she’d get the equipment back, and whether she’d taken out something to thaw for dinner.
“What?”
“You should sell these,” Nonie repeated. “Your fitness tapes. Like Jane Fonda.”
Jo shook her head. “I’m not Jane Fonda. Or Suzanne Somers. I don’t even own a pair of leg warmers, remember?”
“There’re famous people who make fitness tapes,” Missy said. “But aren’t there also regular people who got famous because they did fitness tapes? We can go to Blockbuster tonight and check out the competition.”
“Do it,” said Nonie, waving as she got into her car.
“Do you really think it could work?” Jo asked as she and her daughter got into their car.
Missy’s dark-brown ponytail brushed her shoulder as she turned her head and slowly backed out of the parking space. “Dad’s always saying, you just need one thing—a product, or a business, or a service, or a big idea—and you just keep looking until you find it. What if this is your one thing?” Jo’s heart twisted as she listened to Missy parroting her father’s advice, hearing the love and admiration in Missy’s voice. She hoped the girls had absorbed Dave’s ambition and not what she had come to see, over the years, as his allergy to hard work, his willingness to take shortcuts or tell lies in search of the big score.
“We can take a look,” Jo said.
Melissa gave her a smile, a warmer, less toothy version of her father’s glittering grin. “We’ll get you some leg warmers, and you’ll be all set.” She pushed a button on the car’s tape player, and the music of Duran Duran filled the car. “And a title. You need a good title.” Jo had thought of that already. On Monday morning, she affixed a piece of masking tape to the video cassette’s side and, using one of Lila’s markers (left uncapped and discarded on the kitchen table), she wrote JUMPING FOR JO. “I like it,” said Melissa. At Missy’s insistence, Jo had watched Jane Fonda’s Lean Routine and something called Buns of Steel. Alone in the family room, Jo had seen the shiny leggings and high-cut leotards, the headbands and the matching leg warmers, the heavy makeup and the sprayed and feathered hair. Everyone in the videos smiled, all the time, even in the midst of the most grueling series of glute bridges and walking lunges, and no one ever seemed to sweat. The videos were part workout instruction, part performance, and while Jo knew that she could handle the first part, the second part was beyond her.
But a part of her wanted to try. Maybe Bethie’s success was a once-in-a-lifetime miracle, something that wouldn’t happen again in the same decade, much less in the same family, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t a few crumbs left over for Jo.
Nonie came back from Nantucket in a brand-new track suit (lemon yellow and neon green), glowing and exultant. “I did that tape every morning, and guess what else? My sisters-in-law both want copies!” She paused. “Is it sisters-in-law or sister-in laws? I never know. Anyway, they love you.” Nonie was beaming. “I think you should sell ’em.”
“Told you,” Missy called from the kitchen. Jo asked, “You really think that people would pay?”
“I know they would.” Nonie adjusted her braided green-and-yellow headband. “You know what my sisters-in-law said? They liked that you were a real person. You weren’t some fakey-fake actress with breast implants. You’re just a regular gal.”
Just a regular gal, Jo thought, and smiled, thinking, If you only knew. That night, Missy drove her to the Video Barn, where a sullen, pimply teenage boy ran off twenty copies for a dollar apiece. At the end of the Friday fitness trail class, Jo stood on top of one of the tree stumps they used for step-ups and hops and, with her cheeks burning, she announced that she had videos for sale, for five dollars apiece. “In case anyone’s going on vacation, or just wants to be able to do the workout at home.” She finished her pitch and braced herself for shuffling feet, averted eyes, and embarrassed silence. Ruthann Bremmer spoke up first. “Ooh, I want one.” Connie McSorley, of poison-ivy fame, said, “Me, too,” and Julie Carden bought one for herself and one for her sister in Massachusetts. In ten minutes’ time, Jo had a hundred dollars in her pocket and no tapes left in the box.
“Go back to the Video Barn and have them run off a hundred copies,” Nonie instructed. “And tell pizza-face you want