The Cinderella Pact (17 page)

“What is it, you dingaling? Am I not allowed to take one phone call in your presence?”

“Is that Chip?” She gestures impatiently to my phone.

“Yeah.”

“Computer Chip?”

“Yeah.”

“I need to talk to you before you talk to him. Tell him you'll call him back. Trust me. It's important.”

I get on and ask Chip if I can call him in five. Chip doesn't even say good-bye. He just hangs up.

“OK, so what's the big deal?” I am trying to hide my growing peevish feelings, which won't hold me in good stead as a nun.

Lisa leans over the cubicle wall and lowers her voice. “Did you leave a message on Chip's machine saying that you couldn't go out with him tonight because you were thinking of entering a holy order?”

“Not thinking of. Committed to.”

“Nola.” Lisa grips my shoulder. “Chip came to me right after getting that message. He wanted to know if you were insane. He says he never met you and has no idea who the heck you are.”

“But . . .” But that's impossible, I want to say, feeling thoroughly confused. Didn't Chip and I hang out all night Saturday night? Didn't he drive me home the other day? Wasn't he my coach at the gym? “He came to my apartment Saturday night,” I babble. “I rescued him at the Annex. He cleaned my stove.”

“What do you mean you rescued him at the Annex?”

“From this girl who was attacking him.”

“Oh my God.” She covers her mouth. “Maybe Chip's right. Maybe you are insane. What's that genetic mental disorder that runs in your family?”

“Stupidity?”

Behind me I can sense Joel nodding his head vigorously. “I think you're right, Lisa. She is nuts. She has a special phone that rings ‘Rule Britannia.' ”

I flip him the bird. “Listen, I'm not mad. Chip drove me home when my car broke down. You were the one who asked him, remember?”

Lisa steps back. “Chip didn't drive you home. I tried to find him, but he'd taken the day off. When I came back to the parking lot you were gone. How did you get home anyway?”

My first response is to accuse Lisa of playing a joke. “No, really, Lisa. If this is one of your . . .”

“I'm serious. You can go to Tech Assistance and meet Chip for yourself if you don't believe me. He's thoroughly creeped out, too.”

She is serious. I don't have to go upstairs to Tech Ass to see for myself. Joel and Lisa are staring at me, speechless, while I . . . I don't know what to say either, except nonsense.

“If Chip is not Chip,” I say, now confused and feeling slightly chilly, “then who is Chip?”

“Maybe he's that serial killer you've been expecting,” Joel offers helpfully.

I run my hand up my neck, which is thankfully intact. OK. Don't panic, Nola.

“Just one more thing,” I say, my voice shaking. “Does Chip have a Toyota pickup, blond hair, a slow drawl, and the laid-back demeanor of a surfer?” That would be my essential Chip summary.

“Are you kidding? I don't know if he surfs, but I do know one thing,” Lisa says.

“What?”

“He's five-foot-two with jet-black hair and a thick Scottish brogue.”

Chapter Seventeen

As a general rule I am not a big fan of hospitals, though I used to be when I was a kid.

Hospitals are cool to kids. There's lots of action and ominous signage: WARNING: RADIATION. WARNING: BIOHAZARD-OUS MATERIALS. There are shiny metal carts with wheels and room upon room of beds that can be raised or lowered with a remote, plus televisions galore! Jell-O. Ice cream. Popsicles. At first glance, a hospital is kid heaven.

Not so at age thirty-five. Now when I enter a hospital I'm seeing people closer to my age, and they're not necessarily the doctors or nurses. They're in the beds. Then there's the omnipresent hospital aroma of warm chicken soup or warm urine, I'm never quite sure which. Whatever it is, it makes me sick.

Carrying a bouquet of pink roses for Deb, I enter the medical center, head to the bariatric surgery floor, and hope they don't try to recruit me.

The first familiar face I run into, surprisingly, is Ron. Nancy's Ron, who is leaning against the wall outside of a closed patient recovery room. It is good to see his freakishly tall, Herman Munster-like body in its usual ill-fitting dark suit and the wide, dopey grin on his face. He has kept himself in prime physical shape (for the young trophy wife to be?) but even keeping in mind his Latin Jezebel on the side, there's just no way I can be mad at him. My instincts tell me to hug and hug hard.

“Never expected that,” he says, grinning down even more broadly. “To tell you the truth, you were the one I feared most. I thought you'd kick me in the knee or try to sucker punch me in the gut.”

“I'm a lover, not a fighter. What are you doing here, anyway?”

Ron straightens his tie awkwardly. “To see Deb. After all, she's a friend too. I'm concerned.”

I think about this, about how bad a liar Ron is. As an expert in crafting the big fib, I'm pretty good at assessing the various nuances of a bad lie. “You might very well like Deb. You might even be somewhat concerned. But I know why you're really here.”

Ron keeps his face granitelike, as though he has no idea what I'm implying.

“You're here hoping to run into Nancy.”

He opens his mouth to object, but I don't give him an inch. “She won't see you outside of her lawyer's office, and so you thought this would be the best way to corner her. What are you after? If you've got annulment papers in your briefcase for her to sign, you should walk out that door right now.”

“Nola.” Suddenly Ron is super serious. “I have no papers, annulment or otherwise, for Nancy to sign. You don't understand . . .”

“I think I do.”

“I love Nancy.”

The statement hangs between us. I don't know what to make of it. Then I remember a February
Sass!
article about how guys who cheat on their wives often say corny stuff like this to ease their guilty feelings.

“As in,” I clarify, “you love her and always will but you're not
in
love with her? That's why you're running off with Carmen Miranda.”

“Carmen Miranda?”

“You know what I mean. Whatever her name is. The Guatemalan clerk.”

“My affair—if you can call it that, though I think it's a stretch—is over. It's been over for months.”

I'm speechless. This makes no sense. The way Nancy put it at the Princeton Arms, Ron was ready to make his girlfriend a child bride.

“You mean you're not getting remarried?”

“No. Who told you that?”

I don't want to say Nancy because, knowing her, she wouldn't want Ron to know that we'd been talking about him. Though, really, how could we not?

“Have you told Nancy this?”

“Of course. That's why I'm dragging my feet in the divorce proceedings. I've apologized and offered to go to counseling and thrown myself at her feet. But she just won't listen. Even now she walked right past me into Deb's room. Didn't say a word.”

I eye Deb's room.

“I'll put in a good word for you,” I say, moving to the door.

“Tell her I've ordered a recliner for Deb. From everything I've read, you can't sleep a wink after this surgery without one. It should be at her house in an hour.”

I give him an encouraging thumbs-up and go in.

Deb's room is filled with so many whirring and blinking machines that I'm rather shocked. I don't know what I'd expected, but not all this technology. Deb is in the bed closest to the door and she is knocked out. Nancy is by the window, flipping through a magazine.

There is a pulse monitor on Deb's finger and a tube up her nose. An IV. A catheter bag and other tubes that are mysteries. A machine above her tracks her heartbeat and her oxygen level. And there are these strange stockings on her legs pumping and releasing. Somewhere along the way Deb went in for stomach stapling and came out as Frankenstein's monster.

“Nancy,” I whisper.

Nancy looks up from her magazine. I can tell by her expression that she might have overheard my conversation with Ron. “I don't want to discuss him. Not now.”

OK . . . I change the subject. “How's Deb doing?”

Nancy the former nurse gets up and gives Deb a professional assessment. Nancy's looking thinner in the face, I notice. Either that or it's the dim lighting working to her advantage.

“She was moaning for Paul a little while ago.”

I try to think positive. “Tell me he just ran out to get lunch.”

“Nope. He hasn't been here all day. Not even this morning. I asked the nurses.”

What is wrong with him? Paul and Deb have been married since the day after graduation from high school. Before that they were boyfriend and girlfriend since fourth grade and king and queen of our high school prom in Manville. It's rare for people to refer to one or the other alone. It's always Deb-and-Paul something.

So it doesn't make sense that he wouldn't be here for this, the most significant medical event in Deb's life aside from her appendectomy two years ago and the birthing of their two kids.

“I tried calling him,” Nancy says, “but all I got on the phone was Anna. Naturally, she was worried about her mother and said her dad has promised to take them to the hospital later. Though she had no idea what later meant.”

Deb stirs and opens her eyes with fluttering lids. Seeing us, she smiles and then winces. Nancy efficiently takes charge, dabbing Deb's lips with a wet washcloth and applying a thin coat of Vaseline to them.

“Thanks,” Deb says, trying to sit up but failing. “I had no idea this would be so painful.”

“Won't be painful for long. The sooner you get up and walk around, the better.” Nancy fluffs the pillow behind Deb's head. “The good news is that you did really, really well. The surgery went off without a hitch.”

Deb beams. I open the shade to let some light in, which is when she sees the large bouquet by her bed.

Instantly I realize my mistake. Nancy shoots me a worried glance as Deb leans over and eagerly reads the tag. “From . . . Ron? Who's Ron?”

Nancy and I say nothing.

“You mean Nancy's Ron?” Deb blinks in the light.

“Isn't that nice of him?” I chirp. “He's ordered you a reclining chair, too, so you'll be more comfortable.”

Her face falls five stories. Turning to Nancy, she says, “And you're getting me a live-in nurse for a week.”

Nancy pretends to be busy checking this and that. Meanwhile I surreptitiously dump my own roses in the metal garbage can under the sink.

“But my husband of seventeen years does nothing. Doesn't even kiss me good-bye this morning.” Deb shuts her eyes. I hope she won't cry again. She may be the queen of the water-works, but she's been crying way too much lately.

Fortunately the bariatric nurse comes in and makes it clear that she wants us to vamoose.

“Do you mind, Nola?” Nancy asks, as we tiptoe to the door. “Could you tell Ron that I really don't want to see him? Not now.”

My heart sinks. Nancy can be so stubborn. Just once I wish she could learn to go with the flow.

“OK,” I say reluctantly.

As if having second thoughts, she touches my back. “Though make sure you tell him that his generosity hasn't gone unnoticed. I really appreciate it.”

Thin comfort, if you ask me.

Ron is still waiting, scrolling through his BlackBerry, when I step out. I don't have to say a word. He gets it right away, smart boy that he is.

“She does say thank-you, though. And that your generosity hasn't gone unnoticed. She really appreciates it.”

He nods and shrugs on his coat. “I keep telling myself I deserve this cold shoulder. I guess it's a question of how much is too much.”

I have to agree. It's a damn good question. Only, I'm not sure it has an answer.

 
On the way home from the hospital, I prepare myself for my date/confrontation with “Mystery Chip” by making a pit stop at the Army-Navy Store on Witherspoon—where I pick up a handy, if lethal, Leatherman knife set—and then St. Anne's Roman Catholic Church, a couple blocks from my house. It all makes sense, really.

At church I light a candle for Deb. I practice kneeling for a long time, debating whether this suits me. I don't really like the idea of waking up at four to do sunrise masses or sleeping on a straw tick mattress. Perhaps there is a booklet around here on whether straw tick mattresses are must-haves for today's woman in the holy order.

Luckily, I discover that straw tick mattresses and hair suits are out! That's according to a pamphlet called
So . . . You Want to Be a Nun
? I found under a bunch of miter boxes. It is written in vocabulary an eight-year-old could understand—which raises serious questions about the recruitment policies of the Church, if you ask me.

It is fascinating reading that answers most of my concerns such as: Who Can Be a Nun? Can You Be a Nun? Can I Be a Nun If I've Been Married? Can I Be a Nun If I'm a Widow? Can I Be a Nun If I've Had Premarital Sex?

Boy. These nun wannabes really get around.

Good news. I
can
be a nun. I have never been married and though I have had premarital sex, albeit bad premarital sex, I am not disqualified. Better yet, I don't have to take a vow of poverty!

Vows of poverty are only for certain orders. Certain orders (would that be the Botox Order of Beverly Hills?) believe that material possessions do not interfere with a nun's relationship with her divine husband, God. (That is until He gets a peek at this month's Mastercard bill.)