Getting Waisted (17 page)

Somehow the car arrived in its parking place. Somehow I was in my house, dressing for a dinner. The powder puff in my hand was damp. Oh my God, it did it again. I felt my heart skip, as if I’d hit an air pocket. My throat was closing. Was this a heart attack? My legs were numb. I was becoming paralyzed. Was this some deadly strain of spinal meningitis? Or a deadly bacteria? What did I eat? What did I eat? I was going to die. I wanted to call for help but my mouth opened and my voice wouldn’t come out. My brain was stuttering. I couldn’t breathe.

Somehow I made it to my neighbor John’s door. He immediately sat me down; asked me nothing. I could see in his face that he knew I was in trouble. I needed to tell him what was happening to me, but I couldn’t speak. What was happening to me? This made no sense. The air pocket hit again. WHAM! My heart dropped into my stomach. I was terrified. I looked at John. He picked up my hand and stroked it rhythmically, back and forth, alternating with a different rhythm . . . pat . . . pat . . . pat . . . stroke, stroke. If I could have moved, I would have smacked him. My breath was back. “STOP THAT!” John breathed a sigh of relief, realizing I was okay. I was definitely not okay but I could speak. What the hell just happened to me? Oh God. I was embarrassed. I was scared.

My brother-in-law, the doctor, diagnosed me as having had a classic anxiety attack. At least it was a classic: timeless and always in vogue. He prescribed Valium. I took one and immediately dropped anything that came into my grasp. I didn’t want to be
that
relaxed. But I wanted the Valium; I wanted them by my side just in case. I put them in the glove compartment, in pockets, drawers, shoes—everywhere. But the attacks didn’t come. I lay awake at night, testing the demons, conjuring the most horrible of thoughts. Nothing. Had they gone, or were they lying in wait?

I watched as my father steadily dissolved, like ice cubes melting into nothingness. I wanted to save him. I wanted to bring him home, but I didn’t have enough room and I had stairs. He needed special care. He needed diapers for God sakes! I was a bad person. I didn’t have the Mother Teresa gene; I got the Eva Braun gene—something definitely passed down from my mother. It wasn’t my fault she didn’t want him. Of course, she
never
wanted him but he was mine now. He should have prepared for his old age! I didn’t even know him. I had to go back and spend more time with him. I had so many questions and so few answers . . . There was so little time.

I walked quickly through the lobby of
The Folger Home.
No eye contact. No eye contact.
I plucked my father from the row of pigeons. I kept my head down and I didn’t open my mouth until we were seated at a table in the florescent, overly lit cafeteria. I was babbling in hyper-drive. “How are the books? Tea? Do you want a scone? A nice dessert would be nice. Would you like that?” He didn’t answer me. He just stared at his reflection in the window, seeing nothing. I put a donut in his hand. “So are they treating you alright? Have you made any friends?” Oh God, I was talking to him like he was a child after the first week of summer camp. I felt my breath start to quicken. This man wearing mismatched pajamas was my father and I had no idea who he was. And now I was scared there wasn’t going to be time to find out. I don’t think we’d ever had a real conversation. Please don’t let it be too late. Who are you? Were you ever in love? Have you had any happiness in your life? He took a bite of the donut not hearing anything I’d said. He didn’t know when his mouth was full and kept adding more. I watched mesmerized, looking at the conveyor belt; his hand to mouth, donut in one side, a sodden piece dropping from the other. In, out, in, out until there was a pile of mush on the table in front of him.

He patted his mouth, smiled, and pulled on my sleeve. “All done, very nice . . . very nice indeed. Nurse, could you take me . . .
uhm
. . . back to my house now. I have to . . . I have . . . ” I nodded yes. I looked at my father and saw nothing. There was nothing to see. Pirates had come in the night and stolen all his treasure.

Why would I have wanted to be on a diet? I needed padding to keep me out of the nut house. What I really needed was pudding. Pudding was better. I wanted to climb inside a vat of it and either drown or be the super woman I knew myself to be and eat my way out of it. There were those who would condemn me for falling back into my comfort zone of food but I didn’t care. I don’t judge those who drink too much, snort too much, sleep around too much, organize their clothes on color-coordinated hangers—whatever it takes to get them to the other side of a difficult and thorny patch of life—I take my hat off to them. As long as the only person they’re hurting is themselves. It’s better than jumping off a bridge, leaving a mess for others to clean up. The only bad part about being a secret eater is that it isn’t possible to remain one, as my pain-relieving ways showed themselves soon enough.

16

Falling Rocks

Diet #19
The Baby Food Diet

Cost
$24.00

Weight lost
4 baby-sized pounds

Weight gained
7 jumbo-sized pounds

My father was parked on a side rail,
rusty and no longer of any use. The Folger Home was doing its best to keep him entertained and comfortable, which was not always easy seeing as he was convinced he was back in merry old England and that the beleaguered caregivers who looked after him were family members whom he had never trusted. He was
still
keeping a list and taking names, along with all their infractions. To ward off my ongoing fear that Ms. High Anxiety might make an uninvited appearance, I still kept some Valium in the candy dish at home, which was empty of candy because I had eaten all of it. Not that I was ever planning to take the Valium, but I needed to know it was there. It had become my security blanket.

I had never thought of myself as a depressed person, but my recent behavior said otherwise. I had always thought of myself as outgoing, happy, and a self-starter. Perhaps I was like Sybil, that oft-written about multiple personality. Maybe I had a different persona for every occasion and Rotunda, the dark one, had eaten me out of house and home.

Whatever the truth, I knew I never wanted to be thought of as a victim. That’s not who I was. I was the cheerleader and the instigator of fun.

My mother’s boutique dress shop catered to a very privileged and demanding clientele, and she was their much sought after queen. I had taken to the role of princess as comfortably as ice cream on cake; the clients liked me and my mother was proud, sometimes too proud, and misguided. Whenever I lost ten pounds or more, she’d look at me and say: “You could be a model.” I would look at her and tell her she needed a white cup and a cane, as clearly her vision was gone or the mother filter was so rose-colored it blocked sanity. I had come to the conclusion that most Jewish mothers thought their daughters looked like Audrey Hepburn, even if they were sporting duck lips. Going to work every day was like picking my way through a minefield in a pretty garden. I loved my job, but my mother was my boss and her lifelong mixed messages had me spinning, the general theme being, “You are perfect just as you are, but a few changes couldn’t hurt.”
That, coupled with her ease at setting my father adrift in an un-swimmable sea, deeply upset me.

My inner Southern girl had come out with a vengeance, cooking carbs as if I were a female Paul Prudhomme on a bender. I devoured crumbly, toasted mac and cheese made with butter, a little more butter, triple cream Paradiso cheese, and a hearty thump of sharp cheddar, fried chicken, and anything au gratin. Once again, I had determinedly thrown myself off the wagon. All modeling requests, even from those wearing tinted lenses, ceased.

I buried myself in my work, designing everything from luxurious coats to wedding dresses. I loved the embroidered silks, the floaty chiffons, the boiled wools, the textured weaves; I loved them all with the same reverence I had when I encountered my first jumbo box of Crayola crayons. The colors made me swoon with possibility. I didn’t have the same reverence for the clients; they were often demanding and difficult. My mother’s one-of-a-kind, handmade, custom-fitted dresses and gowns took weeks, making sure the designs suited the bodies that would wear them, with precision fittings, attention to detail, and the awful reality that all that labor would never pay off as most of her customers could never understand the concept of time is money. My mother always paid her dressmakers, her suppliers, and her rent. There was never much left for her, and when her customers pushed and wheedled until she knocked off a few more dollars, she just sucked it up and gave in, her old world ways winning out. I simmered and swore I would never take over her business no matter how much I loved dreaming and drawing those dresses. I was sick of being poor and pretending to be rich—that was my mother’s specialty. I knew I needed a more lucrative, but somehow also creative career, as I wasn’t cut out for the world of high finance. My exercise show was fun and had brought me lots of attention but it was a small cable station and the pay was barely enough to keep me in the fancy chocolate I loved.

I had stumbled into my new passion, writing and performing, by telling tales about my fractured family; they were the gift that kept on giving. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, much like a spewing volcano with a need to erupt. I was funny on paper, funny in person, I was even funny alone in my bathroom. People began to notice and I was in demand as a writer! And as an actress! I had found my G-spot and was being paid for doing what I had always done, amusing myself at my own expense. But I couldn’t just walk out on my mother’s business, especially when things were so fragile. My father got worse and my mother, always hovering on the verge of bankruptcy yet still pretending, was taking out loans she would never be able to pay back. So I stayed.

When I was young, I remember going on a family bus trip to visit what seemed like hundreds of castles in the highlands of Scotland. In the pass, high above the craggy rocks, I read a sign that has always stuck in my head: “Watch for falling rocks.” Life is like that; we’re supposed to watch out for falling rocks but it’s not possible. We cannot stand guard waiting for bad things to happen. Rocks fall when rocks fall. I tried to tough out the panic attacks, which were now coming with the regularity of a Tokyo to Kyoto bullet train but I was sure that my sweaty palms, shortness of breath, and the brand-spanking-new fear of highway driving were glitches brought on by being a bad daughter; if I would just visit my father more, if I could forgive my mother for dumping him, they’d fade away. Of course one was easy, the other would require a much-dreaded, head-on confrontation. I chose the Scarlet O’Hara option and put them both away for another day. My anxiety attacks escalated and my comedy career stalled.

My wonderful friends, led by my best and heart-stoppingly handsome gay pal Stephen, decided it was time for an intervention, and just as I was locking up the shop they descended, armed with a giant picnic basket filled with everything from shrimp quesadillas to champagne and a boom box. Stephen, true to his tribe, also brought hats, wigs, and plenty of sparkle, believing it was time to cheer me up. Eating in the shop was
verboten
—fear of stains splattering wedding gowns—but in my current condition I didn’t care, seeing as food worked way better than tranquilizers. I marshaled a small army to make sure everything was covered in plastic and let the music rip. I was instantly made over into the high priestess of a gaggle of store mannequins that were placed in a variety of positions at my feet—some worshipful, some more risqué. It felt so good to laugh. The transformation from sad girl to my joyful self was made complete by being tended to with so much love and a whack of silliness. I would have married Stephen then and there if not for the struggle we would have had over which one of us would wear the wedding dress . . . and the teeny issue of a life of celibacy.

A couple of loud and funny hours later, someone complained about the noise; the police arrived just as one of the store mannequins, dressed in not much more than a bridal veil, was being danced about the shop in a conga line of blond-wigged men dressed as women. Despite looking like a fat Barbie in drag with punky nails, giant blonde wig, and a magenta boa, I believed I carried off a fairly respectable version of myself. I apologized profusely to the officer, explaining this was a bridal shower for a girl who had been very ill and had just woken from a six-month coma after not being expected to live. It was such a stupid lie but I’d had a lot of champagne. Somehow the officer went with it and left, passing on his best wishes to the bride and whichever “girl” she was marrying.

Small victory. I was more terrified that my mother would get wind of the mayhem so I asked everyone to pull the shop together and leave; the half-naked mannequin, the boys, and everything else disappeared in minutes.

About a week later a terrible odor began to emanate from the shop. First we searched the various trash receptacles for rotting lunch leftovers but found nothing; next, cleaners scoured the place from floor to ceiling but still the smell remained. Clients began to notice and, as though they were visiting medieval France, they quickly reached for perfumed handkerchiefs or their sleeves to protect their wrinkled noses from the offending odor. It was embarrassing and not ideal for hosting fancy customers, so we called in the fumigators—the consensus being there must be a dead rodent in the walls—but they, too, found nothing. The stench got really horrible and I was sent out to neighboring boutiques to see if they were suffering the same fate; perhaps it was a sewage problem. Nothing . . . My mother was contemplating calling a Realtor when I made the gruesome discovery. I was redoing the window display and found the party mannequin, which had been shoved into a back closet along with the other castaways. When I pulled off one of her arms to get a dress over her head I almost keeled over from toxic shock. I covered my nose and mouth before pulling a plastic bag filled with a furry, greenish, former seafood offering. Someone, in his haste to clean up, had shoved it into one of the arm sockets. Wishing I was wearing a full hazmat head-to-toe covering, I scurried to the farthest outdoor garbage bin in the back alley and tossed the foul-smelling evidence, slamming the lid behind me as I gulped for clean-smelling air. I was destined to be done in by food even when it was nowhere near my mouth.

On a sad and sobering visit to see my father in his less-than-glamorous setting, I discovered he had no idea that he wasn’t at home and, worse, he wasn’t quite sure who I was. As I was leaving, a frizzy, too blonde octogenarian in a motorized wheelchair blocked my path to the lobby door. She threatened me with a pointed finger, demanding I stay away from her husband. I promised I would, once I found out which one he was.

I was done and done in, overcome with the realization that my dad was near the end of his life without ever having really lived this one. Silently, I said a prayer for him and then one for me, determined this would not be my fate. I wanted there to be big, noisy footprints to follow in my wake; I had no idea at this point what that meant but I knew it was a solid gold requirement, along with finding love. I had no idea how to go about fulfilling that plan either. Did I have a pheromone on the fritz? I had become a magnet for beautiful, unattainable gay men, and singularly awful and disinterested straight men. My self-esteem had completely plummeted; what was I putting out there? I was brain-ranting, never a good thing when food is one’s go-to stress buster—one more nail in my plus-sized coffin.