Skinny

  God, I wasn’t even that thin. I wasn’t as skinny as I’d been believing I was. How I had been relishing the delusion of regressing, of becoming new, of reversing time. I’d been walking around believing that my arms were bony, that my clavicles were standing at attention, that my legs were skeletal, my ass nonexistent.

  I turned sideways. My ass existed. How shameful that I’d been imagining myself skinny, acting skinny, when in fact I was only skinny compared to fat people. The Camp Carolina population had become my point of reference. When Nurse told me that I needed to eat more, I lapped up her concern instead of looking at the facts.

  Fact number one: Nurse was obese.

  Fact number two: Nurse was surrounded by obese people.

  But. But! It was true that there was less of me. It was true that I was smaller than I’d ever been in my adult life. I imagined Mikey grabbing a handful of my ass, the way he often did. “This ass of yours,” he always said. I imagined him seeing me in a couple of weeks and wondering, Where is the rest of you? Where is the part that you used to let me love?

  When I got back to Bennett, when I sat on the stool and heard it squish beneath my weight, I was seeing my body, really seeing my body: There was still a roll in my stomach—diminished, yes, but there. I drank my beer and felt the roll swell.

  “Please tell me what I did,” Bennett said with a sigh. He inspected his thumbnail, then tore off the cuticle with his teeth.

  “Nothing. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  “Don’t be like that.”

  “Why should I have to explain everything?”

  “I would gladly stick up for you. How can you say I wouldn’t?”

  “Well, you didn’t today.”

  “I wasn’t even involved. How could I have? I wasn’t even with y’all.”

  “You could have come outside.”

  “I didn’t know what was going on. What are you so angry about?”

  “Stop asking me that. I’m telling you what I’m angry about.”

  Funny how all lovers’ quarrels resemble one another, how the fight I was having with Bennett felt like the fights I had with Mikey, how I watched myself run for the same arsenal, watched myself select the weapons I hadn’t seen in months, brush off the dust, and take aim like a pro. Funny how Bennett sounded to me like Mikey with a different accent, a different vocabulary.

  Until he reminded me that he wasn’t Mikey. He wasn’t the man who had been loving me for years, who believed in an airbrushed version of me.

  “I’ve had it,” he said, rising abruptly from his stool and fishing his wallet from his back pocket. “I try to treat you right, but you know what, Gray?”

  I set my beer down and looked up at him. “Gray” sounded harsh coming from his lips, like chewing-tobacco spit. “What?” I said. “Tell me. Tell me about how you’ve had it with me. Don’t you think I’ve had it with you?”

  “I haven’t done anything.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I don’t make demands of you. I don’t expect things from you.”

  “We’re fucking!” I said too loudly. “We’re allowed to expect things from each other.”

  “God, you’re foulmouthed sometimes. It’s that Yankee upbringing.”

  “Don’t start on my upbringing. You know nothing about it. You’re being racist.” I sounded like Whitney.

  “You’re going to run back to your life in New York in a couple of weeks,” Bennett said. “I’ll just be some redneck you had some fling with some summer. You think I don’t know that?”

  “You’re making this a fling. You create distance between us on purpose.”

  Bennett threw cash on the bar and stuffed his wallet back into his pocket. “I don’t have to fight with you. I don’t have to listen to you bitch at me, and I don’t have to defend myself. You’re not my wife. Don’t sit there and tell me I owe you things.”

  He picked up his glass and drained his beer. He was gorgeous. He was a man with blue eyes and a perfect body in flip-flops and cargo shorts, in a crisp white button-down shirt and a Hurricanes cap. I looked at the lines in his face and I loved them. I loved the memories in those lines that I would never be a part of—the best soccer game of his life, the day he fell for Camille, the first time he saw his baby’s toes.

  Bennett pulled his keys out of his pocket, gave them a quick toss, and caught them effortlessly in his palm. Then he turned from me without another glance and walked right out of the bar.

  I watched the door for a few moments. When it finally opened, two women walked in wearing shirts that displayed their bellies. They were thinner than I was. They had fake tans. Their skin looked toasted.

  A man beside me said, “Not too bright, that guy. Leaving a beautiful woman like that.” I looked at him. He was two hundred years old. He spoke into his scotch. His head was bald; his spine so hunched, his body was a comma. The sight of him, the reminder of what eventually happened to every living thing, even the most beautiful living things, made me so depressed, I wanted to run outside and jump in front of a speeding car. Bennett would kneel over my body—lifeless, still imperfect. He would be grief-stricken. He would weep and hyperventilate.

  I touched the backs of the man’s fingers. “Thank you for calling me beautiful,” I said.

  What a dumb daydream—getting hit by a car. I didn’t mean it. Not really. Months had passed since I’d longed for death. Besides, if I died, Bennett wouldn’t care for me any more than he already did. Or maybe he would for a few weeks, but in time I’d become a distant memory—a weird thing that once happened to Bennett. In the end, no one would sob, “If only Bennett had given her enough love, she would still be alive.” Instead they would say, “Wow, she must have been really fucked up.”

  I stood and crossed the bar. I opened the door and stepped outside. The night was hot. I could never get used to summer nights. I was always expecting them to disappoint me, to suddenly turn cold.

  Bennett was sitting in the driver’s seat of his car. His window was down. I stood at the door and held the base of the window frame. Bennett’s keys were stabbed into the ignition, but the engine was silent. Keeping his eyes straight ahead, he said, “You know I would never have left you here. Right?”

  “Of course you wouldn’t have. Southern gentlemen don’t leave their ladies at sports bars.”

  He almost smiled. Then he said, “Sometimes I feel like I’m taking care of someone else’s car. I’m watching your boyfriend’s car for the summer so it doesn’t get scratched up.”

  “You’ve scratched me up pretty good,” I said. I touched his face. I took his earlobe between my thumb and forefinger, the perfect skin of it. A child’s earlobe. I leaned in and kissed it. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I picked that fight.”

  “Why do women pick fights?”

  “To get to the other side.”

  Bennett turned to look at me. “Of what?”

  I withdrew my hand. “Never mind.”

  “What happened to fun? Isn’t this supposed to be fun?”

  “It is fun.”

  “Is it? You’re sort of crazy.”

  “What kind of crazy?”

  “It’s like you’re . . . I don’t know, in love with yourself.”

  “Self-absorption is different from self-love.”

  “I don’t know what the hell that means.”

  “Self-absorption has more to do with self-loathing.”

  “Whatever you say, Angeline.”

  “Well,” I said, “anyway. Someone’s got to be in love with me!”

  I saw myself with a microphone, onstage at a comedy club, saying, “Someone’s got to be in love with me.” I could practically hear the silence of the dark and restless crowd.

  Bennett opened his car door and got out. He took me in his arms and pressed me up against the car. He pushed the hem of my dress to my hips. No one could have seen us. Or maybe they could have. It didn’t matter. I wrapped my arms around Bennett’s neck and smelled the summery scent of him. He l
ifted me off the ground. One of my shoes fell and plopped on the asphalt. I pushed the bare sole of my foot up his shin, into the leg of his shorts. I exhaled. It was still summer. The stars winked at us. The nearby traffic sighed for us. The temperature held its breath and promised to hold it as long as it could.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Dear Fat People,

  Don’t judge me. Don’t you dare judge me. If you were thin, you would make the same mistakes; you would have more room in your life, in your personal space, in your clothing, to make mistakes. You probably wouldn’t even call them mistakes. You would be having so much fun shrinking, and so much fun making the things you used to call mistakes.

  Mistakes are rationed. You use yours up on your daily food choices, your daily commitment to a sedentary life. If you lived healthily, if your step had a spring to it, if you picked daintily at your fruit salad instead of scarfing five pastries for breakfast, you could do things like sleep with a man who was wrong for you just because you felt like it. You could walk around his room naked while he lounged in bed and watched you. You could pretend you had no idea he was watching until he said, “Your body is a work of art.” (He would not mean Rubens’s art.)

  You could half-smile and say, “Thank you,” as if you heard this so often, it was predictable.

  You could wear his pale blue button-down with nothing underneath.

  You could stand naked in his giant shoes.

  You would no longer have to settle for comfort over excitement; for contentment over beautiful, reckless unrest. Don’t you want to live to the very edge of life? Don’t you want to live the way everyone’s afraid to? Don’t you know, deep down, that when you are doing what the world calls stupid or selfish—hurting someone for the sake of your lust, loving someone who doesn’t love you, loving with your whole self with no regard for consequences, generally ignoring the reality of consequences—you are actually alive?

  Be honest with yourself for once. This is no way to live—backpacking through Europe one summer, and then holding a funeral for your youth. This is no way to live—surrounded by a fence, your refrigerator stuffed. This is no way to live—as if sex is something that other people do. This is no way to live—sitting in a comfortable chair, eating doughnuts beside some person who makes you feel big and numb.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  It was Kimmy who broke open like a piñata, who scattered her friends’ secrets like hard candy. It happened on a rainy afternoon in the gym during an all-camp game of dodgeball. I was watching Pudge, who was wearing a baseball cap that said PHAT CAMP in red embroidery and white sneakers that Lewis had bought him, the leather so new it hadn’t yet creased. Pudge wasn’t exactly running, but he was throwing and catching, walking to half court, bending down to pick up balls. His wheelchair was a relic from another era.

  Lewis often said, loudly, that Pudge was a charity case, that he lived in the ghetto, that he binged daily on Doritos and ice cream to soothe himself because he feared for his life, for his mother’s life, when he heard gunshots out the window of his trailer. Were there trailer parks in the ghetto? The story sounded suspicious. But Pudge undoubtedly had survival skills—he knew that as long as he hailed Lewis as king, Lewis would treat him like a prince.

  Whenever I spoke with Pudge, my tongue felt heavy and slow, in part because his southern accent was almost incomprehensibly thick, but also because his wide, sad eyes made me hope that he would like me, made me wish that I could save him. He could make a person feel that if she saved him, she would get to be on 60 Minutes and also go to heaven. Lewis took him shopping. Nurse hosted him for long hours in her air-conditioned office. Together, Nurse and Pudge watched television long after Lights Out.

  I saw him throw the ball that glanced off Kimmy’s shoulder. It was just a red rubber ball, partially deflated, but when it hit her, she crumpled to the floor, curled up like a snail, covered her head with her arms, and began to moan.

  It took everyone a few seconds to make sense of what was happening. Bennett blew his whistle and jogged across the gym to Kimmy, where the kids had begun to gather. KJ, who during fair weather stood sentinel at the pool, started waving his arms like a referee calling for a time-out. “Give her air!” he shouted uselessly. “Give her air!”

  I hung back and watched Bennett crouch beside her. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Are you hurt?”

  With her arms covering her head, she wailed, “I can’t take this anymore!”

  Bennett looked up at Nurse, who had made her way over with Lewis and was bent at the waist, peering at Kimmy, her hands on her thighs.

  “Kimmy?” Lewis said. “Do you want to go to Nurse’s office? Maybe you need an ice pack.”

  “I’m not hurt!” Kimmy shrieked.

  “An aspirin? You might need a glass of water.”

  “I just . . . can’t take this anymore!”

  “Take what?” Bennett asked.

  Sheena poked through the crowd. “Kimmy,” she said, getting down on her knees. “Why don’t you come with me? Come on. Let’s go talk.” She looked at Bennett, then up at Lewis and Nurse. “I think she’s just a little homesick. She’s been homesick lately. I can handle it.”

  “Just a sec,” Nurse said. “Sheena, just hold your pretty horses. Kimmy? You’ve got to sit up and talk to us. No one can help you if you don’t sit up and talk. Sit up. Let the blood circulate. Take deep breaths.” She drew a deep breath to demonstrate.

  “I’ll talk to her,” Sheena said. She pulled Kimmy’s arm. “Get up, Kimmy. We’re going for a walk now. Just the two of us. Okay? Get up. Come on, babe.”

  Kimmy pulled away from Sheena and sat up. Her freckles had expanded beneath her tears. “I have to talk to Lewis,” she said, her bottom lip quivering. “Alone.”

  After Kimmy and Lewis left the gym, Bennett tried to keep the dodgeball game going, but no one was interested in pretend conflict, now that there was a real conflict. Sheena, Whitney, and Miss stood huddled together, whispering. Eden watched them for a while, and then started whispering to Harriet, who didn’t know how to engage in friend-whispering, and kept stepping backward, as if the whispers were blowing her away. Some of the boys decided to play H-O-R-S-E, but no one wanted to shoot first. Finally, they started throwing balls at the wall and catching them.

  A few minutes passed before Lewis returned to the gym and called Bennett and Nurse out. A few minutes after that, Nurse came back in and called Sheena, Whitney, and Miss out.

  My group was reduced to Eden and Harriet. I suggested we head back to the dorm. As we walked, Eden asked me, “Do you know what’s going on?”

  “Not really. Do you?”

  Eden glanced at Harriet. Neither of them spoke. But for the first time, I didn’t care to excavate Eden’s secrets. After a month and a half of dieting, I was thinner than I’d ever been. “Have some self-confidence,” I could hear my father saying. And now I did. It seemed absurd that I had ever eaten two packages of Chips Ahoy! cookies in one sitting. Who was that person?

  She was a person who hadn’t met Bennett. And a person who found comfort in the certainty of death, rather than in possible solutions to her problems.

  I would tell Eden about our father, eventually, because it was the right thing to do, but not because my life depended on it.

  Harriet turned to me and said, “I’m di—” but then she closed her mouth and kept walking.

  “Dizzy?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer immediately. We walked on, gravel crunching under our shoes. “I was going to say that,” she said. “That I was dizzy.”

  “But you’re not.”

  “No,” she said.

  “I’m glad,” I said.

  At dinnertime, Lewis came to the cafeteria and asked to speak with me outside. We sat on the steps and he told me the story: Every night after Lights Out, Sheena had been herding Whitney, Miss, and Kimmy out of the dorm and into her car, and driving them to McDonald’s in Melrose for a nightly fast-food binge. Once the weigh-i
ns showed that the girls had gained weight, Sheena had taught them how to make themselves vomit. Whitney and Miss had taken to it. Kimmy just wanted to go home, where perhaps she was fat, but at least no one was pressuring her to stick her head in a toilet and her finger down her throat.

  “You had no idea?” Lewis studied my face. “Tell me you had no idea.”

  “I told you Whitney and Miss were making themselves throw up.”

  “No, no, you didn’t. If you did, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “All right,” I said. “Well. I had no idea they were going to McDonald’s.”

  “Good. Because, Gray, I’ve always thought you and I were on the same side. Like a team. You remind me of women I knew in the seventies.”

  “I do?”

  “Women who did drugs. Really fun, tremendous women. I think you and I will be friends for life. We’re on the same wavelength.” He poked my forehead with his finger. “I’m just sorry you didn’t catch Sheena. But you were asleep. Doing what you were supposed to be doing.”

  I saw myself then, running through the dark to Bennett.

  “I do so much for everyone,” Lewis said. “It never ceases to amaze me, how willing people are to just screw you over when you’re the nicest guy in the world. I told the girls, ‘Lewis Teller is the nicest guy in the world. But when you take advantage of Lewis Teller, you’d better be prepared to pay the price.’ ”

  We stared together at the drab smile of the loop, the green trees that swayed dreamily to silent music.

  “I don’t know why anyone would risk getting kicked out of camp,” I said. “It’s wonderful here.”

  “It is.”

  “I feel so clean here. Even though I’m sweating all the time. It’s like I’m sweating my whole past out. I feel new.”

  “You are new. That’s the thing about my camp.”

  “Are you going to send the girls home?”

  “I should,” Lewis said, rubbing his knees.

  “Maybe Kimmy should stay? Since she’s the one who spoke up?”

  He didn’t respond. “Sheena’s out of here,” he said. “She has until eight o’clock to pack her things and get the hell out. You think I care? I don’t care. I’ll fire anyone. I could run this whole place myself. You’ll see major changes in Whitney, Miss, and Kimmy. Just watch. They were sobbing their eyes out when they thought I was going to send them home. For two hours I let them think they were done here. And then I told them, ‘Okay, I’ll give you a second chance.’ I told them, ‘But!’ ” He shook his finger. “ ‘But,’ I told them, ‘no more of this little clique of yours. You have to start being real participants in the Camp Carolina community.’ I told them, ‘You’re going to have to work your butts off the rest of the summer.’ I told them I won’t tolerate bad attitudes. They were practically kissing my feet.” I looked at his feet. They were white with blue veins, hairy, housed in enormous imitation Tevas. “It was like I had just spared their lives.” He chuckled. Then he grew serious again. “You know why I didn’t send them home?”