Good in Bed (14 page)

The nurse's face went from frustrated (and slightly dismissive) to angry (and more than slightly scared). “There's a procedure to this,” she said. “We explained it. Four weeks of behavior-modification classes …”

Lily started thumping her fist on the table. “Drugs … drugs … drugs …” she chanted.

“We can't just hand out prescription medication. …”

“Drugs … drugs … drugs …” Now Bonnie the blond girl and Esther were chanting along as well. The nurse opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I'll get the doctor,” she said, and bolted. The five of us stared at each other for a moment. Then we all burst out laughing.

“She was scared!” Lily hooted.

“Probably thought we'd crush her,” I muttered.

“Sit on her!” gasped Bonnie.

“I hate skinny people,” I said.

Anita looked very serious. “Don't say that,” she said. “You shouldn't hate anyone.”

“Agh,” I sighed. Just then, Dr. K. stuck his head through the door, with the chastened-looking nurse right behind him, practically clinging to the hem of his white coat.

“I understand there's a problem,” he rumbled.

“Drugs!” said Lily.

The doctor had the look of a man who wanted very badly to laugh and was trying very hard not to.

“Is there a movement spokeswoman?” he asked.

Everyone looked at me. I got to my feet, smoothed my shirt, and cleared my throat. “I think that it's the feeling of the group that we've all been through different lectures and courses and support groups concerning behavior modification.” I looked around the table. Everyone seemed to be nodding in agreement. “It's our feeling that we've tried to change our behavior, and eat less, and exercise more, and all of those things that they tell you to do, and what we'd really like … what we're really here for, what we've all paid for, is something new. Namely, drugs,” I concluded, and sat back in my seat.

“Well, I know how you feel,” he said.

“I doubt that very much,” I shot back.

“Well, maybe you can tell me,” he said mildly. “Look,” he said. “It's not like I know the secrets to lifelong weight loss and I'm here to tell them to you. Think of this as a journey … think of it as something we're in on together.”

“Except that our journey led us to the wonderful world of plus-size shopping and lonely nights,” I grumbled.

The doctor smiled at me—a very disarming grin. “Let's forget about fat or thin for a minute,” he said. “If you guys already know the calorie counts of everything, and what a serving of pasta's supposed to look like, then I'm sure you all know that most diets don't work. Not over the long term, anyhow.”

Now he had our attention. It was true, we'd all figured this out (from bitter personal experiences, in most cases), but to hear an authority figure, a doctor, a doctor who was running a weight-loss program, say it … well, that was practically heresy. I half expected security guards to come rushing through the door and drag him off to be re-brainwashed.

“I think,” he continued, “that we'll all have much better luck—and we'll be happier—if we think instead about small lifestyle changes—little things that we can do every day that won't prove unsustainable over the long term. If we think about getting healthier, and feeling happier with ourselves, instead of looking like Courteney …”

He looked at me, eyebrows raised.

“Cox,” I supplied. “Actually, Cox-Arquette. She got married.”

“Right. Her. Forget her. Let's concentrate on the attainable instead. And I promise that nobody here will treat you like you're stupid, no matter what your size is.”

I found I was touched in spite of myself. The guy was actually making sense. Better yet, he wasn't talking down to us. It was … well, revolutionary, really.

The nurse gave us one last disgruntled glance and scurried away. The doctor closed the door and took a seat. “I'd like to do an exercise with you,” he said. He looked around the table. “How many of you ever eat when you're not hungry?”

Dead silence. I closed my eyes. Emotional eating. I'd been through this lecture, too.

“How many of you eat breakfast, and then maybe you come to the office and there's a box of doughnuts and they look good and you'll have one just because they're there?”

More silence. “Dunkin' Donuts or Krispy Kremes?” I finally asked.

The doctor pursed his full lips. “I hadn't thought about it.”

“Well, it makes a difference,” I said.

“Dunkin' Donuts,” he said.

“Chocolate? Jelly? Glazed that somebody from Accounting ripped in half, so there's only half a doughnut left?”

“Krispy Kremes are better,” said Bonnie.

“Especially the warm ones,” said Esther.

I licked my lips.

“The last time I had doughnuts,” said Esther, “someone brought them to work, just like we're talking about, and I picked out one that looked like a Boston cream … you know, it had the chocolate on top?”

We nodded. We all probably knew how to recognize a Boston cream doughnut on sight.

“Then I bit into it,” Esther continued, “and it was …” Her lips curled. “Lemon.”

“Ick,” said Bonnie. “I hate lemon!”

“Okay,” said the doctor, laughing. “My point is, they could be the best doughnuts in the world. They could be the Platonic ideal of doughnut-ness. But if you've already had breakfast, and you aren't really hungry, ideally, you should be able to walk right by.”

We thought about this for a minute. “As if,” Lily finally said.

“Maybe you could try telling yourself that when you are really hungry, if what you're really hungry for is a doughnut, then you can go get one.”

We thought again. “Nope,” said Lily. “I'm still eating the free doughnuts.”

“And how do you know what you're really hungry for?” asked Bonnie. “Like, me … I'm always hungry for the stuff I know I shouldn't be eating. But, like, give me a bag of baby carrots and I'm all, like, whatever.”

“Did you ever try boiling them and mashing them with ginger and orange rind?” asked Lily. Bonnie wrinkled her nose.

“I don't like carrots,” said Anita, “but I do like butternut squash.”

“That's not a vegetable, though. It's a starch,” I said.

Anita looked confused. “How can it not be a vegetable?”

“It's a starchy vegetable. Like a potato. I learned that in Weight Watchers.”

“On Fat and Fiber?” asked Lily.

“Okay then!” said the doctor. I could tell from his eyes that the unruly chatter of five veterans of Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Pritikin, Atkins, et al., was starting to get to him. It couldn't be fun.

“Let's try something,” he said. He walked to the door and flicked off the lights. The room dimmed. Bonnie giggled. “I want you all to close your eyes,” he said, “and try to figure out how you feel right now, right this minute. Are you hungry? Tired? Are you sad, or happy, or anxious? Try to really concentrate, and then try to really separate the physical sensations from what's happening emotionally.”

We all closed our eyes.

“Anita?” asked the doctor.

“I'm tired,” she said immediately.

“Bonnie?”

“Oh, maybe tired. Maybe a little hungry, too,” she said.

“And emotionally?” he prodded.

Bonnie sighed. “I'm sick of my school,” she finally muttered. “The kids say rotten things to me.” I snuck a peek at her. Her eyes were still tightly screwed shut, and her hands were clenched into fists on top of her oversize jeans. High school, evidently, had not gotten any kinder or gentler since my own attendance ten years prior. I wished I could put my hand on her shoulder. Tell her that things would get better … except, given recent events in my own life, I wasn't sure it was the truth.

“Lily?”

“Starving,” Lily said promptly.

“And emotionally?”

“Umm … okay,” she said.

“Just okay?” asked the doctor.

“There's a new episode of
ER
on tonight,” she said. “I can't be anything less than okay.”

“Esther?”

“I'm ashamed,” said Esther, and burst into tears. I opened my eyes. The doctor pulled a small packet of Kleenex out of his pocket and handed it over.

“Why ashamed?” he asked gently.

Esther smiled weakly. “'Cause before we started I was looking at the plastic pork chop, and I was thinking that it didn't look half bad.”

That broke the tension. We all started laughing, even the doctor. Esther sniffled, wiping her eyes.

“Don't worry,” Lily said. “I was thinking the exact same thing about the pat of butter on the food pyramid.”

The doctor cleared his throat. “And Candace?” he asked.

“Cannie,” I said.

“How are you?”

I closed my eyes, but only for a second, and what I saw was Bruce's face, Bruce's brown eyes close to mine. Bruce saying that he loved me. Then I opened them and looked right at him. “Fine,” I said, even though it wasn't true. “I'm fine.”

“So how'd it go?” asked Samantha. We were panting on side-by-side StairMasters that night at the gym.

“So far, not bad,” I said. “No drugs yet. The doctor who's leading the class seems okay.”

We climbed in silence for a few minutes, the belts grinding and squeaking beneath our feet as a Funky Fitness class blared away beside us. Our gym seemed determined to attract new members by offering every flavor-of-the-week fitness class, so we had Pilates, gospel aerobics, interval spinning, and something called the Fireman's Full-Body Workout, complete with hoses, ladders, and a one-hundred-pound mannequin to be hauled up and down the stairs. Meanwhile, the roof leaked, the air conditioners were iffy, and the Jacuzzi always seemed to be under repair.

“And how was the rest of your day, dear?” asked Sam, wiping her face with her sleeve. I told her about Mr. Deiffinger's angry defense of Céline Dion.

“I hate readers,” I gasped, as my StairMaster kicked into a higher gear. “Why do they have to get so personal?”

“I guess he probably figures that you were messing with Céline, so you deserve it.”

“Yeah, but she's public property. I'm just me.”

“But not to him, you're not. Your name's in the paper. That makes you public property, just like Céline.”

“Only bigger.”

“And with better taste. And not,” said Samantha sternly, “with any plans to marry your seventy-year-old manager who's known you since you were twelve.”

“Oh, now who's being critical?” I asked.

“Damn Canadians,” said Samantha. She'd spent a few years working in Montreal, had endured a disastrous love affair with a man there, and never had anything nice to say about our neighbors to the North, including Peter Jennings, whom she steadfastly refused to watch, arguing that he'd taken a job that should have rightfully gone to an American—“someone who knows how to say the word
about.
”

After forty miserable minutes, we adjourned to the steam room, wrapped ourselves in towels, and assumed prone positions on the benches.

“How's the Yoga King?” I inquired.

Sam gave a satisfied-looking smile and raised her arms above her head, reaching toward the ceiling. “I'm feeling very flexible,” she said smugly.

I threw my towel at her head. “Don't torture me,” I said. “I'm probably never going to have sex again.”

“Oh, cut it out, Cannie,” said Samantha. “And you know this won't last. Mine never do.” Which was true. Sam's love life, of late, had been uniquely cursed. She'd meet a guy and go out with him once, and everything would be wonderful. They'd meet again, and things would be clicking along. And then, on the third date, there'd be some horrible awkward moment, some unbelievable revelation, something that would basically make it impossible for Sam to see the guy again. Her last guy, a Jewish doctor with a fabulous résumé
and an enviable physique, had looked like a contender until Date #3, when he'd taken Sam home for dinner and she'd been disturbed to find a picture of his sister prominently displayed in the entryway hall.

“What's wrong with that?” I'd asked.

“She was topless,” Samantha'd replied. Exit Dr. Right, enter the Yoga King.

“Look at it this way,” said Samantha. “It was a lousy day, but now it's over.”

“I just wish I could talk to him.”

Samantha brushed her hair back over her shoulders, propped her head on an elbow, and stared down at me from her perch on one of the upper tiers of wooden benches. “To Mr. Deiffledorf?”

“Deiffinger. No, not him.” I ladled more water on the hot rocks so the steam billowed around us. “To Bruce.”

Samantha squinted at me through the haze. “Bruce? I don't get it.”

“What if …” I said slowly. “What if I made a mistake?”

She sighed. “Cannie, I listened to you for months talk about how things weren't right, how things weren't getting better, how you knew that taking a break would be the right thing to do in the long run. And even though you were upset right after it happened, I never heard you say that you'd made the wrong decision.”

“What if I think something different now?”

“Well, what changed your mind?”

I thought about my answer. The article was part of it. Bruce and I had never talked about my whole weight thing. Maybe if we had … if he had some sense of how I felt, if I had some inkling of how much he understood … maybe things could have been different.

But more than that, I missed talking to him, telling him how my day went, blowing off steam about Gabby's latest salvos, reading him potential leads for my stories, scenes from my screenplays.

“I just miss him,” I said lamely.

“Even after what he wrote about you?” asked Sam.