Fit to Die (14 page)

One day, Carlotta saw the little Tiffany standing to one side in the yoga class, watching. Later, as Carlotta was soaking in the whirlpool, the girl stopped beside the water.

“You know what would really help you get flexible?” the girl said brightly, her blonde ponytails swinging, her earrings glinting in the light. “I think you'd find that if you lost a few pounds, that would really help. Of course, if you feel you don't need to…” and the girl shrugged.

Carlotta's mouth fell open, but no response came out. She could only watch as Tiffany smiled and bounced away. The girl stopped to talk to another woman who was just stepping out of the shower. Carlotta could not hear the words that passed, but she saw the naked woman nod and hang her head like a chastized child.

Carlotta told herself she was not at all disturbed by this. But from that evening onward, she no longer entertained Rodrigo with funny stories about the fitness centre.

•  •  •

A few weeks later, Carlotta overheard two women in her office talking about having to lose weight, “just a few pounds”, and “look at how so-and-so has let herself go”, and “just as she was doing so well”. And the one who said she just needed to lose five more pounds—a senior administrator, a smart woman—she was actually a stick, an absolute stick. But then, most of the women looked fine to Carlotta. Why would they talk about themselves that way?

Later, as she walked to her car, Carlotta watched her own reflection in the glass front of her building. She examined her profile critically.

Could she really be certain that
she
wasn't too fat?

That night, when Carlotta was eating dinner with her husband, she found she had no appetite. When they were getting ready for bed she asked him. “Dear one,” she said, “do you think I need to lose weight?”

“Let me look at you,” he said from where he sat on the edge of the bed. She stood very still. He frowned. That meant he was thinking. Her husband was a very serious man, who would not dream of answering such a question with anything but the truth. The idea of what he might say to her made her very nervous. “Can you turn around, my dear?” She lifted her arms slightly and turned slowly, counter clockwise for luck. When she had finished turning and faced her husband once more, she was relieved to see him smiling.

But why didn't she feel happier?

The next day, Carlotta decided she was letting her imagination get the better of her. Of course she was fine. Nothing had changed. Everything was still the same as it had been four months ago when she first came to Canada. She must be working too hard to let these ideas take hold of her. Perhaps she and Rodrigo could get away for the weekend.

In celebration of her restored sanity, Carlotta decided to wear her favourite suit to the office. It was the one she had worn last year to the Business Woman's Conference in Seville. The one she had been wearing when she had shaken the hand of Her Majesty, Queen Sofia of Spain.

Carlotta chose her blouse carefully. Slipped into the skirt and pulled up the zipper. Shrugged into the jacket and did up the button. Then she undid the button again. She looked at herself in the mirror on the door of the old-fashioned wardrobe in her bedroom. Somehow, she remembered looking better in this suit. She turned sideways. She examined her bosoms and her hips. Surely, she thought, it is not possible
that I have
gained
weight? She remembered that there was a photograph of her in this suit on her husband's desk. Quickly she rushed into his study and scrutinized the portrait-sized photograph. Her eyes narrowed.

Was it her imagination? Was there, even in this photo, a little tightness across the hips? A few horizontal wrinkles? Carlotta put her hand to her mouth and gnawed on the side of her finger, ruining her manicure.

Could it be true? Could she be fat? Could Rodrigo be wrong?

Carlotta clenched her teeth. Then she changed her suit.

•  •  •

Carlotta found that if she concentrated very hard, she could actually go whole hours and not think about her weight—while she was at work, or asleep. But every time she passed the scale at the fitness centre, with its evil red blinking numbers, it was all she could do not to step on. One day, when she was coming from her Nautilus class and feeling particularly forceful, Carlotta managed to walk right past it without looking. She went into the locker room, removed her sensible black leotard and stepped into the shower. When she came out, wrapped carefully in her silk shower robe, she found one of the other women in her yoga class weeping into her monogrammed towel.

“Oh, Carlotta,” Hilda sobbed, “I've been working so hard. I've lost twenty-five pounds you know, the second twenty-five pounds, which let me tell you is a lot harder than the first twenty-five, and I was feeling so proud of myself and so pleased with my new look and then…and then she said…she said, oh, it's too horrible.”

“Do not tell me,” Carlotta put her arm around the woman. “It was the little one, the Tiffany.” Carlotta really didn't need the other woman's nod. She'd known who it would be. She let Hilda cry on her shoulder. This cannot go on, Carlotta thought. But what can be done?

Carlotta watched as Hilda finally dressed and went home, dragging her feet and clearly unhappy with the new outfit that she had shown off so proudly only that morning. Carlotta rose stiffly to her feet, wondering if she had the strength to return to the office. She felt something at her back. She turned, knowing that…yes, it was the red, blinking eye of the electronic scale. Carlotta looked swiftly around. She was alone. Surely there could be no harm…she stepped onto the scale. She was just waiting for the electronic numbers to stop flashing and announce her weight when she heard a noise behind her.

It was the little blonde Tiffany. Her earrings swinging. Her teeth longer than natural. Her grin a little too triumphant as she continued into the pool room.

In that moment Carlotta realized what was happening, and her heart turned cold within her. Of course she was not fat. She was never fat in her life. And Hilda, and the lady who had hung her head after stepping out of the shower, and who knew how many others, were not fat. They were normal healthy women. This was all a virus spread by
las flacas,
the skinnies. Brainwashed by the silly advertising, the foolish fashion designers and the people who made money from the diets and the exercises and the many, many books that all told you over and over that you were unhappy, that you were not living up to your full potential and that beyond all else you were fat, fat, fat. A conspiracy to make all women feel sick about themselves. To make women spend so much time worrying about how they looked that they had no time to think.

And this girl. This girl in particular was one of the conspirators, the plotters. Her little remarks, her little looks, all calculated, all poisonous. Look at what she had almost done to Carlotta herself. This girl is killing us, Carlotta thought. She is killing our happiness, our contentment. Our selves.

She has to be dealt with.

Carlotta took her bathing suit out of her dressing case. She would relax in the whirlpool for a while. It would soothe her nerves and help her think. She followed the girl into the pool room.

The next day Carlotta came in at her usual time to find the fitness studio in chaos. She carefully expressed her astonishment when she learned that the little Tiffany had been found drowned in the whirlpool. She had evidently dropped one of her gold earrings as she had entered the water—one could see where it lay gleaming at the bottom of the pool—and when she had reached for it, the vigorous movement of the whirlpool had wrapped her blonde ponytail around the chrome ladder, where it was fastened to the wall. Accidental death, the policeman said. A petition was being circulated to replace the whirlpool.

“Poor child,” Carlotta said as she signed in.

VIOLETTE MALAN
writes from Elgin, Ontario. Her published fiction crosses several genres, including mystery, romance, fantasy and erotica. Violette won the inaugural short story contest at the Bloody Words Crime Writers Conference, and most recently she has sold a story to
Over My Dead Body
for their Canadian issue.

SUE PIKE

Here. Have a look at this.” The bald guy sitting next to me leaned across and waved a photograph in front of my nose.

It was a small snapshot, an old one judging from the wide border and all the folds and creases. The woman looking up at the camera had great bone structure, but she seemed to be hiding behind too much hair and black eyeliner. Mr. Jones, who leads our high school photography club, was teaching us all about bone structure.

I nodded and looked away, but the creep leaned closer and tapped the snapshot with a stubby finger.

“My wife.” Tap. Tap. “She's dead.”

He was way into my personal space. I shifted sideways in my chair as far as I could and looked around at the rest of the group, hoping someone more my own age might have come in while I wasn't looking. But the others seemed pretty old, and they were either crying or staring straight ahead like zombies.

Now he was leaning forward, peering at the stud in my nose.

“How d'ya blow your nose with that thing in there?”

I felt like asking how he tied his shoes with the big gut hanging over his belt, but I just shrugged and looked away.

“Hey! I'm talking to you.” He reached over and clamped a
hand on my knee. Oh, please!

I jerked my knee away and scraped my chair a couple of inches to the other side.

The noise made the group leader look over. She cleared her throat. “Welcome everyone. Let's start by introducing ourselves.” She smiled at each of the five of us in turn. “My name is Helen. I'm Program Coordinator here at Coping with Grief, and I'll be your facilitator this evening.” She sat down and her voice went quiet. “My husband and daughter were killed eight years ago at a railway level crossing, so I've experienced something of what you're all going through.”

“I seriously doubt that,” the guy beside me said.

She looked a little surprised. “Mr. Simpson. Would you like to start?”

“Name's Russ Simpson. Career army. Retired.” He laid the snapshot on the arm of his chair and stretched back, his fingers laced behind his neck. His shirt was one of those loud Hawaiian jobs with the first four buttons undone. I could see gold chains tangled up in a bird's nest of gray chest hair.

“Moved here from Calgary a month ago.” He cracked some knuckles. “My wife, Debbie, was killed a while back.”

Helen waited to be sure he was finished and then turned to me.

“I'm Jill,” I said. “My mom died in March. Breast cancer.”

That was all I felt like saying. My throat and chest had started to ache, and I could feel tears making rat tracks down my cheeks. I sure didn't want to be bawling in front of strangers.

“All of us are bound to cry at one time or another during these sessions. And that's okay. In fact it's more than O.K.” Helen pushed the box of tissues on the coffee table closer to me, but I kept my eyes on the floor, and after a bit she turned to the woman on my other side.

“My name's Mary Anne.”

I hadn't had a chance really to look at Mary Anne before because she'd been hunched over in her chair since I arrived. Now I could see she wasn't all that old, probably not more than thirty. She was pretty too, even with puffy eyes.

“My little girl died of leukemia. She—”

“Hey. Life's a bugger.” Russ gave a low whistle.

“Go on.” Helen said to Mary Anne, but she'd clamped her mouth shut and was staring down at the wet lump of tissues in her hand.

Helen waited then looked across the room at an old couple sitting close together and apart from the rest of us. The man had a tight grip on the woman's arm. “Our daughter and her husband died in a car accident last winter. They were on their way home from a ski trip. Left three kids—”

“Hoo boy. Gotta take it easy on those winter roads. Wonder there aren't more accidents. Eh?”

The old man straightened up and glared at Russ. “The wife and I are doing the best we can.”

Helen spoke up. “Your names…?”

“I'm Bert. This is Doreen.” He slumped back.

“I want to say something.” Russ dropped his hands to his knees and shifted forward in his chair. “The wife here,” he tapped the photo again, “she was a beautiful woman. Great cook and housekeeper, too. I get real mad when I think how some runner could just up and kill her and get away with it. I could kill…”

Helen frowned. “It's quite normal to feel anger—”

“Just walking home from the mall one day, minding her own business and this woman jogger runs past her and pushes her off the sidewalk and into traffic. Wham!” He slammed his right fist into his left palm.

“That's terrible—”

“Police never found the bitch who did it.” He was breathing hard. “Sometimes I get this red, this blood-red light in front of my eyes. Can't see past it. Tried anger management, but they told me to come to this group.”

Helen turned to Bert and Doreen. “Were you going to say more about how you're feeling?”

“Well, I get a little angry at Trish sometimes.” Doreen's mouth was quivering. “I know it's not fair to her. She didn't choose to die.” She looked at Bert. “But we already raised our family. We didn't expect to have to raise—”

“Kids. Nothing but trouble, you ask me.” Russ seemed calmer now and was slapping his heels against the chair legs.

“The kids are okay. It's just they're teenagers, and teenagers are different today. More independent.” Bert glanced over at me and I could see him sizing up the purple streak in my hair and my black leather jacket. I wondered if he might say something else, but he just shrugged.

“A certain amount of anger is—”