Wedding Bell Blues - [33]

junior-high PE, Lily failed to see it.

As she stepped into the locker room for her turn on the scales, she even breathed in the odors ofjunior-high PE — the stale, sour smell of pubescent sweat. “O-kay, hon,” the aerobics instructor, whomLily had begun to think of as Spandex Dominatrix, said, “now, how tall are you?”

“About five-three.”

Spandex Dominatrix wrote the information down on her clipboard. “Step on the scales, please.”

Just as she would have when she was thirteen, Lily dumbly obeyed.

“Uh-huh,” Spandex chided as she looked at the scale. “You’re a full eight pounds over your idealbody weight. But don’t worry. Stay in this class, and you’ll be shedding that flab in no time!”

Lily walked out of the locker room, disgusted not because she was supposedly a few pounds overher ideal body weight, but because she had let Spandex Dominatrix actually make her feel bad aboutherself for a few seconds. Sheila and Tracee, she noticed, had stripped down to butt-floss leotards for theirweigh-ins, and she saw the fat woman looking at their firm buttocks with a mixture of envy and loathing.

What was this psychosis American women had about weight? Even Lily, a supposedly enlightenedfeminist, fell prey to it sometimes. When she had suffered an insecure moment, when she had expressedto Charlotte the need to flatten her tummy or firm up her butt, Charlotte had always pulled her close andwhispered, “Now, who wants to ride in a car that doesn’t have any upholstery?”

The women lined up in rows for their exercises. “O-kay, lay-deez,” Spandex Dominatrix chirped,like Richard Simmons with just a touch more estrogen, “we’re gonna start out with a warmup. But first,does anybody have any questions before we start burning off those calories?”

Lily felt her hand go up in the air.

“Uh-huh?” Spandex acknowledged her.

“Uh ... yeah.” Lily searched for the right words. “I was just wondering, why does this class have tobe about how skinny we can get? Can’t we just exercise to improve our health and feel good instead oftrying to live up to some impossible commercial ideal of beauty?”

Although Spandex was still wearing her smile, she was looking at Lily as though she had beenspeaking to her in Latvian. Finally, Sheila nodded toward Lily and said to the aerobics instructor, “Sheain’t from around here.”

“Oh,” Spandex Dominatrix said, seeming to find Sheila’s comment a satisfactory explanation. “Okay, let’s get started then.”

The soundtrack for their stretching was, as Lily had suspected, moldy top forty. They moved fromthe warmup into a more strenuous step routine. Lily looked around to all the Sheilas and Tracees, whowere clapping and yelling “Whoo-hoo!” and enjoying themselves enormously. Great, Lily thought ...

stepping with the Stepford Wives. She took some comfort in watching the fat woman, who at least lookedappropriately miserable. It wasn’t the exercise that was exhausting Lily; it was the fact that she wassupposed to be perky while she was doing it.

In the car after the ordeal was over, Sheila said, “I can’t believe what you said in class. I thought Iwas gonna die!”

“It’s just cause you’re a newlywed,” Sheila said. “In a few years, you’ll know how important it isto keep them pounds off ... to keep Benny Jack’s eye from wandering.”

“Well,” Lily said, feeling ridiculous even as she said it, “I like to think that Ben wants me for me,and not for my waist size.”

Sheila and Tracee burst out laughing.

“Yeah,” Tracee hooted, “you’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?”

Lily entered the house to find Ben and Ken cuddling on the couch. “It’s getting late,” she barked.

“Y’all can’t be together at all hours of the night. People will talk.”

“Damn,” Ben said, “what’s wrong with you? PMS or something?”

“Ben,” Lily sighed, “how would you like it if you were forced to go out and play a game of tacklefootball with a bunch of straight boys who farted a lot and talked incessantly about pussy?”

“Uh ... well, it sounds like my idea of hell,” Ben said.

“Exactly. And I have just been to that same circle of hell for the opposite sex, with Sheila andTracee as my guides.” She nodded toward Ken. She really did like him, and didn’t want to come off as atotal psychopath. “I’m sorry I was rude, Ken. I enjoyed visiting with you tonight ... before I got suckedinto the vortex of doom. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to check on Mimi, take a shower, andhave a nervous collapse.”

Lily stood in the shower, the sound of the running water drowning out her sobs. There were onlytwo things she wanted — Charlotte, and her old life back—and both of them were as impossible toretrieve as the water that went down the drain.

She knew one thing for sure. If she didn’t find some lesbian friends soon, didn’t find a safe placewhere she could hang out and be herself, she was going to lose her mind. She was not psychologically fitfor this kind of intense, twenty-four-hour undercover work.

CHAPTER 12

“No oozing around the site of the injury?” Dr. Jack’s voice asked over the phone.

“No.” Feeling her throat constrict around the mouthful of yogurt she’d been trying to swallow,