When the women were settled, there was a mutual agreement that Elise should go first and she had them laughing about walking in front of Alejandro in her underwear.
Her story took hours. The best part was at the end, when Elise finally stood up to her mother. The two mothers sat on a couch, the fathers in chairs, and Elise stood in front of them. Kent was beside his wife. For the first time, he was on Elise’s side. Come what may, he’d decided to take a stand. “When you two were in college,” Elise said, “you concocted a plan that you’d marry men who were either rich or aristocratic, and you did so. Later, you decided that your kids would marry each other.” She used her height to loom over the two women. “Did you even once think about what Kent and I wanted?”
“You adored Kent,” Elise’s mother said.
“Probably because that’s the only thing I ever did that got approval from you.”
“We don’t have to listen to this,” Kent’s mother said, but he clamped a hand on her shoulder and made her sit there.
Since Elise’s father had spent three days in jail and was now facing possible prosecution for an attempted kidnapping, his attitude had changed. He sat quietly and listened.
Elise went on with her tirade. She told all four of the parents that they had to give up their snobbish racism or they were going to lose their only children.
She didn’t dare look at Kent when she said that because he was still terrified of losing his job. He wanted it all, the money and Carmen. As for Elise, she was so happy with her new life she could walk away from them and their money—and they knew that.
In the end, the parents conceded. Carmen and Kent were going to move into the house on the property of the parents and Kent was allowed to keep his job. But then, unlike his father, he was an asset to the business.
The parents offered to buy Elise and Alejandro a big house nearby, but they declined.
She knew that taking it would put them under obligation to her parents. And besides, she knew them. Her mother would show up every day with “suggestions” about how Elise should live her life.
After a lot of talk, she and Alejandro, Diego and his wife and children, and three of their employees, decided they were going to move to Fort Lauderdale so they’d have year-round work.
When Elise finished telling her story, she turned to Kathy. “Your turn.”
They opened a bottle of wine—club soda for pregnant Elise—and went into Olivia’s pretty living room. They snuggled up on the well-worn, comfortable chairs and couch and waited for Kathy to begin.
*
Kathy took a sip of her wine. As she was curled up in a chair, she was glad that she looked the same as she did before she went back in time. But inside she was very different. “As I said, I at last figured out that body type doesn’t matter as much as I thought it did. With the way the media bombards us with skinny, skinny, skinny, it’s all I could think about. Diet books, diet pills, and sneers. Lots and lots of sneers. I seemed to have been considered evil for not being thin.”
She grimaced. “Dr. Oz had a show where some big women came onto the stage and the audience was told that no applause was allowed. And why? The only ‘sin’ the women had committed was eating an extra helping of barbecue. I’ve seen child molesters on TV talk shows who were applauded because they said they were going to do better. But overweight women were given less courtesy and kindness than criminals.”
Kathy took a deep drink of her wine. “You know that commercial for toothpaste where the men ignore the skinny girl and lust for the one who has a curvy body—and white teeth?”
“I love that ad,” Elise said.
“That was mine. The guys in the office booed it, but women across the globe loved it.”
“So tell us what happened,” Olivia said. “How did you get your ads on TV and billboards?”
“And in print.” Kathy’s smile of pride told a lot. She put down her glass. “I got angry. I didn’t know so much of my father was in me. But then, I was on a very limited time budget and I knew what awaited me if I didn’t change things. Besides, Dad was yelling at the man I wanted.”
“This is Andy?” Olivia asked. “The one you did not end up with?”
Kathy nodded. “When I woke up, I was sitting in Ray’s office. It took me a while to figure out where I was and when. I looked at Ray’s calendar and saw that he was in Chicago—and it was before we were married. It took me quite a while to adjust. First of all, there was my body. It was different.”
Olivia spoke up. “If you want different, you should go from your sixties to your early twenties. Now that’s a shock!”
Kathy smiled. “I had forgotten that Ray’s obsession with having a body like some California beach boy had soaked into me. When I was growing up, Dad and his energy weren’t around, so it was just Mom and me and we were readers. We liked quiet pleasures. But then I married Ray. He worked out and he got me to do it too.”
“Alejandro is more of a reader, but his sister and I like to—” She broke off as they were staring at her.
“This is the Carmen who made your life so miserable?” Kathy asked.
“This time around she didn’t steal my husband and besides, she’s not bad at helping to run the business. This isn’t about me.” She looked at Kathy. “Go on with the story.”
“So anyway,” Kathy said, “I was sitting at Ray’s desk and thinking how soft I was and that I needed to go to a gym when I noticed a pile of folders on the bookcase. I was pretty disoriented and not sure what to do. I picked up the folders and started looking through them. They were Ray’s ideas for future ad campaigns.”
“And you knew which ones would work,” Olivia said.
“I did. At first it was just a joke. I kept saying, ‘Yes, yes, no, no,’ that sort of thing. It was fascinating knowing the future and which ideas the clients were going to like. And I knew how the client would change them. Ray had put a star by one of the ideas, but I knew that the client was going to hate that one, but he’d love the one in the corner that Ray had drawn a line through.”
“What did you do?” Olivia asked.
“Actually, I think I was afraid to go outside and face everyone. It’s a lot of responsibility to think that in just three weeks you have to do something so fabulous that you change your entire life.”
“I agree,” Olivia said. “I tried to save the entire town—and I had to work to keep myself from writing President Nixon and warning him that...” She waved her hand. It was all too much to tell.
“I had no problems at all,” Elise said. “Three weeks was plenty of time to escape my megalomaniac parents, my greedy fiancé, and, oh yeah, find a career. And while I was at it, I was supposed to make the man I adored, but who didn’t remember our time together, fall in love with me.”
“But you did it,” Olivia said.
Such a look of pride came onto Elise’s pretty face that the room seemed to grow brighter. “I did, didn’t I?” she said softly. She looked back at Kathy.
“Ray’s office was quiet and since no one paid much attention to me, I knew I wouldn’t be bothered. I pulled some paper out of the printer tray and began making sketches of how I knew the ads would be. There were two that had flopped, and afterward we knew why, so I fixed those.”
She smiled in memory. “It was wonderful. When Ray’s secretary came in, I had papers everywhere.”
“Who was his secretary?” Elise asked.
“Back then, he still had Martha. I knew she wanted to retire, but Ray wouldn’t let her. He kept giving her raises and begging her to stay. I asked her to find out where Rita Morales was and to ask her to come in for a job interview as her replacement. She was so pleased I thought she was going to cry.”
Olivia laughed. “Great idea! So what about Cal?”