Mad River Road (11 page)

The phone rang and Lily answered it. “Scully’s,” she said with a smile. “Yes, we certainly are open. That’s right, from seven a.m. to ten p.m. Monday through Saturday, and from eight to six on Sunday. Uh-huh. Yes, absolutely, I can do that,” Lily continued, responding to the caller’s request for more information. “Well, membership is normally an initial payment of five hundred dollars, plus thirty dollars a month, but we’re currently offering a special of only two hundred and fifty dollars to join. Plus the thirty dollars a month, yes.”

“Don’t forget to mention the free mug and T-shirt,” Jan said.

“And we’re throwing in a free mug and T-shirt,” Lily added dutifully.

“Get her name,” Jan reminded Lily just as she was about to ask for it.

“Can I have your name?” Lily grabbed a pencil, scribbled
Arlene Troper
on a nearby piece of paper. “Yes, we have several treadmills, as well as a couple of elliptical machines and an extensive collection of free weights.” She peered through the glass wall at the rather paltry display of old equipment. “We also have a bench press, a rowing machine, and a stationary bicycle. No, we don’t have a Gravitron. We’ve found that the simpler things work best,” Lily improvised quickly. What do you expect for these prices? she was tempted to ask but didn’t. “As well, we can provide you with a personalized exercise routine to suit your needs. Yes, that’s included in the initial payment. Good. Well, thank you, Mrs. Troper. I look forward to seeing you then. Okay. Thank you.” She hung up the phone. “Arlene Troper says she’ll drop by sometime this afternoon.”

“It’s the free mug,” Jan said with a laugh. “Gets them every time.”

Jan was smiling, but Lily could tell she was worried. Membership had fallen off substantially ever since Art Scully had opened his own gym in a competing mall only several blocks away. Art’s Gym was bigger and boasted better and newer equipment. Art was also offering a deal on membership that included a free T-shirt—although not a free mug, as Jan was quick to point out.

Jan slung her large, floral-print purse over her shoulder, took a long, critical look at her reflection in the glass of the trophy case, and headed for the door. “I’ll see you later,” she said. “What book are we supposed to have read for tonight?”

Lily sighed. The five women who made up her monthly book club were supposed to come prepared. At
the very least, they were supposed to have read the book being discussed.
“Wuthering Heights,”
Lily told her.

“Oh, great. I read it in high school. Cathy and that guy, Clifford …?”

“Heathcliff.”

“Right. Good stuff. Anyway, I’m off. Wish me luck.”

“Why do you need luck?” Lily asked.

But the front door was already closing, and the only response Lily received was the flutter of Jan’s long, orange nails waving good-bye.

“Good luck,” Lily called out belatedly, hoping that Jan wasn’t about to do anything foolish. Such as consult another doctor about that brow lift she’d been considering ever since she saw a picture of Catherine Zeta Jones in one of the tabloids and remarked that nobody could possibly look that good without a little surgical help.

“It’s unnatural,” she’d proclaimed. “Not found in nature,” she’d added for good measure.

Lily walked around the reception desk to the small black leather settee, straightening the magazines that were strewn carelessly across the top of the square, oak coffee table in front of it. Julia Roberts smiled up at her from the cover of one magazine, Gwyneth Paltrow from another. They both looked impossibly beautiful, although Lily had seen pictures of Gwyneth in sweats and carrying a yoga mat, looking less than fabulous, and even Julia looked occasionally tired, wan, and downright horsey when she wasn’t all dolled up.

“The mark of a truly beautiful woman,” Lily’s mother had once told her, “is that she doesn’t always look beautiful.”

It was one of the things her mother used to say that
sounded profound on the surface but didn’t make much sense upon closer examination. Still, Lily had taken comfort in those words, as she’d taken comfort in so much of her mother’s down-home blend of wisdom and common sense. If I can be half the comfort to my son that my mother was to me, I’ll count myself lucky, she thought, wishing her mother was beside her right now, reluctantly absorbing the ineluctability of her loss. So many losses, she was thinking, fighting back the sudden threat of tears. Her mother had been the one who’d held everyone together after Kenny had lost control of his motorcycle that awful, rain-soaked night, crashing it into a tree at the side of the road only blocks from home. Her mother had been the one who’d rocked her in her arms in the moments of her deepest and darkest despair, the one who’d tried desperately to assure her that Kenny’s death hadn’t been her fault, that she wasn’t to blame.

And Lily had almost believed her.

Almost.

The phone rang and Lily returned to the reception desk. “Scully’s,” she announced, her voice resonating with fake cheer. It was important to present a positive front, to remain optimistic. “Yes, we’re open until ten. That’s right. No, I’m afraid you have to take out a membership in order to use the facilities. But we’re having a special introductory offer.… Hello? Hello?” Lily shrugged and hung up the phone, no longer offended when people cut her off in midspiel. People were busy after all. They didn’t always have time to indulge others, especially once they realized they had no interest in whatever was being offered. She’d stopped taking such rudeness personally, just as she’d stopped interpreting her scores of rejection
slips to mean she was a lousy writer. Reading was subjective after all. Her book club had certainly taught her that. What one person found scintillating and profound, another found disappointing and shallow. You couldn’t please everyone. You shouldn’t try.

Lily watched Sandra Chan, an attractive woman in her mid-to-late thirties, climb off the elliptical machine and wrap a thin, white towel around her equally thin, white neck, then wait for her friend, Pam Farelli, to finish up on the treadmill. Minutes later, the two women, talking animatedly, pushed through the heavy glass door that separated the exercise room from the reception area and proceeded into the small locker room behind the black leather settee without so much as a glance in her direction. I’m invisible to them, Lily thought. “Which is a good thing,” she reminded herself in her best Martha Stewart voice.

The front door opened and a rugged-looking man with short, dark hair, a sturdy build, and massive hands protruding from under the sleeves of his tan windbreaker stepped inside. “Good morning,” he greeted Lily as she reached underneath the counter to hand him a fresh towel.

“How are you today, Detective Dawson?” she asked, as she asked every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday when the plainclothes police officer dropped by for his regular forty-minute workout.

“Not bad at all,” came his standard response. “Even better if you’ll agree to have dinner with me tonight.”

Lily took an involuntary step back, not sure how to respond. This was a deviation from their familiar banter, and she was unsure how to proceed. It wasn’t that she
didn’t find Detective Dawson attractive. She did, and had, ever since he’d come storming through the doors just after she started working at Scully’s, barking, “Is that your white Impala parked illegally in the handicapped zone? Because if it is, it’s about to get towed.”

“It’s not mine,” she’d stammered. “I don’t have a car.”

“No, but you have an awfully pretty smile,” he’d replied quickly, with a smile of his own.

“Tonight’s my book club,” she told him now.

Jeff Dawson narrowed his dark blue eyes and wrinkled his twice-broken nose, as if he’d just stumbled onto something sinister. “Book club? You mean, like Oprah?”

“Except for the cameras and the seven-figure salary.” Lily smiled, thinking that he wore his weight well, then shook her head, angry at herself for noticing. It was precisely because she found him so attractive that she could never go out with him. Hadn’t she decided that part of her life was over? She had a young son to think about, a life to rebuild. A little innocent flirting was one thing, but she didn’t have the energy for the trivialities of dating, the time for the vagaries of the single scene, the patience for the inevitability of disappointment, the stamina to withstand, once again, the horrible sounds of her world crashing down around her.

“How about tomorrow?” he asked.

“Tomorrow?”

“Seven-thirty? Dinner at Joso’s?”

Lily had never eaten at the popular, and very pricey, downtown restaurant, although she’d heard wonderful things about it. McDonald’s was more her speed these days. And besides, where would she find a babysitter at this late date?

“I have a son,” she told Jeff Dawson simply, searching his face for even the slightest hint that this was more than he bargained for.

“A son?”

“Michael. He’s five.”

“My daughters are nine and ten. They live with their mother. We’re divorced. Obviously.” He laughed selfconsciously. “Almost three years now. You?”

“Widow. Last year. Motorcycle accident,” she clarified before he could ask.

“I’m sorry.”

“I can’t have dinner with you tomorrow night,” Lily said.

Jeff Dawson nodded, as if he understood. “Maybe another time,” he said easily, moving away from the desk and toward the exercise room at back, almost colliding with Sandra Chan and Pam Farelli, who were now dressed and ready to leave.

“He’s cute,” Pam said, loud enough to be heard as Sandra’s eyes trailed after him. “Great triceps,” she continued, watching the detective shed his tan windbreaker to reveal the muscular torso straining against his white T-shirt.

“We always leave too early,” Pam pouted. “Who is he anyway?” she asked Lily, as if suddenly aware of her presence. “Is he a regular?”

Lily felt an unexpected stab of jealousy and fought the urge to run around the desk to trundle these two would-be poachers out of the gym. “I’m sorry. What?” she said instead.

“The guy bench-pressing two-hundred-pound weights without breaking a sweat,” Pam said, pointing with her chin. “What do you know about him?”

“Is he married?” asked Sandra Chan.

“I know he has two daughters,” Lily said, pretending to be busy with something under the counter. “Nine and ten years old, I believe.”

The women shrugged in unison. “Damn,” one muttered.

“The good ones are always married,” said the other.

Well, it wasn’t quite a lie, Lily decided as the two women pushed open the outside door and disappeared in a burst of sunlight. “He does have two daughters. They are nine and ten years old.” But why hadn’t she simply told the women the truth? She pulled her hair into a tight ponytail, secured it with a black scrunchie from her tote bag, and straightened the stacks of thin, white towels that were already perfectly straight, directing her eyes resolutely away from the exercise area. She didn’t want to see an attractive man only a few years her senior, wearing a tight-fitting, white T-shirt, and bench-pressing two hundred pounds without breaking a sweat. That was the last thing she wanted to see, the last thing she
needed
to see. Men like Jeff Dawson might fuel her fantasies in unguarded moments, but what she needed right now was a healthy dose of reality. Lily pulled the large stuffed envelope out of her tote bag and laid it on the counter. Reality it is, she thought, pulling out both her story and its accompanying letter of rejection.

Dear Ms. Rogers
,

That would be me.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to read your short story, “Last Woman Standing.”

Dumb title for a story. I should have called it something else.

While we found the story to be entertaining and well written
,

And what’s wrong with entertaining and well written?

we don’t think it is quite right for the readers of
Women’s Own.

Why the hell not? What’s not quite right about it?

We wish you the best of luck in placing this piece with another magazine
,

What other magazine? I’ve tried all the other magazines.

and hope you’ll think of us in the future
.

Fat chance of that.

Sincerely …

“
In
sincerely,” Lily stated out loud, returning both the letter and the story to the envelope. That’s quite enough reality for one day, she decided, her gaze drifting toward the exercise room despite her best intentions. Ada Pearlman, whose fine, gray hair was pinned into an elegant French twist at the nape of her neck, was trudging along on her treadmill at roughly two miles an hour, which was still faster than Gina Sorbara, a verging-on-obese, middle-aged woman who seemed to be sleepwalking on hers. Jonathan Cartseris was struggling with
the rowing machine, and Bonnie Jacobs, an elderly woman who’d recently been diagnosed with osteoporosis, was standing in front of the rows of free weights as if she didn’t have a clue what she was doing there. Only Police Detective Jeff Dawson looked as though he belonged, lying on his back with his legs spread on either side of the narrow bench, sturdy thighs tensed inside his black sweatpants, as he repeatedly heaved a two-hundred-pound barbell into the air above his head. He
does
look good, Lily found herself thinking, noticing that Bonnie Jacobs was waving at her. Lily smiled and waved back, but the woman persisted, beckoning her inside. Lily quickly got off her stool and went into the exercise room, careful to avoid a closer peek at the now-grunting police detective. “Is something wrong, Mrs. Jacobs?”

“The doctor says I’m supposed to exercise with free weights, but I have no idea what to do.” She grabbed a ten-pound weight in each hand and almost fell to her knees.

“Oh, no, Mrs. Jacobs. That’s way too heavy for you. You’ll injure yourself. Why don’t you start with these?” She lifted two, two-pound barbells from the shelf, transferring them gingerly to Mrs. Jacobs.

“Is that enough?”

“It’s all you need. Trust me,” Lily said, wondering why Mrs. Jacobs should trust her, why
anyone
should trust her. She then demonstrated several easy exercises for the biceps and triceps, as well as one for the pectoral muscles and several for the back and shoulders. “I’ll write them out for you, if you’d like,” she offered, returning as quickly as she could to the reception area.