After dinner, Paul sat down with Maddy (did I mention I loved him and would marry him in a heartbeat?) and did their usual thing: drawing clothes for her paper dolls. At eight years old, she was becoming alarmingly similar to my mother, who was a fashion victim and the emptiest head on the planet if you didn’t count Maddy’s paper dolls.
She was so confident, so pretty. Please, God. Make her as intelligent and grounded as she is pretty, and not an airhead like Marcy or my sister Judy. Make her be a good wife and mother if that is what she wants, and spend time with them. Make her be successful and happy with anything she wants to do.
And, please, let Warren be a patient man, and be kind to his children and wife, even if she won’t be a raging beauty. Let him understand the beauty inside people.
I sat on a kitchen stool with a glass of wine, observing my mini, three-dollar-each succulent cacti plants, perfectly aligned like little soldiers on the kitchen window sill, their thorns sticking out proudly as if to say, “Look at us—we don’t need Erica’s TLC! We can survive without water!” And, boy, could they. I’d forget to water them for weeks, and they’d be there for me, resistant, alive and beautiful, with even little purple or pink flowers sticking out from the top, no matter how much I neglected them. I wished my poor kids knew the same survival techniques, but I guess I was asking too much. Hell, I wish I knew them. Look at me! I can survive without sex with my husband! What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!
Maybe one day I’d have the time to plant a beautiful rosebush right by the front door, so every time I came home I’d be greeted by beauty. Roses, the symbol of love. I sighed. Life wasn’t perfect, and if I had no sex life, there were also other things I still had to master, like, for instance, being a housewife. I was trying with all my heart. In any case, I always had Plan B—envisioning the day my fantasies of killing my husband would become reality. God, sometimes life was a pain in the ass.
Chapter 4:
Mother Marcy?
Marcy threw her hands up in the air. “Ira told me you’re still refusing surgery. Really, Erica, it’s the least you could do to save your marriage.”
I glared at my mother sitting in her size four YSL number opposite me at lunch at The Farthington Hotel, where I worked. She never came to see me, so I’d figured it must be something important; i.e. her next shopping spree in Europe.
Marcy had never really been a hands-on mother, and in particular with me. Sometimes it seemed she simply tolerated my existence, from my birth all the way up until... well, now. But at the same time she doted upon her only son, Vince, and shared a fashion fever with my sister Judy, with whom she still can be seen today storming the designer shops in the city center.
Marcy doesn’t want to be called Mom by any of us and her seven grandchildren have to call her Marcy as well. She can’t stand the sight of elderly people because she’s terrified of aging and has never said anything nice about the way I looked (although I couldn’t blame her most of the time) and my lifestyle choices.
At least I got out of bed every morning and earned myself a living, as opposed to Marcy, who had my dad to keep her in sexy negligees and shiny kimonos until noon at fifty-nine (I’m not kidding you) years of age, and designer numbers size four (Four? Four? How the hell did she give birth to three kids and stay a size four? She didn’t exercise, she smoked and drank like a stevedore.) And here I was; a glorious size twenty and dodging the umpteenth diet.
If it hadn’t been for my Nonna Silvia and my mom’s three sisters, Zia Maria, Zia Martina and Zia Monica, we’d have certainly died—my siblings Judy and Vince of malnutrition, and me of obesity (I was the only one smart enough to have a stash of junk food under my bed). And here she was talking down to me as usual, under the pretense of exasperated, motherly love.
“What will it take for you to understand that you can’t keep a man, looking like you do?”
I sighed. Yes, we all knew I was big, thank you very much. But I’d tried to lose weight. God knew I’d tried and tried and tried. And failed and failed and failed. I couldn’t seem to stay disciplined. Wasn’t I making enough sacrifices in my life as it was? What was wrong with indulging in a little cream puff at the end of a long hard day during which I’d done the manager and the homemaker shifts, saving the hotel from yet another disaster and keeping the kids from climbing the walls?
Okay, so sweets were killing me instead of helping me improve the quality of my life. Maybe if I renounced one every now and then...? No. I had to renounce them entirely. For my health. It was time to admit defeat. Even I could see that. But, hell, was it too much, expecting my husband to still love me in the process?
It wasn’t as if he was George Clooney. He was now almost scrawny, balding and bad-tempered—nothing like the guy I’d fallen in love with. Back then he was good-looking, charming, ambitious and sexy. And so was I. We’d been, I used to think, a perfect fit. But the years had not been kind to us—neither physically nor emotionally.
“Don’t you think it’s time, Erica?” Marcy persisted.
“Time for what?” I replied as I swallowed a generous forkful of shrimp salad. I loved the pink sauce.
She took a sip of her martini and rolled her eyes. “To lose weight, of course. Think of how your love life would improve—think of the sex.”
“Ewh, I can’t believe I’m even having this conversation with you,” I said, raising my evil eyebrow at her. She shrugged her slim, silk-covered shoulders, so glamorous she’d put any Hollywood star to shame.
“I’m just saying. Your whole life would improve if you lost weight. So please at least consider the option of surgery. You’d see the results in a matter of months. And think of the clothes.”
I involuntarily squirmed. There it was—clothes. Her dream; my nightmare since childhood. Marcy dragging me to Macy’s was still one of my most traumatizing early-life experiences. Nothing pleased her. When I tried something on, she’d tut and shake her head, asking the salesladies, in a very loud voice, if there was a larger size. And when they’d cough and whisper that there wasn’t, she’d check the seams to see if the outfit could be widened (by my Grandmother Silvia or Aunt Martina of course; Marcy couldn’t sew a stitch to save herself and still can’t today).
Then, totally mortified, I’d look at the beloved item and mumble, “You know, I really don’t like it anyway.” At which point she’d open her mouth to say something but think better of it.
Sometimes there would be a party and I’d have to get a fancy outfit, usually a dress. My after-school look was baggy jeans and a T-shirt, but I wasn’t blind. I saw the nice accessories and stuff, and my arty soul was already longingly matching this with that item as I walked past the racks, pretending not to care my size was, for a kid my age, unheard of, nor that I would forever be a Fashion Pariah.
So glitzy Marcy would sigh. “Go into the changing room, get undressed and I’ll bring you whatever I can find.” Then she’d turn to the sales reps. “Ladies, I’ll need all the help I can get from you today.”
Do you know how many times I stood there behind Macy’s dressing-room drapes, practically naked, at Marcy’s mercy, with that offending neon light and those deforming circus mirrors pointing at my butt, waiting for her to find a piece of cloth that could actually span the width of my body?
Now keep in mind that it’s my mom we’re talking about and not, say, yours, who very probably was thrilled to see you in a nice dress, looking all pretty and waiting for your prom date. (My boyfriend, Peter DeVita, the only one I’d ever had up until then, moved away just before my prom.)
And every season the same story. I was sick of it. As much as I liked fashionable clothes and stuff, I didn’t want them if they were going to cost me so much pain and humiliation. So in the years that followed, I bought an incredible amount of shoes and bags, all cool and fashionable.
I created my ‘wear it with your baggy jeans’ look. It
didn’t catch on at school, though. Could you imagine me in an enormous lilac, off-the-shoulder dress that ‘tapered’ down the hips? No, I didn’t think so either, unless you figured me as one of the dancing hippos in Fantasia.
Why was it so difficult for Marcy to understand that not every woman could dress and look like a model? That for some people it was difficult to even look decent? She’d been born gorgeous. I hadn’t. Why couldn’t she just chill out and concentrate on my good qualities, like my excellent communication and organizational skills, the fact that I was a great cook, a great manager and a very hands-on mom? All qualities she’d never had.
And now, at almost thirty-five, I felt like the unhappy high-school girl again. Was this my life, running around in ever-decreasing, sad cycles? Was there to be no pleasure whatsoever in my life? Never again?
I turned in my seat to call my head waiter. “Mitch, can you have someone bring me the dessert cart, please?”
“Of course, Mrs. Lowenstein.”
Marcy’s mouth fell open. “Dessert? Aren’t you full enough?”
I looked at her, all dolled up and daintily wiping her mouth. No. I would never be full, because the emptiness inside me went down miles deep. Nothing could sate my hunger for love, my need to feel accepted even if I didn’t look like Judy or didn’t, not even at ten years of age, fit into Marcy’s clothes. I know because I tried playing dress-up in her closet once and went back to my room heartbroken. Not even her shoes fit me.
As she graciously declined the cannoli, the sacher torte and even the almond parfait, I motioned to Mitch for a slice of my one and only weakness (well, not quite), the tiramisù. Spoonful after spoonful I could already feel the joy and satisfaction spreading inside me, dissolving Ira’s unkind words and the life we were leading.
Marcy leaned in. “I’m talking life-changing surgery to you and you eat life-threatening foods?” she hissed. “Erica, what is the matter with you—have you got a death wish?”
And then it struck me that if Marcy hadn’t always been so judgmental, making me feel inadequate and blubbery, I might have liked myself a little more, for both Ira and myself, just enough to not feel ugly, or worse, dull. And then I wouldn’t have felt so empty all the time, and wouldn’t need to comfort eat to compensate the pain inside me. If I’d had my mother’s life and looks, I’d have been happy.
And most of all, if I could better my life and move to Tuscany (where I’d chase my laughing children across the golden fields), I wouldn’t have to sit here and listen to this.
But here I was for now—an overweight, under-loved struggling housewife, ever trying to finish tasks and keeping on top of it all. Ever trying to lose weight with three-week diets (I couldn’t manage for longer) that only made me fatter than before I’d started.
As I sat there and silently ate my tiramisù under Marcy’s resigned eyes, I realized that if it hadn’t been for Warren’s birth, Ira wouldn’t have proposed to me in that snowy, slippery backyard thirteen years ago.
And now with one unkind word from him, I’d been catapulted back to my teen-age years—once again conscious of my heavy butt and dark, heavy clothes. Okay. I was obese. Got it. Now what was I going to do with that information? What was I going to do with all the emotions bubbling and festering, like a suppurating, infected wound, inside me—the fear of not succeeding in a diet, the anxiety, the humiliation of remaining me when everyone else expected me to look like a model?
And now, after two kids (it is nice to blame them, isn’t it?), years of not being able to get to the gym, and eating up everything from the kids’ plates as well as mine, here I was, a product of my own unhappy choices. You can’t imagine what a big part frustration played. You drink a glass of water and you instantly start bloating, bloating, bloating until you start to leaven like bread, and one horrible morning you look down and can’t see your feet anymore. And when you search your once pretty face in the mirror you see two, or at least one the size of two.
I desperately looked into myself as I swallowed my dessert and my tears so Marcy wouldn’t see, and delved for the me I once met briefly fifty kilos ago, the one who’d lured Josh Irons onto a moonlit
English beach and driven all those Brit boys mad. The one who, albeit only for a few years—the best of my whole life—fit into the coolest clothes. The one with the awesome butt. And the confidence of a lioness.
Now I was a big fat clawless cat, meekly wandering through the jungle, trying to get to the other side unscathed, all the while graceful antelope, sleek wolves, jackals and hyenas passed me and turned in scorn. I was an unwanted stray in the jungle of my own life.
And Ira wasn’t having sex with me until I fit onto his lap without the two of us bowling over. How could the world want you if your own husband didn’t accept you? How could your man love you if you recoiled in horror at the sight of yourself?
Plus, lately I was hungrier than ever because Ira would watch me like a hawk at dinner, scowling if I ever went for a second piece of bread or put too much on my plate. But he heaped his up to the ceiling, because he was skinny. The truth was he had skinny arms, legs and bony (how come I’d never noticed that before?) shoulders, and was actually much shorter than I thought.
And so, because I had this immense emptiness to fill, when the coast was clear I would sneak a snack between doing the dishes and the laundry, gobbling it down in one quick gulp, lest he figured me out. Which of course he almost always did. His radar would bleep and he’d sneak up behind me and tap me on my shoulder, growling his usual, ‘Christ, you’re not eating again, are you?’ Ever tried swallowing when someone’s just scared the crap out of you?
For a family of no specific religion, Christ had made many an appearance in our house, and in every room, too. In the bathroom: “Jesus Christ, Erica, why don’t you step onto that scale and face reality?” In the living room: ”Jesus Christ, Erica, why don’t you move over? You’re taking up the whole sofa!” And finally in the bedroom: ”Jesus Christ, you’re snoring again!”
At the beginning of my diets I was always a loose twenty, meaning my jeans would fit comfortably. After a stint of dieting, I’d lose some, even to the point that I needed a belt, and then, boom—I shot right back up and over size twenty, which meant my clothes became so tight they cut into my waist and stretched across my boobs, buttons threatening to pop, leaving unsightly gaps. “Are you wearing a nude-colored bra again?” Marcy would say. ”Why are you trying your best to look like Mrs. Doubtfire?”
My weight kept me in constant despair.
“What about the sheer pleasure of being beautiful? It’s important to a woman but you don’t understand because—” Marcy closed her mouth and took another swig of her martini.
I looked at her expectantly. “What? Because I’ve never been beautiful?”
And down she went with the I never said thats and Why do you have to put words in my mouths?
All my life I’d had to listen to Marcy praising Judy’s mermaid figure and how all the boys went gaga over her and how proud she was about her. Never mind that Judy went through guys like an Eskimo through snow and that she would’ve been a high school dropout if I hadn’t helped her through that year she came home pregnant. Never mind that prior to that, Judy had been coming and going every evening, and that for her every night was date night. I couldn’t even get a friend to come over on a Friday night because they were all busy out with boys as if the end of the world was near and they didn’t want to die virgins.
Was this what it had boiled down to? Your own family not accepting you because of the way you looked? Was losing weight really all it would take to make my own mother—and husband—love me?
Chapter 5:
Cuts like a Knife
So at the tender age of thirty-four, and because I wanted to be happy again (and possibly have another husband-induced orgasm if I wasn’t asking for too much), I accepted it w
as time. After twelve years of marriage to Ira, and with a great deal of support from my mother, I’d been bullied, badgered and finally blackmailed into it.
For the first time, Marcy volunteered to come over at least once a week and spend time poring over brochures, websites, making appointments for me with doctors of all kinds, psychologists, psychiatrists, as if I’d suddenly become this big case, or someone very important to her. She’d take care of it all and all I had to do was just show up. Like some star on a red carpet.
It actually felt kind of nice, to have her there, encouraging me, telling me I was doing the right thing for once, and that I wouldn’t be sorry, and that I should just wait and see how my life would change. If only she’d been there for me like this when I was a kid and really needed my mother’s guidance and not a stand-in crew of relatives. It would’ve been nice.
So, with her support, I was going under the knife to lose weight. And, let’s face it, to save my marriage. Yes, I admit I had gained quite a few pounds since, say, our very first date. But now things were about to change for good. The next day I was going to have one of those operations that you can never be too fat for, and that was going to—uh, yay?—change my life?
Who was I doing this for anyway? For a husband who wouldn’t sleep with me as a form of punishment, until I got down to a size ten? Yeah, like that was happening. Was it even worth it? It wasn’t like the final prize was a night with David Gandy or something—that sort of fun was still restricted to my dreams.
I picked up the phone and dialed Paul’s number.
“Yellowh,” came his beloved voice, and I cracked.
“I can’t do it,” I whispered, my voice hoarse.
Silence. A long one.
“Paul? Did you not hear what I just said?”
“I’m thinking, I’m thinking. Just tell me why.”
I swallowed the knot in my throat. “I’m afraid I’ll die. What if I do die, Paul? Who’s going to take care of Warren and Maddy? Can you see Ira raising them? Can you? Because I sure as hell can’t!”
The Husband Diet (A Romantic Comedy) Page 4