The Cinderella Pact (15 page)

I could reach through this phone and . . .
Patience, Nola. Steady, girl. Remember who you are supposed to be. Remember that Eileen would not want you to hear what she's confiding to Belinda.

“And it's not like we haven't offered to, you know, help make her more attractive to men. Jim's tried everything he can to get Nola to slim down, even gave her a diet and exercise program. For free! He charges big bucks for that kind of counseling at the gym and Nola acts like she is insulted every time he brings it up.”

“Hmm.” Fuming here. Positively fuming. My hands are gripping the rental's steering wheel so tightly, they're leaving permanent imprints. I'll probably be charged extra for that.

To hear these words from my own sister's lips is so dizzying that no matter how much I am trying to be Belinda, the truth is that my lungs have ceased to function. I seem to be slipping into a tunnel. The corner of my vision is all black. Is this how my sister sees me? As a nerdy jealous spinster obstructing her way toward marital bliss? Is this how everyone views me? The big, unmarriageable Nola Devlin?

I bet Nana, Mom, Dad, and Eileen have been sitting around the kitchen table discussing the “Nola problem.” I can see my mother wiping off some invisible crumbs and shaking her head, saying, “There's no way to help her unless she wants to help herself,” and my father, one eye on the TV, adding, “Aww, let her be,” and Nana throwing in a “Well, I think it's disgraceful, a younger sister marrying first.”

“Belinda? Belinda are you there? Did we get cut off again?”

I clear my throat and wipe away my tears with the back of my hand. “For a bit there, yes.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“I think,” I begin, slowly. “I think it would be best . . .”

“Yes?”

“It would be best if you didn't make a big deal of it. Just announce your engagement and I'm sure you'll find that Nola is not nearly as desperate or jealous as you believe.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“That's exactly what Dad said.”

Good ol' Dad. I must remember to give him a secret kiss on the cheek.

“OK, I've gotta go. I'm gonna tell Jim so we can make the announcement today. I've been keeping the ring hidden for, like, weeks.” Eileen squeals again. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I just knew you'd take my side.”

“I usually do.”

Eileen misses that.

“If I could have gone to Nola right off, without worrying about offending her or hurting her feelings, this wouldn't have been such an issue. She's just so sensitive, you know, you can't bring up clothes or shopping or guys or anything else sisters talk about. You're like the older sister I never had, Belinda. You've made this the best birthday ever.”

After she hangs up, I hold the phone in my hand, staring zombielike out the window at the good parishioners of St. Nicholas's, the dark-haired fathers, mothers, and skipping children in all sizes leaving the church in packs of big Greek families. Here are slim women and large women and grand-mothers all in black. Yet they are loved. They are with men. Some are married. Others not. Yet, they are laughing and complete. Why not me?

Somehow the sight of them contrasted with Eileen's pronouncement that I'm destined to be a spinster has a strange effect. I am unable to start the car. I can't stop crying and hating myself for it. I am not sensitive. I am just like any other woman in the world—only slightly larger and with a heart that at this moment is swelling in pain.

Chapter Fifteen

I had been doing so well. Salads. High-protein, low-fat main meals. Water, water, water. Every food I ate was weighed and measured. I was even walking before work.

Then came yesterday. Though, honestly, I can't really be blamed for falling off the wagon, can I? I mean, if your sister had just called you an introverted spinster destined for a life of loneliness, would you resist a bag of chips? No. I'm not talking about a snack bag. I'm talking the whole bag. Ruffles with ridges. Super size. With ranch dip.

I tried to hold off. I really did. After my phony Belinda call, I doused my eyes with Visine, returned to my sister's party, and pretended to act as surprised and thrilled as all of Eileen's shrieking girlfriends when she flashed her Sears diamond-chip ring and trilled, “Guess, what, Nola! Jim and I are getting married. You can be a bridesmaid!”

I stoically kept in mind Dr. Anne Renée Krugenheim's advice from
Who Moved My Fat?

 
And I did just that. In the beginning.

I was very proud of the restraint I showed, even though there was food everywhere. Cheeseburgers. Hot dogs with chili. My mother's omnipresent potato salad. Birthday cake. I didn't even eat one potato chip. As for the cake, just a teensy weensie slice. Rather, two. Two teensy weensie slices followed by nothing more than a dollop of ice cream. Nothing, really.

Yes, it's true that at the New Jersey border I did stop off and get a Subway turkey sandwich, but those things are good for you. Look at that guy on TV who lost all the weight, though I read once that he never ate a sandwich with cheese or mayo. Well, that's just impossible. What's the point of having a sandwich if there's no cheese or mayo?

Then when I got to Princeton to pick up cat food at Wegman's, I might have grabbed a bottle of Dr Pepper. Listen, I was thirsty. Do you know how salty those Subway sandwiches are? While there I noticed a two-for-one sale on Droste 80 percent dark chocolate, which as we all know now, prevents heart disease and cancer and so many life-threatening illnesses. Being very health conscious I bought two and ate both for the sake of cancer prevention.

That I just happened to find the bag of potato chips in the part of my pantry I hadn't cleaned out yet wasn't my fault. After my conversation with Eileen I was vulnerable. So vulnerable that I dug into the ranch dip in the back of my fridge, cleaning off a thin line of green mold at the edge, of course.

And here I am, Monday morning at six thirty, lying in a heap of tangled sheets and self-loathing and suffering from what can only be a salt and sugar hangover. I don't even want to think about the Cinderella Pact.

To tell you the truth, I'm beginning to despise the Cinderella Pact.

I should call it the Cinderella
Packed
because if I hadn't been part of it, I wouldn't have binged like I just did. I would be feeling normal, getting out of bed, taking a shower, making coffee. The usual routine. Instead, I plain hate myself.

I can't do it. I just can't lose a bunch of weight just like that. I'm so tired of it all. I've been on too many diets for too long. I can't stand the constant feeling of being restricted at work, for example, while around me Joel—not exactly light on his toes—is downing grilled pastrami sandwiches and Lisa is helping herself to office birthday cake.

Not me. I've got my Ziploc bag of carrot sticks and have to politely stand aside while everyone helps themselves to either the vanilla or chocolate side of the cake. (In my heyday, I could craftily cut both right down the middle.)

Forget it. I'm done. I didn't want to be in the stupid pact to begin with.

I'm phoning Nancy and dropping out. In fact, I can't wait. I get my cell and dial her before I change my mind.

“Yeah?” Nancy sounds rushed as usual.

“Sorry,” I mumble. “I bet you're going off to work.”

“Running kind of late, but that's OK, Nola. Is this important? No, wait. What a stupid question. Of course it's important if you're calling me before seven. What's up?”

I take a cleansing sigh. “I'm dropping out.”

“Dropping out? Of what?”

“The Cinderella Pact.”

Nancy says nothing. A lawyer trick, I bet.

I speak fast before I lose my resolve. “I can't do it, Nancy. I tried. I really did. I drank tons of water and didn't eat any office birthday cake. Last Friday, when the Food department tested a recipe for Southwestern Chicken Fingers I didn't have one. But last night . . .”

“You went overboard at Eileen's party.”

“Afterward.”

“Why?”

This is the hard part. I can't tell her the whole story about my conversation with Eileen because Nancy doesn't know my secret identity as Belinda. Therefore I say the worst thing possible. “She got engaged.”

“Oh, for heaven's sake. Don't be ridiculous.” Her cell phone starts ringing in the background.

“Listen. If you have to go, I—”

“I do. But I want to talk to you later. In the meantime, do me one favor.”

It's never good when friends ask for favors. “Sure.”

“Find a Weight Watchers meeting.”

“Weight Watchers! I've tried that already.”

“And you've lost weight, remember? You do well on Weight Watchers, Nola, because there's support, which is exactly what you need. Unfortunately I can't give you that at the moment because I have an eight a.m. status conference in Judge Will-banks's chambers, and I'll be cited if I spend one more minute talking to you.”

“Well . . .” I don't know. I've been to Weight Watchers so often my name must be red flagged in their computer system.

“I bet there's a meeting somewhere. One meeting, that's all I ask. Call me again if you decide to really quit. Don't let one night of binging throw you off track. You've been on enough diets to know that. Remember, set your sights to five months from now.” And Nancy's off.

I hang up and think about what she said. I try to time travel to this December when Deb, fully recovered from weight-loss surgery, is strutting around in tight clothes instead of her usual floral tents and Nancy is back to her old zaftig self while I am the same frumpy, overweight me. Too weak-willed to survive a month in the Cinderella Pact.

Weight Watchers. The last refuge of the yo-yo dieter. Why the heck not.

I drag my laptop out and do a Web search for local Weight Watchers meetings, another way WW is like AA. There's always a meeting somewhere, and I've been to all of them. I bet my file is in every one of the sixty-three New Jersey locations.

Except the Weight Watchers at
Sass!

I shudder. I have never been able to bring myself to attend one of the Weight Watchers meetings at work. It's too . . . personal.

Lisa went when she needed to lose a wimpy ten pounds and swore by it since the meetings were held during lunchtime and were right down the hall. It did sound intriguing, I have to admit, especially the part about discovering who at
Sass!
was a closet Weight Watcher.

Afterward, Lisa would come back from the meetings and say things like, “You should go, Nola. You wouldn't
believe
who's in Weight Watchers.” She'd drop big hints about “people in management” who are “so thin now you'd never imagine they once couldn't fit in their chairs.”

As tempting as that was, I still couldn't do it. Not then. Not now.

Fortunately there is a Weight Watchers meeting at nine a.m. in Somerville, fairly close to work. I know that one. It's filled with housewives and senior citizens. There will be much discussion about cooking food in batches and freezing it in Tupperware. They will use the adjective “my” with reckless abandon as in “I make
my
Zero Point Soup on Sunday and divide it into
my
Tupperware so I can defrost it in
my
microwave for
my
lunch.”

That's OK. But if they bring up gelatin, I'm outta there.

I arrive in the lightest clothes possible. A pair of khaki rayon pants and a flimsy black top. Every other woman is dressed in similar fashion and as they line up for the “weigh in” they are busily removing shoes, earrings, watches, dentures, anything that could add unnecessary ounces.

“And your name is?” my Weight Watchers weigher asks as I step up to—but not on—the scale.

“Nola Devlin. I haven't been to this group in a while.”

She flips through a set of cards. “Devlin. Devlin.” Then, not seeing it, she yells to someone to bring her the “dropout” file.

“Have a dropout who's back,” she hollers, loud enough for them to hear in Bayonne.

I smile brightly, though I can feel the looks of pity and criticism from my fellow participants. I am a dropout, an egotist who decided she was above Weight Watchers, that she didn't need to follow Points—and look at her now. The prodigal daughter. A walking morality tale of hubris.

“Here it is,” my weigher says cheerfully, holding up my card. “You'll have to renew.”

I hand her the check already made out. I should have a rubber stamp that says WEIGHT WATCHERS.

“If you don't mind, I don't want to know my weight,” I say.

“You sure? It's always good to have a number to look back on.”

“I'm sure.”

“OK,” she says hesitantly, “though it's the heaviest you'll ever be.”

“That's what you think.”

I step on and watch her face, which she expertly keeps neutral. Then she hands me a tiny folder in which is written the number of points I may use that week. Mine are like 150 a day, which means I am seriously in trouble. Though, really, they are 28—with 35 extra points to goof around with all week long.

I can do this, I think. Sixty-three points is a lot. Until I remember that one of those big muffins you buy at Costco is like 20 points in one shot.