stroke,' she told me, keeping a critical eye on my workout. 'Out of the blue. She was in the grocery store and just collapsed. The baby was in the grocery cart.'
Chills raced through me, as happened whenever I heard about something like this: how could you protect yourself against lightning from a clear sky? Reminding myself that what had happened to Amy might not be as random as it seemed only made my horror more complicated. 'God,' I panted, grimly maintaining the rhythm of the arm curls and the breathing that supported them, 'that's awful.'
'Come on, Madyson, focus. Push it.'
My given name is a dowdy, old-fashioned moniker common to women of my generation. I think of Madyson as my taken name. Madyson: young, fresh, more appropriate for someone in her twenties than nearing fifty, to go with my taken body and, presumably, my taken soul. I like the sound of it, the way it looks on the page. I like the y . I like what it projects about me.
I obeyed Vonda's command and managed to extend my arms ten more times with the weight, heavier than any I'd pressed before, steady in my hands. The burn across my shoulders and pecs was gratifying. Between controlled inhalations and exhalations I said, 'That's terrible.'
Vonda sat, eyeing me critically, trying to do her job but, I saw now, trembling and exhausted. By this point in the workout she would ordinarily have given me both encouragement and instruction; although I understood, of course, why she hadn't this morning, I found myself working harder, pushing harder, going a little beyond the goals she'd set for me, in hopes of catching her attention. It wasn't approval I craved from her so much as assurance — that I was strong and healthy, that I was looking good, that I was doing everything I could.
'She was dead before the paramedics got there.'
'Wow.' I shuddered, and added quite sincerely, 'That's really tragic.'
'You never think of somebody in their forties having a stroke.'
'It happens,' I said carefully, getting up off the mat.
Vonda gave me a quick one-armed hug, the equivalent of men swatting each other's butts. 'Okay, you can go to the sauna now.'
She turned to leave me for one of her other charges, but I stopped her by demanding shamelessly, 'So, how'd I do?'
I had to settle for a distracted, somewhat impatient, 'Fine, Madyson. You did fine.' She gave me a dismissive wave and strode across the gym. I glared after her, thwarted and insulted, soothing myself with the vitriolic thought that the only interest I had in a relationship with this lithe and self-sufficient young woman was what I could get from her. In the locker room I stripped, noting with pleasure the firmness of my new breasts and the tautness of my ass, revelling in the appraising glances of the other women and thinking about the last time I'd seen Amy.
We met for lunch at Charon's to say goodbye to Kit. We didn't quite acknowledge that. We said it was because Denise was in town and the four of us hadn't been together since she'd moved to Austin. Even when Amy called me to set it up, she didn't say, 'This might be the last chance we have to see Kit.'
Denise and I had snagged a window table, and I saw Kit's Beemer pull up, her husband behind the wheel. He parked in the handicap space by the door and went around to help Kit out; she hadn't even opened the door. It took long minutes for her to manoeuvre on to her feet and, leaning on Jerry and visibly off balance, long minutes more before they made it into the restaurant. When a few days earlier I'd spent the evening at her house, she'd felt papery in my arms, like an origami flower; her fingers on my shoulders, though, had been unnervingly strong, a death grip already. Her bones had seemed about to snap under my very light massage, but she'd sighed that it felt so good; fascinated by her absolute hairlessness, I'd rubbed her legs for a long time, gently, envying their incredible smoothness, tempted to lay my cheek against her calf.
Kit had never been beautiful, but her exuberant nature had made her very attractive to a lot of people. We'd met the year we both turned forty-three. She'd just taken up skiing and was learning to clog dance. My breasts had begun to sag and more often than not my lower back hurt. We were in a yoga class together. We took to practising between classes at her house or mine. When we helped each other with poses — her arm against the small of my back, my hands at her ankles and knees I first marvelled at, then absorbed, then siphoned off the energy I needed. I knew her heart was failing about five years-before she did.
Denise had not commented on my appearance beyond a generic, 'Hi, Madyson! It's so good to see you! You look great!' while we hugged hello, the kind of thing women routinely say to each other with hardly any actual referent. Most people are surprised by how young I look; Denise said nothing about it. She did not look young. She looked our age. Healthy and strong, I had to admit, but thirty pounds heavier than I'd have settled for and with wrinkles and greying hair it would have been easy to get rid of. The longer I live the less I understand women like her. They give me the creeps.
'There's Kit,' I said.
'Where?'
'With the red turban.'
'My God.' There was a pause while we watched Kit waft the short distance to the door. She hardly seemed to be touching the ground. 'She's really sick, isn't she? She's really dying.' Her voice broke.
I said, 'Yes.'
For a moment Denise hid her eyes. I noted the stubby fingernails, clean and coated with clear polish but entirely functional, the nails of a middle-aged mother and grandmother who cooked and cleaned and gardened and played and otherwise put her hands to use. Her lack of self-consciousness about her hands was disgusting, and I looked for solace to my own slim, smooth, tastefully ringed fingers on my glass of iced tea. To my horror, the polish on the right thumb had a minuscule but perfectly obvious chip, and on the left ring finger the cuticle was not perfectly smooth. For the rest of the lunch I did everything possible not to draw attention to my hands, which were usually one of my best features; I'd have to make an emergency call to my manicurist as soon as I got home, since obviously I couldn't wait for the standing weekly appointment.
'It's such a shock to see her like this,' Denise said. 'You've been with her all through it so you must be almost used to it, but I didn't imagine this. What am I going to say to her?'
Amy came up behind Kit and put a thick arm around her thin waist. Always on the chunky side, Amy had put on even more weight since the last time I'd seen her. Maybe she wouldn't be called obese in any clinical sense, and she certainly wasn't slovenly; her turquoise dress looked nice, and her loose chignon accentuated her flawless skin and wonderful green eyes. But she was fat. The contrast between them was breathtaking: Kit translucent, ethereal,
