The Weight of Him(54)

*

Back in the changing room, as Billy and Ivor dressed, Ivor’s words turned Billy’s stomach cold. “Being fat is bad, isn’t it?” His face was crimson.

Billy tried to think what to say, and then hoped to sound matter-of-fact. “Fat isn’t bad, but it can be very unhealthy.”

Ivor pushed past Billy and moved to the exit. “Ivor,” Billy said.

“No!” Ivor said. “I said I don’t want you to say anything.”

Billy hurried after Ivor, feeling like that’s all he did now, chase his children.





Eighteen

July 21. The evening of Billy’s big march. Six months ago today, shortly before eight o’clock in the morning—right about when Billy and Tricia had learned that Michael hadn’t shown up to milk the cows—Sergeant Deveney had arrived with his cap in his hands and the news that would shatter their world. Six months, and a part of Billy still couldn’t believe, still expected to turn around and find Michael standing right there, smiling, waiting.

So much had happened in such a short time. In what sometimes felt like forever. He’d lost Michael, his firstborn, and it had prompted his goal to shed half of himself, and to try to stop suicide. Already, he’d dropped over fifty pounds. He saw a flash of himself sitting at a potter’s wheel and sculpting those fifty-some pounds of fat into a boy. He squeezed his eyes closed, as if that could black out the strange-awful picture. Oh, to be a Dr. Frankenstein. To bring Michael back.

His resolve hardened. At least he could bring about change. He could do good. And all in Michael’s name. He’d never known he’d so much fight in him. Never known he could be capable of so much. His was no ordinary weight loss, no ordinary march, no ordinary documentary. He was going to change the world. A shiver passed over him, cooling the surge of bravado. He wished he’d more of an army around him. Wished he could believe that at the very least his wife and children would stand with him through it all. He swallowed hard. In a short while he would go downstairs and put his family to the test. It would wring out his heart if they failed him.

*

In the bathroom, Billy’s face stared out of the mirror above the sink, his head and stomach in a spin. These past couple of weeks it had proven harder and harder to drop the weight and he’d hovered at a loss of fifty-three pounds for what felt like forever. To shift the scale again, he’d cut down to just the performance shakes and had increased his visits to the pool, swimming twenty laps every morning and twenty more in the evenings. But he couldn’t keep that intensity up. It would kill him. Now that the scale was moving again—a total of fifty-seven pounds—he would revert to a more realistic diet and exercise routine, and hopefully rid himself of these awful, poorly sensations. His head and stomach were sick, too, from pure nerves.

He worried he might not be able to make it through the four miles of the very march he had masterminded. His body was pain-free in the pool—light, suspended, held. Walking, though, for any length was a whole different story. He had visions of collapsing on the road and getting carried off in a stretcher. That couldn’t happen. He would do this. He had to.

At the mirror, he ran his free hand through his hair. He had always loved his thick, shiny mass of curls, their silky feel and healthy, blossoming look. Regardless of the sagging, bloated, blue-veined, purple-marked block of body below, no one could ever deny his lustrous crop of curls. He powered on the electric shaver and hesitated, wavering, but then took the blade to himself. The razor’s buzz filled his ears, as if sounding a warning. It was only hair, though. Too much hair. As his curls fell away, he felt ever lighter. Felt surer of who he was becoming. He worked quickly, shearing down to his scalp, leaving only a shadow. Amazing how efficient and deadly the blade was, and yet how pleasant—a warm vibration along his head, a kind of caress.

Finished, he rubbed his coarse head with both hands, feeling its bumps and hollows, assessing its shorn, military look. He glanced down at the dark heap of curls around his bare feet. Tricia, his entire family, would be horrified. But he was a soldier now, waging a war. Another image flashed though him. He saw the village of seconds out in the garage, saw every last toy. The dolls and soldiers alike, they all raised their arms in unison and saluted him. He nodded at himself in the mirror, overcome. Let’s do this.

After a quick shower, he hurried back into his bedroom and stood in front of the full-length mirror. His face and chins had definitely thinned out. He turned left and right, checking his profile. There was ever more give in the waistband of his trousers and tracksuit bottoms with each passing day, but he didn’t see as much change in his body as he’d like, aside from his arms. Oddly, his forearms showed the most difference. They appeared thinner, almost delicate, as if they belonged to someone else. He wrapped his right hand around his left wrist, liking how his thumb and middle finger almost met.

Fifty-seven pounds. He allowed the enormity of the loss to sink in. He was getting closer and closer to his goal. Just yesterday in the village, after he’d visited Michael’s grave, he’d met Caroline outside the church. “Well, if you aren’t meeting yourself backwards,” she had said, admiring. Soon he would have sixty pounds off, and sixty-five, and seventy, and on and on. He would never again allow his weight to climb. He would never again let food control him. He was in charge now.

He strapped on the knee and ankle braces he’d purchased, and then pulled on his tracksuit bottoms. Topless, he moved into the boys’ bedroom and struggled down onto all fours on the carpet. He reached beneath Michael’s bed for the hidden cardboard box. It looked like a gift waiting to be wrapped. The idea disturbed him and he grabbed at the box flaps, removing with reverence the five awful-thrilling T-shirts.