The Fat Girl

by Marilyn Sachs

  “But I like ceramics,” Ellen said. “Don’t you think I’ve improved?”

  One of her pots, a little, tubby, shiny pink one was sitting on the kitchen table with a fat, little cactus plant inside it. We were sitting there, me munching cookies and drinking milk, and Ellen slowly sipping a diet soda. Other tubby pots with shiny glazes had been distributed throughout the house, mostly in the bathrooms, by her tactful mother.

  “Of course,” I said indulgently, “and if you really are enjoying it, Ellen . . .”

  “Oh I am, I am,” she said.

  “Well then, why don’t you just go right on.”

  “Thanks, Jeff,” she said.

  I was bringing Ellen home for dinner that Saturday night. We spent Friday night together, and I kept reassuring her that my mother would like her. It was late when I returned home that night, and my mother had gone to bed. There was a note from her telling me not to eat the cheese pie in the refrigerator, that it was a low-calorie one she was planning to serve for dessert on Saturday night when Ellen came for dinner.

  Saturday morning, Wanda was coming over at about ten to pick up her things. I had to leave the house at eight thirty to be at the hardware store by nine. My mother was still asleep, which was surprising. Usually she gets up early every day, even on weekends when she doesn’t normally work. I tiptoed around the house, and carefully closed the door when I left for work.

  My father was waiting for me in the hardware store when I returned from lunch at one o’clock.

  “Jeff,” he said, “can you come outside? I need to talk to you.”

  I followed him outside the door. Wanda, I figured, it had to be Wanda. His face looked grim. She was giving him a hard time. Good, I thought. Now he’s getting a taste of her moods and bad temper.

  “I’m very sorry to tell you this, Jeff,” said my father, “but when Wanda and I got to your house . . . Well, Jeff, it’s okay now . . . she’s going to be okay . . . But your mother, we found your mother . . . She . . . she’d taken sleeping pills . . . She tried to commit suicide.”

  I must have staggered, because he put his arms around me. I could smell his sweat, and I remembered how I used to smell it when I was a little boy and he’d held me in his arms.

  “It’s all right, Jeff. Why don’t you take off the rest of the day? I’ve got my car here and we can go back to my house. Wanda’s there. She’s been pretty upset, but she’ll feel better when she sees you.”

  “Where’s Mom?” I said.

  “At the hospital. She’s all right now, Jeff. The doctor said . . .”

  “I want to see her.”

  “Okay, Jeff, I’ll take you there. They’ll keep her there a week or so until the doctors feel she won’t do it again. I don’t know if she’ll even be awake now, but I guess you can see her.”

  She was awake—barely, lying there, small and dark, with a smile on her face.

  “Why did you do it, Mom?” I said, trying not to cry. My father was waiting for me outside in the waiting room. I took her hand. It felt cold. “Why, Mom, why?”

  Her hand began patting mine. She didn’t say anything. She just smiled and patted my hand.

  “Just because that little bitch, Wanda, went away? Is that why, Mom?”

  “No,” she whispered finally. “No . . . maybe . . . yes . . . but it wasn’t your fault, Jeff . . . Don’t feel bad . . . You’re a good boy . . . Don’t feel bad.”

  The nurse made me leave, but I told my mother I’d be back the next day.

  “Pick up some things,” said my father, “and we’ll go to my place. You’ll stay with us while she’s in the hospital. Later when she comes out, if she comes out, I’m not sure, Jeff, but maybe you’d better plan on staying with us.”

  “No,” I told him. “I’m not staying with you. And I don’t want to see Wanda. It’s her fault. If it weren’t for her, Mom never would have done it.”

  “Don’t say that, Jeff,” my father said, putting his arm around me as we walked out of the hospital. But I pulled away this time. “Jeff! Jeff!” said my father. “She’s a very unhappy woman. She always was. Nobody can change that—not even you. And you know—I don’t want to criticize her—but for a mother to lay this kind of trip on her own child! Do you know what Wanda’s going through now?”

  “I don’t care what Wanda’s going through,” I shouted at my father, “and I don’t want to see her. Just take me back home—my home! That’s where I want to go.”

  He argued, but he couldn’t shake me. We drove around while we argued. Then we ate some pizza and drove around some more. Finally, the two of us came back to my place. I kept telling him he could leave me, but he said no. I didn’t want him to know it, but I was afraid to stay by myself and I was glad he stayed over. He slept in Wanda’s bed, and at night I woke up shaking with terror for the first time in weeks. I walked past her room and looked inside. He was asleep—my big father in Wanda’s small bed. He didn’t belong there. He had no right sleeping in my mother’s house. It made me angry seeing him there, and I wondered what would happen if he woke up. Would he know I was scared? Would he put his arms around me and tell me it was going to be all right-that everything was going to be all right?

  But he didn’t wake up. I walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and saw the low-calorie cheese pie wrapped carefully in plastic paper. I had forgotten all about Ellen. I ate half the cheese pie and thought about Ellen. After a while, I calmed down and was able to go back to bed.

  My father refused to leave the next day unless I came with him or found someone to stay on at the apartment with me. I called my Aunt Lisa, Mom’s younger sister, and told her. She wanted me to come and stay with her and Uncle Roger in Kensington. I refused. My father was talking to me all the time I was talking to my Aunt Lisa. I couldn’t hear either one of them. Finally, I handed him the phone, and he and my aunt talked while I wandered around the kitchen. I was hungry and I opened the refrigerator as my father said, “Sure, Lisa, that’s right. You understand I don’t want to leave him, but he won’t come with me. Sure, Lisa, thanks, Lisa . . . I sure appreciate . . .”

  There wasn’t too much in the refrigerator aside from the half of the low-calorie cheese pie. Ellen! I had to call Ellen. She must have sat around waiting for me the night before, wondering what had happened.

  “Okay,” my father was saying into the phone, “why don’t we meet you over at the hospital?”

  “Dad,” I said, “I’ve got to make a call.”

  “Sure, Lisa . . . in about an hour and a half . . . Sure, Lisa . . . Goodbye.” He hung up and began explaining to me what my Aunt Lisa had said to him and what he’d said to her.

  “Just a minute, Dad,” I told him. “I’ve got to make an important call.”

  Ellen answered after one ring. “Hi, Ellen,” I said. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t call you yesterday. Something happened—my mother—well, she’s in the hospital. She’s all right now, but it was kind of tense here, and I’m sorry, Ellen, I just forgot.”

  “That’s all right, Jeff,” Ellen said. “I knew you’d call. My mother said—well, never mind what she said. But I knew you’d call.”

  My father was sitting in the kitchen waiting for me to finish, so he could tell me the arrangements he and my Aunt Lisa had worked out. He was pretending to be looking at a magazine and not listening to me, but I knew he was. I wanted to tell Ellen how much I loved her, and that she’d never have to worry about me standing her up. I felt all choked up at the way she trusted me so completely, but my father was sitting there, pretending to read a magazine. So I just said, “You never have to worry about me, Ellen. I can’t talk now, but I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

  “I’ll be here, Jeff,” she said.

  Aunt Lisa met us at the hospital. She was carrying a plant, and she told me she’d stay on with me at the apartment u
ntil my mother returned. She and I both went in to see my mother while my father waited outside. My mother was sitting up in bed, her hair combed, her face carefully made up, that little smile still there.

  “Lisa!” she said when she saw my aunt. She wrinkled her nose as if something smelled bad.

  “Hi, Sue,” said my aunt. She kissed my mother, and the two of them smiled carefully at each other.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said, and waited for somebody to say something.

  “Well,” said my aunt finally, “I thought I’d never get here. You should have seen the traffic on the bridge.”

  “It’s always like that on Sunday,” said my mother.

  “But not like today.”

  “Lisa, have you got an emery board?” my mother asked. “One of my nails broke this morning.”

  Neither of them said anything about my mother’s suicide attempt. My mother asked after Uncle Roger, as if she’d just seen him, and my aunt told a couple of funny stories about some of the customers in her sporting goods store.

  “How about a milk shake, Sue? I bet the food here’s atrocious.”

  “I’m used to hospital food,” said my mother, “but my throat is awfully dry.”

  “Well, I’ll just run down to the coffee shop. What about you, Jeff? Would you like a milk shake too?”

  “No thanks, Aunt Lisa.”

  “Soda?”

  “Nothing thanks. But why don’t I go and get it?”

  “No, no, no! It’s my treat.”

  “She doesn’t want to be alone with me,” said my mother after Aunt Lisa had gone. “She’s embarrassed.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Mom.”

  “She’d never do anything so crude—not her—with her fancy house, her doting husband, and all her money. She never even had kids because she probably thought it was vulgar.”

  “Mom, Mom . . .”

  “Whose idea was it to call her?” my mother snapped. “I bet it was your father’s.”

  She wasn’t smiling anymore. Maybe it was just as well. Maybe things finally were going to get back to normal.

  fourteen

  My mother remained in the hospital for a week. I went to see her every day, and so did my Aunt Lisa. We went at different times. I don’t think she complained to my aunt about me. Maybe she did. I don’t know. But she certainly complained to me all the time about her.

  “She always had all the breaks,” my mother said. “Life’s been easy for her.”

  “I don’t know how you can say that,” I told her. “First of all, you know she had polio when she was a child, and she still has a pretty bad limp.”

  “Big deal!” said my mother. “Everybody was always sorry for her, because they thought she was so helpless. She got all my mother’s attention, and everybody in the family always said ‘poor dear,’ and ‘wasn’t she something to manage in spite of her handicap.’ Bull! It was because of her handicap that she got all the breaks.”

  “Well, she really cares for you, Mom, and she’s been wonderful. So has Uncle Roger. You know how hard it is for him to manage without her at the store, but he says she should stay on here as long as we need her.”

  “I don’t need her, and I don’t want her pity either, you hear me, Jeff? I want her out of the house when I get home.”

  “Mom, Mom . . .”

  “And how come Wanda hasn’t been to see me? She sent me one lousy get well card and that’s it.”

  “I don’t know, Mom, but I’ll call her when I get home.”

  I hadn’t spoken to Wanda since the Saturday my mother tried to kill herself, but my father called me at least once every day. I told him that Mom wanted to see Wanda, and that shut him up for a change.

  “Dad?”

  “I know, Jeff, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, you know Wanda’s been taking it pretty hard. She’s been going for counseling, and I think maybe for the time being . . . until she feels a little better . . .”

  “Look, Dad, Mom’s the one who’s in trouble. Let me talk to Wanda.”

  “No, Jeff, not if you’re going to make her feel bad. She’s been through enough.”

  My father was only worried about Wanda. All he could think of was how Wanda was suffering. Didn’t he care how I was suffering? Here I was hanging on to the phone trying not to break down and start bawling. Nothing I said made any difference at all to him. Wanda was the one he liked better—the one he fussed over the most. And now she was living with him and going out to Farrell’s for ice cream and crying on his shoulder and smelling his warm, sweaty, comforting smell.

  “Jeff?”

  It was like my mother and Aunt Lisa. The way my mother felt about Aunt Lisa, Wanda always had all the breaks too. Even my mother—she must have loved Wanda the best too, if she needed to kill herself just because Wanda took off.

  “Jeff, are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I really don’t want you to make Wanda feel bad. I know you feel bad too . . .”

  “No, you don’t,” I said. “You don’t know anything about me.” I hung up and took the phone off the hook.

  Aunt Lisa tried, but she wasn’t much help either. I was glad she was there at night, when I woke up with the shakes and heard her deep, even breathing coming from my mother’s bed. But during the day, I knew that she was an ally of my father and that he’d been coaching her.

  “Wanda wants to have dinner with us tonight,” said my Aunt Lisa. “I thought we might all go out to that nice little Japanese restaurant on Judah. Maybe Roger can join us and your father too.”

  “Sorry,” I told her. “I have a date with my girlfriend.”

  “Don’t be like that, Jeff,” said my aunt. “Don’t go blaming Wanda for what happened. If you start blaming, it’s hard to know where to stop, Maybe you could blame me, because your mother and I haven’t been in touch for over a year. Maybe you could say it was your father’s fault, because they were divorced, or your fault, because you weren’t home that morning. It can go on and on and never stop.”

  “I really do have a date with my girlfriend,” I said.

  That was the only good time for me—when I was with Ellen, my big, fat, loving, happy Ellen. And she was happy now. Because of me. Maybe I couldn’t do anything right with my own family, but with Ellen I couldn’t do anything wrong.

  She didn’t know the truth about my mother. I only told her that my mother had passed out and was undergoing tests in the hospital. She didn’t ask me any further questions.

  Ellen was going to Weight Watchers now. She had lost twenty pounds and was growing impatient.

  “It’s slowing down,” she complained. “I’m eating even less than I did when I started out, but I’m only losing a few pounds a week now.”

  “There’s no hurry,” I told her.

  “Yes, there is,” she said. “You’re forgetting that the prom is May 28th. I want to lose eighty pounds by then. That’s only four months away.”

  Ellen kept talking about the prom. When she first mentioned it to me, I said no. Nothing and nobody was going to get me to go to the prom. She didn’t argue, but I could see she was disappointed. Then I began thinking. I began thinking about her in the shiny, gold caftan I’d seen in Lady Bountiful. We could come late to the prom and maybe everybody would be dancing as we began descending the stairs into the main ballroom. I’d coach her, and she’d move slowly, gracefully, magnificently, one step at a time. Maybe she would be wearing some kind of gold ornament in her hair and heavy gold bracelets on her arms. Her face would be radiant with smiles, and when she looked at me with those big, adoring eyes, everybody would be able to see how much I meant to her.

  So I told her we could go, and all the lights went on in her face. I told her a
bout the gold caftan. “Like in a fairy tale, Ellen. You’ll be all in gold.”

  “But Jeff,” she said, “I won’t need to wear a caftan by then because I’m going to be thin.”

  Thin? I burst out laughing as Ellen looked at me solemnly.

  “What’s funny, Jeff?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, Ellen,” I told her, patting her soft, fat cheek. “It’s just hard for me to think of you as thin.”

  “But I will be, Jeff,” she said. “You’ll see. I will. I really will.”

  “It’s okay, Ellen,” I told her. “I love you just the way you are.”

  “Do you really, Jeff?” she said, watching my mouth again. “Do you really love me—I mean, as much as you used to love Norma?”

  “Of course, you big silly. Of course I love you as much as I loved Norma. More than I loved Norma. More than I ever loved anybody. I’ll never love anybody the way I love you.”

  The good times with Ellen got better and better. I started sleeping through the night again. I even went over to my father’s house and made up with Wanda. She looked smaller than I had remembered. Poor Wanda! I felt sorry for her. Poor Mom! Poor Dad! I was sorry for all of them, because I was safe and very high on Ellen.

  My mother came home from the hospital, and Aunt Lisa offered to stay a few more days. My mother said no. She said some other things too, so that my aunt was barely speaking to her by the time she left. I helped her carry her things downstairs to her car, and she hugged me hard before she drove off.

  “Don’t forget, Jeff. Call me if you need me.”

  “I will, Aunt Lisa, and thanks for everything.”

  “Tell your mother I’ll give her a ring later.” She shook her head. “I guess I’ll just have to control myself and not get sore.”

  “She doesn’t mean anything, Aunt Lisa. That’s just the way she talks.”

  She smiled and patted my arm. “I’ve known her longer than you have, Jeff. Long enough to know she does mean it, but maybe it’s better for her when she gets it out in the open.”