“I’m fine, Grandpa.”
“Helluva party, huh, sweetheart?”
“It always is,” I said, trying to sound cheerful.
“Better be, cost me a bundle!” Grandpa said. “Hey, did you try that smoked salmon? It’s damned good!”
“I’m on a diet, Grandpa.”
“Coulda fooled me, from the looks of ya!” he boomed. Then he hugged me. “Aw, I’m just kiddin’, kitten. Now there’s just more of you to love!” He hugged me again, winked at Jett, and went off to dance with Grandma, a tiny woman who lived in my grandfather’s oversized shadow.
How could he say that in front of Jett? I fought back tears of embarrassment. But I would not cry. I would not.
“Lara?” Someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Mrs. Armstrong, my beauty pageant coordinator.
“What are you doing here?” I blurted out
Her eyes took in the horror that was me. “Your mother was kind enough to invite me.” She reached out and gently touched my arm. “Sweetheart, what happened to you?”
I stumbled away from her, from Jett, from everyone. I ran upstairs to my bedroom. I could hide in my bathroom and cry where no one could see.
A lot of coats were piled on my bed, and someone’s fur had fallen to the floor. As I went to pick it up, I heard voices in my bathroom. The door was open a crack and I could see the edge of a silver dress I recognized, and one slender leg. I knelt behind the pile of coats and peeked out.
“I just couldn’t believe it when I saw her!” exclaimed the woman in the bathroom with my mother. “How could you let it happen, Carol?”
I knew the voice. It was my mom’s friend Elaine Hirschbaum, who had moved to Nashville from Los Angeles with her doctor husband three years before.
“What am I supposed to do, lock up all the food in the house?” my mother’s voice replied.
“You know it can’t be easy for her, having you as a mother,” Elaine said.
“I happen to be a very good mother—”
“Oh, I know that,” Elaine said. “I just meant I think she feels competitive with you, that’s all.”
“Look, this is not my fault—”
“No need to get so defensive, Carol,” Elaine said.
“I just don’t know what to do with her anymore!” my mother moaned.
I saw the silver skirt and the leg move, and now I could see my mother’s cheek resting on Elaine’s shoulder. They were hugging.
“Hey, now, don’t get so down about it. At least it’s not you who got fat, huh?” Elaine said.
My mother laughed through her tears. “God, Jimbo would kill me.”
“How are things with you two?”
“Great!”
“Well, thank God for that, anyway,” Elaine said. Her head turned so that she was facing the mirror. “This lighting makes me look like death. I look like I’m carrying my luggage under my eyes. Getting old is the pits, Carol. But at least I’m not fat.”
“Maybe I need to get Lara some counseling,” my mother said nervously.
“Maybe?” Elaine echoed dryly.
“Jimbo doesn’t believe in it,” my mother explained.
“Well, honey, he told you he doesn’t believe in having affairs, either, but that didn’t stop him from having one, did it?”
“That’s just a vicious rumor, Elaine.” They started out of the bathroom, and I fled. It was all just too horrible. I ran down the back stairs, way from everyone and everything. I wanted to run into the snow and disappear. I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up.
I stood in the backyard, the snow swirling around me, and I didn’t feel a thing. How could I? Everyone was shocked at how I looked. My mother had invited Mrs. Armstrong to the party to try shame me into losing weight. People were spreading lies about my father. I hated myself and I hated my life.
“Hey.”
It was Jett. He put his leather motorcycle jacket around my shoulders and turned me to face him.
“I saw you come outside,” he told me. I began to shiver and he slipped my arms into his jacket, then cupped my freezing hands in his.
“I just heard … something terrible,” I managed to get out, my teeth chattering.
“What?”
I couldn’t tell him. It seemed so disloyal. Besides, it couldn’t possibly be true.
And then something flashed in my brain. Me, at about age eight, lying in my bed, late at night. Mom and Dad fighting in their room—loud, scary voices, vicious words, something about Grandpa’s money. Bitch, he had called her. Bitch. Then she yelled that he would never be half the man her father was, and then there was the sound of a slap. And Mom was crying. Stop, I’d wanted to scream at them. Stop. But I didn’t scream. I just put my hands over my ears and I sang to myself and pretended I was winning Miss America and my parents were in the audience and they were so happy.
The next morning, at breakfast, no one had said anything. Mom and Dad had smiled at each other. Everyone had just pretended it had never happened. Including me.
“Lara?” Jett asked.
I blinked. There was snow on my eyelashes. “I can’t tell you.” I gulped hard as he held me. “You can hardly get your arms around me anymore.”
“I can get my arms around you fine,” he assured me. He lifted my chin and kissed me softly. “You’re so hard on yourself, Lara. You need to quit beating yourself up.”
“I just want my life back,” I said, I tearfully.
“Some things change,” Jett said, looking into my eyes. “And some things don’t. Like how I feel about you. That hasn’t changed.”
“But—”
“It hasn’t changed,” he said firmly, kissing me again.
The snow fell on us, and I clung to him. Hanging on to Jett was the only thing that seemed to make any sense.
Thank God he still loved me.
Thank God.
“Lara?”
I put down the magazine I’d been pretending to read and stood up, all 180 pounds of me. “Yes.”
“I’m Karen DeBarge. Come on in.”
I didn’t want to “come on in.” I wanted to scream or spew obscenities or slap her skinny, patronizing face. I wanted to act like the horrible monster that I felt everyone saw when they looked at me.
But that would be crazy. Lara Ardeche was sweet and polite, a pageant winner everyone admired. And she did not weigh, dear God, 180 pounds.
So, clearly I really had turned into someone else, morphed into some hideous, fat monster-creature, full of sizzling rage.
I held the monster at bay and followed Karen DeBarge into her office.
She was in her forties, very thin, wearing a bright red suit with a conservative skirt that fell just below her knees. The ugly blouse she wore under her suit jacket had little cherries parading all over it. Her hair was sort of no-colored, and short. So were her nails. She was a bone-thin total stranger with no taste in clothing, and I was supposed to bare my soul to her, tell her the most intimate details of my fat, messed-up life.
It was April first. It had to be an April Fools’ joke.
“Please, make yourself comfortable,” she said, waving me toward a tweed couch. She sat opposite me in a hard backed chair. On the wall above her was a framed photo of her, some thin guy with an overbite, and their two thin, horsey-looking children already in need of orthodontia. Next to that was a framed diploma from Trevecca Nazarene College’s graduate school of counseling, and a certificate from the State of Tennessee.
“Are you comfortable?” she asked.
No.
I nodded.
“Good. And please, call me Karen. I can call you Lara?”
I nodded again.
“This will just be a brief get-acquainted meeting, and then you can decide if you’d like to pursue this or not, okay?”
I gave my patented nod again.
“Your mother mentioned that you’ve been having some problems you might want to discuss. But I’d like to hear from you why you’re here.”
I felt strangled by the rapid pounding of my heart.
“I’ve … gained a lot of weight,” I managed to choke out.
She nodded.
“I used to weigh one hundred eighteen pounds. I’d win beauty pageants. I was homecoming queen.”
She nodded again, waiting.
“Well, look at me!” I blurted out. “I’m some kind of fat freak now!”
“Is that how you think of yourself?”
No, I think I’m walking perfection.
I took a deep breath, folded my hands prettily in my lap, and smiled at Karen’s skinny face. “I work out every single day,” I explained. “My mother found a doctor who put me on a diet drug. Even though I hardly ate, I gained weight, plus it made my heart race. Then he tried a different drug. It made me sick, but I would have stayed on it anyway if I had lost even a little weight. I didn’t. I just gained more. I’ve tried everything and I’ve had all these tests. Nothing works.”
“How are you doing in school?” she asked, changing subjects.
“I get practically straight A’s.”
She nodded. “Homecoming queen and straight A’s. You must be a very hard worker.”
“I like to do my best,” I replied.
She nodded again. “Sometimes it’s a lot of pressure to do your best all the time. How are things for you at home?”
They suck. My parents are ashamed of me.
“Just fine,” I said.
“Tell me about your family,” she suggested.
I ran through the basic family unit quickly. “And my parents are really wonderful. perfect.”
“Perfect?” Karen echoed.
“And my mom is gorgeous. And thin.”
“How do you feel about that?”
I swallowed the monster feelings of rage and tried to answer her question. “I used to always think it was great. Everyone said I looked just like her.”
“And now?”
“And now … I don’t look like her anymore.”
“How do you feel about that?” she asked again.
“How do you think I feel?” I replied, my voice rising. “That is a stupid question!”
“I sense you’re feeling some anger,” Karen said.
Well, aren’t you a rocket scientist.
I took a deep breath. I smiled. Control. “Excuse me. What I meant was that the answer to that is obvious.”
Karen leaned toward me. “Sometimes our own motivations are hard for us to see.” She slid one thin leg over the other. My legs didn’t do that anymore. My thighs rubbed when I walked. I hated her and her thin thighs.
“Let’s talk about your dad a little. How do you feel about him?”
He’s so disappointed in me.
“He’s great.”
“What is his reaction to your gaining weight?”
He hates me. He doesn’t even call me princess anymore.
“He encourages me to lose,” I recited dutifully.
“He’d like to see you thinner?”
No, you bony twit, he’d like to see me fatter.
“Yes,” I said sweetly. “Of course. He loves me.”
“And how do your parents get along with each other?”
None of your business.
“Perfectly.”
“Perfectly?”
“That’s what I just said. Perfectly.”
Karen nodded. I could tell she didn’t believe me. She was so sure she knew better.
“Perfect parents, perfect life,” Karen mused. “It’s not uncommon for perfectionistic, overachieving young women who feel great pressure to succeed, to develop eating disorders.”
“But I don’t think I have an eating disorder. I mean, I don’t eat that much,” I mumbled guiltily. “I think there’s something wrong with me—physically, I mean.”
“Your mom mentioned that you’d seen a number of doctors, and you had a battery of tests done to see if there was any metabolic cause for your weight gain,” Karen said. “What were the results?”
Yeah, like you don’t know.
“They were negative,” I admitted. “But … the doctors could have been wrong. Couldn’t they?”
“It’s possible,” Karen said.
You don’t believe me. Humor the fat girl.
“You’re feeling …?”
I stared at her blankly.
“Angry with me for asking you these questions?” Karen prompted me.
“No,” I said. My smile didn’t crack.
“You’re not angry?”
“No.”
“Really? Even though you’ve gained so much weight?”
I wanted to smack that supercilious look off her skinny face. I couldn’t take it one more minute. I stood up. The monster had finally gotten loose.
“Okay, I’m angry!” I yelled, looming over her. “Now that’s a big duh, huh? You sit there, all smug and superior, and you don’t even know me! You’ve decided I have an eating disorder because you think my family is messed up. Well, my family is not messed up. They’re fine. I’m the one who has a problem. I’m not eating, and I keep gaining weight. That’s why I’m here and they’re not, get it? Now, do you believe me, or not?”
“What I believe isn’t important,” Karen said.
“Then what the hell am I doing here?” I screamed.
She looked at me mildly. “Would you care to sit down again?”
I sat. My whole body was vibrating.
“It’s hard to live up to perfection, Lara. You’ve set extremely high standards for yourself—straight A’s, pageants. It’s a lot of pressure.”
She glanced at her watch. “I hope you’ll think about this, Lara. Sometimes it can be more difficult to be from a family with high expectations than from a family that expects nothing at all.”
She stood up. “The weight is just a symptom, a release valve, if you will, for the pressure within. If you’d like to work with me, I think we can go on quite a journey together. Just call my secretary if you would like to set up regular appointments.” She reached for my hand.
Not on your life, bitch.
I stood up, too, pointedly ignoring her outstretched hand, which hung in the air between me and her, at the end of her skinny arm. I knew I should take it. The old pageant me would definitely have taken it, no matter how much I disliked her. The new me looked at it with disdain.
So I won’t win Miss Congeniality. So fucking what?
Karen left her hand there, but turned it palm up when she spoke. “Lara,” she said. “One last thing. You’re not alone.”
I got into the Saturn my grandfather had bought me and pulled out of Karen DeBarge’s parking lot, turning up the radio as loud as it would go. I never, ever, ever planned to go back there. I hated everything about her. The monster-creature me wanted to strangle her and watch her skinny arms plead for mercy.
But it was over, behind me. I told myself not to think about her anymore. Instead I’d think about all the good things that were still in my life.
Molly was still my best friend. And miracle of miracles, Jett still loved me.
Impossible to believe, but it was true. He still seemed to find me beautiful. I just couldn’t figure that out. He joked around, and tried to tell me that there had been different standards of beauty in different eras and that, by today’s standards, Marilyn Monroe was overweight.
In public, now, I found myself touching him, hanging on him in the same annoying way Mom hung on Dad. I kissed him a lot, held his hand, leaned my head on his shoulder, as if to say: Look, I might be fat, but I can still get a cute guy.
The fatter I got, the more Jennie Smith flirted with Jett. In fact, she’d invited him to her indoor pool party the week before, and she hadn’t invited me. I knew all about the party. Everyone at school was talking about it. They all just assumed I had been invited. I didn’t tell them different.
Then, in study hall, Amber had told me that Jennie had told her that she hadn’t invited me. But that Jennie had invited Jett. “I’m te
lling you this as a friend,” Amber had said. “I don’t think it’s right.”
I didn’t ask Jett about it, because I knew he wasn’t going to the party. We had a date that night. He was going to hide the invitation from me, to spare my feelings.
Then, the day before her party, Jennie had stopped over at my house. And she had explained why she hadn’t invited me.
“I didn’t want you to be embarrassed, Lara,” she had told me, all sweetness and light. “I mean, you? In a bathing suit? I wouldn’t put you through the humiliation!”
My hands tightened on my steering wheel as if it were Jennie Smith’s throat. Murder colored my most vivid fantasies.
Lunch. I wanted to eat lunch. I vowed to stay on my diet. Wendy’s had a salad bar. I pulled into the parking lot of the Wendy’s on White Bridge Road, grabbed my purse, and went in.
“Welcome to Wendy’s, can I take your order?” asked a short guy with a blond crew cut and bad skin. I recognized him, but clearly he didn’t recognize me. Jimmy Porter. I had sat next to him the year before in history. He’d had a hard time keeping up, and some of the kids used to goof on him. I’d heard he’d transferred to a private school.
“Just the salad bar,” I mumbled, trying not to make eye contact.
He cocked his head at me. “You look kinda familiar.”
I shrugged and tried to duck my face down into the neckline of my sweater. It was warm out, but it was still too early in the year for the restaurant to use its airconditioning. I felt flushed, and even though I wasn’t sweating, I knew my fat face was candy-apple red.
“That’ll be four dollars and twenty-nine cents,” Jimmy said. I handed him the money, and he looked at me again. “I know you from somewhere,” he said, handing me my change.
I was about to escape with my plastic salad plate when his face lit up with recognition. “Hey, I know! You’re Lara Ardeche!”
A sickly little smile came to my lips.
“God, what happened to you?” he blurted out. “I mean, no offense or nothing, but, jeez-o-Pete!”
Life in the Fat Lane Page 8