Love for Scale (5 page)

I have to move out,
Rachel thought. Sorry that she didn’t actually get a chance to eat any of her dinner, what was supposed to be her last real meal before she started the Weight Watchers program in the morning, she took her coat and a pair of sneakers from her closet. Her stomach grumbled in time with her bubbling anger as she tied up her shoes. Grabbing her purse, making sure the cell phone was in it, she left her bedroom and headed for the front door.

“Where do you think you are going?” Pearl had the audacity to ask as Rachel passed the kitchen doorway.

“Out.” Rachel answered, not looking back. She felt like a belligerent teenager, but her mother had clearly lost it.

It wasn’t long before Rachel arrived at her destination. She was looking for consolation and found it in her longtime friend: Big Mac (Double). And lucky for her, he came with his support team of super-sized fries and obscenely huge Coke. Rachel sat in her car in the McDonald’s parking lot, tears streaming down her cheeks as she shoved food in her face, continuing to eat long after her full stomach began to protest.

Food had always been comfort. When she had been called fat at school, her mother had baked her cookies (yes, of course, it seemed so stupidly counterproductive now). When she didn’t make it into the band, she was treated to a lobster dinner, topped off with cheesecake. When no boys asked her to the eighth-grade dance, she stayed home instead to feast on a turkey dinner complete with stuffing and gravy.

Even when she tagged along with Sheri and Mark Farmer to the prom in high school, she had arrived home to a soothing vat of matzo ball soup simmering on the stove

As though she had been smacked, Rachel bolted upright, realizing that behind almost every platter of meat, plate of cookies, medicinal dinner out, had been her enabling accomplice: Her mother.

Her mother was always there with her ladle or meat fork, ready to portion out the comfort meal du jour. If Rachel went on a diet, if she stopped eating for emotional reasons, suddenly her mother would be out of a job.

Rachel had never had such an epiphany, a revelation so clear it made her consider for a millisecond going back to school to study psychology full-time since she obviously had such a knack for it. She dropped the last bite of her sandwich into the gaping paper bag and sniffled, dabbing at her eyes with the stiff McDonald’s napkin. It was a no-brainer.

She now had to somehow get her mother to stop cooking and at the same time, convince her there were other ways to show love and comfort. Rachel was going to have to come up with a real solution.

She would have to talk to her mother.
Really
talk, and make Pearl understand that what she considered love was really not helping. What did Sheri always say? That
mothering
was just one letter away from
smothering
.

Able to laugh now that her tears were drying up, Rachel took a sip of her soda and looked at the clock on her dashboard. It was still early. Maybe she’d swing by Sheri’s work before she went home.

* * *

Rachel walked toward the automatic sliding doors of the big box pet warehouse store where Sheri worked as a groomer. Usually, Sheri could be seen through the front window of the store, but Rachel only saw a blond girl dwarfed by a giant hairy dog of some unknown breed on the table in front of her.

She walked into the store, almost tripping over a Jack Russell terrier that had stretched to the end of its leash to smell her shoes.

“Oh sorry,” said the woman at the other end of the leash. “Hermione is very friendly.”

Oh God, are you kidding me?
Despite her creaking knees, Rachel squatted down to pet the dog and smiled up at the woman. “Interesting name.”

The woman nodded over toward two young girls, both identically dressed in soccer uniforms fighting over what bone to buy little Hermione. “Oh, you know, the kids just love Harry Potter.” Soccer mom shrugged.

“Yeah.” Rachel stood up. She sure did know how kids loved Harry Potter. At least twenty-six times a day she was asked if another Harry Potter book was coming out, or if the books were in, or if she could please point out their location in the stacks. Rachel was very familiar with the Harry Potter craze, being a big fan herself. And you know, living on Earth.

She turned toward the groomer’s glass cubicle and saw Sheri come out of the back room, a tiny ball of squirming fluff tucked under her arm. Looking up and noticing Rachel, Sheri smiled and nodded, indicating Rachel should join her behind the glass walls.

“So? How’d it go at Weight Watchers?” she asked the second Rachel walked through the door.

“Okay, I guess.” Rachel lied, shrugging past the humiliation. Sheri didn’t need to know about the tears and the appalling number on the scale.

“So… mochaccinos?” Sympathy was all over Sheri’s face.

Rachel looked down at her shoes, wondering what the little Hermione had been sniffing. She shook her head without looking up at her friend. “I looked them up in the book and you were right—they
are
a million calories. Technically, I
can
have one but then I can’t eat for most of the day.”

“Shitty.” Sheri put the dog down on the table and placed the loop over its head. “Hey, this dog’s name is Cappuccino.” She nodded down at the dog. “How funny is that?”

The other groomer spoke from behind her mutt. “Dumb name for a dog, huh?”

“Yeah,” Rachel agreed.

“So what are you doing here?” Sheri started to brush the little dog whose entire body was vibrating from terror, the beady little eyes darting around the room.

“There was some drama at my house and I just had to book out of there.”

Sheri stopped brushing and looked up at Rachel. “What do you mean? What kind of drama?”

Rachel sighed. “My mom.”

Sheri cringed.

“You know what I’ve realized?” Rachel said in a low voice, unwilling to air her dirty laundry to Sheri’s co-worker. “I think she’s afraid if I stop eating all her fattening foods, she’ll be deemed redundant.”

Sheri’s eyes widened. “You think she’s trying to keep you fat?” The instant the words were out of her mouth, Sheri blushed. “Not
fat
, you know what I meant.”

“I don’t know.” Rachel shrugged. “I don’t know if she’s trying to keep me fat or just wants me to keep eating her food. It’s all about food with her.”

“Wow, that sucks.” Sheri resumed brushing her vibrating client.

“Can I come over when you’re done work?”

“Normally that would be cool, Rach, but Brian’s there right now cooking me dinner.”

Shit. Nowhere to go. Rachel stifled a sigh that begged to be released, but she refused to give in to the temptation to be a drama queen like her mother. “Oh, okay, I guess I’ll just go home.”

“Any other night Rach…” Sheri looked like she really did feel bad, on the verge of getting the pity face, so Rachel figured she’d better bolt before it surfaced.

“No problem.” Rachel smiled, hopeful that she was convincing in her nonchalance.

She turned to go, contemplating the time. She had until midnight before her diet officially started.

I wonder if the Dairy Queen is still open
, she thought to herself as she walked to her car. Or…maybe…Yes, it was decided. Rachel would go to her favorite Starbucks to sit on one of the plush couches and bid a sad farewell to her best non-human friend: warm, comforting and always there to pick you up mochaccino.

* * *

Finally seated with her huge beverage (
I’m not going to settle for a small if it’s going to be my last one
), Rachel pulled the Weight Watchers brochures out of her purse to have a good look at what she was up against.

She flipped through the welcome booklet and noted some of the recipes and meal ideas. She was going to have to start cooking for herself. No matter how crazy her mother was, it wasn’t fair for Rachel to ask Pearl to cook her diet meals on top of cooking for herself and Harry.

The good thing was that most of the recipes in the book looked straightforward. The system was easy to understand and really, you could eat anything as long as you balanced it out and stay within your range during the day. What Rachel dreaded more than the restrictions and having to give up her favorite foods, was the thought of the meetings. Her weight had always been such a private thing that she didn’t even feel comfortable sharing with her own family, let alone strangers.

Everyone there is in the same situation
, Rachel told herself, but it didn’t help. The thought of the meetings terrified her.

Flipping through the books as she sipped at her drink, she figured out the point values for some of her favorite meals, shocked at how quickly they added up. It was easy to see how her weight had inched up and up over the years.

By the time she got to the bottom of her mochaccino, she was almost glad it was gone. Reading the booklets was giving her encouragement and motivation and the new desire to eat healthy foods that would not only be good for her body as a whole but would help her toward her weight loss goals.

One hundred pounds.

A whole person (okay, a whole tiny person, but still…) in extra fat was covering her body. For the first time, she allowed herself to think about what that hundred pounds was doing to her: no more denial allowed.

She was carrying around so much weight that her ankles and knees creaked when she went up and down stairs. Forget running, ever. She had always had a secret fear that if she were ever to be attacked, she wouldn’t be able to get away. She was an easy target.

Her heart pounded every time she stood up or walked for too long. Unlike the models in magazines who seemed to be skeletons with skin stretched over them, tight as drum hides, she hadn’t seen her feet in years. And she wasn’t convinced she even had hip or collar bones.

One hundred pounds.

Rachel picked up her booklets and put them back into her purse. She threw out the empty cup and looked around, burning the vision of the coffee shop in her memory. An idea came to her as she reached for the door. She decided to take the five dollars that she would normally spend on her daily mochaccino and put it away to save for her new wardrobe. The new wardrobe she was going to need someday soon. The new wardrobe that was not going to be dowdy.

Holding her head higher and sporting a smile bigger than she had worn for a while, she got into her car and headed home.

* * *

Rachel snuck into the house in a way that made her feel like she was a teenager trying to make it into the house unnoticed, well past her curfew.

Her parents were in bed and she heard her dad snoring: a good sign that they’d been in bed a while and were unlikely to wake.

Skipping her usual midnight snack, Rachel headed straight for her bedroom, closing the door quietly behind her. She sat down at her desk and wiggled the mouse to bring her monitor to life. As she signed into the speed dating site with her special login and password, her heart began to pound.

And there it was, her profile:

Rachel Stern, F.

We’re sorry but you have 0 matches.

Thanks for speed dating!

Our next event: February 17, keep an eye on your inbox for details to come!

Yeah, right, like I’m doing that again
, Rachel thought.

Only a few days before, this kind of news would have sent Rachel to the fridge, but now it only served to solidify her resolve. And anyway, of the two guys she had picked, neither had been a real standout winner. Taking a deep breath against the tightening in her chest, she turned from her computer and got ready for bed.

As she lay between the sheets, in the few moments when sleep began to creep toward her, Rachel wondered if Finn, the guy who’d come to talk to her after the speed dating event was over, was at all disappointed when he realized she hadn’t picked him. Was she his backup plan? Who else had he picked? Maybe Aviva…Maybe no one.

And who would have picked him?

Rachel felt a sense of weird solidarity with Finn; maybe he had struck out too.

Maybe he too was lying in bed, crying to himself and wondering if he was destined to end up alone.

Chapter 7

“So how’s everything been, Rachel?” Dr. Patel asked as Rachel stared up at the acoustic tiles, wishing there was something to read taped to the ceiling: a comic, an advertisement, hell even someone’s dissertation would be better than the inane conversation she had to endure during her yearly pelvic exam. Chit chat was the last thing she wanted to participate in when her feet were in stirrups, a bright light shined on her privates, her body covered by the thinnest and smallest of paper dresses.

“Fine,” Rachel said. What else
could
she say?

“Have you been exercising?” Dr. Patel asked. “And how about your diet?”

“I haven’t been exercising, but I did join Weight Watchers two days ago.” It was the first time she had something positive to tell her doctor. It felt good; she finally had something to be proud of.

“You’re all done, everything looks fine.” Click. The light went off, the stool rolled back away from Rachel’s nether end. “That’s great about Weight Watchers.” The doctor stood up and smiled down at Rachel.

Rachel took her feet out of the stirrups and swung her legs around to the side of the table, sitting up. She smiled at the doctor: a slim five-foot-nothing of a woman with a dark bob and skin the color of Rachel’s last mochaccino. “Any chance I can skip the diet and sign up for a gastric bypass?” She was only half joking.