Fiction Friday

(Note from Opus: A little background into this excerpt from “The Role Model.” Diana, a weight loss counselor chosen to be the company’s national spokesperson, and her salesman husband, Ted, are separated (Ted had broken his leg in an auto accident earlier in the book, which led to Ted’s mental downslide and Diana’s finding out Ted had been unfaithful again.) Both Ted and Diana are now seeing other people. Jeff, the man Diana is seeing, is someone from her weight center group. With her coaching, he’d lost over a hundred pounds, is becoming a national celebrity in his own right, and he occasionally accompanies Diana on her publicity tour. Previous to this scene, Ted had begged Diana to meet him for dinner.)

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One thing Diana and Ted did have in common was a respect for punctuality. As a couple they could be depended upon to arrive at dinner parties and events on time (never a case of one dawdling and the other standing by tapping a foot or jingling keys), they were asked more frequently to bring appetizers than dessert, and they prided themselves on never missing the beginning of a movie.

But at 6:45 Diana sits alone in the bar of the steak place next to the mall, nursing a mineral water with lemon and checking her watch for the fourth time. She thought waiting here would be easier than sitting alone at the table he’d reserved in the dining room, amid two sets of shiny silverware, two cloth napkins folded into origami swans and two sparkling wine glasses, each item a reminder that they were no longer two. But this choice is proving to be equally uncomfortable. The bar is dimly lit and smells faintly of mildew and burned meat, and a round-shouldered man sitting alone at a small table near the television looks about three sips away from offering to buy her a drink. She wonders if she should call Ted’s cell. No, she tells herself. He’s doing this on purpose, and to call would only give him the satisfaction of knowing he was getting to her. She would take a deep breath and sit tight. If the bartender asks again, she would order a glass of wine. Then she would give him until seven and leave, certain that is what Ted would do to her.

She knows his lateness is not for lack of transportation. When she came home yesterday, his BMW was gone from the garage. There was no sign of forced entry, so she can only assume he either defied his doctor’s orders or had been downgraded into a type of cast which would permit him to drive.

At 6:47 she hears his voice.

“Table for two, Blisko,” he says to the hostess. “My wife has already arrived.”

“She’s at the bar, sir.”

Smug bastard, assuming she’d already be here. Of course, she thinks, mentally rolling her eyes. He saw her car. She should have parked farther away. Let him wonder if she would show up or not. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Why wasn’t she the type of person who would think of that? Ted would.

He walks in. Or, more accurately, hobbles in, assisted by a cane, with a new, smaller cast on his foot. When he sees her, his face registers a pained-looking smile. At least it’s an emotion. Possibly he might have put his weight down wrong, but she wants to believe their separation is having some kind of effect on him. His phone messages have, for the most part, been so calm and controlled.

“Were you waiting long?” he says.

She narrows her eyes. He knows exactly how long she’s been waiting. Then she forces what she hopes will look like a casual smile. “No, actually I just got here myself.”

He glances down at the bar, smirking at the evidence that gives her away. The empty glass, the dollar tip she’d left peeking out from beneath the napkin. Diana feels the blood rush to her face. For all she knows he might have felt the hood of her car to see if it were still warm. Or called ahead to ask the hostess how long she’d been there. He looks up, like he’s about to make some smart remark, but then his face softens. He turns toward the bartender. “Two more of these,” he says. “We’ll take them at our table.”


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He looks pale, she notices, as he peruses the menu and asks the waiter for the rib-eye special, rare. He needs a haircut. And the untucked shirt hides nothing from Diana’s trained eye: she can see the extra weight in his face. But then going from five hours of racquetball a week to nothing will do that to a person. It’s a mean-spirited thought, she knows, but she hopes part of it has to do with her. She wants a picture of him in her head drinking beer and eating pizza and laying around on Mike Smith’s couch, despondent.

“Yeah, I know.” He sips his mineral water and sets down the glass. “I look like crap.”

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“You were thinking it.”

“It’s not so bad.”

“You on the other hand. Why do you get to look so great?”

She touches a lock of her hair, re-highlighted for this most recent leg of her publicity tour. Heat rises into her face before she can tell herself that this is Ted, the grandmaster of charm, and to be on her guard.

He’s smiling at her, his eyes warming. He once told her that he loved when a woman could still blush. But how do you stop it? She couldn’t stop it. She tries deep, slow breaths. Biting the inside of her lip, hard. Anything to make the demon flush go away.

The waiter sets down their plates.

“You wanted to talk,” she says.

“We’re talking now.”

“About us.”

He sighs. “Could we eat first?”

“But you’re the one who wanted to talk. Over dinner. Talking over dinner means talking. Over dinner.”

“OK. We’ll talk.” He picks up his fork. “Nice weather we’re having.”

“Ted.”

“Well, it’s hard to, you know, jump into this stuff! Cut me some slack here. I was working up to dessert.”

“Fine. Then I’ll start.” But she can’t think of where. She pokes at her dinner. Realizing she didn’t really want grilled chicken; ordering it in restaurants was just a habit from her years with Weight Away. And now as their national spokesperson, appearing in a series of commercials currently airing in every major market, she could hardly be seen ordering most of what was on the menu. “So how does this work?” she says. “I’ve never been separated before. Are we supposed to get some kind of legal agreement? Lawyers?”

He cuts into his rib-eye, the juices oozing out onto his plate. She can almost taste it. “We don’t need all that,” he says.

“We can do it ourselves? Like with one of those legal kits from the stationery store?”

“I don’t want a kit. I want...” Ted puts down his fork and looks squarely into Diana’s eyes. “I want to work this out.”

He can’t be serious. “You mean...”

“I want another chance. That’s what married people are supposed to do, right? Work things out?”

She blinks at him. There are so many things wrong with those three sentences that she can’t even begin to itemize them. “Ted. It’s not working. Our marriage isn’t working.”

“Because we haven’t tried hard enough!” Ted lowers his gaze. “Because I haven’t tried hard enough. Look. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Believe me.” He gestures to his foot. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about this. And I understand. About you and that guy. It’s my fault. Totally my fault, and I had it coming. You had every right to turn to someone else. Not a jury in the world would convict you for that. So maybe now we could, you know, just put it all behind us and start with a clean slate. I’ll go to counseling.”

“I really don’t think that’s going to help—”

“But that’s what you wanted, for us to go into counseling, ever since we lost the baby, and now I’m offering, I’m the one bringing it up, and you—“ Ted’s expression suddenly goes slack. “Christ. You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

In her mind she sees Jeff’s olive green eyes smiling at her. She thinks about this weekend, when finally she would have him all to herself. A glorious stretch of unscheduled time between their Saturday morning appearance at a regional Weight Away meeting in Madison, Wisconsin and Sunday afternoon’s radio interview. She’d planned every detail, and had told Jeff nothing. She’d even hired a private car to whisk them away to the romantic-looking inn she’d found on the Internet. “Maybe.” Diana swallows. “Maybe I am.”

“OK.” Ted pats a hand atop the table, and says calmly. “That’s OK. I thought I was in love too. But it was just, you know, the adrenaline rush of it clouding my vision.”

Diana nods. So that’s what this is about. Lucy had dumped him. Ted doesn’t really want Diana; he just can’t stand being alone. But instead of smirking with self-righteousness, Diana finds herself feeling sorry for him.

“It wasn’t real, what I had with her,” he says. “It wasn’t like this. You’ll see. You’ve known this guy, what, a year?”

“Two.”

“Two years and you’re still not sure. Diana. You and I, we knew after just a few months that we wanted to be together for the rest of our lives. Doesn’t that tell you that maybe this is something worth fighting for?”

She tries not to think about those heady first few weeks. When they were shiny-eyed and hopeful, making promises. They simply were not those two people anymore. “Ted, a marriage isn’t something you can just waltz in and out of whenever—”

“But that’s what I want to change! I don’t want to be like my old man. I’ll get help. You’ll be there with me...”

“I think this is work you need to do on your own.”

He stares at her a long time. “If I do it, you’ll think about giving us another shot?”

“I won’t promise you that.”

“Because of him.”

“Because of him and because of you. And because of me. And because—”

Ted puts up a hand as if to stop her. “I don’t need your answer now. I can wait. Just tell me you’ll take some time to think about it.”

“But—“

“Think.”

She toughens herself over. “I don’t need more time. This isn’t going to work out and I don’t see how—”

“But we haven’t even tried! Look, I’m giving you something, here. You’ve always wanted us to work at this and now I want to work at this!”

Diana doesn’t answer.

He snaps a business card down on the table in front of her. The understated gray font spells out a name, with degrees after it, and underneath, “Family Therapist.”

“This is how serious I am.”

“Ted.”

His voice rises slightly out of his usually careful control. She sees his hand tighten atop the table. “Just give me a chance to prove this to you!”

Diana takes a deep breath.

“I made an appointment,” he says.

“Ted. Stop. Yes, this is great. For you. I think you should have done it years ago. But if you’re doing this for me—it’s too late.”

He makes an attempt to smile. “Don’t say that.”

“There’s someone else now.” Diana squares her shoulders, hearing her own voice, her voice on all the commercials, the voice of the woman who looked clear-eyed into the camera and said, ‘I changed my life, and you can, too.’ “And even if there weren’t, things haven’t been very good between us for quite some time.”

Ted’s face falls. “How long have you felt this way?”

“Well.” Diana wipes her damp palms on the napkin in her lap. “I can’t exactly pinpoint it...”

“No. Tell me the truth.” He speaks slowly, his voice low. “How long have you wanted out of this marriage?”

“I don’t—”

“Did you ever love me?”

“Oh, Ted. Of course I loved you.” The past-tense had come out of her mouth before she could stop it and it just hangs there between them like very large piano on a very thin rope.

Light drains from Ted’s pale eyes. Then they ice over. “Does he know he’s just your ticket out?”

“That’s not fair. It’s not like that at all.”

He leans forward, boring into her. “Maybe it’s the other way around and he’s using you. What do you really know about him and his wife?”

“You...you read the interview?”

“The magazine was mixed in with my mail. So she took their kid and left him because he was too fat. She’s bound to find out he lost the weight, Christ, that commercial with the two of you is on TV, like every ten minutes. If she and the kid come back into the picture, is he going to drop you like a hot potato or what?”

It’s like a punch in the stomach. Again she sees the look on Noreen’s mean little face face when she tracked down Diana in the banquet room at the Albany Hilton. ‘I’m still his wife,’ she had said. “He...he wouldn’t do that.”

The corner of Ted’s mouth turns up in a cruel smirk. “I don’t know. A hundred and twenty eight pounds...that’s a hell of a lot to put yourself through for a woman. He must have really loved her.”

“Why...why are you doing this?”

Ted smiles thinly. “You’re such a brilliant student of human nature.” He drops three twenties on the table and reaches for his cane. “You figure it out.”

And she watches him leave. The business card is still on the table.

“Will there be anything else?” the waiter asks.

She sighs. The money Ted left would more than cover their bill. She might as well order dessert. Maybe two.