All's Well That Ends Well

by Roseanne Dowell

  “Constructive? Out of trouble? You’ve stepped over the edge, Mr. Eberhardt. Way over.” I turned to leave. I didn’t have to stand here and take this abuse. How dare he?

  Ed followed me. Of course I knew he would. Ed never let me go off in a tangent. He always insisted we talk things out. I didn’t feel like talking right now. The thought Ed and Ethel talked about me bothered me. Who else had he talked to? My whole family? Did they all think I had a problem? It didn’t set well with me at all. I hurried into the ladies room. At least Ed couldn’t get to me in there.

  He knocked on the door. “Come out of there, Bea. Let’s talk about this.”

  As if I’d agree. That man didn’t know me at all if he thought he could command me to do something.

  Two minutes later Ethel came in. Why didn’t that surprise me? “Beatrice Lulu, are you okay? Ed’s out there pacing and worried sick.”

  “Worried sick?” I couldn’t help but laugh. “About what? That I won’t go along with your crazy plan for an exercise program?”

  “You know Ed hates when you’re upset with him.”

  “Then he shouldn’t have upset me.”

  “You’re being unreasonable. Ed and I both just want what’s best for you.” Ethel tried to hug me, but I pushed her away.

  “If that’s true, then why don’t you both let me decide what’s best for me?”

  “Oh, for heaven sake. I was doing it for me as much as for you. Look at you!” Ethel turned me toward the mirror. “Hell, look at both of us. We’re overweight and out of shape. Admit it. We both need the exercise. I thought if we went together it’d help us both. If you don’t want to go, fine. I’ll find someone else to go with me.” She turned to leave. “Stay in here and pout all night. I don’t care.”

  “Wait!” Ethel was right. I stood there looking in the mirror. I mean really looking for the first time in years. I was fat, plain and simple. No other way to describe it. “Okay, I’ll go to the swimming class with you, but only if you’ll come with me to buy a bathing suit.” I cringed at the idea.

  “No need. I have several. I’m sure one of them will appeal to you.”

  I laughed. “I can’t imagine a bathing suit in my size that would appeal to me, but I’ll look at them. Anything is better than shopping for one.” I opened the door to find Ed waiting for me, a pitiful little boy look on his face. Of course I melted. Besides, I knew he meant well. I went into his arms.

  “Are you ready to go home? I’ve had enough excitement to last a lifetime.”

  “Just let me get my purse and we need to say goodbye to a few people.”

  Ed groaned. “It’ll be another hour before we get out of here.”

  “We can’t leave without thanking people. They went out of the way for you tonight. Named you man of the year. Act the part.” I put my hand through his arm, smiled, and steered him in the right direction.

  An hour later we finally left. Funny thing about goodbyes, they take forever. Doesn’t matter if you talked to the person all evening or that you’d see most of them tomorrow, suddenly there was more to say. Can’t say I wasn’t happy the evening was over. Not that I didn’t enjoy it. I did. I love parties, always have, but trying to keep the secret from Ed had to be the most difficult thing I’d ever done, and I don’t mind admitting I was tired. The bed never looked more inviting. I crawled in without waiting for Ed.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Ethel called bright and early the next morning. “Are you coming over?”

  Was she kidding? I’d barely opened my eyes, hadn’t even started the coffee, let alone thought about what I was doing for the day. “Seriously? Give me a break. I just woke up.”

  “Oh, I thought we were going to the Y. Remember?”

  “I said I’d think about it. I never committed to go.”

  “Of course you did, you even made me promise to help you pick out a bathing suit. I swear you don’t remember anything since you got that bump on your head.”

  “A bathing suit. Right. Listen, Ethel, I have to call you back.” I hung up without giving her a chance to answer. Me in a bathing suit. No way. I cleared the thought from my head and made the coffee.

  “What’s all that about a bathing suit?” Ed came in and kissed me good morning.

  “Ethel insists we go to the Y.”

  “Oh right. When are you going?”

  I put my hands on my hips. “Who said I was going?”

  “You did. Last night, remember?”

  I set up the coffee pot and put two slices of bread in the toaster. “I never said for sure. Let’s not start this again.”

  Ed tilted his head and looked at me. I knew right off that wasn’t the end of this. Oh no, not when he got that look. “Now, Bea, you promised Ethel you’d go with her. You promised me you’d at least give it a chance.”

  “I did no such thing. Don’t you go trying to make me out to be crazy. I never said any such thing and you know it.” I took two coffee cups from the cupboard and slammed the door. The top hinge let loose and the door hung there.

  “There’s no call to go slamming and breaking things. What’s gotten into you, Beatrice Lulu?”

  Ed never called me that. Never, not once since we’d been married. Heck, I’d never been mad enough to slam anything since we’ve been married. We’d never really had an argument before. Disagreements, but never a full blown argument.

  Tears burned my eyes. I hated Ed being angry with me. Hated being this angry at him, but I couldn’t help myself. Maybe they were right, maybe I need to exercise, do something constructive. Being cooped up after I hit my head had taken its toll.

  “Okay, I’ll go swimming. Who cares if I embarrass myself? I’ll look like a big tub of lard, but so what. You don’t care.”

  Ed put his arms around me. “Now, Bea, don’t be saying things like that. You’re not a tub of lard. Okay, you’re a bit overweight, so what. I bet everyone in that class will be the same way.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Poor Ed. Try as he might to ease myself consciousness, he only made it worse. “So you’re saying we’ll all be fat?”

  “Now that’s not what I meant and you know it.” Ed chuckled.

  “Okay, I’ll go, but only to please you.” I picked up the phone and called Ethel. “I’ll be over in an hour. Get those bathing suits ready.”

  I ate my toast, drank my coffee, and got ready to go. I still wasn’t sure about this. Wasn’t that I didn’t like swimming. I did, but lord almighty it’d been years since I wore a bathing suit. I hardly ever wore shorts for heaven sake.

  An hour later I pulled into Ethel’s. How had I let them talk me into this? A bathing suit. Me. That just wasn’t an image I liked. Nothing about it made me comfortable.

  Ethel came to the door all bouncy and excited. I swear you’d have thought we were going to a party or something. “I set the suits out in my bedroom. You can try them on and pick the one you like best.”

  “Good grief, Ethel. Let me come in and have a cup of coffee first.”

  “You can have coffee later. Come on. I can’t wait to show you.” Ethel pulled me into her bedroom. She’d laid out five bathing suits on her bed.

  I cringed looking at the first two. Big, bold red and yellow flowers on one and green and blue horizontal stripes on the other. Not that the hot pink one did anything for me either. What was she thinking when she bought them? “Why do you have so many bathing suits? Where do you wear them?” They looked brand new. In fact, one still had tags on it. “You didn’t just go out and buy these? You did, didn’t you?”

  “Only three of them. I had the other two. I knew you wouldn’t agree to shop.”

  I shook my head, hardly able to believe the lengths she’d gone for this. “And where did you get the money for all these suits?”

  Ethel looked away. “Just pick one and try it on.”

  “Ed gave it to you, didn’t he? How long have you two been conspiring?”

  “I only just mentioned it to him last week. He thou
ght it was a good idea and we both knew you wouldn’t shop for a suit, so he asked me to. Look, just try one on. Here…” she picked up a navy blue suit with a pleated skirt and shoved it at me.

  I took the suit and headed to the bathroom. I have to confess out of all the suits, this wasn’t too bad. Maybe the skirt would help hide my flabby stomach and at least part of my thighs. I lifted my left leg, hopped up and down, my foot half in half out of the suit, lost my balance completely and fell back, barely catching myself on the sink. Obviously, I wasn’t used to standing on one leg. Somehow I managed to put both legs in. I tugged and pulled and wiggled my hips. Jumped up and down – if you want to call it jumping, my feet hardly came off the ground. After much wiggling and wrangling, I jiggled my breasts into the cups and finally pulled the straps up. I was so out of breath I could barely turn around to look at myself in the mirror.

  Good lord, I needed one of those suits they wore in the Victorian days. One that covered me from head to foot. The flab on my arms jiggled and hung. I held in my stomach, not very successfully, the skirt emphasized it instead of camouflaging it. I turned and looked at my back. Okay, this wasn’t going to work. My behind looked worse than my front. I knew I was fat, but never bothered to look at myself so closely before. My buttocks looked like two mounds of I’m not sure what. Nothing pleasant.

  I took off the suit. I wasn’t going swimming, that’s all there was to it. Nope, you’d never catch me out in public in a bathing suit. I put my clothes back on, came out of the bathroom and threw the suit on the bed. “That settles it. I’m not going swimming.”

  “Why?”

  “I look like a walrus.”

  “Don’t be silly. Why didn’t you come out and show me?”

  “Are you crazy? My behind looked like a blob of blubber, not to mention my stomach. I looked eight months pregnant.”

  “Oh don’t be ridiculous. Of course you didn’t.”

  “You didn’t see me, Ethel. How can you say that?”

  “Well you can’t look any worse than me and you should see some of the other ladies. You’ll look like Twiggy next to them.”

  “Yeah, right. I’m not going, plain and simple.”

  “Okay, how about this. Let’s go check it out. You’ll see everyone else and maybe you’ll change your mind. Besides, we’re doing this to help lose some weight, remember.”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t feel comfortable.”

  “Come on, what do you have to lose? If you still feel that way after you see everyone, we’ll come home.” Ethel picked up a black and white print suit and handed it to me. “See if you like this one better.”

  “Are you nuts, with this wild print, I’ll look worse. Nothing is going to make this shape look better.”

  “Just try it on.” She picked up the suit with the bold red and yellow flowers. “Unless you’d rather try this one.”

  “Not in this life time.” I took the black and white print. It was cute. I’d give her that.

  “It might surprise you.” She hugged the bold suit against her. “I know I’m fat. But that doesn’t mean I have to give up fashion. I’m going to look just as big in a dark colored suit as I do in this.”

  She had a point. I tried on the black and white suit with as much wiggling as the other. How could all this strain be worth it? Of course I was right. I still looked like a blimp. Nothing was going to hide the rolls of fat around my midriff, let alone my stomach and butt. But I did like this suit better than the one with the skirt. I came out of the bathroom, prepared for Ethel to laugh. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  Ethel let out a low whistle. “Really, you don’t look too bad. The way you described yourself, I expected to see you falling out of that suit. It holds you in quite nicely.”

  “Give it a rest, I’m not blind. I see very well how I look.”

  Ethel whipped off her cover up. “You don’t look any worse than I do.”

  Wow, she wasn’t kidding. Huge red and yellow flowers covered her breasts. Talk about emphasizing. She turned around and I couldn’t help but laugh. One red, one yellow flower covered each side of her butt. I have to admit, I felt a little better. I wouldn’t be caught dead in a suit like that. But as mama always said, ‘to each his own.’ Although I wasn’t sure I wanted to be seen with her.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  Seldom at a loss for words, I had to think carefully. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but that suit just didn’t do her justice. “I’d like to see you in the navy suit.”

  “That suit is boring. I like this one.” Ethel’s lip trembled.

  I’d hurt her feelings. “Okay, then let’s go.”

  “I could try on the hot pink one if you don’t like this one.”

  “It’s not so much that I don’t like it, it’s those flowers happen to highlight certain parts of your body, I’m not sure you want highlighted.”

  Ethel grabbed the hot pink suit and disappeared into the bathroom almost before I had the words out. I couldn’t imagine that one looking much better, but at least it didn’t have flowers. She came out a few minutes later. I had to admit the color looked great on her. And although it didn’t flatter her figure, at least it didn’t draw attention to her breasts or her butt.

  Ethel spun around. “What do you think?”

  “Not bad. Much better than the other one. Pink is definitely your color.”

  “Good, let’s go.” Ethel picked up her coverall and threw a bag at me. “Put that on over your suit.”

  “What about towels?” I hesitated to open the bag. Although Ethel’s plain black coverall was very conservative. I looked in the bag and sighed. What a relief, plain white lace. Actually quite pretty.

  Ethel went to her linen closet, pulled out two beach towels and tossed me one. “Hold on a minute. I almost forgot.” She bent down, pulled out another shopping bag and tossed it to me, then pulled a beach bag out. “We’d better put our clothes in here so we can change.”

  “Ed must have shelled out a pretty penny for all this.” I opened the shopping bag and pulled out a beautiful rustic jute bag with blue starfish.

  “Nah, most of the stuff was on sale. Besides, he said you’re worth it. I told you the man is crazy about you.”

  I couldn’t deny that and I was crazy about him. Bless the day he walked into my life. I followed Ethel to the car, still leery about this whole thing.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  We arrived at the Y and Ethel maneuvered her car into the tightest parking spot around. Wasn’t that there weren’t plenty of other spots, but Ethel always insisted on being close to the door. I could barely open my door. “Do you think you could have found a smaller spot? It wouldn’t hurt us to walk. After all, we are supposed to be getting exercise.”

  Ethel ignored me and walked away. “Let’s go, we’re going to be late.”

  Still unsure about this, I grabbed the beach bag from the back seat and followed her. I loved the smell of pool water. Thankfully, it wasn’t a strong smell of chlorine. I know some people think that’s a good thing, but it isn’t. A strong smell of chlorine, which isn’t chlorine at all, it’s a combination of contaminants like urine, perspiration, body oils and even cosmetics. There’s a chemical word for it, but it escapes me now. If you ever go swimming and it smells of strong chlorine, stay out of the water.

  A healthy chlorinated pool can emit a light chemical odor, especially if it’s an indoor pool with poor ventilation. The chlorine smell from this pool was very slight. Safe for swimming.

  I looked around at some of the other women. Most of them were my age or older with bodies of all shapes and sizes, many similar to my own. I felt a bit more comfortable that there weren’t any shapely young women, or older women for that matter. One woman in particular caught my eye. I nudged Ethel and nodded toward the woman wearing the exact bold flowered suit Ethel wanted to wear. Considerably larger than Ethel, those flowers stretched across her ample breast. She turned around and Ethel and I both looked away. Neither of u
s could control our laughter.

  “Did I look that bad?”

  I shook my head. “Not even close.”

  The instructor entered the room. Needless to say, my jaw dropped. No way this woman was seventy years old or my name wasn’t Beatrice Lulu Eberhardt. She stood there, fluffed her blond hair – probably from a bottle – put her hand on her slender hip and looked at us. Darn woman had the body of a model in her twenties. Not to mention her face – what a beauty. Okay, more than likely she’d had a face lift. No one looked like that in their seventies. Body lift, too. No one, no matter how physically fit, looked that good.

  No telltale wrinkles around her eyes, no sagging jaw or neckline. No doubt about it, she had plastic surgery and plenty of it. I nudged Ethel. “Wonder who her plastic surgeon is.”

  “Her husband.” Ethel looked away and chuckled.

  “Seriously? Darn, some women have all the luck. It would cost me a fortunate just to have my jowls lifted.”

  The lady in the bold suit stood at the pool’s edge, dipping her toe in and shivering. Laughter burst forth from Ethel and it took everything in my power to hold back mine.

  Fortunately, the instructor called us together and we entered the pool. Well they entered the pool. Some jumped in, some dove in, and a few, like me, walked to the steps and stepped in cautiously. The water wasn’t horribly cold, at least not on my feet, but I knew what would happen as I entered it deeper. It’d be fine until I got up to my thighs and then the cold water would send shivers up my spine. As it reached my breasts, I’d have goose bumps all over.

  Ethel came behind, mumbled something about, “Don’t be a baby.” And pushed me in. My breath caught as my body immersed into cold water. I went under even though it was only four feet deep at this end. I spluttered, came up, and went down again. I came up, trying to catch my breath after swallowing an enormous amount of water.

  “You’re going to pay for that,” I spluttered. Although now that I was in and over the shock of the cold water hitting my private parts, it felt pretty good. I splashed water in Ethel’s face and swam away.