Roxy's Story

  I found the stretching to be more difficult than anything else he had me do in the gym. It was actually very painful. He told me I had to work through the pain to eliminate it. I couldn’t imagine ever standing with my legs straight and stiff and placing my palms flat on the floor, but he guaranteed that I would be doing it in less than a week.

  As he took me through his plan of exercises specially designed for me, I laughed to myself, recalling how uncooperative and defiant I had always been in PE class. This year, my teacher, Ms. Lecter, gave me so many demerits that I was a candidate for failing PE in my senior year after only the first week of class, and that was something that could possibly threaten my graduation. Eventually, when that consequence didn’t change my behavior, she took to doing the same thing most of my teachers did: she ignored me and didn’t even bother to send me to the dean.

  Again, maybe because my father made such a big deal about staying in shape, especially when you were young, I was recalcitrant. That description of me was actually on my report card. I hated almost any form of exercise, and I knew it irked the girls in my class who did work out hard and didn’t have anywhere near the perfect figure I had. They glared at me with such envy and hate. It was so unfair to them. Why was I so blessed? All the Miss Piggies looked as if they would enjoy beating me to death in the locker room and eating me for lunch.

  I came back at Papa whenever he chastised me for not wanting to walk to the store to get something Mama needed or even something I needed. He was especially enraged when he saw the grades I was getting in PE.

  “How can you be failing this?” he cried, waving my multicolored report card in the air like something forbidden he had found in my possession. “What do you do?”

  “Nothing, that’s why.”

  “You’re making a fool of yourself and fools of us!” he bellowed.

  I looked at him calmly. “Who are you to talk, Papa? You’re not exercising the way you should anymore, are you? You have a sedentary job, and you don’t walk to work.”

  Of course, he rattled on about how he was working hard to keep us all comfortable and wanting nothing. He did try to get to the gym every weekend, but he wasn’t happy about how he had to eat while entertaining clients. I think he was drinking more than he should. It was the first time I seriously considered the possibility that he regretted the choice he had made, after all. Perhaps by now, he could have been a high-ranking officer. I knew he harbored the belief that he could have been a better soldier than his older brother, who was still only a lieutenant colonel, whereas their father had become a general by his age.

  After my gym workout, Lance gave me two bathing suits to try on. Both were a little tight. I think he did that deliberately so I would feel bad about my figure. The first one fit better. When I came out of the bathroom, he gave me one of his energy drinks. He was drinking some himself. I sat at the small table and sipped it. It wasn’t bad. I had been expecting it to taste like some sort of medicine.

  “You are a little soft in the abdomen,” he said. “Most women don’t usually gain their weight there, but you look like you might have that inclination. Are your parents overweight?”

  “No. Well, my father is now, but my mother has a terrific figure for someone her age and always did.”

  “So you take after your father more,” he said. The way he said it irked me.

  “I don’t think so.”

  He laughed. “You mean you don’t wish so, but your genetics have a mind of their own. There’s just so much we can do about that. What do you usually have for breakfast?” he asked, grimacing as though he already knew my answer.

  “Coffee and something sweet. My mother is French. Petit déjeuner is usually a café au lait and a sweet roll or croissant. My father often has oatmeal or eggs and bacon.” I smiled to myself, remembering his complaining about my mother’s breakfast habits. Her comeback was always, “Who has more obesity, the French or Americans?”

  Emmie ate more like he did, which pleased him.

  “Yes, well, you’ll get a good nutritional plan here,” Lance said now. “You probably won’t change your breakfast habits after you leave, but at least you’ll supplement them, and you’ll soon see why you need to. So have you done much swimming?”

  “Almost none,” I said. “My school had no pool, not that I would have gone into it, and we don’t go to the beach much. Well, I should say, I don’t. My younger sister loves it, and my mother is a good swimmer. When she was younger and living in France, the family would summer in Juan-les-Pins, where an uncle had a beach house. I’ve never been there, but she often talks about it. My father grew up in a military family and was . . .”

  I stopped myself. Why was I talking so much about my mother and her family and my father? I felt certain most candidates for Mrs. Brittany’s company were as cut off from their families as I was and certainly didn’t talk about them much, if at all. Lance’s deadpan look confirmed how little interest he had in hearing any of it.

  “No,” I admitted. “I’m not much of a swimmer. In fact, I hate putting my face in the water.”

  “We’ll change that,” he said casually.

  “Why is swimming so important?” I asked, practically moaning. I really wanted to ask if he knew I’d be going swimming with a client or something.

  “It’s great exercise. I think you’d like it better than running laps around the property,” he added. “You don’t look like you’ve played team sports.”

  “I haven’t, and I was never in the Girl Scouts or the Brownies, either. Like Groucho Marx said, I won’t join any club that would have me as a member.” He didn’t break a line in his face or relax a lip. “You’ve heard of Groucho Marx?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Something tells me I should add some self-defense training to your schedule,” he said.

  “I’m not bad in that area,” I said. Despite the trouble I was to get into on playgrounds and in locker rooms, my father had taught me some self-defense when I was younger. It was part of his upbringing in a military family, where it was as important as toilet training. I didn’t tell Lance any of this. The thoughts just flowed quickly through my mind and off into space.

  “Okay, we’re set for the pool.” He stood up. “Shall we start? I want to see how you freestyle.”

  I looked at the rest of my drink. I didn’t want to say I’d rather go to the pool outside and lounge, but it was sure in my mind. For the moment, I was afraid to complain about anything. I followed him out and across the hall to the indoor pool. As soon as I got in and started, he stopped me. He jumped in beside me and showed me how to hold my head in the water, how to take a breath, and how to be more graceful with my stroke. He had me do it repeatedly until he was satisfied that I had a better technique. Then he watched me struggle to do a full lap and shook his head.

  “You don’t smoke, do you?”

  “On occasion, some pot, some cigarettes. Once a cigar just to drive some girls nuts.”

  “Well, your lack of exercise and that behavior all show. You’ll have to be able to do at least ten laps every day,” he said.

  I groaned. “Ten? You’re kidding.”

  “Mrs. Brittany is adamant about her girls being in top shape, and under my guidance, they all are,” he said with pride. “They don’t get to work for her until they are,” he added as an incentive. “Let’s go again. You’ll do ten today, no matter how long it takes us.”

  By the time I was finished in the pool, I was ready to go up to my suite and collapse, but instead, I was introduced to Olga Swensen, who guaranteed me that she would restore my energy. I was surprised at how strong she was for a woman who was about five feet five and maybe one hundred fifteen pounds, but her fingers were more like my father’s when she went to work on my muscles. She used her own body-oil formula. It brought heat and relaxation to me almost immediately.

  “You are blessed with great muscle structure,” she told me. “Is this your first massage? You seem very uptight about it.”

&n
bsp; “Yes.”

  “I’m sure you’ll have them once a week after you leave here, and not because anyone orders you to.”

  I couldn’t disagree. When she was finished with me, I was no longer feeling crippled. I showered and changed, but when I went to put on my sweatsuit again, I saw that someone had brought down one of the informal dresses I had seen in my closet. It was hung beside the chair, where another bra and fresh panties, socks, and a pair of flats had been left for me to put on. There was even a new hairbrush.

  I got dressed and stepped out of the room. Olga was talking to Lance. I had the feeling they were talking about me when they both paused to look at me.

  “How do you feel? Hungry?” Lance asked.

  “Yes,” I said, surprised myself. “What do I do about my sweatsuit? I left it in there.”

  “You don’t do anything about anything, Roxy. Someone will always look after you here.”

  “Tell that to Mrs. Pratt,” I said, and they both laughed.

  “Anyway, you go to lunch now,” Lance said. “Mr. Whitehouse is waiting for you.”

  “Oh.” I wasn’t going only to be fed. I realized I was going to another class.

  “See you in the morning,” Lance said. “And expect to be quite charley-horsed,” he called after me, “even with Olga’s great massage.”

  He sounded as if he would be happy about it. I heard them both laugh.

  Without having realized it, I had enlisted in the army, I thought. Maybe this was a secret special-forces unit using only women, and they pretended it was an escort service. I feel more like a female James Bond than potential arm candy.

  Mr. Whitehouse rose from the smaller table when I entered the dining classroom. He was a short, rotund man with very light brown hair and well-trimmed sideburns. He wore a bright blue sports jacket, a dark blue tie, a white shirt, and blue slacks. His eyes were a dull gray and round like two unpolished quarters under his thick, black-framed glasses.

  “I’m Nigel Whitehouse,” he said, extending his hand. I took it and felt how soft his palm was. It was like shaking hands with a large makeup pad.

  “I’m Roxy.”

  “I know who you are, Miss Wilcox. Your proper response should be ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’ ”

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” I said dryly. Oh, no, not another stuffed shirt in my life, I thought. He reminded me of my science teacher, Mr. Rumsfield, whom everyone called “Rummy” because he always had a red nose like that of an alcoholic and, in fact, was suspected of drinking alcohol from his coffee thermos between classes.

  “No, that’s not good enough, my dear. You have to say it as though you really mean it, whether you do or not. In the line of work you’re hoping to begin, the face you put on, especially at lunches and dinners, is far more important than the face you really have. It’s all a matter of pleasing someone in the end, isn’t it? So let’s try again. This time, give me a smile that tells me you mean it. Convince me. Make me feel good about myself.”

  I started to smirk at his lecture but stopped myself. He was still holding my hand. I had the sense that anyone along the way of the training gambit I was to run could give me a failing mark and have Mrs. Brittany send me on my way. All my life, I hated to kowtow to anyone, not just my father. I suppose all the men I had as teachers became my father in my mind in one way or another; even some of the female teachers reminded me too much of him. But I now realized that defiance and tantrums were two things I had to leave outside the door of this mansion the moment I signed Mrs. Brittany’s agreement in her office.

  I took a deep breath, smiled with all the warmth and charm I could muster, and hit him with the French version of “pleased to meet you”: “Enchanté.”

  Now he smiled, satisfied. “Much, much better. And it wasn’t hard for you to do, was it?”

  “No, just different,” I said. “There are so few people I’ve been pleased to meet.”

  He didn’t laugh aloud, but I saw the delight in his eyes. Maybe my independent spirit was refreshing to him.

  He pulled out a chair for me. “Miss Wilcox.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Whitehouse,” I said.

  “De rien.”

  “Does everyone here speak French?” I asked as he went around to take his seat across from me.

  “Everyone has a smattering of it, I imagine. As difficult as it is for an Englishman like me to admit, it’s the language of style, eloquence, and culture. You are most fortunate to have mastered it as your second language already at home.”

  “You know my mother is French, then? You know all about me?”

  “As much as anyone else knows about you, but getting to know each other that completely isn’t why we’re here at the moment,” he said. He said it sharply, but he kept his smile. He looked at the table setting. “Don’t touch your napkin yet. In most of the finer restaurants, the waiter will unfold it for you and place it on your lap. Now, do you know why you have three forks and how you choose which to use?”

  “This fork is for dessert?” I said, touching the fork above my plate. “This one on the far left is for salad. We go from left to right with our silverware.”

  “Precisely.” He nodded, but I thought he looked disappointed that I knew that much. “Your family held formal dinners?”

  “Not very formal,” I said. “But my parents are cultured people and have entertained. Eating well and properly has always been important to my mother, especially.”

  “Really? Well, you’re a rare bird, indeed. Many of my students came from homes where they eat with their hands.”

  My surprise made him laugh.

  “I’m kidding, of course, although we did have a Moroccan girl recently, and that wasn’t far from an exaggeration in her case. But I suspect—I hope—that with you, we’ll have that much less to do,” he said, and looked up as Randy entered. He went right for my napkin and then uncorked the bottle of white wine.

  “We’re having poached salmon today,” Mr. Whitehouse said. “A sauvignon blanc goes best with it. We’re having one of my favorites from the Bordeaux region, a Château de Roques.”

  Randy poured my glass first and stood back.

  “Go on, let’s see you taste it,” Mr. Whitehouse said in a challenging tone.

  I smiled to myself confidently. If there was one thing we all knew how to do in my house (even Emmie, as young as she was, had begun and enjoyed doing it to please my parents), it was how to taste wine.

  I held it up and checked its color and clarity, then swirled it in the glass, sniffed it, and took a sip, rolling it around in my mouth before aspirating through the wine by pursing my lips as if I were going to whistle (Mama’s directions), drawing in some air. Finally, I swallowed it. Mr. Whitehouse sat smiling throughout. Randy’s smile was warmer, his eyes full of pride, as if I were his sister or someone he cherished passing an important test.

  “Well?” Mr. Whitehouse asked.

  “May I see the bottle, Randy?”

  He moved quickly and turned the label toward me.

  “I’ve had this wine,” I said. “The year before this one was a better year for sauvignon blanc, but this is adequate.”

  Randy’s eyes nearly popped.

  Mr. Whitehouse sat back. “Adequate? Well,” he said, looking at Randy, “I’m impressed. Aren’t you, Randy?”

  “That I am, sir,” Randy said. He quickly poured Mr. Whitehouse his glass. “But I must say that the moment I set my eyes on this one, I thought, now, here’s a winner.”

  “Let’s have a toast, then,” Mr. Whitehouse said. “To a very promising new Brittany girl.”

  He reached forward to clink his glass against mine, and we both took sips.

  “Do you know why we clink glasses with lunch and dinner guests?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  His eyebrows looked as if they had been attached to invisible wires and hoisted with his surprise. “Tell me,” he said.

  I recalled my mother’s explanation years ago. “People used to drin
k from the same bowl passed around a table, with the host drinking last. Sometimes there was a piece of bread in it, and he would eat that, too. It reinforced trust and loyalty and friendship. When people began drinking from their own glasses, they toasted, clinking them, to share good feelings for the occasion.”

  “I see. And what if you are too far across from another guest at the table?”

  “You just hold your glass up and make eye contact,” I said. “Some clumsy people reach too far and knock something over,” I recited, just the way my mother had.

  He laughed. “Who taught you all this?”

  “My mother,” I said.

  “She ought to be working here,” he muttered, both in admiration and in disappointment. I could see there was so much he wanted to be the one to tell me. I imagined that not too many candidates could give him the answer. Maybe Camelia could have, I thought, maybe not.

  How ironic this was. In a real way, Mama might have prepared me for the new life I was about to begin. After all, she was a Parisian. She was always interested in fashion and beauty, stylish clothes, wonderful wines, and good food. I was sure she never realized how much of an influence she had on me. It was as if I was always looking at her surreptitiously. I couldn’t explain why I was so unwilling to admit how much I admired her and how many ways I wanted to be like her. My best excuse was my resentment of how devoted she was to my father, how obedient, and how careful she was in not riling him up when she attempted to defend me or disagree with something he had said. I think that had a lot to do with why I was so determined to be disrespectful and defiant, even to her.

  Whatever, I knew she would not appreciate how I was going to utilize the sense of style and appreciation of the finer things in life that she had bestowed upon me. You separate from your mother when you are born. You separate from her again when you begin an independent life of your own. That’s expected and understood. You still hold on to each other in so many loving ways, but what I was doing now was leaving her so completely and clearly that it would be as if I had never been born.