Slashing Mona Lisa

by D. M. Barr

  April nervously scraped the polish from her fingernails as she recounted her past, a clue that despite putting up a brave front, the memory still tore her up inside.

  “I weighed about 140 pounds when he left me,” she continued. “After that, my self-esteem hit the floorboards. Before you could say ‘Pass the Cracker Jack’ I was up to 253. I didn’t have the energy to lift my spirits, much less a set of weights. All anyone could talk to me about was diet and exercise. It was like everyone had an opinion, but the only one that didn’t count was mine. At the end of the day, all I wanted to do was put on my size twenty-two swimsuit and drown myself in the Gulf of Mexico.”

  Camarin shuddered in commiseration. First Perri, now April, resorting to drastic measures to dampen the hatred the world had thrust upon them and they, in turn, had thrust upon themselves.

  “You’re so thin now. And you seem so happy. What was your moment of epiphany? What changed to get you from there to here?”

  “Terry, plain and simple. Terry is why I’m alive and here with you today. The thin part? That’s just gravy. I mean, now that I’m happy, I don’t feel compelled to stuff myself all the time, but Terry didn’t tell me to diet. He taught me to love myself.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “When I was at my lowest point, my friends and family hosted an intervention for me, but they didn’t call it that. They called it a shower. I know, weird, right? There are baby showers and bridal showers, but this was an ‘April Shower,’ a party where they ‘showered’ me with suggestions and assistance. Not just lip service this time but real action. Everyone brought something to pull me out of my slump—a Fat Stoppers membership, a year’s pass to Silver’s Gym, workout clothes, a collection of exercise DVDs. But my oldest sister bought me the gift that made the difference—a plane ticket to Cleveland and a week at Terry’s Haven for the Hated.”

  “Wow, that’s one expensive gift!” Camarin recalled the price listed on Mangel’s website at close to two thousand dollars, not to mention the cost of April’s soul, selling out to Mangel and promoting his costly message to the masses.

  “I know, but in the end, it was priceless. I could never repay her enough. I got my life back. Terry taught me everything about respecting myself for who I was, not how I looked.”

  “Well, for what it’s worth, you look great.”

  April blushed.

  “So how long ago did you join the organization? And how did you come to head up his public relations department?”

  “I’ve been on the road with Terry for about a year.”

  Damn, that’s after the murders started. Cross another name off the list, thought Camarin.

  “And I’ve always been good with people and…wow, this is so amazing. No one ever asks about my story, and you seem so easy to talk to. Could I share something with you, off the record?”

  Camarin nodded, slipping the phone off the table and into her jacket pocket.

  “Don’t tell anyone—this can’t go anywhere beyond this room—but during that week? We fell in love. Terry said he never wanted to travel anywhere without me again…and look!”

  She reached into the side pocket of her handbag and pulled out a three-carat sparkler. “We’re engaged! We don’t talk about it because, well, you know how tongues wag in confined spaces. Terry doesn’t want to put people’s noses out of joint or have them think I get preferential treatment.”

  Or let Maria catch on. It’s no wonder he sends her back to Atlanta between speaking gigs. Can’t have these two comparing notes.

  “It’s beautiful. When’s the big day?”

  “We haven’t set an exact date yet. I just hope it’s soon. Sometimes, I’m so scared the weight might come back on and…well, I have my heart set on a size-four wedding gown.”

  “Would it make a difference? Gaining the weight back? I mean, if you’re happy and love yourself no matter what…”

  April’s face darkened, and she grew quiet and stared out the window.

  “April?”

  “I don’t think…I don’t think he’d still marry me.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s this thing he said. We were in San Francisco, shopping for dresses. I found this gorgeous Vera Wang and modeled it for him—I couldn’t believe how stunning it looked on me—and I joked to the salesgirl, ‘I’d better buy it now, before I gain back any weight’—and he said…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Don’t leave me hanging. What did he say?” Camarin couldn’t stand the suspense.

  April’s face contorted as if in great pain, but she forced herself to spit out the words. “He said, ‘Don’t do that. It would be like slashing the Mona Lisa.’”

  That hypocritical fucker!

  “Maybe he wasn’t thinking when he said that. Maybe it just slipped out,” Camarin suggested.

  “No, I don’t think so. Sometimes…I catch him staring at some of the other girls when he doesn’t know I’m looking—Grace, Maria, Evelyn, the heavier ones, you know. And he’s got this expression on his face. It’s almost…disgust. But I must be reading into that, don’t you think, Camarin? I mean, maybe it’s my own jealousy and insecurity. There’s no way Terry Mangel is a fat hater. Am I right?”

  April’s pleading expression pierced her heart. Here was yet another woman teetering on the edge of hope and self-assurance, looking to Camarin to make her whole. And all she could do was either lie to her and leave her languishing in false hope, or tell her the truth and watch her crumble, along with her dreams. She had to say something—but what? Conflicted, a sudden wave of nausea overcame her.

  “Where’s your ladies’ room?”

  April pointed with surprise to the back of the trailer, and Camarin half-ran past the bed, into the tiny bathroom, and kneeled over the commode. The distress that had been brewing since her encounter with Perri Evans assaulted her with a fury, but because she hadn’t eaten since the night before, nothing was coming back up. After five minutes of dry heaving, she heard April knock at the door.

  “I’ve poured you a glass of diet ginger ale. Drink it. It might help.”

  She pushed the door open and accepted the offering, chugging the sparkling elixir until the glass was empty.

  April offered her a hand and helped Camarin to her feet. “Come on back to the commissary. What you need is some plain toast to sop up that upset stomach. You’ve got to be on your game tonight. The second night is always an amazing show.”

  Grateful that the moment of reckoning had past and her opinion was no longer of interest, Camarin followed along, more determined than ever to get to the bottom of this thing and, in the process, bury the mendacious Mangel along with the murderer.

  Chapter 25

  Clad in an uncharacteristically informal gray cotton hoodie, Fletcher’s toned physique was the only feature distinguishing him from the hundreds of Mangel fans waiting in line outside the revival. Surveying the supersized bodies around him, it was clear that Camarin was on point concerning the magazine’s prospective revamp. Surrounding him was a small sampling of a potential audience of millions who craved fashionable offerings beyond the tight-fitting jeans and minidresses that inundated the advertising sections of Trend.

  His thoughts drifted back to Margaret. Toward the end, she’d also rejected the accoutrements of the young and ultrathin, the current readership of his trash publication. Primarily because she’d no longer counted herself among them. Who cared about Q scores and audience opinions anyway? she’d rationalized. Unfortunately, she learned that one person who did care was the owner of the network, calling her five pounds and five years beyond her prime. All her years of dedication were forgotten. The fact that she’d been one of the youngest journalists ever to break stories like the Gulf War, Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez Brothers? Yesterday’s news. The countless, hard-hitting interviews with headline grabbers like Amy Fisher, Heidi Fleiss, Anita Hill? All negated by an excess of ounces and hours. Once you strayed beyond those narrow constraints, what was left for yo
u?

  His heart still ached over her loss. She would always remain his queen of the airwaves. And Lehming Brothers would pay dearly for backing that clueless network exec. As well as for every message they’d sent out into the world warning people they couldn’t participate unless they dressed, smelled, and ate according to their advertisers’ ever-changing whims.

  The ticket queue started moving, and he pulled his hood down farther to blend in with the crowd. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing here or how he could protect Camarin with merely his presence. But the last thing he wanted, other than being recognized, was for her to get mixed up with someone like Mangel. When his empire eventually toppled, Fletcher didn’t want his new princess of journalistic justice to get sullied by the debris.

  * * * *

  Empowered by the knowledge imparted by her new confidante, April, the ‘also engaged,’ Camarin calmed her stomach with toast and tea before accompanying the public relations director back to the same front-row seats they’d occupied the previous evening.

  “Tonight will be very different than what you saw yesterday,” said April. “Terry will come out and warm up the crowd, but he is sooo not the star of the evening. The audience is. Anyone can come up and tell their story. It’s amazingly powerful. You will be blown away, I promise.” She gave Cam a little hug, another reminder of the secret they now shared.

  Camarin searched for any sign of Mangel loitering behind the podium, canoodling with some other unsuspecting, sycophantic employee. But if he was there, he remained out of sight.

  She took a deep breath and thought about Fletcher. Once she uncovered the murderer, she was sure he’d overlook the Evans fiasco, the scoop that got away, in favor of this more explosive exclusive. No one would be able to resist the tale of someone in Mangel’s inner circle spurning the evangelist’s heartfelt appeals of love in favor of a bloodier, less ‘Kumbaya’ reality. The question was, who was that someone? Thanks to April’s confession, she’d had a revelation about how to proceed.

  She leaned over and whispered into her companion’s ear, “Do you think I could get two words with Terry tonight after the revival?”

  “I can’t see why not. He was quite taken with you last night. He had the most wonderful things to say.”

  Camarin wondered what his opinion might be of her after they shared their little chat.

  The room went pitch-black, and again, the music blaring from the nearby speakers assailed her eardrums. Tonight it was the insightful Shut Up! by Simple Plan, its lyrics a plea for an end to personal criticism.

  The audience joined in, creating a thunderous chorus of “Shut up, shut up, shut up, don’t wanna hear it…” that she was sure was loud enough to be heard as far away as Manhattan. When the song ended, a round of self-congratulatory applause filled the tent, which morphed into claps of appreciation and admiration as Mangel took the spotlight.

  “My friends, you know the song. You know the message,” he started as Camarin fought from cringing.

  You lousy, two-faced bigamist-to-be.

  “They criticize us, they try to silence us, but tonight the world will hear our collective resentment. We will douse our sorrows with each other’s empathy and emerge clean, ready to show the world the love we’d like reflected our way. Who here knows how much we spend each year to make ourselves acceptable in the rigid, hypercritical eyes of society? Let me read you some figures.”

  He dramatically pulled out a piece of paper and slowly unfolded it, ensuring that the microphone picked up every crinkle.

  “I can’t estimate how much we spend on clothing, on cosmetics, on deodorant, on retouching our photographs. I can’t put a dollar figure on the hours we spend alone, too ashamed to join our loved ones at family events, afraid our bulk will embarrass them.”

  Camarin felt a ghostly finger, invisibly poking at her shoulder.

  “But what I can tell you is how much experts estimate we spend on weight loss. Sixty billion dollars. Every single year. Let me put that into perspective for you. In 2017, the gross domestic product of Luxembourg was around $59.9 billion. Think about that. We spend more on trying to get thin than the economic output of an entire European country.”

  One of the smallest countries in Europe, thought Camarin, but she had to concede it was still an impressive amount. The audience oohed and aahed their astonishment.

  “And would they have us spend that money on curing the sick or educating the poor? I mean, with sixty billion dollars you could put the entire populations of French Polynesia and Guam— ” He stared directly at Camarin, flashing his most ingratiating smile. “—through all four years of Temple University. If they could get in, that is.”

  The audience snickered and clapped in response to the mention of their hometown college. Mangel was no stranger to working a crowd. But the reference to her heritage sent shivers down her spine. He must have done some digging of his own.

  “No. They expect us to bankrupt ourselves, so we can fit into their predefined image of how we should appear—an image that changes at the fancy of fashion designers looking to cash in on whatever latest trend they create.”

  Camarin wondered if the mention of her magazine was intentional.

  “It’s an economic issue, especially against women’s pocketbooks. Expecting you to fight nature and instead squeeze into jeans designed to fit teenage boys—that’s just a way to subjugate you, keep you from worrying about more important things, like advancing your career, breaking through glass ceilings. How can you concentrate on beating out the competition when you’re busy focusing on the scale?”

  A woman in the audience yelled, “Hallelujah,” and the room suddenly pulsated with private conversations and chatter. Camarin pictured the floor of her childhood bedroom, littered with too-tight clothes thrown down in despair.

  “And it isn’t just the health benefits of a skinny body they’re selling you. Oh, no. Who here hasn’t been convinced that by losing the weight your entire world will improve? That you’d be happier, better liked, and prospective spouses would finally be able to notice the real, incredibly wonderful you? Guess what? You’ve been that wonderful all along. You’ve just been wasting your life, buying into their labels. It’s time to enjoy your food, and yourself, without ever apologizing again.”

  The audience started chanting, “Tell ’em, Terry! Tell ’em good!”

  I was wonderful too. Why did you abandon me, Camarin?

  “You didn’t come here tonight to hear me proselytize,” he said, attempting to redirect the focus to the front of the room. “You came here to listen to each other. Some of you have written to me in advance, asking to address the audience. I’ll call you up first. But everyone else, this tent...” He moved his pointing finger from left to right. “...this is your haven. Your safe place. If you feel inspired, if the spirit moves you, come up. Be heard. Be acknowledged.”

  Someone emerged from the shadows, and Camarin recognized her as the woman who had been snuggling backstage with Mangel during Maria’s speech the evening before. She sported an hourglass figure but could never have mislabeled as overweight. The evangelist introduced her as a psychologist named Alexandra Platis, and the audience hushed as she spun a gruesome saga of her years counseling traumatized women recovering from attempts at extreme weight-loss.

  “Most nearly died. My job was to bring them back from the brink, to convince them that you can’t love a body that’s six feet under.”

  Where I am, Camarin. Where you put me. As Monaeka’s voice competed for attention with Alexandra’s, Camarin began to tremble, enveloped by chills and a cold sweat.

  “The things they went through…” Her voice cracked, and she stopped for a moment, trying to regain her composure. “I’m going to paraphrase from another Terry, this one being Terry Poulton and her book No Fat Chicks, because that’s a book everyone here should read.”

  Alexandra pulled out her glasses and read from her notes.

  “‘Here are some of the ways we destroy our
selves to satisfy others: we wire our jaws shut, staple our stomachs, hack off our intestines, suck our fat out, inject ourselves with the urine of pregnant women, live off powdered drinks made partially from cattle hooves, starve, vomit…’”

  I tried so hard to be a good sister. The word ‘vomit’ prompted a sudden wave of nausea that Camarin fought hard to ignore.

  “We exercise ourselves into exhausted stupors. We take whatever pills they hand us to suppress our appetites, accelerate our metabolisms, drain our bodies of water—forgetting that we are ninety percent water, my friends—and most of these pills that we base our hopes on were never approved as safe. Some of us have died. But whatever they wrote on our death certificates, I assure you that it was the self-loathing, caused by society’s disgust, that ultimately proved lethal.”

  All I needed was someone to talk to, to tell me I was okay. The tingling in Cam’s limbs, the sense of almost choking made her look around in panic, wondering if anyone could save her from the voices, the guilt, the truth.

  Alexandra looked up from her notes and gazed out at the audience. “This is the world of my patients. A world of beggars craving validation, of innocent adults and children criminalized for eating a few more morsels than their neighbors. But it doesn’t have to be your world. And if you follow either Terry’s advice, it never has to be again.”

  The crowd erupted into momentous applause.

  That opened the floodgates of the oppressed, all stepping forward to share. One by one, members of the crowd took the stage, speaking of being bullied, ostracized, dealing with the prejudice against the plump. Unlike Mangel, every speaker was authentic, and with every tear-filled account, Camarin fell deeper and deeper into despair. Male, female, young, old, she saw their lips move, but all she heard were the veiled cries for help. The accusations of betrayal. She felt her years of guilt coming to a head, demanding to be heard and acknowledged.