by Anita Notaro
“OK, Ellie, you next.”
Normally, Ellie would have told her where to stuff her book and her egg timer, but she was too exhausted and besides, in some perverse way she wanted to know that she wasn’t the worst. As if she’d been wound up, her hands moved haltingly to her zipper.
“That’s it, good girl.” Within seconds, ably assisted by Maggie who was shivering and giggling, Ellie’s skirt and blouse were on the mat. She was glad she was at least wearing black. Nothing beat pale gray for the horror factor, she’d already decided as soon as she saw Maggie. And hers matched, another big plus. Still, the hair under her arms was down to her navel, her pubic stuff had formed two very neat bushes either side of the lace on her pants and her legs and Immac hadn’t met since well before Christmas. She could have auditioned for a part in Werewolf, the Sequel.
“Well done. That’s the spirit. Now, Ellie as you can all see—”
“Needs a shave.” Pam, the only one still fully clothed, got a serious fit of the giggles. Within seconds tears of laughter were streaming down her face. “Just look at you three, you make those girls in the Dove ads look like beauty queens.”
“Very funny.” Ellie was laughing at Pam, who was choking at this stage.
“OK, maybe we should get you to join us before we go any further.” Toni winked at Ellie.
“There’s more chance of me joining the Sons of Divine Providence,” Pam managed in between clutching her stomach. “If you three could only see yourselves.” She wiped her eyes.
“Yes, well, you’re in this bloody club too.” Maggie gave a whoop and pounced on her. “C’mon, girls, let’s see if she’s as brave in her Tesco knickers.”
Ellie decided she quite liked this game when it wasn’t her being picked on and so she found herself unzipping Pam’s black shift dress while Maggie pulled down her tights. This was not easy. Think of stripping the Incredible Hulk in the middle of one of his turns.
“Oh no you don’t.” Toni snatched the dress and sat on it just as Pam tried to pull it back over her head. At the same time Ellie reached the door of the kitchen and locked it in case she tried to escape. She was clutching a tea towel and trying to stretch it round her middle when Toni whipped it away and tossed it over her head like a matador. Poor Pam looked like that bald, baby-faced guy from Little Britain—all pink and chubby. She hated that her underwear bits didn’t even look like they were related, and worse still both her top and bottom were flesh colored. Kate Moss couldn’t have got away with this set of smalls.
“OK, Ellie, I’ll come back to you in a minute.” Toni decided it was safer to do Pam first. “Pam, come here, I won’t bite.” Pam was now behind the sofa firing cushions at them. Ellie ducked and shoved the settee away as easily as if it were a dinky car. “Now, Pam is what the book calls the Christmas pudding shape, I’d say.” No one could argue with that, Toni decided, it wasn’t unkind.
“Well, if you gave her a drop of brandy I’d say she’d flambé quite well, her face is that hot.” Maggie’s eyes were wet.
“Stop it, that’s cruel, and that is not the purpose of this exercise,” Toni said, wagging her finger. “What I mean is, she’s nicely round, but a bit wider in the middle.” Actually, she’d got it spot on, Toni decided as she glanced at her book. “So, she needs to …” She leafed through the relevant pages. “Actually, she just needs to … tone up really.” There was no point in wasting time. “Right, El, back to you.” Toni gazed at Ellie as if she were looking at moldy cheese. “If you were a food, I’d say you’d be a … waffle.”
Initially, Ellie quite liked the sound of this. “You mean, sort of smooth and golden?” She inquired hopefully.
“No, I was thinking square, you are rather square shaped, and I mean that in a positive way. Look at her shoulders, girls. She’s very … eh … structured. Yes, you’re square and, em … dimply.”
“Dimples, as in my cheekbones?” This wasn’t too bad at all, Ellie sucked hers in for good measure.
“No, darling, dimples as in cellulite.” Pam corpsed. “No, wait.” She put her hands over her face as Ellie lunged. “We’re being honest here, girls. It’s really the only way we can get to grips with our true selves.” She grabbed a handful of clothes and ducked behind the sofa to avoid the missiles.
“I’ll get to grips with your teeth with my pliers if you don’t give me back my clothes,” Ellie warned.
“OK, OK, girls, stop fighting. Just let’s have one look at these charts,” Maggie said, trying to restore calm. “I promise you’ll feel better, won’t they, Toni?” Maggie decided to become Toni’s VBF for the rest of the evening, in order to avoid anymore humiliation.
“Absolutely. Then I’ll let you have my surprise.” It was the best she could think of.
“Your surprise’d better be at least twenty percent proof or the food you’ll most closely resemble is a hamburger, cause I’ll make mince meat out of you.” Pam was still glaring at the offending book. She reluctantly joined the others and within seconds four bums were round the table pouring over diagrams of various fruits and other foodstuffs. Thank God I wasn’t a cauliflower,Ellie looked at the unfortunate woman who bore that title on page 130.
“How can anyone possibly look like a lychee?” Pam was trying to look over Ellie’s shoulder.
Maggie took one look at her three friends from behind and started choking. Apart from Toni, who obviously knew this was coming, they looked like rejects from What Not to Wear.
“Just look at us, apart from you, bitch,” she gestured at Toni. “Bet you don’t wear that every day at work.”
“Haven’t you ever heard about being prepared in case you get run over by a bus?” Toni asked innocently. “I choose my underwear with as much care as I put on my make-up.”
“And I choose mine with as much thought as I put into separating my waste.” Pam had never been into recycling.
“Actually, Pam, I’d have expected you to be more glamorous. You’re very sexy and the bras we normally get a good glimpse of are always gorgeous.”
“Listen, I was wearing a blue and green striped polyester blouse and crimplene trousers today. What do you expect?” They looked confused.
“My very stylish uniform, remember?” They did. “So, Ellie, what’s your excuse?”
“Ellie’s actually not bad, considering.” Toni jumped in.
“Considering what?”
“Well, black is sexy.” She turned Ellie round for inspection. Hmmm, well maybe not when it has a bright orange mark on the left buttock.”
“Where?” Ellie looked like a dog with fleas as she tried to inspect her own bottom. “Oh, I remember, I spilt bleach on that pair.”
“How exactly?”
“I was bleaching the tea towels.”
“You wash your underwear with your filthy dish cloths?” Toni was thinking of her silky smalls that cost a packet.
“Listen, her double gussets are so thick you could use them as floor cloths,” Pam said, getting her own back.
Suddenly, they were rolling about, twanging each other’s straps and trying to inspect knicker labels for polyester content.
Toni’s surprise turned out to be a huge tray of wheatgrass for juicing, so they stripped her of her one piece and flung it over the lamp shade. To everyone’s consternation her boobs stayed up around her chin, even without support, and to round it all off she’d even had a Brazilian.
“Did it hurt?” Pam was practically down on her knees inspecting the damage.
“No, well hardly.”
“You look like you’ve been plucked.” Ellie couldn’t bear the idea.
“Well, darling, far be it for me to criticize but you could do with a trim yourself.” Toni wrinkled her nose.
“Ellie’d need a lawnmower to trim that,” Maggie said and they were off again.
After they’d calmed down Toni forced them up on the scales, one by one.
“God, those old people must be terrified of you, you’re a bloody bully.” Pam couldn’t beli
eve she was agreeing to this.
“Shut up, Pamela, you’re down four pounds since the last time.”
“What?” Suddenly it wasn’t so bad.
“Still, don’t get carried away, your clothes probably account for two of those.”
“But … I can’t believe it. How much have I lost overall?”
“Eh, let me check.” Toni consulted her multi-colored wall chart.
“Four plus … em, let’s see, four and a half in total.”
“Kilos?”
“Pounds, I still can’t get to grips with those ghastly metric things. But well done, that’s a lot.”
Pam was beaming.
“OK, Ellie, hop up.”
She did, but only because she knew she’d lost weight, all her clothes were hanging off her.
“My God, you’re down six pounds. That’s fabulous.”
“That’s nearly half a stone.” Maggie did a little dance. “Oh, well done, Ellie, that’s brilliant.”
“Well, I would not recommend doing it my way to anyone.” Ellie’s smile was barely there.
“That gives a grand total of … six pounds. Brilliant. Only one pound to go before you get three dates.” Toni’s wink and broad smile said she had no intention of letting anyone else win that one.
“Maggie?”
“OK, you win.” She hopped up. “Break it to me gently. I’ve been demolishing Christmas pudding and custard all week.”
“You’re down two pounds, plus one from the last time. Good, now me …” Toni wasn’t wasting anymore time.
Pam jumped up, hoping to catch her out. She should have known better.
“Ooh, I’m down four and a half pounds. Excellent.” Toni didn’t wait for Pam. “Added to the, let’s see, two and a half pounds in total I’d lost at the last meeting … and … that makes me … seven pounds. Yes.” She threw a punch in the air.
“Well done, Toni. You deserve it, even if you are a complete cow for putting us through torture tonight.” Maggie smiled and the other two added their encouragement.
“OK, let’s get dressed and talk about the dates you’re getting me.” She had only one on her mind. “Ellie?”
“I told you before, I don’t know anyone.”
“What about Jack?”
“Jack?”
“You know, your employer, the hunky one you’ve been keeping to yourself for months now.” “Jack wouldn’t go.”
“Oh, I don’t know, he was pretty chatty on New Year’s Eve. Anyway, why don’t you ask him, it’s a start?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I just … he wouldn’t … no way, it would be mortifying.”
“Try it. We had a deal, remember? Now, Pamela, how about you?”
“I’m thinking.” Pam had just remembered a Ricky Gervais type who’d joined Wines and Spirits as Assistant Manager. Jane Gray had told her he was single. His suits were nice and shiny and he wore white socks.
“Remember, no nerds, anoraks, spots, glasses or lazy eyes. And don’t even think about that butcher person you mentioned before. I am not going out with someone who smells of liver and has bits of chop between their teeth.” She wiped her hands as if ridding herself of the smell of kidneys.
“Maggie?”
“There’s a guy in our Cork office who—” “No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“No culchies. I cannot stand their accents or their jumpers.”
“You’ve a cheek, considering some of the thugs you’ve gone out with. Besides, Doug is from Leitrim originally.”
“Exactly.” Toni raised one eyebrow. Maggie belted her.
“Jack’s actually from Donegal …” Ellie was desperate.
“I’ll risk it, he sounds educated.”
“Look, why don’t we all have coffee and talk about it later. That OK with you, El? I’ll make it.”
“Fine, there’s bisc—”
“No refined sugar, how many times do I have to tell you?” Toni was feeling fantastic. “You can have some grapes or kiwi, I see some over there in the bowl.”
“Coffee and kiwi. Yum yum.”
“Listen, Maggie, you’ve lost the least amount of any of us, and you have a man to keep, so I’d skip even the fruit if I were you,” Toni teased her. “Pam, black coffee only, please. Now, I propose we take a completely new approach and get down to this seriously.”
Ellie could feel a headache coming on.
Forty
The first days of January saw the girls adopt a varied approach to life, love and the pursuit of a flat stomach. Pam was very happy to have her babies home, even if all they talked about was going back to the States for another “vacation” with their dad. Andrew called her “Mom” and Paul called the two of them “you guys” and wanted to take a “cab” everywhere and buy things for “a few bucks.” Still, the most amazing thing was that they tidied their rooms without being asked.
“What are you looking for now?” Pam asked Andrew the first afternoon she came home to find the dishes done.
“Nothing, why?”
“You’re not going back to the States for Easter, so don’t even think about it.”
“No, I know. That’s OK.”
“So what’s with the dishes.”
“Dad said we were to help you around the house.”
“Why?” She was even more suspicious now.
“He said we did nothing while we were there, so he gave us chores each day.”
“I’ve been giving you chores each day for years and you still haven’t done the first lot.”
“I tidied my room this morning and made my bed.” Paul had joined them to see what was for dinner.
“You, first cousin of Dennis the Menace, tidied your room without being asked?” Pam felt his forehead.
“Yeah, Rhonda made us.”
It was enough to make her almost like the whinger.
“OK, well then, seeing as how you’re reformed characters, I’m going to draw up a list of chores and you don’t get any pocket money until you’ve done them.”
“Fine.”
“Cool.”
And that, it seemed, was that. Suddenly Pam had more energy, a bit of space for herself and time to actually prepare some food instead of opening packets all the time. It was nothing short of a miracle. She was dying to ask Stephen how he’d done it but wasn’t sure she wanted to give him the satisfaction. She still wasn’t entirely convinced they weren’t planning to move her children out of the country.
Maggie and Doug had become a regular couple—with a routine. They saw each other on Wednesdays, Doug liked Mondays and Tuesdays to himself, to “get the week started.” In fact, he didn’t like being out after midnight during the week, but if Maggie managed to persuade him, they usually went to a movie, otherwise they sat in and watched the soaps and she made popcorn. On Fridays they splashed out and went for a drink and a meal, Saturdays were their own, Doug had lots of chores to do and Sunday afternoons they usually went for a walk, although lately he’d started to bring her around new housing schemes—“just out of interest.” Then they had an early night, separately, and got ready to “grab the week by the balls”—her term, not his, although she only said it to see his reaction. He didn’t like women being “vulgar” he’d told her last week and it had irritated her no end.
“Are you happy?” Ellie asked her one night as they sat having coffee after a spot of late-night shopping, with Rudi asleep in his buggy beside them. “Only, it seems very early in the relationship to be in such a rut.” She hoped she hadn’t gone too far. “Not that I can talk. There isn’t a rut big enough to fit my life into at the moment.”
“Do you know something? I think I am. Although he really bugged me last week.” She told Ellie about the “vulgar” episode and Ellie agreed that yes, that sort of talk had to be resisted.
“Maybe it’s like playing at being married or something, I don’t really know. But I like that he’s caring and reliable and ho
nest and … that there are no surprises.” She shrugged.
“But aren’t surprises what make a relationship?”
“I’ve had too many bad ones, then. Remember George, who turned out to have a fiancée in Waterford? Or Patrick, who kept “borrowing” money from me all the time?”
“But you were just unlucky.”
“El, I’ve a string of those kind of stories. Doug treats me well and we have a good time together and that’s all I want, for the moment.”
“Fair enough so.”
Toni had finally ditched Gordon, after he messed her around another couple of times. She consoled herself by spending the Harvey Nics vouchers he gave her as a Christmas present. “I deserve better,” she shouted each morning as she jumped out of bed on her way to some class or other. She felt empowered at the prospect of the year ahead and everyone said she looked like a model. All the good clothes and jewelry certainly helped. And she had three dates to look forward to, she reminded herself as she texted her friends to jolly them along on a daily basis.
Maggie knew that she’d really liked Gordon, though, Toni had admitted it one night as they shared a taxi home after the four of them had gone bowling.
Ellie was too tired even to be depressed at the short, gray days of January that normally dampened her spirits and put a dent in her annual resolution to visit the sick. She was up and out early, baby in tow, and worked hard to make sure the girls weren’t neglected and Jack had no cause for complaint. By the time she got home, tidied her own place, changed and fed Rudi and put on a wash or two it was bedtime for both of them. Dieting was no problem: she rarely thought about food and she hadn’t had a drink in weeks.
“Coffee?” Jack asked one morning when she returned from dropping the girls off.
“Yes, please.” She sighed as she deposited Rudi in the playpen Jack had bought for him. Everything seemed like such an effort today.
“Are you OK?” He handed her a cup.
“Yeah, just tired.” She saw him looking at her closely and wished she’d had time to put on make-up. What had happened to the well-groomed nanny in crisp white blouse and smooth hair? she wondered as she rubbed a spot of dried sick from her bally blue jumper.