Hip to Be Square

by Hope Lyda

  The male closest to me has a clipboard, and a pretty girl next to him has a decorative coffee mug on a tray. “Welcome to Majestic Vista. May I have your name, please?”

  “Mari Hamilton.”

  “Mari, welcome. Would you care for a morning espresso, latte, or soothing tea?” He skims his list, and once he is sure I am one of the chosen ones who belong in these hallowed halls, he is all about service.

  “I am here for Sonya’s intermediate pilates class. She is expecting me.”

  His brows come together but only for a quick instant. The woman next to him whispers in his ear and a light goes on. “Ah, yes. That class is just about to start. Right this way. Halo will escort you to the sanctuary room.”

  My personal tour guide heads over to a long wooden bench that faces short lockers and cubicles, where designer shoes rest until their owners return to claim them. Halo invites me to remove my shoes and replace them with fuzzy blue slippers that give the bottom of my feet a gentle massage with each step.

  “Weren’t you at Lily’s last night?” she asks in a friendly manner.

  “Yes, I was. Do you go there?” She must have seen the photo. Maybe Jace is a member and I just scored big points.

  “I would if I ever got asked,” she offers in the humble manner of someone who is born beautiful and feels obligated to downplay it.

  The sanctuary room lives up to its name. Along textured vanilla walls are rows of sconces holding candles of all sizes. A vast alcove cradles a kidney-shaped stage where Sonya is rolling out her mat alongside large stone vases holding stems of lavender. I try not to think about the screened-in porch my exercisers are forced to endure. They should have this kind of setting.

  Sonya promised to place me in the back so that when Lionel shows up to observe her class, I will be near him to introduce myself. I stand against the wall taking in the ambience and watching as attractive person after attractive person files in.

  Sonya gives me a familiar smile. She greets a few of the others rolling out their deep blue mats on her way over to see me. She twirls around to showcase the room. “What do you think?”

  “I’m in love,” I say while pretending to pinch myself.

  “It is incredible. Did you see much of the foyer and social area?” She gives an okay sign with her fingers and opens her eyes wide. “Oo la la. I really thought I had died and gone to heaven when I started here. This feels too meant to be, you know?” She motions her finger back and forth between us.

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Turning on her toes to face the group, Sonya checks her watch, and amazingly morphs into an even more elegant creature…part swan, part cat. “All right, everyone, let’s step into our breathing. Lie down on the mat and feel the length of your body pressing deeply into the floor with each breath.”

  I quickly set up the mat Halo had given me. What parents name their child Halo? Probably hippies. I feel every part of me sink into the floor. The first few series of moves relax me; there is no sweating or torture. If not for the sharp sound of quick breaths from the woman next to me, who must be a Lamaze graduate, I would fall into a deep slumber.

  The instrumental music in the background rises in energy level. Some native drums are incorporated into the piano and harp harmonies. From here on out, Sonya kicks up the workout. The sweat begins and the word “stretch” takes on deeper meaning. Stretch the limits. Stretch too far. Hopefully, stretched thin as well. I’m keeping up but only because there is a second person on stage providing examples of the modified version of each exercise. Forty minutes into it, I am modifying the modifications and checking the clock every few seconds, praying for it to be over.

  Breather woman next to me asks if I need a glass of water, perhaps with lemon? She hands me her perfectly folded hand towel with the MV monogram. I mop my brow and, while everyone is facing the front, I mop my armpits and beneath my chest. So this is what my militant-exercise residents want? They’re crazy.

  My short rest during an abdominal exercise series that is difficult to watch, let alone mimic, helps me regain my energy and composure. It is during this time that a sharply dressed man with perfect hair and manicured nails enters the room. I see him nod to Sonya and offer the smile of a liked politician. You know he is older because he has an air of wisdom and maturity, but his skin is flawless and very few wrinkles remain to support anyone who might question his youthful vigor. He takes a seat in an antique chair.

  This is it, I tell myself. Kick it in, Mari. Show him and yourself what you are made of.

  The last thing I remember is the sound of my heart pounding (or was it the drums?) and the outline of the breather woman’s contacts as she leans in to examine what a living version of rigor mortis looks like.

  Humiliation Squared

  Mari, how many fingers am I holding up?” a booming voice engages me in a scene from hospital dramas featured on the major networks. Have I fallen asleep while watching television in Golden Horizons’ lounge?

  “Can you tell me your last name?”

  “Ham…Hamilton.” I squint and can begin to make out the figures above me. There is no candle glow, only a sharp, piercing light directed at my pupil.

  Now that I am blinded by the spots that linger after light exposure, I use my hands to feel about me. I’m on some kind of cot or table and dark walls are close-in.

  “Mari, it’s me.” Finally the sound of a familiar voice. My vision clears, and I can see Sonya’s chin and then her full face tilt toward me.

  “This has never happened to me before.” I strain forward for a moment to measure the look of concern in Sonya’s eyes, but I succumb to the weight of my own head.

  “This is Dr. White. He’s our on-call physician. It seems that you passed out from…?” She is baffled.

  The man next to her is not in a white lab coat but in golf attire graced with logos promoting a life I know nothing about. They have called him in off the green to check on me. He speaks with stern kindness and authority. “Actually, the way you were holding your right glute, I believe you were in the middle of a muscle cramp. Though it is very uncommon, the pain of a muscle seizure can cause a blackout. Are you still in pain?”

  No matter how I feel, I am determined to say no. I start to shift my position. He must be right because I am favoring my right cheek. Which is funny, my mind interjects, since I have never been particularly fond of either. I release my back and press down on my right side. A shriek escapes my lips. The scream is so loud the doctor steps back instinctively to preserve and protect his ear drums and his love of the symphony.

  “Mari, I feel so bad. This has never happened before. I should have been watching you more closely.” Sonya doesn’t blame me for ruining her class.

  “You are so hired,” I whisper as the doctor makes a quick call on his cell phone.

  “Are you sure? Look what I did to you.” Sonya is horrified.

  “Believe me, this represents the way my life works. It has nothing to do with your teaching methods. Our exercise group will love you.”

  She hugs me gently. I cannot believe she is this excited to join Golden Horizons. I hope I’m not around when she realizes what she is signing on to.

  Now the doctor is speaking to someone just outside the door. Sonya is helping me try to slide off the table to see if I can put my full weight down on my legs. While the pain is not as excruciating in this position, it becomes clear that I cannot hold my body upright for long without triggering the spasms.

  “We are bringing in our best masseur to rub out the cramp, Mari.” Sonya has given me some aspirin and a little purple paper cup with daisies on it. She is removing what looks like a designer hospital gown from the cupboard near the rock fountain in the corner. The doctor has left us alone to give me privacy to change.

  “It had better be a woman.” I laugh, but her expression makes me nervous. “It’s a woman, right? I mean, this is my never-before-seen right buttock we’re talking about.”

  “Charles is the
best, Mari. And I will stay in here with you if that makes you feel more comfortable.”

  Tough choice…alone with a guy while wearing an open gown or alone with a guy and the woman who is my only link to a new life and who, up until now, thought I was somewhat professional. I will never be able to hold my head up if I ask her to hold my hand through a stinkin’ massage.

  “No. No. I’ll be fine. I’m just feeling groggy. Of course I am fine with Charles. He’s a professional. He is a professional, right?” I’m a dithering dupe. “It is so nice of you to take care of me like this. I cannot believe I missed my chance to meet Lionel. You kindly set it up and here I go and ruin it. After all of your effort, the guy still doesn’t know my name.”

  Sonya wrings her hands and looks away from my rambling mouth toward the peaceful bliss of the fountain.

  “He does, actually.” She visibly cringes at the scene she witnessed.

  “What? What, Sonya? Don’t tell me he was still there when I…cramped?”

  “Mari.” She is reluctant to speak. She motions for me to sit down and remembers that is not my best position of comfort right now. “Mari, he is the one who carried you in here.”

  The scene in which Lionel was my heroic leading man to my passed-out damsel in distress flashes through my mind like lightning. My future goes up in flames. One by one the symbols of beauty and success melt away…the mural, the complementary cup of tea, the marble polished to a sheen, and the heavenly slippers that forgave my calloused feet. These are erased from my recent past. But, of course, the biggest tragedy of all is that they have been torn from my future.

  “Nooooooo,” I wail. My humiliation is complete.

  Sonya pats my back and comforts me as well as a stranger is able, but it is no use. “I had better let you change. Do you need any help?”

  “Not unless you are a licensed psychologist too.” I try to lighten the moment for her sake, but I am too deep in irrationality to find humor in any of this.

  After the door closes behind her, I wish I had accepted her help. Wiggling out of my sweats is proving difficult. I cannot lean over the way I normally would, and squatting isn’t a pain-free option either. I figure out that if I lie down on the massage table and bend my knees, I can get my sweatpants as far as my lower thighs. My logic is that if I then stand for just a few seconds, my sweatpants should fall the rest of the way to my feet.

  I am thankful there are no mirrors in this place. If I had a glimpse of what Charles will soon be exposed to, I’d never go through with this. I copy the Lamaze lady’s breathing pattern and prepare to stand. One breath. Two breath. Three breath…Go.

  My feet hit the floor and the pain nearly cancels out any further breathing. These form-fitting sweats do not quite fall to the floor as I had hoped. I brace my hands on the table and walk in place to loosen the grip of Lycra. “Onward Christian soldiers…breathe…marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus, going on before.” I hum a vacation Bible school favorite to mask the pain.

  “Hey, I know that one.”

  A voice startles me into action. I try to turn and squat and pull my pants back up—an impossible motion that triggers searing pain. And that thing that never happens to me…that passing-out thing…happens for the second time in one day. In the most compromising position imaginable, I fall to the marbled tile that will never be mine to glide over in self-massaging slippers the color of sapphires.

  Charles the beautiful masseur is in the room.

  And Lady Luck has so left the building.

  Helpful Accessories

  Higher,” I say in between groans of pain.

  Caitlin adjusts the ice pack on my lower back. I cannot feel my buttocks, but I can feel the undertow of muscle cramps.

  “I cannot believe the guy who could offer me a life makeover had to carry me twice. And he saw my junkie car.”

  “He left you passed out in your car? That doesn’t sound like a good man to me.”

  “No. He placed me on the backseat. Sonya drove me and then took Majestic’s car service back.” I cannot bear the humiliation of this.

  “It’s a good thing I made this.” Caitlin digs through her colorful Mexican artisan bag.

  I glance down at the woven bracelet she hands me. Among amber beads and threads of blue and brown are the initials WWOMD. My friend’s revised take on the What Would Jesus Do concept.

  “You are supposed to ask yourself What Would Old Mari Do? and then do the opposite.”

  I recall a Seinfeld episode with a similar theory. Is it possible that my instincts are so messed up that I should run in the opposite direction when they surface?

  So WWOMD? I’d hope to never run into Lionel again. I’d be so ashamed that I wouldn’t follow up. Why give him the chance to say, “I’m so sorry, but you are one clumsy, inept, odd woman. We don’t serve or employ your kind.”

  “Hand me a pen and some paper,” I say, pointing to my desk, and Caitlin retrieves my monogrammed thank-you notes. “Lower,” I add, indicating my pack needs adjusting for the hundredth time.

  I decide to take the new theory out for a spin. New Mari won’t let anything—not even possible rejection—get in the way of her dreams.

  Music Man

  My volume raises another octave as I describe once again my vision for the decor theme to be implemented for tonight’s Golden Golden Gala to Blanche Adams.

  While I do appreciate her last-minute idea to transform the event into a Jane Austen tribute, it is giving me a mental seizure. I find myself doing Rae’s “you give me a migraine” hand to temple motion before sending Blanche on an important mission to retrieve electrical tape. This will occupy her for hours, but it also means I am left to complete the last-minute details by myself. Rae conveniently trundled out of here at two for a hair appointment and will not reappear until everyone is in attendance so she can make a regal entrance in a radiant gown that supposedly once belonged to Oprah. She bought it online and made a big to-do about its level of luminance. We all have our doubts but will praise her nonetheless. And I have my special glasses just in case it is indeed a ten on the scale of brightness.

  In my arms I hold reams of gold lamé. It is the volume and style of fabric that would incite fear in any woman who has ever been a bridesmaid. But as a table covering and a display draping, it turns out to be perfect material. Only two more of the dining tables need to be covered, and then I plan to affix some to the exhibit table, where I have arranged large photos of Golden Horizons and its residents during each of its decades of existence. Beside each main black-and-white image, I have placed a photo album containing more images, menus, activity programs, and other paraphernalia from that time period.

  The large black-and-white photos had been Angelica’s idea. She had just returned from a conference where they had displayed large images of people before and after taking the newest medication. Though I found this disturbing, I was able to envision how it could work perfectly for this event.

  I have not yet called Angelica, though she left a couple of messages. Just the thought of replaying the incident at Majestic, to Angelica no less, was too much to bear. I needed to throw my thoughts and energy into this event. Prior to my on-site spasm, I secretly dreamed that the Golden Anniversary party would be my send-off…I could go out with a bang before transitioning into my new life. Now the success of this event is necessary because it is all I have. The perspective shift leaves me flat.

  I look around at my surroundings and can plainly hear a line from a favorite movie…Jack Nicholson leaves his peers in the psychiatrist’s waiting room with poisoned food for thought. “What if this is as good as it gets?”

  “Mari dear, I’m ready for a hand here.” Tess is at the far end of the grand room, where she has agreed to display some of her finest garments from the 1950s. As I approach her and her work, I am utterly in awe. It is breathtaking. The entire expanse of the wall is decorated with dresses pinned to look captured mid-dance, shoes dainty and intricate dangle from nylon thread ancho
red to the ceiling, and several mannequins I borrowed on a whim from Caitlin have been transformed either into tiara-adorned princesses or sophisticated figures clutching sequined clutches, umbrellas, and dog leashes with stuffed toy poodles attached.

  “Oh, Tess…I do believe you have saved me from certain mediocrity tonight.” I praise the lovely woman still hemming a Bob Mackie gown the color of raspberry sherbet. “I had no idea you could do such things.”

  “Darling, haven’t I ever told you that I was a window dresser for Saks?” She bats her made-up eyes and grins the smile that only cherished secrets can inspire.

  “You left that out of our many conversations. I don’t know why I just assumed—”

  “I was a spoiled debutante turned spoiled housewife?”

  “That would be it. Well, except you forgot the ‘turned spoiled resident’ part.”

  “I’m ashamed of you, Mari. You know me so well and yet you really thought I was among the idle rich? Me?” Tess bites off the bit of string remaining after the knot has been secured. “I was rich, but never idle.”

  One of the biggest joys in this job is discovering who these people have been and what they have accomplished in a lifetime. Against popular opinion, this place is not a place of lamented regrets. Except perhaps that there is not more time to live good lives. Just when I thought Tess couldn’t surprise me anymore, she silences me with her still-agile hands and creative flair.

  “Has anyone ever told you that you are one classy dame?” I help her hang the last gown and adjust it to look as though the wind has caught the hemline. A fan on the far left side of the display oscillates and catches the edges of various garments from the poodle skirt to the evening ball gown. It is as if they are dancing to a song not yet written. I tell her this.