The Weight of Him(4)

He burrowed deeper on the bed and covered himself completely with the comforter, letting the darkness swallow him. His hot, damp breath surrounded his head like a welcome fog. The social worker had assured them they had done nothing wrong. “People can be great actors,” she’d said. “They can hide a lot.” Billy hadn’t been able to meet her gaze, knowing how much of himself he’d always hid.

He grabbed at the bottom sheet on Tricia’s side of the bed and scrunched it in his fist. During the long, sleepless night, he’d felt her breath on his arm. Two cool streams from her nostrils that he’d counted up to one hundred, two hundred, three. He’d thought about waking her up, but that had seemed unfair. She should get whatever rest she could. He wasn’t just being considerate, though. He hadn’t wanted her to see him so distraught. So weak.

The ache to have done better by Michael, to have saved him, set on Billy again. There was one thing he could do, at least. His resolve from last night returned. He was done killing himself slowly. He was going to lose his weight, once and for all.

*

The motor in the fridge made its whirring sound, as though getting a surge of electricity. It seemed to call to Billy, inviting him to plunder its laden, condensation-fogged shelves. Shelves that shouldered roast chicken, creamy coleslaw, bars of chocolate, a block of sharp red cheddar, cheesy pizza topped with meat and mushrooms, and lots more salvation. Billy’s empty stomach called back, almost as loud as the noise of the motor.

He glanced at Michael’s empty chair, and out at the clothesline, steeling himself. “Just one scrambled egg, please,” he told Tricia. “And only one slice of toast, with the barest lick of butter.”

“Are you feeling all right?” she asked.

“I’m back on my diet. I’m going to lose this weight, for good this time.”

She worked on his breakfast in silence.

“You don’t believe I’ll do it,” he said.

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you don’t think I will.” He had a lifelong pattern of losing and regaining his weight and then some, up until the past five years or so when he’d wearied of the struggle and had given up altogether.

“I’m done trying to figure out what people are and aren’t capable of.” Tricia fetched her cigarettes and lighter from the window ledge and stepped outside, closing the back door with a sharp click.

A gray-blue ribbon unraveled across the window. Something about that thread of smoke and breath, both having come out of Tricia and now floating up and away, gave Billy a feeling in his throat like food caught. The morning they lost Michael, Billy brought a towel from the bathroom and he and Tricia sat on the side of their bed together, crying into the two ends of cloth. How did they go from that to this? He swallowed hard. Tricia was disappearing on him, too.

*

Inside Dr. Shaw’s office, Billy struggled up onto the exam table. Beneath him, the sheet of white paper made its scratchy sounds. His embarrassment grew as he wrestled out of his too-small jacket. Shaw moved toward him, his liver-spotted hands gripping the ends of the stethoscope hanging from his neck. The thought rang in Billy’s head. Hanging from his neck.

After checking Billy’s blood pressure, Shaw placed the stethoscope on Billy’s chest and then his back, pressing hard to hear the wheeze of lungs through the walls of fat. The skeleton in the corner was missing its left arm. Billy’s last visit, it was intact.

Billy gestured with a nod. “What happened to him?”

Shaw, pulling an impatient, confused face, removed the stethoscope’s right earpiece.

“Its arm?” Billy repeated.

Shaw gave a soft chuckle. “Would you believe the dog got in and ran off with it?”

Billy could believe almost anything now.

Shaw finished his check of Billy’s vitals and moved back to his desk. Billy tried to work up the courage to tell the doctor he wasn’t here for a second stress cert, to get more time off work. Shaw reached for his notepad.

“Actually, Doctor, I’m not here for that.”

“Oh, no?”

“I want to drop all this weight, and get fit and healthy.”

Shaw’s gray eyebrows arched and he pushed on the bridge of his glasses. Their family doctor, he had cautioned Billy on his weight many times over the years, and his lectures had largely gone ignored.

“I mean it,” Billy said.

“Glad to hear it,” Shaw said, moving back to Billy. “I’m sympathetic to your situation, you know that, but it is about time we had a serious talk, especially with everything you’re going through. Your blood pressure is high, worrisome in fact, as is your overall condition. There’s no easy way to put this, Billy, you’re morbidly obese and on a very slippery slope. Headed straight toward hypertension, diabetes, cardiopulmonary disease, and you put shock and grief on top of all that … well, I don’t have to spell it out.”

“No, don’t, thanks.”

“All right, then. Let’s get you up on the scales.”

Billy shuddered. This would be his first time on a weighing scale in years. The number would feel like a sentence.

He dragged himself across the room. A detailed, multicolored diagram of the human body filled much of the wall above the tall, metal scale. Billy stared at the map of veins, muscles, bones, and vital organs. A geography of ourselves. Next to the human map, he looked like an entire, ailing continent.