Looking for Lily

by Africa Fine

“How about some new clothes?”

  I stood in the Dillard’s dressing room, patient and dutiful, trying on outfits that were at least a size too small for my chubby frame, clothes that stretched tight around my waist and sagged around the breasts I didn’t have. Each time my aunt went to find another outfit, I stood in my underwear, looking at my reflection. Round and brown and plain. I didn’t think I was ugly, because I had dimples in my plump cheeks and long eyelashes. But glancing at my aunt’s long hair and hourglass figure, I knew I wasn’t pretty.

  At some point, Aunt Gillian had to concede defeat. “It must be your father’s genes,” she sighed, fluffing her hair in the mirror before turning toward the exit.

  * * *

  The first time I tried to lose weight was four and a half years ago, when I met Jack. It was December, I was turning thirty that month, and I decided enough was enough. But I had no idea how to start. I’d spent my life finding comfort in the taste, textures, and aromas of food. Health had been the least of my concerns.

  I was too embarrassed to go to Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig or anywhere else where I’d be with other fat people. The gym was out of the question. I’d joined Ultima Fitness on Clematis, right near the university and not far from my house. The place was filled with recent graduates and young professionals who, as it turned out, were almost all taut and toned. I’d braved the sea of Lycra a few times, wheezing on the treadmill as I glared at couples wearing coordinated gym outfits (his, black V-neck t-shirt trimmed in blue; hers, blue V-neck sports bra trimmed in black, bearing expensive logos and made out of something much more hip than cotton). They recorded their every move in elaborate leather-bound exercise diaries as they listened to the newest music on their iPods (blue, to match the outfits). There’s nothing like the sight of navel rings and bulging biceps to conquer an already shaky motivation. Of course, I quit going. I continued to pay the dues in penance.

  Next, I took matters into my own hands. The English Department offices were not far from the Mizner University Medical Center, so I asked a couple of doctors I knew about best diets and exercise programs for someone my size. I first asked Dr. Krespe, a resident in pediatrics, because I figured anyone who loved kids would be sensitive and nice about the whole thing. He suggested gastric bypass surgery in a kind way. But I had seen the gory details of surgery on the Discovery Channel, and I was unwilling to volunteer to be opened up, prodded, poked, and sewed.

  And I needed to prove to myself that I had the willpower and discipline to change. I knew I wasn’t fat because of genetics, or because of some kind of metabolic disorder. I ate too much—it was that simple. Surgery seemed like cheating, and I knew that if I didn’t change my lifestyle, surgery might make me thin, but it wouldn’t keep me that way.

  I decided that what I needed was more practical advice, so I called my best friend from college, Monica Coleman. We had gone to Georgetown together, then to the University of Maryland. Even though she worked at a law firm in Atlanta, we had remained friends. She, too, had struggled with her weight all her life, but while we were in graduate school at Maryland, she had gotten thin. Her thinness had made me jealous and, ironically, hungrier than ever, which put a strain on our relationship. We dealt with the strain by never talking about how she lost the weight. Now, I was ready to know.

  I managed to catch her in between meetings. She practiced corporate law and loved it, which I found mysterious and fascinating.

  “Monica, I need to lose weight.”

  “Really?” Her voice dripped with good-natured irony.

  I laughed. Monica’s dry sense of humor always got to me, even when I wasn’t in a laughing mood. She was always kind, even while she watched me down a dozen doughnuts in a sitting. But she was also always honest, which is one of the things I loved about her.

  “No, seriously, Mon. I’m going to lose all the weight. I just don’t know the best way to do it. What did you do?”

  I could hear the smile in her voice. “It only took you fifteen years to ask.”

  “I don’t like to rush these things.”

  She laughed and thought for a moment, then told me to eat less and swim often. So I went to the YMCA every day before work and at least once each weekend and I swam. My rhythm was slow and disjointed at first, and then, as the pounds began to drop off, with greater speed and confidence.

  I felt comfortable wearing a bathing suit because there was almost no one else using the YMCA pool. It was an older facility that had become run-down and shabby after it was eclipsed by fancy health clubs, community pools, and apathy. It suited me fine, since I preferred not to reveal my cellulite-ridden thighs and oversized belly to the world.

  In fact, the only other person I saw at the pool on a regular basis was Jack, and he seemed just as averse to social contact as I was. Focused on our own personal demons, we ignored each other. Or, I ignored him and focused on mine until about nine months into my regimen.

  “You need a new bathing suit.”

  I had been standing near the steps to the diving board, considering whether I could remember anything from the swimming lessons I took as a child, wondering whether I would maim myself if I attempted a dive. I hadn’t noticed Jack standing near me until he spoke.

  I looked at him. “Excuse me?”

  I used my frostiest tone in an attempt to conceal my embarrassment. I resisted the urge to look down at my suit. What was wrong with it? It was a simple navy blue one-piece that I’d bought at the beginning of my training regimen. I’d considered other suits, ones with frilled skirts that claim to hide fat and flab, but I’d decided that there was no use pretending that three inches of ruffles made any difference whatsoever.

  He cleared his throat and pointed. “Your suit. It’s too big.”

  I took a deep breath and looked down. He was right; the leg holes gaped where they used to cling, and there were folds of fabric around my middle. Still, he didn’t know me—what gave him the right?

  I looked up to ask him this, but he was gone. The next time I saw him, neither of us said a word to each other, and it was as if the whole thing had never happened, except that I stopped ignoring him and instead watched him swim when he wasn’t looking. He had perfect form, his strokes precise and metered, as if he had been born in the water. He approached the pool with a businesslike intensity, never stopping to catch his breath or daydream as I often did. His workouts took forty-seven minutes.

  Over the next few weeks, I found myself wondering about him. What kind of man tells a stranger that her bathing suit is too big? Was he looking at me because I was fat? I wondered where he worked and how he managed to time his workouts to the minute without ever seeming to glance at the clock. And I noticed that, even wearing goggles, he was handsome. His skin gleamed deep brown in the fluorescent lights, and he had a perfect swimmer’s body—broad shoulders, lean muscles, long legs.

  Another month passed before he spoke to me again. We both happened to be leaving the pool at the same time and our eyes met.

  “I’m Jack. Want to have dinner sometime?”

  His voice was formal and deep, and he smiled at me. I smiled back.

  “I’m Tina.”

  Chapter 4

  “We were a perfect match”

  There was nothing conventional about my brief courtship with Jack Kennedy Kingston. We were, I learned, as different as two people could be and still be attracted to each other. He was an engineer and had started his own (successful) firm, then had left his partner to run the business while he taught at Mizner University. The fact that I had never met him, although we shared an employer, spoke volumes about how different our professions were. Teaching English and teaching engineering are like living in different countries on opposite ends of the planet.

  He was methodical, logical, rational. I don’t believe that a person’s occupation reflects his true self, but Jack was as typical an engineer as one could imagine. He was, in fact, everything I was not, and I invented an “opposites attract” fantasy to explain
why we were perfect for each other. I was a collection of contradictions, and I felt as if I’d spent most of my life opposing my aunt instead of doing what I wanted to do. I spent entire days talking to students and my colleagues, yet I was shy and avoided socializing whenever possible. I was contradictory and unpredictable in my moods, and I hated that my personal life didn’t have much direction. When I met Jack, he was what I thought I needed.

  Some of what I knew about Jack he told me right away, but most of what I know about him I learned later, after we became friends. Jack Kennedy Kingston understood me from the moment we met. He had pretended he didn’t have a middle name since he learned about the other Jack Kennedy in fourth-grade civics class. It wasn’t that he had anything against JFK, but even at age ten he knew what a cliché was.

  So he got how much I hated being named Ernestine, and even though he had been skinny all his life, he got how much I hated being fat and why, until I was almost thirty years old, I’d never even tried to be thin.

  Jack hadn’t seen his mother since he was a teenager, although as far as he knew, she was still living in St. Louis where he grew up. His father had moved out and took Jack with him after coming home from work to find eight-year-old Jack sitting in front of the television and eating potato chips while his mother was sprawled on the sofa, passed out next to an empty bottle of Absolut.

  “Pop liked to joke that what hurt most was that she had passed out on the most expensive liquor in the house.” Jack laughed at this, but I didn’t.

  So neither of us had a mother growing up. He had a father who made cruel jokes, and I had an aunt to whom I was a perpetual disappointment.

  We both grew up in the Midwest, we had both escaped the first chance we got, and we both ended up in South Florida, teaching at Mizner University. As far as I was concerned, we were a perfect match.

  The afternoon of our first date, I started getting ready three hours before. I needed the time to try on every possible outfit I could wear, and maybe run out to CityPlace to buy something new if nothing in my closet worked. Plus, I had to wade through piles of fat clothes that I was scared to throw away. I had been fat for so long that I didn’t feel at home in my new thin skin. Being overweight isn’t just about the body, it’s about the mind. I wasn’t sure I could ever think of myself as thin, or believe that I would stay that way. I hadn’t eaten a chocolate-chip cookie in months, but sometimes I dreamed about eating an entire batch, soft and gooey right out of the oven. I didn’t think this was the dream of a woman who was meant to stay thin.

  This was one of those times I wished Monica was here. She knew how it felt to be a fat girl, knew how it felt to change. She had stayed thin, and I knew she would understand my fear. My closet was still full of conservative clothes, no V-necks or tank tops. I could wear them now, but I wouldn’t dare. It would be like throwing my weight loss in the face of fate, which might then make my chocolate-chip dreams a reality.

  I tried on eight outfits before I grabbed my keys and headed out. I called Monica on my cell phone.

  “Mon, I have a date.”

  “You do?”

  “Try not to sound so shocked.”

  She laughed. “Tina, when was the last time you had a boyfriend? Or went on a date? You’re not much of a dater.”

  I sniffed. “Guys don’t like fat girls.”

  I could almost see her eyes rolling. “You’re not fat anymore. And even when you were, that didn’t mean you couldn’t date.”

  “Okay, cut the lecture. What I need to know is the best place to find a good date outfit.”

  “Where are you going?”

  For the date, Jack took the initiative and planned everything. He wanted to e-mail me the details, but I told him I’d rather be surprised. I told her that I assumed we would go out to dinner at one of West Palm Beach’s many steak joints; he seemed like a steak-and-potatoes kind of guy who exercised enough to stay lean without trying. I’d begun to look forward to dinner because I hadn’t eaten a steak in months. I’d stopped being a vegetarian once I moved away from my aunt, but steaks were not a part of my new thin-person diet.

  Monica cut me off. “You always do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Assume too much. Worrying. Looking too much ahead instead of just living in the moment.”

  I sighed. “Now you sound like Aunt Gillian. Can we get back to my clothes?”

  I was just pulling into a parking spot. I put the car into park and waited. Monica came through.

  “Something simple but elegant. A dress is too much for a first date—makes it seem like too big a deal. Tailored pants, something neutral, white shirt with an open neck and closed-toe heels. Add some color with a bag, maybe red. Don’t forget lipstick. Go to Ann Taylor, then hit the Clinique counter at Macy’s.”

  I smiled. “Thanks, Mon.”

  “Who is this guy, anyway?”

  “He’s a swimmer. I’ll tell you all about it later.”

  * * *

  I told Jack about my guess about the steaks when he picked me up, but he smiled and shook his head.

  “I’m not a big steak guy.”

  “So where are we going?” I eyed his casual fisherman’s sweater and jeans. It was early December and West Palm Beach was in the midst of a cool winter, which meant fifty-degree temperatures during the days. Elsewhere, this constituted a winter heat wave; in South Florida, people were wrapped in parkas and hats. I wore the outfit Monica prescribed, with an expensive pair of boots I’d bought when I lost the last five pounds.

  “Am I overdressed?”

  He shook his head. “You’re perfect.”

  I knew what he meant, that I was dressed fine for whatever he had planned. But it had been so long since a man had made me feel special that I blushed and decided to take the compliment, intended or not.

  We left my house then and Jack opened the car door for me, which I included in my mental list of why Jack was the man for me.

  Jack drove us to a small airfield that I didn’t know existed. There was a field filled with small airplanes that shone in the bright lights of the narrow runway. It was quiet and the night was clear, but there didn’t seem to be anyone else interested in flying that night besides us. As we walked toward a small, square building, I could smell motor oil and the scent of the melaleuca trees off in the distance.

  “Are we going somewhere?”

  He smiled. “I wanted you to meet someone special. I don’t introduce her to just anyone.”

  I frowned, worried that I had misinterpreted the evening, that this wasn’t a date at all. Had Jack brought me all the way out here to meet his girlfriend? And what was she doing at an airfield?

  We stopped in front of a tiny plane, which I later found out was a single-engine Tinassna Skyhawk. It had propellers, which I thought were obsolete in air travel, and was decorated with brown and black designs that reminded me of Chinese characters. There was a large identification number near the back, and the wings were narrow.

  Jack smiled broadly as I looked around. Did he want me to meet the pilot?

  “This is Eleanor.” He pointed to the plane and I smiled. I was afraid of flying in small airplanes and I hated the name Eleanor, but I didn’t say a word as he led me onto the plane and strapped me in. The leather seats smelled like a new car, and I tried to remember one of those more-people-get-killed-in-car-accidents-than-in-plane-crashes statistics while Jack told me about the plane. It was his company’s plane, and they used it to impress clients and visit building sites. But he had always loved flying and had decided to become a pilot himself when he realized his engineering firm needed a small plane.

  It wasn’t until after a smooth takeoff (it felt smooth; my eyes were closed and I was trying to remember how to say a rosary) that I relaxed and sat back in my seat. And then I threw up, all over the tiny cockpit.

  Later, I couldn’t meet Jack’s eyes as he dropped me off, and I imagined myself crumpling up my Jack Is My Soulmate list and burning it.

  * *
*

  I thought I’d never talk to him again. I planned to avoid him if I ever saw him on campus, and I considered avoiding the pool, but it was my only way to exercise. I hoped he would have the decency to swim elsewhere, or else take up weight lifting or something. But the next week at the pool, he said hi. After a few fumbling starts, we talked. Neither of us mentioned the date, and I assumed that he wanted nothing more than friendship from a woman who defiled Eleanor and ruined what could have been a nice evening. Jack was the kind of man who said what was on his mind and didn’t think much about social graces and tact. It’s not that he didn’t care about other people’s feelings; it was just that telling little white lies didn’t make much sense to him. So when I started to gain the weight back, and my bathing suit began to get tighter, he noticed. He didn’t say anything, but I caught him looking one day while he thought I wasn’t paying attention.

  “I’ve gained some weight.” I tried not to sound defensive. I failed.

  He just looked at me.

  “I’m not meant to be thin. Not everyone has to be thin, you know. People come in all shapes and sizes.”

  We both knew that Jack wasn’t the one I was trying to convince. I couldn’t read the expression in his eyes, but I was relieved it wasn’t pity. I didn’t think I could endure his pity. It was a long time before he spoke.

  “Low expectations are a lot easier to meet,” he said.

  I told him to shut up and opened a fresh bag of Oreos. He never brought it up again, even after I gained back every pound I’d lost.

  Chapter 5

  “Is this a date?”

  When I met Jack, I was just a junior faculty member in English, and I was very concerned about appearances. I thought that playing politics would get me ahead and ensure a successful tenure bid. So when the dean of Arts and Sciences held his annual cookout in the fall, I felt I had to go. But I didn’t want to go alone, so I called Jack.

  By then, we were friends, somewhere between acquaintances and confidantes. We had lunch sometimes, we exchanged books we liked, and we never talked about the date. I spent a lot of time trying to convince myself that Jack and I weren’t right for each other. The problem was that I couldn’t stop thinking of him as the perfect man. I knew better than to believe in Cinderella and her prince, but sometimes fantasy is more compelling than reality.