Big Summer(37)

“Oh, that’s fine for you to say,” Nana said. “You have no idea what it’s like to go through life as a fat woman. No idea at all.”

I closed my eyes. Had Nana been a fat woman? Was she talking about my mom? Was I destined to be fat, just like my mother? And was it really that bad?

I pressed the pillow over my ears when the shouting began, my nana yelling at my dad, “You’re not doing her any favors with those food trips of yours,” my father yelling back, “I don’t want her hating her own body! Isn’t it enough that you’ve made your own daughter miserable? Do you have to do the same thing to her daughter?” I was lying on my bed when I heard the door slam, then my father’s tread in the hallway. His face was red, and his hair stood up in tufts, but his voice was gentle, and his hand was warm around mine.

“How about you and I go for a walk?” he asked. We went to Ben & Jerry’s on 104th Street, where I got the hot-fudge sundae with mint chip ice cream I’d been dreaming about since Nana’s arrival. My father told me stories about their time in Maine: the camper who’d finally learned how to swim after being too scared to even put his face in the water, the canoers who’d gotten lost in a thunderstorm. Finally, he said, “How’d it go with Nana?”

“I was so hungry,” I said. By then my spoon was clinking against the glass as I scraped up every bit of hot fudge, gobbling it down, even as I heard Nana’s voice saying that sugar was poison, and Valerie, the Weight Watchers leader, talking about how she’d weighed three hundred pounds and how awful that had been. “She only let me have, like, one tiny bite of chocolate for dessert. She threw out all the sugar and all the butter!”

“She shouldn’t have done that,” my father said. “There’s absolutely no reason to restrict what a growing girl is eating.” He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “You are fine, just the way you are,” he said. “Bodies come in all shapes and sizes. Don’t ever let anyone make you feel any differently.”

I wanted to believe him, but by then, of course, the damage had been done.



* * *




At Drue and Stuart’s apartment, with the party continuing behind me, and with Brett lurking somewhere nearby, I finished my water, went back to the bar, asked for a shot of tequila, and slugged it down, feeling my throat burn, along with my eyes. I am going to die alone, I thought. I wanted to go home, back to my safe little nest, to sit with Bingo in my lap and Darshi on the couch beside me, or maybe even back to my parents’ place, away from all these beautiful people who, just by living, made me feel inadequate, at once enormous and small.

I’d stepped into the hallway and summoned the elevator when I heard a man’s voice, coming from the shadowed corner at the end of the hallway.

I held my breath and listened. The man was Stuart. His face was toward the wall, his body bent in a protective curve as he spoke intently to someone I couldn’t see. “It’ll be fine,” I heard him say. “I promise.”

The elevator dinged. Stuart turned around. Quickly, before he could see me, I stepped inside, punching the down button until the doors slid shut. As the elevator descended, I thought about Mr. Cavanaugh’s fidgety impatience, about Mrs. Cavanaugh’s enlarged lips and Mr. Lowe’s transplanted hair. I wondered how many of the guests were faking something—confidence, friendship, maybe even love. I wondered how many had ulterior motives—fame or fortune or just proximity to someone who had both. I thought about the cousins, wondering if Drue had paid for their tickets and hotel rooms, or made generous contribution to their kids’ college funds. I recalled her gorgeous assistant, wondering if she’d been offered a raise right around the time the save-the-date cards had gone out and Drue had recruited her as a bridesmaid. I walked out into the darkness, feeling unsettled, unhappy, a little envious, a little nauseated. And all of those emotions felt familiar, as comfortable and customary as drawing breath. It was the way Drue Cavanaugh had always made me feel.

I was almost out the door when I heard Drue calling me. “Hey, Daphne! Wait up!”

I turned around and there she was, hurrying through the lobby in her moonbeam dress with her high-heeled shoes in her hand. When she saw that she’d gotten my attention, she dropped her shoes by her feet, stood up very straight, and declaimed,

My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps

To come and waste their time and ours…



In spite of myself, I smiled. Back at Lathrop, the English teacher who’d gotten us started on Philip Larkin with the poem about how your parents fuck you up had also taught the poem called “Vers de Société,” about the pain of loneliness versus the discomfort of social interaction.

“I had to get out of there,” Drue announced. “Couldn’t stand it. Come on, let’s go get some French fries! With gravy!”

“I don’t think you can bail on your own engagement party,” I murmured as my stomach growled.

“Who’s going to stop me?” Daphne giggled, and I thought, Who ever does? “Besides,” she said, leaning her head briefly on top of mine and exhaling tequila vapors, “I can’t stand any of those people.”

“Drue,” I said, “you’re marrying one of those people in a few weeks.”

She wrinkled her nose. If I’d made the gesture, I would have looked like a constipated rabbit. On Drue it was charming. “Meh,” she said.