The soothing scents of Saratoga reach my nose: heady redwood and eucalyptus mingle with fresh-roasted coffee and the various aromas of the culturally elite restaurants preparing for the lunch rush. I was born to live here.
I enter the spa's courtyard and the little dripping sounds begin. What is that? Is it supposed to be relaxing? Because I'm thinking Chinese water torture, and what's the difference? Once inside Provence, I'm met with a whole new realm of sensations. There's the soft continual splash of the fountain, and the soothing scents of lavender and almond oil with ylangylang. Combined with the subtle mural of the French countryside, I feel like I've been transported to Europe, and hope for serious change starts rising inside me.
“Good morning. Velcome to Provence. How may I help you?”
“I'm here for a rain-forest therapy.” That sounds so stupid, I feel like I'm ordering McNuggets. “The reservation is under Ashley Stockingdale.”
“Ah yes, you'll find a robe and slippers in the dressing room. Vould you like some tea or water perhaps?”
“No, no, thank you.” I make my way to the dressing room, which is draped in rich taupe brocade, and looks like something out of a Gold Rush brothel, but I try to dispel such thoughts. There's a younger, more refreshed Ashley waiting to burst forth onto the scene, and this overly decorated spa holds the key.
A teenager, at least I think so, meets me in the waiting area. “Hello, Ashley. I'm Isabella, and I'll be doing your rain-forest therapy today.” She sits me down in front of a mirror and begins to finger my hair, feeling the texture like it's a piece of modern art. “Your hair is natural, no?”
“Naturally curly, yes.”
“Such a beautiful auburn. But you are stressed, no? I see in your skin the toll of your life.”
Now there's a comment I could do without. Let's get this over with. I stand up. “I was given this therapy as a gift. I'm not sure what it is, or ifâ”
“You vill love it.” She moves her arms around like she's doing some intense foreign dance. “It vill take zee impurities from your skin and your body, and zee therapy vill vork for days after your visit. You vill be a new voman.”
A new vermin. There ya go. The sum total of my life. I can be transformed into a new rat. She leaves me alone, I undress, climb onto the terry-cloth table that looks like some kind of torture device, and wait for an eternity until Isabella decides to return. So passive-aggressive the way they leave you waiting naked under a blanket like a slab of meat waiting for marinade.
After what feels like an eternity listening to creepy nature sounds, Isabella returns. “The temperature is okay, no?”
“It's fine, thanks.”
She starts to massage my back, then says, “Now I vill add zee marjoram oil.” As she drips it on my back, she explains further. Like I need a narrative on this. I don't want to know any more about what's happening than I want to know the contents of a McNugget. “It helps to lower the blood pressure and vorks as a laxative,” she rambles, “and to help calm the nervous system.”
Ah, well slather it on then!
She rubs that on, then I feel another dribble. “This is oil of rosemary.” I smell like a chicken. “It is used to aid the immune system and support hair growth.”
Where was this stuff after my last haircut?
My back starts to sting just a tad. “Can you wipe some of that off? It's stinging a little.”
She just keeps rubbing. Apparently, her English is not as good as her aromatherapy. “This should help,” she finally says. “This is oil of oregano.” Now I smell like an Italian chicken. And I'm getting hungry. “It promotes balance and clears the bronchial tubes.”
“You know, this is really starting to hurt. Do you have anything gentler?”
“Oil of eucalyptus. It is help to deepen concentration and to increase awareness.”
I turn around and see she's reading this garbage off the bottles.
Aromatherapy for Dummies,
it probably says. My back is now feeling quite raw, like a really bad sunburn.
“Ouch, that stings!” I hop up in my towel and my voice sounds unusually high pitched. “Get it off me!”
But there stands Isabella with even more bottles, more soothing jars of mystery potions to scald the skin from my body.
“Where's a shower?”
“A shower might cause the oils to react with your skin.” How strange. Her accent is now completely gone.
“How do I get this off me?” I say, hopping like a fish on a hook. I rub against the towel, but the more I move, the more I hurt. “Please. Please get this off me.”
“Lie down,” she says. “You must have sensitive skin. Why didn't you tell me?”
“Oh yeah, this is my fault. Because I didn't know you were going to slather me up and sauté me in pain, that's why!”
Okay, Christian reaction not good, but I hurt! This is so
not
suffering for Jesus. I look at the pots and jars of stuff on the counter, praying for something soothing-looking. I find a green cucumber medley that looks souffléish and slap it on my back. “Oh,” I gasp, feeling like I've just hit ice after being on fire. “Put that on, please!”
Isabella rubs it on and then takes a towel to my back. I don't even care that my backside is completely flailing in the wind. I pull my clothes on as soon as the piercing irritation stops. I pick up the eucalyptus oil. “Look, it says right here to be used sparingly or in a bath.”
“It's pure oil. It cleanses the system.”
“It
strips
the skin, Isabella. Like a deer tick.” Poor Isabella's face is stricken, and I realize I'll be terrible in labor. I can't even handle massage therapy. “I'm sorry. I just wasn't expecting that. I guess my skin
is
sensitive.”
“Please don't tell my boss. I need this job,” she says again, in perfect English.
I look at her and start to laugh. “Please don't tell my best friend that I couldn't relax.” I look over my shoulder at my back, and it's red like fresh-cooked lobster. “Anyway, I do feel purged. We've just eliminated the essential oil of Seth and that's a good thing.”
She looks at me like I'm crazy. But I suppose it's not every day she sees a customer do the hokeypokey during rain-forest therapy.
T
hanksgiving, and I have a million things to be thankful for: I made general counsel by the age of thirty-one. I have a best friend from heaven, a church that I love, a great family. Well, okay. A really nice family, anyway. I'm going to be an auntie. (Three times over if you count Brea's babies.) And of course, most importantly, I'm loved by Jesus. There, that's the positive view. Now I can whine.
It's another year where I'm technically alone on Thanksgiving: lost between a legitimate spot at the adult dinette and the folding table beside my ten-year-old second cousin. It's a year when the draw of a foreign culture was stronger than my boyfriend's love for me, and being dumped is fresh and rawâright before the Christmas season. Remember how in high school, guys would break up right before Valentine's Day so they didn't have to buy a gift? Well, bingo. Here I am, only worse than that.
Once, I read the story of Mumtaz, an Indian princess so loved by her emperor husband that when she died giving birth to their four-teenth child, Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal for her mausoleum. Mumtaz inspires love. I apparently inspire fear, and Seth's escape to India, Mumtaz's final resting place, is as close as I get to true devotion.
And yet there are all these men in my life that don't run. All these possibilities that aren't really possibilities. Like my boss. The way he looks at me makes me feel desirable. But then reality sets in. This is a man who hangs women on a tree like ornaments. Call me:
Christmas 2003.
And then there's Kevin, who is clearly impossible. And then there are the Reasons.
Kay is organizing Thanksgiving dinner for the entire abandoned singles' group. Their parents are somewhere across the country, and they're here. Generally, the Reasons eat out, but there's a paltry selection on Thanksgiving Day, and it gives Kay an excuse to use the fine china. So everybody's happy.
“Everything looks great, Kay.” There's a harvest-colored, plaid tablecloth with rust candles, and a huge bouquet of fall flowers adorning her antique table.
“You don't think it's too much?”
“Kay, you know everything you do is perfectly incredible, and you'll be the talk of the Reasons for a month.”
She pouts at me. “That doesn't make me feel any better. I want things to be nice, Ashley. None of these people have anywhere to be today. Our house is such a wreck right now. I hope everyone's okay with that.”
“They could all be with me at the food kitchen. They need servers, Kevin says.”
“That's not fair. You're going to your mother's for dinner later. The guys are going to watch football here. It's so anti-Silicon Valley, there might actually be conversation. I would think you'd like us getting together. You're always saying that we need to get a social life.”
I said that?
“Forgive me, I'm Scrooge today, okay?”
“Seth hasn't called?”
I toss my hand. “Oh, who cares about Seth? I'm loyal to the wrong people.” Rhett whines at my feet and I scrunch his face in my hands. “Not you, Sweetie. You are worthy of being loyal to.”
“Did you invite Kevin to your mother's?”
“I'm just going to tell him he can come if he wants once we're done.” I shrug. “I don't want him to think I'm making any kind of move. I'm very leery of his attention, especially when I met this sweet little nurse the other day, who seemed enamored of him.” I crinkle my face. “Actually, she was a complete shrew, but I imagine Kevin needs a strong woman to put up with his mother.”
“You're hopeless, Ashley. Just because a guy resembles Bill Gates, it does not make him good husband material. Sheesh, talk about judging someone by their looks. I honestly think you're prejudiced against good-looking men.”
I laugh out loud. “I'm so not prejudiced against good-looking men. But come on, a doctor and a lawyer? That's not exactly a match made in heaven.” I sigh. “Kevin's under this delusion that I'd be a fun date.”
“And you're refusing to check that out. Why?”
I shake my hands. “I'm not into that whole Mensa thing, the country club thing, the handsome-like-Hugh-Jackman thing. We're from different worlds and that never works.” I puff out my chest. “I'm going to find myself a nice, middle-class guy and work from there. Move up in baby steps, you know, maybe a little more hair than Seth. Not a full, luscious crop like Kevin's.” But thinking about his warm brown locks gets my fingers itching. I'd love to know what it felt like to run my fingers through.
No, no, no. Don't go there. So not healthy.
“Are you saying you're looking for ugly? Because I can get you ugly. I have the nicest guy that works for me, but he's hairy like a gorilla. It sticks out of the back of the golf shirts he wears every day and covers the back of his arms. You interested?”
“Okay, ick. I don't want to talk about this. I'm just not interested in Kevin that way, and you can't force that feeling if it isn't there.” Instantly I remember that stolen kiss in the parking lot. I know too well that the possibility is there, but I don't want to explore it anymore than I want to explore the Taj Mahal.
The doorbell rings, and Rhett barks.
“That's gotta be Kevin now. Stay out of it, okay? I'm begging you.”
Kay shrugs. “No skin off my nose. But you wouldn't know a good man if he brought you flowers and introduced you to fine dining. Isn't that what Kevin did?” Kay winks, takes off for the kitchen, and calls back out at me. “If you want to meet Bigfoot, let me know. I imagine he's free.”
I open the door and Kevin is standing there with huge yellow sun-flowers. I have a picture of a hairy Neanderthal engineer in my head. “Hi, Kevin,” I say through my giggles. “The flowers are gorgeous.”
“Gorgeous like you.” It sounds cheesy, but not the way he says it. Kevin is just suave, like there's a soap opera writer behind him, feeding him the words. Taking his jacket, I twist him around and study his arms, which sport the perfect amount of hair. Enough to be manly, not enough to resemble my local primate.
“Are you ready to go?”
“Yeah, let me get my coat.” I put on my new Ralph Lauren navy peacoat, and maybe I do a little spin to get into it waiting for the forthcoming compliment.
“Is that new? It's beautiful.”
I smile. “Got it on sale. Do you like it? Just my part to support the troops. Isn't it patriotic?”
He breathes deeply, then speaks. “It's a little fancy for the food kitchen. I wouldn't want you to get it dirty.”
I sigh audibly
. Duh. Like the food kitchen is fashion week in New York.
“Right. You're right.” I put the peacoat back on its hanger and get out my balled-up Lilly Pulitzer sweater. It doesn't match what I'm wearing, but what do I care? “Let's go.”
His eyebrows lift, and I think he's about to point out my lack of color coordination, but he quickly sizes up my response and says nothing. Then his beeper goes off just as he opens the door. He looks at the phone, then at me. “Can you wait just a second?”
“Go for it.” I plop back on the couch and sniff deeply to get the turkey aroma and to try to get into this day. Maybe matching clothes would help. I go to the closet and get out a red cardigan I bought at Bon-Macy's when I traveled to Seattle for work. It has seen better days, and I would have given it to Goodwill long ago if I didn't love it so much. There are those pieces that just define an era and make you feel good when you wear them.
The doorbell chimes again, and I open the door to Seth's leech, I mean, roommate, Sam. “Hi, Ashley, you staying?” He's carrying a pint of mashed potatoes from Boston Market.
Now I remember who did that the last time.