The Men I Didn't Marry

by Janice Kaplan

  “And maybe in ten years, when you’re in your fifties, you’ll find some fabulous Italian lingerie,” suggests Amanda.

  “I’ll never be in my fifties,” says Darlie, who’s already working on how to avoid an entire decade.

  “I didn’t imagine I’d ever be in my forties or even my thirties,” I groan.

  “A century ago, the average life expectancy for a woman was forty-seven, ” says Jennifer helpfully, “which I guess made you middle-aged at twenty-three.”

  Darlie runs her fingers through her highlighted hair. “I read in a magazine that the perfect age is thirty-six. Hollywood may like young starlets, but the article said maturity brings a certain confidence to your beauty. And lucky me, I’m exactly that age.”

  We all try not to giggle.

  “Thirty-six is when Marilyn Monroe died. Same with Princess Diana,” says Jennifer.

  “I didn’t claim everything about it was perfect,” says Darlie defensively. “I could be thirty-five if you prefer.”

  Amanda laughs. “Doesn’t matter how old you are anymore. We’re a generation of women without limits. You just have to stay receptive.”

  “I stay receptive to everything. Especially when the pro at the tennis club flirts with me,” says Darlie, as usual offering her own spin.

  There’s a brief silence at the table.

  Rosalie giggles. “Is he cute?”

  “Very,” says Darlie.

  “Want to play doubles on Tuesday?” asks Rosalie, possibly crafting a future for herself that doesn’t involve a crochet hook.

  Steff, either worried about the food getting cold or Rosalie doubling up with Darlie on anything, raps her knife against her glass.

  “I’m grateful to have such wonderful friends to celebrate with me,” she says. “Lunch’s on. Let’s get over to the buffet.”

  We take our leaf-shaped plates from the elegant table Steff has set and head to her beautiful spread.

  “I ordered in a very special lunch from that new store, Organic Edibles,” Steff says proudly. “Everything’s very healthy. Instead of industrial fertilizer, they raise their vegetables in one hundred percent pure manure.”

  Is that supposed to be appetizing? For healthy, I’d rather stick with Snickers bars and a One-A-Day vitamin pill.

  “What’s this?” asks Jennifer, picking up what looks like a flower.

  “The best part. Everything in today’s lunch is made with fresh nasturtium. Dig in,” says Steff, as she heaps large mounds of the edible orange-and-yellow petals onto our plates. I look askance, trying to decide if I should eat this myself or save it to mulch the backyard.

  I tentatively take an itty-bitty bite of a bitter-tasting bud and then surreptitiously spit it back into my napkin. Amanda’s right. We really are lucky to be able to try everything. But maybe not everything is worth trying.

  The cheapest time to buy airline tickets is supposed to be Tuesday night at midnight, which probably works fine if you don’t have a job to get to early the next morning. I’ve been at the computer for two hours now, flipping back and forth from Expedia to Travelocity to Orbitz to Fly byNite.com. (Do their flights take off in the dark, or do they just take off with your money?) I could quit searching this minute, but I’ll still get only five hours under the covers. If I fall asleep at my desk in the morning, Arthur will fire me, and I’ll have to survive months of unemployment on the twenty-two dollars I’ve saved in this game of find-the-lowest fare. Definitely not a bargain.

  Bleary-eyed, I stumble into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. I open the freezer to get an ice cube and find something better— some chocolate fudge cookies that I’d made for the kids and stashed in the freezer so I wouldn’t be tempted. But I am tempted, so I reach for one and munch greedily. The cookies taste much better this way, and I’m pretty sure the freezing process kills off the calories. Plus everybody knows that any food you eat standing up doesn’t count.

  Revved from my sugar boost, I go back to the computer, determined that I’m going to buy the ticket on Expedia, stop worrying about a measly few dollars, and go to bed. But when I click “Purchase” I see that the fare has gone up ten bucks in the last ten minutes. I’m not wasting money! I’m not buying! I refuse! I quickly switch to Travelocity where the fare has soared twelve dollars. Time is money. On FlybyNite.com the fare is down three dollars, but it doesn’t seem worth the risk. Like a crazed day-trader, I’m desperate to close the best deal.

  Somewhere in the back of my head I know that my real panic isn’t over the money—it’s that I’m planning a Thanksgiving getaway and buying only one ticket. But I’ve decided that’s what I want to do and I’m going to do it. I click “Accept Terms and Conditions” on my nonrefundable ticket and make the purchase. There. Done.

  I sit back and strum my fingers on the computer keyboard. I’m not going to be depressed. It was my idea to leave town and let Bill be with the kids for the holiday since I’ll have them for Christmas and winter break. I’ll probably feel awful not being at a happy family table this Thanksgiving, but at least I won’t be home alone, eating a frozen Weight Watcher’s dinner and watching the Macy’s parade.

  Exhausted now, I turn off the computer and go upstairs to my bed, where I lie awake, tossing and turning. What was I thinking? There are a lot of vacation spots in the world. I could have decided to spend the weekend skiing in Aspen, skeet-shooting in the Adirondacks, or ice fishing in Alaska.

  But instead I picked Virgin Gorda. All the travel sites say there’s no more beautiful spot. Still, I have to admit that what lured me weren’t the sunny beaches and azure blue water, but something equally irresistible: the thought of seeing my high school honey, Kevin. Will I actually muster the courage to look him up when I’m there? And if I do, what will he think?

  My list of things to worry about grows longer by the moment, but focusing on the big anxieties won’t get me anywhere, so I do what every woman does—and obsess about my body. My encounters with Eric and Ravi both turned out well, but I didn’t have to meet up with either of them in a bikini, or even a one-piece Anne Cole with built-in bra.

  I flip onto my back and stare straight up. But the ceiling, slightly pocked and puckered from a recent rainstorm, just reminds me of my pocked and puckered thighs. I’ll track down the painter tomorrow to ask him to do some scraping and spackling. But who can I find to do repair work on me?

  The next morning at work, I call Bellini to tell her about my trip— and my ceiling. Immediately she’s on the case.

  “If you’re going to a beach, you’re going without cellulite,” she says.

  “Great. I knew you’d know how to get rid of it,” I say to my friend with the silky smooth legs. The only dimples Bellini’s ever had are on her face.

  “Don’t be silly. If I knew how to get rid of cellulite, I’d sell the secret and buy a house on Virgin Gorda. Or, come to think of it, I could buy Virgin Gorda.”

  “So fixing my legs is hopeless?”

  “Nothing’s hopeless. Drink plenty of water and call me in the morning.”

  “It is the morning. And why am I drinking water?” I ask, maybe a little too practical for this whole beauty business.

  “Water’s always good for you,” says Bellini, “and I need time to pull out my files. I’ll call you back.”

  Twenty minutes later, Bellini has turned into the Jonas Salk of chubby thighs. She believes there’s a cure, and she’s not going to rest until she finds it.

  “I’ve found scads of possible solutions, so here we go,” she says efficiently. “Number one: Do you have anything against needles?”

  “A lot. I don’t let needles anywhere near me. I don’t even sew.”

  “Well, that lets out acupuncture, which probably works better on migraines, anyway. But some people swear by mesotherapy. It’s a solution of enzymes and detergent, injected directly into the fat to melt it away.”

  “I can’t even find a detergent that melts away ketchup stains,” I say.

 
She sighs, and I can hear her crossing two things off the list that she must have scribbled.

  “Okay, how do you feel about heat?”

  “Yes, for showers, no, for salsa,” I say.

  “We could think about thermage. It’s a new process that sends radio frequencies pulsating through your skin. Sometimes it burns a little.”

  “I could put up with burning,” I say bravely. “But a radio frequency? I draw the line at listening to Garrison Keillor.”

  I hear another scratch mark.

  “There is one other thing,” she says a little hesitantly. “I’m not sure if it’s real or an urban myth. I heard about a woman at a spa in the city. If you want to meet me tomorrow, it’s worth a try. She’s called the Cellulite Exorcist.”

  I travel down to SoHo from my office in midtown, which for me is like making an exotic sojourn to Paris. Unlike the sterile lineup of sky-scrapers where I work, this neighborhood boasts charming boutiques, outdoor cafés, and expensively dressed women brandishing logoed shopping bags. Art galleries used to be the attraction here, but rent got too high and most of them were replaced by designer-name stores. Now the chic shoppers who come here are saved the trouble of pretending that they’re as interested in Chagall as they are in Chanel. Unless they totter twenty blocks on their stilettos to the newest art mecca, they’re mercifully spared the embarrassment of trying to make intelligent comments about Jenny Holzer’s neon word sculptures.

  I glance again at the address Bellini gave me and make my way toward the cellulite spa, which seems to be right next door to the overpriced food emporium Dean & DeLuca. Very convenient. You can wolf down a last snack of thirty-dollar imported triple-creamy Camembert and race over to have the fat extracted the moment it lands on your hips.

  I tentatively step inside and find pretty modern digs for an exorcist. I can’t imagine Linda Blair spewing green vomit in this soft-toned pink waiting room. But if I’m not mistaken, the slim woman sitting on a sofa in a corner is a different Linda—Evangelista. She’s flipping through a Vogue, probably checking to find a picture of herself and see if she’s made a comeback.

  Since Bellini hasn’t arrived yet, I take a seat across from Linda, who’s wearing tight jeans and a turtleneck with high-heeled fur boots. Very chic and paparazzi-ready. I’ve been looking at pictures of Linda in magazines and on billboards for so many years that I have the momentary sense we’re friends.

  “So who paid you ten thousand dollars to get out of bed this morning? ” I quip, paraphrasing her famous line about how much money it would take to entice her into a photographer’s studio.

  She peers up from her Vogue and shoots me an icy glare. Super-model eye contact. I can practically see us becoming pals and renting a house together next summer in Nantucket.

  “Sorry,” I say, trying to get back on better footing. “I didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject. You made one stupid comment in your life and it’s all anybody remembers, huh?”

  Bellini walks in just then, waves cheerfully, and sits down next to me.

  Skipping hello, she leans over and in a stage whisper that would wake Hamlet’s ghost, “Psst. I think that’s Christy Turlington.”

  “Linda Evangelista,” I tell her smugly.

  “You’re right. Geez, I wonder who paid her ten thousand dollars to get out of bed this morning,” Bellini says.

  Linda throws down her Vogue and storms toward the door. Apparently no amount of money would be enough to keep her in the same room with us. I think we’ve upset her more than we realized, because, through the window, I see her heading straight into Dean & DeLuca.

  “Linda, don’t do it!” I call after her, opening the glass a crack. “You’re still beautiful! Do cigarettes! Do booze! Just don’t do cheese, please! Promise me you won’t do the triple-fat cheese!”

  Bellini rushes up next to me. I think she’s going to pull me away from the window, but instead she leans out, too.

  “Linda, come back. Do you really have cellulite? How can somebody as skinny as you have cellulite?”

  We both move away from the door and collapse in giggles.

  “With that body, she can’t have cellulite,” I say. “She must have just been here reading the magazine.”

  “Not necessarily,” says Bellini. “We’re all sisters under the skin.”

  “Are we all lumpy sisters?” I ask.

  “Not for long,” Bellini promises.

  My appointment is next. The attendant appears and leads me into the treatment room, and I insist that Bellini come with me and stay at my side. Like a thirteen-year-old on a double date, I’m not going through this alone. The attendant hands me a white stretch one-piece unitard and tells me to change. The Cellulite Exorcist herself will be in momentarily.

  When she’s gone, I hold the stretchy material in my hand. This could be as challenging as the thong in the tanning salon. I haven’t worn a leotard since I was a dancing oak tree in the second-grade Arbor Day celebration. That was the day I tripped over one of my own branches and gave up a promising ballet career forever. Since then, the shape of leotards—and of me—has changed considerably.

  “How am I supposed to get into this?” I ask, pulling the unitard up to my knees but not able to tug it an inch higher. “And what is it, anyway?”

  “A body-sleeve pressure system,” says Bellini, reading from the sheet the attendant has left behind. “It helps squeeze the impurities from your cells and stimulates the lymph drainage system.”

  “By cutting off my circulation?”

  “By whatever means necessary. Besides, they developed this at NASA.”

  “When do I get the Tang?” I ask.

  “In this place, we’re all drinking the Kool-Aid,” Bellini says with a sly grin.

  I grimace and tug harder. Of course I’ll be thinner when all this is on, because there won’t be any air left in my body. Fighting the tight material over my thighs and hips, I twist around getting my arms into the slinky sleeves. At last it’s on. Encased like the finest Jimmy Dean sausage, I roll onto the leather-covered treatment table and stare at the ominous piece of equipment looming over me. I’d hightail it out of here, but I can’t move. That’s probably the real purpose of the suit.

  “What is that thing?” I ask, pointing to the menacing machinery with the scary suction hoses attached. “It looks like an old Hoover vacuum.”

  “Not a Hoover or even an Oreck,” barks a brittle voice.

  “A Dustbuster?” I ask meekly, turning to the black-clad figure who has just swooped in. She’s barely five feet tall, but fills the room with her mass of frizzy red hair and swirling black cape. Clearly the Cellulite Exorcist has arrived.

  She flicks some switches, and a moment later, when the machine sputters on, she comes menacingly toward me with a thick pulsating hose.

  “Um, could you please tell me what you’re doing before you start?” I ask, ever the educated consumer. Though if I were really an educated consumer, I probably wouldn’t be here to begin with.

  “Shush. You must stop thinking and just believe,” she says.

  “We do believe,” Bellini says, as if trying to keep Tinkerbell—and my hopes—alive. “How can we not believe? You’re the Cellulite Exorcist, right?”

  She spins around, clearly irritated. “The Exorcist? Nobody calls me that to my face. I have serious credentials. Medical credentials.”

  “What are you?” asks Bellini, a little worried about what she’s gotten me into.

  “A veterinarian.”

  Okay, I have self-esteem. That doesn’t mean she thinks I’m a pig.

  “My being a vet isn’t as strange as you think,” she says, as she attaches the nozzle to my upper thigh. “This procedure is called Endermologie, and it started as deep-tissue massage for injured horses. Then an esteemed colleague realized the amazing side effect. None of the horses had any cellulite.”

  I rack my brain, trying to think if I’d ever seen cellulite on Secretariat. Definitely none on Seabiscuit.

>   All of a sudden, I feel a pulling on my skin, and I grab onto the edge of the table so the machine doesn’t suck me in—though clearly I’ve already been sucked in.

  The Exorcist vacuums the machine over me like I’m a saggy couch, explaining that the motorized rollers are lifting, stretching, and spinning, to increase collagen production and make the skin smoother. And best of all, we’re getting rid of the hardened connective tissue, though I was kind of used to that old hardened connective tissue. Isn’t it the only thing holding me up?

  “I feel the problem leaving your skin,” the Exorcist intones. I suddenly picture her dangling a cross over my dimply thighs. And why not? Cellulite is clearly the work of the devil.

  “Do you feel the subcutaneous fat and the toxins breaking down?” she asks grandly.

  Actually, I feel the social contract of the twenty-first century breaking down. I’m an attractive intelligent woman with an Ivy League law degree and a good sense of humor, and I’m lying here with an Exorcist, a vacuum cleaner, and a slim hope of thinner thighs. Yes, civilization as we know it is about to come to an end—or else it’s advanced beyond our wildest dreams.

  When the Exorcist finally turns off her whirring machine, she pats the back of my thighs.

  “Good start,” she says definitively. “We’ll do this twice a week. Fourteen more sessions. I’m sure you’ll see some improvement.”

  Twice a week for seven more weeks? That’s a longer commitment than George Bush made to being a compassionate conservative.

  “I don’t have that kind of time. I’m leaving for the Caribbean,” I tell her.

  Her eyes light up. “It’s not unheard of for clients to take me with them on vacation,” she says eagerly.

  I think about that one for a minute. My own personal exorcist on call day or night to break down my subcutaneous fat—not to mention breaking down my bank account.

  “Thanks,” I say, managing to get off the table and stand on my own two feet. “I’m flying solo.”

  Chapter NINE

  FOR ABOUT THE SEVENTEENTH TIME, Emily calls from her dorm to ask me if I’m really going to be all right by myself at Thanksgiving. I’m determined to put up a brave front, so I shrug off her concerns.