My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman by Lisa Scottoline, Francesca Serritella Page A

dropped.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know.” Mind you, she’s not confused. She’s 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 finish saying it, it sounds ridiculous. A phone costs plenty, so maybe it’s reasonable to expect it to work, but never mind, I have to get the Thanksgiving conversation back on track.
    But to fast-forward, I don’t. We never recover from the mystery of the dropped call.
    So you know where this is going.
    Mother Mary will come visit, we’ll go to a few book signings, and we’ll celebrate Thanksgiving.
    And you know what I’m thankful for.
    Another holiday with my family. Especially Dr.
    Bunsen Honeydew.

Some Enchanted Evening

By Francesca Scottoline Serritella
    My grandmother, whom you know as Mother Mary, just turned eighty-six years old, and so I gave her a call. I sang Happy Birthday, we discussed the usual topics, and then she asked me one of the questions she always asks: “Kitten, are you having fun?” And for once, I had a real story for her.
    I answered, “I had the best night of my life.”
    Last weekend, my cousin invited me to a charity ball. I expected it to be a formal, bordering on stuffy, occasion, one that intimidated me. But I had a red dress in my closet, and sometimes that is reason enough.
    The night turned out to live up to every possible promise a red dress can make. The event was held in a beautiful, old New York building. There, I met a British man who was so handsome, so debonair, I could hardly speak when he started talking to me, much less move when he asked me to dance.
    He led me to the dance floor, where we remained for the next two hours. He spun me around like a pro, and on the last beat of every song, he’d toss me into the most daring, thrilling dips, the sort of trust-me-or-die, hair-grazes-the-floor dips that make other people stop and look.
    A group of us, including Prince Charming, ended the night at an authentic piano bar—a tiny place where a gifted pianist played song after song and the waitress and bartender took turns singing long after last call.
    Finally, it was time for me to bid my reluctant farewells. I stepped outside and saw that my golden coach was once again a yellow taxi, and the evening rain had released smells of the city not found in fairy tales.
    Driving home, replaying the evening in my mind, I could barely believe such a night could be real. As I stepped out of the cab, I looked down at my feet and saw that both of my shoes had an ugly bit of glue exposed over the peep-toe. And then I realized I had my proof that the night had really happened:
    I had danced the bows off my shoes.
    “Oh, Kitten, that’s marvelous!” my grandmother cried. Her tone turned serious, “But did you sing at the piano bar?”
    I laughed. “No.”
    “ No? Why not?”
    “Oh, I don’t know, I’d be too embarrassed. I don’t think I even know all the words to any song.”
    “You know all those Sinatra songs! I always used to sing at piano bars when I was young. Anywhere I went, if there was a piano, I would sing. You see, I was a bit of a show-off then.”
    “Oh yeah?”
    “ Oh yeah! I would go to a party in a great dress, and I’d dance all night in the center of the room, and I’d always sing at a piano. That was sixty, seventy years ago, but I loved it. You should never be embarrassed. You should have sung your heart out.”
    The picture she was painting of herself was far different from the grandmother I knew, but it was one I could see clearly. I realized that inside the woman who survived an impoverished childhood, who selflessly raised two kids and worked when few women did, who, despite arthritic fingers and worsening eyesight, can still assemble one hundred perfect ravioli on any given