Big Summer(36)
I’d never been to church, but I imagined that church was probably something like Weight Watchers, with rituals and repetition, confessions and forgiveness and exhortations to stay the course in the upcoming week. I thought it was nice, how the women all seemed to want to help each other. When Valerie would open the floor, saying “Ladies, let me hear about your triumphs and temptations,” someone would start talking about an upcoming party, or a business trip, or how there’d been birthday cake at the office, and everyone would want to help.
“They know I’m on a diet!” the birthday-cake woman had wailed. “And I couldn’t not eat it! I had to be polite!” I listened as the other Weight Watchers proposed solutions—Tell them you’re allergic! Take a slice and say it’s for later and throw it away! I wondered if this was what being an adult was: endless denial, requiring limitless willpower. Then I would think about what kind of job I could find where birthday cake was served in the office.
After a week and a half of deprivation, I had the bright idea to tell Nana I was going upstairs to visit the DiNardos’ cats. “Be back by bedtime,” she said, stirring Sweet’N Low into her coffee. “And take the stairs, not the elevator.” I took the stairs two at a time, galloping up to the fifth floor and presenting myself, red-faced and panting, to Mrs. DiNardo, who seemed surprised to see me. I’d helped my mother take care of Muffin and Mittens before, when the DiNardos went away. Mom would pour dry food into the cats’ bowl, change their water, and clean their litter box, and I would pet them, to the extent that the stand-offish Persians wanted petting, but I’d never stopped in to see the cats while the DiNardos were home.
“How are you holding up? You miss your mom and dad?” Mrs. DiNardo asked.
I nodded, scratching Muffin (or possibly Mittens) behind its ears. I waited until Mrs. DiNardo had gone back to Dancing with the Stars before easing open her pantry door. I found a half-full bag of marshmallows and a bar of unsweetened baking chocolate and shoved them both into the pouch of the sweatshirt I’d worn with theft in mind. In the refrigerator, I found a few hot-dog buns and added them to my stash. I played with the cat for another few minutes, then got to my feet.
“Good night, Mrs. DiNardo!” I called. I felt bad about stealing food, but I was sure the DiNardos could afford to replace what I’d taken. On the fourth-floor landing, I crammed four marshmallows into my mouth and chased them with a hot-dog bun. I hid the rest of the treats under my mattress, and supplemented my one-egg breakfasts and dry-tuna lunches with a few marshmallows or a square of the unsweetened chocolate, which was so bitter it made my face ache.
Every Saturday morning before we left for Weight Watchers, Nana would weigh me. “The trick to staying healthy is never gaining weight in the first place,” she said. I would stand on the bathroom scale in just my underwear and nightgown. “I’ve never weighed more than five pounds more than I did the day I was married,” she told me, sucking in her cheeks and turning from side to side, inspecting herself in the bathroom mirror, moving her body and face through the same series of poses that I’d seen my mother perform a thousand times. “I weigh myself every morning, and if I see that needle creeping up, I cut back.” Cut back where? I wondered. Would she eliminate the single square of chocolate she permitted herself every other night? Would she reduce her afternoon snack from twelve almonds to six? What was left for her to deny herself?
“So many women my age let themselves go,” Nana lamented one Saturday after the meeting. I was instantly struck by the phrase. While she kept talking, I thought about how it would look: women unbuttoning their jeans and unzipping their dresses, running toward tables full of carrot cake and apple crisp. Their breasts would bounce; the extra flesh of their upper arms would jiggle; their thighs would ripple and shake as they raced toward rivers of butter, plains of prime rib, mountains of mashed potatoes and ice cream and birthday cake.
I will never forget the look on my mother’s face on that hot August afternoon when my parents came home: first shock, then sorrow, and what looked like a flash of envy that quickly turned into sympathy, and from sympathy to anger. “Oh,” she said, and opened her arms. She felt warm and soft against me, her scent mixed with the unfamiliar tang of bug spray and sunscreen.
“How about a hug for Dad?” said my father. He tried to smile as I embraced him, but his forehead was furrowed, and his lips were a little white around the edges. I helped them carry their luggage inside and upstairs to where Nana was sitting in the kitchen.
“Jerry!” Nana said, smiling as she stood, smoothing the fabric of her slacks over her hips. “How was Maine?”
“Maine was good,” he said. “But, Denise—”
As if she hadn’t heard him, Nana said, “And doesn’t Daphne look wonderful?” Lowering her voice, she said, “I thought about sending you a picture, but we wanted it to be a surprise.”
By then my mom had made it upstairs. Holding her duffel bag in her hand, in a voice that was frighteningly quiet, she said, “Mom. We talked about this.”
“What?” Nana asked. She raised her hands, fingers spread, in the air, an exaggerated look of innocence on her face. “What did I do? Is it a crime to want my granddaughter to be healthy?”
“Daphne,” said my father, “go to your room, please.”
I hurried down the hall and closed my bedroom door. Part of me didn’t want to hear them, but a larger part was powerless to resist. I pressed my ear against the seam where the door met the wall and listened to a three-way fight conducted mostly in whispers, with the occasional shout. I heard Nana hissing at my mother, saying, “You of all people know how hard it is to lose weight once you’ve put it on,” and my father growling, “You had no business doing this to Daphne.”