Cut, Crop & Die (20 page)

I eagerly anticipated the sense of peace and well-being that came every Friday from thanking God for light, wine, and bread. The short ceremony created a pause, a deep breath of sanity, in a hectic life.

Anya turned big blue eyes on me. “Yeah. I can’t wait to tell all my friends I touched real live vibrators today. That is totally cool.”

Note: These albums are not acid or lignin free, which means they will get brittle over time, and your photos probably won’t be safe in them. But they are still fun! Use duplicate photos or photos you have on disk or on negatives.

SHEILA HIRED A WHITE Lincoln limousine to pick me up at her house and take me to Spa La Femme. Seeing as how I’d just dropped off my Great Dane at the store and was covered in dog hair, the huge vehicle felt too grand for the likes of grubby old me. On the other hand, my daughter wasted no time adapting to luxury. Leaving her grandmother behind, Anya raced to the open door and peeped in. “It’s just like a regular car,” she sniffed, a sure sign she sported a bad case of terminally cool. Then she relented with “but the fact you have a driver makes it the bomb, Mom.”

Sheila’s maid Linnea handed the chauffeur, Howard, a zippered garment bag. Inside were my gown, wrap, and shoes.

Linnea and Anya planned to make chocolate chip cookies while we were at the Opera Theatre dinner. Sheila harbored bizarre worries about Anya getting overweight. Once privy to my concerns about my child getting too thin, Linnea took charge of the situation, since she’d long since laid claim to Sheila’s kitchen as her own personal territory. The maid became my co-conspirator and safety net, making sure my child’s diet included more than iceberg lettuce, baked chicken, and apples. “What happens in my kitchen, stays in my kitchen, Miss Kiki,” said the stout woman. “I get to decide what to make most of the time. I keep telling Miss Sheila, if she eats too much bunny food, she’s going to grow herself a fuzzy cotton tail. I’ll make sure Missie Anya gets what she needs to keep shooting up like a weed. You know I will.”

The bulging garment bag, the sleek white town car, and the driver standing at attention sent my brain into Queen for a Day overload. I searched the skies for a Disneyesque fairy godmother descending from the heavens to dust me with sparkly stars and shimmering pixie dust. From my childhood memory vault came a sappy theme song. The bouncy refrain of “bibbity-bobbity-boo” gave me pause—and I hesitated, one leg in the car and one on the terra firma of Sheila’s massacred and muddied lawn. My mother-in-law showed up at my elbow to give me an encouraging push.

“Is all this really necessary? Our society puts too much emphasis on beauty as it is.”

Sheila rolled her eyes. “Get in the car. The staff at Spa La Femme has a lot to do before Howard swings back by to pick me up.”

“What if I get done early? How will I get home?”

She rolled her eyes even more and gave a “go on” nod to the liveried driver who was dressed—and was shaped—like a skinny penguin wearing a red tie. The real capper was his hat, a low, flat-topped black affair with a gold braid rimming the bill.

“But without my car … I won’t be able to get a ride back until, uh, Howard comes for me.” I stopped. It dawned on me why Sheila had constructed my trip in this one-sided manner. “You think I’ll chicken out.”

It was so like her to manipulate me. Somehow, she often got the best end of the deal, which is to say, she got exactly what she wanted. As usual.

She stopped rolling her eyes long enough to stare at me. “The thought had crossed my mind. Why do you think I chose a spa out in the middle of nowhere? Hmm?”

Barbara Walters explained the art of asking questions as the limo rolled over hill after hill, up and down two-lane Highway 94 toward Defiance. Howard turned west, following wooded areas bordered with rippling prairie grass, nodding yellow-orange day lilies, and waving white daisies. Along the way, we passed the clapboard-sided two-story home where Daniel Boone dispensed prairie justice to settlers and Indians alike. A mile or so later, Howard pulled into a long gravel drive running uphill through a rolling green lawn. Banners hanging from iron street lamps announced Spa La Femme. I peered around the driver’s head at the impressive Victorian farmhouse. The pink pastel siding with lavender, yellow, and green gingerbread trim made me think of birthday cakes. Behind the main house two wings angled, tripling the size of the original building. As we drove under the rose-colored canvas awning, two matrons in white dresses and orthopedic shoes raced down the steps and stood like tin soldiers watching our approach. Their hands were clasped behind their backs à la parade rest.

We rolled to a stop. Howard hopped out and opened my door. Both women rushed forward, one taking me by the hand and the other retrieving my garment bag.

“I’m Suzanne, and I’ll be taking care of you today,” said the woman holding my elbow. Glancing down at the gold watch pinned to her left breast, my minder noted the time approvingly and said, “Come right this way, we’ve been expecting you.”

For a second, I wondered if Sheila had committed me to a sanitarium. Yeah, we were getting along better, but I still didn’t completely trust her. Why should I?

Best to face this head on. “I’m here to have my nails done.”

Suzanne and the other woman in white giggled. “Oh, I think we’ll be doing a bit more than that!”

Ten minutes later, I stood naked as a jay bird. Other women were also shedding their clothes. We were too embarrassed to strike up conversations, but there was none of the hoity-toity attitude I’d expected at a place as exclusive as this. Nudity is a great equalizer. It’s hard to proclaim your status when you’re wearing nothing but your birthday suit.

I quickly slipped into a fluffy white bathrobe. My feet shuffled along in soft open-toed slippers. I closed the door on my locker, pinning the key to my robe as Suzanne suggested. I don’t know why I bothered. It wasn’t like my locker held anything of value. Inside was five bucks, a pack of gum, Chapstick, and a dingy wad of tissues plus the well-worn cut-offs I made out of jeans, a pair of Keds, and a tired Reebok T-shirt that had once been George’s.

I joined other stuffed bath towels in the waiting room.

Suzanne tripped in, smiling like a kid the first day of kindergarten. She was very lavender, from her fragrance to the clean look of her. “I think this is a bit extreme for a manicure,” I said pointing to my bathrobe. I didn’t want the other women to think I was silly. Of course, we’d all seen each other buck naked moments ago.

Suzanne consulted her clipboard and chirped, “That’s on the list but first we need to exfoliate you.”

“Ex-what me?”

“Exfoliate.”

“Isn’t that what Agent Orange did? In Vietnam? I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

She turned to me, her face clouded with confusion. “We don’t have any Agent Orange, but Helga can put citrus aroma in the body scrub.”

“Scrub?” I played Little Miss Echo as I scuffed my way along like an octogenarian on her way to bingo in the parlor.

At the threshold of a white-paneled door in an endless row of the same, Suzanne handed me off to Helga, a woman whose musculature and false teeth were ample proof she’d once played hockey for the Boston Bruins. In guttural tones, Helga indicated I was to take off my bathrobe (of which I’d grown rather fond), lie face up on the leather bed, and cover myself with the proffered white sheet. A small pair of panties made from material like kitchen wipes were waiting for me. The smell of bleach and eucalyptus filled the air.

The ceiling was papered with posters of Tom Cruise, Antonio Banderas, and George Clooney. This was instantly and deeply shaming. The last thing I wanted was for these hunks to witness my puny, white, and flabby self in Handi Wipe undies. A quick rap on the door announced Helga’s reappearance, and she loomed over me, a mess of gooey orange paste in one paw. “Now, I exfoliate you. We take off dead skin.”

When last I checked, all external skin is dead. Helga must have read the same biology text, because she scrubbed me with a vengeance, ridding me of this important outer covering. I gritted my teeth as layers peeled away. Between forceful strokes, she scooped up more nasty mix and slapped it on me. Fortunately, I have a high pain threshold. I could tolerate the sanding down of my upper arms, hands, forearms, and shins, but when she began grinding down my inner thighs, I yelped in pain.

“Could you lighten up, please? You aren’t refinishing furniture,” I tried to inject levity.

A whisker on Helga’s chin drooped as she frowned. “No, is better this way. Better for the mud and seaweed.”

“Mud? Seaweed?”

“Makes skin glow. Removes toxins. Drink this.”

I grasped a white mug filled with clear liquid and sipped. “What is this stuff?”

“Hot water and lemon. Is natural diuretic. You are bloated.”

“I am?” This was news to me. I felt fine. Or rather, I had been feeling fine until I lost that top coat of skin.

Her watery eyes squinted as though I were making a bad joke. “When your last fast? When your last detox?”

“Uh, never. I don’t drink much and I don’t do drugs. Although either would be welcome right now.”

“Chemicals in food and alcoholic beverages build up. Inside. Americans do not eat enough fiber. You need colonic and diuretic to cleanse insides. Alas, we have no time for colonic today.”

I had a vague idea of what a colonic was … and the thought made me wince. And I thought people went to spas to relax!

Helga took my cup away with a sniff. “You need detox each spring. Also sauna to sweat out impurities. And you must sauna with no clothes on. No towel, either. Is not sanitary. Finish with plunge in cold water. I know you do not,” and she jerked her chin, causing a stray hair to sway, “ because I see your skin so murky. Now, you must urinate. After I will apply mud and seaweed.”

I pee on command. It’s a leftover from being one of three girls. We never left the house without a mandatory piddle-check. Did you go? And you? And you? Once we were in the car, if Dad was driving, it was straight on ’til morning. There was no stopping until we needed gas. Such deeply ingrained habits don’t leave you. Even today, you point me at a toilet and I will produce. This time, I have to admit, I wanted to linger in the restroom, figuring if I took long enough Helga would go away. But a discreet knock on the door told me I was making life tough for other clients.

“
Uffda
,” she muttered, slathering on a concoction of brown mud and green seaweed. The plant life had obviously been rotting when added to the mix. I stood in a trance, having given up all my modesty as Helga finger-painted me, touching everything but the little paper panties with a brisk, business-like authority. The mirror showed me an Al Jolson clone. After she judged me “done,” Helga wrapped plastic wrap around and around my body, pinning my arms and making me feel like a giant salami. Her bulging muscles came in handy as she lowered me to the bed. The head was slanted higher than the feet, allowing me to view ten dark toes strapped together by the plastic.

“Is hot in here,
ya
?” Without waiting for a response, she opened the window at the foot of my bed about twelve inches. Sheers blurred the outside world, but each zephyr lifted the curtains to provide tantalizing glimpses of freedom.