Waisted

by Randy Susan Meyers

  “What brings you here? Is everything okay?”

  “If you thought something was wrong, why did you leave me reading an entire library of magazines?”

  “If something horrible happened, I figured you’d call. So. Is anything awful going on?”

  “It depends on what you mean by awful.”

  Her sister nodded, quiet, waiting for Daphne to continue, as though Bianca were a shrink and not a dermatologist. Daphne searched for ways to form what needed to be said, staring at her sister. As the middle girl, Bianca had stood out from the beginning, including choosing science over art, and silence over the stream of words used by the rest of the family.

  “I need your help.” Daphne tried to formulate her request in a manner that didn’t sound frantic. Like an addict.

  “Reconsidering the tightening? Do you want a referral?” Bianca reached for her phone.

  Daphne put a hand on her sister’s arm. “The pills they gave us? The ones I told you about? I brought some home with me.”

  “How? Why?”

  “Some they gave us. Others I stole. Because I didn’t think I could keep it up without them.”

  “And?”

  “And I found out that was true when I ran out. My weight is creeping up.”

  “Did you come here for more pills or advice?”

  Such a simple question and so tricky to answer.

  “Be truthful,” Bianca said. “It’s the only way through.”

  “Through what?”

  “Whatever ails you. I’m not being cute. Lying to yourself or me will only prolong the problem. That much I do know.” Bianca turned toward the window, studying the view across Route 16. Daphne reached for patience. Analyzing always came first in Bianca’s world, and no torrent of words would help Daphne’s cause.

  Finally, Bianca faced her. “How many pills did you take? Steal?”

  “Twenty.”

  “And you came home, what, four weeks ago?”

  “About.”

  “Twenty pills lasted you four weeks?”

  Daphne tried to formulate an answer that would capture how she scraped off bits and pieces with her teeth, occasionally breaking one in quarters with a pill splitter.

  When she didn’t answer, Bianca spoke. “Daph, at most, that’s about five pills a week. Less than one a day. It’s not something I would ever recommend, but you don’t have an addiction—at least not a physical one. And if you left that place with a habit, then you titrated down by how you doled out those twenty pills.”

  “I need a few more. Just for a bit.”

  “Why?”

  “To manage my appetite. If I get it in control once more, I know I can handle it.”

  Her sister walked around the desk and knelt before her. She took her hands and squeezed. “You look great, Daph.”

  “For how long?”

  • • •

  Back in the car, with a recommendation for a shrink in hand, Daphne drove straight to the nearest CVS on Route 9. The giant one, not the one by her house. After shoving a few bottles of shampoo into her cart for cover, she headed to the aisle filled with weight loss aids. Faced with the overwhelming array, she almost ran out screaming. Which one could best mimic the pills she’d been taking? Zantrex-3 swore it would provide extreme energy, while Zantrex Black promised rapid release. Apple cider vinegar sounded too tame, Alli Orlistat capsules frightened her with memories of anal leakage warnings. Her chest tightened. She grabbed the Zantrex Black. Just for now.

  Daphne promised herself she’d stop using them by Valentine’s Day.

  Cooking no longer brought pleasure. Tonight she broiled salmon, steamed broccoli, and mashed squash, boiling a side of pasta with grated cheese for everyone but her.

  Meals tasted flat. No matter how many herbs and spices she added, dullness reigned.

  Smears of olive oil carried flavor differently than butter. A simple fact. Olive oil necessitated garlic, which called for onions, which meant mushrooms, and before you knew it, every damn vegetable required a coterie of vegetable friends surrounding it. Olive oil required working harder than she wanted after a long day at work standing on her feet and leaning over clients.

  With butter, just a shiny smear plus one twist of salt, and your mouth thanked you. Daphne wanted to say “Fuck you!” every time she lifted the bottle of olive oil. “Fuck you and your supposed healthy ways. Fuck you and your cachet of cool. Fuck you! I want butter!”

  Cook in defense of calories, and taste became the victim. She missed swirling ingredients that burst wide open by themselves and made mad music together.

  Before Waisted, she’d spent lazy Sundays slicing ten different vegetables into butter—onions, radishes, zucchini, and beyond—and simmer them down in wine. Add cream, tomato, and parmesan, ladle the three-hour sauce over conchigliette pasta, add shrimp or sausage, serve it on a brightly colored platter, and bring smiles to everyone—even Audrey, who complained but must recognize that, like Sam, she had the metabolism of a hummingbird. Audrey and Sam scorched calories by chewing. Gabe’s burn ratio was yet to be uncovered, as his addiction to biking kept him trim, but evidence pointed to his being in the Sam camp.

  The world treated fat people like out-of-control horrors, when, in fact, those who inherited tendencies toward being heavy exerted ten times as much control as the genetically thin, even if all they wanted was to stay plump instead of fat.

  Diet books seldom addressed sensuality, but what did cooking do if not marry flavors through heat? Sexy stuff. Daphne grabbed a pair of chopsticks from the drawer and dared herself to score a slippery udon noodle.

  She won.

  Or she lost.

  Who knew.

  But tasting the noodle made her groan.

  She carried the platter of fish to the table and placed it next to the vegetable bowls. “Audrey, please bring in the noodles. They’re in the covered blue casserole dish.”

  “Why me?”

  Daphne wondered if any question requiring any child to work engendered “Why me?” or if her particularly lax parenting (as her mother always described it) brought on the constant complaints.

  TIP: A mother who is obsessing about being thin and dieting and exercising is not going to be a very good mother.

  —Jane Fonda

  TRUTH: She hadn’t been a very good mother. But she could change.

  “If not you, who? If not now, when?” Sam intoned.

  Audrey groaned. “Not new, Dad.”

  “Nor is your moaning. Go help your mother. And don’t point at your brother. He’ll be cleaning with me.”

  Daphne dished out the salmon, unappetizing crap, smothered in mustard mixed with faux maple syrup. She tried not to think about the chemicals killing her family. Did anyone understand what they used to make maple flavors? Well, probably Sam, but at the moment, she wanted her ignorance.

  Sam scooped a massive portion of noodles. “Thanks. Must be hard for you to cook these without eating.”

  “No reason everyone should walk my road to perdition.”

  “It’s awful, Mom.” Audrey’s desolate expression killed her. “The math just isn’t fair. That you can’t burn calories like I do.”

  Daphne peered at her daughter. “So you know that.”

  “First,” she said, “I’m not a child. Or stupid. Second, Daddy told me. We talked while you were gone, you know.”

  “About me?”

  “Of course about you,” Sam said. “If the center of your family leaves, voluntarily, to go to a food prison, you talk.”

  “It scared us, Mom.” Gabe speaking about fear at the dinner table took Daphne by surprise. She must have sunk damn far into her own world not to see the impact of her departure. Gabe came home more often these days. Tufts might be close, but his visits home had stepped up considerably since she returned.

  “Why did it scare you?” she asked.

  “Because how bad did you feel inside that you had to run away to fix it?” Gabe reached for the pasta, stopped, an
d took an oversized portion of broccoli.

  Daphne held back from pushing noodles at him. “Oh, honey, I wasn’t running away from you guys. You know that, right?”

  “Not really.” Audrey’s honesty never failed. “You had to get away from us. And stop cooking. Because you love it so much. Cooking. And us, of course.”

  “You glow when you’re making something for us.” Sam reached for a roll. Damned if she was going to stop serving them, even though her hand twitched for the entire meal. “So it made sense for you to take a break from us. Every hour in the kitchen, you faced temptation and frustrating choices.”

  “Going to Waisted didn’t exactly solve my problems, did it?” The words escaped before she considered the impact of admitting to being still unhappy. Or unsatisfied. Un-something.

  “But you’re so much skinnier,” Audrey said. “Did that make it worth it?”

  “Despite having to escape, that is,” Gabe said.

  “Being a prisoner of war does make you thinner,” Daphne said. “Every time. I don’t recommend it.”

  “Do you think you would have lost weight without Waisted?” Audrey appeared apprehensive, but, on further analysis, Daphne also saw relief on her daughter’s face. The giant elephant that had roamed their house for too long had come out in the open. Daphne and her obsession with her body.

  “I don’t know. Any method of weight loss might have worked, simply because I was ready. Yes, being tortured and harassed worked in forcing off pounds, but having it work this way left me messed up.”

  Fear plastered their faces. Too much truth—Daphne had gone too far. “No! Not in a long-term, send-me-to-be fixed way. But in a time-to-look-at-myself way.”

  “You never say stuff like that, Mom.” Audrey took her hand.

  “I guess that goes on the top of my mistake list.”

  “Is this why you guys want to make the movie, Mom?” Gabe asked. “To work out what the hell happened?”

  “More like who the hell those horrible people are,” Audrey said. “We can help, you know.”

  “You’re helping me now.”

  “No. We don’t mean by ‘being supportive.’ ”

  “Being supportive isn’t chicken feed.” Sam reached for Daphne’s hand. “In fact, it indicates just how much you’ve both grown.”

  “Jeez. Were we such monsters up until this moment? Not everyone wears the mantle of sainthood, you know.” The patronizing way Gabe patted his father’s shoulder cracked up Daphne. Sam did carry his saintliness a bit far. It made her and the kids want to tease him until he cracked and became less than reasonable and understanding.

  “What we mean is that we can help make the video,” Audrey said.

  “How?”

  “Time to accept that Audrey and I know more about technical things,” Gabe said. “We’re young. Don’t make me spell it out.”

  “Just how much do you know?” Sam asked. “Should we be worried?”

  “Ship sailed, Dad. Anyway, you saw our work.” Seeing Daphne’s puzzled look, Gabe pointed to his ever-present computer on the side table. “Show you later. But you should know that given the proper materials, Audrey and I could have a video up by tomorrow. Might not be great, but it would get the information across.”

  “How long until you—we—might have a decent-enough one?” Excitement grew as Daphne listened to her son. “And is this a thing you’re interested in?”

  “Hell, yes. I might end up producing exposés,” Gabe said, throwing premed out the window as though switching from building blocks to Legos.

  “I’ll join. We can be the new Illuminati.” Audrey gave an evil grin. “Instead of jewels covering you, we uncover companies that prey on women. They actively lied to get you there. They set you up to be made fools of.”

  “I guess if we walked right out, they wouldn’t have made their point, right? So, were we idiots, or were they guilty of malfeasance? Who was more at fault? We thought we were prisoners, but was that true? Should we have tested them?”

  “Stop! Don’t forget what you said.”

  Audrey rose and ran out of the room, returning with her computer. “Repeat what you just said. I think you hit the core. The thesis to make it more than just ‘see what they did to us.’ This will be you three examining it from a serious point of view. ‘Did we victimize ourselves, or did they make us victims?“ ‘ She typed as she spoke.

  “Or both,” Daphne said. “Did they simply want to drive us, test our limits, or was their hypothesis that they could throw any humiliation at us because we wanted so badly to be thin? Are we all that desperate?”

  “Enough to take what you had to realize were illegal substances.” Audrey kept writing.

  Daphne nodded. She thought of the pills she tried to beg from Bianca and the new ones hidden on the bottom of her closet.

  “Let’s go, champ,” Sam said to Gabe. “Time for us to clean up.”

  “Champ? For real? Sometimes I think you belong in the fifties.”

  “Perhaps you’re right, buddy.” Sam winked at Daphne. “Let’s go, pal.”

  “I married a comedian. So, funny guys, I’m going to give you a treat: I’m cleaning up tonight. I want to throw out some leftovers that might be from the fifties.” Daphne stood.

  Gabe leaped up. “Don’t have to ask me twice.”

  “Let’s write some video ideas down.” Audrey stood and gathered water glasses.

  “Guess we raised them better than we thought,” Sam said.

  “Better than you thought. Didn’t I always say we had perfect children?”

  CHAPTER 25

  * * *

  DAPHNE

  Daphne spun Sam from the kitchen toward the living room. “Out. I’d have to do about ten years of dishes to make up for what you’ve done for me.”

  “Like letting you go to a prison for fat women? I suppose I deserve some gratitude for that.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic about my terrific husband.” She squeezed him hard around the waist, pressed her cheek to his back, and then pushed him away. “Go catch up with your work so we can both go to bed early.”

  Daphne began cleaning, grateful for the mess. She required action to keep from eating: hands washing dishes, scraping debris into the trash, loading the dishwasher—anything that kept her from the choice between stuffing the onion rolls down the drain or into her mouth.

  “Mom!” Audrey yelled from the dining room.

  She opened the door and peeked out. “What?” Audrey and Gabe sat side by side at the table with open computers.

  “We’re putting together ideas. Searching for similar videos. Making lists. We have a bunch of stuff we want you to see. Are you finished in there?”

  “Just about,” Daphne said. “Give me five minutes. Keep going.”

  Daphne closed the door, walked back to the counter, grabbed a knife, and stabbed the butter sitting in her pretty cornflower dish. She tore the roll in half and spread a thin sheen, just enough to moisten the bread. Then Daphne turned her back toward the door and bent over the dishwasher, loading plates as she chewed, afraid of being caught.

  By whom?

  Who gave a damn except her?

  She crammed the bread in and choked it down.

  Sam’s wineglass was to her left. She picked up the Zinfandel and poured, followed by a trip to the cabinet, where she opened a pack of Wheat Thins—equal to caloric heroin for Daphne. Continually, she bought a box “for company,” but then continually ate every one and then hid the empty cardboard in the bottom of the recycle bin.

  Who did she think acted as the trash police? Daphne lived as though her mother still lurked around every corner, but self-awareness didn’t stop her insanity.

  Honesty—with her children, with Sam—should have brought relief, broken open her dam of self-loathing, and led her to the path of sanity. Instead, as though there would never be another crumb of deliciousness left in the world, Daphne jammed crackers in her mouth until choking became a possibility. The crunch, the
sweet malty flavor, fed her addiction for the savory. Like nicotine for her mouth, she pushed them in. One single cracker provided the hit, so why keep packing them in? The idea of swallowing one at a time made sense. But she didn’t.

  TIP:Eating bite-sized portions, and concentrating on flavor for several seconds will help you feel gratified, and you’ll eat less.

  —Weight Watchers meetings, postpartum with Audrey

  WEIGHT LOST: 11 pounds.

  TIME KEPT OFF: 5 weeks.

  She spat the half-chewed Wheat Thins into the trash and emptied the remaining crackers over it. Then, knowing how likely it was she might reach in and grab one right back, she poured her wine on top and covered the purple mess with rubbish from dinner.

  “I’ll be right there!” Daphne said, zipping past the kids. She ran into her bedroom, raced to the closet, grabbed the diet pills, and swallowed one dry.

  Immediately, she calmed down. She brushed her teeth. After, she outlined her lips in a dusty rose, blotted, nodded in the mirror, and went to the children.

  “Here you go.” Gabe pointed to the computer screen. “We started making the movie.”

  “Impossible. Hania has all the material.” Daphne ran her tongue over her teeth, feeling for debris she’d missed with her toothbrush. The minty taste and lipstick would keep her from the kitchen. She prayed.

  “We mocked up ideas to give you a sense of how much could be done in a supershort time.” Audrey pointed along with Gabe. “With what we found online.”

  “How do you know how to do this?” Daphne, like all parents, she supposed, was consistently amazed that her children sopped up tools for living and art that came from sources outside the house.

  “Mom, it’s not that difficult. Just Google ‘How to make a movie,’ and, whomp, you’re on your way,” Gabe said.

  “Is that what you did?”

  “Long ago.” Her son tapped a few keys, and YouTube appeared. “This is my channel.”

  He clicked a video titled My Double Aunts’ Wedding. “I made that for Aunt Marissa and Aunt Lili.”

  “Why haven’t I seen it before?”

  “I kept it a secret. To give them as my wedding present.”