Bigger (The Nicky Beets series) (11 page)

I spent the rest of the day tidying our home and finishing some
last-minute gift-wrapping. I promised my mom I’d bring cookies to her house the
next day, so I busied myself in the kitchen preparing giant, face-sized cookies
with three types of chocolate chips and chopped walnuts, which I also photographed
and blogged about, of course. The smell of them baking in the oven was
intoxicating, but I’d already promised myself ahead of time that I wouldn’t be
going off the diet this holiday. Plenty of holidays had already been spent
overindulging, and look where it had gotten me – on television, cramming
my mouth with hot dogs, while my stomach jiggled unhindered over my waistband.
So, no, I would not be eating cookies this year.

I did allow myself a couple glasses of wine as I curled up on the couch
with a blanket draped over my legs. I popped “Moonstruck” into the DVD player
– it’s one of my favorite holiday movies, even though it has nothing to
do with the holidays. At some point – I think when Ronnie takes Loretta
to the opera – I fell asleep. When I awoke, Johnny was back from Italy
and knocking on the front door. Outside my townhouse, it was dark and the hour
was late, so I quietly clicked the lights off and went to bed, pulling the
comforter up over myself contentedly.

Because my mother insisted I spend Christmas with her in the same fashion
I had as a child, I was scheduled to arrive at her home at seven a.m. Which
meant I had to get up at five a.m. if I was going to have enough time to
shower, dress, gather all the gifts and cookies together and drive the quiet
freeways, again, to her home in Los Gatos.

After a long shower, I surveyed my closet and chose an oversized red
cashmere sweater I was pretty sure I’d worn on Christmas the year before. It
was festive, and would cover me well. Which was a strange thing to want. I’d
lost a decent amount of weight – thirty-six pounds, which was almost a
pound a day. I was down to two-hundred-thirty-four pounds. I was really, really
proud of myself and the major restraint I’d practiced. I’d have never believed
I could go more than a month without bread or sugar.

But frankly, I didn’t want anyone in my family to notice. My aunt Kathy
would be there with her husband, as would Jim’s elderly mother, and the last
thing I wanted or needed was my mom making a big deal about me losing a few
pounds when it was obvious I still had a lot of weight to lose. It would just
be embarrassing.

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried about it. My mom probably
wouldn’t have noticed my weight loss if I’d shown up in a bikini. She was in
her customary frantic holiday mode, running around adjusting bowls of potpurri
and putting things in the oven and taking things out. When I showed up on her
porch with my arms full of gifts, she opened the door with, “Nicole, you’re
finally here.” Then she walked away, distracted by something or the other and
yelling for my stepdad.

Jim sauntered up in his slippers, bemused, and took the packages from me
with a peck on the cheek. He paused a moment to look at me with a raised
eyebrow and said too quietly for anyone else to hear, “You look good, kid.” Jim
was so good with stuff like that – he knew I didn’t like a lot of
attention, so he didn’t make a big deal out of it.

No one else said anything that day about how I looked, which was a
relief. We spent the day sitting around in my mom and Jim’s expansive living
room, opening gifts, sipping coffee, and breaking for meals. No one seemed to
notice, and no one commented when I skipped the cinnamon rolls and heaped fruit
salad on my plate, or when I passed over the rolls and mashed potatoes at
dinner, instead opting for a slice of ham, some green beans and salad. By the
end of the day, I was actually a bit baffled. No one had balked the slightest
bit when I turned down dessert and instead refilled my coffee mug. I knew my
mom was a bit self-absorbed, but her complete disinterest in me was beginning
to feel offensive.

As everyone prepared to leave for the evening, I pulled my coat on and
Jim walked me out to my car.

“Your mom’s still peeved at you, you know,” he said, glancing sideways at
me.

This stopped me in my tracks.

“For
what
?” I asked.

“Well, she says you hung up on her …”

“Oh, my God. I hung up on her like over a month ago. She’s still pissed
about that?”

“Hasn’t stopped bitching about it since,” he replied.

“Sorry,” I said empathetically. I knew what miserable company my mom
could be when she was stewing about something. “But she had it coming. She
basically told me I was fat and I needed to lose weight. And not in a nice
way.”

Jim didn’t say anything at first, but he turned to look at me. “Well it
looks like you took what she said to heart.”

“Thanks for noticing,” I told him. “But she isn’t the reason I’m doing
this. … I just can’t believe she spent the whole day completely ignoring me.”

“It’s her way, Kemo Sabe,” Jim grasped my shoulder and gave me a wink.
“Give it a couple more weeks and it should blow over. A new crisis will arise;
one always does.”

I smiled and hugged him tightly before climbing back in my car and
turning slowly back onto the road.

Chuck was due back the next afternoon, so I spent the next morning
picking up some groceries and prepping for the coming week. At the appointed
hour, I pulled up to the curb at the airport and he fell into the passenger
seat with a sigh. There was an air of dejection about him, and the skin under
his eyes was dark with fatigue.

“Hey,” I said, mildly surprised. “You look pooped.”

He leaned over to kiss me lightly on the lips and then leaned back in his
seat again with a big yawn.

“Yeah,” he said. “That was rough.”

“Ugh, sorry,” I said. “My mom was her usual awesome self, as well.”

Chuck shook his head. “There’s no comparison,” he muttered. “Both of your
parents are alive. You have no idea what it’s like.”

I could have argued that I’d never actually seen my dad in person, so at
least Chuck had a few good years with his, but I wasn’t up for the argument.

“I’m not comparing anything,” I said defensively. “And I’m not going to
fight with you, so you can give it up right now.”

He ran his hand through his hair and quietly said, “Sorry. Don’t mind
me.”

So I didn’t. We drove home in uneasy silence.

We arrived home shortly and Chuck announced he was going to take a nap,
which was so unusual for him I just nodded my head in surprise. He closed our
bedroom door and I heard him fall into bed. Meanwhile, I went for a walk down
to the track, which I circled a few times before heading back. When I got home,
Chuck was still napping, to my surprise, so I quietly started a lentil soup on
the stove.

About half an hour later, as I was pouring chicken broth into a large
pot, Chuck emerged sleepily from our bedroom, trudging down the hallway in his
socks. He stood behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist, resting his
chin on top of my shoulder.

“Better?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m glad I’m home. What’s for dinner?”

“Lentil soup.”

“Hm.” He unwrapped himself and trudged off to the living room, where he
sat down heavily on the couch and turned on the TV.

Chuck had been tiring of the dinners I was preparing at home. It was
obvious by the resigned look on his face, his lackluster way of pushing food
around on his plate with his fork and chewing on it joylessly. I was trying to
make the food as interesting as possible, but there were only so many ways that
I knew how to prepare low fat, low-carbohydrate meals. I’d spent years
perfecting pasta dishes, starchy meals rich with butter and cream, and desserts
loaded with sugar. I’d never bothered to learn how to make healthy food, much
less how to make it taste good. For the time being, I was satisfied with
skinless baked chicken breasts, salad with light vinaigrette and some kind of
steamed vegetable, but the routine was wearing on my boyfriend.

A few evenings after I’d picked him up from the airport, we’d both been
to work that day and I’d returned sweat-soaked from the track. I was
stir-frying slices of turkey breast with bell peppers, snow peas, onions and
garlic, and I was pretty happy with how it was turning out.

Chuck sauntered into the kitchen to peer into the pan and looked
unimpressed.

“Stir fry, babe!” I enthused. “Something a little different! You’ll like
it.”

“Are we having rice, too?” he asked.

“No, too carby,” I told him. “I made a salad, though.”

“So we’re having vegetables with a side of vegetables?”

I glared at him. “There’s turkey in the stir-fry.”

Chuck sighed deeply. “Why can’t we eat rice? And when can we eat some red
meat?”

He was a born-and-bred Texan, used to regular large servings of cow on
his plate. It was really sort of a miracle I could get him to eat turkey at
all. Still, with all the effort I put into our meals – I was constantly
thinking about what I should and should not eat – I wasn’t in the mood
for his complaints.

“If you want rice, make it yourself,” I snapped. “I’ll pick up some red
meat next week if it’ll get you off my back.”

“I don’t think it’s asking too much to have rice with stir fry,” he
complained. “It’s sort of standard. And it’s not as if it’s going to make a
difference.”

Oh, sure. He could probably eat all the rice he wanted. Me? I’d been
eating all the rice I wanted for years, now, and look where it’d gotten me.
Still, I wasn’t willing to engage in a debate about it.

“Please,” I said, annoyed. “I’m not going to argue about this.”

Chuck glared at me for a moment and then walked to the fridge, where he
wrestled a beer from the back, twisted the cap off and tossed it onto the
counter. He seemed to be mulling over his next sentence.

“You know, none of the girls at work are overweight, and they eat
whatever they want,” he began. “They just don’t eat
a lot
of it.”

I froze and felt my face harden into granite before I turned slowly to
scowl at him. He could hardly have chosen a more insulting thing to say to me.
Oh sure, all the cute chicks at work were thin, and effortlessly so! Obviously,
being a skinny person was super-easy and I’d just been going about it wrong for
all this time.

“Yeah?” I asked, cocking my head in sarcastic curiosity. “Who? Like
Candace
? Wow. I guess I should probably
give her a call and ask her how she keeps herself so trim. She’s definitely got
it all figured out, hasn’t she?”

Candace could die a happy death if I called her for weight loss advice,
which I myself would sooner die than do. And come to think of it, she’d
probably be happiest if I
did
die, so
she could move in on Chuck.

Chuck just stared at me with his pissed-off face, his mouth a tight slit.

“I guess I’ve been going about this all wrong,” I continued, turning back
around to flick the burner off and begin dishing a serving of stir-fry onto a
plate for myself. Chuck could get his own fucking plate if he wanted any, or he
could eat shit for all I cared at that moment. “Yeah, you know, the more I
think about it, the more I realize you are probably
so
right. Candace – she’s never been fat a day in her life,
has she? Obviously, she knows how to stay thin. I’ll give her a call tomorrow,
and come to think of it, let’s just start eating pizza and ice cream again.
Because it really shouldn’t be a problem for me, if I could just control my
portions, right?”

I violently speared a piece of turkey and shoved it into my mouth,
chewing slowly as I bored holes into Chuck’s face with my eyes.

Chuck shrugged. “You’re irrational. Forget it.”

“Gosh, I know,” I oozed sarcasm. “I’m such an irrational, out-of-control
woman. I’m not really sure how you put up with me.” I walked past Chuck into
the living room, where I sat on the couch and slowly ate my dinner. Chuck
silently watched me for a moment while I ignored him. He walked to the back of
the house. I heard our office door slam.

It seemed Chuck was still in anger/rage mode, and I was still in angry/defensive
mode. He had a way of choosing the exact words he knew would hurt me the most.
He’d often do this even if whatever insult he was hurling at me had nothing to
do with the argument at hand. It was beyond hurtful. I was his girlfriend. I
wanted him to be happy, and I thought that was pretty obvious. I was trying
really hard; why wasn’t he?

I finished my dinner, which admittedly was not that good. The turkey was
tough and, the vegetables had gotten too soft during our argument.

Nonetheless, I’d taken a quick shot of the dinner and uploaded it to my
blog.

Turkey Stir-Fry

Le sigh.

This could have been a decent dish if it hadn’t gotten overcooked during
an argument with a certain someone. Also, the turkey was bland and tough. To
say that I haven’t figured out a way to make low-fat, low-carb food taste
really good would be a considerable understatement. However, there is no
denying that low-fat, low-carb food, combined with torturous workout sessions,
results in impressive weight loss. They say nothing tastes as good as skinny
feels. That’s a difficult concept for a foodie to wrap her mind around, but I
can say that it certainly does feel amazing when a formerly tightly-fitting pair
of pants are suddenly loose on me.

I might catch hell for calling
Chuck out on the blog, but at the moment I just didn’t give a shit.

It was almost nine o’clock when I clicked “publish” and simultaneously
felt my cell phone vibrating in my pocket. Laurie’s name popped up on the
screen.

“Hey girl,” I answered. For a couple of beats there was no reply.