by Joan Hess
She clasped her hands to her mouth and darted back into her room. I put on my robe and slippers, ran my fingers through my hair (which was grayer than it had been five minutes earlier), and was at the kitchen table when Caron joined me.
“Inez and I goofed,” she said, now subdued. “Neither one of us realized that we were supposed to drink that stuff instead of eating. We thought it was some miracle drink that made you burn calories, and we were having it between meals.”
She was so deflated I didn’t have the heart to laugh, despite the temptation. Instead, I patted her hand and suggested she reread the book with a shade more attention to the overall diet plan.
“We agreed we can’t drink any more of that stuff; it’s enough to make a pig gag.” Caron shot a quick look at the refrigerator, shrugged her shoulders, and said, “There’s no point in starting another diet while we’re both so depressed. Is there any sausage?”
FOUR
When Maribeth came in the next afternoon, I yielded to my curiosity and asked her why Gerald had changed his mind about both the part-time job and the Ultima program.
She shrugged. “I really don’t know, but all of a sudden he’s very much in favor of it. When he came home for lunch yesterday and I told him I was thinking about a part-time job here, he almost choked on an olive. I was … a little bit afraid, although he’s never struck me or even raised his hand. His abuse is verbal, not physical.” She hesitated, blinking rapidly. “But when he came home last night, he said he’d had a long talk with Candice and she’d persuaded him to allow me to try the Ultima program. She’s very articulate, and I guess he was impressed.”
“He came by yesterday afternoon, and he was more than a little vehement in his opposition,” I said. “I’m surprised he was willing to listen to anything, much less a lengthy sales presentation.
“Candice can lay on the charm with a trowel. In any case, Gerald brought home some pamphlets about environmental cues, and has agreed to attend the weekly meetings for family members of those in the program. The first one’s tonight.”
“How were your first twenty-four hours on the program?”
“All I’m allowed are vitamins, potassium, liquid protein supplements, and ten glasses of water. I’ve been hungry enough to engage in auto-cannibalism, but it doesn’t really bother me. I’m pretending that the gnawing pain in my stomach is a troll eating fat cells.”
“Good for you. When do you start the exercise part of the program?”
“Today, after I weigh in. I dread this more than anything. I really don’t want to put on a leotard and allow all those peppy, flat-bellied size threes to see my body. Even in sweats I’ll feel like a great gray elephant, huffing and puffing through the jungle while they swing effortlessly through the treetops. However, Candice says it’s terribly important to maintain a high metabolic rate, and she says this Jody is a great instructor. I wish I had a friend to come along for moral support, but I know hardly anyone in town.” She gave me a look that indicated that she did happen to know someone in the immediate area.
“I don’t sweat voluntarily,” I said hastily, “but I’m sure Joanie will go with you this first time.”
“She has a special class from four-thirty until six. But that’s okay, Claire; I’ll survive somehow, and I’ve got to stop behaving like a kid on the first day of school. I don’t need someone to hold my hand when I cross the street.”
Maribeth gave me a smile, but I could see the panic radiating from her eyes like darts. I reminded myself of my ingrained aversion to strenuous physical activity that resulted in screaming muscles and damp, frizzy hair. I forced myself to envision both digits of my age—in neon, blinking like a digital clock. I wisely pondered what a twisted ligament could do to my mobility and thus my income.
“I’ll go with you,” I said with a sigh. “Caron and Inez come in at four; they can mind the store for a couple of hours. Do I truly have to wear a leotard?”
“Not the first time,” Maribeth said, beaming at me.
I retreated to my office to see if somewhere in my chaotic filing system I had a hair coat and a whip. Self-flagellation seemed to be the order of the day.
Joanie breezed in at four, but I told her I’d drive Maribeth to Ultima and stay with her for the exercise class afterward. Joanie patted my cheek and told me I was a good person. I resisted the urge to pat her fanny with my foot and told her she was a coward who needed more than a visit to a wizard to redeem herself. While she was formulating a reply, Caron and Inez appeared. I told them to stay until I returned, then hustled Maribeth out to my car. I stopped at my apartment to grab a T-shirt and a frayed pair of Caron’s gym shorts, and we drove across the campus toward the diet place, the fitness center, and doom.
“Did you hear about that football player?” Maribeth asked idly. “Awful, wasn’t it?”
I nearly ran into a pickup truck that capriciously had opted to stop at a stop sign. Once I’d caught my breath, I said, “Not a word, but I never read the sports section. What’s happened? Was he murdered?”
“He had a heart attack in the middle of practice. He was running laps and then just turned blue and collapsed. The coaches tried CPR, but he was dead by the time the ambulance arrived. I think the article said he was twenty years old.”
“Truly awful,” I said, disappointed that I hadn’t heard of some major muddle worthy of Peter’s expertise. “One would think that the athletes are examined regularly to make sure they’re in decent physical condition.”
“Sometimes doctors miss things, especially if they don’t know what they’re looking for. This boy probably had a congenital problem, or permanent damage from a childhood disease.”
I turned down the steep hill that led past Farber Stadium, home of the Fighting Frogs. The field was dotted with helmeted hulks in green shirts, all busily kicking footballs, chasing each other, knocking each other down, lunging into padded uprights, and basically engaging in various incomprehensible activities better known as practice. “Then they didn’t call off the remainder of the season out of respect for the player who died?”
“I think that sort of thing happens quite a bit,” Maribeth said, shaking her head as she looked down at the field. “Some of the athletes get too involved in perfecting their bodies, while others of us break mirrors and dress in the dark.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say, so we drove the rest of the way in silence. I parked under a shiny new sign that proclaimed in bold red letters ULTIMA DIET CENTER: WE DON’T WIN IF YOU DON’T LOSE. On the left was a slightly faded sign that said DELANO’S FITNESS CENTER.
Maribeth sat for a moment, then opened the car door and struggled to her feet. I followed her up the sidewalk and through a glass door with the daily schedule painted on it. Inside was a counter, on top of which was a silk flower arrangement and a clipboard, and beyond it a glass-enclosed office occupied by a petite blond-haired girl and a noticeably voluptuous black-haired woman in a tight white uniform. The two were discussing the contents of a manila folder, but they glanced up as the door closed behind us.
The blonde appeared to be no more than twenty. She had a dewy complexion that exuded innocence, in contrast to her thick lips and wide, heavily made-up eyes. She clapped her hands, and in a childishly high voice, said, “Oh, Maribeth, I’m so happy you came back! This is so exciting!”
The other woman was less exuberant. Her hair was pinned neatly under her white nurse’s cap, and her makeup was deftly muted. Smoky gray almond-shaped eyes gave her an obliquely oriental appearance, as did her olive skin. She was somewhat older than her companion, judging by the sprinkling of fine lines around her eyes and the softness below her chin. Despite the minor concessions to age, she might have stepped off the set of a television show, and I had no doubt she’d easily persuaded Gerald to allow Maribeth to enter the program. She could have talked him into lecturing on trade regulations in the nude.
Smiling warmly, she came to the counter and turned the clipboard around. “Congratulatio
ns, Maribeth; I knew you’d decide to stick with the program. We’ll work together to reach your goal, and when we do, you’ll be a brand new person ready to take on the world.” She raised a delicately drawn eyebrow at me. “Have you brought in your first referral? As I told you yesterday, you’ll receive a free box of the protein supplement of your choice, or a twenty-dollar reduction in your permanent maintenance program.”
“I’m along for the ride,” I said coolly. Sleekly. Unlike someone in need of a seven-hundred-dollar diet.
“Oh, of course,” the woman said, laughing. “No one is allowed in the examination rooms with the client. If you’ll wait in the reception area, I’ll take Maribeth right back for our consultation. I’m sure you can find something to read in the rack.”
Once Maribeth had been whisked away, the blonde leaned over the counter. “There’s really not much to read on the rack, unless you want to learn all about the perils of excess adipose and clogged arteries. Can I get you a diet soda or a cup of coffee? Maribeth’s going to be a few minutes; Candice has to go over all sorts of details about the program.”
I agreed to coffee and declined artificial sweetener. After I’d been rewarded with a plastic cup of murky gray liquid, I asked the girl how long Ultima had been open.
“This is our first week, and it’s so exciting! We’ve already signed up twelve clients. If you know someone who might want to sign up, I’m sure Dr. Winder will give you, you know, like a quiet little bonus for the referral. You certainly don’t need protein supplements or an extra month of maintenance, do you?”
We both chuckled at the very idea. In that she was wearing a miniskirt and a hot pink T-shirt rather than pristine white, I asked her if she was a registered nurse.
“Goodness no! I’m just plain Bobbi Rodriquez, a junior at the college, majoring in physical education. After I graduate, I want to coach girls’ basketball or maybe own a fitness center like the one next door. Right now I lead one class after I finish here, but I can’t imagine anything more fun than leading aerobics classes all day, can you? I’ve already started building up my leotard wardrobe. I found this incredible spandex outfit during my lunch hour today. Would you like to see it?”
I was eroding rapidly, and we hadn’t even started the exercise class. Before I could couch a refusal in polite terms, Bobbi bounced over to a filing cabinet, picked up a sack, and bounced back to show me her incredible spandex outfit, which to my jaded eye appeared to be a size one. Or zero. Or minus one.
“Don’t you just love it?” she demanded.
I admitted that I just loved it. I was about to be pressured into further lies when a man wearing a white coat over a pastel blue shirt entered the office through a door in the wall opposite the window. He reached toward a somewhat rounded part of Bobbi’s anatomy, then spotted me and smoothly redirected his hand toward the desktop. “Ah, very good, Bobbi, I was looking for Mrs. Galleston’s folder. Did she bring in those old medical records?”
“Gee, I don’t think she did, Dr. Winder,” Bobbi said, giggling. “Anyways, that’s Mrs. Alawan’s folder; Candice has Maribeth’s. Do you want me to ask her now while she’s with Candice, or shall I wait until she comes back out?”
“There’s no rush,” he said, then smiled at me. “Do we have a new client? I’m Sheldon Winder, M.D. I’m the resident physician here at Ultima, available for consultation five days a week from nine until five and Thursday evenings until nine, because we feel our program requires close medical supervision, along with support from the staff and a commitment from our clients. And if you don’t lose, we don’t win.”
“She’s a friend of Maribeth’s,” Bobbi hissed. “She’s not buying.”
“Well, then, we’re delighted that you’re giving her this kind of support, particularly during the first few days on the program,” he murmured. He went out the far door, and then came through another into the reception room. He looked as if he were no more than a year or two out of medical school, although I knew that the required years of internship and residency meant he was more likely to be in his early thirties. He had clear brown eyes, stylishly cut hair, and a lopsided grin that contributed to his boyish demeanor. He wore brown-framed glasses, possibly in an attempt to make himself look older. Personally, I preferred the grandfatherly variety of doctor, who’s had a few decades to perfect his art. After all, they do call it practice.
“How nice to meet you,” I said, shaking his slightly damp hand. “Maribeth’s quite enthusiastic about the program. I was afraid her husband, who’s a lawyer, would demand the contract be torn up and the obligation canceled. I was pleased that you and your wife convinced him to allow her to continue.”
Dr. Winder frowned at Bobbi. “Maribeth’s husband was here? Why wasn’t I informed of this? You know how strongly I believe in a family support system.”
“He came in yesterday, just as I was locking up,” she said, her cheeks turning pink. “You’d already gone off to that meeting at the hospital, but Candice was still here, so she took him back to her private office to explain the program and the details of the contract.”
“And he didn’t have any problems with the small print?” Winder continued.
Bobbi shook her head decisively. “He looked kind of scary when he first came in, like he wanted to beat somebody up, but Candice said she straightened him out in no time at all and sent him away with the environmental cues material.”
Winder nodded, but before he could leap back into his diet jargon, the door opened and Maribeth joined us. Her voice almost shaking, she said, “Guess what—I lost three pounds! What’s more, my blood pressure’s down.”
Winder threw his arms around her and hugged her as if she’d led the field in the Kentucky Derby. “That’s absolutely marvelous, Maribeth! Fantastic!”
Bobbi looked a little misty as she said, “That’s so exciting, Maribeth! You’re doing just super.”
Candice came to the doorway, a folder in her hand, and said, “Isn’t this so thrilling for Maribeth, losing three pounds the very first day? Her ketones were right on the button, and when I read the scales, I was so breathless I almost had to sit down to collect myself.”
They all three looked at me. I realized some gush of enthusiasm was expected, hunted through my vocabulary for an adjective that hadn’t been used, and finally said, “That’s wonderful progress the first day.”
Maribeth was given more praise, patted on the back, hugged, told repeatedly how successful she’d been, and sent out the door with a face reminiscent of a harvest moon. Once we were outside, however, she gave me a dry smile and said, “They tend to get carried away with the positive reinforcement, don’t they? I know perfectly well that the major part of those three pounds was water.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I said. “You’re going to stick to this diet, and pretty soon you’ll notice the inches are disappearing, too. You’ll look better and feel better and be a damn sight healthier. If it helps for the Ultima staff to stage a Broadway production every day, then why worry about it?”
“I did stick to the diet, didn’t I?” she said under her breath, then pointed at the sign above the fitness center. “This class is supposed to be for beginners. It’s low-level for the first few weeks, and the sessions only last forty minutes. Later, when we’re in better shape, the sessions are an hour and a lot more demanding.”
The only positive thing I could think of was that I wouldn’t be chaperoning her when all that happened. I muttered something and dutifully followed her through the door, nurturing vile visions of petite bodies shouting, “Burn, baby, burn,” and other encouraging remarks more appropriate to ghetto uprisings or weenie roasts.
The front room of the fitness center was large, decorated tastefully in yellow concrete blocks and a few posters of bug-eyed people contorting their bodies into gruesome bulges. The plants were plastic, as were the chairs scattered in the front of the room. There were two doors in the back, neither of which interested me. There was a short hallway on one side wi
th several doors visible, none of which interested me. There was an enormous mirror on the opposite wall, which appalled me. Sweating was unsavory; watching oneself sweat was unspeakable. As we hesitated, two young women appeared from the hallway and began to stretch in front of the mirror. A moment later, a white-haired woman joined them. All three had the trim bodies and grim visages of Rumanian gymnasts. “I’m not sure what the procedure is,” Maribeth said nervously. “I know I’m supposed to fill out a form, but I don’t see anyone who appears to be in charge.”
“One of those women might be Jody.”
Neither one of us seemed inclined to ask, so we stayed by the door. The older woman stopped stretching long enough to put a cassette in a jam box. Violent rock music blared, and the three began to bobble furiously to the insistent rhythm.
“Maybe we ought to try again tomorrow,” I suggested, inching backward with total disregard for the beat. “It looks as if the class has already started, and if this is a low-level class for beginners, I’m Jane Fonda.”
Maribeth caught my elbow before I could bolt. “It’s vital to the program that I participate in an exercise class three days a week. If I don’t start now, I probably never will.”
“Oh, all right,” I said ungraciously. “Let’s find Jody and get you enrolled.” I went over to the older woman, who was flailing her arms and kicking her legs like a crazed Rockette, and said, “Where do we find Jody?”
She gave me a blank look and began to prance in place, her knees threatening her chin. I realized she hadn’t heard me, and shouted, “Jody? Are you Jody?” The music stopped in the middle of my question, and my voice was considerably louder than necessary in the sudden stillness.
“I’m not deaf,” the woman said as she blotted her forehead with a terry-cloth wristband. “Jody’s in the office, through that door.” She glanced at her companions. “Again, or the other side of the tape?”