Bikini Season

by Sheila Roberts

  There was also more to life than being a support system for a spoiled stomach, Kizzy realized, thinking of the way she’d been living the last few years. She looked out her dining room window at the lake, tucked in under the cover of night. She could almost see herself lolling around on her dock in a cute little bikini, then … “I’d love to be able to jump off my dock and swim across the lake,” she mused.

  “I could go for just sitting on your dock in my new bikini and drinking girly drinks,” said Angela.

  “And I’d love to have to take in my wedding gown,” said Erin, “and be able to take a bikini on my honeymoon.”

  “Are you going someplace where you can actually wear one?” teased Megan. “For all you know, Adam could be taking you to the Motel Cheap in Tukwila.”

  “I’ll have you know we’re going to Hawaii. Adam got a deal.”

  At least Adam had done something right, Kizzy thought. “Well, then, let’s do it,” she said.

  “This is great,” said Erin. “I feel better already.”

  “Me, too,” said Angela, smiling. “Bene. This is going to be fun.” Everyone looked at her like she was nuts. “Well, sort of,” she amended. “More fun than trying to lose weight alone. And ninety percent of the time when you’ve got a goal you’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of succeeding. I think I read that somewhere,” she added.

  Kizzy couldn’t imagine where, but she kept her mouth shut.

  “We should name ourselves,” Angela decided.

  Megan looked disgusted. “Why do we need a name?”

  “Just for fun,” Angela said. “How about the I-Hate-to-Diet Club?”

  Erin rolled her eyes. “That’s positive.”

  “Let’s think of something more inspiring,” Kizzy suggested.

  Angela snapped her fingers. “I know! The Bikini Club.”

  “No,” Erin corrected with a grin. “The Teeny Bikini Club. And when it’s bikini season we’ll all celebrate on Kizzy’s dock wearing them.”

  “Oh, I like it!” cried Angela. “We could do it on the Fourth of July.”

  “Independence Day,” Erin said with a nod.

  “I’ll still look scary in a bikini by July,” Kizzy said. Angela frowned at her and she added, “But I’ll do it.”

  “I don’t know,” said Megan.

  “It’s just going to be us girls,” Angela said. “Come on, it will be fun.”

  “We’ll see,” Megan said.

  Kizzy knew what those words meant. She’d used them often enough over the years to placate her kids when she had no intention of giving in. She understood Megan’s reluctance. Megan probably had the most weight to lose. She wouldn’t be bikini-ready by summer. But maybe, if she lost some weight, she’d at least feel encouraged.

  Kizzy raised her glass of chocolate milk. “So, here’s to the Teeny Bikini Diet Club. Starting tomorrow, we toss out all our chocolate stashes left over from the holidays.”

  “And dump the cookies,” added Angela.

  “And everyone finds a diet book and brings it to the first meeting,” Megan added. “We can set goals.”

  Angela sighed. “I’m already going through baking withdrawals and we haven’t even started.”

  “You can make up something nonfattening for us,” Megan suggested.

  “I like it,” Angela said with a nod.

  “And we each have to start an exercise program,” added Erin, who was getting pumped.

  The mention of exercise threw cold water on Kizzy’s enthusiasm. It was one thing to imagine herself fit and fine, swimming the lake, but in reality she wasn’t really a sports fanatic or a fitness freak. As far as she was concerned, gyms were places of torture. “I hate treadmills and bicycles.”

  “You just have to find something that’s fun,” Erin told her.

  Kizzy grimaced. “There is no such thing.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Erin. “We’ll help you find something to get you buzzed about exercise.”

  That settled, they spent the rest of the evening brainstorming possible menu themes for future meetings, and by the time they were done everyone was excited.

  “We are going to be hot by bikini season,” Angela crowed, doing a little boogie in her seat. “Totally bella.”

  “I’m going to fit into my wedding dress,” said Erin, smiling.

  “And we’re all going to feel better, which is the most important thing of all,” added Kizzy.

  “Now we just have one thing left to do,” said Megan.

  “What’s that?” asked Kizzy.

  “We need to toss the cookies and cake and the casserole left-overs.”

  “We can’t toss out perfectly good food,” Kizzy protested. And besides, Lionel had left the house fantasizing about the treats he was going to enjoy when he got home from his bowling league. He’d be disappointed.

  “If you send those cookies home with Angela you’ll sabotage her,” Megan reasoned. “And if that cake stays here can you resist it?”

  It was one thing to talk the talk, but Kizzy was already backing up from the idea of walking the walk. “Why don’t I freeze it? Then we can eat it later in the year when we’re all fit and fine.”

  “I don’t know about you, but a little thing like a freezer wouldn’t keep me out of chocolate cake,” Megan said.

  “She’s right,” Angela said, her voice steely. “It all has to go. No gain, no pain.”

  “That’s no pain, no gain,” Megan corrected her absently.

  “I made that cake from scratch,” Kizzy protested.

  But Megan and Angela were already on their way out to the kitchen, Erin in hot pursuit.

  Kizzy trailed them miserably. There were people starving in the world. It seemed so wasteful to throw away good food.

  Who was she kidding? That had always been her excuse for not getting rid of things she shouldn’t be eating. What not wasting food usually translated into was saving treats for future indulgence, and if she was going to carve a healthy new body for herself she was going to have to lose that kind of faulty thinking.

  Gathered in the kitchen, they were just about to begin the food disposal ceremony, starting with the chocolate cake, when Kizzy got inspired. “Wait!” she cried, throwing herself in front of the garbage can. “I know a much better way to dispose of all of this. We can take the cookies down to my neighbor Faith to take to the homeless shelter where she volunteers. And Linda Isaacson just had foot surgery. Her kids will inhale all these leftovers.”

  “Oh, great idea,” said Angela, clapping her hands. “Let’s deliver them right now.”

  “That works,” said Erin, grabbing the plate of cookies.

  Five minutes later they were parading down the street, bearing foil-wrapped offerings to the neighbors, Erin and Angela giggling and singing the chorus to the Pretenders’ “Brass in Pocket” loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear that they were special.

  “Gonna lose my arms,” Erin sang, improving on the original lyrics. “Gonna lose my legs.”

  “Gonna lose my butt,” added Angela, off-key.

  “’Cause we’re special,” they chorused.

  Kizzy couldn’t help smiling. Yes, they were.

  Linda’s family was excited over the food offering, the younger kids jumping up and down as their dad and oldest sibling took the goodies with grateful smiles. And Faith promised to put the cookies to good use.

  “That felt good,” Erin said as they walked back.

  “And it proves we’re serious. From now on we start becoming different women,” Kizzy said.

  “Better women,” added Megan.

  Would losing weight make them better? Kizzy wondered.

  She was still mulling it over when Lionel came home from bowling and started snooping around the kitchen for leftovers. “So where are the goods?”

  “Gone.” Kizzy put her Fitz and Floyd salt and pepper shakers back on the counter next to the stove, then returned to the dining room and pulled her grandmother’s old floral tablecloth off
the table.

  Lionel leaned dejectedly in the doorway. “You ate everything?”

  “No,” she said, and started for the laundry room. “We gave it all away.”

  “To who, and why?”

  “To people who really could use it,” she said over her shoulder. “Some is going to the shelter with Faith tomorrow and some went to the Isaacsons. And as for the why, I don’t want the temptation in the house.”

  “People who could use it. Humph. I’d have used it,” he grumbled. She put the soiled tablecloth in the hamper and Lionel watched her morosely. “Here I come home hungry and you don’t even give me my props.”

  She came up to him and slid her hands up his chest. “I can give you your props right now if you want.”

  He smiled, his irritation over the vanishing leftovers forgotten.

  Kizzy couldn’t help smiling, too, as Lionel started helping her out of her blouse. Men were so easily distracted.

  If only women were, she thought later as she lay in bed, remembering that chocolate cake. She hadn’t even gotten a taste of it, and there wasn’t so much as a crumb left in the house.

  She sighed and turned over onto her side. There was a reason diet was a four-letter word.

  Erin left Kizzy’s house with visions of bikinis dancing in her head. She could do this. She didn’t have that much to lose. Getting into her wedding dress by June was doable.

  She stopped off at the Safeway and loaded her shopping basket with lettuce, tomatoes, celery, low-fat salad dressing, and chicken breasts. And she hurried past the snacks aisle, trying not to think about chips and salsa and margaritas. The express checkout lane was closed and there was no sign of Dan Rockwell anywhere. Good. At least she wouldn’t have to put up with a running commentary from him. She went to an empty checkstand manned by a woman.

  But then, just after she’d unloaded her groceries onto the conveyor belt, there was a changing of the guards, and the current checker left to be replaced by … not him again.

  “Hey, there,” he said cheerily as he reached for the head of lettuce. “Belated New Year’s resolution?”

  “No.” She sounded defensive and snotty. Okay, no reason for that. He was only making conversation in his usual clueless manner. She tried for a lighter tone. “Just trying to eat right. You know I don’t always sit around eating chips,” she couldn’t help adding. What business was it of his if she did? Why had she felt the need to say that?

  “Sometimes you’re just in the mood for chips. Nothing wrong with that.”

  “There’s not,” she agreed. “And there’s nothing wrong with eating salad to balance out the chips.”

  He looked at her seriously. “You’re not fat, you know.”

  How embarrassing that he’d remembered their last conversation. He couldn’t remember her fiancé’s nickname, but he could remember talking about her fat.

  Cut him some slack, he’s trying to be nice, whispered her inner mother.

  Well, he could go be nice somewhere else. There were other people around, and she didn’t need him talking about her weight with the entire store listening.

  “Do you mind?” she said between clenched teeth.

  “Having you come through my checkout? Nope.”

  “Well, I’m not going to if you don’t stop talking about my weight every time.”

  “Sorry. Just thought you’d like to know. I mean, you were so pissed last time.”

  “I was not pissed, I was …” She stopped. “Okay, yes I was pissed. It really had nothing to do with you.” Other than him being a dork, which he couldn’t help.

  “I figured that out,” he said as she swiped her debit card. “Next time you come through you should buy some chips,” he added. “Good for the soul.”

  “They may be good for the soul but they’re not good for the hips,” Erin informed him as he gave her the receipt.

  “Yeah, that’s the problem with a lot of women these days. All they think about is their hips.” He handed over the bag. “Yours are fine, believe me.”

  What was this, some sort of grocery line shrink session? “Thanks, Dr. Dan. I’ll remember that,” she said, and took the bag. As she left the store, she found herself trying to remember if Adam had actually ever said her hips were fine.

  He hadn’t, she was sure. But, so what? She’d never asked him. Anyway, he told her he loved her, and that was what counted. He loved her and she loved him and they were perfect for each other. And life was perfect. And by June, her hips would be perfect. And then her wedding would be perfect. Perfect.

  Four

  Megan was actually smiling when she drove back to her condo after cooking club (cooking club it was going to stay—no way was she going to think in terms of teeny bikinis!). She had a plan, she had support, and, for the first time in a very long time, she had hope.

  And that was a big change from when she’d first arrived at Kizzy’s house. She had come home after work and almost thrown out the stupid appetizer makings, almost thrown out everything in her refrigerator. Almost. But then she’d felt so depressed that she’d wound up eating half the refrigerator, which was even more depressing.

  That was when she had her now-or-never moment. She could either continue feeling invisible at parties when men drifted past her to talk to the pencils, keep shoring up a shaky I’m-smarter-than-anyone façade in front of her shoddy self-esteem, or she could do something. To do something, of course, was the smart choice. And the first something that came to mind had been to quit the cooking club. Belonging to a club that centered on food was like being a diabetic and working at a candy factory.

  She’d almost called and canceled, but the need to be with women who actually appreciated her had driven her to go one last time. Anyway, it was gutless to bow out over the phone. And when Kizzy had opened her door and smiled at Megan like she was a long-lost relative it had been salve to the smarting wound she’d received at work, the wound that had turned her into a ravening refrigerator beast.

  Her day at the firm of Weisman, Waters, and Green (referred to by the younger members of the firm as Wise Ass and Greed) had started okay. She’d spent almost the whole morning in her windowless office on the forty-first floor—the firm occupied both the forty-first and forty-second floors—of the First Orca Trust Tower, putting together a brief in support of a motion for summary judgment that had at least a reasonable chance of success. By eleven she was feeling restless, so she’d slipped down to the little coffee shop on the lobby floor for a mocha and muffin. Back on the forty-first floor she’d gotten as far as the hallway, lined with bookcases of leather-bound legal journals, when she passed Pamela Thornton and Ashley Paine, two of the pencils. They looked sharp in their black business suits with their white blouses discreetly unbuttoned to show a hint of cleavage, and their slender little feet in heels, their long shiny hair, and perfect makeup. She, of course, was dressed for success, too, and her long hair was stylishly cut, but compared to the pencils she looked like SpongeBob Square-Pants in a suit. They smiled as they chatted, showing off professionally whitened teeth. They could have been models or actresses posing as lawyers—Julie on Boston Legal. Neither one of them was a Harvard Law School graduate like she was, and Megan knew neither one had graduated in the top percentile. Yet here they came, prancing down the hall like a couple of goddesses out slumming. Pamela Pencil carried a cup of black coffee. Of course, it wouldn’t have anything fun or fattening in it. Goddesses didn’t do fun or fattening. Goddesses didn’t need food. They fed on their own conceit.

  She’d barely gotten past them when Ashley said in a quasi-undervoice to Pamela, “The poor whale. She’ll be here a million years and never make partner.”

  Megan Wales, whale. Ha, ha.

  Oh, I’ll make partner someday, Megan thought as she kept walking. But I won’t have to do it lying on my back.

  She could have easily voiced her thought, but why sink to their level? Anyway, her barb would have been nothing more than a pinprick which they would brush off their
golden selves much as they brushed rain off their expensive cashmere coats when they first came to work every morning. Megan, on the other hand, knew she would struggle with her wound all day long.

  And a little voice whispered that Ashley was right. In a society that prized beauty, nobody wanted to save the whales. The world treated you differently when you were fat. It was the last socially acceptable discrimination.

  But that was all B.C., before cooking club. Now Megan felt like she’d found new evidence or the key witness to turn a trial around. She was going to change, and so was her life. If Wise Ass and Greed wanted a hot Boston Legal babe to put in first chair on defense, they’d get one. Brains and looks. The pencils couldn’t compete with that. “We’ll see who’s pretending to feel sorry for whom then,” she said, and the green eyes peering back at her from her rearview mirror narrowed in determination.

  It had been forever since Erin had exercised. How pathetic, considering how much she used to get, she thought as she entered the Heart Lake Health Club Saturday morning. Cheerleading in high school, tennis in college. And then she’d gone to work and turned into a slug. Actually, she’d turned into more of a slug after meeting Adam. They hadn’t played tennis since August. And since Adam wasn’t all that into dancing, most of their clubbing consisted of drinking and playing trivia games at the Last Resort, their favorite watering hole. Which was okay, but it didn’t exactly get the heart pumping.

  She climbed onto a stationary bike, set it for a medium difficulty workout level, and then began to pedal off toward the land of Thin.

  She smiled and pedaled faster. She could do this. We’ve got it, we’ve got it, we’ve got it, got it, got it, got it. Goooo, team!

  She was just working up a sweat when she saw—oh, no!—Dan Rockwell striding toward her. And oh, no!—looking at him in his workout grubbies gave her a zing, the same kind of zing she got every time she went to a movie and Leonardo DiCaprio walked out onto the big screen. Dan sure wasn’t dressed like Leo. No movie star would be caught dead in those Goodwill cast-off shorts and that faded T-shirt sporting a picture of Homer Simpson. But the body inside the clothes looked movie-star good—thick pecs, legs corded with muscle, beautifully sculpted biceps peeking out from under those tattered sleeves. It was a lot more of him than she saw when he was working the checkout stand.