“Thanks, Mom. Love you.”
“I love you, too. You know, you were the cutest baby. Do you remember the time I took you to Disneyland, and you told Cinderella that you were going to marry her?” He didn’t answer. “Hello? Hello?” Nothing. It was quiet on the line, and it took a moment for me to realize that he had hung up. I couldn’t blame him since he was busy with his life, being productive, while I was sitting in my recliner, watching face cream commercials. I needed someone who could relate more to face cream and my pathetic state.
I dialed my best friend.
“Hello? There you are!” Destiny shouted, answering the phone. “Where have you been? What’s wrong?” she asked. At least, that’s what I thought she said. She was blotto and slurring her speech. “Did that asshat do something?”
I didn’t have to ask her which asshat she was talking about. Destiny was obsessed with only one asshat, and I was wearing the ring that asshat had given me in high school.
Destiny was six-feet-tall, straight up and down, like a supermodel. No lumps or bumps. No Spanx. Not even a bra. We were the same age, but she looked ten years younger. She was independent and fabulous, and she was always trying to “empower” me, whatever that meant. In short, Destiny was bossy. In the past, she had made me buy two leather miniskirts, even though she knew I had a personal rule to never show my knees in public. Then there was the time she made me get a full bikini wax because she said I was too Old School.
But the worst was when she dragged me to her women’s group: The Second Chances Club. Located in the local rec center, the club met in a bland room with a circle of plastic chairs, but not much else. The walls were covered with notices for macramé classes and the junior basketball league. But we weren’t there for macramé or basketball. We were there for something much worse. She had asked me to come with her, and I was all for supporting my friend, but it was my worst nightmare. I didn’t need to complain about men, talk about orgasms, or whatever they did in a women’s group.
Destiny’s bossy excuse was that she was saving me from my life. Totally ridiculous, I thought. At that point—a month ago—I thought I had a perfect life. I was comfortable in my comfort zone of life. But Destiny didn’t believe in comfort zones. She said they were mini deaths. I said comfort zones were comfortable. What’s wrong with comfort?
So, she finally got me through the door with donuts. The Second Chances Club always had donuts, she had explained to me, and she didn’t lie. There were glazed raised, sugar twist, and my favorite: chocolate cake donuts with sprinkles. There was nothing more comfortable than chocolate cake donuts with sprinkles.
“I’m not a wimp, but I know what these kinds of women’s groups do,” I told Destiny, as I took a tentative step into the room.
“Talk? Knit? Eat doughnuts? What?”
“I’m not an idiot, you know. I’ve read Erica Jong.”
“Erica Jong. From the seventies?” she asked. “Can’t you read something a little more recent? At least move up to the eighties?”
“But they--” I started but bit my lip.
“Doughnuts with sprinkles, Eliza,” she repeated. “Come on. You’ll love these women.”
“Okay, but if they tell me I’m responsible for my own orgasm and make me look at my vagina, I’m leaving,” I insisted.
“Deal.”
There were about ten women in the room, and they were all standing at the coffee and donuts table. Destiny was mixing and mingling, but I kept my head down and looked at my cup of coffee. I wasn’t exactly a social butterfly. Parties terrified me, and I would do just about anything not to talk to a stranger. Steve even had to call to make reservations at restaurants for me. It was a relief when it was time to start the meeting, and everyone took their seats.
They went around the circle of chairs, each woman introducing herself. There was Dottie, who was trying to make a living creating knitted tea cozies after her son stole her identity and bankrupted her. Then, there was Frances who was on food stamps after she was fired a year before she was supposed to get her pension, and Jane, whose boyfriend…well, they were losers, all of them, and I couldn’t wait to get out of there, back to my nice life.
“I’m going to kill you,” I hissed at Destiny, who was sitting to my left.
“This is an empowering group of women,” she hissed back. “Relax and get empowered.”
I didn’t know exactly what she meant by empowered. I was plenty empowered. Why did I need to get more empowered? And besides, how would these tea-cozy-making women teach me about empowerment?
After they shared about their miseries, they passed around little mirrors. My heart raced. “I told you,” I whispered to Destiny. “I’mnotlooking at my vagina.” Panicked, I hopped up and went back to the donut table. They were out of sprinkles—I might have had something to do with that—and took a bear claw, instead.
But I was wrong about the mirrors. They were merely used by the women to look at their faces, in order to see their so-called beauty, intelligence, worth, and potential. I didn’t look in my mirror. I thought that I already knew everything I was.
But that was a month ago when I was happy. Now, I was a miserable slob with no car and no husband.
“No. No. Everything’s fine,” I heard myself say into the phone.
“You’re hiding something from me,” she said and hiccoughed. “I’m coming home in nine days. I’m having shex,” she slurred. “Lots of shex.”
Shex in Hawaii sounded great. I wanted shex. I mean, if I didn’t have to get naked for it. Tight Tammy probably had no problem getting naked for shex. She was probably naked all the time, showing off her tightness. She probably got naked to take out the trash and to eat chips.
Who was I kidding? Tight Tammy didn’t eat chips.
I got up and walked to the kitchen to get chips. “I’ve started working out,” I told Destiny. “And I ate egg whites.”
