by Sarah Bird
Could Millie be the catalyst? The only way I can account for this sea change is that Millie, slyboots, is using all the secret information I gave her. I have to test this hypothesis. The sign-up sheet reveals that Cookie’s first private session with Millie started only minutes ago.
I race up the stairs as fast as a person wearing a circus tent can race and slip into the utility closet conveniently located next to the room where Millie has been conducting her private sessions. The closet roils with ducts twisting out from the fragrance blower Sanjeev cobbled together. All the coils disorient me. I bend down and, as silently as possible, remove the floor-level flexible coil that I think leads to Millie’s room. A suffocating cloud of eucalyptus, lavender, and bergamot belches forth. I put my ear to the opening.
“Jew are holding a lot of tenchun in jour pelbis area. For jew I recommend full release.” Sergio’s silken Latin murmur purrs through the hole in the wall.
“Oh well, if you think so.”
Missy Quisinberry?
“Jes, jes, I do. Shall I dim the light?”
I shove the duct back into the opening before I can overhear Missy’s response. More careful this time, I locate the coil leading to Millie’s room and silently pull it loose.
“Cookie, you have been carrying too much weight for too long.” Millie uses a tone I have never heard from her before. Gone is her typical apologetic deference. She speaks with the certitude of someone explaining gravity. “It is not good to carry so much weight.”
“Well, I know that,” Cookie snaps back, sounding like the tough ranchwoman she was raised to be. “Your damn program here isn’t helping me either. I’ve barely lost a pound and a half. I’m thinking about demanding a refund.”
“Cookie, you know we’re not talking about that weight. You can put your burden down.”
“Don’t get mystical. I don’t do mystical. I wouldn’t have come up here if I thought you were going to get all woo-woo. Of course, no one who’s been in here to see you will tell me what you tell them. All they’ll give me is some happy horseshit about ‘Ooo, she changed my thinking.’ ‘Ooo, she’s got such amazing insights.’ I assume that you have some big revelation about what diet worked for you. I know you used to weigh two hundred pounds. That’s all anyone will tell me. You had your stomach stapled, right?”
There is a silence and I assume that Millie is shaking her head no.
“Lipo? Weight Watchers, right? You look like a Weight Watchers person. Slow and steady. Church basement full of women cheering when you reach your goal weight. Trading recipes for Bundt cakes made with Splenda.”
“Cookie, I have a question for you: Would you marry a man who hated your body?”
“Don’t go all Dr. Phil on me.”
“Would you work for a boss who constantly criticized you? Who demeaned you? Who continually came up with ever more unattainable goals?”
“I know where you’re going with this and it really doesn’t interest me.”
“If you know, Cookie, why are you such a bad boss to yourself? To your own body? Cookie Mehan, you have been carrying too much weight for too long. Let it go, Cookie. Put it down.”
“Oh, please.” Cookie’s voice crackles with its usual astringency.
“Look at yourself in the mirror, Cookie.”
“Listen, I don’t know how you buffaloed all the others, but where I grew up we shovel bullshit, we don’t buy it.”
“Look at yourself and understand that your body is deteriorating.”
“Believe me, I don’t need you to remind me of that.”
“Understand that with each second another grain of sand slips through the neck of the hourglass.”
“Take a peek at my rear end. You don’t have to tell me that all those grains are heading south.”
“Understand that your body is a vehicle that will wear out and die.”
“Exactly. That’s why I’m trying to do everything I can to keep the miles from showing.”
“Whether they show or not, the body records them. Look in the mirror and thank your body for being such a good vessel for your spirit.”
“Okay, now you’re getting seriously woo-woo and I told you I don’t do woo-woo.”
“Don’t be a bad boss to your own body. To your spirit.”
Cookie groans. “Give me a fucking break.” But she doesn’t get up and walk out. Millie goes on. Her words are hypnotic, insistent in a liquid way, like a stream carving out a canyon, one inevitable, irresistible drop at a time. It is impossible to argue against what amounts to a gentle rain. It will fall whether you agree with it or not.
“Thank your body for serving you well. For moving your mind and spirit through a world more beautiful than any of us has a right to.”
“Oh gee, thank you, body, for saddlebag thighs and mosquito-bite tits.”
“Thank your body for being strong and for being soft.”
“Soft, that’s for sure.”
“Thank it for allowing you to express love and to receive love.”
“Look, this Oprah Lite shit just isn’t doing it for me. You’re helping me find my path, all right, and it’s heading straight out of here.”
“I will tell you one sure thing about your path, Cookie.”
“About time.”
“You will get old and you will die.”
“News flash. News flash.”
“Cookie, if you know that one thing for sure, why are you putting so many eggs in the wrong basket?”
“Say what?”
“Choose another basket. The basket of your body will crumble. Put those eggs in a basket that will last. Only you know the best container for your own most precious self-worth. I would advise, though, against choosing one favored by eighteen-year-old boys.”
“All men are eighteen-year-old boys,” Cookie snaps, but a bit of the acerbic tartness has washed out of her voice.
“Cookie, if the ultimate answer in your life is size two, you are asking the wrong question. You are asking the wrong question and you are playing the wrong game. You will die. I will die. We will all die. What do you want on your tombstone? ‘My shroud was a size two’? ‘I had perfect abs’? We’re women, Cookie. Our bodies were created millions of years ago to be round and soft. To give comfort and life. And then to die.”
“Stop saying that!”
“It is the most important thing you will ever hear. Maybe we come back. Maybe we float around on clouds and harps. We don’t know.”
“You are quite the ray of sunshine, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am. I truly am. I am shining a light on a message that is truly worth celebrating: Our time on this earth is a party. It would be churlish to complain because the party ends. But it does. Ask yourself how much of this precious time you have spent worrying about your weight or being unhappy with the way you look. Ask yourself what you could accomplish if you did something else with that time. Maybe it’s not anything more than planting a garden, but at least you’d have some homegrown tomatoes. Cookie, on your deathbed, what will you regret most not having done?”
I quickly plug the hose back in. Cookie’s answer is private. It’s hers alone. I am ashamed of myself for having eavesdropped. More ashamed than I can remember being in a long time.
The ladies return and we make it through the rest of the day without incident. But by the next morning I am beyond exhausted and can barely drag myself off the pool table and plod next door. No one is up yet. None of my little helpers is anywhere to be seen. I haul my aching carcass to the kitchen and try to get into harness. But weariness flattens me. I wilt into a chair, and honestly don’t think I have enough strength left to ever get up again. Then, praise Allah, a miracle.
Kippie Lee appears at the top of the stairs and announces, “Y’all! Group session in Millie’s room in five minutes. Come on! Fire up, y’all!” Doors fly open, the ladies emerge, rush past Fatima, and head upstairs. A few blessedly quiet hours later, they all emerge from Millie’s crow’s-nest confessional weeping
, their arms looped over one another’s shoulders, the miraculous transformation from the finickiest of consumers to handmaidens of the Lord put on earth to serve, complete.
Suddenly all the princesses begin treating their remaining time at Spa Seneca as the sort of volunteer vacation where you pay to repair the Appalachian Trail or build a pump station for a poor Mexican village. They regress back to a summer camp mentality, to a time when they made their own bunks and cooked special dinners in Dutch ovens for their favorite counselors at Camps Mystic and Longhorn. The ladies don’t make a single demand. They do everything for themselves. For one another. For Fatima and whichever of the other residents comes out of hiding. Most amazing of all, though, with the end in sight, the ladies begin clamoring to sign up for “next year’s event.”
“They are totally insane,” Juniper whispers to me. I nod from behind my little grille. The past week has shown me that Juniper and I can be fast friends as long as I am shrouded from head to toe and don’t utter a single word.
Original Sin
I CANNOT TELL how late it is when I awake that night with my foot in the side pocket of the New Guild pool table. I pat the empty space on the baize beside me where Millie had been when I’d fallen asleep only a few hours earlier, practically giddy from the thought that tomorrow is the ladies’ last day.
“Millie,” I whisper, trying not to wake any of the sleepers clumped around the pool table, but Millie is not among them. Moonlight suddenly spills in when, at the far end of the large room, the door to the backyard opens, and Millie slips outside.
“Would you kindly shut the fuck up?” Jerome crabs as a board squeaks when I tiptoe past his head.
“Oops, sorry.”
Outside, the cool night is one of those rare, early summer gifts to Austin. The light breeze is sweet with the fragrance of new growth. A full moon hangs low and plump, making the leaves of the live oaks sparkle like a thousand silver dimes. The pale limbs of a tall crape myrtle glow in the moonlight. Nighthawks chasing bugs zip in and out of the nimbus of brightness shining around a streetlight. I hear the soft murmur of muted voices and peek around the corner.
Millie’s face, radiant as an Irish saint’s, is tilted up to Sanjeev. She hangs on his every word as he says, “No, don’t argue with me. Seeing you work for what you believe in this past week has given me the courage I needed to finally, truly declare myself. I cannot go through with an arranged marriage. I will call my father tomorrow.”
“But, Sanjeev—”
“No, I have decided. I will simply ask him how he can ever expect our country to progress if even he, one of our nation’s great reformers, insists upon enslaving his own son to a tradition from the Dark Ages. I will tell him that his position is illogical.”
Illogical? Tell her you love her, you sap!
“Oh, Sanjeev,” Millie whispers with a doomed romanticism not at all in keeping with Sanjeev’s heroic announcement.
Sanjeev’s face falls. “What is it? I dared to hope that you would be happy.”
Millie speaks so softly I can barely hear her. “How, Sanjeev? How can I be happy?”
“Because I am now free to say what has been in my heart for so long: I love you. I love you, Millie Ott.”
Yes!
“No, don’t say that, Sanjeev.”
“Don’t say what? That I love you? It’s true. I love everything about you, Millie Ott. I love the way your cheeks turn pink when you see me. I love how your right nostril quivers when you say something daring. I love that your hair is glossy as a seal pup’s. I love that you sing ‘Barbara Allen’ when you start off on your rounds. I love your compassion. I love your honorableness. I love that at this very moment your foremost concerns are probably for a girl in India whom neither one of us has ever met.”
“It’s true. I can’t stop thinking about Bhavani Mukherjee. Imagining how her life will be ruined if you don’t go through with the wedding. I’ve done research. A spurned bride is very likely never to find another suitable marriage partner. But, Sanjeev, it’s mostly you I’m thinking about. If you defy your family, you will become an outcast to them, to the entire world you grew up in and love so dearly.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Maybe it doesn’t matter now. But what about a few years from now? A few decades? What if you were to marry someone whom your family has not selected and you have children with this person?”
“If that person is you, it will be the fulfillment of my fondest dream.”
“Yes, but imagine having children and knowing that your beloved father will never see them. Never know them. From the very beginning you told me that your life’s goal, your dream, was to return to India and go into practice with your father. To continue his work with the poorest in your country.”
“Dreams change.”
“Yes, but has the dreamer changed? I don’t think so. I think you are still the same son who worships his father, who feels his destiny is to serve the country he loves, whose very soul is fed by his ties to that country. Perhaps you wouldn’t immediately regret breaking those ties. But someday, Sanjeev, you would, and when you did, you would come to resent the one who caused that break. I cannot allow you to do this. You must not call your father.”
I want Sanjeev to grab Millie in his arms. Then I want him to kiss her until she is too breathless to say another word. But Sanjeev doesn’t do that. Instead, he nods his honorable head; then, with the barest touch of his fingertips against Millie’s cheek, he leaves.
Sanjeev walks off into the night. I emerge and pull Millie into my arms. “Millie, I’m sorry. I am so sorry for what I’ve done.”
As she cries, I wish I could live my life all over. I wish I could straighten out every crooked turn I have ever taken. I wish I would have chosen any other route in life instead of the one that has ended up here with the best person I’ve ever known sobbing in my arms because I have caused her heart to be broken.
Millie blows her nose and pulls herself together with a shuddering sigh. “Blythe, you did me a favor, you truly did. From the very beginning, I acted in bad faith with Sanjeev. I pretended a friendship that didn’t exist. In my heart of hearts, I always wanted more than friendship, even though he made it crystal clear from the start that he could never give me more. All you did was force my falsehood to the surface.”
“I wish I hadn’t. No one can make it through life without a lot of falsehoods.”
“I understand that, but this one was bound to be exposed in time. You just hastened the process a tiny bit. That’s all. It was inevitable. Inevitable that it should end like this.”
Millie buries her head in my shoulder and weeps. I pat her back, and the moon sets in the summer sky. She stops suddenly and looks up at me, startled. “Did you just say something?”
“Me? No.”
“Blythe, what do you want to say to me?”
“Nothing.”
“You do.”
“I really don’t.”
Millie keeps staring at me with her genius retriever stare. I’m certain she’s reading my mind and I don’t like that. “It’s nothing. It’s stupid.”
“Don’t think. Just say it.”
“No, really. Forget it.”
“Say it. Blurt it out. Whatever thought is in your head at this very moment, just say it.”
Millie’s otherworldly intensity unsettles me. “I’m not thinking about anything but you.”
“But I made you think of something else. Something that disturbs you deeply. What is it? Tell me.”
“Why? Why should I?”
“Because you want to. You want to be forgiven. You want to change.”
“No, I—”
“Say it. Blurt it out right now. Don’t think. Don’t lie. Say it. Now.”
“Is this that tingles thing?”
“Just say it. Now.”
The words pop out of their own volition. “I married Trey for his money.”
“Tell me the rest.”
“Wow
, you’re kind of a hard-liner, aren’t you? Is this how you transformed the princesses?”
“Tell me. Tell me the important part.”
“I fell in love with Trey for his money.”
“There. Good. The important part. Now we can start.”
“I did love him. But without the monstrous family fortune—I mean, if he’d been a busboy at that wedding—I wouldn’t have put up with Trey and his ridiculous shenanigans and his ridiculous family for two seconds.”
“And so your intense dislike for your former mother-in-law—”
“Yeah, Peggy. She had the goods on me from the get-go. I guess I hated her so much because she played the game so much better than I ever could. The prenup was her way of forcing my hand. She knew I was marrying her son for money before I even knew it.”
“So that was your original sin?”
“Hardly original. Every non-trust-funded princess in the house committed some version of it. The difference is, I knew. They’re all goldfish, and marrying for money is the water they’ve always swum in. I saw the water. I knew it was there. I knew what I was doing. No, my original sin was greed. I wanted more. I wanted wretched excess.”
“Do you feel better?”
“No.”
“You will. I have to be alone now.”
Millie leaves and I stay outside for a long time. In the glow from the streetlight, I notice a few bedraggled pink mimosa blossoms still hanging on the trees. Apparently, the sweetest blooms have all come and gone, and I didn’t even smell them once.
An Abrupt Harmonic Convergence
ONLY THE KNOWLEDGE that the sun is rising on the very last day of my own personal Bataan Death March gives me the strength to open my eyes. Millie is already gone. There is a damp spot on the baize where her head had been. It is hot enough inside New Guild that the spot could have been sweat. I hope it is. I am pretty certain it is not.
