Wicked Jealous: A Love Story

by Palmer, Robin

  “Oh good—you’re home!” Hillary tweeted as she click-clacked onto my now-bare-wood floor because my awesome Indian dhurrie rug was gone. “So what do you think? Isn’t it great?”

  I doubted that even a forklift could’ve picked my jaw up off the floor so that I could answer her.

  “I know how fond you were of all those . . . used things that you bought at the flea markets back when your dad and you used to go on your little bonding outings, but according to Mercury—she’s the psychic-slash-feng-shui-expert-slash-interior-designer I found through an article in last month’s Vogue—they really stop the flow of new and creative energy, which is going to be important once I start trying to get pregnant.”

  Not only was I not going to be able to pick my jaw up off the ground, but I was afraid my eyes had just opened so wide they were going to be permanently stuck like that.

  “That’s still two years out in the ten-year plan, but still, you can never start taking care of yourself too early.” She click-clacked over to my closet. “Speaking of which, I cleaned out your closet and replaced it with some healthier snacks.”

  My closet—my snacks. She sounded so nonchalant about it—as if it was completely normal for a person to keep boxes of snack cakes hidden in their closet with a paper bag full of wrappers next to it. This was even more humiliating than the locker room thing.

  As she threw open the door, I saw that all my Krimpets were gone. In their place were boxes of Hostess Apple Pies, an apple tart, and an apple cobbler.

  “How are those healthy?” I managed to get out.

  She ruffled my hair. “Because of the fruit aspect, silly!” She laughed. “Did you know that apples are an excellent source of fiber?” She picked up a lock of my long dark hair and examined it. “This is really your natural color?” she asked doubtfully.

  I nodded.

  She sighed. “Wow. Women pay a lot of money for something so rich-looking.” She flashed a smile. “So what do you think?”

  What did I think? I thought the woman was completely insane. I walked over to the closet and began to drag the boxes out.

  “What are you doing?!”

  “Hillary, I’m allergic to apples. Remember?” I replied. Just thinking about apples made my arms start itching, my eyes start to water, and my throat start to get all tickly and begin to close up.

  She squinted. “Huh. Oh, riiiiiiiiiiight—now it’s coming back to me. Yes, I vaguely remember you and your father mentioning that at one point.”

  Mentioned. More like a half-hour oral history of the severe allergic reactions I’d had over the years after inadvertently eaten something with apple, as told by my father during the Sunday drive the three of us had taken up the Pacific Coast Highway a few days after she moved in. From anyone else, that would’ve come off as an odd remark, but seeing that Hillary was so self-centered and totally disinterested in what people said, unless it directly had some bearing on her life, it was kind of par for the course.

  “Well, lucky for you, because all the books talk about the importance of being extra sensitive to a stepchild’s needs during those critical first months of blending, I had my assistant purchase some non-apple snacks as well,” she went on, reaching for a brown paper bag on the floor next to her. “Although because there isn’t a fruit component, they’re not very healthy.”

  She handed it to me. Inside were Ho Hos, Devil Dogs, Big Wheels, and Sno Balls. Jeez. It would’ve been nice if Hillary had given me a little credit. Those things tasted like cardboard and Styrofoam mixed with dishwashing liquid and Windex.

  “Hillary, what’d you do with my stuff?” I demanded. It was taking everything in me not to scream, but I didn’t want to give her the benefit of seeing how much she was getting to me.

  A perfectly formed pout appeared on her (not-as-red-as-mine) lips. “That’s fine. I won’t take your passive-aggressive comment as yet another rejection of all the effort I’ve been putting into developing a relationship with you for your father’s sake. I had it put in one of those storage places,” she replied. “You know, the ones you hear about on the news where murderers store bodies and stuff?”

  “I want it back. Now.” The sooner I had my room back to normal, the sooner I could breathe again.

  She shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’ll have my assistant take care of it.” She flashed a smile as she smoothed her unwrinkled red dress and fluffed her already fluffy mane of hair. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go call the decorator about replacing all those horrible old mirrors around here. I mean, what’s the point of a mirror if it’s so old that you can’t actually see yourself in it?”

  As soon as she moved in, I discovered that Hillary’s obsession with mirrors wasn’t just limited to her collection of compacts. It was wherever she could glean a reflection of herself. In a window, in our stainless steel refrigerator . . . I once even caught her crouching down, looking at herself in the sliver of chrome that surrounded the dishwasher. As for me, I tried everything I could do not to look in a mirror—which, when you’re attempting to tweeze between your eyebrows because your best friend has told you in the most gentle way possible that you’re starting to resemble a monkey, isn’t easy.

  But those “old” mirrors she was referring to were actually expensive antiques. BH (Before Hillary) the whole house had been filled with antiques. In fact, that was one of the things people had always liked best about our house—the fact that everything in it, while old and eclectic, ended up mixing together perfectly and, in a world of CCRPH (Nicola’s abbreviation for Cookie Cutter Rich People’s Houses) made it feel warm and inviting.

  But Hillary wasn’t into antiques. According to her, they were depressing. And Dad just let her get rid of them. So now, with its new furniture that looked like a collection of geometric shapes, our house was just as cold and soulless and uncomfortable on your butt as every other house in L.A. Not exactly the kind of place that screamed “Come hang out here!”

  I walked over to my desk. She’d even taken the bulletin board with all the photos of Nicola and me. Who took away someone’s pictures? I looked under my bed. Mowki! Where was Mowki, the stuffed donkey that I had had since I was four?! There was definitely a circle in hell for people who took other people’s stuffed animals. I stood up and looked at the closet.

  If she touched my shoe box, I was going to have to kill her.

  I walked over to the closet, relieved to find a beat-up shoe box still tucked away in the top left-hand corner. As I took it down and opened it, I took out a photo of a woman who looked a lot like me, minus the snack cake weight.

  “I’m not sure where you are right now,” I whispered to my mom, “but if you could help me out here, I’d really appreciate it.”

  “I know—you can get a hobby,” Nicola suggested a week later at One Person’s Garbage as she tied a paisley silk scarf around her head, making her look like a boho hippy circa 1975. If boho hippies had had lavender streaks in their hair.

  “I guess so,” I replied unenthusiastically. Due to my distaste for exercise and my Weird Fat Girl status, I wasn’t exactly a hobby kinda girl. But I couldn’t go home—not with Hillary taking over. “Aren’t they expensive?” Seeing that the only hobby I had was hanging out at the Nuart watching old French films, I hadn’t ever been exactly breaking the bank with my activities. But because of the redecorating at the house, and the fact that the Nuart was closed for renovations, I had been spending less and less time at home and more and more time at One Person’s Garbage. Even though I considered Brad a friend, I still felt guilty when I didn’t buy anything, which is why I was quickly going broke—vintage concert T-shirts are a lot more expensive than movie tickets.

  She shrugged. “They can be, if you choose something like . . . collecting tribal artifacts from lost civilizations, like my grandfather does.” Nicola’s grandfather was this very bizarre guy who had made boatl
oads of money when he invented this screw that every airplane in the world used. He also dressed up in a different costume before dinner every night. Which, when you’re that rich, you can afford to do.

  Brad looked up from his computer where, from the way he had been super focused and taking notes, I knew it had been an OkCupid versus an eBay kind of day. “You could try the AFCC over on San Vicente,” he suggested. “They’ve got lots of classes. That’s where I took that Find Your Soul Mate While Learning How to Make Jewelry! one.” AFCC stood for All Faiths Community Center. It used to just be a JCC—Jewish Community Center—but then the Christians and Muslims got all mad, so they changed it.

  “I remember that!” Nicola exclaimed. “You came back with that beaded Native American breastplate thingie and the phone number of that actor-slash-life-coach guy.”

  “I don’t know,” I said doubtfully as I petted the blue satin dress again. Now that I couldn’t spend my afternoons in the house visiting with Tastykakes, my pants were loosening up a little (well, at least they weren’t cutting into my skin and leaving marks), but I still wasn’t anywhere near fitting into a size 8. “I’m not sure I’m interested in something so . . . social. I’m kind of into hobbies you can do by yourself.”

  Brad clicked away on the computer. “What about pottery making? That’s a solitary kind of hobby. Especially if you sit off to the side and don’t talk to anyone in the class.”

  Pottery sounded kind of cool. Maybe I would become so good at it I could open up a little online store on Etsy. Or at least make one mug that wasn’t so crooked that all the liquid sloshed out of it whenever I tried to take a sip. “It is close to my house,” I said.

  “Yeah. You could even ride your bike there,” Nicola said. “Might get you into that blue satin dress faster.”

  I shot her a look. That was pushing it. Physical exercise and spending my afternoons around strangers? No thanks. I’d be like every other person in Los Angeles and contribute to the pollution problem by driving there.

  Well, I would’ve driven there if my Saab had started. But it didn’t. Again. And because L.A. is not a real city—like, say, Manhattan or Paris—I couldn’t just walk out my door and get a cab. And because I’m one of those people who, if I miss the first five minutes of a movie I can’t watch it, I didn’t even want to think about how uncomfortable it would be to miss the beginning of a pottery class. Which is why I was forced to wade through old lawn mowers, a moth-eaten volleyball net, a Big Wheel, a Slip ’N Slide, and a few empty propane tanks in the garage to get to my very dusty bike. It had been years since I’d ridden it, and although they (whoever “they” are) say that you never forget how to ride one, from the way I wobbled down the driveway before finally getting my balance, I was pretty close to proving them wrong. Luckily, by the time I got to the end of my street my memory had come back and I felt safe enough to brave my way to the AFCC.

  When your physical activity for the last few years has been limited to chewing and channel-changing, heavy aerobic activity like biking is somewhat of a shock to your system. Not to mention your clothing. By the time I arrived, my Psychedelic Furs T-shirt had sweat stains in places that I hadn’t known were possible. And my long hair looked like I had just washed it. In body oil.

  As I walked in, an older woman with frosted blonde hair wearing a pink Juicy Couture velour tracksuit looked up from the desk and gave me a big smile. “Hello. I’m Cookie. And look at you—a workout before the workout!” she said before cringing at the drop of sweat that plopped off my forehead onto the counter. “Aren’t you the little overachiever!”

  “I’m here for—” I gasped.

  “Zumba, I know,” she said as she slid a clipboard across the desk with what looked to be a novella’s length stack of forms. “Just fill these out. And don’t forget the section about whether you’re a convicted criminal with a previous record,” she said. “People think just because we’re in Brentwood that would never be the case and they can skip over it, but I’m here to tell you, you would not believe the number of middle-aged housewives in this town who have been arrested for shoplifting. . . . It’s actually quite shocking. But you need to hurry.” She looked at her blinged-out watch. “Class started five minutes ago.”

  “Actually. I’m. Here. For. The. Pottery. Class,” I panted before mopping my forehead with the edge of my T-shirt.

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry—we canceled that.”

  “What?!” I had gotten my heart rate up for nothing?

  She nodded. “Yeah. No one enrolled.” She shook her head. “I keep telling Waheel—he’s the programmer here—that if you want to draw a crowd, it’s got to be something that helps them either slim down or meet their soul mate.” She sighed. “But I’ve only worked here for five years, so what do I know?” She flashed a smile. “But lucky for you, our ten-week Zumba Your Way into Health and Happiness starts today—which I know you’re just going to love. And it’s just in time for the holidays! Now will that be cash or charge?”

  It was a little obnoxious for this woman to think that I automatically wanted to lose weight. I mean, maybe I didn’t. Maybe I liked being fat. I sighed. Okay, fine. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I had just gotten used to it and felt like even if I wanted to do something about it, I didn’t know how. Plus, I could tell that “No, thank you” was not an answer that computed in her world. I’d give it a try. One class. And if I hated it—which I obviously would—I’d never come back again.

  She peered over the counter at my beige cargo pants, which, thanks to my bike, were now streaked with grease stains, before standing up and waddling over to the boutique area, which was filled with bedazzled yoga pants and bedazzled tank tops. There were even bedazzled water bottles. “Now, while you can get away with wearing the T-shirt, you’re going to need something a little more appropriate pants-wise.” She held up a pair of orange-camouflage yoga pants. “And I think these would just look fabulous on you!” She looked at the tag. “They’re an extra large, so I think they’ll fit, but I’m telling you—five sessions into this course and I bet my bottom dollar you’ll be swimming in them.” She waddled back to the counter. “And because you’re a new member of the AFCC family, you get a fifteen percent discount on them, which means”—she clicked on a calculator with her pink nails with little flowers painted on them—“they’re only going to set you back ninety-two shekels! You’re just gonna love Zumba, honey!” Cookie said. “It’s completely off the doorknob!”

  “Huh?”

  “You know . . . amazing!” she explained. “My eight-year-old granddaughter taught me that phrase. Isn’t it so catchy?”

  “I think what you mean is that it’s ‘off the hook.’”

  “Huh?

  “It’s not ‘off the doorknob’ . . . it’s . . .” From the look on her face, I could tell she was very confused. “You know what? Never mind. So are we talking Zumba Zumba?” I asked. “That dance thing that they made fun of on Saturday Night Live last weekend?”

  “Yes, but maybe if those Saturday Night Live people actually tried it, they would realize the wonderful benefits to it and wouldn’t make fun of it,” she replied, all huffily. “Now cash or credit?”

  I sighed. I wasn’t psychic or anything, but I intuitively knew that the chances of my convincing a woman named Cookie with nail art that Zumba wasn’t really for me were slim to none. And seeing that the reason I was here was because I was kind of like one of those displaced persons from World War II whom we studied about in history class, I figured my dad could pay for it. “Credit,” I said, handing over the American Express card I carried around in case of emergencies. Which—if this Zumba thing was going to require any sort of coordination—this could end up being.

  After I had filled out the application to the best of my ability (who walked around with their passport in their bag at all times? Or their vaccination records?), I went into the locker room. As I started to und
ress, I told myself that if the yoga pants didn’t fit, I could leave. Unluckily for me, while definitely tight, the Lycra made it so that there was enough give that I could get by.

  “OMG—orange is so your color!” Cookie exclaimed when I walked out. “BTW, OMG is short for ‘oh my gosh.’ Or is it ‘God’? Oh, and BTW is ‘by the way,’” she said as she pulled me toward the gym and opened the door. Inside, about twenty middle-aged women with muffin tops hanging over their waistbands were shaking their booties as Latin music blared out of an old-school CD player.

  “See Rona over there?” she asked, pointing at an equally frosted blonde woman wearing a neon-pink yoga top with lemon-yellow yoga pants. I could see that the charm bouncing up on and down on her chest as she shook and shimmied said WORLD’S #1 GRANDMA. “When she first started coming, all she wore were these awful caftans from International Woman over on Sawtelle. Now she’s into jeggings.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about the world’s number one grandma wearing jeggings, but still, the idea that you could lose weight from Zumba-ing rather than just die from laughter because it looked so ridiculous was pretty impressive.

  “Ay carrrrrrramba!” yelled a twentysomething guy in lime-green short shorts and a purple I’M THE REALEST BITCH YOU KNOW Mob Wives tank top. Even from far away I could see that underneath his yellow bandana, his curly dark hair was smothered in hair gel. “Shake those tuchuses, guapas!”

  “That’s Jorge. Isn’t he the bomb shelter?”

  “I think it’s just ‘the bomb.’”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s not bomb shelter . . . it’s just ‘bomb.’”

  More confusion.

  “Never mind.”

  “I just love that he’s able to mix Yiddish and Spanish in the same sentence,” Cookie went on. “It’s so creative.”