Life in the Fat Lane (20 page)

“Honey, the kids appreciate that you put the basket up, really.” Mom hugged Dad from behind. “You look so handsome, Jimbo, I can’t resist you.” She ruffled his hair.

“You know I hate that,” Dad said.

“Okay, grouchy,” Mom said playfully.

Dad threw his napkin on the table. “I have to go make a business call,” he announced, and left the kitchen.

“He’s calling
her
,” Scott declared.

“There is no ‘her,’ ” Mom said. “That’s a terrible thing to say. That’s over.”

Scott looked at me. “You think he’d be stupid enough to actually call her from here?”

“Anything’s possible in this house,” I said.

“It’s over,” Mom insisted.

“Then why is he treating you like crap again?” Scott asked.

Mom glared at Scott. “You are not the judge and jury of your father, young man. He’s just tense because of his new job—”

“When are you going to quit lying for him?” Scott asked, his voice rising. “Do you think we’re stupid?”

“He loves me, and he loves you, and—”

“You are so full of it!” Scott yelled, getting up so quickly that he knocked his chair over. “Go ahead. Pretend we’re the Brady Bunch. I don’t care anymore.” He stormed out.

Mom and I silently cleared the table, since Friday was the new housekeeper’s day off.

“He is not calling her,” she insisted as she swiped at the counter with a sponge.

“If you’re worried about it, why don’t you just ask him? Better yet, pick up the phone.”

She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. Her hands were shaking. “Everything is fine.”

I loaded the dishes into the dishwasher and turned it on. Mom smoked furiously, eyeing the phone that hung on the wall.

“Just pick it up!”

She didn’t move.

“Fine,
I’ll
pick it up.” I reached for the phone.

“Stop it! Don’t you dare.”

I put my hand down.

“This is between your father and me,” Mom said. “It has nothing to do with you.”

“How can you say that? I’m stuck here in Michigan and my life is ruined because of it!” I whirled around and snatched up the phone.

There was a dial tone.

Dad walked into the kitchen. He eyed the receiver in my hand. “I have to go back to the office for a while.”

“Why?” Mom asked.

“Conference,” he said, pulling on his jacket. “I won’t be long.”

“Want me to come?” Mom called to him. “I could use the fresh air!”

Dad didn’t answer. He was already gone.

“H
ello!” I called out as I entered the City Center Rehearsal Studios. The outer office was empty. I was already fifteen minutes late for my first piano lesson with Dr. Alex Paxton, the teacher Dr. Carson in Nashville had recommended. I had gotten lost in downtown Detroit, and then I hadn’t been able to find a parking space.

I heard loud music coming from an interior room, so I walked down the corridor to a glass door market
STUDIO
ONE
. Studio One featured a beautiful black grand piano. Seated at the piano was a huge woman with wild, dark, curly hair, wearing black jeans and a fitted white T-shirts. A roll of fat on her back bulged under the line of her bra. Her upper arms jiggled as her fingers flew across the keyboard, playing something modern and jazzy.

When she finally finished, I knocked on the door and opened it.

She turned around. She looked to be in her late twenties. If she hadn’t been so fat, she would have been pretty, I realized. She had huge blue eyes, high cheekbones, and full lips. But she
was
fat. Really fat.

“Hi, excuse me,” I said. “I’m looking for Dr. Paxton?”

“Car accident,” she said. “Are you Lara Ardeche?”

“He had a car accident?”

“Two days ago,” she said, coming over to me. Her bust was massive; her T-shirt clung to the rolls on her stomach and midriff.

She should wear something looser-fitting so that her fat doesn’t show quite so much, I thought.

“Someone rammed him at a stop sign,” she continued.

“Is he okay?”

“He’s got whiplash, but he’ll be all right. You are Lara, right?”

“Right. I was supposed to start—”

“Didn’t you get my message? I called on Thursday and talked to your brother.”

“He didn’t tell me. So, I guess I have to wait to—”

“I’m taking Dr. Paxton’s students,” she said. “That was the message I left. I’m Suzanne Silver, Dr. Paxton’s assistant. Call me Suzanne.” She put out her hand and we shook.

“What was that piece you were playing?” I asked her. “Did you like it? I wrote it.”

“Very nice,” I lied. “Listen, maybe I should just wait until he’s better.”

“I really am qualified to teach, you know,” Suzanne said, smiling. “Promise.”

“Well, I only play classical—”

“Oh yeah, I’ve heard of that.” She sat back down at the piano and flawlessly played a short passage from a very difficult Chopin waltz. Then she turned to me.

“I wasn’t doubting you.”

“Oh yes you were,” she said, laughing. “But that’s cool. You don’t know me. So, how about if you play for me now?”

“All right.” She got up, and I sat down at the piano. I closed my eyes and blocked out everything. Then I played Mozart’s Sonata in B flat major. The music went through me, filled me up, until I
was
the music and I wasn’t fat anymore. I was flying, released, free.

“Wow,” Suzanne said softly.

I opened my eyes.

“That’s a good ‘wow,’ ” she explained, leaning against the piano. “Oh, I’m gettin that feeling—”

“What feeling?”

“Goose bumps,” she said. “Down my spine. When someone walks in here with the real thing, I get this feeling. You’re really good. Dr. Paxton told me you’re a senior, and he said—” She stopped herself.

“What?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter. Where are you going to college?”

“I don’t know yet,” I replied.

“You’re going to be a piano performance major, though, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“But why not?”

“I don’t perform solo,” I said tersely.

“Oh, come on!” Suzanne exclaimed. “You just did!”

“Look, I don’t want to talk about it, okay? I’m just here for lessons.”

“Is it a stage-fright thing? Because I know ways to—”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it
,” I repeated. “If you don’t want to teach me because I don’t want to concertize, just say so.”

She stared at me a moment, then shrugged. “Let’s check out your sight-reading.”

She put sheet music on the piano for a mazurka, which I played, and then we worked on two other pieces I had already learned.

“I know the perfect music for you,” Suzanne said. “I have to unearth it from the files. Be right back.”

I turned back to the piano and idly played a minuet I had learned as a kid. In fact, I had played it when I had won Miss Tiny Tennessee. Mom and Dad had been so proud when they called my name. And Dad had lifted me up in his arms and kissed me and said, “That’s my perfect little princess,” and then—

“Hey, where’s Suzanne?”

I turned around. A truly gorgeous guy was standing there—medium height, dark blond hair, dark eyes, and a cleft in his chin.

“She went to find some music for me,” I explained.

“Good luck, her filing system stinks,” he said good-naturedly. “You a new student?”

I nodded.

“Jazz?” he asked.

“Classical.”

“Too bad,” the guy said.

“Found it,” Suzanne said as she rushed back in, brandishing the sheet music. “I really think you’ll—”

“Hi, remember me?” the guy said, grinning at her.

She smiled back. “I do seem to remember you, but I’m busy now, so I’ll remember you better later, okay?” She turned to me. “Did you two meet?”

“I’m Lara Ardeche,” I said.

“Tristan McCoy,” the guy said. He turned back to Suzanne. “I’ll meet you at the Captain’s when you’re done, okay?”

“Okay,” Suzanne said.

“Nice to meet you,” he called to me as he left.

“That guy is gorgeous,” I blurted out as I watched him walk through the outer office.

“Yeah,” Suzanne agreed. She put the new sheet music up on the piano. “Okay, this is Ravel’s
Sonatine
, and—”

“Are you good friends?”

“You could say that,” Suzanne agreed. “He’s an incredible musician. Guitar.” She tapped her finger on the sheet music. “Okay, from the top.”

The next hour passed in a blur of concentration. It felt good to be challenged again, to think about something other than my horrible life.

“Wow, time flies and all that,” Suzanne said, looking at her watch. “So, are you going to study with me? I’m a slave driver, I’ll tell you that up front. I’ll kick your butt. But if you work hard, I’ll also be your biggest fan.”

“It’s a deal,” I decided. “And I love the Ravel.”

“You really should think about two lessons a week, you know,” Suzanne said. “If you want to make big progress before college—”

“I don’t even know if I’m going to be a music major.”

“Uh-huh.” She gathered up some of the music. “So, I understand you just moved here …”

“From Tennessee,” I filled in.

“Right. How do you like Michigan?”

I hate it
.

“Fine.”

“Really? Isn’t it hard for you to be at a new school for your senior year?”

Of course it’s hard, you fat idiot
.

I bit my tongue. Monster-me was going into rage mode for no good reason. I fought back the beast.

“It’s fine,” I forced myself to say.

She cocked her head at me. “Yeah? What high school are you going to?”

“Blooming Woods.”

“No kidding?” she asked, laughing. “That’s where I went. I graduated ten years ago, and I still have the scars to prove it.” She tapped her temple.

“It’s okay.” I got my purse from the chair.

“Well, it must have changed, then.” She shook some curls out of her eyes. “I don’t mean that I didn’t have friends, because I did. But certain kids just loved to make fun of me.”

I stared at her coolly. I knew what she was saying in fat-people code: I got teased, you get teased.

How pathetic. We had nothing in common. She probably ate all the time like Perry Jameson and deserved her fatness, whereas I was a prisoner in a body I hadn’t earned.

“It’s not a problem for me,” I said flatly.

“Oh, well, good. It was torture for me. I’ll never forget this girl Diane Levy. She made my life a living hell. Every day, when I walked into school, she’d yell out as loud as she could, ‘Hey, it’s Two-Ton Silver!’ I wanted to sink through the floor and die, you know?”

She looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to share some personal story about similar humiliations I had suffered. So we could bond over our fatness. The rage welled up in me again.

“Thanks for the lesson,” I said stiffly. “I’ll see you next week.” I turned toward the door.

“Wait a sec,” she called to me. “Do you like jazz?”

“It’s okay.”

“Why don’t you come over to Captain Bizarro’s with me? I’m meeting Tristan and a bunch of our friends for lunch, and then we’ll all play something or other.”

I had absolutely no reason to say yes. I didn’t really like her. On the other hand, I had nowhere to go but home, where Mom was so depressed and stressed out over Dad that all she did was chain-smoke, walk on the StairMaster, and obsess about her upcoming facelift, often simultaneously.

“What’s Captain Bizarro’s?” I asked.

Suzanne laughed. “It’s sort of indescribable,” she said. “So I guess you’ll just have to see for yourself.”

C
aptain Bizarro’s was kind of rundown looking, on a side street near the campus of Wayne State University, in a neighborhood where you wouldn’t want to be alone at night.

Inside, the empty room was filled with tables covered with white butcher paper, and the chairs were red vinyl, peeling at the corners. Billie Holiday blared from the jukebox, singing “Strange Fruit.” I recognized it from an album my grandmother played sometimes.

“Hey, Mamacita!” a tall, skinny, brown-skinned man with a straggly beard called as we entered the restaurant. His skin was leathery; his voice was hoarse. He wore a white apron tied around his waist, faded jeans, and a
green army camouflage jacket, and had a red bandanna tied hippie-style around his forehead. He hurried over to Suzanne and wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug.

“Captain, this is a new friend of mine, Lara Ardeche. And this is Captain Bizarro.”

“Welcome to my humble abode,” the man said, bowing from the waist. “Your beauty does me honor.”

Was that supposed to be some kind of a joke? I didn’t smile.

“Lara plays keyboards,” Suzanne said.

Keyboards. I had never heard it put that way before.

“Everyone is downstairs already,” Captain Bizarro said. “You’re late!” He wagged a finger at her.

“My teaching went overtime,” Suzanne explained.

“You want the usual?”

“Sure,” Suzanne said.

“You like raw clams?” she asked me.

“Raw?”
I repeated, aghast.

“Food of the gods,” Captain Bizarro said, kissing his fingertips. “I also do fried that’ll melt in your mouth.” He kissed Suzanne’s hand and took off toward the kitchen.