The Cinderella Pact (5 page)

The theory behind this is similar to the Alcoholics Anonymous step where you have to apologize to people for trashing their lampshades or puking on their carpet along with telling them that you've stopped drinking. That's the thing about being fat. There aren't many opportunities to trash lampshades. Still, Dr. Anne Renée Krugenheim is confident that making these phone calls will ensure that I won't be “sidetracked” or “lost in the woods.”

I get the impression there will be no shortage of travel metaphors in
Who Moved My Fat?

Call your loved ones now,
Dr. Anne Renée Krugenheim admonishes us.
Any delay postpones the journey.

Gee. I wouldn't want to do that. I look up and discover the traffic has moved approximately one inch.

Before I hesitate a minute longer, I take out my cell and dial Mom's number at work.

Mom is a secretary in the Princeton municipal clerk's office. She's the rectangular one in the sexless, hand-sewn denim jumpers and booster pins that say
Go Tigers!
, who puts homemade oatmeal raisin cookies on the counter to appease the locals coming in to pay their property taxes or buy dog tags. I am convinced that she has outlasted eight administrations, both Republican and Democrat, solely because of her secret recipe for Swedish meatballs in tangy sour cream sauce—a dish that could melt the hardest heart of any conniving politician.

Like me, Mom is not small, though she was thin—allegedly—when she married Dad. Somewhere after the honeymoon she got it into her head that being a wife meant serving up meat smothered in sauce, buttered vegetables (one grown above ground/one grown below), and a starch for every dinner, followed by a dessert to rival the ones on the cover of
Woman's Day
.

Butterscotch brownies topped by vanilla ice cream (honestly, did we need the ice cream?). Banana pudding made with Nilla wafers. Blueberry pie and “lite” Cool Whip . . .

This was the house I grew up in. Meatloaf and twice-baked potatoes with sour cream. Short ribs and poppyseed noodles. Chicken potpie in a flaky crust. Pot roast cooked with dark beer. Lasagna with sausage and three kinds of cheese, accompanied by garlic bread. Knockwurst and sauerkraut in a Crock-Pot. (Crock-Pots are very big with my mother. She reveres them as miracles akin to the NASA space station.)

For dessert there was homemade thick hot-fudge sauce over mint-chip ice cream. Ginger cookies with unsulfured molasses for a snack every day after school along with a tall glass of cold whole milk. Even our Friday night fish was battered and fried. Plus, just in case we hadn't been satisfied, a big basket of sliced white bread at every table at every meal, accompanied by a stick of butter.

And the doctor was confused as to why I topped 150 in seventh grade.

Mom answers the phone like she's at home. “It's Betty!”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Nola! I was just going to call you.”

“First hear me out. I have big news,” I begin dramatically, already feeling teary at the thought of what I'm about to declare. “I am going on an exciting weight-loss journey that is guaranteed to change my life forever.”

“A spa? Caroline Spivak went to a spa and lost ten pounds of sweat.”

“No.” I clear my throat and try again. “I'm going on a diet, or
diata
—which, I don't know if you know this, means ‘prescribed way of living' in Greek.”

“I'll have to tell Nicky Spanadopolous. He's Greek, you know.”

“It's Greek to me!” someone in the background yells, spawning an uproarious round of laughter at the Princeton muni clerk's office.

“Are you coming to Eileen's birthday party?” Mom asks.

Clearly, she does not appreciate the gravity of what I have just announced, that I am embarking on an exciting weight-loss journey that is guaranteed to change my life forever.

“It's on the twentieth,” she reminds me. “At her house. Your father and I are buying her a new set of tires.”

My parents cannot do enough for Eileen, the baby in the family. And I say this without one ounce of sibling rivalry. My sister is thirty-two, works full-time as a hairdresser, drives a leased late-model Camaro, and has a serious boyfriend named Jim Russell, whom we've secretly nicknamed
Jack
Russell because he is as wiry and hyperactive as a terrier. Despite this adult lifestyle, she somehow gets our mother to wash and iron all her clothes and our dad to help pay her Visa bill, on which she once charged a spontaneous trip to Hawaii.

Don't even talk to me about Eileen.

“Of course,” I say, though it had completely slipped my mind.

“If you haven't gotten her a gift yet, I have the perfect one in mind.”

Here it comes. The diamond ring my grandmother gave me. My left kidney. My favorite spleen.

“See, Eileen was over for dinner and
E!
came on. There was a brief segment about Belinda Apple and Nigel Barnes and how they're an item and all. Now Eileen wants to talk to Belinda about something personal,” Mom is saying. “I told her to write Belinda a letter like everyone else, but apparently whatever is bugging her can't wait. I thought maybe, for her birthday, you could have Belinda give Eileen a call at the party. She can put her on speakerphone!”

Nooo!!
I give my head a slight bang against the steering wheel. I can see it now. Me as Belinda on speakerphone. Eileen, Mom, Dad, and Jack Russell all listening in, commenting that her voice sounds so familiar. Why, you could swear she's Nola.

“Eileen will be forever grateful to you. It'll be a hoot!”

It'll be hooting impossible. How am I supposed to pull off Belinda on the telephone if I have to be at the same party at the same time? Ventriloquism is not one of my talents. Not yet.

I really want to dissuade Mom of this brainstorm except for some reason my windshield is fogging up. No. It's not really fogging up, it's . . . smoke. Smoke rising from the hood of my car, which has been idling in the traffic jam. A mere twenty feet from my exit ramp to the Princeton North Corporate Office Park.

“Gotta go, Mom,” I say, waving the smoke out of my eyes.

“Wait! What about Belinda Apple calling on Sunday? Is that a yes?”

I quickly shout “Whatever!” and then click off because the smell inside my car is worse than the perpetually burning trash fires down in Perth Amboy and I have started coughing uncontrollably. I careen my ancient and now exploding Audi Fox off the highway, past the breakdown lane, and onto the grass before I wiggle out, remembering at the very last minute to grab Belinda's cell phone from the seat next to me.

Which means I am standing at the edge of the highway in a black pantsuit on a ninety-degree June day. Of course I am wearing black. I always wear black to work, no matter what the temperature. I also always wear long sleeves and, if I'm in a skirt, hose. Queen size. I'd do well in Afghanistan.

Something goes poof under the hood of my Fox, and the front of my car explodes in flames. I'd rush around and do something except that I am already five minutes late to the “Mandatory Staff Meeting” on which hangs my entire career. I freeze, uncertain what to do.

“This your car?”

An East Brunswick cop who is equally sweaty and hot is standing next to me with a red fire extinguisher. “Don't go near it, OK? Back off.”

He lifts the extinguisher and sprays the hood. The flames disappear as white steam rises along with a sickening acrid smell. “Thank you,” I say, coughing. “I'll move her off the berm.”

“There's nothing you can do with this heap now,” he says cruelly. “She's history.”

“But it can't be a heap. It's my car.”

“Trust me. It's a heap. I'd lose my badge if I let you get behind the wheel.” He pulls out a walkie-talkie and radios for a tow truck.

I regard my forlorn Audi. My first car, ever. This is the car that drove me to college and the Jersey Shore and, once, to Boston to see the Rolling Stones. This is the car in which I made out with Robbie Spillman in twelfth grade. This car defines me.

“You need a ride somewhere?” the cop is asking nicely.

“Actually, I work right up there.” I point behind me to the fortress. I am reluctant to leave my car but here's the tow truck, its yellow lights flashing, coming to take my Audi to the Big Scrap Heap in the sky.

I can't bear to see the Audi treated like a piece of junk. I turn my attention to the hillside littered with McDonald's bags and dirty socks and various bits of garbage. Climb the hill and I'll be at the Princeton North parking lot. Climb the hill and I just might make the meeting in time.

I thank the cop again, give him my address so the tow truck can bill me, and start the climb.

The hill turns out to be much steeper than it seems from the highway and I can feel rivulets of sweat running down my arms. There's a mirror in my purse, but I don't dare check my reflection lest I turn myself into stone. My black pants are snagged and covered with burrs. Good thing I've got twenty more pairs at home.

I pause halfway up to catch my breath. Over to the right I can see the cause of the traffic jam: a car with a front crumpled end at the top of the exit ramp. People are standing around uninjured, so that's a relief.

I plow onward, finally reaching the parking lot, sweat popping out of places I didn't even know sweat could pop out of. To think that Mom's friend Caroline Spivak paid good money to do this. Hah! Bet I've lost five pounds of sweat already.

All I have to do is step over this rather high, rather rusty line of barbed wire, and then I'm safely on the macadam, two steps from the side entrance, a half a stairwell from the conference room, and—
bing!
—I'm home free.

I lift my leg and safely step over. I lift my other and feel a tug on my ass. Wait. Was that a rip? It couldn't be a rip. I pat my behind, cautiously searching for a hole. Nothing. Whew! And then I feel a slight breeze.

Damn. It
is
a rip and not on the seam, either.

I can't see it, though. Maybe if it's not too big I can get by. Hold on. What color underwear am I wearing? No biggie if it's black. I can just slide into the conference room and sit down and no one will be the wiser. Then, after the meeting, I'll slide out and down the stairs, get my friend Lisa or someone to drive me home and change my pants.

Oh shoot, it's pink. All-cotton baby pink Hanes. Perhaps it doesn't show. If I check underneath. I'll just bend over and . . .

“ 'Ello, luv.”

I stop dead in my tracks. My head is between my knees looking up.

“Have you lost something?” The voice is British. Genuine British. Not my fake Monty Python/Posh Spice/Mr. Bean/Belinda Apple British.

I snap up and, in so doing, my hair falls out of its clip and over my face like Cousin Itt. I feel a bit dizzy and I must be dizzy because in front of me is standing Mick Jagger, only thirty years younger. But what would Mick Jagger only thirty years younger (Son of Mick?) be doing near the Route 18 overpass in East Brunswick in the Princeton North Corporate Center?

He grins, and that's when it comes into focus. This isn't Son of Mick. This is Nigel Barnes.
The
Nigel Barnes. Belinda's Nigel Barnes, whom I last saw in the flesh at the annual
Sass!
Christmas party.

That's where he said to me, and I quote, “Did you make these meatballs? They're rather good.”

And I wittily retorted, “Uh-huh.”

And he said, “Family recipe?”

And I grunted, “Mother's.”

At which point he smiled politely and chirped, “Jolly good.” Then some tart from Personnel threw her arms around his neck and dragged him to a group of giggling fellow Personnel tarts tipsy on punch.

He is taller than I remembered. Confident in a classic white shirt, a rather preppy striped tie, and worn jeans and somewhat unshaven face. His hands are large with long, almost graceful fingers. Artistic, I think. And other things that I wouldn't say unless I were Belinda. But I'm not Belinda. I'm Nola. If I were Belinda, I wouldn't be as eloquent as I am now.

“Um.” I start searching my database for a lie that might explain why I, literally, had my head up my ass. “You see . . .”

Forget it. There simply is no easy way to recover from being caught checking the state of your underwear.

Chapter Four

“My car exploded,” I say by way of idiotic explanation as Nigel, probably suspecting that I am a runaway mental patient, insists on escorting me to
Sass!
Much to his obvious surprise, I declare that we are both late for the same meeting.

“You work . . . here?” He turns to me on the stairs where I am keeping a careful distance to fall behind. As a general rule, I try to never end up walking ahead of someone up the stairs so that my rear end is in their face. But today this rule has a codicil. The pink underwear codicil. Today no one will see my ass, not as long as there are walls against which to slink.

“I'm Belinda Apple's editor. We met once at a Christmas party two years ago.” I raise my eyebrows alluringly. “Swedish meatballs.”

“Oh, yes, right. Of course,” he flubs, not remembering me or my meatballs one bit.

Which means I have to gracefully bring up my name so that he won't have to stumble around it. “Yessirree,” I say, as we reach the corridor leading to the conference room. “It's hard to forget
Nola
Devlin's Swedish meatballs.”

“Right. Nola.” He smiles weakly and opens the door to the hallway, though I demur because of the pink-undie codicil. “Apparently Belinda and I are an item. You know, I should sue since I've never even laid eyes on the woman.”