Chapter 3.
It didn’t take me long to realise that I was in no shape to even be seen inside a gym. Too flabby, too pale and too uncoordinated by far. And I didn’t have a thing to wear. Well, okay, that’s a slight exaggeration — I did have my old track pants and a number of perfectly good T-shirts. But I’d seen the ads on TV with all those Lycra-clad young women, trim, taut and tanned, in tummy-taming tops and thigh-hugging shorts. Anything unlucky enough to hug my thighs would require industrial-strength elastic to prevent terminal reverberation.
It was clear: the only way I could ever set foot inside a gym was when I was already just as trim, taut and tanned as the resident gym bunnies. But it didn’t escape my sense of irony that I stood no chance of becoming trim and taut unless I set foot inside the aforementioned gym.
So I made a small start. I cancelled my appointment with the personal trainer and, instead of spending my lunchtime at the gym, I drove to the nearest sportswear store and purchased a pair of sturdy Lycra shorts. They encased my thighs with enough industrial-strength restraints to stop them wobbling in the (increasingly unlikely) event of them being forced into star jumps or pounding a treadmill.
You’ve got to start somewhere and having the right gear is, in my opinion, as good a start as any. At least, that’s what I told Nicky when she surprised me coming out of the lift with the telltale sports shop bag.
‘I’ll believe it when I see you on the cross-trainer,’ she said.
‘Don’t be such a sceptic,’ I laughed. ‘It could happen.’
‘The only machine I can see you using at the gym is the vending machine.’
‘Four months on a rowing machine should do the trick — without a break,’ Ginny threw in on her way past.
‘What would you know? You’ve never set foot inside a gym,’ Nicky called to her departing back.
‘I did once — never again,’ Ginny said, pulling a face. ‘I twisted and gyrated and jumped up and down and sweated like mad for half an hour. And that was only getting the leotard on. By then the class was over.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ I said. ‘You and I had a pact never to attempt anything you couldn’t do in Manolos.’
‘Just shows you I’ve learned my lesson,’ she called, before escaping to answer her ringing cellphone.
‘What colour did you get?’ Nicky asked, prising the bag open.
‘Just black,’ I replied. ‘I prefer to keep myself inconspicuous.’
‘You could have tried a bit of colour. These days gym gear is just as much of a fashion statement as what you wear on the high street.’
‘The only fashion statement I’ll be making is that black is the new black,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m not one to follow fads.’
‘No? What about those bright blue stilettos you bought?’
‘Hardly a fad,’ I said. ‘You all said you’d never be seen dead in them.’
‘Darn right,’ Ginny said, reappearing. ‘Come to think of it, I don’t recall seeing you in them since the day you bought them either.’
‘Saving them for Ginny’s annual charity fancy dress, perhaps?’ Nicky teased.
I was about to leap to my own defence when I realised they were right — I hadn’t in fact worn the periwinkle winkle-pickers anywhere outside my own dressing room.
‘No, they’re the original killer heels,’ I admitted. ‘As in, “My feet are killing me”.’
They’d seemed such a steal at the time, reduced to fifty dollars from way over three hundred. But it wasn’t until I’d put them on to go to one of Ginny’s glitterati parties that I’d realised why they were such a steal — no woman over thirty-five would be able to stand up in them for more than twenty minutes without experiencing vertigo.
So it was with a new resolve to give the purple pointy-toes at least one outing that I scrunched my feet into them after work later that week and tippy-toed down the road to the appointed bar for my regular Ladies’ Philosophical Society meeting.
The five of us in the society, known as Philly for short, met up years ago at one of those women’s business network events, when such things were something of a novelty. The business network had long since passed its use-by date, but we five had struck a common bond and continued to get together after work at irregular intervals for post-traumatic stress therapy. Mind you, trying to call a meeting can sometimes be harder than scheduling an appointment with Milo Weinstein, the famous facelift surgeon, as we all get so busy. But cocktail hour with the girls is better than visiting a therapist. And believe me, we have all needed the therapy at one time or another.
Take Liz, a partner in the tony law firm Cavendish McIntyre. Like the woman who lived in a shoe, Liz has more children than anyone else could cope with, but she still manages to be impeccably dressed, as if she’s just come off the set of Boston Legal, and never seems stressed. When she miscarried her sixth child, instead of crying with relief as most of us would have done, she was so upset she told us she was going to see a shrink. ‘Try a session with us first,’ we emailed her back. Sure enough, after a couple of hours, a few wines and a lot of tears and laughter, Liz announced that she felt so much better she was going to go home and try for a seventh that very night. Fran produced a pair of edible panties out of her handbag to help get Liz’s husband Graeme in the mood.
And just what, you might well ask, was Fran doing with edible panties in her handbag? Ever since her slimeball husband left her for a buxom busybody ten years his junior, who just happened to live next door, Fran has been gradually finding her true self. We’re still not sure just who that person is yet and, we suspect, neither is she, but so far she’s experimented with having platinum blonde short hair, green and purple highlights in a long red mane and — her latest persona — dark brown dreads. The underlings at the software firm she runs don’t seem to mind — in fact, they probably haven’t been able to tear their eyes away from their screens long enough to even notice.
Helen never went through a midlife crisis but her husband George did, arriving one day to pick up their teenage kids after school affecting Raybans, leather keyhole driving gloves and a Porsche — the perfect accessory for the man in search of a status symbol to cover up for his personality bypass. Helen makes up for what he lacks with personality plus — she’s a larger than life woman in every sense of the word who doesn’t let her Rubenesque proportions or her management position get in the way of wearing wacky, way-out outfits that ignore all the rules of the colour wheel while surpassing all budgetary boundaries. And she’s as generous with her time and expertise as she is with her credit card. Helen’s been my saviour on one memorable occasion, outing my husband Steve’s infidelity by broadcasting a few pertinent facts on one of the radio stations in the network group she manages.
Unlike me, both Helen and Liz manage to leave their job behind them when they clock off at six. If I were running a pile of radio stations, I’d be plugged in 24/7, making sure they were sticking to the playlist or whatever. But the only time I’ve seen Helen listening to the radio outside the office is when she was waiting for the big reveal after I’d delivered Steve’s beloved Triumph Stag to his office car park painted bright yellow with big red flames down the sides. Helen had arranged for an outside broadcast from the radio station’s Black Blunders promo team, who rocked up to Steve outside his office while he was still fuming with rage and caught his reaction on air.
Paint job: $3000. Red flame decals: $300. Live broadcast of your ex-husband’s humiliation: priceless.
Last but by no means least there’s Di, the only one of us who’s childless, and defiantly so. As a result, she’s twice as well off, looks half our age and can call her time her own.
I’ve lost count of the number of luxury resorts she and her husband Evan have visited while we’ve been running the kids to hockey and football and swimming and ballet and spending enough at the supermarket to sustain a small country. While we’re making sandwiches or hounding the kids out of bed and then out of the bathroom, Di is doing neat circuits at the gym, keeping her compact little body taut and trim.
Unlike me.
I tottered across to the table to be the recipient of the send-up I knew I deserved.
‘I see you’re trying for a part in Sex in the City,’ Helen laughed. ‘Carrie would approve.’
‘I’m still wearing them in,’ I admitted. ‘I figured if that I could cope if I was going to be sitting down for most of the evening.’
‘I’ve often wondered how Carrie and co manage to get around in those things, anyway,’ Helen said. ‘It’s a wonder they don’t break their ankles.’
‘I know. I’ve come close to falling off them a couple of times already. I’m beginning to think I’m too old for stilettos.’
‘Nonsense. If it’s good enough for those Sex and the City girls, it’s good enough for us,’ said Fran. ‘They’re about our age, anyway.’
‘They probably practice walking in them with handrails.’
‘I could’ve brought you a Zimmer frame from work,’ Di laughed. She manages a group of private hospitals and can be a veritable treasure trove of medical advice.
‘That would be a good combination — tottering along on a rhinestone-encrusted Zimmer frame while wearing high heels,’ I chuckled.
‘Don’t laugh,’ she said. ‘It could happen. I can’t see Carrie Bradshaw in a pair of comfy slippers.’
Of course, they all fell about laughing when I told them how Phil Wiggins had had me on about going mountain-biking and how I’d managed to make and then break an appointment with a personal trainer.
‘You should see my personal trainer,’ Fran said, affecting a sexy, throaty growl. ‘His six-pack is my inspiration to get up early and go to the gym. Although I still don’t manage it as often as I should.’
‘The last time I went to the gym, I ached all over for a week afterwards,’ I said. ‘Why on earth someone would want to go to step classes when the world is full of perfectly good escalators is beyond me.’
‘Maybe going to the gym would help me lose some weight,’ Helen said. ‘I’ve been trying the thirty-day diet. So far, I’ve managed to lose ten days, but I haven’t lost an ounce of weight!’
‘I know the feeling. I’ve bought so many diet books over the years, they weigh as much as I do,’ I added.
‘A friend of mine told me the other day she’d worked out why she puts on more weight than her single friends,’ Helen said. ‘They come home, see what’s in the fridge and go to bed. Married women come home, see what’s in bed and go to the fridge.’
‘Unfair!’ Liz cried. ‘I don’t need an excuse to go to the fridge.’
‘It’s true for me, and I’m single,’ Fran said. ‘Food has replaced sex in my life. These days I can’t even get into my own pants, let alone anyone else’s!’
We fell about laughing. She’s not really overweight — not as much as me anyway — but she’s always putting herself down.
‘You need someone cracking the whip all the way to the gym, Penny, or you’ll never get there,’ Liz said.
‘What?’ cried Fran. ‘Don’t tell me you’re into bondage and discipline now? It didn’t take long for Graeme to move on from edible panties to the raunchy stuff!’
‘No, not that,’ Liz said. ‘I meant having a gym buddy. I never would have kept going if it hadn’t been for Katrina. Just the thought of letting her down by not turning up made me keep going, even when I desperately didn’t want to.’
‘I don’t know how you find the time,’ Di said. ‘With all those children running around at home demanding your attention, and having to fill in your quota of six-minute blocks of chargeable time at work every day, it’s a wonder you find time to put on your make-up in the morning, let alone get to the gym.’
‘I often don’t,’ Liz laughed. ‘Put my make-up on, I mean. I usually do it in the car on the way into town. That’s why my mascara sometimes strays onto the top of my cheekbones and my lipstick rubs off on my teeth.’
‘Isn’t it funny how waterproof mascara comes off if you cry, shower or swim, but never when you try to remove it?’ Fran interjected.
‘I don’t believe you, Liz,’ I said. ‘You always look so immaculate.’
‘I wish.’ Liz snorted. ‘I’ll never forget the time I turned up for a meeting and suddenly realised, after I’d shaken hands with the client, that my blouse was inside out.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Made an excuse to fetch a piece of paper from my office and dived into the storeroom to change on the way past. Luckily nobody needed any files while I was in there or I’d have been sprung.’
‘I still don’t know how you do it,’ Fran sighed. ‘I’ve only got one child and I can’t even manage to match my shoes to my outfit, let alone find a pair of pantyhose without a hole in them.’
‘Kids. Funny how the work-life balance gets tipped upside down when they come along.’
‘Not that men would notice,’ Fran said. ‘I’ve yet to hear a man worry about how to combine his career with having kids.’
‘Roll on the empty nest, then,’ I said. ‘I look forward to the day my last two can afford to go flatting.’
‘You said that now,’ Liz said, ‘but you’ll be in floods of tears as you help them pack up their rooms.’
‘I wouldn’t count on it.’
‘You’ll be surprised,’ Helen said. ‘When James first went down to Otago I cleaned out his room, but I just couldn’t throw away his jumble of toy cars and bits of Lego. They’re still tucked away in a bottom drawer.’
‘In case he wants to use them after he’s graduated?’ Di said sarcastically.
‘He could build a Lego recliner with a hole in the arm for his beer can.’
‘Lego can have many uses,’ I said. ‘Nicky’s son Dylan managed to prove that small Lego pieces can pass intact through the digestive tract of a four-year-old boy.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ I added. ‘When Adam was four, he proved that Lego, when placed in an oven, melts at a hundred and ninety degrees Celsius and emits a toxic-smelling black smoke that sets off the smoke alarm within two minutes.’
‘That’s nothing,’ Liz said. ‘When Jack was five he proved that the motor on a ceiling fan can burn out in less than a minute when trying to rotate a twenty-five kilogram boy in a Superman outfit holding onto the end of the dog’s leash – fortunately without the dog attached!’
‘What, he’d hooked the dog’s leash over the ceiling fan?’
‘Temporarily,’ Liz laughed. ‘The insurance company didn’t believe me when I told them.’
‘They didn’t believe me either when I told them how Riley broke the living-room window with a cricket ball,’ added Helen. ‘Nothing usual about that. But he didn’t just hit the ball through the window, like most kids. No, he had to throw the ball up at the ceiling fan trying to see if it would slice it in two.’
‘And did it?’ laughed Fran.
‘He said he had to throw it up six times before he scored a hit. And no, the ball didn’t break in half. But the window sure did.’
‘Ah, children. You can’t wait to have ’em, and once you’ve got ’em, you can’t wait for ’em to grow up and leave home.’ I sighed long and loud.