Stars (The Butterfly Trilogy) (45 page)

     "The baby's fine now," Charmie said. "I thought of making tonight's makeup demonstration on contouring the cheeks with blush, but I don't know if I have enough with me, and this group is the largest. Hannah, have you seen the pamphlets yet? They turned out a lot spiffier than I was expecting."

     They open the carton and pulled out the booklets, which Philippa had written and designed. The covers were blue with white stars, and inside there was such advice as "Expect the best and get it" and "Know what you want." It also contained Philippa's "Four-Step Plan to Success," which was:

     1) Determine your goal.

     2) Establish your priorities.

     3) Decide what sacrifices you are willing to make.

     4) Get to work.

     "These pamphlets are
beautiful!
" Hannah said. "You know, now that I look at them, I don't think we should charge fifty cents apiece. A dollar is certainly reasonable, considering what they're getting."

     It had been necessary to start charging dues when the Saturday group had gotten so large it had had to be moved to the recreation room in their
apartment complex. The manager charged a fee for the room, and since Philippa and Hannah provided coffee, tea, and diet soft drinks, along with incurring the expense of photocopying all the diet menus, Philippa's weekly letter, and Hannah's fashion tips, they realized they were running into debt. They settled upon a dollar per person per meeting. Now, not only were they covering their costs, at thirteen hundred dollars a month in dues, they were actually making a profit.

     We're getting more and more phone calls," Philippa said as she unfolded metal chairs and placed them at the card tables. Because the evening was warm, she wore shorts, the first she had owned in her life. She had bought them a year ago, on her twenty-second birthday, right off the rack at JC Penney, just like regular people. "Calls from all over. There's a group of twenty in Northridge who've heard of our diet club and want us to go out there and get them started."

     "My cousin Nancy," said Hannah as she got the large coffeepot going, "who lost thirty-two pounds with us, says she's got all the teachers at her school interested, plus some Girl Scout moms and members of her ladies' club. But they're in Torrance. She ways she can guarantee a showing of fifty people and she will provide the clubhouse."

     "We can't handle it all," Philippa said.

     "The groups are getting too big, too," Charmie added. "I can't possibly give a facial demonstration to forty women!"

     A year ago, when it was still an informal Saturday get-together, the women had talked mostly about dieting and losing weight. But Philippa had steered them away from focusing too much on weight loss, asking Hannah to give a few words of advice on how to choose clothes that flattered ("Avoid gathered skirts") and Charmie on makeup ("Don't make one end of the eyebrow higher or lower than the other"). The purpose was to take the emphasis off weight and focus more on the total woman. The idea had caught on, but now they were running into logistics problems because the groups were getting too large and unmanageable.

     "Maybe we should limit membership." Hannah said, wondering if forty Styrofoam cups were going to be enough for tonight. "You know, just put a lid on it right now and say, 'No more.'"

     "That wouldn't be fair," Philippa said. After all, how could she deny to other desperate women the success and happiness she herself had found through the little Starlite club? How could she walk into an ordinary department store, browse through dresses on a rack, try one on without hating the sight of herself in the mirror, and revel in the freedom of such choice—there were
so
many fashions out there for slender women—how could she experience such freedom and say to others who were suffering the way she once had, "No, you can't have this"?

     She thought of some of their graduates, such as Cassie Marie, who had recently gotten married in a size eight wedding gown, or a girl named Juliett, who had weighed over three hundred pounds and been on the verge of suicide but who had slimmed down to a size fourteen and was now back in school. With each Starlite success, Philippa would think of Rhys. Each time a member came up to her and said, "I used to hate myself, but look at me now," that sleeping handsome face would be there in her mind.

     No, she thought, she would not close the doors to anyone.

     "Oh God," Charmie said, "people are arriving already and it isn't even time yet. Will we have enough handouts, do you think?"

     "We'll have enough," Philippa said. And she realized with a start that a vision was beginning to form in her mind. It hadn't been there a moment ago, but it was there now, coming into sharper focus with each breath she drew, like a television picture warming up.

     While the room hummed with life as Hannah sat at the first card table to register the members, with Charmie next to her, taking their money and distributing the handouts, Philippa picked up the legal pad on which she had written a few notes for her opening talk, turned to a fresh page, and began to write quickly. As Cassie Marie set up the balance beam doctor's scale in a little anteroom that served as a bar when parties where held here, and she weighed each member in private, recording their gain or loss, Philippa sat at one of the card tables with a look of deep concentration on her face and wrote with furious energy, the pen flying across the page as the new vision in her mind became sharper, brighter, with spaces filling in and details popping up. She was suddenly so excited that the pen flew out of her hand and she had to catch it.

     The rec room was soon filled with the dull roar of excited diet chatter: "lost four pounds..." "down to a size ten..." "I save my bread exchanges for dinner..." "frozen grapes take
hours
to eat..." "Charmie's right, blue eye shadow should be outlawed..." Philippa only half heard it, part of her brain consumed with getting her new ideas down before they evaporated, the other part marveling at how far her little group had come in only eleven months.

     She had tried to get Mrs. Chadwick to join, not so much for the weight loss as for the companionship. The television was all her former landlady had, and it made Philippa sad to think so, wishing to repay Mrs. Chadwick for everything she had done for her. But Mrs. Chadwick was happy where she was, serving heavy meals to her contented boarders and then retiring to sit before her TV set for an evening of
Armstrong Circle Theater.

     Dottie, who had once thought her husband was cheating on her but who had gotten him back after she lost forty pounds, came up to Philippa and said, "A lot of the members have brought guests! We don't have enough chairs for them all!"

     Philippa stared at Dottie, then she looked down at the legal pad and was startled to see that she had filled four long pages with barely legible writing. And her hand was cramping.

     "Have them sign in and stand along the walls," she said. "We'll pass around a sign-up sheet to form new groups."

     "New groups!" Dottie said. "How will we manage that?"

     Thinking of the exciting vision that had just been born, Philippa smiled and said, "We'll manage."

     Finally she called the meeting to order. The last few to sign in and get weighed found their way to seats or places along the walls; the room buzzed for a few seconds, like a hive when the bees settled into it for the night, and then there was silence.

     Philippa paused for a moment as she surveyed the faces all turned hopefully toward her, like flowers following the sun. Her heart was racing. She wanted to blurt the news right now about the glimpse she had just been given of the future and how anxious she was to rush home and get started on making it happen. There wasn't a moment to lose! Her voice rang out as
she introduced herself, her staff, and gave a brief explanation of what Starlite was all about. "It's time to cast off the myths and assumptions," she said, "that come with being fat. Society equates fat with dumb, and we are not dumb. We have to divest ourselves of our old image," she continued, this slender young woman who was the envy of the heavy ones in the crowd—she didn't look as if she had lost sixty pounds!—"and put a stop to people taking advantage of us, or putting us down, or making us feel worthless. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, 'They conquer who believe they can.' Every woman in this room can accomplish anything she sets her heart to. Believe in yourself and you can achieve anything!"

     When the applause subsided, one of the members raised her hand, stood, and said, "I really think we should begin each meeting with a prayer. I know a lot of us belong to Our Lady of Grace Church—"

     "And a lot of us don't!" shouted Becky Baumgartner.

     While everyone laughed, Philippa noticed a late arrival coming through the door—a man she had never met personally but whom she recognized with a start as Ron Charmer.

     And a chill of fear went through her.

     She looked around for Charmie, but her friend was in the back, getting her cosmetics ready for the demonstration.

     Other members stood up to speak. "When I weighed two hundred and eight pounds," said Rhonda, one of the obesity clinic originals, "the first think I would do whenever I walked into a room full of people was to look around and see if anyone there was fatter than I was. If there wasn't anyone, if I was the fattest, then I knew I was going to have a terrible time. But if there was someone who was heavier than I, then I felt relieved. God help me, I even felt smug."

     While everyone else voiced sympathy and said how brave Rhonda was to admit such a thing, Philippa kept her eye on Ron Charmer. She didn't like the feeling he gave her as he made his way quietly along the edge of the room, a skinny man in a tight T-shirt, with tattoos on both arms and a tautness to his face that sent alarms ringing in her head.

     Another woman stood and said, "I just want to say that Starlite has enabled me to lead a normal life again. I used to be so fat that one time my
husband and I went to a restaurant and we had to sit at a table because I couldn't fit into a booth." A murmur of understanding rippled through the group. "Everything was fine until it was time to leave. I stood up, and the chair came up with me. Everyone in the restaurant laughed. I wanted to die right then."

     They all clapped when she sat down, but Philippa continued to watch Ron Charmer, who had slowly made his way up to the front.

     When Charmie emerged from the back, wiping her hands on a towel, prepared to give her cosmetics demonstration, she smiled at Philippa, took a seat, and then looked around the room. When she saw her husband, she froze. "My God, it's Ron," she said, going white beneath her makeup.

     He marched up to her and seized her by the arm, making her wince. The room fell silent except for the sound of the electric fans stirring the air.

     "The baby-sitter told me where you were," he said in a low voice, but everybody heard.

     "Please don't," Charmie said, trying to pull free.

     Philippa saw how deeply his fingers dug into her flesh. And then she heard him say, "...this freak show," as he pulled Charmie to her feet, sending her chair over backward.

     Hannah stood up and said, "Now just a minute—"

     "It's okay," Charmie said. "He's right, I'd better go." She turned to Philippa with a look of intense shame and said, "The baby has a fever. I have to go. I'm sorry I caused—"

     But Ron was already pulling her toward the door, Charmie tripping because one of her rubber thongs had slipped off her foot.

     Hannah was naked. As Alan Scadudo gently eased her down onto satin sheets, she could see herself, her skin glowing and feverish, her body slender for the first time in her life. Alan knelt between her legs and gently spread them open. He, too, was naked, with fine muscular shoulders and a scattering of hair on his chest. He was stroking her large breasts and murmuring, "You're beautiful." Hannah reached up for him and drew him down onto her. She couldn't wait to reach around and clutch that exquisite ass...

     She awoke with a start, finding herself in a tangle of damp bed sheets, her nightgown twisted up around her waist. That was the sixth erotic dream
she'd had this month. No doubt about it, she was just going to have to work up the courage to see him.

     She telephoned Charmie and said, "Help!" Then she took two hours selecting just the right outfit. Even though Hannah was thin now, she still operated with a "fat" eye, making sure the sweater had raglan sleeves, a definite thinner, and a draped cowl neck; the skirt had stitched-down pleats and a subtle A-line; sling-back pumps with modest heels were de rigueur.

     When Charmie arrived with her professional makeup kit, Hannah said, "I'm going after a man. Make me look like Elizabeth Taylor."

     "You're prettier than she is. Calm down, you'll be gorgeous."

     As Charmie did an artistic make-over, Hannah wanted to ask what had happened after Ron marched her out of the Starlite meeting the other night. But she and Philippa both knew not to bring up the touchy subject of Charmie's husband; they respected her desire for privacy.

     When her friend looked breathtaking, Charmie said, "Go get him."

     Hannah experienced a moment of hesitation, as twenty-three years of feeling inferior came back. But then she saw herself in the mirror—the trim waist, long legs, large breasts. Recalling Starlite's motto—"Believe in Yourself"—she gave Charmie a hug and hurried out.

     It felt strange walking into Halliwell and Katz as an ex-employee; even stranger to walk up to the counter and wait to be noticed. Ardeth Faulkner bustled up with her phony smile and "May I help you?" but when she recognized Hannah, her face fell. Two reactions rippled across it, one chasing the other: first, pleasant surprise; then, remembered resentment. Hannah had left Ardeth with all the shit jobs she had done at H and K for three years.

     "I'm here to see Mr. Scadudo," Hannah said coolly. "Is he around?" "Alan left six months ago. He doesn't work here anymore."