“Just for a couple of nights, Erica. Try it. What have you got to lose?” he insisted.
What did I have to lose? My will to live? It was a revolting piece of work and it gave me gag reflex, only succeeding in making my mouth hurt along with the rest of my teeth. Can you imagine me with one of these things in my mouth and having one of my nocturnal apnea attacks? Images of me with my eyes bulging out of my head while the air that couldn’t get past my nostrils detoured in a panic to my mouth, only to find that tunnel blocked by a big fat piece of rubber? I was faced with two choices: either dying of suffocation or never having sex again.
“All right, already. Give me the damn duckie,” I said with a sigh.
“That’s a girl,” he smiled. Operation Recuperation Husband had begun.
* * *
Three whole frustrated and horny weeks later, I bravely ditched my favorite cow pajamas and my new bite for one evening and pulled on a pretty nightgown with a lacy bodice. It was do or die, meaning that if he didn’t do me tonight I’d kill him. He had to make a damn effort—it couldn’t always be me. I needed some cooperation. And so came Phase Two of my strategy: Seduction.
I crawled over to his side, pressed up against his back and whispered, “Hello…” like we used to in the days of old.
Nothing. I caressed his shoulders, just the way he liked it. Still nothing from the other side. “Ira…?”
He sighed, more like a groan, and turned over to face me and involuntarily, I stiffened. Not because the torpedo (him) and the rabbit (me) would make yet another baby (I was on the pill), but because we’d lost our intimacy, and were now practically strangers.
But there we were, Ira’s hand going south and me suddenly changing my mind, silently willing him to stop. I heard him pant, huff in frustration, and finally roll away.
I lay there, stunned, and then turned on the light. He groaned in annoyance.
“What? What’s wrong?” I didn’t smell, did I? I’d showered, and B.O. was one of the few problems that I didn’t suffer from.
“It’s so awkward.”
He felt it, too, then. Maybe now he’d agree to see a marriage counselor. Long moments of equally awkward silence followed, and I waited with bated breath.
“I can’t do it,” he finally said. “I’ve tried, but you’re way too big, and I’m too tired to make the effort.”
“Come again?” I said, no pun intended, my eyes searching for him in the low light. I could see the silhouette of his head, and I was happy I couldn’t see his face.
He sighed and was silent before he answered me. “All these years I’ve been on your case about losing weight. And you never listened, never cared. And now you’ve blown to a size twenty... and it’s just too much.”
I sat in stunned silence.
“Look,” he said apologetically, “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings but you have to face the facts here. A normal woman is a size ten.”
Had he done a study project on it? What did he consider normal? And was this what he’d been thinking all these years during which I gave birth to and nurtured his children and him—that I wasn’t the size of a normal woman? And that loving the woman who had been by his side all these years required an effort?
I stared at him, my heart falling, flailing, to the deepest part of me somewhere inside. “You won’t have sex with me because I’m big?” I said, unable to believe it. “Don’t you think that’s being a little superficial?”
He shrugged, his eyes downcast. “Maybe. But I can’t keep lying to you. Your body’s putting me off. I’ve begged you to lose weight. I’ve tried giving you all sorts of signs to make you understand.”
I snorted, too hurt to show it. “You mean being an asshole was a sign?”
“There’s no reason to be offensive now, Erica.”
“Oh, because you are paying me a compliment? You think living with you and all your hang-ups is easy?”
He shrugged, unable, or unwilling, to elaborate.
“Do you think it’s normal to act like this?” I demanded. “Do you think every man in the world whose wife is a bit big acts like you do? I’ve seen other men adore their big wives.”
He sighed. “Contrary to what big women think, men don’t like all that flab.”
I blinked back the tears and his face softened. “Look, I’m sorry, but for years your mother and I have been asking you to do something about your weight.”
Which wasn’t true. They’d been bashing me about it, pushing all sorts of surgery at me. Stomach bypasses. Restrictive rings—the works. At home I had a whole library of brochures and printouts courtesy of the two of them.
“I don’t want to undergo surgery, if that’s what you’re so subtly hinting at yet again,” I snapped.
He groaned. “You know what, it’s late; I have to get up early tomorrow.”
“You can’t just drop this bomb on me and then turn over and go to sleep. What kind of a monster are you?”
“A tired, exhausted and fed up one,” he sentenced, scooping up his pillows (all four of them) and leaving our bedroom with a slam of the door.
I sat in bed with my hands over my mouth, staring at my flannel pajamas swinging from the hook on the door. They seemed to say, See, stupid? You should have stuck with us and saved yourself the embarrassment.
I’d tried to skirt around the various issues of my teeth-grinding, talking in my sleep, hoping it was just a phase—but nothing. That was it. He’d spelled it out to me, loud and clear. Lose weight. This was his ultimate ultimatum.
When a man’s no longer interested in what’s under your dress, there is no amount of cooking, ironing or candlelit dinners that will save the day. Once he’s off you (literally, too), he’s off you for good. Never mind all the efforts you’ve made to try to see him as George Clooney. Never mind all the sacrifices you’ve made period. So it boiled down to lose weight—or lose him? I honestly hadn’t seen it coming and now I wasn’t quite sure how traumatizing the latter result would be, to be honest.
Outside, the iris bulbs I’d planted were somewhere deep in the ground, under three inches of the first snow, enveloped in the dark, cold earth, practically dead until the first warmth caressed them back to life. In spring they’d sprout and bloom, as beautiful as ever, right on cue. But it was going to be a long winter.
My husband doesn’t want to make love to me anymore.
I leaned out the window, taking in the white, silent world that was my dormant garden, and remembered one night on a Sicilian beach where, as a child, I’d had to pick my way through campfires and couples making out. Even my cousins who’d brought me along had disappeared. That sense of loneliness had overwhelmed me then and now, instead of snow-filled clouds, I saw starry Sicilian skies and smelled the smoke from the campfires from so many years ago.
How had Ira and I changed so much? There were so many hidden feelings between us, and the good ones were rapidly fading, like stars at dawn.
Maybe being thinner would make a difference between us? I had tried everything else and nothing had worked. If I lost weight it would improve my life on all levels and it would bring me back to life. But would it bring the old Ira back into my bed? Just how badly did I want him back there? Surely I’d forget him if I had to? Just like my mattress that didn’t have foam-memory technology, meaning it was as if Ira had never been in my bed at all, could I, too, erase him from my memory, as if he’d never existed? Could I do it if necessary?
Chapter 3:
Stage Four?
“Dump him!” my best friend Paul exclaimed as we lugged our delicatessen food home. Freshly baked ciabatta with oregano, stuffed peppers, baked potatoes with rosemary, veal involtini simmered in white Inzolia wine and my favorite, tiramisù. Take that to the bank, Ira.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said as I hefted the bags and inhaled
the marvelous fragrances, already envisaging a revenge feast. Well, maybe a goodbye-to-food dinner, kind of like my own version of The Last Supper or something.
“Too tired to make the effort. Blown to a size twenty. As if he was Brad friggin’ Pitt!” Paul scoffed. “I can’t believe it. What am I saying? Of course I believe it. That little shit is capable of anything.”
Every week the same story—Paul telling me to dump my husband and me biding my time, waiting for a miracle to happen. Only now I knew it wasn’t just his hectic work life sapping the strength out of him that made him always cranky. It was my fat ass.
He no longer saw me as he used to and it was true I’d gone a long way down from the young, preppy, free-spirited and sexy girl I used to be. At least I had been before the kids. Ira couldn’t understand why I’d never lost the baby weight. Fact was it wasn’t just the baby weight. It was the doughnut weight, the apple pie weight, the tiramisù. It had nothing to do with the baby fat.
Yes, I’d packed it back on after Warren and Maddy were born, but I was simply returning to my old (big) self that Ira hadn’t seen before because he’d met me during my two-year stint of slimness when I had been a size fourteen. And even then he’d had something to say about it. He’d told me I was pretty, but that I’d needed to lose just a tiny bit of weight.
Lose weight? What a joke. Ira didn’t understand me. I was born hungry and nothing could fill me. I liked to blame my mother for never loving me the way she loved Judy and Vince, my siblings. I liked to blame my love for cooking, or Le Tre Donne, my aunts’ Italian restaurant. Or even the desserts section at my local supermarket. But in truth, eating made me happy. It comforted me and made me feel like everything was all right. And up until then I hadn’t given a damn about my weight. Inside I was still me. And I still managed to dress nicely thanks to the Plus Size sections in Macy’s.
But it was soon becoming obvious to me, once my pink shades had dropped off my nose, that the weight was starting to really weigh me down. I was a busy working mom who could never go fast enough, with never a moment to spare, always running late, always dropping things on the way to the car and wheezing when I bent to pick them up. Of course, if I lost some weight I could actually keep up with the kids and face anything they threw my way.
Who knows, maybe I was hoping I’d lose weight out of sheer force of concentration and become this irresistible woman that Ira couldn’t help but make love to. Because dieting was hard. I was always too hungry and there was always amazing food around me. If I didn’t have time to bake it or go back to Little Italy, there was always the shop around the corner.
“I’d say you’re at Stage Four,” Paul diagnosed, which, according to his scale of one to five in troubled relationships, was just before divorce.
“Nonsense; we’re just in a rut.”
“And you’re in denial.”
“Is it really because I’m big?” I asked. Ira had spelled it out to me but it still hurt to believe.
He shot me a skeptical glance. “Sunshine, only a real man deserves a real woman. That’s my official version. My real opinion is Ira’s always been a shit.”
“That’s not true,” I countered. When we’d met, Ira was different. He was sexy, alluring, with so many goals in life. “He doesn’t even want to go to Tuscany anymore.”
Paul had been helping me trawl for farmhouses through an Italian connection of his in Siena, but so far nothing was affordable. He’d suggested settling for a normal house in the country, but I’d put my foot down. No more settling for me. I wanted the real deal.
“Doesn’t want to go to Tuscany?” Paul echoed. “The guy is beyond helpless. What are you waiting for to split the scene?”
I stopped to admire the doughnuts in the bakery window. Paul tugged on my arm. “Sunshine, no.”
I cast a longing look at him, my best friend, the one person I could chew the breeze and be myself with, something we rarely did around anyone else.
“Just one,” I pleaded. It had been ages. Well, two days, really. Oh, the chocolate glaze! “What’s one measly doughnut? Besides—whose side are you on? Why can’t I be big and be loved all the same? You love me.”
“Sunshine,” Paul said. “I love you, but I’m never gonna have sex with you. You know I don’t do women.”
“If you weren’t gay, would you? Do me?”
Paul chuckled. “And you need to ask? Of course I would.”
“Even though I’m big?” I insisted.
“Of course! You’re beautiful—like the Renaissance women, soft and squeezable. Who wouldn’t want you?”
“Then don’t give me a hard time if I want a doughnut.”
Paul looked at me, his eyes shining with what I knew was compassion, and sighed. “All right, but only if you promise to leave him.”
“Paul! All I want is a damn doughnut.”
“And all I want is for you to be happy. Erica, you can’t go on like this. The kids can’t go on like this. You need to send him to hell once and for all.”
As if it was easy. I remember the old Ira and our evenings together, having a quiet dinner and a chat on the sofa. More often than not we’d take it from the sofa to the bedroom. Now there was nothing much left to take anywhere. The person I’d become, although I kept a roof over his head and food in his belly, had disappointed him.
I hoped he was just going through a phase. Because I couldn’t stand it. And if I couldn’t stand by my man in his time of need, then we were toast. I’d promised to love and cherish him. For the sake of our marriage. For the sake of our children. I could deal with it. If I ran a leviathan like The Farthington, I should be able to do everything, including saving my marriage. Provided I still wanted to.
Sometimes I wished I could just... wiggle my nose and make him disappear. Or at least make him change. But that was not happening. He’d spoken his mind. The die had been cast. It was lose weight or lose him, live in Boston or go to Tuscany on my own. But I was no longer sure I wanted to play by his rules anymore.
“So, no doughnuts—are you saying Ira was right?” I challenged Paul.
Paul rolled his dark eyes. “It’s not your looks or your sex appeal I’m worried about. It’s your health.”
“I’m perfectly fine,” I assured him.
“You are now. But what about when you get older? A fit body is a successful body. And it houses a happy mind.”
A fit body houses a happy mind. Could he be right? Would I find happiness on the lower end of the bathroom scale? Would being lighter make me not only feel better, but more satisfied about my life? Technically, yes. I’d look better and feel better. Was it really down to being thin again? Yes—I remembered the looks I got when I was thin and it felt great.
I remembered what it had been like, being slim. It had empowered me. There was no cartwheel I couldn’t (in my younger years—I haven’t tried lately) accomplish, no race I couldn’t win. I would wake up in the mornings thinking, ‘Wow, not only do I not feel like shit anymore; I actually feel good!’ No headaches, no stomachaches, no backaches that would keep me twisting and turning in bed (“Thrashing like a pig on a spit”), according to Ira. I’d have to literally grip the bars of our wrought-iron bed to be able to turn over, my back was so bad.
“You’re starting to sound like my mother,” I huffed. “How did we get from talking about your latest squeeze to me?”
Paul shrugged. “Because for the last few years you’ve been miserable—and Carl’s boring the crap out of me. I’m thinking of a way to get rid of him. Speaking of which, tell me again how you killed Ira last night,” he giggled, suddenly more flippant, and I grinned despite myself. It was our little secret, a harmless game, really, but a real sanity-saver.
They weren’t dreams, but open-eyed fantasies of getting rid of my husband once and forever in the funniest ways, like maybe shackling and squeezing him,
big mouth and all, into a Tupperware box, lid on tight, his face and body assuming the shape of the container, sometimes round, sometimes square—you know, like in cartoons; his big eyes blinking, begging—no, demanding—in a muffled voice that I should let him out.
I forgot all about the chocolate doughnut as the pleasant images caressed my mind, and I brightened up and stifled a giggle. “I hung him upside down to dry in the sun for days—like my Nonna Silvia’s ham joints,” I answered. “And when his carcass was ready, I made some real groovy leather bags.”
Paul’s eyes flashed. “That’s still too light a treatment for Ira.”
I don’t need to tell you that Ira and Paul weren’t bosom buddies. My husband was not tolerant of anyone different from himself. It was a wonder he married me, an Italian Catholic, when his family had always hoped that one day he would meet a nice thin Jewish girl.
Paul always had something to say, and Ira tolerated him politely enough when he was around, but in the evening he’d sniff the air and sigh, “I can smell your gay friend’s cheap perfume.”
Not even the fact that Paul was a respected freelance costume designer who travelled the world for his living (and whose butt had never seen a desk chair) could sway Ira.
“Sunshine,” Paul said, cupping my clenched jaw with his free hand and bringing me back to reality as we reached my front door without my realizing, “instead of having these visions of murder, why don’t you just leave him already?”
Why, he kept asking. For two excellent reasons. One was twelve years old and the other eight.
“I can’t. He’s my husband.”
“What, you don’t think you could live without him? Please tell me that not even you are that masochistic?” Paul begged.
Ira’s revelation of his lack of desire for me certainly put things into perspective. I was living with a man who didn’t find me attractive. How far were we from the end? Were we really at Stage Four?
* * *
The Husband Diet (A Romantic Comedy) Page 3