The Wildwater Walking Club (4 page)

“I’m really sorry,” I said. “But I’m afraid I’m going to have to get back to you on that.”

Brock nodded. “Okay, think about it. Who wants to go next?”

Some of the others were almost as bad as I was, but a few people really got into it. One woman just wouldn’t shut up about all the things she was never, ever going to do again, everything from going to meetings to wearing mascara to singing “Happy Birthday” to people she didn’t even like. It was actually nice to be around people, and the ninety minutes flew by.

Brock left us with a final nugget. “And, remember,” he said, “when you’re in transition, structure is key. Put yourself on a sched
ule and adhere to it. Without a routine, it’s a slippery slope. Too much freedom and before you know it you’ve lost control of your day and turned into a slug. So when that structure isn’t imposed from without, you have to take the time to build it carefully and irrevocably into your day…the Fresh Horizons way.”

“I thought he was going to start tap-dancing and break into a song at the end there,” I said to the woman with the messy hair as we walked out together. “But I have to admit that baby coach wasn’t half bad.”

A guy stepped up to my other side. Every time he swung his arm, he flashed a little bit of skin through a hole in the armpit of his T-shirt. It was kind of sexy in a lowbrow way. “Yeah,” he said. “That slug image was magic. Almost enough to make me find myself by next week.” He half-turned and raised his voice. “So, what is it this week, kids, Wii bowling or PlayStation Rock Band?”

“
STRUCTURE IS KEY
,”
I SAID
. “
AND I DON’T THINK IT WOULD
hurt for us to set some goals, either.” Rosie Stockton, who owned the lavender farm, had cut through the woods to my backyard, and Tess came out as soon as she saw us.

“Yeah, yeah,” Tess said as we walked across my side yard to Wildwater Way. “I still can’t believe your name is Rosemary and you own a lavender farm.”

“They’re related, you know,” Rosie said. Her red hair was short and curly, and she was tiny, maybe five two, if that, so unfortunately she didn’t wear an 8½. “Sage and thyme are related to lavender, too. And lavenders belong to the genus
Lavandula
of the family Lamiaceae, which is the mint family.”

“So, can I have mint in my garden, too?” I asked. The plan was that I’d try to exchange a pair of the sneakers for a size 6½ for Rosie, and in return she’d plant a starter lavender garden for me. Tess would get a bar of lavender chocolate for brokering the deal.

“Mint is really invasive,” Rosie said. I noticed that we were falling into a pattern already. Only two of us could fit on the sidewalk at the same time, so we’d walk three abreast in the middle of the road, whenever we could get away with it. When we had to move back to the sidewalk, we’d take solo turns up in front of the other two. “It’ll take over your whole garden. I can bring you some from
my garden, but the best thing to do is plant it in a pot to keep it contained.”

“I thought I planted mint one year,” Tess said, “but it turned out to be catnip. Every cat in town started coming to our yard to get high. Like I didn’t have enough problems with two teenagers in the house.”

“Whatever you think,” I said. “I’ll try to exchange the sneakers tomorrow. I’m meeting some old friends from work.”

“Catnip is a kind of mint,” Rosie said. “It’s also great for getting rid of mosquitoes.”

“Maybe,” Tess said, “the mosquitoes are just too busy laughing at the cats to bite anybody.”

We’d reached North Beach already. We walked single file through a narrow opening in the seawall, and then spread out again to walk the beach. It was getting close to high tide, so only one of us could fit on the hard-packed sand, and the other two had to walk on the loose, dry sand at the top of the beach.

Last night I’d gone on the Internet to research walking and found out what anybody who’d ever tried it knew: walking on the sand requires more effort than walking on a solid surface. Because your foot moves around more, the tendons and muscles of your legs have to work more than twice as hard. Supposedly walking on the sand used up to 50 percent more calories than hard surface walking, too.

Whatever the benefits, the best reason to walk the beach was that it was so amazingly beautiful. Especially early in the morning like this when the walkers owned the sand. In another hour or so, it would become an obstacle course of chairs and towels, pails and shovels, and throngs of sunscreen-slathered, bathing suit–clad people in all shapes and sizes.

Out of the blue, Rosie started to sing “Walk On By,” maybe in honor of the shoes I’d promised her. Tess joined in. Then I did.
Actually, we didn’t really remember the words, so we just kept making them up as we went along.

We kept going until a couple of guys walking their dog got close enough to hear us, and then we started to giggle.

“That was fun,” Rosie said. “I always wanted to be in a girl group. I was devastated when I didn’t even make my high school chorus.”

“I had this great fantasy I’d become a rock star,” Tess said, “and run a private school for the band’s kids on the side. Not much job security though.”

I didn’t say anything, mostly because I couldn’t seem to remember anything I’d ever wanted to be. Maybe being made redundant had wiped clean a portion of my brain; with my luck, it was the part that had been flourishing while I neglected it. Or maybe I couldn’t think about what I’d always wanted to be because then I’d actually have to start thinking about what I wanted to do next.

I could feel a little cloud of anxiety starting to rise through the center of my chest, so I changed the subject. “Okay,” I said. “Getting back to structure. I was thinking maybe we could commit to walking at the same time every day….”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?” Rosie said.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “But what if there were a prize at the end? You know, a certain number of hours walked or pounds lost by a certain time.”

“Not another diet,” Tess said. “I am so over diets. You starve yourself, lose ten pounds, enjoy it for a week, then gain back twenty-two. I rebel against the whole concept. And I’m never going to have plastic surgery either, so don’t even bring that up. Somebody has to look old, you know?”

“No offense,” Rosie said. “But I have to say I agree.”

“Fine,” I said. I bent down to pick up a piece of sea glass and let the other two walk ahead.

Tess turned around. “Don’t pout,” she said. “It’s not becoming.”

I stood up. “I’m not pouting. I just wanted something to look forward to.”

Tess and Rosie stopped walking. I threw the sea glass, and it disappeared into the water.

“I could use something to look forward to,” Rosie said.

“At school,” Tess said, “the P.E. teachers give us these big maps for our classroom wall. The kids keep track of their mileage with these little tokens they earn and wear on their sneaker laces, and we plot the classroom mileage totals and pretend to travel across the country. Math skills, geography skills, history tie-ins, plus it really gets them moving.”

“That’s a great idea,” I said. “Okay, what if we say that whatever mileage the three of us can accumulate in one month, we get to go somewhere that’s the same distance away for real.”

We started walking again. “What do the tokens look like?” Rosie asked.

“Young,” Tess said. “Okay, here’s the problem. Say we each walk five miles a day, seven days a week.” Her voice clicked into teacher mode. “Thirty-five miles times three would be….”

I closed my eyes to do the math.

“A hundred and five,” Rosie said.

Tess nodded. “Good job. And times four weeks…”

“Four hundred and twenty,” I said as fast as I could. Not to be competitive, but I completely blew Rosie out of the water on that one.

“Great,” Tess said. “Which would probably get us to, where, East Wesipisipp? I think if we’re going to do this, we need to up the ante.”

“Is there really an East Wesipisipp?” I asked. Maybe I would have had better luck there than in Marshbury.

“Of course, there is,” Tess said. “It has the biggest population of golden retrievers per square acre in the state.”

“And don’t forget that tennis tournament,” Rosie said. “The Wesipisipp Cup.”

“Good one,” Tess said.

“Thanks,” Rosie said. “You, too.”

We reached the far end of the beach and started crossing the parking lot to get back out to the road. Just the thought of upping the ante had caused us to pick up speed.

“Moving on,” Rosie said. “What if we made it six months?” Every so often Rosie had to take a little hop and a skip to keep up with our longer legs.

“I don’t know,” Tess said. “I’m not sure delayed gratification is the way to go. I’d kind of like to get out of here as soon as possible. Plus, summer’s the best time for me to go away.”

“Maybe,” I said, “we can count other things, like strength training, or even gardening. Come up with a formula to convert them to miles.”

“As long as we don’t count calories,” Tess said. “I’m fine with eating healthy, but I’m not keeping a food diary, and I am so not giving up wine.”

“We could recruit people to donate miles to us,” Rosie said.

“What? ‘Help send these poor women to camp’?” Tess stopped walking and put her hands on her hips. “You know, that might just work. My whole family would probably donate.”

AS SOON AS I REACHED THE PARKING LOT, I STARTED THINKING
about Michael again. It was like I could feel his presence once I broke through the Balancing Act force field. Even though close to a thousand employees worked—in Balancing Act lingo—“on campus,” I had such a strong feeling I was going to run into him at some point, as if fate wouldn’t be able to resist crashing us together again.

I wasn’t even sure I believed in fate, but just in case, I’d dressed extra carefully. I was wearing a subdued but flirty periwinkle and white sundress in a contemporary floral print, a complete departure from my usual professional casual work attire, which consisted mostly of pants and jackets in neutral solids.

It actually felt good to wear a dress for a change, and when I’d looked in the mirror before I left the house, I’d thought I looked pretty good for a redundant woman of a certain age without a certain someone/certain job/ounce of certainty in her life. The periwinkle brought out the mossy green in my eyes, and my chin-length brown hair was still at that good place between touch-ups when the graying roots hadn’t even started to emerge yet. The dress had a V-neck and a touch of ruching that gave me the illusion of a long, lean silhouette. My upper arms weren’t great, but I didn’t think there was any serious wiggling going on yet.

I pulled into the exact same spot in front of the Balancing Act
Employee Store I’d parked in last time. I’d flipped through my buyout papers last night and couldn’t find anything about the expiration of my employee discount, so I’d have to take my chances. Balancing Act employees had two open weeks before Christmas and one in August when they were allowed to buy for family and friends, but the rest of the year, we were only supposed to buy shoes in our own size. With luck, my feet looked smaller in sandals.

As soon as I entered the store, I walked quickly over to the Walk On By display. I scooped up a box labeled 6½ with my free hand and headed right for the register.

“Hi,” I said to the same woman who’d waited on me last time. “I can’t believe this, but I just took a buyout, so I came in here and bought a whole bunch of shoes, you know, while I still could, and well, I guess I wasn’t paying much attention, because one pair wasn’t even my size.” I curled my toes. “Six and a half,” I said. “Small feet.”

I held up both boxes, then put the 8½ on the counter. The woman gave me a look that said, essentially,
whatever
.

I cradled the 6½ box in my arms. If she didn’t care, then I certainly wasn’t going to keep feeling like a criminal. “Hey,” I said, “remember that purple pedometer you gave me last time? You don’t happen to have two more of those you can sell me, do you?”

She reached under the counter and handed me two purple pedometers. “On the house,” she said. “It’s the least Balancing Act can do for you.”

I thought she could use some new material, but Balancing Act wasn’t my problem anymore, so
whatever
. I thanked her and walked back out to my car with Rosie’s shoes. It had all gone so easily, it was almost a bit of a letdown. I wished I hadn’t overexplained myself like that in the beginning. It left me feeling slightly sullied, as if another shower today wouldn’t be such a bad idea. It just wasn’t the kind of thing I would normally do.

I mean, what was the big deal? Worst case scenario, I could have kept the shoes and bought Rosie a pair at retail. I wouldn’t even have had to tell her. She’d still have gotten her shoes, and I’d still have ended up with a lavender garden. None of the fun of the barter would have been lost, and I was getting a paycheck, so it’s not like I was destitute or anything, at least not yet.

I clicked my car door open and put one hand on my door handle. One row of cars away and off to my right, a man in a suit was walking with his back toward me. He was tall, with dark hair, and I knew that walk. At least I thought I did.

I walked quickly, closing the distance between us. I’d almost caught up to him when it hit me. What the hell was I going to say to Michael? Not only that, but it would look like I was following him, mostly because, well, technically, I
was
following him.

I had to take control of the situation. I wondered if there was a way I could create a disturbance, turn around, and walk the other way. That way he’d be following me, which would put me in the power seat.

I looked down at the shoe box I was carrying. I held it behind my back, then lobbed it away from me. When I turned around, Rosie’s shoe box was sprawled on the pavement, one shoe in and one shoe out. The top had turned into a Frisbee and was just coming in for a landing on the hood of a shiny silver sports car.

I twisted my head just enough to assess the situation behind me. The guy had turned around, too, but instead of Michael, it was a perfect stranger who was glaring at me. I didn’t have to know him to tell he was not a happy camper.

I gave him a little smile.

He scowled at me for a long moment, then looked in the direction of the shiny car. “There better not be one single scratch,” he said.

“Ohmigod,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. But it’s only cardboard, and I’m sure….”

“You better have good insurance,” he said.

“Oh, I do,” I said. “I have great insurance, and I even know a terrific auto body shop, if you need a referral. Once, a few years ago…”

I took a step back as he stormed past me. He picked the box top off his hood with two fingers and flicked it onto the pavement. I scrambled for it and tucked it under my arm. I started rifling in my purse for my license while he ran his finger slowly over the hood of his car. I assumed he was feeling for scratches, but it looked like he was trying to read something in Braille.

His silver baby must have turned out to be scratch free, because he gave me one more mean look and started walking away.

“Sorry,” I said to his back.

“That’s an understatement,” he said, without turning around.

By the time I got to O’Malley’s, I really needed a drink. Carol had staked out the head of our usual table and was flanked by several Wednesday regulars. I ran my eyes quickly around the table. I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath until I started breathing again when I didn’t see Michael.

“Well,” Carol said perkily. “If it isn’t Reeny, Reeny, Redundancy Queeny.”

“Hi, everybody,” I said. I sat down, leaving an empty chair on one side, just in case Michael showed up. Not that he would. Not that I cared.

A waiter was just delivering drinks, so I ordered a glass of wine.

“So what’s it like to be a free woman?” somebody asked.

“Great,” I said. “I’m loving it.”

“You look good,” Beth from Accounting said.

“Thanks.”

“I didn’t know you wore dresses,” Lena from Marketing said.

My wine came and I took a big gulp. The conversation had already moved on. They were talking about a big interdepartmental
meeting they’d just had, and I suddenly felt like I’d been away for a century instead of a week and a half.

“You’re awfully quiet, Noreen,” somebody said eventually. “Tell us what you’ve been up to.”

I took another sip of wine and put the glass down on the table. “Well,” I said. “It turns out I’ve got some nice neighbors. We’ve started walking together. We’re even thinking—”

“Must be nice,” Josh from Customer Relations said. “Hey, did you hear what happened in IT yesterday?”

Their conversation floated in one of my ears and right on out the other. It was as if I couldn’t even process the words I was hearing. I hadn’t been myself since I’d set foot on Balancing Act property.

But if I wasn’t myself, then who was I? The old Noreen certainly wouldn’t have behaved like that in the Balancing Act store. The first rule of negotiation, in this case a simple, if slightly illegal, shoe exchange, is not to volunteer too much information. Bring the shoes up to the register, give the salesperson a confident, non-adversarial smile, and tell her matter-of-factly that you’re making an equal exchange.

And that guy in the parking lot. I mean, come on. When you’re dealing with an asshole, you keep your mouth shut. You make him do all the talking. You don’t start hemorrhaging apologies all over the place. And what the hell was I doing, hallucinating Michael and throwing a box of sneakers across the parking lot like a love-sick teenager?

It had taken me a long time to learn to thrive at Balancing Act. I’d spent the first few years under the control of a really tough supervisor. I kept thinking I could please her if I worked just a little bit harder, came up with an even more brilliant idea, flattered her some more. But the more I tried to please her, the more she withheld her approval, and somehow it always ended up feeling like it was my fault.

She completely controlled me. She said jump; I asked how high. I didn’t make a single decision without wondering what she would think of it. Just the thought of my quarterly employee evaluation was enough to send me into a full-blown anxiety attack.

And then one day, in the midst of some snowballing departmental crisis, she really let me have it. We were sitting in her office, and there were no witnesses. She took off her reading glasses and placed them in front of her on the desk. She launched into an angry tirade about how she’d created me, how I’d be nothing without her. She belittled my past efforts, ridiculed the project I was working on, minimized everything I’d be likely to bring to the table in the future.

The odd thing was that as she ranted, I suddenly got it. She was a bully, plain and simple. Because she’d never shoved me into a locker, or held me upside down by my ankles and shaken the change out of my pockets, I just hadn’t been able to see it until then. It was a huge epiphany for me, maybe one of the biggest of my life. In that instant, I stopped trying to please her, and she lost all power over me.

I think she knew it, too. Bullies need people to control, and when they can’t play the game with you, they find another victim.

I continued to do my work, but I stopped worrying about whether or not she liked it. Eventually an opportunity presented itself in another department, run by a more nurturing, less abusive boss. I grabbed it and never looked back. In the years since, I’d run into other bullies, and I’d gotten pretty good at defusing them.

My behavior today felt like major backsliding. Was it possible I’d lost my edge in less than two weeks? Maybe without a job, all your skills just withered up because you no longer had a place to practice them. I looked around the table again, and I felt a total disconnect. It was like I was sitting with perfect strangers, and not only did I not recognize any of them, but I didn’t even recognize myself. Maybe without a job, I didn’t have a self.

One of the women, Sherry, was pushing her chair back from the table and saying something about having to get going because she was meeting someone for dinner. She stood up, placed some bills on the table, and looked over at me.

“Nice to see you again, Noreen,” she said. “Call me if you want to hang out sometime.”

I liked Sherry. She was about my age and had started working at Balancing Act maybe a year or two after I did. We sometimes shared a table in the cafeteria at lunch, and we’d gone to the movies and shopping together a few times over the years. She was a nice person, with a dry wit, and I’d always enjoyed her company.

“Thanks,” I said. “I will.”

The minute Sherry was out the door, Carol leaned forward. “I know who she’s meeting,” she actually sang.

“Who?” somebody asked.

“Wouldn’t you like to kno-ow?” Carol was still singing. She was in her glory.

“I heard from a friend of mine in her department that she’s thinking about taking a buyout while the VRIF is still on the table,” somebody said.

“Come on, who?” somebody else said.

“Come on, Carol,” somebody else said. “Play fair. You brought it up, so now you
have
to tell us.”

Carol leaned back in her chair like it was a throne. We all waited. She tilted forward again, placed one elbow on the table, and rested her chin on the palm of her hand.

“Michael Carleton,” she stage-whispered. “You know, Michael-don’t-call-me-Mike from Olympus. They’ve been sneaking around practically since the takeover.”