Conversations with the Fat Girl

by Liza Palmer

  Peregrine steps out of the bathroom and straightens her shirt. I am holding on to that can of chocolate syrup like it is my firstborn. And yet I’m a little cocky. How could I not take that personally? I await her epiphany. She purses her lips and looks off into the distance.

  “I’d better get back,” I say, turning.

  “Ahhhh, sweet pea, he’s an asshole—you’re just so sensitive. Just think about what I said.” Peregrine sighs.

  Unbelievable.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Me and Marcus Aurelius

  After Cal, I was accepted at San Francisco State University’s museum studies program. I’d majored in art history at Cal and was so dedicated to the restoration and preservation of great art that I decided to make that my career. I was good at it. My obsessive attention to detail and ability to work long hours, without interruption, put me at the top of my class. I went back to Pasadena after those years excited and ready to take my place in the working world. I found the job at Joe’s a few weeks after my return from the Bay Area. I told myself I would apply to jobs in my field throughout that summer and be out of there by fall. I applied over and over again and was rejected. I kept going to interviews and sending résumés, but I was still working at Joe’s as I celebrated Thanksgiving with my family. I gave up easily and far too soon. Joe’s was just easier.

  The coffeemaker begins brewing as I wake up the next morning. I feel relieved that it’s my day off, but dread that it will be spent sifting, cleaning, and readying for the big move. I start in the kitchen, the room with the most things I can live without for the next few weeks. I decide to pick up a paper this afternoon and start the phone calls to prospective landlords.

  I pack various cabinets of pots, pans, cookie sheets, and most of the dishes. I am beginning to get into the deeper recesses of the cabinets. I find old tape recorders, videotapes, and other knickknacks I can’t remember having. After finding enough stuff I haven’t seen in forever, I go outside, drag in a plastic trash can, and begin to maniacally toss everything I haven’t used in the past year. I feel lighter but sad for a bygone era that is now being dragged out trash can by trash can. In another cabinet, I find shoe boxes of pictures that tumble out at my feet. I have apparently been stuffing them in the cabinet and not in the shoe boxes for some time now.

  To open or not to open? That is the question. A shoe box filled to the rim with old pictures and memorabilia is an invitation to open Pandora’s box. I pull off my head the old baby hat that I’ve been wearing since I packed the “hat drawer” earlier this morning and settle in.

  Old school pictures and candid photographs take me back to a time I don’t want to relive, just as I knew they would. Flipping through them, I feel teleported to that world: Olivia and I the day she got her first car, our college graduation from Cal, and the day Olivia, my sister, and I went up to the mountains when we saw it snowing on the news—we just packed up and started driving.

  Pictures of Olivia and I in our early twenties in San Francisco and Washington, DC, take up most of this shoe box: Olivia and I at one of our many outings at the Golden Gate Bridge. Olivia and I lunching in Tiburon. Olivia and I toasting with Blue Hawaiians at a Georgetown bar. I remember that night—the Blue Hawaiian night—the first time I stayed with Olivia and Adam in their apartment.

  I was deep into my third year of the master’s program at San Francisco State and trying to get used to a San Francisco without Olivia. I met Olivia and Adam at a Spanish tapas bar in DC for dinner after flying in that afternoon. As I walked into the restaurant, I couldn’t miss the two of them. She was stunning in her white pantsuit with bright yellow pointy heels, but she paled in comparison to how impossibly beautiful Adam was. That night, he was wearing a black suit with a brilliant blue buttondown shirt, which opened to reveal his perfect chest. His golden hair was cut short and moussed to perfection. Upon my arrival, Adam stood to greet me. I remember my breath catching. I’d forgotten how tall he was. When I gathered my wits again, I ordered a sautéed mushroom appetizer. I remember thinking that if I just ate the mushrooms, I would not officially be going off whatever diet I was on that night. The mushrooms tasted great, and I felt even better for sticking to this new mysterious mushroom diet I’d discovered.

  After dinner, Olivia, Adam, and I moved to a bar in the Foggy Bottom district. I bought drinks we heard other people ordering and then we saw them. Two girls, who looked like they were having the best time, had beautiful neon-blue drinks in huge, oversize hurricane glasses in front of them. Olivia and I got the bartender’s attention, pointed to the girls, and babbled something like, “Gimme, gimme, them blue drinkies.” He presented us with two of our very own Blue Hawaiians. We toasted, giggled like schoolgirls again, and I drank. And drank. They tasted like candy, so I ordered more. And more. The only thing I really remember is getting up early the next morning to the undeniable gurglings of a hangover. I was in Olivia and Adam’s tiny apartment sleeping in the living room on a camping mattress Adam had loaned me. Olivia and Adam slept in the only bedroom, which I had to quietly pass through to get to the only bathroom. As the hangover found its legs, I found I was losing any control over holding anything down. In a panic, I decided to take a shower, figuring I could throw up all I wanted and they wouldn’t hear.

  I creaked open the bedroom door to find Olivia sleeping in a queen-size bed all by herself and her brand-new fiancé, Dr. Adam Farrell, sleeping in another queen-size bed right next to it. There was a large sleeping bag clipped to the window blocking all natural light. Adam lay there with blankets pulled to his perfectly chiseled chin, bright orange earplugs tucked tight, and a black sleeping mask. I was paralyzed, but I feared that throwing up while staring at the sleeping couple might be a little unnerving for all of us. I padded through the bedroom toward the bathroom, where I vowed never to drink again.

  At breakfast that morning at a local coffee shop, Adam left Olivia and me at the table in search of a Washington Post. I stirred my coffee, pushed up my glasses, and never made eye contact with Olivia. My head was killing me. I felt almost too nauseous to drink coffee, which has never since happened, thank God. Olivia smirked across the table and busted me about my “rough morning.” I smiled. It hurt. She showed no signs of our previous night. Thinking back, I was the only one ordering the blue drinkies. That would explain this morning. I apologized for bothering their sleep, even though they had not awakened. I thought she might offer some explanation for their bizarre sleeping arrangement if she knew I’d seen them. I could hear my spoon hitting the sides of the coffee mug as we sat in silence.

  “He needs his sleep, you know,” Olivia said, cutting her muffin into eighths.

  “Oh. Is that what the . . .”

  “The beds? Yeah. He can’t waste one night’s sleep, you know. It’s so rare that he gets a full night, he just needs to make the most of it.”

  “Oh, that sounds . . . practical.” I couldn’t imagine anything more sterile and haunting.

  “It must have looked weird when you walked in, you know . . . us in different beds?”

  “No, I . . . uh, was a little preoccupied. I didn’t even think twice about it.”

  Lie.

  We never spoke about it again. I sensed Olivia was having a hard time with the arrangement as well. It was the ultimate in Adam not making room for her in his life. She wasn’t even allowed to share his bed.

  The phone rings, snapping me out of my reverie.

  “Hey there, Bobo,” Kate says. My sister has instinctively saved me once again.

  “Hey there, Fatty,” I say, clutching another stack of fun party photos I will feverishly flip through cursing, crying, and regretting. We have this lifelong family game where one of us is fat, Fatty, and the other Bobo, which means “stupid.” The point is to decide which one you are. So if you get called Bobo, then you must respond by referring to the other as Fatty. I have never minded being called Bobo, but full-fledged fistfights have broken out when I was called Fatty.

  “Whatch
a doin’?” She senses something is wrong in the universe.

  “Nothin’ much,” I say as I relive every blue-neon mushroom moment.

  “Then are you free to take Emily and Bella down to Buster’s for ice cream while I go drop some papers off with the scout leader?”

  “Where’s Vincent?”

  “Vincent had to finish up some work today, but he’ll probably be home before me. We could really use the help.”

  I can feel Kate on the edge. She is teetering. The next words out of her mouth are going to be forget it . . . never mind . . . , then dial tone; or forget it, I’ll ask Mom. Then the race is on to call Mom and tell her your side of the story first.

  It’s never about watching my nieces or, as I call them, the girlies. I just can’t imagine making myself presentable right now. I promised myself I would not get out of my favorite outfit all day. If I could just walk around in this gray men’s tank top and these black terry-cloth pants, I would be the luckiest woman alive. I have been planning around this outfit for days now. With this phone call, I will have to put on a bra and panties.

  “Just let me get washed up.” I start putting the lids on the shoe boxes.

  “Don’t say it like that . . . I’ll even buy the ice cream.” Kate’s voice is smooth.

  “Damn right you will, and double scoops, little missy,” I huff.

  I stuff the shoe boxes back into the cabinet and the contents back into my subconscious. I climb into the shower and look forward to seeing my nieces. Kate lives minutes away from Mom in a house she and Vincent bought almost a year ago.

  Sitting in front of Kate’s house, all washed and wearing pants with a button, I curse my sister. Emily and Bella, who have the hearing of bats, run out to greet me.

  Emily wears her hair short this month. At eight years old, she has the kind of courage about her appearance that most women never attain. She’s blessed with flawless olive skin, feathery green eyes, and perfect, thick brown hair; it’s getting harder and harder for me to remember the day Kate first brought her home from the hospital.

  Bella looks like she’s right out of Central Casting for the Little Rascals. Her alabaster skin is dotted with dirt, snot, and whatever else she’s been rolling around in that day. Her wavy brown hair is cut in a short bob while her newly self-cut bangs show off her huge sky-blue eyes. Her knees have permanent Band-Aids, and she always wears her favorite red cowboy boots I gave her for Christmas.

  “Hey, crazies,” I say.

  “No, you’re crazy,” Emily says.

  “What you do?” Bella’s voice somehow never evolved past that of a raspy seventy-year-old smoker. I always feel I should make it a double when I talk to her.

  “Well, I was going to go to Buster’s and thought that maybe your mom wanted to come with me. Can you guys hang here for a while?” I say, beeping my car’s alarm on.

  “You came to get us, crazy, let me get my backpack.” Emily skips inside with my cleverness floating behind her.

  Kate comes from the house with her wallet, a sheet of paper, and Bella’s kid car seat. Kate and I look exactly opposite from each other. Where I am pushing six feet, she is barely five feet tall. Where I have dark brown hair and brown eyes, Kate has white-blond hair and ice-blue eyes. I tend to have issues about my weight, yet Kate stays at a perfect size 2 no matter what the world throws at her. Pregnancy? She takes yoga and prenatal classes. Second pregnancy? Now she’s teaching the yoga class and is at the top of the phone tree in her prenatal class.

  There is something about our appearance that ties us together enough so people can tell we’re sisters, but it’s nothing you can put your finger on. Kate and I have taken this physical oppositeness and run with it in our personal choices. Kate is a wife and mother, while I have been forcibly single for what looks like it might be a good fifty more years. Kate revels in being a wife and mother and is confident and forward; I have a bachelor’s in art history and a master’s in museum studies but I work at a coffeehouse making minimum wage. I allow myself to daydream about a career, but haven’t mustered the guts to start applying again. I just find myself gazing at my unframed diplomas like they should go out and wrangle us a job.

  “I knew you came for us, too, Maggie,” Bella concedes.

  “We all knew,” Kate whispers.

  Bella climbs into the back, sticking her little pink panties in my face as I fasten her into her kid car seat. We wait for Emily, who needs many accessories to join us this afternoon. I see she now has a new necklace and a fabulous charm bracelet dangling from her tiny wrist as she exits the house. Bella looks on enviously, but she’s cradling her Molly American Girl doll and looks somewhat pacified.

  “Here.” Kate passes me a sheet of paper downloaded off the Internet as Emily settles in her seat.

  “What’s this?” I flip the paper so it’s right-side up.

  “Just read it.” Kate squeezes past me and helps Emily into her seat belt. I fix my eyes on the paper.

  The Getty Conservation Institute works internationally to advance conservation and to enhance and encourage the preservation and understanding of the visual arts in all of their dimensions—objects, collections, architecture, and sites.

  The Getty Museum has an active internship program. Twelve-month internships are offered in several of the Museum’s conservation departments. The internship program is organized and administered by the Museum’s education department.

  “What do you think?” Kate raises herself out of the backseat. It’s those damn diplomas’ fault.

  “What do you mean? What am I supposed to think?” I feel ambushed. This whole ice cream trip is just a con to hand me this piece of paper.

  “I just thought . . . you know . . . it sounds amazing and it’s been a while since you last sent out résumés, right?” Kate says.

  “Yeah, I guess.” I feel like crying.

  I don’t know where the emotions are coming from. I secretly know I’m living half a life at Joe’s. But I get to stare at Domenic two or three times a week and I get to have this dream. The dream is: I’m in the basement of the Louvre. There I am in the center of the room, Walkman on, wearing a basic white T-shirt, a charcoal cashmere sweater, and worn-in jeans—barefoot of course—restoring the David. It apparently fell over in some freak disaster and they have called me in because of my “international reputation.” The curator nervously questions how the sculpture is as I answer him in fluent French. He breathes easy and says he is forever indebted. The door is left open, and I faintly hear someone else enter. It is Domenic. He is dressed in pajama bottoms and an aged Cal sweatshirt. He is holding a steaming mug of Earl Grey tea (my favorite) and his novel that was once at our bedside. He sets the tea at my feet and gently kisses me before settling in with his novel for the night. But the only reason the dream lives is because I haven’t sent my résumé out. If I send my résumé out or make a call on any job openings, the dream will die and be replaced with the reality that I’m not good enough.

  “I called,” Kate says. I am quiet.

  “They’ve got this Marcus Aurelius sculpture. AD ninety-five.” Kate looks away. I breathe in and try to control my emotions in front of the girlies. I stare at her.

  “And what else? Are they paying people? Are they accepting applications? Or do they just want you to apply so they can reject you? Huh?” I try to watch my sailor mouth in front of the girlies.

  “Oh, sweetie. Yes, they’re paying—pretty nicely if I do say so myself. And yes, they’re accepting applications this summer.” Kate is calm.

  “Oh.” Shit. I feel a tear roll down my face. Kate wipes it away. It’s as if the numbness subsides and all the emotion and hope I’ve tried so hard to push down and ignore just erupt.

  “Just take it. I wrote the lady’s name on the back. She’s waiting for your call. The sculpture is being disassembled now, but they’ll need a gap filler and an in-painter by fall.” I flip the paper over. In Kate’s perfect Catholic Nun writing is the name Beverly Urban and a phone numbe
r. Kate has written in parentheses that this is her direct line.

  I fold the paper and shove it in my pocket. The pants are tight, and the inner workings of the pocket are revolting against any new contents. Frustrated, I pull the now balled-up paper out of my “pocket.” Kate sighs. I walk around the car as indignantly as I can and throw the paper on the passenger seat as I pull out of Kate’s driveway.

  “Who’s Marc’s Face and Tell Us?” Bella asks. I throw the car into drive and head down Kate’s perfect suburban street explaining to a six- and eight-year-old about the life of a Roman emperor.

  Once at Buster’s in South Pasadena, Emily orders Daiquiri Ice, pronouncing it Da-kweeri Ice, while Bella orders Pink. I order my usual Cappuccino and Chocolate in a dish with a cone as a hat. That way you can crumble. It’s an art.

  “I’m moving,” I say across the ice cream parlor table.

  “Where?” Bella asks.

  “I’m not sure. I need to find a new home. For me and Solo,” I say.

  I hear myself saying it. I don’t think I really believed it until right now.

  “You don’t know where you’re going to go?” Emily asks.

  “No,” I say.

  “Will you live with Grammy and Papa Russell?” Emily asks.

  “Will I what?” I stutter, almost choking on crumbled bits of cone.

  “Grammy and Papa Russell have a house,” Bella says, with Pink ice cream now on her forehead.

  “Yes, but Grammy and Papa Russell don’t want their twenty-seven-year-old daughter living with them,” I say, stabbing at my ice cream.

  “Why not? It would be like a sleepover. Bella and I slept over one night when Mommy and Daddy went to Fran San Sisco, and Grammy made up two beds for us with pillowcases she got special for us,” Emily says, lifting her napkin to her mouth.

  “She could do that for you,” Bella adds, Pink ice cream now everywhere.

  I try to find some reason that would make sense to Emily and Bella why a grown woman shouldn’t live with her parents. Besides the obvious rant that I’m repeating in my mind about not being a loser, being independent, having a life, and being too old for this . . . I have big plans.