The Cinderella Pact (28 page)

“I want you to put together a report as well, Devlin,” Lori says. “David Stanton has requested one from you in particular.”

“The hot David Stanton?” Joel asks. “Or the old?”

“The young one. Dave.” Lori smiles. “As a matter of fact, he and I were talking about this issue only last night. And I thoroughly agreed with his conclusion that as Belinda's editor, Nola, you were the person who had the most direct contact with her and should have been aware she was a fraud.”

Shoot me now. Please, someone, put me out of my misery. This constant mortification, I think, is why I haven't shown my face at work in a week.

When I got home from L.A., I made the mistake of stopping off at my parents' house on my way back from the airport to pick up where I left off on the explanations and apologies for missing Eileen's engagement party.

Mom took one look at my thinner, paler self, at the LOVE, HARLEY ☺ scrawled on my forearm, and ordered me to undergo an emergency infusion of Rosemary Baked Chicken. Rosemary Baked Chicken is my mother's Prozac and penicillin wrapped in one. She is convinced that the drug industry would be decimated and the divorce rate would fall if more people turned to chicken in times of crisis.

Of course you can't just have Rosemary Baked Chicken alone. There must also be stuffing with walnuts, mashed potatoes with sour cream and chives, butter-slathered broccoli, and cherry cobbler with ice cream. I am ashamed to say I wolfed it all down. Including second helpings on the cobbler.

“Good. Good. Your body needs it, Nola,” Mom said, topping the warm cobbler with an extra touch of whipped cream. “And don't bother going back to your place tonight. I've got your old room ready. New sheets and everything. Take a bath after dinner, watch some TV, and go to bed. I even bought a new bottle of Mr. Bubbles.”

That night, squeaky clean, drowsy with Mom's cooking and tucked tightly among crisp cotton sheets in my old white-framed single bed, I looked around my familiar pink room with its sloping eaves and flowered wallpaper border and my Duran Duran poster from high school, and felt a comforting peace. Yes, my tiny childhood home in Manville was about as far away from the sophisticated feng shui at the O hotel in L.A. as you could get, and thank heaven. I decided then and there never to leave and couldn't fathom why I'd been so eager to flee when I was eighteen.

The next morning I awoke to the fresh homemade cinnamon rolls Mom was pulling out of the oven.

“Cinnamon sets everyone right. It's been scientifically proven.” Mom put one on a plate, refilled my coffee, and handed me another cut grapefruit. I silently reaffirmed my vow from the night before.

Bitsy took care of Otis and I called in my personal days as I “decompressed” at my parents' house. The days of three-course meals and soup and sandwiches for lunch, chocolate-chip cookies for snacks, and soap operas from noon to four passed by in one blur. One very pleasant, satisfying blur. I didn't step on the scale once for the simple reason that my parents don't own a scale. Like my father says, once every other year at the doctor's office is often enough, thank you.

Probably a wise thing, as when it comes to fattening comfort food, no one can beat my mom, who was determined to comfort me until I exploded. We feasted on baked macaroni and cheese with real cheese and buttery breadcrumb topping. Meatloaf with a ketchup sauce. Thick bean soup with sausage and homemade bread. Pineapple upside-down cake. Baked Alaska. And, of course, rice pudding with raisins and extra cinnamon.

The more I ate, the more whole I felt. This was so familiar. I knew
this.
Why had I put up the fight with all that water drinking, exercising, and portion control? Better that I accept who I am. Isn't that what maturity is all about? Accepting ourselves? Therefore, I accepted that I was a closeted, spinster bookworm like Eileen said. It wasn't as though Chip was ever going to call me again anyway.

Chip. Every time I thought of him, of embarrassing myself in front of Harley Jane Kozak, of ordering a double margarita and tottering around Gladstone's, I changed the channel or helped myself to another butterscotch brownie. And as my independence eroded, as the sugar in my blood spiked, Mom inched in for the kill.

“There's my favorite girl back again,” she said, smoothing my hair as I sat like a lump on her brown tweed couch, feeling particularly sated and warm. “Why don't you tell me what's going on, hon? Let it all out.”

But I couldn't. Frankly, I'd eaten so much in the past few days that my capability of putting words in coherent order had diminished. All I could blurt was, “I think I might like to be a nun.”

Mom quickly crossed herself. Then she took my hand again and said, “Let me call Father Mike. I'll arrange everything.”

Which is how I have arrived in Father Mike's study, staring at the embroidered, multicolored LOVE tapestry one of the church ladies must have framed for him, thinking not of Christ's message, but of how much I missed Chip and so very much wanted to hop his bones.

 
“So, Nola, what's this your mother said about you wanting to become a nun?”

Father Mike has nice brown eyes and a beard. He's about my age, which is kind of amazing when you think of what normal guy in my generation would voluntarily choose to give up sex in exchange for being on call 24/7 to all those old ladies in the altar guild who think nothing of calling him when their tomato soup goes cold. I am pretty sure he is not one of those molesting priests. He plays baseball and runs in marathons. Not exactly molesting-priest hobbies.

“I think,” I begin, looking away from the smiling Madonna in the painting behind Father Mike's desk, “I think I have a calling.”

“A calling.”

“Yes.”

A calling sounds so much better than explaining that I want to be a nun because the garments are loose and because God as a husband doesn't mind if I have a fat ass and, anyway, there's not much point of me forging onward in life as a practicing heterosexual woman after embarrassing myself in front of the one man I could truly see myself spending a loving lifetime with.

“That's right,” I reaffirm. “A calling.”

“I see.” Father Mike leans back in his swivel chair and looks up at the ceiling. I can't tell if he's amused or taking me seriously. It's so hard to discern with that beard. “And how, may I ask if it's not too personal, did that calling manifest itself to you?”

I'm a bit confused by what he means here, but I give it my best shot. “In a Weight Watchers meeting.”

“In a Weight Watchers meeting.”

“While I was arguing with a couple of old ladies about Zero Point Soup,” I add.

“I see,” he says again. It could get annoying if he keeps up this repetition.

“So,” I say, getting to the point, “are there any nun orders that aren't, you know, too bad?”

“Too bad? I'm not sure I'm following you.”

“Well, I read this book I found in church called
So . . . You Want to Be a Nun?
And it said that with some orders you didn't have to wake up before dawn or take a vow of poverty.”

“Or wear a habit,” Father Mike suggests.

“Actually, I like the habit. They're black. They're loose. They hide figure flaws. I think habits could be a marketing campaign for the church if it ever started recruiting for more nuns. You know, ‘Make it a habit! Become a nun!' ” That's pretty clever if I do say so myself.

Father Mike laughs and gets up to pour us two coffees. “The church recruits all right. But I don't think telling women to join so they can wear a heavy, shapeless cloak is exactly a wise move. I mean, being a nun means giving yourself over one hundred percent to others. It's the most selfless act a woman can perform in the Catholic Church.”

“I was afraid of that.”

He hands me a cup, not bothering to ask me if I want milk or sugar because he knows and I know that I would never drink the sludge he lets condense every day in the bottom of his pot. “I hear what you're saying, Nola, and what I'm not picking up is the spiritual component of your calling. Correct me if I'm wrong or if you've been going to another church, but I haven't seen you at St. Anne's in weeks.”

“Months.”

He makes a face and pulls up a chair next to me so that we are eye to eye. Father Mike is not one for patriarchy. He's all about being one with the congregation. “What I am hearing, Nola, is pain.” His voice is soft and sincere. “Would you like to talk about that pain?”

Something inside me stiffens protectively. “No.”

“It wouldn't have anything to do with your sister's upcoming wedding, would it?”

“Absolutely not. If Mom's been telling you that, ignore it. It's a lie.”

He reaches out and touches my knee in a non-sexually-harassing way. “Please, Nola. How about we lower the fence for a moment. It's me, Mike. We went through catechism together every Monday night. You used to babysit my little brothers.”

(For the record there are 115 kids in the Salabski family, of whom Mike is like number twelve.)

“You can tell me what's in your heart. Trust me. Your word here is safe.”

I'm still not sure.

“We all want to be loved, Nola. You especially. I've always thought you'd make a great wife and mother. You're warm and generous. And I'll let you in on a little secret.”

Ick. I'm not sure I want to hear a priest's secret. It's supposed to be the other way around. He hears ours.

“If I hadn't had my own calling, I might have considered asking you out.”

“Oh, come on.” I mean, really, does he go around telling this to the altar guild?

“Well, to be honest, I had the calling at a pretty young age. Like ten. I guess what I'm trying to tell you is that as a child of God you are worthy, Nola, of being loved for who you are.”

It's too much. That did it, the child-of-God-worthy-of-being-loved thing. From some deep well within me rises a fountain of tears I never knew was there. Between sobs and sips of Mike's truly shitty coffee, I let it all out. Everything.

I tell him about how I hate being fat, that I just want to wake up thin and have it done with. I explain about the Cinderella Pact and how Deb and Nancy are threatening to outpace me in the weight-loss race. Then I really let loose and confide that I have fallen madly in love with Chip, a man who seems to really enjoy being with me, only to find that he is investigating my alter ego about labor fraud and that he is my boss's son.

That's right, I even blab that I am Belinda Apple. Interestingly enough, Father Mike had no idea who Belinda Apple is, though he cottoned on that she was thin and British and some sort of celebrity in a materialistic culture he abhors.

When I am through, my body is weaker than if I'd just suffered through a twenty-four-hour bug. My shoulders ache and my joints hurt. I have the sense that my face is puffy and bloated. There is an empty tissue box discarded on the oriental carpet beneath our feet and another one in my lap.

All I want to do is go home and take a nice long nap.

Father Mike, meanwhile, says nothing as he cleans out the pot, refills it with water, and spoons out more coffee. An antique wall clock ticks out the minutes. I like it here in his office, which he has decorated in standard priest décor. I like the faded oil paintings of Jesus with children, the Bibles on the shelves along with books about teaching the Gospels and each of us experiencing our “personal Calvary.” I even like the smell of must and dust. Church smells.

Maybe I wouldn't be such a bad nun after all.

“John 10:10,” Father Mike says from his shadowy corner near the coffee pot. “Do you know it, Nola? It's one of my favorites.”

If this is some kind of nun quiz, then I am definitely going to flunk. “Um, kind of.”

“ ‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy,' Jesus says. And then he adds, ‘I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.' ”

“Oh.” I squirm in my chair. It makes me very uncomfortable when priests get all religious.

“God wants us to live life abundantly. But it is impossible for us to have an abundant life if we follow the thief instead of the Lord. And I am afraid, Nola, that you have been misled into following the thief.”

Oh, brother. I am definitely beginning to regret this visit.

The coffee pot spits out its last and Father Mike gets two fresh cups. This could be Father Mike's fifteenth cup of the day. Priests must develop serious prostate problems, is all I have to say.

He hands me a warm cup and goes to the window, his back to me. “Think about what that means.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy
. According to what you've just described to me, you have lied to your employer and to the readers of your magazine. The thief strikes.”

I drop my head and study the floor. He's right, of course.

“And then you express jealousy, the most destructive emotion we have, toward your own sister. The thief again.”

OK, now I'm really in pain. I eye the door with longing. Get ... me . . . out.

“But worst of all, you hate yourself. You have let the thief convince you that you are unlovable, not valuable, worthless. You have let him rob you of the wonder of being alive. He has stolen the preciousness God has imbued in each of us from birth.

“Think of a baby, how she smiles and coos and reaches for the sun. Does she care if her little legs are chubby or if her belly is round? Of course not. All she knows is the joy of love. And my question to you today is why did you let the thief steal that joy from you?”

Goddammit. There go those tears again, and I'm back to the tissue box, though this round I'm only crying and not speaking. Yes, what did happen to the joy? I think back to when Eileen and I played dress-up, her as the ever-marching bride, me as Cinderella. We didn't care who was fat or who was thin, who had a boyfriend and who didn't.