Five Fortunes (12 page)

“Besides, Mom has a photographic memory,” said Jill, eyes still closed.

“Do you really?”

Amy nodded. “A little thing, but it is mine own.”

“Can you remember names and faces?” Rae asked enviously.

“Thousands of them,” said Amy.

“What’s Jill going to do when you’re President?” Carter asked.

“How about the Pentagon? Secretary of Defense? Baby General?”

“I know what job I want,” Jill said. “I’ve known since second-year Latin.”

“What?”

“I want to be the Voice of Reason.”

“Me too!” cried Rae. “That would be perfect for me.”

“You already have a job,” Jill said. Then she explained, “When a Caesar would arrive in Rome at the head of a conquering army, messengers were sent ahead so that by the time he reached the Forum the whole population was out to line the route, and cheering. There he’d be, passing under triumphal arches, leading his legions of soldiers, wagons full of plunder, exotic animals in cages, and the rulers and warriors of the vanquished in chains. And all of Rome is roaring and hailing, and behind him in his chariot, there’s a slave whispering,

‘Remember, you are only a man. Remember, you are only a man.’”

Five Fortunes / 87

“Of course, they did not remember for more than ten minutes,”

said Carter. “My memory is that they had themselves declared divine, right and left.”

“I think you would be a perfect Voice of Reason, Jill,” said Laurie.

“You can ride in my chariot and sleep at the foot of my bed. But it would depress me to be nothing more than a man. You’ll have to whisper, ‘Remember, you’re only a woman.’”

The table burst into hoots and applause. Ladies lunching at other tables turned questioning faces in their direction.

A
s darkness fell at the end of the last afternoon, the yoga class was sitting barefoot and tailor-fashion (or as close to it as they could manage) on the floor. A cassette player emitted the muffled sounds of waves crashing on a beach.

First they did deep-breathing exercises. These were harder than they sounded. Next they did postures that opened their pelvises or stretched their spines. Honey, the instructor, moved among them, devising geriatric variations on these poses for those whose joints refused. Then came the headstand they had been practicing all week.

Tonight, Jill moved out to the center of the room. The other ladies positioned themselves against the wall and began, as they had been taught, to raise themselves to vertical, upside down. After various false tries, and corrections, they one by one succeeded in unfurling themselves toward the ceiling. When they opened their eyes, upside down, they saw Jill, in the middle of the floor, her body perfectly aligned, holding a headstand with no external support.

Bunny Gibson was the first to curl herself down to the floor and give Jill a round of applause. The others soon followed suit.

“You made it look so easy!”

Jill was very pleased with herself.

“I’m so jealous,” said Rae. “Want to see me do a cartwheel?”

“Yes!” said Jill, and Rae started to laugh, since she hadn’t been serious.

“Well, all right,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve done one in about forty

88

Five Fortunes / 89

years but…” and before Honey, who looked horrified, could stop her, Rae in her violet sweat suit and purple socks took two long steps down the carpeted floor and then turned a very respectable cartwheel.

“Ooh la la!”

“Fantastic!” cried the ladies, clapping.

“Madam, please, do
not
do that again,” said Honey, appalled, clearly imagining herself explaining how she came to let her elderly charge break both wrists and her neck.

“I won’t,” said Rae. “I’m going to quit while I’m ahead.”

In darkness and silence, Jill trotted back to her room to dress for dinner. This was the night people washed their hair, put on makeup, wore their jewelry, and appeared as their outside selves. It was like the end of Lent; the fast was over.

Jill was feeling full of merriment. She had stood on her head. She had a ball of light. She had lost an immense amount of weight in one week; she hadn’t known you could lose that much in so short a time. Wearing her cassock and her string of pearls, she went out and tapped at her mother’s door. There was no answer. Jill put her head in the door and heard the shower running.

She went on to Carter’s room

“Come in,” Carter bellowed. She was on the phone. She smiled at Jill and beckoned her in.

“So you ran the tags…of course. From where?” She made rapid notes in some kind of shorthand.

“Okay, m’dear,” she said at last. “I’ll be in the office by early Monday…. Yes…I’ll be the one with the rose in my teeth, in case you don’t know me.” She hung up.

“DeeAnne?” Jill asked.

“Yeah, she called to tell me she threw out all the ashtrays in the office. If I want to smoke, I have to stand outside on the ledge.”

“How high up is your office?”

“Twenty-two stories.”

Jill laughed. “Guess what I did—I stood on my head!”

“Hey! All right!”

90 / Beth Gutcheon

“But I wasn’t the hero. Rae got jealous and did a cartwheel.”

“No! Did she really?”

“She said she hadn’t done one in forty years.”

“She’s in great shape, isn’t she?” Carter said. “How old do you think she is?”

“God, I don’t know…seventy-five?”

“I think eighty.”

“Wow.”

“Definite wow. You ready to go?”

“Aren’t you going to put on your makeup?” Jill asked.

Carter looked embarrassed. “I have to get used to it at home.”

“I told you you’d never wear it.”

“What a fresh kid you are.”

“Come on. I’ll help you.”

“What do you know about it? You aren’t wearing any.”

“Aha! I am wearing
pounds
of makeup as we speak. Come on, come on.”

Jill was herding Carter into the bathroom. There she found the bag from the Beauty Cloister, untouched, with the jars and bottles inside in their boxes.

“Here. This is foundation. Shake it up, then put it all over your face. No, stop—here, do this first. Put it under your eyes.”

“You’re confusing me,” Carter complained, but she followed Jill’s instructions.

Jill handed her the eye shadow.

“Wet your brush and put it on like watercolor.”

“Can you
do
that?”

“Sure. You can get it more subtle that way. Only use this gray—the other colors are too much for you.”

“I’ll say.”

“Now this light one, here.” Jill pointed and Carter dabbed at it.

“Now powder,” Jill ordered.

“I feel like a complete jerk,” said Carter, taking the brush.

“Cover your eyelashes too. It helps keep the mascara from smearing.”

“Where did you learn all this stuff?”

Five Fortunes / 91

“You forget my early stage career, girl ballerina.” Jill made her put on a darker powder that brought out her cheekbones, eyeliner, which she only stuck in her eye once, then mascara. Carter blinked before Jill could show her how to blot it, so she had a little line of black flecks on her cheekbones. She looked in the mirror.

“Aaah!”

“Hold still, I’ll fix it.” Jill went to work with a cotton swab. “Close your eyes.” Carter did. Jill powdered her face again.

“Okay, you’re beautiful.”

“Right,” said Carter. The dinner gong sounded.

Amy Burrows, Laurie Lopez, and Wilma Smythe were sitting together near the fire, sipping spiced tea. Amy was wearing her rings, and had blow-dried her hair. Laurie was dressed as she had been all week.

“It’s too wonderful not to have to look in the mirror,” she said.

Every time someone new arrived, there was reaction and babble.

Bunny Gibson came in wearing a spangly sweater over sweatpants, and big earrings. On her bare feet she wore thongs.

“I couldn’t change my pants,” she announced. “I just this minute had my toes painted.”

Jill and Carter came in. There was applause. “Miss Thirteen Pounds and Fifteen Inches!” someone called.

“Yes!” cried Jill, and she did a little Zorba the Greek victory dance.

“And look at Miss Vavavoom here.” She pointed at Carter.

“You look terrific.”

“Really, you look wonderful.”

“I feel like a complete dork,” said Carter, but she seemed pleased.

Carol and Rusty Haines came in. Carol was wearing a pink sarong and diamond earrings. Her hair was washed and curled and fluffy, and she wore heavy makeup over her perfect skin. Her mascara was so thick it was clumped. She who had been so naturally the picture of health now looked like a very tall doll.

“Oh…don’t you look pretty,” people said, staring at her.

Laurie said, “If you’d looked like that the first time I met you, I’d never have dared speak to you.”

“You wouldn’t? Why not?” Carol asked.

92 / Beth Gutcheon

“You’re wearing a mask,” said Laurie.

Carol turned to the mirror that hung by the door behind a large arrangement of dried flowers. She stared at herself. She turned back.

“Am I?” she asked the room at large.

“You look so pretty with your hair just pulled back,” said Amy diplomatically. “I got used to you like that.”

“And you like it better?”

It was clear, everyone liked it better. She no longer looked quite like a real person; she looked more like a decoration. Carol, who had an infinite capacity to be interested in herself, took in this information with apparent relish. She turned again, and went to stare in the mirror.

Dinner was hilarious. The Fitness Professionals awarded prizes for various forms of silliness. There was a video shown of the group in their classes, trying to learn the Electric Slide, prancing up and down in step class, puffing and blowing. Even The Movie Star could be seen in one sequence, struggling to master the hula hoop.

Sue Snyderman nearly started a riot at her table by announcing that if you strapped a vibrator to your hand and then stuck your finger in your ear, it was better than sex. Another group telephoned to the nearest village and ordered three pizzas. They had to go out and wait by the gate for the delivery boy, and when they finally had the pizzas in a stack on the table in Saguaro, they looked at the grease from the cheese and pepperoni soaking the cardboard of the boxes, and nobody would touch them.

Jill and Amy went to the bathhouse for their last soak in the Japanese tub under the stars.

“I hope Carter and Rae are coming, and Laurie,” Jill said. But none of the others did come. The stars were very fine and bright, and they drank in the scent of eucalyptus.

“Are you looking forward to getting home?” Amy asked. “To show off your new figure?”

The question made Jill cringe. She didn’t want to show off anything, ever. She didn’t want anyone to notice her, and she knew what was coming. Her mother constantly calling attention to the new Jill,

Five Fortunes / 93

Miss Thirteen Pounds Fifteen Inches. It was enough to make her want to gain it all back.

“Yes,” said Jill. “It will be nice.”

“You’ll miss your friends, though,” said Amy. “I know I will.”

“I wish they’d all get on-line so we could e-mail each other,” said Jill.

“I hope you told them so.”

Jill had. Amusingly, and probably typically, the only one of the group who was already on-line was Rae.

Laurie sat in her room with only one light on. She had thought of going to the bathhouse, but she realized she would not be alone again for a very long time; the children would be needing her and would one way or another make up to themselves for the week she had been away. She couldn’t blame them. She was missing them too, especially Cara with her bedroom full of turtles and hamsters, and sturdy little Hunter, and Xavier with his big solemn eyes. But she knew that what was waiting for her, from the moment she walked into the house, was the weight of all those memories of Roberto. Every moment that she looked at her son Carlos. She realized she was dreading the morning.

Carter was dressed in street clothes and ready to leave; it was full day. She’d gone with a much diminished group for the three-mile mountain hike. Jill and Amy were already gone. Rae had come in to Saguaro to say good-bye, looking urbane in her Adolfo suit.

“You take good care of yourself,” Rae said, looking Carter firmly in the eye.

“I will. You too.”

“And I’ll see you back here next year, the first week of November.”

Carter laughed. “What an idea!”

“It’s a perfect idea. I already signed you up. ’Bye, dearie. Don’t take any wooden bullets.”

“I won’t.” Carter smiled, and allowed herself to be hugged. Unexpectedly, she felt rather teary.

94 / Beth Gutcheon

There was a knock at the door of her room.

“Come,” Carter called. She expected the bellman. Instead, it was the pretty redhead who ran the boutique. She was holding a plastic bag.

“I hope you have room for this,” she said.

“I didn’t order anything else,” Carter said, a little sharply. She had a vision of more bottles and brushes and paint. Enough was enough.

“It’s for you, though. If you don’t have room, I can ship it.”

She handed the package to Carter, and tripped off in her high heels. Carter sat down on the bed and opened the bag. Inside was the red sweater, knit of silk ribbons, and a note from Rae.

Had your name on it. I was too cheap to get the necklace.

XXX

Rae

R
ae’s plane banked over San Francisco Bay on its final approach to the airport. She could see the Bay Bridge and the Oakland hills as the plane circled to the south. In an hour she’d be at home. She thought about how beautiful the city was. She thought about how glad she would be to see Winston Churchill.

Winston Churchill was her bulldog.

Her driver was waiting for her at the gate, crisp and smiling in his uniform. She couldn’t pronounce his Chinese name, but he preferred in any case to be called James. His wife’s American name was Doreen.

“How is everything?” Rae asked as James took her bag and raincoat.