Makeover

By B. Callahan

I Vocabulary work

1. Study the words and use them in contexts of your own.

Subsequent, frumpy, maligned, exertion, snarl, pouty, demolish.

II Discussing the text

1. Read the text.

On our first wedding anniversary thirteen years ago, Todd gave me a diamond tennis bracelet to mark the occasion. A firm believer in romantic rituals, I insisted that Todd slip the bracelet on my wrist and clasp it firmly shut on every subsequent anniversary as a symbol of our unbroken marital bond. In the years one to ten, the bracelet slid on as smoothly as the glass slipper onto Cinderella’s foot.

On our eleventh anniversary, Todd raised his eyebrows tolerantly as he squeezed my wrist to make the bracelet fit. On our twelfth, he grimaced along with me as he squeezed harder to circle it around my wrist. On our thirteenth, an anniversary that should be skipped on the basis of numerical toxicity, Todd gritted his teeth as he forced the clasp shut and sent the diamonds skittering across the carpet on our bedroom floor.

“Maybe we ought to have the bracelet made into dangling earrings, Emily. Your earlobes seem to have escaped the padding you’ve systematically applied to the rest of your body courtesy of every fast-food chain in town.”

Taking more care not to trample on the diamonds than he did on my heart, he neatly arranged his workout clothes in his duffel bag and left for the gym.

Addressing each diamond as if it were a daisy petal, I choked out the words, “He loves me, he loves me not” until reaching the final glittering traitor – an “He loves me not.”

Of course he loved me not. How stupid of me not to recognize it sooner. If Todd had loved me, he wouldn’t have insisted on his fortieth birthday, three years ago, that I cook him those dreadful meals. He claimed that a Spartan diet of brown rice, tofu, and veggies would fend off the “forties fifteen”, the inevitable weight gain attested to by his friends who had lumbered into that decade before him. And if Todd had truly loved me, he would not have insisted that I enroll in that exercise class led by a bouncy anorexic dedicated to eradicating the “forties flab”. Unlike Todd, whose workouts energized him, mine propelled me home to the restorative comfort of the living room sofa.

No wonder that I supplemented my diet with Taco Toros, Pizza Parnassian, and Seriously Sinful Shakes. No wonder that I skipped exercise class so often that my fellow sufferers awarded me a fake Olimpic gold medal for truancy. And no wonder that after Todd’s cruel remark I headed immediately out to Le Barbeque d’Andre to buy Le Grand Burgaire and a side of the Fries of France.

En route, to distract myself from my own pain, I turned on the car radio to listen to the problems of strangers. Monty Malaise, the talk-show host of Misery Loves Company, was inviting a tearful young woman to “share your own misery and whine to your heart’s content because we’re here for you, Buttercup”. Monty addressed all his women callers as Buttercup and the men as Hydrangea, a technique that invariably made the callers divulge their first names.

“My name’s not Buttercup, Monty, it’s Stephanie.”

“Okay, Stephanie, now tell Uncle Monty and all those audio voyeurs out there in their kitchens and cars what’s making you miserable.”

“I’m in love with a married man,” she wailed.

“Poor baby,” yawned Monty.

“And he loves me too,” she sniffed.

“So what’s the problem?” asked Monty in the interested tone of one who is busily buffing his nails.

“He won’t ask his wife for a divorce.”

“Why not?”

“She inherited a lot of money three years ago and controls all their finances. If he leaves her, we’ll have to make do with his salary as a junior accountant and mine as a secretary, and that’s barely enough to keep up the payments on the twin Ferraris we must have.”

Interrupting her in mid sob, Monty said, “Hold on there, Steph. Gotta pay our bills. Time for a commercial.”

Musing on Stephanie’s problems as Monty waxed eloquent about a laxative, I silently agreed that a junior accountant’s salary plus a secretary’s salary didn’t add up to even one Ferrari. On that subject, I was an expert, having many times turned down Todd’s request for a Ferrari when he was a junior accountant and I was a secretary. Of course, since Aunt Gertrude’s death three years ago, which allowed me to quit my job, we could buy a fleet of Ferraris, as Todd repeatedly points out; but I believe expensive cars invite carjackers.

“Why, I’d be afraid to stop at a red light in a car like that, Todd,” I told him. “That’s when carjackers smash the driver’s window, unlock the doors, and jump inside.”

“The odds of that happening are five million to one,” he snapped, drawing on his unlimited stock of imaginary numbers.

Ignoring his math, I added, “And heaven knows what a car-jacker would do to me once he got inside.”

I shivered. Todd smiled.

Affectionately, I patted the dashboard of my solid Buick – Todd has one too – as Monty returned to the saga of Stephanie.

“So what I hear you saying, Stephie, is that your married lover’s wife is downright cheap.”

“Yes,” agreed Stephanie, “and she’s downright frumpy.”

“Frumpy?” asked Monty. “I don’t know ‘frumpy.’”

“It’s sort of an old-fashioned word that older people in their forties use.”

“Older people in their forties!” echoed Monty in dismay. “How old are you, Buttercup?”

“Twenty-four,” she answered and proceeded to define frumpy. “The frumpies are women who wear unstylish clothes like lime-green polyester pantsuits and carry plastic tote bags with daisies on them. And they still get their hair permed into retro curly styles.”

“Horrors,” sniggered Monty. “Dial nine-one-one for the fashion police.”

“Exactly,” said Stephanie. “And there’s something else about her, too.”

“Something more offensive than the retro hair?”

“Yes,” breathed Stephanie.

“Goody. Tell Uncle Monty all.”

A pause.

“Come now, Stephanie. You’ve taken a huge chunk out of our time so you owe me and our listeners big time.”

“Okay,” she sighed. “Here goes. She’s so overweight her jewelry doesn’t fit anymore.”

“That’s it?” shrieked Monty. “You make us think you’ve got a bombshell like a crime or an interesting perversion and then you give us that bit of non-titillating fluff! You’re wasting our time. Sorry, listeners. As for you, Stephanie, we’ll personally volunteer your name as a suspect if ever a woman in a lime-green polyester pantsuit is found murdered. Next caller, please.”

Murdered! I shuddered. Why would Stephanie and her married lover want to murder a woman just for being frumpy, cheap, and unable to wear her jewelry anymore? Bonding with the maligned wife, I rubbed my wrist, which still bore the imprint of the tennis bracelet that no longer fit. Overflowing with empathy, I reached into my plastic tote bag to retrieve tissues to mop the tears that plopped onto my chartreuse slacks.

“Mother Nature should have equipped us with retractable windshield wipers for our eyelids,” I murmured in solidarity with the woman who couldn’t wear her tennis bracelet anymore.

Tennis bracelet! Who said anything about a tennis bracelet?

“You did,” said that little inner voice that cuts into my interior monologues like an intrusive call-waiting signal.

Tires squealing, I made a U-turn into the opposite direction of Le Barbeque d’Andre. I had to get home to check our Christmas-card list, which would include the name of Todd’s secretary. I had forgotten her name because Todd had stopped talking about the office during the past few months. In fact, he had stopped talking about anything during the past few months. The memories of silent meals forced me to pull over to the curb to tend to my tears. Had Todd been plotting to murder me as he stabbed at his seaweed salad?

When I was able to resume driving, I saw flashing lights in my rearview mirror, a signal to pull over. I turned off the ignition as a police officer tapped on my window. After checking my license and registration, he cited me for erratic driving.

“But officer,” I sobbed, “my husband is going to kill me.”

“Think about that the next time you’re planning a U-turn and roaring up to a curb without signaling,” he said, believing I was just exaggerating my husband’s reaction to my ticket.

“No, I mean, he’s really going to kill me. Him and his secretary – I think her name is Stephanie. Just ask Monty.”

“Ma’am, in this job we hear a lot of far-fetched stories that are concocted to make us tear up tickets. Yours ranks right up there with the best. But here’s the ticket and tell it to the judge. Take Monty along with you.”

Tipping his cap, he added, “Have a nice day.”

The image of his badge being ripped off his uniform by his superior after a woman in a lime-green pantsuit was found murdered sustained me during the ride home. Adding dialogue to this fantasy helped me even more.

Officer: “But Captain, I thought she was making it up about her husband and Stephanie just to get out of the ticket.

Captain: It’s not our job to make assumptions. You should have checked with Monty.

Officer: It will never happen again.

Captain: That’s for sure. You’re off the force.

Officer: Oh no!

Captain: Have a nice day.

Shaking, I ran into the house and opened the top drawer in Todd’s desk and studied the Christmas-card list. Beside the name Stephanie Nesbit he had written: “My secretary. Send to home address, not office.”

So it was Todd’s secretary who’d called Monty. Angrily, I shoved the list into the drawer and dislodged a photo under some writing paper. It was me, but a younger and very different me superimposed onto a card decorated with holly leaves. A Santa Claus hat perched jauntily on my unpermed hair, which caressed my shoulders. My slender arms hugged a stuffed Rudolph. The brightness of my smile could have nudged that reindeer out of the running for those foggy-night heroics.

When had I ever been that young, slender, and happy? Perhaps there was a date on the back of the card. I turned it over and read. “Christmas 1997. Thanks so much for Rudolph, Toddy-Woddy. Maybe next year I’ll have something better to snuggle up to on Christmas Eve. Love, Stephanie.”

Incredible! Toddy-Woddy had fallen in love with someone who could be a clone of me fourteen years ago, confirming a theory espoused by my friend Lisa that we follow a pattern of falling in love with the same physical types. “My dad,” she told me, “married Dorothy Lamour three times. My mom and each of my stepmothers could have played in a ‘Road’ movie.”

As for me, pre-Todd I fell in love with two Todd look-alikes – two tall, thin men with pinched lips who resembled the schoolmasters in English movies who were adept at caning, as Lisa described them.

This revelation that Stephanie was a years-ago Emily look-alike cheered me considerably. I smiled at Stephanie and patted Rudolph on the nose before sliding them back into the drawer. Humming, I removed the lime-green pantsuit and tossed it into the trash. No more Ms. Victim. No more silly worrying about getting murdered. Stephanie never said anything about murder; Monty did.

At that time I was a mere palimpsest of the original Emily whom Stephanie resembled, but I intended to resurface. After I changed into my workout clothes, I hopped into the car and turned on the car radio. “The solution, Monty, is simple,” I said aloud as I headed toward the Down With Flab Health Club, avoiding any maneuvers that would reattract the heartless young officer. Raising my voice over the shrill chastisement Monty was leveling at a caller who had failed to deliver a salacious misery as promised to the call screener, I stated my game plan in two words: a makeover. Purposefully, I strode into the health club, like a pro intent on making a comeback.

“Why, Emily,” gushed the receptionist, “it’s so good to see you back. It’s been four months, hasn’t it, since you told us you had to go on a secret mission for the CIA and couldn’t complete the aerobics course.”

She winked at someone standing behind me. I turned and faced Lisa, who gleamed with good health. We squealed each other’s names happily and hugged until I had to free myself from being impaled on her collarbones. “You look wonderful,” I said.

“And why not,” she stated. “I not only count calories and work out every single day, but I change husbands every three-point-five years.”

“But your first husband looked like Kevin Costner,” I said. “How could you give him up?”

“Easily. Husbands two and three look like him too. Remember the look-alike pattern.”

Losing my resolve, I burst into tears. “Todd is following the look-alike pattern, too,” I sobbed. “He’s in love with someone who looks like me.”

Lisa frowned. “You mean he’s in love with someone who’s overwe– well, um, let’s say, someone who doesn’t work out nearly enough?”

“No, someone who looks like I did fourteen years ago.” “ “I see,” she answered absently as she patted my shoulders and then held on to them to balance herself for a stretching exercise. After curving her left leg backward until it almost rested on her shoulder, she sighed, not from exertion, but from the strain of what she was about to say.

“Listen, Emily, let your look-alike have Todd. I never did understand what you saw in a man who looks like every actor who ever terrorized Oliver Twist in the orphanage.” “But I love him,” I wailed.

“Oh, good grief,” groaned the receptionist and Lisa in unison. “Let me tell you my game plan,” I begged. “I’m going to lose twenty-five pounds, have my hair styled to caress my shoulders, as they say in the shampoo ads, have my eyebrows waxed, learn about cosmetics, and buy a new wardrobe. In other words, I’m going to have a makeover. Then Todd will forget the sham Emily and love me, the real me, again. Will you help me, Lisa?”

“Okay,” she said, “but not because I want to help you win back Todd, who looks like the time-study expert feared by all the widows in the workhouse. I’ll participate in this makeover because it will make you healthier and help you to feel better about yourself. First stop, the treadmill. I hope you’re up for it.”

“Child’s play,” I laughed as I hopped aboard. After only a few minutes, I remembered that the treadmill used to figure prominently in prisons as an instrument of punishment. After five minutes, I believed I had atoned sufficiently for my crimes and begged Lisa to commute my sentence. Instead, she switched the machine to an elevated plane and I was no longer walking to nowhere, but climbing to nowhere.

Up, up Mount Everest I climb, bearing several bundles of supplies on my back, destined for the climbers stranded there who are waiting for me, Emily, to lead them back to safety. As I struggle upward, I hear singing, not the sounds of angels ready to bear me to paradise, but the infantile cooing of Stephanie echoing through the comfort of the base camp as she sings silly songs to Toddy-Woddy and Rudolph. My resolve strengthened, I reach the summit, accept the gratitude of the stranded, and tumble down the hill into the grasp of my own rescuer, Lisa, who hoists me off the machine.

“Good girl,” she said before chipping at my resolve with, “ten minutes today, twenty tomorrow.”

“Uh, listen, Lisa, I have a really important appointment tomorrow, with, uh, my decorator. Yes, that’s it. We’re going to redo the, um, laundry room.”

“Cancel,” she barked and steered me toward an exercise bike. For a few seconds, I was pleasantly reminded of the days when I rode leisurely in the park during my engagement to Todd, and I pedaled dreamily. Contentment, however, offends Lisa.

“Enough of this slow-pokiness,” she pronounced as she turned the tension knob to its highest position. “Let’s show some attitude!”

Hot, hot, terribly hot. Sweat pours down my forehead, into my eyes, onto my chin, but what else can I expect after volunteering to cycle up Mount St. Helens, which has entered into the early stages of eruption. Driblets of lava force me to cycle serpentine style to reach the injured eagle perched precariously on the rim of the caldera. When I reach the eagle and place him carefully in my knapsack, the crowd below cheers, except for the young officer in its midst who scribbles my name on ticket after ticket because I failed to signal my serpentine intentions. The crowd boos him soundly, and Monty turns to Stephanie and says, “Sorry, Buttercup, Emily has it all over you. She looks great in that lime-green spandex cycling outfit.”

Fortified by those images, I managed to complete five miles before Lisa pointed to the racquetball court and mouthed, “Meet me there in five minutes.” Grimacing, I slid off the machine. Apologizing to my limbs, I promised them only one more workout and entered the chamber of horrors where my body twisted and ducked but failed to elude the hard black ball that ricocheted off the walls and ceiling, pummeling me like vicious hailstones.

“You did good,” Lisa said as she piggybacked me into the locker room and tossed me into the shower. “But I wish you were working out simply for the joy of well-being and not for that husband who looks like he’d derive his greatest pleasure from evicting peasants from their thatched-roof cottages. Now let’s celebrate your first day back at Down With Flab with a really good dinner.”

She took me to the Vibrant Veggie, a health-food restaurant that championed the nutrients of its fare with alliterative blurbs on the menu like “our broccoli is too bashful to boast about its bountiful benefits so we’ll do it...” and “our coquettish cauliflower can coax you into cavorting at a cotillion devoid of carnivorous crashers.” After reading the anthropomorphic descriptions of each vegetable, I felt that eating them would be tantamount to feasting on friends. I settled for Tempestuous Tempeh, which the menu assured me unalliteratively would flamenco through my body and stomp vitamins into every cell.

At home, I supplemented my dinner with brown rice, water chestnuts, and eggplant, the meal that I had prepared for Todd. When he saw me ladle the food onto two plates, he said, “Why, Emily, you’re not eating your usual fried and fatty poison. What’s going on?”

“I thought I’d try eating like you, Todd. Actually, this is delicious,” I lied.

“But I hope this doesn’t mean that you’ve stopped eating desserts,” he said, reaching under the table for a box from Bitter-mann’s Bakery. “Black Forest cake, your favorite.”

In an obvious effort to make amends for his cruel comments of the morning, he had bought me a calorie-packed gift, which did not fit into my game plan. After Todd excused himself from the table for his nightly walk, I dumped the cake into the trash can by the garage and carried the box back to the kitchen and put it on top of the refrigerator. When Todd returned, he went into the kitchen, then sprinted into the living room where I sat staring into space, too weary to push the power button to turn on the TV.

“Ah, I see you’ve eaten the whole cake, Emily. Well done. Good girl. If you’ll excuse me now, I have to make a phone call.”

Odd that he should be happy when he thought I had overindulged, but I supposed his guilt for being so insensitive that morning needed relief. Pleased with a penitent Todd, I snuggled deeper into the armchair and drifted off to sleep.

And had strange dreams, peopled by Todd cavorting merrily around the room with a slender woman who blew kisses at me and cried, “Farewell, Polyester Princess.” Several times in the dream Todd danced over to me and lifted my wrist, holding it for a minute, dropping it, and saying, “Not yet.” Apparently, he wanted me to join in the dance, but I couldn’t wake up.

Someone wailing pitifully finally did awaken me. It wasn’t the young woman who had disappeared and it wasn’t Todd, who was slumped fully clothed on the sofa, snoring heavily and looking as if he had fallen asleep while keeping some kind of vigil. Daylight streamed into the room, helping me to orient myself and locate the source of the keening. Stiffly, I got up from the chair and limped to the window. Next to our garage, Mrs. Mitchell, my neighbor, was cradling Whiskers, her tabby, in her arms. Apparently, the poor creature had been hit by a car and tried to crawl home but made it only as far as our trash cans.

“Poor woman,” I said, “we must send her a condolence card.”

“You don’t send a condolence card to the woman you’ve murdered,” snarled Todd, rising from the sofa, rubbing his eyes.

“What a strange thing to say, Todd. You must be pulling out of a bad dream.”

Looking as if he’d seen a ghost, he sank down on his knees and whispered, “Emily, it’s you. I thought you were someone else.”

“No, dear, it’s me,” I said, holding his shaking arm.

“I’ve got to shower,” he growled.

Since hunger was making Todd grouchy, I rushed into the kitchen to pour out his Mega-Muesli and line up his twenty-seven vitamin pills. However, the infusion of all those nutrients did nothing to restore the minimum daily allowance of good humor he usually shows me when he leaves in the morning. In fact, he regarded me sulkily, making me wonder if I had forgotten to put out his pantothenic-acid tablets. Todd insists that he is homeostatically affected when he is pantothenically deprived.

The strange dreams of the evening, the death of my neighbor’s cat, and Todd’s grouchiness depressed me. When he left for work, I tossed my game plan into the brain bin that stores discarded resolutions and mixed a batch of pancakes. As they bubbled in the pan I thought of calling Down With Flab and telling the receptionist that I had been summoned by the CIA for yet another secret mission. A knock at the door kept me honest and rescued my game plan.

Jogging in place on the back porch, Lisa ordered me to join her. When she sniffed the pancakes, she trotted into the kitchen, switched off the stove, shoved a handful of Mega-Muesli in my mouth and – never missing a beat – pushed me out the door. Since I still wore my workout clothes from yesterday, I couldn’t object. Totally repulsed by level ground, La Belle Jogger sans Merci sought out every steep incline in my neighborhood. Although Lisa ignored my pitiable huffing, a vicious-looking Doberman leaped a fence – not to attack me, but to lick my hand and nudge me up a hill.

“Thanks,” I gasped, drawing strength from the animal’s kindness and from the sight of an ambulance without flashing lights turning the corner, a vehicle that could surely handle a pickup.

“Over here,” I bleated, while waving weakly.

An emergency medical technician who mistook my distress signal for a friendly wave rolled down his window and gave me the thumbs-up sign. “Keep up the good work, ma’am, and the most you'll ever need from us is an ace bandage for a sprain.”

Groaning, I soldiered on, jogging mindlessly, until through sweat-bathed eyes I saw a figure floating toward me. Lisa handed me bottled water and studied her sports watch, concluding that I had done two miles in forty minutes.

“You’ll break that record tomorrow,” she promised. Tomorrow – beautiful torrential tomorrow. The tail end of a hurricane swatted our town with heavy rains and 45-mile-per-hour winds. Lisa was a no-show on my back porch but she did call later in the day to inform me that Down With Flab still had a roof, windows, and torture equipment intact, and there was no reason for me to stay home. So I went that day and every day for a month, at the end of which I had lost twelve pounds.

Of course, I didn’t accomplish that feat through exercise alone. I became intimate with fruits, vegetables, fish, and lean meat. Like mostly everyone who has triumphed even for a short time over old habits. I felt vastly superior to anyone still indulging in no-no food. Whenever I passed Le Barbeque d’Andre, I sneered at those going in. In fact, I added Le Barbeque to my jogging route just to make customers feel bad when they saw me through the window. Many times I saw diners actually put down a helping of the Fries of France when I came into view.

Physically I felt terrific, but emotionally not so great. I had expected Todd to be delighted with my progress, but he continually tried to sabotage my efforts with goodies from Bittermann’s Bakery. At breakfast one morning he tried to tempt me with huge cream-filled doughnuts that looked as if they had been injected with confectioner’s steroids.

“Mmm, these are delicious, Emily,” he said, after biting into one from the bottom of the box. “Try one. In fact, try two.”

“No, thanks,” I replied. “They’ll slow me down. I can almost keep up with Lisa now.”

Shoving the bakery box into the trash can, he muttered, “Why you want to go jogging with a woman who looks as if she could lead Amazons into battle, I’ll never know. What ever happened to my soft, cuddly Emily?”

“Ask Monty,” I said cryptically as I charged out the door, having no time to lavish on pouty Todd. Lisa had made an appointment for me that morning to be depermed at the Hair Revival Salon, a shop that advertised “all your shampooing, styling, and coloring sins will be miraculously washed away by heavenly hands for a small donation of $125.”

At the salon, I delivered myself into the hands of Miguel, whose hair was tied in a ponytail and whose dark eyes flashed at me when I entered like a toreador assuming control over a difficult beast. Thoroughly subdued, I sank into the chair at his station and he wordlessly studied my head. He wore a long white robe like the other stylists at Hair Revival, and I mentally whipped it off and dressed him in the satin bolero and tight-fitting pants that his handsome body deserved.

Miraculously, he transcended the mere examination of my head and peered inside it, capturing the theme of my fantasy. “Salvaging your hair,” he snorted, “is like a challenge that would earn me two ears and a tail in the bullring. I must charge you one hundred and seventy-five dollars.” “Ole,” I whispered. “I mean okay.”

No bull had ever suffered as much as I. Miguel feinted and charged and jabbed at my head. Muttering words that sounded like “down curl, down curl,” he slathered my hair with gel and pulled a metal comb through it. Scowling, he looked at my pained expression in the mirror and decided I could take more. Tossing the comb on the vanity, Miguel went manual. He pulled, he yanked, he stroked. And then he crooned. Yes, crooned.

“Sometimes I have to sing to relax the most stubborn ones,” he explained, as I slid further down in the chair, charmed by his sudden sweetness.

At Down With Flab that afternoon, Lisa pronounced Miguel a genius. Critically surveying my head, she observed, “You’re free of about one-fourth of those corkscrews. You’re on your way to the Stephanie look, although why you want to resemble the paramour of a man who could pass for the chief lasher on the Bounty, I’ll never know.”

Todd’s reaction to Miguel’s skill was hardly enthusiastic. “What the hell did you do to your hair?” he bellowed.

“I’m getting depermed. I’m going to have hair that caresses my shoulders, just like I had when we were first married.”

“So I have to sit opposite someone with a hairdo like Bozo the Clown’s wig until that happens,” he snarled as he thrust a piece of lemon meringue pie at me.

“No, thanks, you eat it,” I counter-snarled and left the table, sustained by the images starting to form in my head.

The time capsule opens and I find myself in Colonial Williams-burg. I follow the crowd to the town square where a squirming, squealing, fortyish man is being shoved into the stocks. “What’s his crime?” I ask a mobcapped woman. She blushes as if too embarrassed to explain. Finally she sighs and whispers, “He mocked his wife’s hair.” My eyes widen in horror at that offense. A young boy offers bystanders something from a large basket. I take one and then join in with the crowd as we gleefully toss creamy pies at the captive target.

On my way to an evening aerobics class – I had begun a twice-a-day regime at Down With Flab – I passed the kitchen and shuddered at the sight of Todd shoveling globs of pie into his mouth, meringue whiskers dotting his cheeks. He demolished the dessert, except for the piece he had offered me, which rested on top of the trash can. This grotesque scene was replayed every night for two weeks as Todd’s efforts at sabotaging my game plan escalated – shoo-fly pies, chocolate eclairs, cherry cobblers, apple turnovers – all offered to me, refused, and the proffered delicacy consigned to the garbage while Todd consumed the rest.

En route to the Hair Revival Salon for my third session with Miguel and my first with Colette, the cosmetician, I met Lisa, who was power-walking with her third husband – who did look like Kevin Costner, but only as the actor might look after three days of nonstop filming. As he puffed along beside her, I knew his days as a Lisa-spouse were numbered. Waving with one of the ten-pound weights she carried, Lisa shouted, “Hey, I had a Todd sighting today. He was sitting at the counter of the Dignified Doughnut. He’s gotten so pudgy he looks as if he’s been stealing the gruel from Oliver Twist’s tablemates. He’s giving himself a makeover, but in the wrong direction.”

She was right about Todd, who had easily picked up the twelve pounds that I had dropped. What a contrast to slender, muscular Miguel, who waved the client’s protective cape at me teasingly before I sat down!

“Today’s the day, Senora, that I, Miguel, triumph over the last line of resistance. Bid farewell to your curly locks.”

“Adios,” I said as he whisked out his shears and snipped off the last layer of corkscrews. After they fell, he stamped on them with scorn and the entire staff applauded. Then he stroked my hair gently with a brush and sang quietly to it until the strands, like me, relaxed. My hair curved obediently onto my shoulders.

“You’re a genius, Miguel,” I murmured, trying to extend the moment by soliciting his modest denial.

“Yes. Because I am Miguel, the most skilled hair-tamer in the business. And now I must tend to my public. I have three clients waiting for a follow-up to ensure the docility of their locks.”

Lowering his voice, he leaned over and kissed my hand, “But none, Senora, is as exciting for Miguel as you. You are my masterpiece.”

“Oh, Miguel,” I sighed as he led me to the station of Colette, the cosmetician, “can I see you again?”

“Every three weeks,” he answered, handing me a business card with his hours on it.

Since Colette hadn’t finished with another customer, I stared at the card, embossed with a jeweled comb, and let that image do its work.

I am Rosalita, a poor but beautiful flamenco dancer at the Cafe Ole in Barcelona. My only valuable possession is a jeweled comb given to me by my grandmother to hold my luxurious hair in place as I dance.

One evening, a rough crowd enters the cafe and makes crude comments to me. The worst offender is a pudgy fortyish man who looks as if he would be happiest presiding at an Inquisition. He grabs me and my comb falls off. When my hair spills to my shoulders, he ties it back with a diamond tennis bracelet. He is about to carry me off when Miguel, the bravest matador in Spain, immobilizes him with a glance from his dark, flashing eyes. “Stay away from Rosalita,” he orders as he, Miguel, replaces the comb in my hair.

“Hi, I’m Colette,” announced a wispy voice.

I opened my eyes, clapped my hands, and pounded a few flamenco steps on the floor. “And I am Rosalita.”

Flustered, the petite young woman dropped a tray of lip gloss.

I apologized to her all through my cucumber facial and eyebrow wax. After generously tipping her and buying the entire line of Cleopatra’s Secret makeup, I hurried to my car to give myself a good talking-to.

“Come back to reality, Emily,” I hissed at the new face that sheepishly regarded me in the rearview mirror. “You’re not a flamenco dancer and you’re about the fiftieth of Miguel’s masterpieces. And you’re being shamefully disloyal to Todd in your fantasies. The whole purpose of this game plan was to win him back. Shape up and keep focused. “And repeat after me, ‘I love Todd.’” “I love Todd.” “Louder.” “I love Todd.” “Once more.”

Before I could follow that order, I saw the young police officer who had ticketed me standing next to the car, regarding me quizzically. I waved and carefully pulled away from the curb before he could cite me for talking to myself in a motor vehicle.

At home, Todd was mixing a batch of brownies. He looked so cute with dollops of batter speckled across his nose and dangling from his left ear that I tiptoed up and hugged him. Startled, he dropped a vial of something white, confectioner’s sugar, I supposed, onto the kitchen floor.

“For Pete’s sake, Emily, look what you made me do. I was going to surprise you with these, but you made me drop this special ingredient.”

I apologized all through the cleanup, which taxed him severely. No longer able to bend over easily because of the Bittermann’s Bakery deposits at his waistline, he had to sit on the floor to do the job. When he was finished, I helped him up and handed him a cup of Rudy’s root’n bark tea as a peace offering.

Instead of berating me for causing the mess, he frowned as he sipped and finally said, “You’re starting to remind me of somebody. If only your clothes were different, I might be able to say who it is.” Stephanie, the ersatz me, that’s who! I thought giddily, patting my subdued hair and hugging my shrinking body. To complete the transformation, all I had to do was to keep up with my regimen for a few more weeks and buy a Stephanie wardrobe. After Todd toddled off for his nap, I studied her photo on the Christmas card to see what she wore, but the red-nosed reindeer covered her blouse except for its short sleeves. Why couldn’t Monty Malaise, the radio-talk-show host, have inquired about her style of dress after she mocked my lime-green polyester pantsuit, which was now gracing a landfill?

Discouraged, I almost sought solace from the box of Godiva chocolates Todd had placed on the table beside my chair in the living room, but my conscience, whom I dubbed Lisa, protested mightily. In a few minutes, virtue rewarded me, and I devised a plan. I would go to Todd's building at lunchtime and observe Stephanie in the cafeteria and learn her style – unless she carried a big stuffed animal around all the time, which I wouldn’t put past someone who called my husband Toddy-Woddy.

Of course, I needed a disguise and, of course, I solicited Lisa’s help. “So you want me to come up with a getup that will allow you to spy on your husband’s mistress at lunch,” she said in her usual tactful way. Seizing a jump rope, she displayed footwork that would have impressed even Evander Holyfield.

“I’ve got the answer,” she announced. “Rope-work always stimulates my brain.”

After showering, she led me to Foster’s Department Store, first to housewares and then to the uniform department. Loaded down with purchases, I followed her to Beck’s Pharmacy, where she tried reading glasses on me and settled for a half-lens pair. At Wilma’s Wig Emporium, she selected a curly auburn number.

The next day, outfitted in a blue uniform on the pocket of which Lisa had stitched “Ace Cleaning Service,” I nervously approached the security guard at Beebe, Beebe, Carruthers, and Beebe Accounting.

“Nora from Ace Cleaning,” I said bravely, then cringed. Obviously moonlighting – or sunlighting, since it was daytime – the young officer who had ticketed me wore a Stan’s Security Service uniform. Fearful that he’d remember me in spite of the glasses and wig and recall the name Emily, not Nora, on my driver’s license, I tried to push past him.

“Just a minute. Let me see your license and registration; I mean, let me see some ID.” I pointed to the stitching on my uniform. “That won’t do,” he responded.

“Call my boss,” I said and gave him Lisa’s number. He removed his cell phone and dialed. “Ace Cleaning Service,” she said brightly.

Although assured by Lisa of my credentials – she told him I was the best mopper in the business – he scratched his head as if coaxing a memory out of hiding. To give him something else to think about, I stumbled forward and tapped his forehead soundly with the handle of my mop.

“Have a nice day,” I said as I swept past him, seemingly oblivious to his language, which surely violated some township ordinance on public behavior. At a post next to the salad bar, for I was sure Stephanie feasted on endives and cucumbers, I picked up and dropped a wilted piece of lettuce several times before pretending to mount a mop-attack on the smudge on the floor.

When I looked up, I beheld Stephanie – she who had mocked my color choice to Monty –resplendent in a lime-green leather miniskirt topped by a lime-green leather vest. For some reason, however, the color did not make her look frumpy. Fellow workers, men, cast admiring glances at her as she sashayed to the dessert bar to rendezvous with Todd.

Although I had gotten a sense of Stephanie’s fashion style and could have left a cryptic “mission accomplished” message on Lisa’s answering machine, my curiosity to hear them conversing as a couple propelled me to a post near their table. Mopping my way across the room, I stopped at a small spill near them and eradicated it over and over, while furtively glancing at the lovers.

Shaking her finger, Stephanie scolded, “Toddy-Woddy, you’re getting gross. Must you eat three pieces of banana cream pie and four dishes of butterscotch pudding for lunch?” “Yes, I must,” he shot back. “This business of trying to...” I moved closer.

“...eliminate the problem...” Chomp, slurp, chomp, slurp. “...is really stressful...”

Not exactly a romantic conversation. Most likely, Todd was trying to eliminate a work-related accounting problem. To contain my anger at seeing them together and learning that Todd shared problems with her and not me, I created my own scenario.

7 am Agent 008, the most ingenious operative in the bureau. I have been assigned to eavesdrop on two people who have betrayed a trust. Although they are speaking in an intricate code, I am able to decipher it through my mop which has been equipped by our computer people with artificial intelligence. Their code appears to be based on food. The man says, “I’ve tried everything she loves to eat – Bittermann’s Bakery’s whole repertoire and Godiva chocolates.” Suddenly, I realize I never activated the Power button on the mop and what I am hearing is not code.

“She won’t bite,” he sighed. “Literally, she won’t bite into anything I put in front of her. Lisa the Amazon has brainwashed her into eating health food.”

“Keep trying,” Stephanie urged. “She’s bound to give in soon.”

“It better be soon,” Todd growled, “I’m running low on the poi– Ouch!”

Stephanie administered a swift kick to his shin. “Oh, the poi, yes, the poi, the Hawaiian food made from the taro root. I can’t wait to try it. And after you’ve solved the problem, we’ll have plenty of resources to dine on poi right on Maui.”

The Bureau has also equipped the mop with small darts of curare poison, but it wouldn’t be wise to use them in this crowded place, especially since my hand is shaking and they might hit the wrong target. The lecture given by Z, the chief, advised on subtle methods of attack, and one is already forming in my mind.

Through blurred vision, I watched Stephanie get up from her seat, lean over to pick up a shopping bag, and surreptitiously blow a kiss to Todd. That gesture cleared my vision, allowing me to read the logo on the shopping bag, and firmed my resolve to carry out a new game plan – as did the sight of Todd waddling over to the dessert bar for refills.

On my way home, I stopped at Bo’s Boutique, the shop name printed on Stephanie’s bag. Although not yet svelte, I was able to be shrink-wrapped into a lime-green leather miniskirt and vest, most likely two sizes larger than Stephanie’s identical outfit. To complete the morph into Stephanie, I bought a pair of three-inch wedgies. Tottering out of the store, I checked my reflection in Bo’s window and decided at fast glance, which is all my neighbor would give to the visitor at my home, that I could pass as my husband’s lover.

At home, I called Todd and left a message on his voice mail.

“Todd, could you please bring home a pizza for dinner? I am totally famished and tofu will not satisfy me tonight. Thanks so much.”

The phone rang shortly after. “Sure, honey,” gushed Todd, “I’d be glad to bring home a pizza. I’ve been so worried about you losing all that weight that I’ve been stuffing myself. Compensatory eating, I believe it must be. And I’ll get pepperoni topping, your favorite. I’ll be home bearing Georgio’s pizza at five-thirty. Love ya.”

Love ya – right. He was probably looking at Stephanie when he said that. The two of them were surely doing a polka around the office until she advised him that the poison vial might spill out of his pocket.

At 5:15, I slipped my sweatsuit over the lime-green outfit and gratefully exchanged the wedgies for sneakers. To look more convincing when I left the house after the pizza dinner, I had been practicing walking in them for two hours. At exactly 5:30, Todd bounded in the door, holding the pizza box aloft like a waiter, and pulled my chair out for me. He set the box on the table, carefully arranging it so that “org” in Georgio was directly in front of me. Beneath those innocent letters, I knew, lurked the poisoned pizza. Todd bowed and said, “Madame, zis ees ze finest entree from Georgio’s. I personally will ladle out ze first slice for you onto our finest china.”

As he turned to get a plate from the cabinet, I gave the box a quarter-turn so that the designated first piece would not face me. Unaware that the letters “org” now faced him, Todd opened the box and used the pizza cutter to remove the slice directly in front of me. I accepted it with a smile. He sat down on the chair to my left and started eating a piece topped with pepperoni, garnished with specks of white powder. He was so busy watching me that he didn’t even glance at his piece of pizza. I nibbled. He gagged, clutched his throat, and slid off the chair.

I took off the sweatsuit, retrieved the wedgies, put on a pair of gloves, and headed out the door. When I saw Mrs. Mitchell, my next-door neighbor, watering her flowers, I scrunched low, but not too low, next to a hedge, and held my gloved hand next to my face so she’d be sure to see it. Since she didn’t say hello, I assumed she didn’t recognize me, but she surely would remember the Stephanie outfit and shoes if she peeked around the hedge. And if she didn’t, she’d definitely remember the hairdo and gloved hand (which explained the lack of Stephanie's prints in the house) when questioned by the police.

Painfully, I hobbled around to the other side of the house, where we had no neighbors, and went in through the basement door. In the living room, I dialed the radio show Misery Loves Company. It must have been a slow day for misery because I had only a few minutes to wait before Monty, the host, came on the line.

“Misery Loves Company. Monty Malaise speaking.”

“Monty, this is Stephanie. Remember me?”

“Sure, you’re the caller whose lover won’t divorce his wife. You said she was thumpy or something.”

“Frumpy.”

“So anything new on the frumpy front? Got some better stuff for Monty today, other than the fact that his wife wears unfashionable clothes? Has your misery index risen to the lascivious levels we love?”

“It sure has,” I sobbed. “I’ve gotten so upset with my boyfriend for not leaving her that I played a terrible game with him today.”

“Goody,” said Monty brightly. “Stay with us, listeners. Stephanie might be bringing us some lurid stuff today. What kind of game?”

“Well, I’ll call it Pizza Roulette, although he wasn’t aware we were playing it. I poisoned one slice of pizza and spun it in front of him. He took it and died.”

“Good grief, woman, are you crazy?”

“No, just miserable, so that’s why I called. I had to get it off my chest. Thanks for your time, Monty.”

“Hold on now, hold on,” he yelled.

I hung up and turned on the radio.

“Don’t worry, listeners,” Monty assured his audience. “We'll get her; we have Caller ID.”

I smiled. Caller ID would bring the police to my house, but I would be long gone, once more using the basement door. Mrs. Mitchell would fill the police in on Todd’s lime-green killer, who obviously forgot about Caller ID. At least, that’s what the prosecutor would claim at her trial. I peeled off the mini outfit and stuffed it in my duffel bag, along with the torturous shoes. I wrapped myself in a terry-cloth towel and put my sweatsuit over it before going to my car, which was parked around the block.

At Down With Flab, I entered through the back door and shoved the sweatsuit and duffel bag into a locker far from anyone else in the room before sauntering into the sauna, which fortunately was empty. I stayed only a few minutes, splashed water on my face to simulate sweat, and returned to the locker room, pretending to be overcooked. Three witnesses could confirm my presence at the health club at the approximate time of Todd’s death.

It was imperative that I not skip my workout. I had to confess my transgression to Lisa when she came in. After all, I had eaten almost a whole piece of pizza that day and needed her absolution. Besides, I had to look good for the trial.

At the sensational trial of Stephanie Nesbit for the murder of my husband, I, the widow, am tastefully outfitted in a size 6 black dress and am wearing a small pillbox hat with an eye-level veil. I enter the courtroom on the arm of my chief comforter, Miguel. Dabbing at tears, I take the stand and identify the defendant – a woman sallow from lack of sunlight and pudgy from prison food, wearing an unstylish print dress – as the jilted lover of my husband. “Stephanie Nesbit killed Todd because he wouldn’t leave his wife,” thunders the prosecutor.

“Why would he ever leave beautiful Emily,” stage-whispers a male spectator, “for someone like Stephanie. She’s so, she’s so...” “Frumpy?” offers the woman beside him. “Yes, frumpy, that’s the word. Frumpy.”

2. Answer the questions about the text.

1. How and why did the conflict between Emily and her husband start?

2. What radio programme was Emily listening on her way to the restaurant?

3. When did you guess that Stephanie was talking about Emily?

4. How did Stephanie describe Emily?

5. Why was Emily shocked when she saw Stephanie’s photo?

6. What is the essence of the “look-alike” pattern theory?

7. What did Emily decide to change about her life?

8. How did Todd react to these changes?

9. Recall the episode with Emily’s throwing the cake away and a strange dream she had afterwards. Comment on Todd’s and Emily’s behaviour.

10. What changed about Todd?

11. How did Emily find out about Stephanie and Todd’s plan? Did this plan work? Did Emily’s plan work?

III Follow-up activities

1. Did Emily feel happy about the changes she had introduced into her life?

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 863