The Cinderella Pact

by Sarah Strohmeyer

  “I can’t believe you,” I gush, noting her straightened hair and professionally tweezed brows. When was the last time Deb donned a swimsuit? Years. All those summers missed at the Shore, because she was disgusted with herself for having to swim in shorts and a T-shirt, claiming she didn’t want to go into the water because of sharks. “You’re almost . . . thin!”

  Deb smooths down her cover-up. “Nancy said the same thing, but I don’t see it. I look in the mirror and see the same old me.”

  “That’s a crock and you know it.” Then I hesitate before asking the next question. “What’s Paul say?”

  “I have no idea,” she says, shrugging. “He hasn’t said one word, except for last week when he made some crack about me getting awfully flat chested.”

  Somehow I maintain a smile so Deb won’t know that what I’d really like to do at the moment is go over to her house and slap Paul to his senses.

  “So maybe I should get a breast job. That might get his attention.”

  “Well, I think you look amazing and so does everyone else.” I give her a tight, tight hug. “He probably is in awe and dumbstruck and doesn’t know what to say.”

  “It’s the funniest thing,” she says, clinging to me. “We fell in love in high school when I was fat. We married when I was fat. We were happy when I was fat. I’m thinking maybe Paul likes me fat. It’s a real bummer.”

  Or, I am tempted to suggest, maybe you liked him when you were fat. And now? Now you’re not so sure.

  “He’ll come around.” This has now become the Cinderella Pact mantra: Paul Will Come Around. We must say it to Deb at least once a day. “All right. Let’s get this party started.”

  Nancy lives in an absolutely spectacular gray clapboard colonial she and Ron bought three years ago in Hopewell Township. Four bedrooms. Rumpus room. Designer kitchen with a commercial-grade stove and granite countertops. Plenty of space for the children she never could pencil into her schedule. It’s puzzling why she keeps this monstrosity, now that she and Ron are supposedly split and children are fast becoming out of the question.

  Nancy is on a lounge chair by the pool, completely covered up and wearing a big straw hat. “Well, well, well,” she says, squinting in the sun. “You finally made it.”

  “Show her, Nancy,” Deb exclaims, clapping. “Come on.”

  “Show me what?” Maybe it’s a brand-new engagement ring from Ron, or some other symbol of their reunion. That would be the best surprise of all.

  Nancy waves Deb away. “I feel silly.”

  “If you don’t show her, I will.” Deb reaches down to snatch Nancy’s robe, but Nancy’s too fast for her. Hopping out of her lounge chair, she turns her back to us and then, almost seductively, drops her robe to her feet.

  I can only stare at the shocking display. Two pieces. This is unheard of in our group. But my eyes are not deceiving me. Yup. It’s no mirage. Two pieces. “You daredevil, you!” I holler. “You really went for the whole enchilada.”

  “Now show the front,” Deb says.

  Shyly, Nancy spins around. All I see is cleavage, long legs, and not too much cellulite. The suit must have cost a fortune—and worth every penny. There is plenty of elastic in the hips of her modest, high-cut bikini bottom to rein in the fat, and whoever designed the top should be given an architectural award for creative support. She is not Cindy Crawford, but she would not send sunbathers screaming for the surf either.

  “You win,” I say.

  Nancy winks. “We all win. And the best part is that the worst part is over. Now it gets fun.”

  I’m not so sure about that. According to my dieting history, I’m due for another plateau right about now, which will mean I’ll get frustrated and go back to my former careless eating ways. But seeing how the Cinderella Pact began with a lie—Belinda’s lie—I once again heartily concur with false enthusiasm.

  When I come back from changing in one of the house’s five bathrooms, both women are sitting at the edge of the halcyon blue pool, dangling their feet in the water. The air is heady with the late-summer-afternoon perfume of freshly mowed grass, coconut oil, and chlorine. The season’s last cicadas twang in the high green hedges that afford us privacy and shade.

  Like Nancy’s and Deb’s, my swimsuit is built around the revered color black and reinforced with enough elastic to seriously interfere with proper lung function. However, unlike Nancy’s, it’s an old-lady suit with a little skirt to hide the tops of my thighs. In light of her stunning two-piece, I feel like a grandmother.

  “You look good too, Nola,” Nancy says, shielding the hot sun with her hand. “How much have you lost?”

  “I’m not getting on the scale. I figure when I get thinner, I’ll be thinner.” I can’t bear to tell them the truth. I’m clearly last in the running here, what with Deb’s bypass surgery and the professional trainer attention lavished on Nancy.

  “Not stepping on the scale,” Deb says. “I couldn’t do that in a million years. I’m getting on the scale every hour.”

  “Tony”—that’s Nancy’s personal trainer—“keeps telling me to pay no attention to the scale. And I hope he’s right, because I’ve only lost seventeen pounds.”

  A bubble of happiness rises within me. Three pounds. I’ve lost three more pounds than Nancy, and yet she’s stunning.

  “Why are you smiling?” Nancy says. “Oh, hold on. You have been stepping on the scale, haven’t you? And you’ve lost more than I have.”

  I blush. I can’t stand it when Nancy catches me in a lie, which she almost always does. Almost always.

  “Twenty,” I say. “I didn’t want to tell you, because you look so good I assumed you were closer to forty.”

  Nancy opens her eyes wide. “Forty. Those are Deb’s kind of numbers. No. Not forty. Heck. I don’t know how much I’ll lose. As muscle replaces fat it gets denser, Tony says, which means the scale is no indicator of anything.”

  “Yes,” I say, holding up a white wine spritzer. “Chuck the scale.”

  “Chuck the scale,” Nancy toasts.

  “I don’t know,” Deb says, frowning. “I’m beginning to like the scale.”

  We pelt her with ice cubes and push her into the pool to make her take back her scale-loving ways.

  Nancy helps Deb out of the pool and hands her a towel. “Though there is one thing Tony said that made me think of you, Nola.”

  “Oh?”

  “I was telling him about how we got started on the Cinderella Pact. Do you remember? There was that scene at the Willoughby, and then I had that article from Belinda I’d been carrying around.”

  A funny chill comes over me. Goosebumps rise on my arm.

  “And Tony said that no way could you lose a ton of weight just by walking five miles a day and cutting two hundred fifty calories. He said your body would adjust to the exercise and you would have to decrease your calorie consumption accordingly and increase the exercise, just like Brian that waiter said.”

  “Uh-huh.” I nod as if this makes sense. “Good for you, Deb.”

  Deb has just wrapped the towel around her. No big deal to civilians. Big deal to fat girls. Even so, she is not diverted by my compliment. “Do you think Belinda made it up about losing weight?”

  “If she did,” Nancy says, “then she should be fired.”

  I swallow, hard.

  “That’s what made me think of you, Nola. You should ask her outright.”

  “Absolutely. I completely agree. I’ll call her Tuesday. You know what?” I am forced to resort to an old standby. “I’m starved.”

  “Now that you mention it,” Nancy says, much to my relief, “me too.”

  Food. The final distraction.

  The party fare is not our usual. Gone are the margaritas and nachos with sour cream, the chocolate-tipped strawberries and cookies. Nancy has carefully selected stuff Deb can eat in moderation. A lowfat yogurt dip. Grapes. Raw vegetables for us. Crystal Light for Deb, who says she chews every bite thirty times. I’m not sure how you c
hew a grape thirty times. I find myself watching her and counting.

  We remind one another that it’s not about the food anymore. It’s the fellowship.

  “So, what’s up with Chip? You ever hear from him again?” Nancy asks, getting back on her lounge chair.

  I’ve been dreading this question and try to answer as casually as possible. “Uh, no. I guess he went back to California to stay. Mom still thinks he’s married.”

  Nancy raises an eyebrow.

  Deb says, “I asked John if he knew a guy named Chip who fit the description you gave us and he could name six right off. John grew up in Princeton, went to Princeton Day in fact. He knows that whole snooty society down there, John does.”

  I nudge Nancy. “Who’s John?”

  “Paul’s business partner.” Nancy says. “He’s taken quite an interest in Deb lately. He’s been over at the house every day.”

  “It’s perfectly platonic. All he’s doing is teaching me yoga,” Deb says defensively. “He calls me his support team.”

  “As opposed to Paul, who’s trying to sabotage her,” Nancy adds under her breath.

  I look over to Deb, who isn’t denying this. “How is Paul sabotaging you?”

  “He’s not, really.”

  “Bull,” Nancy jumps in. “He’s insisting Deb cook four-course dinners even though the smell of meat makes her nauseous. And what was that incident the other day with the banana cream pie?”

  Deb pulls her cover-up around her self-consciously. “He was only kidding around.”

  “He was not. He tried to make you eat a spoonful, didn’t he? Even though he knew it could make you sick.”

  Even though he knew it is—was—Deb’s favorite, I add silently.

  Deb and Nancy regard each other like two hurt dogs. “Why are you doing this to me?” Deb says finally. “What do you have against Paul?”

  “I don’t have anything against Paul. What bothers me is how he’s been treating you ever since you decided to do this weight-loss surgery. You need to preserve your dignity, Deb. Isn’t that what you learned in pre-surgery counseling? That the first step toward rejecting the label of ‘fat woman with no value’ is learning to stand up for yourself. I’m trying to learn that lesson every day.”

  “Since when do you have to learn to stand up for yourself, Nancy?” I say. “I don’t know anyone who stands up for herself more than you. You’re in court every day fighting for scum-bags most of us would rather ignore and lock in jail.”

  “I didn’t say I haven’t stood up for other people,” she snaps back so fast I wish I’d kept my mouth shut. “What I said is that I haven’t stood up for myself in the past. If I had, I wouldn’t have gotten so huge.”

  “What does that mean?” Deb asks.

  “I blame my job.” Nancy studies her toes, which are painted bright red. I wonder if she has done them herself—a first for a woman who has struggled to touch her tootsies for years. “When I started out at Barlow, Cafferty and Kline, there was a senior partner, Ted Kline, who kept coming on to me. If I came to work wearing a tight sweater, for example, he’d come into my office, close the door, point right at my chest, and ask if it was too cold or was I just glad to see him.”

  “Did you smack him?” Deb asks

  “Forget that,” I say. “Did you sue him?”

  “Are you kidding? Back then I was so thrilled to be in the state’s most powerful law firm, I didn’t dare drop a complaint about my parking spot. By the way, he wasn’t the only one, though he was the worst. It was as though no man there could view me as a lawyer first, woman second. To them I was tits, ass, and, oh yeah, Temple Law Review.”

  “Whew.” Deb takes a swig from the water bottle that is permanently affixed to her side.

  “I got so messed up that I convinced myself the harassment was my fault for being full-figured in a man’s world. Here I was, taking on clients who were suing their employers for sexual harassment and I couldn’t recognize it in my own backyard.” Nancy shakes her head. “That’s when I really started packing on the pounds. The weight was like insulation against sexual predators and, sure enough, once my figure disappeared, the personal comments stopped and the men started taking me seriously.”

  We are silent, watching the faint breeze tickle up slight waves on the pool’s surface. Nancy’s story—the first I’d heard of this spin on her weight gain—goes far to explain what happened to the bubbly girl on Ron’s arm back in college, the one who wanted to be a nurse and have a house full of kids. She got lost years ago under layers of fat and anger.

  “Does Ron know about this?” I ask.

  “We’ve been talking about it,” she says, pushing a pool toy with her painted red toe. “Though between us girls, we haven’t been talking much.”

  “Is that a good kind of not talking or a bad kind of not talking,” I ask slyly.

  “The good kind. The verrry good kind. The long, slow, over and over kind.”

  “Whoa!” Deb yells as we high-five each other.

  This is a stunning twist in the Ron and Nancy saga. I make a mental note to bet Deb that he moves back in before Christmas. “How long has this been going on?”

  “A few weeks. I don’t know how it happened. He came over to fix the treadmill again and, well, I guess one screw led to another.”

  That must be some treadmill.

  “At least one of us is getting some action,” Deb says.

  Nancy and I exchange looks. “Don’t worry, Deb,” Nancy says. “Paul will come around.”

  From my black beach bag my cell phone rings. I grab the phone and take it to Nancy’s kitchen. Probably Mom reminding me to pick up another bag of charcoal for her Labor Day/ Eileen’s Engagement party.

  “I haven’t forgot, Mom,” I say.

  “That’s nice,” says Charlotte Dawson. “Because I’ve just purchased at great cost a ticket on a Continental flight to L.A. You don’t have much time, Nola. Your flight leaves at eight a.m. tomorrow.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  To: belinda.apple@sassmag.com

  From: David.A.Stanton@stantoninc.com

  Re: Making arrangements to meet

  Dear Ms. Apple:

  It just so happens that I will be stopping off in London next week on my return trip from Paris to New York. I would very much like to meet with you and discuss a serious matter that has come to my attention. As I am in poor health, I do not have much time and my schedule is limited. However, I believe that this issue is of such importance that my secretary has been instructed to carve out a half hour for us to talk.

  Would Tuesday at 1 p.m. at the Ritz work for you?

  Please get back to me ASAP.

  David Stanton

  David A. Stanton, publisher and president

  Sass! Fit! and Fix Up! Magazines

  Stanton Media, Inc.

  West 57th Street

  New York, New York 10019

  To: David.A.Stanton@stantoninc.com

  From: belinda.apple@sassmag.com

  Re: Making Arrangements to Meet

  Dear Mr. Stanton:

  What an unfortunate bit of luck that I will not be able to accept your lovely offer to meet with you this week at the Ritz. As fate would have it, I will be in Los Angeles staying at the O Hotel while you are in London.

  Perhaps on your next trip across the pond?

  Sincerely,

  Belinda

  To: belinda.apple@sassmag.com

  From: David.A.Stanton@stantoninc.com

  Re: Re: Making Arrangements to Meet

  Dear Miss Apple:

  Excellent!

  The manager of our California office of Stanton Media, which is based in Beverly Hills and a mere two blocks from the O Hotel, is looking forward to a quick, private meeting at your convenience.

  Thank you for your accommodation in this very serious matter.

  Sincerely,

  David A. Stanton

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Is there a problem, Miss Devlin?”
The stewardess is handing me a cup of fresh-squeezed orange juice, standard treatment in first class.

  That’s right. FIRST CLASS. All paid for by Sweet Dream Productions, which is so eager to finalize the movie deal about Belinda’s life story that they’re sparing no expense. They even sent a stretch limousine to my apartment this morning and a fully uniformed chauffeur rang Bitsy’s bell, causing her Talbot’s hairband to practically spring off her head. And then they arranged for me to cool my heels in Newark Airport’s VIP lounge until my flight took off.

  “No, no, I’m fine.”

  “You’ll have to turn off your phone, I’m afraid. We’ve closed the doors.” She smiles gently and draws the curtain that separates us from those riffraff in coach where a stewardess is barking orders to put up tray tables, raise seat backs, and face FAA imprisonment should they keep their cells on for one minute longer.

  Ah, yes, the civility of first class.

  I lean back and try to act as though I always fly in this style, yawning every now and then, checking my Timex impatiently. Across from me businessmen read their Sunday New York Times and sip coffee. They’re so used to sitting on $4,000 seats that not even the promise of freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies fazes them.

  Actually, I’d hoped to catch sight of a movie star, seeing as how it’s a first-class trip to L.A. There’s a brown-haired woman in brown pants and a brown shirt curled up in the corner sleeping. Might be Sandra Bullock. And the man with white, white hair three rows in front of me I’m pretty sure is Steve Martin.

  Nancy told me she used to fly first class years ago, when she was super heavy, that the smaller seats in coach were either too uncomfortable or required seat belt extenders. She’s not the only one. I’d say that a good third of the men up here are flying prime because they, too, can’t fit the normal seats.

  Explaining to Nancy and Deb why I must impulsively rush off to California for three days took some imagination. I relied on Charlotte’s advice to stick as close to the truth as possible—for a change. So I told them that I had a meeting with a Hollywood production company, though I couldn’t say more because we’re still in negotiations and I didn’t want to blow the deal.