Once There Was a Fat Girl

by Cynthia Baxter

  Instead of grimacing or feeling annoyed, Martha just laughed. “Yes. That’s what diets are for, aren’t they?”

  “My goodness. What else have you got up your sleeve?”

  The elements of her life that were most significant— her job, her running, Larry—could not be tossed about lightly as conversational filler, Martha realized. It was too risky to share these things with her mother and her sister; there was nothing to be gained from placing what was important to her under their critical scrutiny. Instead, she opted for an easy out.

  “Well,” she said slowly, stirring the ice cubes in her glass with the plastic straw. “I’m thinking of getting my hair cut.”

  “But Martha!” her mother protested. “Your hair is lovely! It’s so thick It’s your best beauty asset.”

  Mrs. Nowicki’s habit of talking like the unobtrusive copy on the fashion spreads of Mademoiselle always made Martha uncomfortable. “Leave it. It’s just getting long. Like the way you wore it in high school.”

  Martha shifted in her seat. She told the iced tea glass, “But it’s so long that it’s hard to take care of it.” She spoke of her hair as if it were a puppy who was unexpectedly growing into a giant Doberman. “I’m thinking of getting it frizzed up.”

  “What?” Mrs. Nowicki asked sharply. Martha couldn’t tell if she was reprimanding her, or if she simply had forgotten to listen.

  “I said, I’m getting it frizzed.”

  “Ugh,” Susan said disgustedly, toying with the strap of her lavender halter. “Those girls with frizzy hair look like Bozo the Clown.”

  “You’d regret it, Martha. You know you don’t look well in full hairstyles. They make your face look... rounder.” Her mother wrinkled her nose.

  “I don’t know where you come up with these things, Martha,” Susan interjected crossly. “You never cared about how you looked before.”

  Martha looked up quickly. “How do you know what I cared about, Susan?” she asked.

  “Well,” her sister mumbled, suddenly embarrassed, “I just meant that... you always seemed more interested in other things.”

  “You mean things like food, don’t you.” Martha watched her sister’s face for some reaction.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she sighed, feigning exasperation. “You’re always so defensive. It’s not my fault you were always...”

  “Always what?”

  “Always fat. I don’t know why you’re carrying on so,” Susan said, staring off at the fence as if she had suddenly lost interest in the topic of her sister. Martha watched the scene with surprising objectivity. It amazed her that her sister’s disdain meant so little to her.

  “At any rate,” Mrs. Nowicki piped up, oblivious to the interchange that had just transpired, “a permanent would ruin your hair. You know how drying they are. Susan is perfectly happy to keep her hair natural.”

  “Susan happens to have perfect hair,” Martha said evenly. Susan was startled by this unexpected compliment. She added, “Blondes can get away with anything.”

  “Well, there is some truth in that,” Mrs. Nowicki said slowly, gazing at her older daughter. “Susan’s hair is lovely just the way it is. Of course, she has the cheekbones ... Well,” she tsk-tsked, standing up to bring glasses of melting ice cubes and a pile of crumpled paper napkins into the house, “it is your decision, I suppose.”

  Martha noticed that, once she and her sister were left alone, there was nothing to be said. After a separation of nearly eighteen months, the best Susan could come up with was, “I’d love to go to the beach, but the parking lots are probably full by now.”

  * * * *

  Terror.

  That was Martha’s first reaction as she opened her eyes in the dark room. Where was she? She listened for the shrieking sirens and piercing burglar alarms. There were no such sounds.

  She sniffed the air, seeking a trace of Betsy’s dusting powder, or the charred memory of a Weight Watchers pizza that had met its death in the broiler. The air smelled uncomfortably fresh.

  She looked for the friendly face of her digital clock. It was nowhere in sight.

  Martha was not in her apartment. Where, then? Of all the beds upon which she had lain her weary bones, which was this? She raced through the list, hoping that one would jump out as the obvious answer: college dormitory, Larry’s apartment, Holiday Inn, canvas tent at Girl Scout camp, Eddie’s apartment...

  In the unfamiliar shadows that surrounded her, Martha made out one form. It was her teddy bear. She was at home. Her parents’ home, she corrected herself as she reached for her fuzzy friend, suddenly and irrationally concerned that he might be cold or lonely.

  She tucked Teddy under the covers and gave him a loving squeeze. Where was she in time? Was she six years old, or three, or seventeen? Should she be dreading an arithmetic test, or hoping for a snow day, or looking forward to a class trip to the Museum of Natural History? Was tomorrow the first day of kindergarten, or the first day of college?

  She relaxed as she remembered that she was just a visitor, the reluctant Dating Game partner of the Ghost of Martha Past. Her days as an active participant in the great institution known as childhood were long past. The room was the same, a delicate collage of passive pink and languid lavender. Teddy was the same, a stoic soldier with a firm round stomach and a crooked smile. It was Martha who had changed, Martha who was the outsider. She was grown up now.

  She flicked on the light, unable to sleep in the strange silence of the suburban night. The pink walls of the room glowed eerily in the subdued light of the rosy lamp.

  It was all here, she realized. All the experiences that had made up her life were stacked up here like plates on a shelf. Every stick of furniture, every book, every scratch on the wall was a piece of her. The Jefferson Airplane poster in fading psychedelic colors was a trip to Greenwich Village to see The Fantasticks on her fifteenth birthday. The Wizard of Oz book was a prize for memorizing all the lessons in the catechism for Sunday school. The dark spot on the rug near the desk was a terrifying encounter with a bottle of India ink that left her quaking for days, fearing flogging or deportment into the French Foreign Legion.

  How important all that had seemed at the time. And each had been promptly forgotten, and replaced with new experiences. These were the elements of her existence, yet they seemed now as if they were the fragments of someone else’s life.

  Martha studied the room carefully, and realized that she had never liked it. She liked the things she had added to it herself, but the rest of it—the color of the walls, the frilly curtains, the furniture—seemed like someone else’s taste, superimposed over her own. That had been the case, after all; her mother had decorated the room, when Martha was still too young to read the names of the colors printed on the paint chips. But living in a room that someone else had designed for you was like living a life that someone else had planned for you.

  She got out of bed, feeling uncomfortable, disturbed even, by the room. She was afraid of the dark, at least in this house. She had never outgrown the belief that bogeymen lurked behind closed doors and in the basement with the seldom-used springform pan and the boxes of Tide bought on special and hoarded away. She hunted for her wristwatch and discovered that it was almost four o’clock.

  Four o’clock. The hour of the wolf. Her first inclination, bringing Teddy along with her, no longer seemed foolish.

  Martha and Teddy padded down the stairs, careful not to look left or right. That way, the bogeyman wouldn’t notice them, since, as everyone knows, he is attracted by loud noises and quick movements. As she stood on the bottom step, she forgot, again, how old she was. For a few seconds, she was four years old again, Teddy was a brand-new friend, and she was stealing into her parents’ room to rid herself of the lingering terror of a nightmare.

  Martha was afraid to turn on lights or stumble around. She did not want to wake her parents, or her sister, or the ghosts that hid everywhere, waiting to spring memories upon her. A thought occurred to her: her fe
ar of walking around alone in this house was really a fear of running into herself.

  The kitchen was the safest place to sit. She could close the door to keep in the light and the noise. She plopped Teddy into a chair, apologizing to him for the bright light of the fluorescent bulb. The memories were here, too, even though the kitchen was now blue instead of yellow and a new GE refrigerator had replaced the old. In that silent kitchen, she was fourteen again, just for a moment, up in the middle of the night with menstrual cramps, yearning for someone to make her some tea, wishing for hot sweet rolls, her pain mitigated by the joy of having an excuse to stay home from school the next day. All the mornings she had sat at this table, eating a breakfast of soggy Rice Krispies hurriedly, worried about missing the school bus. All the Friday nights she and Jasmine had baked cookies in this oven, listening to The Association on WABC. All the plans she had made for herself, the resolutions, the promises, while leaning on that Formica counter, staring at the front lawn covered with snow, or red and orange leaves, or, as was the case today, freshly cut grass. She had heard the Beatles for the first time in this kitchen, written her first love letter, talked on the phone for hours, finger-painted her name on the cabinets, washed thousands of dishes.

  Martha tried to avoid thinking about all the food that she had eaten at the table, leaning over the counter, standing at the refrigerator. The thought depressed her; at the same time, she found the idea very attractive. She opened the refrigerator, and was grateful that her plastic bag of limp celery was tucked between the coleslaw and a stick of butter.

  Martha was startled by a footstep and the sound of the kitchen door opening. Her father stood in the doorway, smiling through squinting eyes.

  “I knew I heard someone prowling around,” he said, closing the door and sitting down at the table. “I thought it might be you.”

  Martha felt as if she and her father were the only people awake in the world. The birds were just waking up, chirping in the still blackness of morning. It would be day soon; the sun would rise all of a sudden, surprising everyone with the abruptness of a new day.

  “You always did have a weakness for midnight snacks,” her father said. Whether he was criticizing, teasing, or simply stating a fact, was unfathomable. Martha, unable to react appropriately, smiled wanly.

  Mr. Nowicki picked up a can opener and tapped it lightly against his fist. “Your mother keeps talking about you getting married, Martha, but you haven’t said a word about it.”

  Martha sighed, and sat down. “I feel like I’m letting Mom down.”

  Her father raised his eyebrows. “By getting married?”

  “By not getting married. Daddy, Eddie and I aren’t even speaking to each other anymore.”

  “Is it just a fight? Those things happen to every...”

  Martha shook her head violently. “It wasn’t just a fight. It’s more than that. We’re not right for each other. I started to feel like this whole thing with Eddie had just happened to me. It was as if I’d never had any choice in that matter. I just woke up one day, and there I was, stuck with Eddie. All these faults I had never even noticed before appeared out of nowhere.”

  “I only met him once, but he seemed like a nice fellow.” Mr. Nowicki stared at the squiggly pattern on the Formica tabletop.

  “Oh, Daddy, that’s not it. Eddie’s okay. It’s just... I don’t know. He’s just not good enough.” She smiled self-consciously. “I sound like Judy Garland in one of those old movies about a girl who wants to make it big in the city. But it’s true, in a way. I am like that.” Martha faltered, and bit her lip. “I’m starting to want more for myself.”

  Her father smiled. Martha couldn’t tell if he was agreeing with her or laughing at her.

  “When I look around this house,” she went on, “I relive my life. It’s as if I were drowning and my whole life was passing before my eyes. And along with the things that happened, I can see the things I wished would happen. The things I was hoping for, everything I ever wanted for myself. It scares me, sometimes, when I step back and see what I have.”

  Her father stood up and gazed out the window. “Well, the sun will be coming up any minute now. I’d better get a few more hours’ sleep. Once it’s light, it’s impossible to get any shut-eye.”

  Martha felt the same weariness she had felt the day before. She wrapped her arms around her knees. “Okay, Dad. Good night.”

  “Why don’t you get some sleep too?” Mr. Nowicki busied himself with the task of silently pushing his chair under the kitchen table. “I think your mother and Susan are planning a trip to the beach.” He stood in the doorway, about to leave.

  “Martha,” he said softly, his hand resting on the doorknob, “you’re right, you know.” He disappeared behind the closed kitchen door, not unlike the bogeymen that Martha had sensed were lurking in the shadows only a half hour earlier.

  Mr. Nowicki went back to sleep immediately, his face turned away from the window. Martha drifted off slowly, her eyes shut tight against the glaring rays of the rising sun. Only Teddy sat upright, his eyes round in appreciation of the radiant dawn.

  * * * *

  “Not marrying Eddie! You are kidding, of course. Aren’t you?”

  Martha fixed her gaze on the blue and white crisscross design on her plate. Her mother’s voice grated like the screeching of ambulance sirens, and for the ninety-eighth time that weekend, Martha deplored the invention of relatives. For some unexplained reason, she kept thinking about test-tube babies. Test-tube babies who were raised in a perfectly controlled system, who received a minimum daily requirement of hugs and kisses, and who were fed a specially determined number of calories each day and would never have the urge to trade in a plate of barbecued lean ground beef for a box of Wheat Thins and a can of Hawaiian Punch.

  “No, Mother,” she heard herself say. “We’re not getting married.” She was surprised by the conviction and the calm that she heard in her own voice.

  Tension hung over the Norman Rockwell dinner scene like the oppressive humidity that characterizes Long Island in the summer. Martha chewed slowly and listened to the confusion and anger that was rising in her mother, manifested in quick breaths and near-whimpers. She could feel her father recoiling and her sister settling back for an enjoyable little argument.

  “Well,” her mother said contemptuously, “I suppose Eddie finally gave up on you. You never even bother to comb your hair, much less to find a decent job or give him the attention he...”

  “Actually, I met someone new,” Martha said lightly, relieved at her newfound ability to mask the hoarse ness in her voice.

  “Well, well, well,” came a voice from across the table. “My little sister has certainly become quite a swinger!”

  “Oh, Susan, don’t be such a bitch,” Martha said evenly.

  “Martha!” her mother gasped. Susan glared at her, then patted Georgie distractedly, as if to protect innocent youth from the corruption of her sister’s wanton big-city ways.

  “It just so happens that I’ve met a lovely man. His name is Larry and he’s a pharmacist. He was going to be a musician, but he decided to do what he wanted instead of what his parents wanted.” And he’s great in bed, Martha was tempted to add.

  “Surely you’re not implying that we ever tried to pressure you into marrying Eddie,” Mrs. Nowicki said defensively.

  Martha shrugged. “I’m not implying anything. I’m just not getting married. That’s all. No big deal.”

  Georgie started to wail then, and Martha glanced at the clock and was pleased to note she had an excuse to depart. “My train leaves in half an hour. Could someone drive me to the station, please?”

  Mrs. Nowicki continued wearing her look of dismay as Martha prepared for her hasty departure.

  “Wait, dear.” At the eleventh hour, she produced an aluminum foil sculpture much smaller than a bread box. “Here, take the rest of the chocolate cake. It’s your favorite. I made it just for you.”

  “Thanks, Mom. I appreciate
it, but I am on this diet. Remember?”

  “Yes, but... Your roommates, maybe?” she suggested meekly. “Or that new boyfriend of yours? Men love chocolate cake.”

  Martha wondered what a panel of psychoanalysts, feminists, and pastry chefs, led by David Susskind, could do with a statement like that.

  “Really, Mom. It’s much easier if I just don’t have that stuff around.”

  Martha feared that her rejection of the remains of the chocolate cake would set off some dramatic reaction in her mother: a temper tantrum, perhaps, or a brief regression back to prepubescence. But, alas, there was none. The cake and its suit of armor were unceremoniously tucked into the recesses of the refrigerator. Martha couldn’t help feeling slightly victorious over the final slam of the refrigerator door and her mother’s ensuing look of puzzlement. Susan’s vague expression of surprise further added to her satisfaction.

  It was time to leave.

  Mrs. Nowicki and Susan and Georgie and Martha piled into the car, creating an instant replay of Martha’s arrival two days earlier. The scene at the station was the usual flurry of excitement. “Goodbye, Mom! Good luck, Susan! My love to Mark! Goodbye, Georgie!”

  Goodbye, Nowicki family. Goodbye, town. Goodbye, old days.

  The blast of icy air that hit her when she entered the train made it possible for Martha to breathe again. She watched the Oldsmobile from her refrigerated rocket ship as it drove away and disappeared. Soon she would be chugging back to the city, transported, this

  time, by a modern miracle of air conditioning and speed.

  Never before had the thought of Penn Station been so appealing.

  * * * *

  Martha leaned against a tree, so enthralled with the idea of communing with nature that she was able to ignore the pain of a mosaic of bark jabbing into her back. She held the cool metal of a half-empty can of Diet Pepsi against her neck and stretched her legs out on the grass.

  “Ummm,” she purred. “This feels so good. I like summer. I like Central Park, I like Diet Pepsi. I like you.”