by Anna Maxted
“You don’t do that to children,” I retort, hooking my feet around my chair legs to stop myself from spinning off into the ether like a deflating balloon.
“Oh, Nat,” whispers Andy. “Did you never say?”
“What do you think?” I say, through clenched teeth. “Excuse me.”
I leave the table, the world spins as I do, but I make it to the ladies’. I want to scream and scream (nothing personal against Tate Modern’s toilets) GET ME OUT OF HERE, but I don’t. I wash my hands first—my mother would be proud—then I lock myself in a cubicle, stoop over the toilet bowl, and stick my fingers down my throat. Jab, jab. It’s violent, vile. Jab, jab. Again. Again, againagainagain. When every last gloop of the dark chocolate tart is up and out, I feel calmer. Not cleansed—I am more polluted than ever and I can feel a hard core of calories clinging stickily to my insides—but having done penance. I scrub my hands, splash water on my face, swill out my mouth. I walk back to Andy, my heart hammering in shock, my tears in suspension at the back of my throat, my hands only a little shaky. Disgusting and messy on the inside, but civilized and presentable on the out. And—no disrespect to Andy—isn’t that what matters?
33
I ATTEMPT A PLEASANT EXPRESSION BUT SOMETHING has changed. I can’t quite fake it. My ever-ready smile is like a mean sheet of wrapping paper applied to a bulky object.
“Are you all right?” says Andy immediately. “Did I say the wrong thing?”
“No,” I say, “not at all. It’s been lovely, I’m just a bit tired, that’s all.”
“Oh sure,” replies Andy, his smile uncertain. “ ‘Lovely.’ Well, do you want to go? I’ll drop you home, if you like.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” I plead, “I don’t want to put you out, I’ll get a cab.”
Andy shrugs and doesn’t offer to drive me again.
I sit in the cab and my thoughts keep knocking into each other. The more I learn about myself, the worse I get. All that pap we’re fed in women’s magazines about self-awareness! I can barely believe the irresponsibility of these people. It’s like prescribing vodka to insomniacs. Or alcoholics. How can it benefit me to realize I hate the people I love?
I swallow and wince. My throat feels like an open wound. Oh yes, my other disgrace. I want to evaporate. Where did that choice new habit come from? I can’t help feel I’m setting evolution back. I’m sorry but I’m not sorry. There was a brief elation, a respite. The gift of blankness before the guilt and loathing swamped me again. I won’t be sick again, though. I am not a bulimic! Those people have no self-control! I’m an organized homicidal maniac sneering at his disorganized peers. And I’m about to accept work at the crime scene! At least at the deli I’ll be under observation. I suppose it’s less of a risk than being at home alone with a fridge. I pay the driver without looking at him, run into my flat, bolt the door, keel into bed, and conk out.
A virgin day. I fling the duvet aside and determine that this morning of pale sun and sharp air heralds the start of a new improved me. No more aberrations. From now on I am the straight and narrow. I weigh a brown portion of bran into a bowl, add a dollop of milk, and pat a scoop of Lavazza Qualita Rossa coffee into the filter compartment of my stovetop espresso pot (a moving-in present from Andy because he couldn’t stand my coffeemaker and its “piss-weak coffee”). Talking of whom. He’s like a dog digging up a rose bed to unearth a skull.
I exhale a puff of air through my nose, and concentrate on spooning sweet soggy cereal into my mouth without gagging. From nowhere, a memory is triggered: Babs, me, and Simon, haring down Brick Lane after a night at a comedy store with Frannie, Babs crying “I’m ravenous!” and screeching to a halt by the all-night bakery, Simon wolfing a hot salt beef sandwich, Babs taking a mammoth bite out of it while driving and saying, “Ik tuck to ga oof of gy outh!” I hadn’t eaten a thing, of course, but now, I remember the tingly smell of the hot salt beef, and the pure silly pleasure Babs felt in it sticking to the roof of her mouth.
I’ve despised and envied people who find pleasure in food, but today I just envy them. Aiming to join them is a bit of a stretch, but this weekend I will attempt to see food as my friend.
Despite this holy intention, I am drawn—like a pin to a magnet—to the ugliest aspects of last night. It’s all very well being drawn to ugliness, as long as you can gaze on it from a softly padded distance. Car crashes, exploding bombs, child murders, dreadfully tragic, yes yes, but nonetheless ghoulishly riveting because someone else died, not you. As my mother once declared, “When you hear about a plane crash you think, ‘Good, that’s that out of the way,’ because these things don’t tend to happen in clusters.” Alas, right now, I don’t have that luxury. Metaphorically, I’ve had both legs blown off.
Still. Andy drove me to it. A man who (might I add, surprisingly for one so comprehensively traveled) doesn’t know the meaning of the word boundary. It’s the one trait he shares with Tony. But I can’t be too harsh. He so plainly wanted to help. He exhibited the scarily earnest air of the do-gooder. And while I know—after a long and illuminating chat with Kimberli Ann on my phone bill—that we try to exorcise the demons of others to placate our own, it’s obvious Andy was bossy in the spirit of kindness. Furthermore, what he turfed up wasn’t all bad. I can now take comfort in the fact Tony never called me Alan.
I smile—partly because I’ve finished the dead-end pilgrimage that is breakfast, and partly because I imagine Babs’s reaction at age twelve on being called Alan. A name that is surely hard to bear, even if you’re male. Andy must be more courageous than I gave him credit for. As I recall, she had a ferocious right hook even then. I smile some more, then stop. In some ways, Andy doesn’t know his sister as well as I do, or he wouldn’t be blithely repeating Simon’s cowardly logic. “It’s irrelevant” is the lousiest excuse I’ve heard since “If I wear one of those I can’t feel anything.”
Babs deserves the whole truth. I’ll ring her today. Not yet though, it’s 10:25 A.M., they’ll be buying sofas or planning the names of their children, or whatever it is married people do. I peel a yellow Post-it from its pack, write in capitals RING BABS, CONFESS and stick it on the wall by the phone. There. For thirty seconds I am warm in a golden glow of piety. Then I remember they’re in Prague and it fades. I’ll just have to wait. Okay. I’ll call Jackie to accept her offer of work. On the sixth ring I realize that Mrs. Edwards will be at work. I’m halfway to putting down the phone when a sleep-raddled voice husks, “Hello?”
“Oh gosh, Andy, hi, it’s me, Natalie! Sorry, I’ve woken you up, haven’t I? Er, sorry about last night.”
“Why?”
“Oh, look, doesn’t matter, I’ll phone back later—I was actually after your mum, to say yes to a job, and when does she want me to start, but I realize she’s probably at the deli.”
“I can tell her—aaaaaaah!” he says, alarming me until I realize this is a yawn. “A-aaah! scuse me, I’ll be seeing her later today. And tomorrow. Waking up now—ahak!—sorry, frog in my throat!”
Normally I dislike being party to other people’s bodily functions, or functionings. Frannie once went through a period, no pun intended, of talking compulsively and interminably about her periods. It was period this, period that, tired today (heavy period), violent headache (heavy period), vicious cramps (heavy period), virulent nausea (heavy period)—she’s the only woman I know who has a regular period once a week and—call me a misogynist, in thrall to my mother, whatever—the incessant newsfeed off Frannie’s Period Information Hotline ultimately rendered me nauseous myself.
However, frogs in throats I can just about tolerate, so long as the word phlegm is kept out of it. Besides, when Andy says “frog in my throat” a resistant lump dissolves in my chest and I think, “Aaw!” Frog in my throat is such a quaint little phrase, so formal, so resolutely uncool, that there’s something innately vulnerable about a person who says it. I can’t imagine, for instance, Dennis Rodman announcing a frog in his throat. He’d probably just s
pit.
“You know,” I say suddenly, “if the parental home is closing in on you, you can always move back into my flat.”
The silence screams. I force myself to count my blessings. I could have said, “The glitterball in my spare bedroom has no one to glitter for.” (You’ll never know.)
“Yeah? You sure?”
As the phrase “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it” is, in my case, a grotesque fib, I restrict myself to “Yes.”
“Er, how does tomorrow morning suit you?”
“Wow,” I murmur, “the pressure must be on.”
“Well, Natalie,” says Andy in a gloating tone, “you’ll find out more about that on Monday at nine. Mum’s on standby.”
“You think they’ll want me to start that soon?” I squeak. “I…I don’t mind, it’s just that Matt, my ex-boss, was going to give me some more work.”
“Oh right, yeah, of course, the bloke who came round last Monday. And we made the Pilates–Sivananda pact.”
Damn you and your computerized memory, I think, as he continues, “Look, Nat, it’s cool. Do what you have to do, and when you’re ready give my parents a day’s notice.”
“A day! Are you sure they won’t mind?”
“What’s to mind?” says Andy. “Tomorrow, then. Back to Primrose Hill, land of little shops and poncy pubs. Thanks, Nat. I’ve still got my key, so don’t hang about if you’ve got something on. Cheers! ’Bye.”
I replace the receiver and cover my mouth with both hands. Andy is coming to live with me again. How did that happen?
Dialing at high speed, I ring Matt at home, and ask him if he’s ever done Sivananda yoga.
He replies, “Piss off! I’d rather drink ten pints and scratch my arse!”
Saturday stretches before me like a yawn. If you’re not obsessed with food, what else is there? What bounces back is a phrase that Alex used in her Pilates class. “Imagine your vertebrae as a string of pearls,” she told us. At the risk of sounding alarmingly sentimental, if not borderline insane, it was an image that touched me (having never imagined my vertebrae in any other term than the plodding but pragmatic “my vertebrae”). While duly respectful of its importance as a body part, I never considered my backbone to be gemstone precious. I jump up and ferret through my bag for the gym schedule.
Three and a half hours later I am lying, jellified, on a blue mat, wondering how an exercise that is—according to Alex—“ninety percent lying down” can be so grueling. Sitting up straight is a killer! Not that I’m complaining, but it is odd. I’ll clock up ten miles on the treadmill and my feet will itch for greater challenges, but Pilates—which is, to all intents, a small step up from sprawling on a sofa eating crisps—wipes me out. I feel sedated. It is very rewarding.
“Oi, Sleeping Beauty. Do you want to go for that drink, then?” says Alex, leaning over me, her wide smile white against her dark skin.
“If you’ve still got time.” I sigh. Alex rolls her eyes.
“I’ve got time,” she says. “See you in the bar in five.”
I blush as I explain my mission because Alex has an unnerving way of giving you her full attention. She is not one of those people whose eyes are forever darting behind and beyond you, in case a more thrilling presence is at large (a habit I almost find reassuring) and she doesn’t interrupt with “right, yeah, sure,” to hustle along your yap so that she can talk. She sits and watches and listens and waits until you’ve said what you want to say. Most unusual.
“So, I’d just like to know a bit more. Before I do anything mad like spend my savings on a course,” I end. (A tad self-consciously as the one time I let slip to Babs that I had savings, she shrieked, “You’ve got savings?” in a tone that suggested this was as bad as keeping a child on a chain in my hall cupboard.)
But Alex nods. “You’re right, Natalie,” she replies. “You have to know what you want for yourself before you can get it. I used to be a solicitor. I started this as a hobby.” Then she hits me with the bad news. It’s not all poncing around on mats. A part-time course in Pilates can take two years. There are several thousand exercises to learn. Anatomy, physiology, sports injuries, rehab techniques. A lot of ex-dancers go into it. It can be hard if you don’t come from a dance background—you know about how the body works if you’ve come from dance, you can look at other bodies and assess them—she had to train for longer, so will I.
As if this isn’t bad enough, there is further slog—1,800 hours’ training before you can take the exam. But I’m not put off, even when she states, “Pilates appeals to a lot of people who hate exercise.” Then she says, “It’s about making the body work healthily rather than exercise for exercise’s sake. It’s customized to the individual. It tries to find a way to make the best of each person: you want them to go away feeling good about themselves.” I am nodding away happily, imagining myself as streamlined as a dolphin (without the fin), when she adds, “It’s about how you feel internally, rather than the external picture.”
At this, I stop nodding and wonder if I really have found what I’m after. We move onto personal chat, and Alex tells me about her background. Her mother is West Indian, her father is English, she has three sisters.
“I’d love to have sisters,” I say with a sigh, but secretly I’ve started to feel uncomfortable. What is it with my friends, Babs, Alex, Andy? I have this creeping sense of being got at—they’re all trying to change me, preaching the case for inner strength. But you can’t spin flax into gold. I drive home, scowling. Pilates makes me feel taut on the outside and calm on the inside. But I have no interest in excavating my soul. Even though, I tell myself, that’s not what she meant. Pilates is not psychoanalysis—it’s lying on the floor with a bunch of geriatrics pretending to be a Concorde taking off, all the better to stretch your lower back.
I walk in the door and see the yellow Post-It instructing me to RING BABS, CONFESS. “Can’t,” I say coldly to the note, “she’s noncontactable,” and scrunch it up. But you’ve found something you love. The voice in my head comes from nowhere, and I freeze. It’s true. When something is perfect, I get an urge to spoil it. When I first joined the GLB, Matt and I would go to the pub at lunch, and while I rejoiced in our friendship, my constant thought was: He’s my boss! What if I chucked my drink over him? I realize I’m halfway to talking myself out of doing something I really want to do because I’m scared. In my bag is a number for a Pilates training course. I’ll ring it on Monday.
I stamp around the flat straightening pictures on walls until I dare admit that while I don’t like to be reminded of how ugly I feel inside, what actually unsettled me was Alex. She’s so sorted, so capable, so at ease with herself. And, despite the Concordes, dolphins, and pearls, I can’t imagine ever being like that. As if to prove my point, I gorge on chocolate, then throw it up.
34
IT OCCURRED TO ME A WHILE BACK THAT YOU can go for months and months without being insulted, then speak to a relative and be resoundingly snubbed three times in the first minute. With this in mind, my mother is not the person I want to hear from at ten past ten on Sunday morning. The memory of yesterday hangs over me like a noose, and my aching spine has less in common with a string of pearls than with a rusty bike chain. I feel fragile, and if my mother says anything less than complimentary I may fragment. At her worst, she is the human version of lemon-scented bleach. Her token nod toward petty sensibilities accentuates the toxic undertone.
“Mum. How are you?”
“Patronized!” ricochets the response. I gulp, and grope through my recent past for possible transgressions.
“W-why?”
“Yumminess, that’s why!” snaps my mother.
I wait, and she waits too. I realize I’ve unwittingly engaged in a theatrical contract and my line—in the tradition of a doofus sidekick—is: “Yumminess? What do you mean, ‘yumminess’?”
“I mean,” shrills my mother on cue, “yumminess, as in ‘Slimwell’s Whole Meal bread—All the delicious yumminess
of brown malted wheat bread but a lot less calories!’ The wretched stuff—advertised on every second page of Lite Weight magazine—until I felt morally obliged to buy a loaf. Morag at Weight Watchers said she swore by it, I might have known she was bluffing! Utterly ridiculous! I’m not surprised each slice is only forty-five calories—each slice is mainly air! I had to eat eight slices to make the tiniest dent! How dare they? ‘Delicious yumminess!’ It’s outrageous, talking down to grown women, taking us for fools! I should have known. ‘A lot less calories’ indeed! How’s that? Not even a child’s grasp of English grammar! I’ve a good mind to write and complain. They’ve even got a Web site! A Web site for a loaf of diet bread! They’re lucky I don’t own a computer, is all I’ll say!”
I giggle. When my mother discards her alien shell and parties with the human race she can be quite likable. Her beliefs are so dissimilar to mine—square nails—not ladylike; fancy car—no money in the bank; L-shaped sofas—common—that on the rare occasions she produces a thought I can relate to, I’m too lost for words to tell her I agree.
“That is quite a cheek,” I manage finally. “How, uh, how is the diet going?”
As the diet’s been going for the best part of twenty-six years with no sign of abatement or, indeed, waistline, this question is a formality. But I’m interested. It fascinates me, my mother’s endless tussle with her weight, so much a part of who she is that her failure to lose more than two pounds in one week without gaining three the next is a warm, restful constant. While her lack of willpower irks me, I’m not sure I could stand her if she was thin. In fact, I feel it’s a mother’s duty to be a little plump. (If they can’t manage a large maternal bosom, it’s the least they can do.) Meanwhile, if I seem contrary, I’m nothing compared to her. My mother’s double standards are such that she can talk happily about her own food fight and bewail mine at the same time.