Dear Emily (19 page)

“No.”

“I’ll buy you a pair for Christmas. I like this robe.”

“I’ll buy you one for Christmas just like it.”

“See, we’re saying we’re going to be around at Christmas time. As in together. Now, aren’t you sorry you didn’t open the door sooner?”

“No. I had to do what I did to get to this place in time. I have a long way to go, Ben. I made up my mind tonight to file for divorce. I’m also going to go and get a face-lift. I’m doing it for myself, not for you, just for me.”

“What’s wrong with your face?” Ben asked curiously. “I think it’s kind of nice.”

“I think I look…like three miles of used road. Too much excess skin. See, when I do this,” Emily said, pulling the skin back from her cheekbones, “what a difference it makes.”

“It does look better, but are you sure you want to go under the knife for something that isn’t crucial?”

“I think so. All this loose skin, my look, it’s the old Emily, the Emily that thought she belonged to Ian. I want
me
back and I’m not confusing aging with the way I look. I don’t expect you to understand. I do and that’s all that’s important. Thanks, though, for saying I look okay.”

“To me you do. Tell me now, am I fired?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” Ben said, smacking his hands together. He blew his nose lustily before he said, “Emily, I have an idea. See what you think of it. I think, and this is just my opinion, but I think it will take you right to the top if you go for it.”

“Wait a minute. Are we done with that business at your house?”

“I never dwell on something when it’s settled. We settled it. When and if we ever decide to make love, we’ll do it the way Ben and Emily want to do it. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won’t. We’re friends again. That’s important to me. Do you want to pick it apart?”

“No. What’s your idea?” she asked, her eyes wide with curiosity. There would be a next time; she was sure of it.

“Do you remember telling me about that video you made of yourself a long time ago?”

“The one where I let it all hang out, where I’m in my underwear?”

“That’s the one unless you made another one. Do you have the guts to show that to your customers? Instead of Charley with his satin cape and me doing your aerobics, which is going to get stale real quick. I think you can make that tape work for you. Look at you now. You are the living proof. Show them the tape. Give it to them so they can see that if you could do it, so can they. I want you to think about that, Emily.”

“I never showed that tape to anyone. I made it to torture myself.”

“How many times have you looked at it?”

“I’ve never looked at it. I would rather take a physical beating than look at that tape.”

“That’s the wrong attitude, Emily. You should be proud of all you’ve accomplished. You yourself said it was a long, hard road.”

“I’m still traveling that road. You really don’t think Charley is going to help me in the long run, do you?”

“No, Emily, I don’t. Gimmicks are okay once in a while. They’re fun, but your business isn’t a fun business. You’re trying to do something, build something that will give you and your friends a future, so you have to take it seriously. Yes, business dictates you do whatever you have to do to get customers in the door, but you have to be able to back that business up with a product or a service. I want you to think about it. And I want you to think about something else. Is it possible you went too fast, opened too many clinics all at once? In the back of your mind, were you trying to one-up your husband by opening eight where he opened four?”

“Oh, no, Ben, that had nothing to do with it. I did eight so each of my roommates and myself would have a clinic to operate. We’re partners.”

“As long as you’re sure. By the way, I feel like hell.”

“You look like hell too. Do you want to stay here tonight and leave early in the morning? I can make up the couch for you. It’s still raining outside.”

“No, I have to go back. I might be able to convince Ted’s mother to drop him off in the morning if I don’t feel better.”

“I’m sorry about this evening.”

“And well you should be. Be sure to bring me chicken soup if you don’t hear from me. I’ll call you tomorrow night when Ted leaves. Thanks for the tea.”

A smile tugged at the corners of Emily’s mouth when she held out her hand for the flowered housecoat. “Promise me you’ll go straight to bed. Drink some more tea and stay warm. Take a hot shower before you go to bed too.”

“Yes, Mother,” Ben said wearily.

“Good night, Ben.”

“Good night, Emily.”

I
t was a cloudy, overcast day with a hint of snow in the air when Emily unlocked the kitchen door. She’d closed early because she thought she was coming down with a cold. As she set about making tea, however, she knew she wasn’t catching a cold—it was just an excuse to come home and go over her books.

Two weeks until Christmas, two weeks and one day until her surgery in New York. Maybe she should cancel the face-lift and use the money for the clinics. It didn’t matter that she and the others had taken a vote and all had agreed that she should go ahead as planned. Someway, somehow, they’d manage. The seventeen thousand dollars she’d gotten two weeks ago for the sale of her fur coats was to be used for the surgery, since her health insurance didn’t pay for cosmetic surgery. It was decadent of her to do this, but she didn’t care.

Her head pounded and her shoulders were so tight she felt like a wooden doll whose owner was about to snap off her arms. She lit a cigarette, her first in weeks, and gulped at the black currant tea before she opened the ledger she’d carried home. What
was
she to do? They were deep in the red. Charley had given his notice and would be leaving the first of the year. Bodybuilding, his obsession, beckoned, as did a girl named Winona who professed to love muscles. Charley was going into training so he could do the circuit, whatever that meant.

Emily turned the pages of the ledger to the last page, where her personal finances were listed. She needed only one page. It was time to sell her jewelry, time to put the shore house on the market. Ian’s share would be put into an escrow account should he ever come back. Maybe she could take out a small second mortgage on this house.

Did she have the guts to dip into the last ninety thousand dollars of her retirement money? Whatever it takes, Emily. You can do this. You have to do it. You committed. So did the others.

She finished the tea, made another cup. She was on her second cigarette when she started to think about the video she’d made the day she got mugged. Ben’s words rang in her ears. Was he right? More than likely. How was she to show that video to the world? Ben was a man; he didn’t understand shame, guilt, and rejection. He didn’t understand rolls of fat, sagging breasts, thighs that rubbed together, a big ass whose excess fat formed rolls where the elastic on her panties met. He didn’t understand slumped shoulders because of low self-esteem and a fat, ugly body. Ben saw his clients in drop-dead sweat suits with pretty little sweatbands. So what if there was fat underneath? He didn’t
see
it, so he didn’t know what he was asking her to do.

Once Ian had said she was as pretty as a butterfly. She burst into tears. Damn, she thought, she was past this sniveling. “I hate you, Ian Thorn. God, how I hate you. I hope your damn white shirts are full of messy wrinkles.” She finished the last of the tea and crushed out her cigarette. The others wouldn’t be home for another hour and a half so she had time to…

A moment later she was off the chair, pulling the camcorder and video off the shelf in the closet. It took another minute to turn on the VCR and the TV. She sat down on the chair, the remote in her hand. She shrank into herself as she stared at her reflection. Her eyes filled again when she stared at her underwear-clad body. She rewound the tape, played it three more times before she pressed the Stop button. She could continue the tape now if she wanted to. Part two, so to speak. The question was, Did she want to? My God, no, she didn’t. Whatever it takes, Emily. The worst is over. The first part is the
before
part. This second part is the
after
part. Get your face right up there so everyone can see what the years did to you. Take off that sweatshirt and let everyone see what you look like in your pink leotard. Let them see the deformed butterfly. Whatever it takes, Emily, you can do. For yourself, for the others, and for everyone who is going to see this video. For free yet. God!

Emily pressed the Record button and backed up to the chair she’d been sitting on. “This is Emily Thorn,” she began. “If you’re watching this, it means you’ve seen the first part of the video I made when I was at the lowest point in my life. I didn’t have the courage, the guts, if you will, to look at it until today. A long time ago my ex-husband said I was as pretty as a butterfly.” She moved closer to the camcorder. “I don’t look like a pretty butterfly and I don’t feel like one either. However, I feel fit and healthy, and beauty, as we all know, is in the eye of the beholder. Easy to say, right?” She backed away again. “Take a good look at me, ladies.” She turned around, did a few deep knee bends, did a few pirouettes, dropped to her stomach and did some pushups with rapid-fire motions. “I can do this now. I’m in shape now without one extra ounce of body fat that my body doesn’t need. Today I can eat anything I want as long as I practice moderation.”

Emily licked at her lips, her eyes filling again. “About thirty minutes ago I was sitting in my kitchen drinking tea and smoking a cigarette, which I know I shouldn’t have done, but I have virtually kicked the habit. Anyway, I was sitting there thinking about my appointment to have a face-lift after Christmas. I thought of it as an investment in myself. But I was kidding myself. I was doing it for pure vanity. I wanted to be the Emily Thorn who was as pretty as a butterfly. I realize now I’m not a butterfly nor was I ever a butterfly. I’m me, Emily Thorn. There were never two Emily Thorns. That’s where I went wrong, but I am now correcting that mistake. Please, bear with me for a few moments until I can get my thoughts together so I can go on to part three of this video.”

Emily tried to marshal her thoughts. If Ben was right, then what she said was paramount and it couldn’t be rehearsed. She had to say what she thought, what she believed. She stared into the single eye of the camcorder and said, “I want to believe I am a survivor. Now, many of you are going to ask yourselves, What does any of this have to do with physical fitness? For me, it had everything to do with getting my life on track. Now, as I look back, I know that I wasted half of my life. My husband left me after I put him through medical school. He didn’t leave me destitute. He left me some money and a house with a huge mortgage and…and sixty-two pounds of fat; my fat. Fortunately for me I have a wonderful support system that came about because of all of this. All of us at Emily’s Fitness Centers will be your support system. It doesn’t matter what your reasons are, we’ll be there for you. We’ll teach you how and when to exercise, how to eat, how to treat your body kindly to attain the best results for you. You, as an individual. We are women helping women. I don’t know who you are so you are going to have to come to us. Don’t waste your life; don’t give it away. Live it to the fullest. Dare to be you.

“And now I’m going to pause this camera one more time and go to one of our clinics and show you what we’re all about.” Emily pressed the Stop button. Tomorrow she would take the camcorder in early and have Lena or one of the girls help her finish the video. She was totally exhausted. There really was such a thing as mental torture. Did mental torture burn off calories?

In the kitchen, Emily looked at the clock. She might as well make dinner since she was home. Broiled chicken, steamed vegetables mixed with lemon and dill, baked potato, a lettuce and carrot salad with a honey Dijon dressing, and sugar-free strawberry Jell-O. She’d baste the chicken with Sausy Susan and,
voilà,
a substantial dinner as well as dessert with very little sugar.

She enjoyed the dinner hour with her friends more than she enjoyed the food. Before, she’d lived to eat; like the others, now she ate to live. Tonight while they sat around the living room, they’d snack on popcorn and drink herbal tea.

Her eyes clouded with worry, Emily set the table. She was folding the napkins when Ben knocked on the back door and let himself in at the same time. “Just in time for dinner. Sometimes I do things just right,” he teased.

“Shall I set another place?”

“If you’re inviting me, yes.”

“What brings you here at this hour?”

“I have a new client on Woodland. It was so close I just decided to stop and see you.”

He looks wonderful, Emily thought. Even at the end of the day in his sweats, he looks like a man with a purpose. He was handsome in a homely, rugged kind of way. She felt a tingle of something she hadn’t felt in a long time. “I’m glad you did,” she said warmly. “I was wondering if you’d like to have dinner with me this weekend. My treat. Or is that one of those
no,
whoa, things?”

“If you want to pay, it’s okay with me. I find it…titillating that a woman is asking me for a date, but I want you to know I’m modern enough to accept and be gracious in my acceptance. I’ll look forward to it. And no, it’s not a
no
or whoa thing.” He grinned from ear to ear. “I thought you were going to bring me chicken soup when I was sick.”

“I didn’t have any chicken. That was a long time ago. I also remember you saying you were going to call me that Sunday and you didn’t.”

“I was too sick.”

“Same principle as me not having any chicken, eh?”

“Or tit for tat,” Ben said breezily.

“I thought about you a lot after that…that evening.”

“I thought about you too, Emily. Actually, it’s getting close to the holidays and I wanted to be around real people. My wife and her new husband are going to California for the holidays so I’m kind of bumming, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m sorry, Ben. Don’t you get holiday visitation rights or do you alternate?”

“We’re supposed to alternate, but this is a delayed honeymoon for them. I get Ted for the next two Christmases. She was civil about the whole thing. Ted wanted to go, so what could I do?”

“Just what you did. You’re welcome to spend Christmas with us if you want. We plan on doing it up big Christmas Eve and sleeping in Christmas Day then having a big dinner. Big dinner on Christmas Eve too. Hey, let’s all go together to pick out a tree next weekend or even this weekend, if you want. Sunday would be good. I know where there’s a wonderful tree farm down off Route 130. I love Christmas. I have boxes and boxes of ornaments and lights.” Her voice was breathless as she waited for his reply.

“I accept. I’ll bring the wine.”

“You’ll have to do better than wine. You need to show up with
presents.
Shopping bags filled with presents. There’s eight of us,” Emily twinkled.

“Duly noted. Wine and presents. I hope it snows.”

“I do too. They said it might snow over the weekend. Wouldn’t it be great if we were out choosing a tree and it started to snow. Jeez, it would make me
soooo
happy. The girls are home,” Emily said as she turned on the broiler. “If you want to help, you can pour that dressing on the salad and toss it. I’m doing the potatoes in the microwave so we’ll be ready to eat in fifteen minutes.”

Having a man in the house, in the kitchen,
did
make a difference, Emily thought as the group teased and laughed, poked and ribbed each other.

They didn’t talk about business at all. Instead the conversation concerned Christmases of long ago, selecting the right tree, getting “dolled up” as Martina put it, for midnight services, opening presents afterward, toasting each other and then going to bed.

Emily sat back and watched the interaction between Ben and her roommates. In all the years of her marriage to Ian, they’d never had a dinner party, never had guests to their home. Once or twice they’d eaten out with one of Ian’s colleagues and each time it had been a disaster afterward. She wasn’t dressed quite right, she didn’t sparkle enough, she didn’t contribute to the conversation and then the ultimate punishment of silence on Ian’s part; sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks. She knew she was smiling and it felt good. She was living; finally.

“Lordy, lordy, everything is gone,” Kelly said, getting up to clear the table. “I love healthy appetites.”

“Invite me again and I’ll do the same every time. I can cook, but I find it easier to just grab something. This was a nutritious meal. I can see why you’re all slimming down. I can help with the dishes or I can go home,” Ben said.

“I’ll wash; it’s my turn,” Emily said. “You can dry.”

“I break a lot of dishes,” Ben said.

“In that case, here’s your coat,” Lena said, ushering him to the back door. Hoots of displeasure followed him out the door. “Just like a man. Eat and run. Go on, see if we care. Next time you’re washing and drying. Bring your own paper plates.” The kitchen was suddenly a beehive as the women pitched in to help Emily.

“I want to call a meeting,” Emily said, hanging up the dishtowel.

“We knew,” Zoë said. “That’s why we shooed Ben out.”

“How’d you know?” Emily asked, her face full of amazement.

“We’re women,” Lena said as if that explained everything. “Are we right?”

“Let’s go into the living room. I want to show you a video, but before I do, we need a short business meeting.” The women trooped into the living room. Nancy was the last to take her place in the circle around the floor. She placed the tray with the Styrofoam cups and the coffeepot next to her. She poured and passed the cups to the others.

“We’re at another low. Charley’s moving on. We knew he would and he was a gimmick. We can’t afford gimmicks any longer. We can stay in business for another six months, but then I’m tapped out. There won’t be anyplace else to get money. The banks still won’t lend us any; that much I’m sure of. That means we have to make it on our own.”

“How bad off are we?” they asked together.

“Bad. There’s no place else to turn. I don’t have a magic wand. We have all tried so hard, given it everything we have. There’s no place else to cut back. We have some goodwill, some word of mouth, but it isn’t enough for now. I’ve made mistakes that have cost us money.”

“We all have a little savings. If we give it, will it help?” Martina asked.

“Of course it will help, but I can’t ask all of you to give up what little security you have,” Emily said.

“You did,” the Demster twins said smartly.