Mrs. Everything (48 page)

At the end of August, Nonie announced that she was going to visit her sister on Nantucket for two weeks. “I’m gonna fall off the wagon. Fried clams . . . lobster rolls . . . ice-cream cones . . . ugh, summer’s just a disaster!” she lamented. Jo, who was familiar with her friend’s taste for Halloween candy in the fall, Christmas cookies in the winter, and Cadbury Easter eggs when spring arrived, elected to keep her mouth shut. “Maybe you could type up the exercises for me. Oh, no, wait!” Nonie grabbed Jo’s hands. “I know what! You can do a video!”

“What? No I can’t. I don’t have a camera.”

“Doesn’t the school have equipment?”

“I’ll ask.”

The next afternoon, Jo approached the tech teacher, whose name was Mr. Genova, to inquire about borrowing a camera. “No can do,” he said, glaring at her as if she’d asked to borrow a hundred dollars from him personally. “Equipment doesn’t leave school grounds.”

“I could do the exercises in the gym,” Jo said, and Mr. Genova showed her a sign-up sheet, and a waiting list, and a waiting list for the waiting list, and told her that he didn’t think a substitute teacher should be allowed to jump the line. “He said ‘substitute teacher’ like it was ‘child molester,’ ” Jo reported to Nonie, who tapped her tongue on the roof of her mouth, looking thoughtful. “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” she finally said. “Is that room locked at night?”

Jo didn’t know for sure, but she couldn’t imagine that the school would leave expensive equipment just lying around. “Do you have keys?”

Jo saw where this was going. “I do, but, Nonie . . .” Nonie held up her hand. “No ‘buts.’ No excuses. Isn’t that what you say?”

“Yes, I tell you that when you’re trying to cheat on your lunges, not when you’re telling me to steal stuff.”

“Not steal. Borrow. Big difference.” She raised her voice. “Hey, Missy, want to help us pull off a heist?”

“Don’t answer that,” Jo shouted, just as her daughter called from the living room, “What are we heisting?”

“You see that? Your daughter can help you! I’ll do your hair and makeup.”

“Nonie, I know that you think this is a game, but I could lose my job.”

“You won’t need that job.” Nonie’s eyes sparkled wickedly, and her smile was as pleased as Jo had ever seen it. “We’re going to make you . . .”—she spread her arms wide, like she was writing words on the sky—“. . . a star!”

*  *  *

“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Jo whispered the next
morning. She and Nonie, dressed in black, were walking—creeping—toward the high school’s entrance. It was five a.m. on Saturday. Their plan was to take the equipment, film the workout routine that morning (“Magic hour!” Nonie said brightly), and have everything back in place by eight a.m. Jo held her breath as she eased the key into the lock. The door swung open. Lights did not flash; sirens did not blare. She exhaled a little, turned, and beckoned for Nonie, who was waiting behind the wheel. Nonie put the car in Park and ran across the lot, breasts bouncing enticingly.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Jo whispered as she hurried to the second floor with Nonie at her heels. They both had flashlights. Nonie even had a black face mask, which her son Drew wore when he was skiing. “If anyone stops you, just say you left your purse in the classroom.” That was Jo’s plan, and it would work . . . unless, of course, anyone saw her leaving the technology center with what she assumed were thousands of dollars of equipment. She unlocked the tech center’s door. The students’ desks were empty. The teacher’s desk was bare. “In here?” Nonie asked, waving her flashlight at a wall of locked cupboards. Nonie tugged one of the handles and made a face when the door was locked. She walked to the teacher’s desk and pulled the top drawer open, and there, between a staple remover and a large pink eraser, was a small silver key on a tag labeled “equipment.” “Here!” Jo shoved the key in the lock, opened the cabinet door, and hunted until she’d found the equipment Missy had told them to collect: a camera, a boom, a microphone, and a power pack. Jo handed the camera and the power pack to Nonie, tucked the long boom and the mic under her arm, locked the cupboard, replaced the key, and had just stepped into the hallway when she heard voices, and laughter, the sound of a crowd of people coming up the stairs.

“Oh, shit!” Nonie hissed. “The walkers!”

“What?”

“The old people!” Nonie spluttered. “The senior citizens.
Shit, I read about this. They used to power-walk in the mall, but the mall kicked ’em out, so now they’re here! C’mon, we have to hurry!” She grabbed Jo’s hand as the first of a crowd of warm-up-suit-clad seniors crested the staircase and made their way down the hall. Jo and Nonie hurried away, but not before they were spotted by the woman at the head of the pack.

“Yoo-hoo? Who’s up there?”

“Yoo-hoo?” Nonie muttered. “Seriously?” She started walking more quickly.

“I told you we should’ve just worn normal clothes!” Jo whispered. If she’d worn her teaching clothes, or even her own exercise gear, she could have turned, waved, given the seniors an explanation. But with the two of them in head-to-toe black, and Nonie in her ski mask, their arms full of electronics, they looked like what they were: thieves.

Turning, Jo caught a glimpse of white hair, turquoise-blue nylon, and a four-pronged cane with tennis balls at the base.

“What are you doing here?”

“Fuck!” Nonie stage-whispered. “Run!”

Jo raced down the hall after her friend. The yoo-hooing lady had been joined by a man who was yelling, “Stop, thief!” Jo and Nonie pushed through the doors and ran down the east staircase, with the race-walkers yelling at them to stop. “Come on,” Nonie said, her voice urgent as she grabbed Jo’s arm. They raced down the stairs, with Nonie whispering, “Come on, come on, I’m not getting arrested in the dumbest crime of the century.”

“Stop . . . making . . . me . . . laugh,” Jo wheezed as she ran. They made it through the cafeteria, Nonie carrying the equipment, until finally they were out the door, into the parking lot, and leaning against the cafeteria’s Dumpsters, laughing until they couldn’t breathe.

“We did it!” Nonie said, pressing her hand to her chest. “Shit, I think my heart stopped in there. Does fear burn calories?”

“Probably,” Jo said.

“Excellent.” Nonie unlocked her car. “And off we go!”

Because Jo didn’t want to implicate her daughter in a crime, she’d asked Missy to meet them at the fitness trail. “That’s what you’re wearing?” Missy asked as Jo and Nonie climbed out of the car. Jo looked down at her black T-shirt and gray terry cloth shorts. “Why? What’s wrong?” “Nothing. It’s just that the fitness ladies all wear, like, you know.” Missy gestured toward Nonie. “Warm-up suits and leotards and stuff. Leg warmers. Stuff like that.”

“I am not a fitness lady,” Jo said, her voice emphatic. “And spandex doesn’t have pockets. Where do you put your car keys?”

“Bra,” Nonie said merrily. “God’s pocket.”

The three of them walked to the first station on the trail, which had a pull-up bar and a patch of soft, sloping grass for push-ups. “Okay. Stand there.” Missy got Jo in position, peered through the camera, nodded, and said, “Three . . . two . . . one,” and pointed at her mother. Jo looked at the camera. She felt oddly nervous, her mouth dry and chest fluttery, even though no one but Nonie would ever see the tape. She forced herself to smile. “Hi, Nonie. It’s me, your old pal Jo, leaving you with no excuse to fall off the fitness wagon. Today, we’re going to start with three sets of four different exercises, starting with your very favorite, walking lunges.” By the third exercise, Jo had forgotten all about Missy. “Keep your shoulders over your wrists,” she said as her daughter circled her with the camera during the planks. “Don’t let your knees get past your toes,” she counseled during the squats, and “Remember to keep your core tight” for the one-legged toe touches. “And that’s it!” she said when she’d gone through a round of each exercise. “Do the entire circuit three times, and you’re done. I’d like to thank my cameraperson, Melissa Braverman, who is also my producer and director. Nonie, I’ll see you back on the fitness trail.”

“And . . . cut! Hey, that was good,” Melissa said with an enthusiasm she usually reserved for her soccer teammates.

“Really good,” said Nonie. “You know what? You should sell tapes.”

Jo was only half listening, already thinking about how she’d get the equipment back, and whether she’d taken out something to thaw for dinner.

“What?”

“You should sell these,” Nonie repeated. “Your fitness tapes. Like Jane Fonda.”

Jo shook her head. “I’m not Jane Fonda. Or Suzanne Somers. I don’t even own a pair of leg warmers, remember?”

“There’re famous people who make fitness tapes,” Missy said. “But aren’t there also regular people who got famous because they did fitness tapes? We can go to Blockbuster tonight and check out the competition.”

“Do it,” said Nonie, waving as she got into her car.

“Do you really think it could work?” Jo asked as she and her daughter got into their car.

Missy’s dark-brown ponytail brushed her shoulder as she turned her head and slowly backed out of the parking space. “Dad’s always saying, you just need one thing—a product, or a business, or a service, or a big idea—and you just keep looking until you find it. What if this is your one thing?” Jo’s heart twisted as she listened to Missy parroting her father’s advice, hearing the love and admiration in Missy’s voice. She hoped the girls had absorbed Dave’s ambition and not what she had come to see, over the years, as his allergy to hard work, his willingness to take shortcuts or tell lies in search of the big score.

“We can take a look,” Jo said.

Melissa gave her a smile, a warmer, less toothy version of her father’s glittering grin. “We’ll get you some leg warmers, and you’ll be all set.” She pushed a button on the car’s tape player, and the music of Duran Duran filled the car. “And a title. You need a good title.” Jo had thought of that already. On Monday morning, she affixed a piece of masking tape to the video cassette’s side and, using one of Lila’s markers (left uncapped and discarded on the kitchen table), she wrote JUMPING FOR JO. “I like it,” said Melissa. At Missy’s insistence, Jo had watched Jane Fonda’s
Lean
Routine
and something called
Buns of Steel
. Alone in the family room, Jo had seen the shiny leggings and high-cut leotards, the headbands and the matching leg warmers, the heavy makeup and the sprayed and feathered hair. Everyone in the videos smiled, all the time, even in the midst of the most grueling series of glute bridges and walking lunges, and no one ever seemed to sweat. The videos were part workout instruction, part performance, and while Jo knew that she could handle the first part, the second part was beyond her.

But a part of her wanted to try. Maybe Bethie’s success was a once-in-a-lifetime miracle, something that wouldn’t happen again in the same decade, much less in the same family, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t a few crumbs left over for Jo.

Nonie came back from Nantucket in a brand-new track suit (lemon yellow and neon green), glowing and exultant. “I did that tape every morning, and guess what else? My sisters-in-law both want copies!” She paused. “Is it sisters-in-law or sister-in laws? I never know. Anyway, they love you.” Nonie was beaming. “I think you should sell ’em.”

“Told you,” Missy called from the kitchen. Jo asked, “You really think that people would pay?”

“I know they would.” Nonie adjusted her braided green-and-yellow headband. “You know what my sisters-in-law said? They liked that you were a real person. You weren’t some fakey-fake actress with breast implants. You’re just a regular gal.”

Just a regular gal
, Jo thought, and smiled, thinking,
If you only knew.
That night, Missy drove her to the Video Barn, where a sullen, pimply teenage boy ran off twenty copies for a dollar apiece. At the end of the Friday fitness trail class, Jo stood on top of one of the tree stumps they used for step-ups and hops and, with her cheeks burning, she announced that she had videos for sale, for five dollars apiece. “In case anyone’s going on vacation, or just wants to be able to do the workout at home.” She finished her pitch and braced herself for shuffling feet, averted eyes, and embarrassed silence. Ruthann Bremmer spoke up first. “Ooh, I
want one.” Connie McSorley, of poison-ivy fame, said, “Me, too,” and Julie Carden bought one for herself and one for her sister in Massachusetts. In ten minutes’ time, Jo had a hundred dollars in her pocket and no tapes left in the box.

“Go back to the Video Barn and have them run off a hundred copies,” Nonie instructed. “And tell pizza-face you want a bulk discount this time.”

“Oh, Nonie,” said Jo.

“Do it.” For all her Southern charm, Nonie could be ruthless when it suited her. “I’m going to send copies to my sisters-in-law, and you’re going to sell at least another twenty at class. And there’s the PTA sale in September.” Jo tried to imagine selling tapes of herself to strangers. She’d barely been able to watch the tape, worried about how unfeminine, how mannish she’d looked, in shorts and a T-shirt, performing high-knee raises and jumping jacks.
Unnatural
, she heard her mother say, and she thought of all the jokes she’d ever heard about female gym teachers.

“I don’t know.”

Nonie was glaring at her, eyes narrowed. “I don’t get it. What’s the problem? Shoot, if I was as skinny as you, I’d have done that video naked!”

“You look great,” Jo said. Nonie had gotten some sun on Nantucket. Her face and arms and chest, normally pale pink, had acquired a golden glow. She’d lost a little of her jiggle, but she was still deliciously plump, her thighs and upper arms rounded and firm and covered in the finest dusting of golden hair.
Juicy
, Jo sometimes thought. Like a ripe peach, where the juice would fill your mouth when you took a bite.

“Come on,” Nonie said. “What have you got to lose?”

“My self-esteem? My dignity? However much I spend to get the tapes made?” Nonie was relentless. She drove Jo to the Video Barn, demanded to speak to the pimply teenager’s manager, and negotiated the rate she wanted. She made Jo pose for pictures, doing the star jump over and over, propelling herself into the air
with her arms and legs spread wide. “Smile!” Nonie called, until finally, Jo did, and when her friend showed her the shot, Jo had to admit that she looked okay. At least, not awful.