“Well obviously Prada was too big of a step,” Lilly says. “But you could spend a little. Buy something, perhaps, without the word vintage in front of it.”
“People barely wear stuff in the Valley, Lilly. You can get a lot of great stuff at the secondhand store.”
Lilly holds up a palm. “No, I’m not going there. Your issue isn’t money; those running pants you wear cost a fortune, and you buy them at Nordstrom’s. I’ve seen the tags.”
“You are so nosy, Lilly,” Morgan says.
“Like you wouldn’t have looked, Morgan. Look, it’s expensive to go to Hawaii and exercise, Poppy,” Lilly adds. “You spend money on some things. We’re not saying you need designer gear. We’re just saying get rid of your mother’s skirts and stop trying to make the statement you’re a weirdo. You’re not and you know it; you’re just trying to avoid dating.”
“Hawaii is a triathlon, not just a trip,” I explain. “It’s pushing myself to my very limits and coming out victorious on the other side. It’s that high of accomplishing what I’ve strived so long for. There’s nothing else like it.”
“There’s lying on the beach. Same great taste, half the effort.” Lilly unclips a barrette and lets her wild hair shake loose.
“Then she wouldn’t have that body, though,” Morgan says.
“True, but she’d still have that red hair and those blue eyes. When we went to your fancy gym, Morgan, she was like a man magnet. She was dressed in that skirt, with moccasin boots no less. I’m telling you, she doesn’t want to get married. Men look at her like she’s a piece of art in the Louvre, and does she care? No, she’s like Mona Lisa wrapped in gauze. Nobody get too close.”
“Hello, I’m right here,” I announce.
“So prove to us you want to have a relationship,” Lilly says. “Besides with your trainer.”
“How would I do that? Should I get engaged to the next man who walks through the spa?”
Morgan looks down over the sulfur-laden hot tub under our balcony and snickers. We join her to see a portly, bald man looking up at us.
“He probably wouldn’t care about the skirt.” Lilly shrugs.
I cross my arms and whisper at the two of them. “So rude. He could be to the soul what Brad Pitt is to the eyes.”
“Was that on your SAT?” Morgan asks before looking over the balcony again and giggling. “Break out the truffles, Lilly. Poppy has a date in the hot tub.”
“You used to at least sneak the garbage when I was getting my spa treatment. Now you’re just flaunting bad behavior in front of me.”
“I’m pregnant, Poppy. If I don’t eat fattening now, what’s the point?” Lilly asks with her lanky hundred-pound frame with the small bump in the front.
“It’s not about the fat. It’s your body-fat ratio. Your skinny little self could be 30 percent fat and that’s not healthy.”
Lilly stares at me with her mouth open for a moment before popping a truffle inside. Whole.
“There’s nothing wrong with dark chocolate,” I say over crossed arms. “Magnesium is great for the digestive system— a natural laxative, actually.”
“Eww!” Morgan says. “Do you have to talk about such things, Poppy? It’s so unfeminine. You manage to make chocolate unpalatable. How do you do that?”
“I’m just saying if she thinks that’s entirely unhealthy, it’s not.”
“Yeah, well, don’t say,” Lilly says, spitting out the chewed-up truffle into a napkin. “You take the fun out of everything.”
The accusation hits me hard, because right now, it feels really truthful and I can’t help myself. There’s this little voice in my head that tells me how to do health right, and I can’t shut it down. But I think I need to shut it down. Just like a true Trekkie has to shut it down after age thirty to get a date.
“So what of it—do you want to be single forever?” Lilly asks.
“I never said that.” I unpack my bag into the plastic dresser painted to look like wood. “Look, Morgan, I’ve done a lot of prep work for your wedding and my run. After that, you all can worry about getting me a date, all right? It’s not like I’m going to dry up in the next month.”
I came for this last, blissful weekend with my gals, and they’re putting me on the battlefield. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t been avoiding serious dating for ten years. Why the fuss all of a sudden?
“Then what gives, Poppy? You’ve had more guys ask you out than I think Morgan or I had in a lifetime, and yet you’re the only one who’s never had a long-term boyfriend. Why is that?”
“I guess I just get a feeling on that first date, and I haven’t been interested enough to follow through. I’m not avoiding relationships. Quit acting like I need to be diagnosed. I’m just single, that’s all. I don’t want to marry just anybody.”
“So that means Dr. Jeff is a why bother?”
Is he ever. “I have no respect for that man or what he does. How desperate do you think I am? Jeff Curran is about as mainstream as a person can go. And besides, I think he might go to church to get business. My mother would be horrified that I even spent time with a plastic surgeon. I feel guilty still. And I even dressed up for the occasion.”
“See, I think you and Dr. Jeff do have a lot in common and you don’t want to admit it. You both think you’re the answer to everyone’s problems. He cares about his patients and their perfection just like you do. The only difference is he obsesses on the outside, and you go for the inside. And you were going to be a medical doctor until . . . well, you know.”
“There’s a reason I didn’t become an MD, and therefore dating one has the same problem for me. Look, I know you both want to find me romance, but trust me on this, Dr. Jeff is not it.”
“Okay, so no go on Dr. Jeff; we’re good with that. What about one of these guys?” Morgan hands me a folder. “I printed out a bunch of men from the Yahoo! Personals that I thought sounded a lot like you. Look, this one is a runner and a swimmer and he’s pretty hot.”
“Online dating?” I push the folder back at her. It hasn’t come to that, has it? Now they want me to become so Silicon Valley that the only way I can meet a guy is through the computer?
“Hey, the good news is that the guys over the Internet can’t see the skirt,” Lilly quips.
“So how will I know if they pass the first test?” I ask. “Maybe I want them to look past the skirt.”
“Men don’t notice clothes, anyway. They only care what’s underneath them.” Morgan shrugs.
“Morgan! That sounded like something Lilly would say.”
“It’s true. The men don’t care if she wears that ugly skirt. They see her red hair, and they lose it. They always have. Even that senator’s son at Stanford. He went crazy for beatnik Poppy.”
“Morgan!” I yell again. “What are you turning into? Lilly?”
She pauses, smoothing her pretty blonde hair and blinking her wide eyes. “Well, Poppy, do you think that skirt is pretty? That you’re adorning yourself in any way? Do you think it makes you appealing?” she asks.
I look down at my mother’s dingy skirt and notice just how many strings are hanging from its hem. “I suppose not, but my mother thought it was more important to care about the earth and its inhabitants than arbitrary things like clothing. Daddy too. At least at one time.” I think about my dad’s love of Sharon and her well-sculpted over-fifty body, always dressed like a Christmas package. Neatly wrapped and with all the accessories to look special. “My father may have forgotten, but I haven’t.”
“She’s impossible.” Lilly shakes her head. “Poppy, our mothers are gone too. You can’t keep her around with her ugly skirts. Morgan can’t keep her mother around through her jewelry, and I can’t keep mine around period. Your dad loved your mother. He didn’t betray her by marrying someone different after she died. You need to get over it.”
We all sit around staring at each other for a moment. We’re probably thinking about our mothers, how Lilly’s slipped off into a new life an
d left her with a grandmother, Morgan’s succumbed to a horrible cancer after a horrific marriage, and mine slipped into a diabetic coma, never to wake again because of the dangers of sugar and insulin.
“Well, this is depressing,” Lilly finally says. “Let’s go shopping and get you some clothes. We’ll burn that thing when we get back. It will be symbolic. Our new life starts now. We start our families, you start trying to not scare men.”
For a moment, I’ll admit I’m tempted. I liked the way I felt out the other night with Jeff. Well, except for the getting blindsided and the pantyhose stuck to my toes because my shoes were too big. Other than that, I liked the skirt and the heels. It was a good calf exercise too. It was a workout just to walk. A little yoga involved in keeping my balance, even.
I slip off my shoe and show off my neatly painted pink toenails. “I’m making progress every day.” Generally, when we stop for our pedicures on the way to the spa, I avoid color. Today, rather than pearl, which Lilly calls wheat, I picked bright pink. I feel almost scandalous.
“We thought you were painting your toenails for a guy,” Morgan says, her frown apparent.
I don’t explain that I only get the pedicures for them. I personally could do without someone touching my feet and painting a toxic colored shell on my nails, but I know when to back down. Everyone seems to love pedicures, so I figure I should at least find a way to enjoy the experience. The pink was just one more way to show them I could play. Here I’m feeling like Gwen Stefani and they’re disappointed.
“Would it make you two feel better to make me over? To know you’d done everything you could possibly do to get me married?”
They both nod.
“Okay, so the pink isn’t cutting it. Go ahead, make me over. I have nothing to fear.” I sit down on the balcony and cross my arms.
The two of them are like two plucky birds planning their next move and chattering excitedly. “First, we’re putting you in makeup,” Morgan says. “Just a little light powder foundation. Nothing heavy.”
I sit in the chair while Morgan takes out a compact, hands me a mirror, and smothers my face with a pasty beige film. “See? Very simple, and you’ve completely evened out your tone.” Then Morgan breaks out the mascara. “Your eyes are incredible, but they need mascara to stand out.”
“Don’t forget the eyeliner,” Lilly adds. “Just think, if you weren’t busy wearing that colored sack, people would truly see you. You might find someone like Max,” she says about her husband.
“Or George,” Morgan says about her fiancé.
I look into their faces, and I remember when they too had no hope and spent lots of evenings on bad dates, getting set up with old men and worse, but my current mood wins out. “But you know, the guy could be allergic to cats.”
“Look up,” Morgan commands while finishing my mascara.
“And you could fix that with your voodoo,” Lilly says, referring to the allergy relief acupressure that I practice.
“All right, let’s see what you’ve got.” I laugh, reaching for the folder with the online dating possibilities, though my hopes couldn’t be any lower. Computer dating? Where’s the chemistry in that? I take a deep breath and force myself to think positively. My soul mate could be in this folder. “This is just like take-out. Only a guy comes with the pizza. I’ll take tall, dark, and handsome with a side of anchovies.”
“That’s when you get one from Russia.” Morgan says, and considering she was once engaged to a Russian consulate, it makes me wonder how much truth there is to her comment. “This is different. This is simply online dating.”
“These guys are more afraid of commitment since they don’t get a green card with each purchase,” Lilly says.
My friends, helpful as always, have printed out several bios. I rifle through each page with a disappointed frown. “Every one of these guys says they want an athletic woman.” I scrunch my face up at the sight of the word over and over again:
Athletic.
Must be Athletic.
Slender and athletic.
You: an athlete. Me: your partner in sports.
I’m into kayaking, hiking and conquering the next mountain. You’re there with me.
Um, no. I’m not.
“So what if they want athletic,” Lilly shrugs. “You’re athletic.”
“But you’re not reading what they’re really selling. Look at this guy, he must be 275 pounds. Bowling is not a sport, and he’s not athletic. What he’s saying is you must be skinny and look like a model, even if I resemble a human warthog. These men are single because they think they’ve bought the Cinderella fairy tale in reverse. Only they aren’t Prince Charming, and they most certainly don’t have a kingdom. But by golly, she better have tiny feet, fit into the glass corset, and worship the ground he walks on. They grew up on Bond, and they believe it.”
“You’re cynical,” Lilly accuses. “And coming from me, that’s saying something, because I’m cynical.”
“Tiny feet are a qualification you still meet,” Morgan offers. “What’s the problem?”
“You don’t get it—athletic is simply a thesaurus word for thin. No fat chicks need apply. And while I may not have that issue, I do not want to hook up with someone who values their women solely by the exterior. These men are shallow. These men are why Dr. Jeff has a practice.”
“You don’t know that; maybe they’re just wishful thinkers. Come on, tell me if you made your list, it wouldn’t say ‘Looks like Johnny Depp and understands the way the intestinal system functions. ’”
“Lilly!”
“Look at this guy. He says he’s a Christian and looking for his Proverbs 31 woman.”
I grab the paper. “He’s forty-seven, Morgan. If he hasn’t found her by now, he may as well be looking for his Proverbs 54 woman because she’s not out there.”
She grabs the paper. “Sorry, I missed that. He doesn’t look that old.”
“He probably got the picture from the J. C. Penney catalog.”
“Look, if you don’t want to get married, that’s fine Poppy. We respect that,” Lilly says. “But what we don’t respect is your spending every day running farther and faster to nothing. Your body-fat percentage is not a worthy life’s goal; you’re better than that, Poppy.”
“But these guys are looking for America’s Next Top Model while they themselves belong on The Biggest Loser. Men seem to have this special mirror. In it, they are all Bond, James Bond, and looking for their Bond girl. When they’re Christian, make that the Proverbs 31 Bond Girl.”
“Not every guy is that shallow. You’re reading too much into that; you’re not giving them a chance.”
“Look at this. He says, ‘No one under 5’3”.’”
“You’re five-nine,” Lilly reminds me.
“This guy is five-six if he’s a foot.” I hold up the picture.
“But maybe he has the soul of the Christian Ghandi,” Morgan says encouragingly.
I hand her back the folder. “I just think when I’m ready, I’ll be ready. I’m not ready. Not for this, anyway. I’m still recovering from my so-called date with Jeff. Which cost me my office space.”
She takes the folder and sighs. “So your life’s goal is what? A clean digestive tract?” Lilly lifts her lip in disgust. “At least have a purpose. Then we’ll leave you alone. If you want to go to the deserts of Africa and preach, we’ll support that. If you want to straighten the most crooked spines in all of India, we’ll support that, help you raise funds even. But if you want to hide out in that little office of yours and pretend the fun girl in college never existed, want to hide her away in ugly skirts so she won’t get hurt again . . . ? Yeah, we’re not into that.”
“You need to go back to Santa Cruz and finish this,” Morgan says.
I look at their sincerity and the depth in their gazes and I love these women. But I don’t think Santa Cruz is going to solve a thing. I left that history there. Only the skirts came with me.
Really.
> chapter 12
My favorite skirt disappeared this weekend. Of course, I have more than a subtle idea where it went, but it’s missing just the same. In its place, Lilly left me something she made for me in hopes that my hippy style might disappear. I like what she left me. It’s comfortable and fashionable. Apparently peasant skirts are back, and she made me one in a soft, buttery-cream cotton. Truly, I feel like myself with a touch of princess, and I want to spin like a little girl in her first Easter dress.
As I unlock the office door, I hear giggling and look at Jeff’s office to see the blonde from the convertible exiting. That girl is trouble personified and she’s everywhere. I let myself into the office and slam the door behind me. Men are so clueless. The last time I saw her she was kissing Simon for fifty bucks. In my day we had a name for that. Wrap something up in a beautiful package, and men’s IQs fall to single digits. I’m not jealous, just sort of disappointed Jeff is no better than that. Now, not only is he missing fruit, but he’s a little nutty to boot.
I sit down at my desk and hear a small knock at the door. Moving the curtain aside, I see Jeff standing outside. “Can I come in?” he shouts through the door. I open it, crossing my arms at Mr. Flirtation. And on a Sunday, no less. “I assume that door slam was for me?” he asks.
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“So it’s true what they say about the fiery redhead. You’re a jealous one then? How exciting.” He rubs his hands together.
“Jealous of what? I’m just mad you took my parking space. It’s Sunday. Don’t you ever go home? Get yourself a life, and all that?”
“I thought we agreed that it was my parking space. One blonde and the deal’s off, huh? Women. I’ll never understand them. You basically told me I was human vermin the other night. What do you want from me, Poppy?”
“I didn’t know the parking deal extended to weekends,” I say, trying to dig myself out of this hole. What is that little part in women where we take ownership of someone? Even when we don’t really want them and when they’re perfectly free to marry another? In the back of my mind I can’t help but think he’s my date for the wedding, and can he not be flirtation-celibate for a few measly weeks? I hate that I care what he does, but my mouth just betrays me when he’s around. I say things I can’t imagine myself saying and all sense of peace goes out the window.
Calm, Cool, and Adjusted Page 14