Bigger (The Nicky Beets series) (2 page)

“Oh, babe. I’m so sorry.” I scooted closer to him and wrapped my arms
around him as he wept. I’d never felt so impotent and incapable. There’d be
nothing I could do to ease his grief, and that knowledge alone triggered my own
tears.

I landed in Dallas several days later, having received the go-ahead from
Chuck to fly in for his dad’s funeral. Chuck was waiting in a rental car at the
curb outside the baggage claim. He helped me maneuver my suitcase into the
trunk and then we settled in for the drive to his mom’s house.

He’d already explained to me in brief phone conversations in the evenings
that he and his mom had been busy with the dreadful work that comes with the
passing of a loved one, made particularly abhorrent by its unexpected nature.
First there was the trip to the funeral home, where they flipped through laminated
sheets in three-ring binders, choosing service programs, the casket, discussing
the embalming – the home would need a suit to dress his father in. Chuck
said his mother had sobbed through that ordeal and he’d hastily made all the
funeral decisions, not truly caring about any of the details or the cost. A
large lump seemed to have taken up permanent residence in the pit of his
stomach.

Then there were all the relatives who constantly called the house and
stopped by to see how his mom, Bonnie, was doing. Several had driven in from
out-of-town and were staying in spare rooms and on the couch. It’d have been
irritating if Chuck could summon the energy to feel anything other than numb. Besides,
someone had to eat the massive amounts of casserole and pie that well-meaning
neighbors and friends from church kept dropping off.

“How are you doing?” I asked him, resting my hand on his. We were
coasting down the freeway mid-day.

Chuck gave me a quick glance and a half-smile. “I’m OK. I just can’t wait
for this to be over.”

“I know.”

I wondered if I should ask Chuck how to behave around his mom. This was
my first time meeting Bonnie and I would have been nervous under normal
circumstances, but given recent events, I was practically shaking. The last
thing I wanted was to be another burden. But I decided Chuck had enough on his
mind.

We pulled up to a beautiful, large brick house with white trim. Chuck
grabbed my luggage and we trudged toward the front door, which was decorated
with an artistic fall wreath, faux golden leaves and berries winding around a
circle of twigs. All of the moisture in my mouth suddenly disappeared and my
heart hammered wildly.

Several people were sitting around a table in the dining room, quietly
poking at something on their plates. One woman stood and made her way toward
us. She was impossibly tiny, probably a head shorter than me, and rail thin.
Skinny, really. Her blonde hair was sprayed into a perfect halo around her
head. She wore a full face of makeup, although no amount of makeup was going to
hide the tender bags under her eyes that were no doubt swollen from crying.

“Mom, this is Nic. Nic, my mom, Bonnie,” Chuck introduced us with little
fanfare.

I held out my hand and tried to crumple my body into as small a version
of itself as possible. “Mrs. Schmidt, I’m so sorry we’re meeting under these
circumstances.”

Her childlike hand disappeared into my chubby palm. I watched her look me
up and down, quite obviously surprised that this was me, the girl her son had
been dating for all these years. It occurred to me that Chuck had probably told
his parents next to nothing about me over the last several years. Did I detect
disappointment in her gaze? Almost certainly. Could I fault her for it? No. Her
husband had just died, and now her only son had brought his obese girlfriend
home to meet her for the first time. Life was not being kind at the moment.

“Call me Bonnie,” she said with a tight smile. “Welcome to Dallas.”

And she turned and walked back toward the table, where she resumed
sitting and poking at the food on her plate. I looked at Chuck, who seemed
mildly concerned but just shook his head as if to say,
it is what it is
.

“Nicole?” A woman who looked like a plump version of Bonnie was making
her way toward me with her arms outstretched. “I’m Carlene. We’re so glad you
could make it.”

Aunt Carlene wrapped me an embrace and then hustled me off to the
kitchen. “Let’s get you some pie, sweetheart. You must be starving after your
trip.”

Thank goodness for Carlene – she was the pleasant, good-natured
buffer everyone in the house needed in order not to feel like screaming and
running as far away as they possibly could. I stayed by her side throughout my
visit and barely spoke with Bonnie at all. I told myself not to be concerned
about it. If I were in the throes of grief, I’m sure I’d be incommunicado, too.
There’d be time to get to know each other later.

So I found myself tagging along wherever it seemed the family needed to
be, sort of hanging around in the background, not wanting to impose. Although
Carlene always made sure I was part of the group.

I sat as still as possible on the church pew next to Chuck during his
dad’s funeral. Bonnie was crumpled in a damp heap, Carlene patting her back
consolingly and dabbing at her own eyes with a tissue. Chuck was stock-still
and dry-eyed, his jaw muscle flexing over and over. I thought perhaps he’d
reached the “anger” stage of grief.

At Chuck’s insistence, I flew home the morning after the funeral.

“We have some things we need to wrap up. You shouldn’t use your vacation
time for this.”

“It’s not an inconvenience,” I started to tell him, but the stony look in
his eyes relayed more than he could say at the moment. He needed to be alone.
 

Chuck returned home about a week after the funeral.

Several friends had sent sympathy cards and emails and Facebook messages.
Some called. Many seemed almost fearful. We realized most friends our age still
had two living parents, and many had never even been to a funeral. I myself had
never had a death in my family; we’d had close family friends pass away and had
lost pets over the years, but nothing that hit quite as hard as this.

Our friends seemed to not know what to say, or when it would be
appropriate to hang out and drink beers and act like everything was great
again. For his part, Chuck seemed to want to return to normalcy. Yet when our
friends chose to ignore the elephant in the room and neglected to mention his
dad’s passing, it made him angry. Those who did attempt to discuss it constantly
said the wrong things, telling him his grief would pass and he’d be all right
soon enough.

“I’m not all right,” he’d rage to me later. “I’m not even the same person
anymore.”

And I’m afraid I was as much to blame as anyone, although I did all I
knew to do. It seemed Chuck’s new default emotions were rage and anger. There were
unresolved issues between him and his dad, and now there’d never be a
resolution. He believed his dad would never know how much he’d loved him, now
that he’d been ripped from his life so quickly. Rather than grieve in sadness,
he grieved in anger, and I could take only so much when that anger was directed
at me.

So sometimes I fought back. These arguments often escalated until one of
us left the house, slamming the door loudly behind us, or one or both of us
were sobbing. Regardless, I always felt a horrible combination of guilt for
daring to argue with Chuck while he was grieving, and fury at him for taking it
out on me.

We’d finally reached a point where we were no longer arguing, but Chuck was
still detached and depressed. I’d suggested seeing a therapist, but that idea
was met with scorn. He wasn’t a pussy who needed to go to therapy, goddammit.

TODAY

I unlocked the front door, thinking about what I might make for dinner,
and if I should make enough for the two of us. Chuck might not even make it
home before I went to bed.

He’d thrown himself into his work after his dad’s death. He told me about
a couple special projects he was working on that were eating up a lot of his
time. And he’d taken to accompanying his coworkers to bars after work. I didn’t
love the idea of him getting drunk without me there to at least give cute girls
the evil eye, but I let it pass for now, given the circumstances.

He hadn’t clued me in as to his whereabouts this evening, so I figured
I’d text him a little later after I’d eaten dinner. But, as I was stepping
inside, Chuck’s truck came trundling up the drive. I was more than pleasantly
surprised when he hopped out of the driver’s side with a large pizza box in one
hand.

“You got dinner?” I asked with an awed smile. This was beyond rare.

“Yep,” he said, leaning down to peck me on the mouth, smiling wearily.

We stepped into our small foyer, where I removed my shoes, per my own
house rule; shoes worn outside are never to be worn inside, so as to prevent
disgusting germs from getting onto our pristine, cream-colored carpet. I neatly
hung my purse and coat on the rack near the door. Chuck was perfectly aware of
the rule, but just kept walking toward the kitchen. He’d started this up
shortly after his dad’s death, and it almost felt hostile, like he was
challenging me to say something about it. I’d been ignoring it, hoping his
rebellious tantrum would eventually end, but it wasn’t easy. I bit my lip to
keep from saying anything, but I certainly noticed his wet footprints and a
couple of damp leaves that had rubbed off onto the carpet.

Living with Chuck for the last several years had required major
adjustments for both of us. He didn’t believe in hanging up his clothes or
cleaning toilets or filing papers. If we’d followed his lead, I feared the
house would be a filthy hoarder’s nest, teeming with untidy stacks of utility
bills and littered with chocolate wrappers. It figured that a slob and a neat
freak would become romantically involved. I’d been obsessed with order and
tidiness for as long as I could remember, and I simply could not rest until
everything was clean and put away. It had taken a few knock-down, drag-out
fights before we agreed on a system we could both live with, which basically
amounted to me cleaning obsessively and him keeping his clutter to a minimum.
Lately, though, there was certainly less of a balance.

Chuck was popping open a bottle of red wine in the kitchen, so I strode
in after him. He poured a few glugs into a goblet and handed it to me.

“You read my mind,” I said, downing a generous gulp. I leaned up against
his back and inhaled; even after a long day he managed to smell soapy, with an
undercurrent of his spicy personal fragrance.

“Let’s eat,” he said, pulling away from me as he carried his dinner plate
and wine into the living room.

“I’ll be right back – just need to change,” I answered.

I jiggled my pinstripe-panted butt toward our bedroom to change into
stretch pants and an enormous T-shirt I got for participating in a 5K-run
several thinner years prior. Then grabbing my camera, I set about taking photos
of the pizza and wine so I could post them on my blog later that night. As with
many things in my life, I had a few rules about my blog. One rule was that
every night I must take photos of my dinner, regardless of what I was eating,
and post the pictures to my blog, which was aptly titled
“Nicky Eats.”
I often took photos of breakfast or lunch, depending
on whether said meals were interesting enough to earn a mention, but photos of
dinner were always imperative.

I’d started the blog two years prior. It seemed like everyone I knew had
a blog; even my mother was reviewing books on her own little blog. Chuck had
been encouraging me to start a blog about food for a few months. After all,
most of what he and I did together was eat. I experimented with different
recipes and we often tried out restaurants around town. Eating was our main
hobby, almost a passion. Considering how bored I was with my job and the
copious amount of free time I had when I wasn’t working or scrubbing nearly
undetectable dirt off the kitchen floor, I decided: Why the hell not?

What I found was, strangely, people really enjoyed reading about food.
They loved seeing photos of food and step-by-step processes in recipes, and
would leave comments letting me know when they’d tried out different meals or
restaurants. Strangers emailed me to tell me how much they loved the site and
before I knew it, thousands of people were reading my blog every week. Every
now and then a company emailed me to ask if I wanted to participate in a
giveaway for one of their products or offer to advertise on the site. I’d
accepted a few offers but never really felt like the blog was going to take me
anywhere financially, so why bother to invest much effort in advertisers and
the like? Besides, the fun part was sharing my photos and recipes, and seeing what
my readers had to say about them.

I arranged two slices of combination pizza – sausage, pepperoni,
onion, mushroom, and olives – on a cute vintage dish I’d found at the
flea market, and snapped away. Oftentimes Chuck would pose for a photo with a
meal. He normally didn’t mind being pictured on the site, and I preferred not
to be. (See: aforementioned hatred of photos of myself.) So I frequently posted
photos of him, much to my readers’ delight. There was no denying that Chuck was
handsome and photogenic. However, lately he’d been shaking his head “no” when I
asked if he would smile for the camera. It was OK, really. He didn’t feel cheerful
and wasn’t going to be able to make himself look convincingly happy, so I let
it go.

Once I was done taking pictures, I set the camera aside and dug into my
slices and wine. I’d post photos to the blog later that night, before bed.

Later, happily buzzed on red wine and with our pizza-filled bellies
pushing against our waistbands, Chuck and I watched
The Biggest Loser
. Contestants on the inspiring reality-TV program
compete to lose the most weight for a substantial cash prize.