Get a piggyback ride from a guy.
Be in a photo shoot.
Eat dessert in public.
Tuck in a shirt.
Shop at a store for regular people.
Have a cute stranger buy you a drink at a bar.
Go home to meet his parents.
Tell off the people who judged us when we were fat.
Promise me, Emerson had said there in the hospital.
“She wants us to do all this? Now?” Marley asked.
“I guess so.”
“Why? That was so long ago. I mean . . . these aren’t exactly meaningful life achievements for a card-carrying adult.” She was nervous, fidgeting with the fringe on the pillow. “Get a piggyback ride?”
“Have you ever had a piggyback ride?”
She gave me the stink-eye. “Any guy who gave me a piggyback ride would collapse or pop a hernia.”
“His eyes would explode out of his head,” I said. “Gray matter would leak from his ears, and his vertebrae would collapse into powder. Blood everywhere.”
“Bite me,” she said, tossing the throw pillow at me.
I’d never had a piggyback ride, either. It was such a little thing, and yet so . . . romantic. So normal, the idea that you’d be smaller than your honey, and he’d be playful and manly, and you’d be adorable and spontaneous.
Marley cleared her throat. “Let’s go through this list, and see if any of these things matter anymore. We were just kids when we wrote it.” She glanced at the notepaper. “Go running in a sports bra? Who wrote that one? It sure wasn’t me.”
“I did. All those cross-country meets when Hunter was in high school. My mother dragged me to every one.” I still remembered those girls, so impossibly perfect, so oblivious to the blessings of good health and beauty. I couldn’t take my eyes off them, even though they ignored me.
Even at age seven, I’d known I’d never look like that.
“The point of putting it on the list,” I said slowly, “was the idea that someday, I wouldn’t want to . . . you know. Hide.”
“Fat acceptance?” Marley said.
“More like the idea that we could be skinny.”
“Well, shit,” said Marley. “Shit on rye.”
“Don’t make me want carbs,” I said, and we snorted in unexpected laughter, which in Marley’s case quickly became tears again.
I picked up the list. “The privileges of thin people,” I murmured.
Because that’s what it had been. These were the things thin girls got to do, things that were out of reach for us fatties. The list was stark and innocent, slashing like an unseen razor with its yearning . . . and honesty.
When Rafe took me home to meet his parents, I remember thinking, I should’ve lost more weight for this.
“Can I see it again?” Marley asked. She studied the paper. I remembered the notebook—a pink cover with purple peace signs. Emerson had always been writing in it; she was one of the few people I knew who kept a diary.
“Actually,” Marley said, “I have had a cute guy buy me a drink. Gays count, right?”
“I think we were picturing straight guys. Benjamin Bratt, remember?” We’d all had that Law & Order addiction.
“Oh, God, I loved him. So Benjamin Bratt has to buy me a drink? All right. The sacrifices I make.” But I could hear the pain under her words. She’d had a crush on a guy for the past five years—one of her brother Dante’s FDNY coworkers—but it had yet to progress to anything. He was an idiot, in my opinion. Marley was the best person on earth. So instinctively kind, so funny, so generous . . . and yes, sure, overweight, but she carried it well—she’d always had a waist and great boobs. She could get away with zaftig or Rubenesque.
Not me. I’d always been fat-fat, like a troll, like an egg. There was no romantic word for how I was shaped.
“‘Tuck in a shirt,’” Marley read. Back at Copperbrook, we had talked about the ultimate skinny girl’s outfit: a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt, tucked in. She looked at me now. “You could totally work that, just sayin’.”
“With Spanx and a waist trainer and liposuction and black magic, sure.”
“I’m serious. You look great.”
I shrugged. Whenever I looked in the mirror, which I did only when necessary, I still didn’t see what I wanted to.
“‘Eat dessert in public.’ I already do that, so rest easy, Emerson,” Marley said, moving on.
I didn’t. I hadn’t had dessert in . . . well, since my wedding cake, probably. I was more of the junk-food type. My first love was salt.
But since Mason’s overdose, accidental or not, food and I had become even more hateful enemies.
“‘Hold hands with a cute guy in public,’” Marley continued. “That won’t be a problem. I can run up to a hot guy, grab his hand and drag him a few yards. Check.”
My ex-husband and I had held hands all the time. And he’d been extremely hot. I couldn’t count the number of times people had looked surprised to see us as a couple.
“‘Tell off the people who judged us when we were fat,’” Marley read. “Great. We’d have to line them up in a stadium. Can we start with your asshole brother? ‘Tell off,’ that means stab in the eye, right?”
“We don’t have to do this,” I said, setting my drink down on the coffee table. “This is what three teenagers thought would be the ultimate . . . whatever. It’s not really for adults. We’re thirty-four. Almost thirty-five.”
Marley lay back and gazed up at the ceiling. “But we promised Emerson we would. She’ll never get to do these things, G.” Her voice thickened. “And she kept this list all these years.”
I swallowed, and Admiral put his head on my leg. “I don’t know. It seems . . . empty, really. And my plate is pretty full these days. Work and Mason. The FFE.” I did some pro bono legal work for the Foundation for Female Entrepreneurship, which gave out business and legal advice and sometimes money for disadvantaged women looking to start their own businesses. Couldn’t let the Yale law degree go completely to waste.
I didn’t see what purpose the list would serve, frankly.
Marley rubbed her eyes. “Yeah. I understand.” We sat in silence for a few minutes until she spoke again. “I’m zonked. Time for bed.”
“Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She left, and my apartment felt oddly empty. Like something was missing from the moment. Unfinished business. I had to shake myself to close the door after her.
A half hour later, I was soaking in my big, beautiful tub, Admiral curled on the floor next to me. I loved baths. I’d invested in a gorgeous tub for myself, big enough so I could feel small and delicate, and tonight, I needed to do something to make myself feel good. The sadness of Emerson’s funeral had caught up to me.
The list brought up a lot, too. All the misery of being a fat teenager in America, trying so hard to be invisible, quiet, not to draw attention to myself.
Still, I’d done stuff. I traveled a little bit, five days here, a week there. I’d been to Paris and Rome, albeit when I was in college. I had a great job, all my students hugging me, smiling, offering me their instant, innocent love. Granted, I made a lot less than when I was a lawyer, but I could pay my bills, thanks to the inheritance from my grandmother, and I had a nice investment portfolio curated by my dad, who managed a big mutual fund. I had a house, a dog, a nephew. A longtime best friend. I’d even been in love once. I didn’t need to do the things on that list.
Except I’d said I would.
CHAPTER 4
Marley
Be in a photo shoot. (Sort of.)
“Please wait while I get my checkbook.”
I closed my eyes and tried not to sigh.
This particular client was a special type of ass pain. Granted, I was grateful fo
r ass-pain clients, because I charged them more.
But I loved most of my clients. Some saw cooking as too much of a chore, which was hard for me to understand, since I grouped sex and cooking in the same category of sensual delight. Others had food allergies and issues that made food prep difficult. Some were genuinely too busy. Some just hated it; Georgia admitted to dry-heaving if she had to touch raw chicken.
Here in the wealthy, charming little town of Cambry-on-Hudson, a lot liked the status of having a personal chef. Cambry was just twenty minutes from Yonkers, where I’d grown up, but a world apart. Here, there were things like equestrian clubs and preschools with tuitions equaling those of many colleges. So being able to say you had a personal chef . . . well, people liked that.
And so . . . Salt & Pepper, my little company, founded by me, staffed by me and occasionally assisted by my mom and Dante. Dinners (and lunches, but mostly dinners) prepared just for you, according to everything you love and any health considerations you might have.
My skills went beyond cooking. I was an organizational wizard. Got celiac disease? Don’t worry; I would never show you a menu with a speck of gluten on it. Peanut allergy? There’s a counter I used just for your food. Your kids hate bananas? No worries! I’ll make sure they get their potassium another way. Dairy nauseates you? Good old Marley will take care of you.
I loved it. I loved my clients, even the snooty yoga moms who pretended they cooked my dinners themselves or treated me like a serving wench when I did the occasional dinner party. I loved them because they needed me.
And then there was Will Harding.
I had already put his food on the counter, as I did five nights a week. Today, he’d chosen grilled salmon, crispy roasted baby potatoes and a tomato-and-avocado salad. For some reason, he felt the need to check under the lids, as if I’d topped the salmon with ground glass instead of kale-almond pesto.
I reminded myself that Will had been one of Salt & Pepper’s first clients. He used me five times a week; most of my clients were the one- or three-times-a-week types. Some used me only for special occasions.
But Will never told me he liked the food, never gave me any feedback at all. In fact, he barely spoke to me.
I wished Frankie were here. I wished she were my business partner, my roomie, my best friend. I wished she were standing next to me, rolling her eyes as Will wrote out his check.
My twin sister had been dead for thirty years, and still, I had these feelings every day—the yearning for her company, even though I barely remembered her. The ache of feeling half of a pair instead of a whole person.
I sighed, and tried to pull out some of my Keep on the Sunny Side attitude from the vault in my heart. Sometimes that good cheer came naturally, and sometimes it was like walking through tar. It had been harder going than usual since Emerson’s funeral.
How long did it take to write a check for the same amount every single day?
Wastes my time. I’d started a mental list of Will Harding’s flaws months ago. And number one on that list was prejudiced against fat people.
Oh, yes, I noticed the way he scanned me, his face carefully blank. What? I wore my chef whites with the cute little logo over my heart—a set of salt and pepper shakers, dancing, little smiley faces alight with joy. Mason, Georgia’s nephew, had made it for me on his computer, the clever lad.
But Will gave me that look that we overweight women know so well . . . the look that said, No, thanks, and also, You’re fat . . . fat being as egregious a sin as being a serial killer of puppies. The look that said fat was worse than hateful or dishonest or cruel.
Will returned from the back room—I was only allowed in the kitchen—and gave me the look now. I forced my face into a smile, waiting for him to hand over the check.
“That cold sore you had is gone,” he said.
I blinked. An entire sentence! And such a sweet thing to say, no less. “Yes.”
“Good.” He handed me the check, and I took it, careful not to let our fingers touch. Once that had happened, and he jumped back.
Not for the first time, I thought about dropping him. It was a little creepy, our routine. His whole house was always dark, shades drawn, only the counter island lights on in the kitchen. Every day, I was let in almost the second I knocked, because he waited for me. Then came the setting down of the bags. The verification of their contents. The writing of the check. The dismissal.
“Thank you,” he said now, as he did every night. “Good-bye.”
“Enjoy the salmon!” I said with fat-girl jollity. “See you tomorrow!”
“Thank you,” he repeated. “Good-bye.”
It was always a relief to get out of there. Oh, the house was fine. Whether or not Will Harding had bodies stashed in his freezer was another question.
When I got into my car, I took a second to text Camden—Mr. November in the FDNY calendar. (My darling baby brother was Mr. April.) Camden worked with Dante and, occasionally, slept with me.
I loved him, of course.
Just left the serial killer’s house, I wrote. Am still alive.
Dante—“the gay firefighter,” Mom always said, as if she had more than one firefighter son—had done me one huge favor in his life, and that was joining FDNY. Sure, sure, saving lives and protecting property, that was great. More importantly (for me, anyway) was nearly unlimited access to New York’s Bravest. Dropping by his firehouse with a pan of eggplant Parmesan or four dozen cannolis to endear myself to my brother’s coworkers was one of my favorite activities. Yes, it was exactly as you might imagine. I’d go into Battalion 11 on the Upper West Side, hear a chorus of manly voices saying, “Yo, Dante, your sistah’s here! Heya, Marley, whatcha bring us, hon?”
I really was only there for Camden Fortuno. He was everything—gorgeous, brave, strong, funny, friendly, gorgeous, a firefighter, did I mention that? Okay, sure, his name was a little dopey—there are those Italians who have a penchant for picking out the WASPiest name possible to pair with their Old Country last name. My mom didn’t fall prey to that trap—we were Eva, my older sister; Dante; Marlena (yours truly); and my twin, Francesca, aka Frankie, may she rest in peace.
Camden, on the other hand, had a sister named Huntley and a brother named Wickham.
At any rate, Camden was . . . well. See above. Plus, he was nice.
The three pulsing dots on my phone’s screen told me he was typing a reply to my text. A second later, it popped up.
Thank God. What are you doing tonight?
My heart leaped. “Be cool, be cool,” I said to myself.
Camden and I had never been on a date. Once in a while, I’d go out with my brother, his husband, Louis, and some of the gang from Battalion 11. That was about as close as a public date as I’d had with Cam. But in the past five years, we’d nevertheless ended up back at his place six times, where sexy time had indeed ensued.
Maybe he was asking me out now.
Not much, I typed back. Almost done with my deliveries. What are you up to?
Working, he wrote back. Have a great night!
Well, shit.
You too! I typed. Considered adding a smiley face, wisely decided against it, clicked off my phone and sighed.
Each time Camden and I had slept together had been after a party. Each time, Camden had been a little drunk; each time, he’d asked me not to tell my brother.
Each time made me love him all the more. Don’t judge me.
But being a twin without a twin is like having a hole in your heart. Even though Frankie and I had been only four when she died, I was meant to be half of a pair. Small wonder that I latched onto friends the way I did, leaped at the chance to be Georgia’s tenant, visited my brother twice a week, called my older sister to check in (not that she ever called me first). And yes, ever since passing puberty, I’d been on the prowl for a husband.
Camden woul
d fit the bill quite nicely. I just had to get him to that point.
Well. I had three more deliveries. Two were Manhattan commuters who wouldn’t be home when I dropped off their stuff. I made short work of those, programming the ovens to start preheating in an hour, stashing the food in the fridge, instructions taped to the boxes.
Rachel Carver was last on my list, and one of the few people who really deserved having a meal dropped off once a week, though she was a pretty great cook herself. You could tell by the ingredients in her fridge, and the fact that her kids ate things like fish and spinach and curry.
But her daughters were four-year-old triplets, and she was divorced, so who better to use Salt & Pepper? Rachel and I had become friends in the past six months since she started using me, and sometimes I stayed for a glass of wine if she was my last client. Her girls all went to St. Luke’s preschool, and all were in Georgia’s class, which meant I was a rock star by association.
“Marley, Marley, what did you bring, it smells good, look at my picture, play with me, Marley!” the girls chorused as I came in.
Their beautiful little faces made my heart hurt. I was so jealous of them, and I adored them, and they were that age, that age . . . and if I wasn’t careful, I’d start crying. Please turn five, I mentally ordered them.
“Hi, Marley,” Rachel said, wading through her daughters to relieve me of the food. “What did we order tonight? I forgot.”
“Panfried chicken, sugar snap peas, and mashed sweet potatoes with cranberries,” I said. “Extra deliciousness for you, princesses!”
The little girls hugged my legs and grabbed my hands, jockeying for position. I hoped they’d live to be a hundred and all die at the same exact instant, holding hands, surrounded by their progeny. I loved these girls. I did. Even if they made me feel like I’d swallowed a shard of glass.
“Can you stay for a glass of wine?” Rachel asked.
“Sure,” I said. “How are you?” One of the girls held up a necklace for me to inspect. “Oh, Rose, that’s lovely. Is that macaroni? It’s so sparkly.”
Good Luck with That Page 4