Love Sick
Authors: Frances Kuffel
PRAISE FOR
Love Sick
“
Love Sick
is a journey worth celebrating.”
—Tim McLoughlin, author of
Heart of the Old Country
“Frances Kuffel nails the world of middle-age dating. She is very honest, strikingly so, and tells of her travails with wit and understanding. The book is a treat. She is one hell of a storyteller.”
—Rob Fasano, Moth Grand Slam winner
Eating Ice Cream with My Dog
(Previously published as
Angry Fat Girls
)
“[Kuffel] chronicles nearly every aspect of her life (binges in bed, childhood taunts, depression, meds, sex, breakups, firings and failings). . . . It is ultimately and simply Kuffel’s own unsparing story that makes [
Eating Ice Cream with My Dog
] a necessary read.”
—
Bitch
“Kuffel’s narrative of rededication is a skilled blend of insight . . . and emotion . . . that never flags in intimacy, honesty or compassion. With keen humor and disarming skill, Kuffel introduces readers to the most private moments of the five women, whose addictive relationships with food make regular nourishment a constant nightmare of temptation.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A wake-up call to anyone who believes that weight management is a quick and easy feat. It’s not. And Kuffel’s greatest gift is a blast of hopeful reality for any brave reader ready to take herself on and honestly face her own food and weight demons.”
—Pamela Peeke, author of
Fight Fat After Forty
“[
Eating Ice Cream with My Dog
] is about women, weight loss, body image and what we did and did not learn growing up fat, and why losing weight—and keeping it off—is so hard. This book is honest, true and very funny.”
—Cheryl Peck, author of
Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs
Passing for Thin
“Inspiring . . . brazenly intimate . . . offers a powerful rebuff to anyone who believes that people can’t change.”
—USA Today
“[Kuffel’s] writing is as clear and sharp as broken glass . . . a glorious read.”
—The New York Times
“A talented writer.”
—The Boston Globe
“Empathy, candor and courage are abundant.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Rife with snappy anecdotes and mordant humor . . . as fascinating in its grotesque insight as in its inspirational uplift.”
—The A.V. Club
“[A] riveting memoir . . . grim humor . . . A hilarious and insightful book.”
—Psychology Today
BOOKS BY FRANCES KUFFEL
Passing for Thin
Eating Ice Cream with My Dog
Love Sick
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China
A Penguin Random House Company
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
LOVE SICK
Copyright © 2014 by Frances Kuffel
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
BERKLEY®
is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.
The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.
An application to register this book for cataloging has been submitted to the Library of Congress.
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley trade paperback edition / June 2014
Cover design by Diana Kolsky
Cover art: cut heart © Susan Fox / Trevillion Images
The names and identifying characteristics of some of the individuals depicted in this book have been changed to protect their privacy.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the author nor the publisher is responsible for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.
Version_1
To Tom Graves
Tu m’affida, o mio tesor.
Contents
One
Penguin couples spend their lives apart from each other and meet once a year in late March, after traveling as far as seventy miles inland—on foot or sliding on their bellies—to reach the breeding site.
April
We are in Santa Fe to find a ghost. It is also, as he and I had discussed in a wearying back-and-forth series of phone calls and emails, my audition as Dar’s girlfriend and, seven thousand feet higher than where we started out in Phoenix, we were breathless in all the wrong ways. Instead of canoodling our ghost into rearranging the furniture, I slept fitfully as the television murmured and flickered through a marathon of
Sasuke
. In the end, our only haunting is that “Need You Now” is on every radio station between Santa Fe and Phoenix, which is annoying but also fitting as we sit in the car outside his house having the Talk.
It is becoming more and more obvious that men are oblivious to what Friends with Benefits can start for a woman.
“I love you,” he begins. “We have a lot in common. You know, the whole lit thing, and dogs, and a general sort of outlook on stuff. But then again, there are things that are important to me that we don’t have in common. I don’t know whether it’s best to be with someone with whom you have everything in common or not. I had a girlfriend like that once, but the minute she came to visit me, I knew it was all wrong . . .
“So I dunno. One thing is that you’re not exactly easygoing. You don’t always relax and go with the flow. I mean, you never know what could happen, I s’pose. I
could
wake up one day and be in love with you. But I’m not now and I don’t want to do anything that would jeopardize our friendship. That means a lot to me. You know that, right?”
I blow my nose in answer. I want out of his car. I want to get into my car, which is parked in his garage, and I want to drive to my father’s house, get on the plane to New York the next morning, retrieve my dog from my friends Ben and Jean and tell them what didn’t happen and then hold a weepy funeral with the mostly faithful love of Daisy, an ill-behaved, too-smart-for-her-own-good yellow Labrador, in the solitude of the Bat Cave.
*
Don’t
say anything,
one part of me warns.
Have some dignity.
“Okay.” I hiccup and open the door. “I guess that’s that. I gotta go.”
He hugs me good-bye, an awkward bear hug in which I pat his back as though consoling him.
I’m so sick of this bullshit,
I think.
• • •
I should have known, I think as the Midwest skeins me away from Dar. I should have known when I was late meeting him in Phoenix for the drive to New Mexico. I should have known when I found myself biting my lips in an ugly frown against my grinding jaw, that I was too tense, too scared to be girlfriend material.
I had no excuse for not knowing how tension crippled anything soft and fluid in me because I know the difference between scared, solo tension and the tension you admit to and find is as shared and rare as a yellow crocus flowering in the snow.
March
“God, France, I’m so sorry I’m not going to be here,” Grace calls in disappointment on a heavy and cold Sunday afternoon. I am about to leave on my book tour to Seattle and Portland and am excited to see so many people from my past. Grace and I had been good friends in college but we’d lost touch in the last twenty years. I’d looked for her on various networking sites with no success, but her curiosity was equal to mine and she had found me in a two-second Google search. All Grace had to do was email me and we spent most of a Saturday on the phone reestablishing a comfy, happy friendship.
“I have lots of friends and family in Seattle, so I have plenty to do,” I say, “although I really wanted to go to the movies with you.”
She sighs and is about to answer when there is a loud crash and cursing on her end of the line. I wait through some mumbling and then laughter. “Kevin just knocked over the trash,” she says. “He comes over most Sundays and makes brunch for us. But first we have to pick up banana peels and plum pits.”
“And eggshells—ick!” I hear him call.
It’s been thirty years since I’ve heard Kevin’s voice but I could pick it out of Monday morning rush hour. I hadn’t even heard of his sister, Grace, when Kevin Willoughby and I were pals for about five minutes in high school drama club. He’s two years older than I, had dimples you could bury nickels in, dazzling blue eyes, a lovely tenor and he was one the most popular boys in school. He was perpetually jolly and surrounded by people; I was fat, a depressed underachiever, someone who went through friendships like Kleenex. I admired him for being all those things I was not and wasn’t surprised when he got bored with acting. He went off to date the cream of the Joni Mitchell clones and the funniest cheerleaders, take the coolest drugs and ski with the maniacs. We lapsed into jokey hallway hellos and the thrill of having him sign my yearbook.