Dear Emily

by Fern Michaels

  Emily listened for a moment, her eye on two of the women on the machines. She rattled off her spiel automatically. “We have a pay-as-you-go program or we can do a full year’s membership. I offer one-on-one counseling. We suggest before embarking on any physical fitness program that you check with your doctor. Yes, our machines have pulse and heart monitors. We’ll teach you how to take your own pulse when you’re doing aerobics. We have showers and a cool-down room. So far we haven’t had any men sign up. We’re a chain organized for middle-aged women. Most of our clients are over forty. Yes, we know when to call a halt if you start to sweat too much. Of course we have a television set for you to watch while you’re exercising. I understand you want to watch your soap operas. Killing two birds with one stone is good if that’s how you feel. Food? We’ll give you a wide selection of diets to follow. Of course it’s the honor system. Yes, it is your body. Freeze-dried food? We’re working on it, but as of now, no, we don’t have it.”

  Emily hung up the phone and rushed to turn off the treadmill. “That’s enough for you, Mrs. Sanchez. Tomorrow you’ll increase it by two or three minutes. You didn’t put that weight on overnight and it isn’t going to go away with a few sessions. You want to do this right and lose your weight slowly. Inches are important. We’re striving here to lose body fat. Twelve minutes on the exercycle and then you cool down. Can you read while you’re cycling? Good, here’s a book on herbal medicine I’d like you to peruse. You’re doing well, I’m proud of you,” Emily said, patting the chunky woman on the shoulder. The woman beamed with Emily’s praise. And I would have killed for a kind word while I was torturing myself. One woman helping another, that’s what it was all about.

  Emily woke on Saturday with a feeling that something wonderful was going to happen. While she dressed, she played her date back and forth in her mind. Dinner meant dinner. Nothing was said about after dinner. Maybe they’d stop at Charlie Brown’s for a drink since the Chinese restaurant didn’t serve liquor. And then…and then…back to her house or back to Ben’s apartment? Did she have the nerve to go? Would he ask her back to see his etchings? Did they use that term anymore or did they say something like, Let’s go back to my apartment to see my new CD player or let’s check out my big screen TV? Maybe they were even more risqué and suggested X-rated movies. She needed a plan. Asking her roommates would be futile since they’d been as dateless as she was. She could follow Ben in her car, since he was picking her up at the clinic.

  She caught her reflection in the mirror. Emily Thorn stared back at her. She squinted, trying to see traces of the long-ago Emily, but age and the ravages of her life had definitely taken their toll. With her index finger she pulled skin toward her ears, from around her eyes. Makeup could only do so much. A facial even less. The loose skin around her neck bothered her, but at least she’d lost most of her triple chin. She was not pretty, didn’t consider herself attractive at all. Why was Ben taking her to dinner? What did he expect? Better yet, Emily, what do you expect? What I expect is…is a nice dinner with someone I’m comfortable with, maybe a drink afterward and then…and then, perhaps a long, lingering kiss. Nothing more. I wish I could turn the clock backward, erase the calendar, become the old Emily with a twitch of the nose or an airy wave of a finger.

  In the kitchen over a bagel and coffee, Emily listened to the good-natured teasing about her date. Her face was warm, but she loved every minute of it. A collective “Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do” rang in her ears as she scurried through the door, her dress and makeup bag under her arm. “I’ll see you…whenever.” She smiled as she listened to the hoots of laughter that followed her to the car.

  The hours passed quickly. Saturdays, she’d found out, were her busiest days. She had a system now for the machines as well as the aerobic classes. “Smooth as silk,” she’d told the other girls. Damn, she felt good. Really good. She was doing something she loved, something she was convinced in her heart would work, and while she was doing it, she was helping other women.

  The hours passed, and before she knew it, the last group of women were packing up to leave. They called her Emily and asked her advice on their workout clothes, on any number of things. She was a mentor now and she thrived on it.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” she said, making shooing motions with her hands. “I have a date and you guys are going to make me late. You don’t want that on your conscience, do you?”

  “We want to hear all about it next week,” the last woman through the door said, grinning. “Take notes.”

  “You bet,” Emily promised. She locked the door, closed the blinds, and sprinted for the shower.

  When her hair was dry, her large, gold hoop earrings in place, she stood back to admire her reflection. The Indian print skirt was perfect. The wide leather belt with its ornate clasp riding low on her hips with the top bloused over it was more than fashionable. Kelly’s contribution. The suede boots, a rich copper color, were comfortable—contributed by Martina. The burlap carry bag with its leather handles and buckles were donated by Nancy.

  Emily opened her makeup bag. She had one of everything. It really wasn’t going to help her to make up. If anything, makeup, no matter how skillfully she applied it, would call attention to the fat deposits under her eyes, announce the deep creases around her mouth and nose. Better to smile a lot and pretend they were laugh lines. Her fingers found the loose skin under her chin. Too much, way too much. And she was getting liver spots. She wasn’t sure if she could tolerate the ugly, brown blotches much longer. She had one in the middle of her nose that definitely had to go, but it was the ones on the backs of her hands that bothered her the most. If she wanted to pay out the money, she could go to a good dermatologist and have them singed off. She made a mental note to call the first of the week for an appointment. She made a second mental note to seriously look into cosmetic surgery. A nip, a tuck, or an entire overhaul. If she sold her furs, it would probably cover the cost. Something for herself. And she was going to look into the possibility of having the veins in her legs stripped. She wondered what it would be like to be free of the awful ache in her legs. She’d lived with the aches and pains for so long it was a way of life.

  Emily made a face at her reflection before she applied her lipstick and a little mascara to the tips of her eyelashes. She dabbed a little perfume, perfume she’d bought herself, which she liked, behind her ears, in the bends of her elbows.

  Emily turned off the light, then walked to the front of the clinic to unlock the front door so Ben could just walk in. She walked back to the cool-down room and sat down on one of the futons. She watched Harry and Harriet as they cavorted in their tank.

  “Emily!”

  “Back here,” Emily called back. “I just have to get my coat and I’m ready. I can follow you, Ben; this way you won’t have to take me home.”

  “Hey, when I pick up a date, I take her home. Or in this case, I’ll bring you back here to get your car.”

  “Okay,” Emily said.

  “It’s raining out. I parked at the far end of the lot. Do you have an umbrella? No, huh? Okay, I’ll drive around and pick you up in front.”

  “No, it’s okay. I like walking in the rain, do you?”

  “Hell yes, it’s one of my favorite pastimes. My son and I slosh around in the rain all summer long, to his mother’s horror. I’m forever buying him new sneakers.”

  “Really! Then let’s walk. Wait a minute, I want to close all the blinds.”

  Outside in the rain, Ben asked, “Don’t you worry about your hair?”

  Emily laughed. “It just gets curlier. Oooh, look at that big puddle.” She let go of his arm and ran forward to stomp in the circle of water that covered her boots. She turned to see Ben stomp in it right alongside her. “Let’s find another one,” she suggested. “There’s one over there and there’s another one! Ooohhh, here comes a pickup.” No sooner were the words out of her mouth when the puddle splashed upward, drenching both of them.

  The pickup stoppe
d then backed up. “Hey, I’m sorry. Can I give you people a lift?”

  “No way,” Emily said.

  Ben grinned. “I’m with the lady.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry.”

  They received a second drenching when the pickup’s tires spewed water as it sped away.

  “You know what, Emily Thorn, you look green and purple under these lights,” Ben guffawed as he pointed to the arced lights in the parking lot. “Listen, we can’t go to a restaurant looking like this. We can either go back into the clinic and dry our clothes or we can go to my place and I can whip us up some supper, or as a third choice, we can stop and take some Chinese home. Your call, Emily.”

  “Can you cook?”

  “Of course I can cook. Not well, but I can throw things together. My specialty is bacon and eggs. I have both.”

  “I love bacon and eggs. I haven’t had them in a very long time. I like to dip my toast in the yolk and then dip it in coffee.”

  “I do too. My mother used to tell me I couldn’t do that in a restaurant, and then when I was old enough to eat out on my own, I saw everyone do it. I like the yolks best in fried eggs, but I like the whites best on hard boiled eggs. I throw away the yolks.”

  “I do too. Imagine that,” Emily said, climbing into Ben’s car. “Do you have a dryer at your place?”

  “Sure do. My son gives it a workout every time he comes to visit. I tried to make my place an extension of his home with his mother. He has his own room, his own things, his own television. Divorce is hard on kids. Be glad you didn’t have that problem. I don’t mean…”

  “I know what you mean,” Emily said. “Was it hard on you?”

  “Yeah, it was, but you go on because that’s all that’s left for you to do. You don’t look back. I learned that the hard way. Things are better now. Now I look forward to getting up in the morning, I look forward to what the day will bring and talking with my son at night. It gets lonely sometimes, but those times are almost over. I have a life like you do now. The bottom line is you go on. Some people never learn that little fact. I have a friend who refuses to let go. His wife cleaned him out; she got everything. He spends so much time and energy on ways to harass her, he isn’t living, he’s existing. Just two weeks ago he slashed the tires on her car in the middle of the night. A month ago he hid in the bushes and threw rotten fruit and vegetables he’d been saving for weeks up against her front door. He gets caught and then she has to talk to him. She won’t press charges so he keeps doing it. Now, I ask you, what’s the point? She has a new boyfriend and is getting married in a few months. She’s going to move out of state to get away from him and he’s trying to fight it with the legal system.”

  “What will happen to him if his wife moves away?”

  “First of all, they’re divorced, so she isn’t his wife anymore. He’s going to get a dose of hard reality when she marries and moves away.”

  “Be there for him, Ben. I didn’t have anyone for a long time. I know how he feels. Rejection is…it’s so demeaning. You want to hide in a dark closet.”

  “Here we are,” Ben said, steering his car into his assigned parking space. “When I bought this place, I had a choice of a garage or a fireplace. I opted for the fireplace. My son is a Boy Scout and he loves to make fires. In the winter we build a fire and tell scary stories at night and toast marshmallows. I make a lot of popcorn. I have one of those poppers they make just for fireplaces. It’s great!”

  She liked this man. She almost said, Have you ever made love in front of a fireplace, but she bit her tongue instead. “I’m freezing.”

  “That will teach you to walk in the rain and jump in puddles.” Ben laughed as he opened the front door and turned on the light. “Upstairs to your left is my son’s room. It has a bath. In the hall closet next to the bathroom you’ll find a robe. Bring your clothes down and I’ll dry them.”

  “What about you?”

  “I have some clothes in the laundry room. I want you to look now, I got spiffed up for this date,” he said, opening his jacket to reveal a pullover sweater over a neat white collar. His cords were sharply creased but drenched around the ankles. He dripped water on the beige carpet.

  “Duly noted,” Emily said as she made her way up the stairs.

  She didn’t take note of the boy’s room until she was dressed and warm in one of Ben’s robes. It smelled like him. It was a wonderful room filled with sports equipment and bright color. A parade of toy soldiers, worn and handled, marched along a white shelf next to a pile of teddy bears that were equally worn and handled. In the corner, a baseball bat, a glove, and a box of balls sat waiting. A lamp whose base was a real football stood next to the bed. It was an old football, probably one of Ben’s from his youth. She touched the leather, noted the frayed strings that had been sprayed with some kind of lacquer. Next to the closet door was a sled, a Flexible Flyer with the Y in flyer almost obliterated. It must have been Ben’s sled that he’d saved for his son. She knew he was a wonderful father. Three-shelf bookcases were under both windows, jammed with all kinds of boy’s books: the Hardy Boys, the Bobbsey Twins, Huck Finn. All of them were old ones, well thumbed, the pages yellow. New books, most of them adventures, were squeezed in between the old books. Puzzle books, books about sports, trains, and airplanes were jammed every which way on the bottom shelf next to a string bag of Leggos. A desk with a swivel chair was opposite the bed. Cups of pencils, all the erasers gone, stood sentinel on each end of the desk. Tablets of school paper and spiral notebooks sat in the middle of a doodled pad. She turned, tested the mattress of the single bed. Firm, but comfortable. She liked the baseball figures at bat that speckled the cotton spread. The drapes matched the spread perfectly.

  “Is everything all right, Emily?”

  She hadn’t heard him come up. “I bet your son loves this room,” she said quietly. “It’s wonderful. Did you do it yourself?”

  “Ted and I did it together. When I first moved here, I was tapped out as far as money went. I pretty much lived out of cartons for a while, but the courts said I had to have a room for Ted with his own things so I got stuff out of storage, from my parents’ house. Stuff my wife didn’t want. I asked Ted and he loved the idea of having some of my old things so that’s the route we went. He likes coming here, looks forward to it. I think it’s a happy room, what do you think?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m sorry I never…Ian had our house decorated…I didn’t even…that’s all in the past. So tell me, how’s our supper coming?”

  Ben laughed. “I’ve been waiting for you to do the toast. I softened up the butter for you. I have jam, not jelly. What’s your feeling on that, Emily?”

  “I adore jam, hate jelly sliding all over my toast.”

  “Me too,” Ben said happily. “How about the bacon?”

  “Extra crisp, snap in two. Four slices.”

  “A lady after my own heart. How about the eggs?”

  “Over easy, I want the yolks really runny. I think I’d like three.”

  Ben threw his head back and laughed. “Emily Thorn, your taste in food is impeccable. As you can see, I have eight slices of bacon all laid out as well as six eggs. Three slices of toast each, right.”

  “Uh-huh. Are we having dessert? I like something sweet after a meal like this. Usually I eat mandarin orange slices.”

  “Jesus,” Ben said, opening the cabinet over the sink to reveal nine cans of mandarin orange slices. “I want my own can,” he said.

  “I do too,” Emily said.

  They stared at each other, their eyes wide with wonder. Emily was the first to look away, her neck warm.

  They ate like starving truck drivers, finishing at exactly the same time. They ate their orange slices out of the cans and drank the juice the same way.

  “We are not going to do the dishes. I have to get up early tomorrow to pick up Ted so I’ll do them then.”

  “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Ben Jackson,” Emily said, getting up and beelining fo
r the living room. Ben followed her with a tray that held fresh coffee and a bottle of brandy. He set them down on the coffee table. “You pour and I’ll light the artificial log. One log or two?”

  Emily giggled. “Two. I like big fires. Don’t you use wood?”

  “I need to get some. Ted and I will probably pick some up tomorrow at the supermarket. Did you know you can buy bundles for three bucks each?”

  “I didn’t know that. Anytime you want free wood, go by my house. I have a ton of it stacked up behind the garage.”

  Ben sat down next to Emily and propped his feet on the circular table. Emily did the same. Outside, the rain pelted the windows. “Do you like rainstorms in the summer—you know, lots of thunder and lightning?” she asked.

  “I do. There’s nothing like a storm to clear the air. I like watching it through the window. My parents used to have a screened-in back porch and I’d sit on the swing and watch until it was over. It made my mother nervous. Ted likes storms too. He’s a lot like me. How about you?”

  “I watch through the window too. For some reason when a storm is over, I always feel better. These days I’m grateful for most anything that makes me feel good,” Emily murmured.

  “You mean things like this?” Ben said, leaning over to kiss her lightly on the mouth.

  Emily smiled. “Yes, things like that.”

  “I can do it again if you like.”

  “I like.” Her smile was wider this time.

  “Maybe we should stop now before…”

  “No. That was then, this is now. How about we agree now that it’s going to be whatever it’s going to be and neither one of us is committing to the other. I think I need to keep that clear in my head.”

  “We could talk this to death if we keep it up, but okay.” He reached over to gather her in his arms.

  Suddenly she was all over him, her hands feverish, her mouth crushing his. Breathless, he pulled away and said, “Whoa, Emily, what’s going on here?”