The Cinderella Pact (23 page)

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

“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.

This is all true. From what Charlotte explained to me in a subsequent brief, chaotic phone call from the Hamptons where she is visiting one of her more famous authors over the holiday, Sweet Dream is putting me up in L.A. supposedly as a courtship maneuver. In reality, they're checking me out, to see if I could market a movie on my so-called fake life. If they are impressed during the twenty-minute meeting on Monday morning, there's a deal. If not, it's off.

“What they're looking for is a woman who can appear on the
Today
show, tell her story about fooling four million
Sass!
magazine readers into believing she's Belinda Apple, and yet be compassionate enough, endearing enough, so that people will want to see her story on the big screen,” Charlotte said.

“This woman . . . you mean me, right?”

“Yes, Nola.”

“Will I have to lose weight?”

“Well, television does add fifteen pounds.”

I do the math. My hard work all summer essentially ruined by one measly camera.

After a microwaved lunch of first-class vegetable lasagna (6 to 9 points, depending, but as the other choice was baked halibut in a white sauce, I took the risk) and fruit salad (3 points, though I didn't eat the mushy pineapple) served on real white linen, I lower my first-class window shade and stretch out, pulling the soft blanket tightly under my chin, imagining how I will wow Sweet Dream Productions.

I catnap and fantasize about me sitting knee to knee with Mr. Bigshot of Sweet Dream in his spectacular L.A. digs. He is hanging on every word. He's calling up writers in town, he's waving in interns to hear my tale.

And then Brad Pitt comes in, does a double-take upon seeing me, falls on one knee, and asks me where I've been all his life.

Don't laugh. It's Hollywood. Anything can happen.

There is a bump of turbulence that sends us downward for a couple hundred feet and causes me to nearly wet my pants. I am now fully awake for, like, the rest of my life. I don't think of uncurling my toes until the seat belt sign goes off and the woman in brown heads to the bathroom. She is not Sandra Bullock after all. Just another California girl with a pair of inconceivably bony hips to remind me that I am a fool for ever daring to hope.

Eileen's right. I'll be a spinster forever.

Which is when, with a shot of panic worse than the turbulence, I suddenly remember my sister's engagement party that everyone predicted I'd miss because I'm a hulking jealous thing. They have no idea that I'm 36,000 feet in the air on my way to L.A. to meet slick movie producers. They are livid that I am not in my parents' backyard writing down what gifts my sister's receiving and from whom, even though I'm not her maid of honor.

Now I
will
have to become a nun. Immediately. A cloistered nun, because that will be the only way to get back in my family's good graces again.

 
A man in a black suit in baggage claim at LAX is holding out a sign that says APPLE. I pass it twice before realizing he is not begging for food, that he is waiting to take me in his Lincoln Town Car to the O. Apparently the O is so chic it can't be bothered with the H, T, E, and L that other, lesser accommodations seem to require.

As soon as I climb into the car, I pull out my cell and dial home. Mom answers, sounding tired—and slightly put out.

“Oh, Nola. I'm so disappointed. You said you'd come.” There is the sound of running water in the background and the clatter of dishes. That's right. It's three hours later there and the party must be over.