by Theresa Alan
His mom and sisters greeted him with smiles and hugs, but none of the loud shouting that Chelsey received when she went home to her family. Something was cooking on the stove, something fatty and oniony—the smell permeated the room.
“Chelsey, this is A’Marie and this is May. This is my mother, Elise,” Rob said.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Chelsey said.
All three women were chubby, Chelsey noticed; his mother was seriously obese. Chelsey did her best not to be horrified by the small, dirty house or Elise’s morbidly unhealthy weight.
“Hey, bro,” A’Marie said. She was sixteen, a junior in high school. “How’s the ankle?”
“Better.”
“Dinner’s just about ready,” Elise said.
“Posole?” Rob said.
His mother nodded. “Posole and fry bread.”
“What’s that?” Chelsey asked.
“Posole is a stew with hominy and jalapeños and pork. Fry bread is fried bread,” Rob said.
“Fried bread?” Chelsey couldn’t contain her horror.
“It’s good,” May said quietly, with a shy smile. Rob had told Chelsey that May was twenty and going to the community college in Pine Ridge. “It’s easy to make. Just baking powder and flour and water.”
As if white bread weren’t enough of a nutritional wasteland, on top of that they fried it? Good Lord!
“Chelsey’s a little bit of a health nut,” Rob explained to his family.
“You need to put some meat on your bones,” Elise said. “You’re going to waste away.”
Chelsey shrugged. “I’m a personal trainer. I work out a lot.”
Rob did most of the talking over dinner. It was obvious that his little sisters looked up to him and his mother adored him. Chelsey tried to get down a little of the Posole to be polite, but it nearly killed her. Pork! It had been years since she’d eaten pork. And the fry bread? As if.
It was only a two-bedroom house, so Chelsey and Rob had to sleep on sleeping bags on the living room floor. A’Marie and May said they’d be happy to give up their beds, but Chelsey and Rob insisted. Chelsey was feeling so guilty, she would have slept outside with nothing to shield her from the elements. She thought about her home in Denver—it was at least twice as big and infinitely nicer than this place, and yet she was a single woman without any kids. She remembered thinking how broke she felt after buying her house. She felt like an idiot that she ever could have thought that. This was poverty. This was completely different.
She snuggled up next to Rob that night and held him tight. Somehow, seeing where he’d come from made her love him even more.
Ana and Scott left work early on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and headed off bright and early for the long drive ahead of them.
As always, Ana had vigilantly prepared ahead of time, packing a cooler full of food and water so they could keep their stops to a minimum. She’d also borrowed a few Bill Bryson books on tape from the library, and his humorous travel narratives kept them laughing all the way to Texas. About the time they got to the border, however, Ana was quite ready to get out of the car. Her butt was sore, she was sick of sitting, and there was something about driving long distances that made Ana feel dirty and queasy. She wanted to shower and eat vats of vegetables to make up for gorging on half of an industrial-size bag of pretzels.
They stopped at about eleven o’clock that night to stay at an overpriced, under-comfortable hotel. Despite the lack of luxury, Ana was ecstatic just be able to get out of the car and stretch her legs.
After a good night of sleep, they took off again the next morning and pulled into Scott’s family’s driveway around noon. Scott’s dad was outside tearing weeds from what was probably supposed to be a garden but was so desiccated it looked like a tumbleweed convention.
Scott rolled down his window. “Is it okay if we park here?”
“Park yonder,” he pointed to the far left side of the driveway.
Yonder? Had she really just heard the word “yonder” uttered without irony?
Scott parked and he and Ana got out of the car. Scott gave his father a big bear hug. When they finally broke from the embrace, Ana started to mumble a “hello, it’s nice to meet you” and extend her hand for a handshake. Instead, Scott’s father, Ron, smothered her with an enormous hug and told her about fifty times how happy he was to meet her and how happy he was that she could come down. Apparently Texans were a little more forthcoming with their affection than Coloradoans were.
When the tsunami of welcome abated, Scott noted that his parents had planted new trees in the front yard. At this point, the trees weren’t much taller than Ana and were so skinny they looked like they’d lose a fight with dental floss.
“Me and Jack was gonna put a coupla of’em over dare”—Ron indicated a spot closer to the house—“but me and him wasn’t sure if that’d be too close to the house.”
Holy improper use of the English language! “Me and Jack was”? “Me and him wasn’t . . .”? Ana wasn’t some grammar snob, well okay, maybe she was, but ouch, it hurt her ears to hear this. “He and I weren’t,” Ana corrected silently. Note the placement of the “I” after the “He.” I didn’t make the rules up. I just enforce them. If we didn’t follow the rules, all would be anarchy and my ears would commit suicide from the horror.
They went inside and Ana was introduced to a mob of people, but she forgot everyone’s name in seconds, despite her best efforts. Over the course of the day, as everyone bustled around to prepare dinner, she simply could not remember who was Jack and who was John. And Lettie and Laura, honestly, Ana didn’t even bother trying to call them by name. She just did her best to get in their line of sight before she asked a question so they’d know who she was talking to. Nobody in Scott’s family called his sister anything but “Sis.” Ana thought that was adorable. Very Dick and Jane-ian. The whole family seemed like a Dick and Jane book.
Ana learned that Scott’s dad worked in a meat-packing plant, and his mother worked as a checker in a grocery store. Sis was a stay-at-home mom. His brothers were a cop, a carpenter, and a well digger. Scott was the only one who’d gone to college. The only one who had any artistic interests. The only one without a thick Texan accent. In some ways, he seemed so different from his family, but in other ways, he fit right in. The love they shared was palpable. Everyone cracked jokes and told stories and it was constantly loud, but Ana felt comfortable in the midst of the hubbub. They looked out for each other, in small little ways that Ana probably only noticed because she came from such a different family. At Scott’s house, nobody got up from the table without asking if they could get anyone anything. If Ana’s glass of iced tea was getting low—they drank vat after vat of tea in this place—it was instantly refilled, usually before Ana realized she was running out.
Ana thought of all the times Scott had made a face and told her a joke to cheer her up. She understood now that he came from a family that looked out for each other fiercely, and if one of them was unhappy, they all were.
Despite having little kids running around and a huge crowd of people to feed, no one got stressed or freaked out or short-tempered. No one got teary-eyed when things didn’t turn out exactly like they were supposed to—Ana thought it might have been the first Thanksgiving she’d ever had that didn’t end up with somebody (well, her mother) crying.
After gorging themselves silly, they played epic rounds of Taboo, Scattergories, and Cranium. At last worn out, they all retired to the living room to watch TV. It had been five hours since dinner, and still Ana’s stomach ached from the food she’d shoveled in. But when everyone else started making their way to the kitchen for leftovers, she started to panic—they’d take the last of the mashed potatoes and candied yams and stuffing and pecan pie. . . .
“Can I get you a plate?” Sister-in-Law-With-the-Curly-Blonde-Hair said.
It would be rude to turn her down, right? “Sure.” She was just being polite, really.
A couple hours l
ater, Ana and Scott lugged their protruding bellies to the room Scott had grown up in to get some sleep. As they lay next to each other in bed, she asked him when he’d lost his accent.
“I never really had a strong accent growing up, I guess because I was always a national broadcast news junky, and Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings don’t have accents. I thought they were so cool, that they knew everything, you know? And I lost any vestiges of a Texas accent when I went to school in Colorado.”
“So you could fit in?”
“No, it’s just that you start talking like the people around you. If everybody says ‘cool’ and ‘awesome,’ it’s hard not to start sprinkling ‘cools’ and ‘awesomes’ in your speech, you know?”
Ana nodded. What she really wanted to know was, “How did you learn to speak English so well despite spending eighteen years with people who say ‘we was gonna put a coupla of ’em over dare’?” But she knew that if she made any kind of remark that could be construed as disparaging his family, he’d hurl her out the window. He was that kind of loyal.
Ramiro’s Thanksgiving, like all holidays with his family, was an exercise in method acting. It could have been titled: Gay Man Plays It Straight, Ignores Huge Part of His Life. That was how the charade went—Ram pretended Nick didn’t exist, and his father pretended he could tolerate his son.
Ram spent the meal thinking about Nick having a great time partying it up with their friends. If it weren’t for Yo, the baby, and his mom, Ram would be right at Nick’s side, being able to be himself and enjoy his life.
Yo’s husband, Kevin, would have never been accepted into the family if Ram hadn’t come out of the closet. After Ram’s little admission, though, suddenly a European-American pale-skinned non-Catholic didn’t seem so bad after all.
“It’s so great to have a four-day weekend,” Kevin said. Their desserts had been reduced to crumbs, the cups of coffee were getting cold. Ram’s mom was off doing dishes, but the rest of them sat around the table, busily digesting.
“You just need to tell your boss you’re some kind of unusual religion,” Ram suggested.
“Jewish. Jewish people have all kinds of holidays off,” Kevin said.
“No, no good. Your boss could figure it out eventually. I told a boss once I was Druid.”
“You did not.”
“Oh, but I did. He was this white Catholic guy, right? All concerned about not pissing off the Hispanic guy, you know, worried about getting slapped with discrimination charges or something. So he said, ‘Oh really? How interesting. What do you believe in?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, you know, we’re all into nature. Arbor Day, that’s our big day. The big Druid holiday. ’”
Yo and Kevin burst out laughing. “You are not serious,” Yo said.
“I am serious. He said, ‘Oh, really, that’s great. I can see that.’ ” Ramiro nodded with comic exaggeration, playing the part of the duped boss. “He bought it. I got Arbor Day off, Earth Day, any random day I made up. I’m serious.”
Yo and Kevin found this hilarious, and Ram joined their laughter. Their merriment was quickly stanched, however, when Ram’s father said, with a serious grimace on his face, “You are Catholic. How can you turn your back on God for a day off from work!”
“Dad, I was just being silly, joking around.” That’s what I do. It’s who I am. Why can’t you understand even a little bit about who I am?
Silence and tension gripped the room until at last Kevin changed the subject to something safe—football, golf, basketball—the harmless conversation of men.
Eventually, dinner was over, and Ram went to his friend’s house for after-dinner cocktails. When he saw Nick, he hugged him tight, then took his hand in his own, and gripped it firmly, as if to prove to himself that Nick was real, their love was real. At last, Ramiro was home.
Marin spent her day locked in her hotel room. At first, she simply reveled in the fact that she could sleep in and be a lazy slob, watching bad movies on cable.
She snuggled under her covers, smiling to herself. She’d been smiling a lot these days. Since her date with Jay, her life seemed to be a whirlwind of excitement. They both had hectic schedules, but they did their best to see each other whenever they could. Marin was amazed by how busy someone who was unemployed could be, but Jay had the most amazingly eventful social calendar she’d ever heard of, and he often traveled to check on various investments or to go to board meetings of various boards of directors that he served on.
The other night, Jay had taken her to a party at the home of a movie producer. He’d been so casual about it. Just, “Want to come to a party tonight?” Not, “Want to come to a party where a number of Hollywood heavies will be?” She’d seen Ron Howard, Winona Ryder, and Ben Stiller, and there were lots of producers, directors, and behind-the-scenes people who Marin didn’t know yet, but knew she would be in awe of when she did. Thank god she’d gotten dressed up for it.
She’d had to buy lots of new clothes since coming to California. For one thing, she’d only packed a week’s worth of outfits when she’d come out here. For another thing, most of her clothes in Denver wouldn’t fit in here. Denver was a casual town that could never be confused for being a high-fashion hot spot. In L.A., there was a strange fashion code that Marin was still working to crack. Even “casual” outfits seemed expensive and high fashion.
She ordered breakfast from room service at about noon, feeling like a queen, who, with a simple phone call or a snap of the fingers, could summon food and drink and whatever her heart desired.
She took a shower, put on a cute, short white nightie and white silk thong underwear. She did her hair and put on a little makeup, even though she knew it would probably be several hours until she saw him. His dinner was at two, but with dessert and coffee and talking and maybe games, she probably wouldn’t see him till seven or eight.
Her boredom started to set in around two o’clock. She kept changing positions on her bed, trying to get comfortable. Her body wasn’t used to being so inactive for such a long stretch of time. She should probably go work out, but she’d already showered and the task of changing into sweats and going down to the gym seemed Herculean.
By four o’clock, she was sprawled across the bed, the right side of her face smashed up against the mattress, watching some movie that was so awful she could actually feel it robbing hours off her life—not just the two hours she watched it, but the powerful vacuum of its awfulness was actually sucking months or years away from her time on this planet like cigarettes or chronic heavy drinking.
At six o’clock, she ordered dinner from room service, and this was when depression started setting in. Though at breakfast she’d felt like a queen, now she felt like a loser, all alone on Thanksgiving, holed up in a hotel room, watching terrible movies. She made it a big point to ask for a bottle of wine with two glasses, as if it mattered what the receptionist or the waiter thought of her, as if they cared she was waiting for her man to show up and wasn’t really a social reject.
She ate her dinner slowly, trying to drag it out to fill the hours until Jay got there. She had a glass of wine with her meal, and though she really had intended to share the bottle with Jay, she had another, then another.
She couldn’t believe when nine o’clock rolled around and she still hadn’t heard from him. She figured he would have called her as soon as he’d left and was about to drive back to L.A.
When he called, it was almost eleven, and Marin had finished off the wine and was nodding off into a drunken slumber.
“Babe?”
“Jay, where are you?”
“I’m so sorry. We waited a couple of hours after dinner to have dessert, then there was coffee and brandy and dessert wine, and I drank too much to be able to drive home tonight.”
“Oh, you’re kidding,” she whined. “I was really looking forward to seeing you.”
“I know, I’ll make it up to you. When’s your next day off?”
“I’m not sure.”
“
How about Saturday night after you get off the set?”
“Sure. That sounds great.” Even though, in truth, most nights she worked on the set she just wanted to crawl into bed the second she got home and crash. They’d only gone out a few nights when she worked, but twice she’d fallen asleep right after sex, something he loved to tease her about.
“Great. See you Saturday night.”
Oh well, every relationship had challenges to overcome. All in all, though, she counted herself the luckiest woman alive.
41
Porno Pop-Up Hell
Ana had finished her sessions with Chelsey. She’d lost four pounds in the last six weeks. Hardly enough weight to star in a weight loss commercial, but she was feeling better. She’d loved working out with Chelsey—Chelsey kicked her ass. Ana wished she could afford a trainer all the time.
Ana would have lost more, but Thanksgiving weekend with Scott’s family had blunted progress significantly. She felt like she was at least on the right track now, eating better and working out more. Her pants weren’t quite so tight anymore, and that was really the main thing.
She ate her lunch slowly, trying to actually enjoy her entire hour-long lunch break. She liked to surf the ’Net while she ate, but she usually scarfed down her food in about four minutes flat, and then she didn’t want to keep reading online publications lest some higher-up walk past her and think she was goofing off, rather than taking a much deserved lunch break. So she was determined to keep her lunch in front of her for an entire hour, even with her stomach grumbling angrily. Eating slowly was supposed to be good for you anyway.
Ana nibbled miserably on her carrot stick. She felt like she’d been starving herself for months and was not yet skinny. She knew that it had taken her several months to become the porker who busted out of her pants, but still, she wanted speedier results.
She went to the New York Times and read the news and book reviews. Then she quickly looked at Denver Post online. She checked the celebrity gossip at People and Us. Then she decided to swing by Bitch magazine, a hilarious mag that critiqued the bullshit of the pop culture she’d so recently been at pains to study in People and Us. She typed in www.bitch.com, which, as it turned out, was not the correct URL to the feminist Bitch magazine. Quite the opposite, it was a porn site of some sort, which spewed out pop-up ads for other lascivious porn sites like fireworks going off in rapid fire succession.