Free The Best Laid Plans by Lynn Schnurnberger

it.”
    Sienna and I exchange amused glances. Even in the grimmest of times, Paige can always make me laugh. Bill Murphy goes over to look at Paige’s handiwork and picks up a bill that she’s folded into an angel. At least I think it’s an angel; with those ginormous wings it could just as easily be an oversized bug. “That’s the spirit, kiddo!” he says.
    Paige scrunches her eyes and I see the start of one of her famously contemptuous Paige Newman stares, the stare that says you do not deserve to be taking up oxygen on this—or any other—planet. But Bill’s good cheer is so obviously well-meaning that, despite herself, Paige smiles. Sienna smiles, too. “Nice guy,” she mouths, pointing in Bill’s direction. As for Bill, I catch him giving Sienna an admiring glance.
    I turn off the television. “Look at the bright side, Mom. Now you don’t have to worry about buying a whole new spring wardrobe. Sounds like we’re going to see a wave of ‘Recessionista Chic.’ ”
    “That’s ridiculous,” chides Naomi, straightening the seams of her stockings. “Isn’t that silly, Gordon? Recessionista Chic. That’s like jumbo shrimp. It’s an onxy, oxy … cotin …”
    “Oxymoron, dear.” Dr. Barasch chuckles. His eyes twinkle, and he leans in to give Naomi a small kiss.
    “But Grandma.…” Molly starts to say. Then realizing that she’s not allowed to used the G word—“ ‘Grandma’ is so aging. Besides who’d believe it?”—Molly begins again. “There is Recessionista Chic, Naomi, they were talking about it today on
Tyra.
”
    I raise an eyebrow at my daughter’s viewing habits.
    “Light homework day.” Molly shrugs. “Anyway, take this scarf, for example.” Molly unties the silk Hermès draped over my mother’s shoulders. “You can wear it as a belt, or even a halter.”
    “A halter?” asks Paige, making a beeline for Naomi—because what could be more challenging to Paige’s newfound folding skills than figuring out how to hold her grandmother’s boobs in place with nothing more than a thirty-six-inch square of fabric?
    “Why don’t we just tie this around Naomi’s bag,” Molly says, wrestling the scarf back from her sister.
    “Girls, stop playing,” bleats Naomi. “Doesn’t anybody in this family take anything seriously? Tru, this is a catastrophe, why aren’t you hysterical like everyone else? You never did know how to behave appropriately!”
    Before I have a chance to answer that I feel as wobbly as the Dow but that I’m sucking it up for the girls, Peter comes into the living room dribbling that damned rubber ball.
    “I’m upset enough for the whole country!” Peter yowls, slamming the ball so hard against the wooden floor that it ricochets onto a table, barely missing a lamp.
    “Honey,” I say, patting the cushion on the sofa next to me and trying to get him to calm down, “it’s going to be all right. We’ll figure something out.”
    “Figure out something? Like if you try really hard enough, you’ll come up with an answer I haven’t thought of? Let’s get Tru to figure out something! Maybe she can call Ben Bernankeand give him a few tips on how to save the whole economy while she’s at it, too. I’m sure he’d be grateful. Here’s the phone,” Peter says, thrusting the receiver within an inch of my nose. “Why don’t you call right now?”
    “Stop it! Just stop it! Stop being so goddamned full of yourself for once in your life, will you, Peter? You’d think you were the only one who was suffering!” I blurt back angrily.
    There’s an audible gasp in the room. It isn’t like me to speak so sharply. And how could we ever, no matter how angry we are, have let the girls hear us attacking each other?
    “I’m so sorry,” I tell Paige and Molly, at a loss for anything else to say. Bill Murphy puts his hand on Peter’s shoulder and he turns toward the twins.
    “With everything that’s happened today, everybody’s emotions are running pretty