“I’m warning you,” Amber held up her fist and shook it at Sally.
“Oh, skip the threats,” Sally said.
“Take this as notice, then,” Amber said, and turned her hand in front of her mouth as if closing a lock. She was never going to speak to Sally again.
“You really are too big for your britches,” Sally said.
“I’m too big,” Amber said. Again with the wordplay.
“I didn’t mean it literally,” Sally said.
“Perhaps she just meant it figure-atively.” Jane leaned across the table.
“I wasn’t talking about weight,” Sally said, her face pink with embarrassment.
“I guess not,” Amber said. “You never do.” She puffed out her cheeks like a blowfish.
The noises they made at each other were like cats hissing.
Amber looked over just as Maurice walked into the restaurant. She had not really expected to see him again, and she stood, knocking her champagne glass to the floor. It shattered when it hit the stone tiles.
“Maurice,” she cried dramatically and kissed him on the lips. She left the table without saying a word to her friends.
Maurice and Amber walked arm in arm through the streets of Antibes.
He was nice. Curious to know about her life back in Pittsburgh, he asked a zillion questions. Amber liked the attention. The night air was pink, the setting sun glowed with her happiness. When they got to the beach, they began kissing frantically. The pine taste of his cologne coated her tongue, reminding her that she had not eaten since noon.
She could feel the sand in her sandals. Her sunburned skin felt fresh and alive. She was not being stupid. Not with Maurice. She wasn’t dreaming. She wasn’t counting on wedding bells, as Sally always insisted she did. It felt nice to be appreciated. This is what life was all about. It was a shame she didn’t meet men like this more often.
Maurice led her to the center of town, where, at the condom machine, he asked her for some money. She gave him one of her one hundred franc notes, which he slid into the opening before turning the knob. Her change spilled onto the street like money rolling from a slot machine. She was giddy and told him not to bother with the few francs that had rolled into the gutter.
“Don’t be silly,” he scolded and pocketed all that he collected.
The hotel across from the train station was dingy. The smell of cooked and cooking cabbage was everywhere. The bedspread was worn, the rug was mustard-colored and stained, and the window had no view except of the tracks, which might have been construed as romantic if the sun had been shining.
“It’s certainly not the Ritz,” she said.
The lamp beside the bed did not work. Had she been with Sally and Jane, they would have taken one look and walked out. They did not suffer dingy surroundings. A clean and well-equipped bathroom was essential to a pleasant stay. But Amber did not want to give the impression of being an American snob, so she squinted her eyes until the room took on a nice glow and told Maurice she was having a good time.
Maurice put his arms around her waist. “I have never loved so big,” he said. It sounded romantic in French and she was not at all embarrassed to undress in front of him.
He kissed her lips. “Your lips are so pretty,” he cooed, and she believed him.
He kissed her eyes. “Your eyes are so pretty.”
Her throat. “Your throat is so pretty.”
Her ears. “Your ears are so pretty.”
Her hair. “Your hair….”
Amber felt as if she were in the middle of a bad French lesson, but she did not want it to stop.
When they finished making love, Maurice asked for money.
“A few hundred francs, my pretty one,” he said in the same low throaty voice he had used to woo her.
Amber sat up in bed, fully awake, absolutely ravenous. She was sure a hotel directly across from the train station did not have room service.
“I need money.” Maurice shook her leg when he saw that she was not listening to his request. “I was supposed to meet a man tonight. That was my job. Instead I spent the time with you. Now I need the money.”
“I suppose you do,” Amber said. The disappointment of the night spread through her body like a sharp pain. She bit her lip, not daring to cry.
She would not let him ruin her night. She leaned over and kissed Maurice’s hands. “Your hands,” she said in English, “are so pretty.”
Maurice, no longer interested in giving or receiving language lessons, rolled off the bed and got dressed.
“Sex, if you ask me, is highly overrated,” Amber said. “All that talk about how many calories it uses,” she said. “But really all you do is lie there on your back. Doesn’t seem to burn anything.”
“You’re very big,” Maurice said without emotion. “You must have lots of money.” It no longer sounded romantic.
“You probably burn more calories trying to find the channel switcher during a good night of television watching. All in all it’s a real waste of time,” Amber declared.
Amber was upset, but not surprised. Her track record with men was annoyingly consistent. Sally had been right. She asked Maurice to walk her back to the hotel and he grunted something about a restaurant. She followed, thinking food, wine, or both might salvage something of the evening.
Instead Maurice took her to a crowded nightclub. He walked in ahead of her, and she lost him in the crowd.
In the small bathroom, a woman stood over the sink, gagging herself with her two fingers. Amber did not need to hear her speak to know she was American.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Amber said. “It will make you sick.”
“That’s the point,” the woman said.
American magazines and television were filled with horror stories about women like these, but Amber had never seen one in action. She watched the young woman throw up with abject fascination. Amber put her hands on her own hips, feeling the thickness, the bulk of her extra weight. And for the first time in years, she felt the strange pull of doubt, feelings she hadn’t had since she was fifteen. She brought her finger to her mouth and pushed it past her lips, down her throat, until she could feel herself gagging.
She saw herself in the mirror and her mind cleared instantly. However disappointing the night had been, she would not turn stupid. She would not be ridiculous.
“Stop,” Amber said. She pulled on the woman’s dress. “Stop this nonsense.”
“Have you ever been thin?” the woman removed her fingers from her throat and talked to Amber in the mirror.
Amber considered the question. “Not exactly.”
“Then go away,” she said. Her nose was runny. She reached for a piece of paper toweling, then dropped it to the ground when she had finished with it.
“Very glamorous,” Amber said. “Unbelievably romantic.”
“I locked the door,” the young woman said. “I didn’t mean to be a public spectacle. I didn’t expect a group discussion.” She grabbed her hair in a ponytail and bent over the sink again.
Amber knew she was talking to a woman who would never sign up for an Attr-ACTIVE Women’s Group at the Jewish Community Center. But she was probably worth saving.
“The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star,” Amber said. This was not one of Rosemary’s, but considering the situation, it was appropriate—and probably true.
The thin woman rolled her eyes. “Leave me alone, you weirdo.” Amber had no idea why skinny women were so stupid.
“Food is a pleasure. One should eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a queen.”
“I would never eat a meal,” the woman said. “Ever.” She turned to the side and admired her thin shape in the cracked mirror.
Amber realized that she was wasting her words on this creature, but she felt empowered, full of strength and wisdom. She put all thoughts of the Maurice disaster aside and talked with pride and conviction. “The kitchen is
a country in which there are always discoveries to be made. Eating is the one passionate thing left to us in these bleak times.”
“I don’t want to discover anything,” the woman said. “I just want to be skinny. That’s what I want.” She extracted a small tube of toothpaste from her purse. She squeezed a thin line onto her finger and moved it around her mouth, all odor disguised by the mint flavoring. “What I don’t want,” she said, brushing her hair back with her fingertips, “is to end up like you.”
“You’ll never be like me,” Amber said. “Never.” Not one to exert herself in a useless cause, Amber stopped talking.
The hotel room, with its smells of lavender soap, cinnamon candles, and peanut butter-chocolate treats, was at once warm and welcoming. Jane and Sally were asleep. Their thick noisy shapes, cocooned in extra blankets and pillows, made her weep with relief. She got under the covers and waited for morning.
Jane and Sally were her friends. She should not have fought with them. It was up to her to apologize—an act she would have to do with a great deal of care. She would have to be humble.
At first light she went downstairs to reserve their favorite table on the seaside terrace, then waited for them to come to breakfast.
Sally and Jane walked outside a short while later. They had showered and looked fresh and ready for a full day of sightseeing.
“How was dinner?” Amber asked, waving them over to the table.
“Excellent,” Sally said.
“Your liver was delicious,” Jane said. “You owe me 150 francs. There are no refunds in four-star French restaurants.”
Amber pulled out the money and handed it across the table. It was going to be rough. They would not let her off easily.
Jane read the newspaper. Sally flipped through the travel guide. They were doing a good job of ignoring her.
She was not sure they were listening, but she went ahead with her plan.
“I was thinking,” Amber said slowly. “The Hôtel Negresco in Nice has a very good lunch deal. Four-course gourmet meal for two hundred francs, which is actually quite reasonable,” she paused and then added, “as long as you don’t convert it into dollars.”
She bribed them slowly and carefully. “It’s probably my turn to treat you both to a good meal.”
Jane looked up from the International Herald Tribune. “Duck is very good this time of year. Even here on the Riviera. I wonder if the Negresco has duck.”
“It says here that the dining room has a domed ceiling decorated with twenty-four-carat gold leaf and the biggest carpet ever to come out of the Savonnerie workshops,” Sally read from Jane’s pocket guide to the Riviera. “The chandelier was commissioned from Baccarat by Czar Nicholas II. It doesn’t sound like the kind of place that wouldn’t have duck.”
Amber nodded. “Yes. We could have duck.”
“Although duck is very fatty,” Sally sniffed.
“The walk from the train station to the Matisse museum is two miles,” Jane said, jotting some numbers on her newspaper.
“We could do a quick tour of Antibes,” Sally said. “I still have to go to the post office. Twice around the old town could be part of our constitutional today.”
“That’s good,” Jane said. “That’ll put us way ahead. We should be all ready for a nice big lunch.”
They turned to Amber and nodded their approval.
“I’ll make a reservation after breakfast,” Amber promised.
“Whoever said money could not buy happiness does not know where to shop,” Sally clapped her hands—an Attr-ACTIVE woman, even here on the Côte d’Azur.
“The only dangerous food is wedding cake,” Jane said. They had heard this one before.
A slight breeze passed over the table, and with it came a moment of silence. Amber looked at her friends and thought that only a Frenchman would say they looked like angels. They should stay in Antibes forever.
The waiter arrived with their breakfast tray. And though the French have taken to buying their pastries and baguettes frozen and in bulk, the croissants at the women’s hotel were served fresh and warm. There was always plenty of butter. Plenty of jam. Plenty of preserves. Honey or clotted cream upon request.
This Month of Charity
CAROL’S STUDENT HAS FEW PROBLEMS with individual words—it is sentences that give him trouble. Donald, her fifty-four-year-old student, begins the new paragraph, reading just above a whisper, then stops before the end of the second line. The Detroit Public Library is busy with people checking out books, and Carol concentrates on the shuffling noise at the circulation desk rather than on the silence in front of her. Donald lowers his head and moves his finger across the page.
“There are fifteen words in this sentence. It’s too long.” He shows Carol the book as if she won’t believe his claim.
“You know the words,” Carol says again. This is their first night working together, and she tries to be patient, but Donald has been complaining about sentence length since they started. “Read it aloud. Slowly. Then you’ll understand what it means.”
“Adults read to themselves,” Donald protests. “I don’t want to read like a beginner.”
Carol knows that in ancient times only the most intelligent people could read without voicing the words. Julius Caesar was considered to be a genius because he read without moving his lips. Messengers would stare in awe as he read the news of the State—his mind understanding, his body not showing any struggle.
Carol keeps her thoughts to herself. She does not like teaching people to read and knows her lack of enthusiasm makes her a less-than-average teacher. She only volunteered for the program because she is attracted to her next-door neighbor, Mitch, who is also doing volunteer work. She thought these nights of charity would bring them closer together. So far this has not happened.
Donald asks if they can take a water break and Carol agrees. When they return to their table, Donald finishes the article and they discuss his understanding of the material. At nine o’clock they carry the books back to the special program desk. Carol takes out his file and records what they’ve read and how much progress she feels he’s made. His former reading teacher has made several notes, and Carol learns that Donald is serious about learning but easily distracted. He is also unusually talkative about his personal life.
Once outside, Donald offers her a ride. It is late June and the sky is full of pastel pinks and blues. The sun, like the kids playing tag in the parking lot, is stalling nightfall.
“My friend’s here.” Carol points to the car parked in front of the library, where Mitch is waiting with his emergency lights flashing. Mitch has told her that he admires the way she cares about her students, and she wants him to see her talking with Donald.
“I look forward to seeing you again.” She dawdles for a moment to impress Mitch.
“Thank you for your help,” Donald says. “You’re a very good teacher.”
Carol blushes. No one has ever praised her for her work. She’s not certain she deserves it, but she’s pleased by the compliment.
“Is that a new one?” Mitch asks when she gets into the car. The air conditioner is on high, and Carol shivers with goosebumps.
“New to me, but not a beginner,” Carol says. “His other teacher just quit the program, so I got him.” Her body adjusts to the cool air, and the bumps on her arm disappear. She asks Mitch how his night went.
“Dull. We went back to the house and watched videos.”
“Did he talk?”
“Three, maybe four words,” Mitch says. “I feel like quitting. If this is what it means to be a Big Brother, I don’t want to do it. I’m not helping him like this.”
Mitch’s little brother is fourteen years old and quiet. He prefers to watch cable TV at Mitch’s house rather than play baseball or visit Boblo Island, an amusement park on the Detroit River—things Mitch had planned to do with him. One night he asked Mitch if he could mow his lawn, and Mitch told him he could do it whenever he wanted. It’s the only th
ing he shows any interest in.
“You can’t quit. We’re in this together,” Carol says. If Mitch quits doing volunteer work, they won’t have a reason to see each other.
Mitch nods and asks if Carol wants to eat pizza. She agrees, though she doesn’t like the Italian restaurant in their neighborhood. The place is too loud, too bright, and there are always too many people. She and Mitch are not lovers, but Carol has been attracted to him ever since he bought the house next door. He is exactly the kind of person she wants to date. He is kind. He is interesting. He is good-looking. He has a job. He has all his hair and he doesn’t complain about every little thing—a trait she finds difficult to deal with in both men and women, but especially annoying in men. Carol is used to men’s attention, and Mitch’s aloofness confuses as well as depresses her. As it stands, she has no idea whether he finds her sexually interesting, even mildly attractive.
On Thursday the secretary from the Literacy Program calls Carol at work and relays the message that Donald will not be able to make tonight’s lesson. He wants to reassure Carol that he’s serious about learning and that he will definitely be there next week. Carols takes the black magic marker and draws a large X on her desk calendar. Then she calls Mitch and pretends to be relieved that she has a week’s reprieve from the volunteer job. She tells him that she’d still like to get together for dinner. Mitch asks if he and his little brother can watch TV at her house. The temperature at noon was in the upper nineties, and he knows his house will be a hotbox.
“My living room’s not air-conditioned,” Carol says. “We could sit out on the back porch. There might be some sort of breeze.”
“Let’s move the TV into the air conditioning,” Mitch says. “I have to get out of this heat.”
“That’s fine.” Carol is delighted with Mitch’s suggestion and considers it progress that he knows that her bedroom is airconditioned. She thinks again how uncomplicated it would be to start an intimate relationship with Mitch. They are already friends. They are familiar with each other’s tastes in restaurants, movies, and other kinds of entertainment. They own almost identical homes. There would be none of the awkward getting to know one another that Carol finds so boring.
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