact that Carmine was, once upon a time, my mother's boyfriend. I mean, way, way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and before DNA testing could prove paternity, if you get my drift. And then, it's a well-known fact that the man has definite Mafia connections. I'm not exactly sure what they are, but I am sure I don't want to get involved with anything even remotely involving the Mafianot after finally extricating middle names. OneNicky the Nosewas enough for my lifetime, thank you very much. Bobbie, hair in place, makeup perfect despite the heat, tips down the sunglasses she hasn't yet taken off, and studies me over the rims. She gives me one of herlet me get this straightlooks, which is just this side of herplease tell me you're kiddinglooks. "Four weeks in the Hamptons without the kids? Teddi, I'd be there in a heartbeat if Mike and I weren't going on that cruise to Alaska." In the imaginaryGo For Itcolumn, I put as Number One the fact that Bobbie's twin girls will be off at camp, leaving my eldest, Dana, bored out of her skull. Number Two: Bobbie and Mike won't be around to help even up the parent-to-child ratio with all three of mine. And Number Three: How about the fact that it's only May and today it hit ninety-one degrees and I don't have central air-conditioning? Then, in theNo How, No Waycolumn, I chalk in my mother's name. No, make thatchiselin. She's permanently in that column, but this time it's worse than usual because the woman is way too interested in Carmine lately, and not nearly interested enough in Number Two on myNo How, No Waylistmy father. I just can't imagine telling him that I'm going to decorate Carmine's house while the man sends my father's grandchildren to camp. When I tell Bobbie as much, she shrugs and asks why I'm so obsessed with "full disclosure." "Well," I remind her, "unlike your mother, mine doesn't live three thousand miles away. She doesn't have your mother's philosophy of "live and let live," either. You know as well as I do that her nose job wasn't just to make her look better, but to help her sniff out every last detail of my life, the better to interfere in it." Bobbie, who doesn't have to worry about calories, puts some chips in a bowl on the counter in front of me while I continue. "That little turned up hook at the end of her nose that makes you think of Candice Bergen? A direct result of sticking it in everyone else's business." Bobbie examines a chip as though there is a hidden message embedded within it. "Yeah, yeah," she says, because she's heard it all before. "So just don't tell her." Like it's as simple as that and Swami June won't somehow divine the truth. "Come on," Bobbie tells me. "You're smart. Get her to send you off with a smile." "A smile? With all that Botox, I can't even tell if she's smiling. Besides, the only thing that could make her happy is if I tell her I'm going out to the Hamptons to marry a plastic surgeon." There's a beat, and then Bobbie and I grin slowly at each other. "Maybe notmarrying," Bobbie says. "But what aboutfishingin the Hamptons. After all, what bAustin, Kate is the author of 'Summer Dreams Summertime Blues/Kokomo/who's That in the Itsy-bitsy, Anyway?', published 2007 under ISBN 9780373881383 and ISBN 037388138X.