“That’d be great.” Neither of us said it, but we both knew—Hunter was easier to take when allies were present. “Yeah, I could see the benefits of having some . . . whatever. Goals. Benchmarks. And not the kind Dad wants, which is basically world domination.”
I glanced around, saw that none of his peers were around, and gave him a quick hug.
“I gotta go,” he said. “Math tutor’s coming.”
“Okay,” I said, standing up. “Think about some things. They don’t have to be huge. Just . . . stepping-stones. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said, and sure enough, there was a smile there. A real one.
“I love you,” I said.
“You’re gross.” But he was still smiling when he handed me my dog’s leash and walked across the park to Hunter’s house.
I had lesson plans to work on, and some paperwork to file for one of the clients at FFE—a woman from the Bronx who wanted to start a farm-to-table nursery here in Cambry. Once she’d been a heroin addict; now she was an organic farmer. I loved the foundation, loved helping these women get a start at a new career, but at the moment, I still felt a little unsettled.
On impulse, I decided to visit my father. He was always good for the soul. I could do the paperwork on the train, and ask my dad to pony up some money for the foundation—he was excellent at writing checks—plus visit my half sisters and see my stepmom, all in one fell swoop.
Twenty minutes later, I was on the train, clacking along the mighty Hudson. I caught a glimpse of myself reflected in the window. I was surprised at how little room I took up.
Even on my wedding day, I’d wished I was thinner. That day when a woman was supposed to feel most beautiful, I felt a little ashamed. Guilty. I could’ve lost more weight.
Rafael’s face flashed in my memory, the smile that took over his whole face, his bottomless eyes that could say a thousand words with one look. He’d been so happy that day.
Me, not so much.
Okay. I couldn’t go there right now. If Rafael Santiago was going to pop back up in my life via Silvi, then he would, and I’d handle it and be polite and cordial and pleasant. All those things.
When the train pulled into Grand Central, I filed out with all the other people, like a school of fish, dividing to go out the respective exits. I passed Zabar’s bakery, forbidding myself to look. They had the best pastries.
Not for me, though. Too many calories, too much butter, too much regret later on. Once upon a time, I hadn’t been above sticking my finger down my throat. I didn’t want to start down that path again, so the best thing would be to avoid a bakery at all costs.
My dad’s place was only twenty or so blocks from Grand Central. I walked; I could use more exercise. And you know what else? I was going to lose the last bit of weight. I could do it. Emerson would want me to do it. The memory of her, helpless in that bed, wheezing, every part of her in some kind of distress . . .
I was so close to being thin. The possible ulcer, the stress over Mason’s overdose . . . the reflection of myself in the train window, smaller than I’d been maybe ever . . . I pulled out my phone and called my mother.
“Hi, Mom,” I said.
“Oh, Georgia, it’s you,” she answered, never a master of caller ID.
“Um . . . Mom, remember that spa you go to upstate? Hakuna Matata or something?”
“Sagrada Vida?”
Exactly what I said. “Sure. That one. I was thinking about . . .” I took a breath. “About going for a weekend.”
“Really!” The joy in her voice was usually reserved for Bergdorf Goodman’s annual shoe sale. “Really, Georgia? You’re going to lose some weight? I’m absolutely thrilled for you.”
Princeton. Yale. Law review. Another advanced degree. New career nurturing children. Helping women start businesses. But nothing excited my mother as much as the idea of me getting thinner. Despite having lost weight a hundred times in my life, it had never been enough for the super-thin Kathryn Ellerington Sloane, also known as (for unfathomable reasons) Big Kitty.
“I’ll go, too!” she said. “I could use a little cold lipo. Maybe a teensy bit of Juvéderm.”
Shit. “Um, okay. Marley will be coming, too. It’s, uh, an early birthday present for her.” Of course, Marley knew nothing about this, but I wasn’t about to be alone at a weight-loss spa with my mother.
“I’ll make the reservations. I’m a VIP member, and it’s hard to get in, but they love me there. Georgia, you have to get the hydrovisconic. You think you have good bowel habits, but when you see—”
“I have to go. Thanks, Mother. Talk soon.”
There it was, that moment when you sign away your soul to the devil. But I was almost there, and I’d been hoping to be there my entire life. As much as I fought it, I was just as obsessed with my weight as my mother was. So. I’d eat Marley’s healthy dinners, and I could cut back a little at breakfast and lunch. It wasn’t like I was hungry these days, anyway. Even less so since seeing Emerson die.
I put my phone in my purse and picked up my pace, matching the New Yorkers, burning a few more calories.
My father and stepmother lived in a large, funky apartment in Chelsea, right near the High Line. As I walked through into the sleek, sophisticated foyer, the doorman picked up the house phone. “It’s the lovely Georgia to see you, Mr. Sloane,” he said, and over the receiver, I could hear my father’s happy yelp.
Two minutes later, I was being hugged by Dear Old Dad, swarmed by my half sisters, and offered a glass of wine by my stepmother.
Dad’s new family was everything ours hadn’t been, and his guilt over that made him a better father to me. I’d take it. After all, I’d pretty much forgiven him for ditching me when he left my mother.
My parents had divorced when I was eleven. For a long time, my father was Sad Dad, idling outside our house on Tuesday nights and every other Friday, waiting for me. Hunter was already away at school, so the remaining three years before I went to Concord Academy featured just me and Mom, the dreaded visits from Hunter, and our cold, sterile house.
Back then, I hated my father for leaving me with Mom and Hunter, loved him fiercely because he never mentioned that I was fat, resented him because he didn’t have the power to make me skinny. But with a mother who was obsessed with my weight, and a brother who didn’t miss a single chance to tell me I was fat, it was a relief to be with someone who never talked about it. And he did send me to Camp Copperbrook every summer. What else was he going to do? Give me a gastric bypass for my twelfth birthday?
Once, I asked my father why I couldn’t live with him. He teared up and mumbled something about how he wanted that, too, but yada yada whatever. I stayed with Mom of the jutting hip bones and skeletal sternum, the critical eye and the disappointed sigh.
When I was twenty-two, Dad married Cherish, an exotic dancer, then twenty-five. Another skinny woman, something Marley and I discussed at length. Dad, who loved his fat daughter, had married two extremely beautiful, extremely lean women.
But Cherish was fantastic. I mean, it was weird having a stepmother who was as lithe as mine was, not to mention so frickin’ young. Still, I got it. She was warm and funny and open. She adored my dad; they laughed all the time, she flirted with him, held his hand and didn’t go crazy spending his money (though, yes, her engagement ring was a sight to behold—three carats, Cartier, so big it looked fake).
They had two daughters, my half sisters: Paris and Milan (Dad had a thing about geographical names, apparently), ages nine and five. I was their godmother in addition to their sister.
Obviously, Dad was my favorite parent.
“Read me a book!” Paris demanded now, twining her arm around my leg. “Junie B. Jones. She’s funny!”
“You look so pretty,” Milan said. “Mama, can I get hair like Georgia? I hate curly hair!”
“And I love curly h
air!” I said. “We should trade.”
“Play with me, play with me,” Milan chanted.
“Girls, let Georgia sit down for a minute,” Cherish said. “She’s been working hard all day. Sweetheart, you’re going to stay for dinner, of course, aren’t you? Spend the night! There are clean sheets on your bed.” I had a room here, wooden letters spelling my name over the door, just like Paris and Milan had, and a soft little giraffe on the queen-sized bed.
“Stay! Sleep over!” my sisters demanded.
“I’ll stay for dinner,” I said. “I should’ve texted. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to text,” Dad said. “This is your home, too.”
“Well. Thank you.”
I braided Milan’s hair, read to Paris, told Dad and Cherish funny tales from preschool—Axel burying himself in the stuffed animals, Primrose stating on her “getting to know you” worksheet that her mommy was a doctor and her daddy drank wine for a living.
Sitting at the counter as Cherish cooked and the girls played with my dad, I was bathed in the warm glow of their happiness. Cherish liberally added hot pepper and jalapeños, since it was Taco Night. I wouldn’t be eating much of that dish, not with Mr. Ulcer waiting. Good. Another few calories sacrificed to the skinny gods.
“Guess who I saw the other day?” she said, smiling as she chopped onions.
“Tom Hiddleston? And you told him about me, and he wants to marry me and father my children?”
She wiped away her onion-induced tears with the back of her hand and took a sip of wine. “Not quite, but the guy I saw was still pretty cute.” She glanced around to make sure my father and the girls were occupied. “A certain ex-husband of yours. Rafael Santiago.” She let the syllables roll off her tongue with the appropriate accent. “Me and my friend Willow? We went to his place.”
“Where is your family loyalty?” I asked, feigning calm (and trying not to correct her grammar).
But seriously. Two mentions of Rafe in one day was too much for my fragile, girlish heart. The lava in my stomach seemed to harden into volcanic rock, heavy and black.
“We had just gone to the natural history museum, you know?”
“Georgia, we saw dinosaurs!” Milan yelled from the living room, where my dad was rolling around with them.
“Really!” I said. “That’s so cool!”
“Stegosauruseses,” she said.
“Yeah,” Cherish continued. “And we came back here, and Joe, your daddy, that is, he’d come home early, and he said he’d watch all four kids, so me and Willow should go out for a nice dinner after chasing the little demons around the museum all day.”
I didn’t remember my dad ever coming home early when I was little. But I could see why he’d want to with this family. “Go on.” My heart was pounding.
“So we went down to Tribeca, and the restaurant, it’s called—what’s the place where the bulls run?”
“Pamplona.”
“Right. God, you’re so smart. You should try out for Jeopardy!, you would slay. Anyway, I didn’t know it was his place till I saw the menu, and at the bottom it says, Rafael Santiago, executive chef and owner. So I say to Willow, ‘Hey, my ex-stepson-in-law owns this place! We gotta ditch.’”
New York was a small town of eight million. This kind of thing happened all the time. “Hmm,” I said.
“The thing is,” Cherish went on, waving the knife in the air to punctuate her words, “we’d already ordered drinks, right? So we’re waiting for the server so we can get the check, okay, because really, Georgia, I do have your back, but then the girl brings over these complimentary tapas.”
“I love tapas!” Paris said. “Can we have tapas, Mommy?”
“Maybe tomorrow, honeybun.” She lowered her voice again. “And then all of a sudden, there he is, handsome as ever, and he remembered me.”
He would remember her. He remembered everyone he ever met.
After her waterfall of words, Cherish was quiet a minute, adding the onions to the ground beef. “He looks good,” she said. “He told us to come back anytime, and he sent you his regards.”
I nodded. Fake-smiled. Took a sip of wine and felt it hit the sore spot in my stomach. I could just about hear the words in his slight accent—Please send Georgia my regards. Everything he said sounded beautiful. His father was from Spain, his mother from the Dominican Republic, and they’d moved here when he was fourteen. His younger sisters didn’t have the same accent; they sounded like Staten Islanders.
For Rafe, English had been a second language, but he spoke it better than most Americans, his phrases always slightly formal, his words sounding more important, more beautiful because of . . . well. Because he was himself.
“You should stop by,” Cherish said, patting my hand. “Say hi to him.”
“I won’t,” I said.
She patted my hand more firmly. “You never know.”
We moved to the table, held hands while Dad said grace (something that had never happened when he lived with us), and they ate and I pretended to. The girls chattered like a pair of happy starlings, and Dad’s love for his family shone from his eyes. Cherish couldn’t pass him without touching him, stroking his neck, a kiss on the head.
“I’m so happy you’re here,” Dad said, squeezing my hand.
“Me too, me too! So are we!” the girls said, and I felt that familiar happy sorrow I always felt here. Glad for this family, sad to be on its fringes. I was grateful that at least there was a place for me here, even if my stepmother had been a stripper and my father was twice her age. Even if it hadn’t happened until I was twenty-three, it felt nice to be part of a family.
After supper and bath time, the girls demanded that I tuck them in, which I did, singing to them in my off-key voice, kissing their foreheads, noses, cheeks. Cherish again invited me to spend the night—she really was the best stepmother. But I said no. “I have an early morning meeting,” I said. “By the way, Dad, the FFE could use another check.”
“What’s that stand for again?” Cherish asked.
“The Foundation for Female Entrepreneurship,” I said.
“One of these days, Joe, I’m gonna start a business, too,” she said. “I just don’t know what yet.”
“Whatever you’ll do will be fantastic,” my dad said.
“Agreed.” I smiled.
Dad got out his checkbook. “What’s the business this time?”
“Farm-to-table garden.”
“Nice.” He wrote a check to the foundation, added an extra zero and gave it to me. Guilt money, I suspected, over leaving me with Mom all those years ago. But it was for a good cause. He gave me a long hug. “I’m so glad you came. I always love seeing my little girl.”
I hugged him back tightly. “Same here, Daddy. Hey, by the way . . . Mason could use a little time with you.”
“I left two messages with Hunter,” he said. The Sad Dad expression came over his handsome face.
“Keep trying. Mason gets out at two fifteen if you wanted to just pop up some weekday. He usually comes to my house right after school to walk Admiral.”
“I’ll do that.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Want me to call the car service? They could drive you right home.”
“No, thanks. The train will be faster.”
My father was wealthy. Both my parents were from money, as we Yankees like to say (or not say). Mom had never tried to get a job, despite her degree from Bryn Mawr. “Darling, I don’t need to work,” she’d say. Dad did something on Wall Street in the mysterious world of finance, made a ridiculous salary and obscene bonuses, and my Christmas and birthday presents were always fat checks.
Cherish kissed me good-bye. “Pamplona. Don’t forget. You and Marley, you guys could just innocently drop by. I’m just sayin’.”
I half smiled, half sighed. “Good night, Cherish. Bye
, Dad.”
There were hardly any other passengers on the ride back to Cambry-on-Hudson. Rocked by the erratic rhythm of the train, I leaned my head against the window and tried not to think about Rafael Santiago, my ex-husband, the man who thought he knew me, the man who was the love of my life.
The man whose last words to me had been, “Get out.”
CHAPTER 6
Dear Other Emerson,
Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I’m really, really excited. One day at a time. One meal at a time. This time will be different! There’s good, healthy food out there, and I will eat it and only it, except for the very occasional and small indulgence. And I will enjoy it. I mean, a good salad is absolutely delicious, right?
Immediately, I picture a hot fudge sundae with really dense whipped cream, and salted almonds and dark, dark liquid fudge. The cold, creamy ice cream sliding down my throat. Not just once, but again and again and again. In public, in a cute little ice cream parlor where I fit into the chairs, and where people smile at me and say, “Oh, doesn’t that look good! I’ll have what she’s having.”
I have never had dessert in public. The disapproval, the disgust, the hatred over seeing a fat person eating just for fun.
I’m so hungry.
But, not gonna go there! I cleaned out my fridge yesterday, and filled it up with lettuce and kale, veggies and cottage cheese and chicken breasts.
I want a cheeseburger. Hot and rare, pink inside, juices running, the snap of red onion packing just enough bite.
I’m well aware that my food cravings sound like porn.
Two years ago, my mom died of fast-moving colon cancer. She didn’t even try chemo. It was too far advanced. The doctor said her weight played a role. Like skinny people didn’t get cancer. My dad was skinny. Died of a heart attack at age fifty-two.
I don’t want to die before my life really starts. I have to give myself a chance. I’m only twenty-nine years old.
My knees hurt. They should. I weigh 372 pounds. If I lost half my body weight, I’d still be considered obese.
Good Luck with That Page 7