“You ever try cayenne pepper?” asked an elderly man in the row ahead. “Not too much, you understand, but just a pinch gives it a really nice flavor.”
“Thyme’s nice, too,” said my mother.
“Okay, Julia Child.” I closed my eyes, slumping lower in my folding chair as the chef moved on to candied sweet potatoes and apple fritters, and my mother continued to quiz him about substitutions, modifications, techniques that she’d learned in her years as a homemaker, while offering running commentary to the bemusement of the people sitting near her and the fury of the entire front row.
Later, over cappuccinos and hot buttered pretzels from the Amish pretzel stand, she gave me the speech I was sure she’d been preparing since last night. “I know your feelings are hurt right now,” she began. “But there are a lot of guys out there.”
“Yeah, right,” I muttered, keeping my eyes on my cup.
“Women, too,” my mother continued helpfully.
“Ma, how many times do I have to tell you? I’m not a lesbian! I’m not interested.”
She shook her head in mock sadness. “I had such high hopes for you,” she fake-sighed, and pointed toward one of the fish stalls, where pike and carp were stacked on top of each other, open-mouthed and googly-eyed, their scales gleaming silver under the lights. “This is an object lesson,” she said.
“This is a fish stall,” I corrected.
“This is telling you that there are plenty of fish in the sea,” she said. She walked over and tapped one fingernail on the glass case. I followed her reluctantly. “You see that?” she said. “Think of each one of those fish as a single guy.”
I stared at the fish. The fish, stacked six high on the crushed ice, seemed to gape back. “They have better manners,” I observed. “Some of them are probably better conversationalists, too.”
“You want fish?” asked a short Asian woman in a floor-length rubber apron. She had a filleting knife in one hand. I thought, briefly, about asking to borrow it, and what it would feel like to gut Bruce. “Good fish,” she urged.
“No thanks,” I said. My mother led me back to the table.
“You shouldn’t be so upset,” she said. “That article will be lining birdcages by next month”
“What an uplifting thought to share with a journalist,” I said.
“Don’t be sarcastic,” she said.
“I don’t have any other way to be.” I sighed.
We sat down again. My mother picked up her coffee cup. “Is it because he got a job at a magazine?” she ventured.
I took a deep breath. “Maybe,” I acknowledged. And it was true, seeing Bruce’s star rise while mine just stayed in place would have hurt even if his first story hadn’t been about me.
“You’re doing fine,” said my mother. “Your day will come.”
“What if it doesn’t?” I demanded. “What if I never get another job, or another boyfriend”
My mother waved her hand dismissively, as if this was too silly to even consider.
“But what if I don’t?” I asked raggedly. “He’s got this column, he’s writing a novel”
“He says he’s writing a novel,” said my mother. “Doesn’t mean it’s true.”
“I’m never going to meet anyone else,” I said flatly.
My mother sighed. “You know, I think some of this is my fault,” she finally said.
That got my attention.
“When your father used to say things…”
This was definitely a turn I didn’t want the conversation to take. “Mom…”
“No, no, Cannie, let me finish.” She took a deep breath. “He was awful,” she said. “Mean and awful, and I let him get away with way too much, and I let it go on for too long.”
“Water under the bridge,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” said my mother. I had heard her say this before, of course, but it hurt every time, because every time it made me remember just what she was apologizing for, and how bad it had been. “I’m sorry because I know it’s what’s made you this way.”
I stood up, grabbing her cup and mine, our used napkins, the remains of the pretzels, and headed off to find a garbage can. She followed behind me. “Made me how?” I asked.
She thought about it. “Well, you’re not great with criticism.”
“Tell me about it.”
“You don’t seem very comfortable with how you look.”
“Show me a woman who is,” I shot back. “It’s just that not all of us get to enjoy having our insecurities exploited for millions of Moxie readers.”
“And I wish…” She looked ruefully toward the tables at the center of the market, where families were gathered, having sandwiches or coffee, passing sections of the Examiner back and forth. “I wish you believed in yourself more. Like with… romantic stuff.”
Yet another conversation I didn’t want to be having with my late-in-life-lesbian mother.
“You’ll find the right guy,” she said.
“I’ve been underwhelmed by the choices so far.”
“You stayed with Bruce too long”
“Ma, please!”
“He was a nice guy. But I knew you didn’t love him that way.”
“I thought you were out of the heterosexual advice-giving arena.”
“I’m making a special guest appearance on an as-needed basis,” she said cheerfully. Outside, by the car, she gave me a rough hug— a big step for her, I knew. My mother is a great cook, a sympathetic listener, and a good judge of character, but she’s never been big on touchy-feely stuff. “I love you,” she said, which was also out of character for her. But I wasn’t going to object. I needed all the love I could get.
THREE
On Monday morning I sat in a waiting room full of women too big to cross their legs, all of us wedged into inadequate armchairs on the seventh floor of the University of Philadelphia Weight and Eating Disorders Center, thinking that if I ran the place I’d make sure to have couches.
“A few surveys,” the smiling, skinny secretary behind the desk had said, handing me a half-inch thick slab of forms, a clipboard, and a pen. “There’s breakfast,” she added chirpily, pointing at a stack of desiccated bagels, a tub of fat-free cream cheese, and a pitcher of orange juice with a thick film of pulp floating on the top. Like anyone would eat in here, I thought, bypassing the bagels and sitting down with my forms beneath a poster that read “Taking it off… one day at a time!” and depicted a model in a leotard romping through a field full of flowers, which was not something I planned on doing, no matter how skinny I got.
Name. That was easy. Height. No problem. Current weight. Ack. Lowest weight maintained as an adult. Did fourteen count as an adult? Reason for wanting to lose weight. I thought for a minute, than scribbled, Was humiliated in national publication. I thought for a minute, than added, Would like to feel better about myself.
Next page. Diet history. Highest weights, lowest weights, programs I’d enrolled in, how much I’d lost, how long I’d kept it off. “Please use reverse side if more space is needed,” read the form. I needed. In fact, judging from a quick glance around the room, everybody needed. One woman even had to ask for extra paper.
Page three. Parents’ weights. Grandparents’ weights. Siblings’ weights. I took guesses for all of them. These weren’t things that were discussed around the table at family gatherings. Did I binge and purge, fast, abuse laxatives, exercise compulsively? If I did, I thought, would I look like this?
Please list your five favorite restaurants. Well, this would be easy. I could just walk down my street and pass five fabulous places to eat— everything from spring rolls to tiramisu before I’d gone three blocks. Philadelphia still lived in the shadow of New York City and often had the character of a sulky second sister who’d never made the honor roll or the homecoming court. But our restaurant renaissance was for real, and I lived in the neighborhood that boasted the first crêperie, the first soba noodle shop, and the first drag show dinner theater (so-so female impersonators, divine calamari). We also had the obligatory two coffee shops per block, which had hooked me on three-dollar lattes and chocolate-chip scones. Not, I knew, the breakfast of champions, but what was a girl to do, except try to compensate by avoiding the cheesesteak shops on every corner? Plus which, Andy, the one real friend I’d made at the paper, was the food critic, whom I often accompanied on review meals, eating foie gras and rabbit rillettes and veal and venison and pan-seared sea bass at the finest restaurants in town while Andy murmured into the microphone wire running through his collar.
Five favorite foods. Now this was getting tricky. Desserts, in my opinion, were an entirely separate category from main dishes, and breakfast was another thing altogether, and the five best things I could cook bore no relation to the five best things I could buy. Mashed potatoes and roast chicken were my go-to comfort foods, but could I really compare them to the chocolate tarts and crème brûlée from the Parisian bakery on Lombard Street? Or the grilled stuffed grape leaves at Viet Nam, the fried chicken at Delilah’s, and the brownies from Le Bus? I scribbled, crossed out, remembered the chocolate bread pudding at the Silk City Diner, heated and with fresh whipped cream, and had to start again.
Seven pages of physical history. Did I have a heart murmur, high blood pressure, glaucoma? Was I pregnant? No, no, and a thousand times no. Six pages of emotional history. Did I eat when I was upset? Yes. Did I eat when I was happy? Yes. Would I be tearing through those bagels and that funky-looking cream cheese at this very moment, were it not for the present company? You betcha.
On to the psychology pages. Was I frequently depressed? I circled sometimes. Did I have thoughts of suicide? I winced, then circled rarely. Insomnia? No. Feelings of worthlessness? Yes, even though I knew I wasn’t worthless. Did I ever fantasize about cutting off fleshy or flabby areas of my body? What, doesn’t everyone? Please add any additional thoughts. I wrote, I am happy with every aspect of my life except my appearance. Then I added, And my love life.
I laughed a little bit. The woman stuffed into the seat next to mine gave me a tentative smile. She was wearing one of those outfits I always thought of as fat-lady chic: leggings and a tunic top in a soft, periwinkle blue, with silk-screened daisies across her chest. A beautiful outfit, and not cheap, either, but play clothes. It’s as if the fashion designers decided that once a woman hit a certain weight, she’d have no need for business suits, for skirts and blazers, for anything except glorified sweatsuits, and they tried to apologize for dressing us like overaged Teletubbies by silk-screening daisies on the tops.
“I’m laughing to keep from crying,” I explained.
“Gotcha,” she said. “I’m Lily.”
“I’m Candace. Cannie.”
“Not Candy?”
“I think my parents decided not to give the kids on the playground any extra ammunition,” I said. She smiled. She had glossy black hair twisted back with lacquered chopstick-y things, and diamond studs the size of cocktail peanuts in her ears.
“Do you think this will work?” I asked. She shrugged her thick shoulders.
“I was on phen-fen,” she said. “I lost eighty pounds.” She reached into her purse. I knew what was coming. Regular women carry pictures of their babies, their husbands, their summer houses. Fat ladies carry pictures of themselves at their skinniest. Lily showed me the full-figure view, in a black suit, and then the side profile, in a miniskirt and sweater. Sure enough, she looked terrific. “Phen-fen,” she said, and sighed gigantically. Her bosom looked like something governed by tides and gravity, not mere human will. “I was doing so great,” she said. Her eyes took on a faraway look. “I was never hungry. It was like flying.”
“Speed’ll do that to you,” I observed.
Lily wasn’t listening. “I cried the day they took it off the market. I tried and tried, but I gained everything back in, like, ten minutes.” She narrowed her eyes. “I would kill to get more phen-fen.”
“But…,” I said hesitantly. “Wasn’t it supposed to cause heart problems?”
Lily snorted. “Given a choice between being this big and being dead, I swear I’d have to think about it. It’s ridiculous! I could walk down two blocks and buy crack cocaine on the corner, but I can’t get phen-fen for love or money.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“You never tried phen-fen?”
“No. Just Weight Watchers.”
That brought a chorus of complaints and rolled eyes from the women sitting around me.
“Weight Watchers!”
“That’s a crock.”
“Expensive crock.”
“Standing in line so some skinny thing can weigh you”
“And those scales were never right,” said Lily, to a chorus of enthusiastic uh-huhs! The size six behind the desk was looking worried. Fat lady insurrection! I grinned, imagining us surging down the hall, a righteous, stretch-pant-wearing army, tipping over the scales, toppling the blood-pressure machine, tearing the height-weight charts off the walls and making all the skinny clinicians eat them, while we feasted on bagels and fat-free cream cheese.
“Candace Shapiro?”
A tall doctor with an extremely deep voice was calling my name. Lily squeezed my hand.
“Good luck,” she whispered. “And if he’s got any samples of phen-fen in there, grab ‘em!”
The doctor was fortyish, thin (of course), and going gray at the temples, with a warm handshake and big brown eyes. He was also extremely tall. Even in my thick-soled Doc Martens I barely came up to his shoulders, which meant he had to be at least six and a half feet. His name sounded like Dr. Krushelevsky, only with more syllables. “You can call me Dr. K,” he said, in his absurdly deep, absurdly slow voice. I kept waiting for him to drop what I took for a misguided Barry White impression and talk normally, but he didn’t, so I guessed that basso profundo was the way he did talk. I sat, holding my purse against my chest, while he flipped through my forms, squinting at a few answers, laughing out loud at others. I looked around, trying to relax. His office was nice. Leather couches, a comfortably cluttered desk, a real-looking Oriental rug covered with piles of books, papers, magazines, and a television/VCR in one corner, a small refrigerator with a coffee machine perched on top in another. I wondered if he’d ever slept there… if maybe the couch unfolded into a bed. It looked like the kind of place you’d want to stay in.