Slim to None (9 page)

Stir in Abstinence, Reduce Calories by Half

William’s sound asleep by the time I return home. In the morning he’s gone before I get up.

Today I shun my coffee shop routine, opting instead for an early morning workout before I have to show up at the office for the first time since the Great Debacle. This should be rich. So rich that I’ll gladly divert to the gym just to avoid it that much longer.

Thor is there, waiting to put me through my assigned chores. I haven’t felt this much dread since I took trigonometry in high school—it’s like I haven’t done the homework, don’t understand the questions and won’t be able to answer a thing when the teacher calls on me.

"How goes the diet, Abster?" It appears he’s hung this moniker on me that I can’t seem to shake. Though I’m getting used to it. Abster. Sounds like something they’d sell on a late-night infomercial to help strengthen your core. I need something better than that. Like say, the Resolvster, to help strengthen my resolve. Otherwise what am I gonna do??? I haven’t got one iota of willpower in me.

"Diet? Somebody say something about a diet?" I crack a smile, and Thor smiles back at me.

"Not so good, huh?"

I roll my eyes. "That’s being generous. If it’s any consolation, I’m really good at eating. I mean
really
good at eating. If there were an Olympic category for that, I’d be a gold medal contender. But the
not
eating? It goes against my grain. Against my very core—the core that’s not exactly strengthening, by the way. I hate it."

Thor comes closer, puts his hand on my shoulder, drawing me into his confidence. "I think it’s time you stepped back and decided why you’re doing this, Abbie. Are you doing this for you, or are you doing it for someone else? Because quite frankly, unless
you
want to do something about your situation, nothing’s going to change. It’s all up here." He taps my head with his pointer finger. "Until you’re reconciled in your mind about all of this, it’s not worth your efforts. You call the shots, Abster. And you need to do this for
you
. Your body is a temple, so treat it with respect."

Christ, if my body is a temple, it must be in honor of Bacchus, god of wine (and debauchery, but I wouldn’t necessarily put myself out on that limb). Or perhaps the Fallen Temple of the White Goddess—yes, that’s it! That’s me!
White is blight. White is blight.

I sigh. I think I’ve sighed more in the past week than I have in my entire adult life. "I know you’re right, Th—, er, Mark. Intellectually, I understand this completely. Emotionally? That’s another thing altogether. I’m tied up with food so badly it’s as if I’m married to it."

"In that case, d’ya ever think maybe it’s a toxic relationship? Maybe you two need a divorce? Or at least some serious couples counseling?"

I can’t help but laugh at him. I picture a cartoon image of me at a shrink’s office with a plate of pâté en croûte, a good old-fashioned rump roast, and a large serving of tarte tatin (à la mode) on the couch next to me, all of us turning a cold shoulder, our body language conveying our mistrust of one another.

Thor’s not such a bad guy after all. Despite those calipers. I know he’s looking out for my best interest. Which means I’d better get working. We set about with my routine, and I hit a roadblock after about ten minutes the treadmill. You see, one of the benefits I can see to working out is I get to wear sweats. Sweats are good, because they hide a lot of flaws. They don’t look particularly attractive, but function over form or whatever that saying is. The only problem is, once I start to sweat, then my sweats are cruel captors, trapping me in a terrarium of heat and humidity. I think I could actually measure the heat index inside these puppies. But I don’t dare disrobe down to something lighter (and shorter) because no one, but no one, should be subjected to the sight of the likes of my enormous white legs and wobbly arms in the flesh. So I suffer through in overheated silence, gushing sweat into my eyeballs, ready to faint. Remind me again why people do this to themselves voluntarily?

After my workout I shower and dress, feeling quite obese next to the host of slender, fit, naked women getting ready for work alongside me. The club-issue towels actually wrap around their bodies and then some. For me it’s as if I’m trying to wrap myself in a handkerchief.

I just can’t see how I could ever look like these women—so why try?
Why try? I’ll tell you why. Because you won’t keep the best job of your career if you don’t, that’s why.
I swear I feel like I’m in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, with the angel bunny on one shoulder exhorting exemplary behavior while the devil bunny on the other shoulder is encouraging me to get my wild on. I finally decide to tell them both to shut up and leave me alone, then flick them each off my shoulders as if there’s a bit of dandruff there. Time for my day of reckoning to begin.

I choose to walk the seven blocks to work: a sure sign that I’m in no hurry to get there. Normally the idea of trudging that far when there are taxis that can get me there quicker just doesn’t even cross my mind. But the sooner I get there, the soon I’m going to have to face the firing squad: colleagues who will be snickering behind my back, with my demotion front and center for me to contemplate. And that conniving double-crosser Barry Newman who will gloat himself into a coma, no doubt, at my very presence. We can only hope, because at least in a coma they’d be forced to replace him with another—better—food critic. Me.

The walk turns out to be downright pleasant. I love springtime in Manhattan—everything seems especially alive and vital. People are practically smiling. There’s a sense of promise in the air.

But then the promise of things to come is squeezed out by the reality of the present: the motion of my ample hips as I walk is shoving my belt right on up beneath my boobs. I don’t know why I even wear a belt—it’s not as if I have loose pants to hold up. It’s only there as a trompe l’oeil of sorts—anything that tricks the eye away from my misshapen self. I’ve become quite skillful at this over the years. I wonder if I’d devoted such time to ensuring that I not have to hide my figure, maybe it would have been time better spent. But it’s such
hard
time spent. I don’t know that I’ve got it in me.

Today Julio is back to his usual wave and go, no great big greeting. That’s okay. I’m not in the mood for small talk, anyway. As people climb into the elevator I feign a search for some elusive necessity in my purse; the only necessity really is to avoid eye contact. The longer I wait till this dies down, the less I’ll have to confront it.

The elevator door pings on my floor and I look both ways before getting off, hoping to avoid people. Too late.

"Abbie! We’ve missed you! Where’ve you been?" Barry, the dirty dog, accosts me with a disingenuous hug. "Look here, I brought a surprise for you, just in case you showed up this morning!" He holds out the telltale bakery bag. Even the damned bag is
white
!

A half dozen zucchini-chocolate chip muffins, each one the size of a boxer’s fist, from the Muffin Top. My hands-down favorite muffin shop. For a minute I forget myself and start to reach into the bag to eat one of the things. I’ve got the paper peeled and the muffin so close to my lips I can taste it through the aroma alone. It’s still warm. But then I toss it back into the bag. How could I bite on the bait that easily? Am I
that
predictable? I’m almost ashamed of myself. Although zucchini muffins aren’t white, and they do have vegetables in them...

I brandish a weak smile, the kind of smile that might arise when you find out your boyfriend just got engaged, to another woman. "Gee, thanks. So thoughtful of you Barry. I think I’ll wait till later."

I spin on my heels the other direction and head toward my office, marching in and turning to close the door. Until I realize that my office is not my office. It’s been commandeered by none other than Barry of the betraying muffins. He has a poster of Corks from Around the World on one wall, and autographed photographs of Kylie Minogue, an Abba tribute band, and the Phantom of the Opera on another wall. Is this guy for real?

I storm into Mortie’s office unannounced. "I lose my prestigious job
and
I lose my office? All in one fell swoop?" I ask him. "Maybe I should just don a hairshirt and self-flagellate while I’m at it. You got a whip handy?"

Mordie holds his hands up in self-defense. "It wasn’t my idea, Abbie."

"Then whose was it?"

"Barry’s," he says.

"He can just strip my office bare because he deems it appropriate?"

"Well, you had vital things in there that he needed."

"Vital things? I’ll show him what I can do with his vital things. Name one thing he needed from my office."

"The refrigerator, for starters."

"Why didn’t you just put one in his cubicle? Or take it out of mine and put it in his?"

"You know his cubicle was too small for that. Plus you had the view. Barry said he did his best writing looking out the window. I figured you weren’t going to need that so much, only being in part-time. At least for the time being."

"I just wish someone had warned me when I took the job that I was being employed by Judas Iscariot. At least now I know who I can trust around here." I storm out of his office, a tempest in stretch nylon I am.

I navigate my way through a cluster of colleagues, all exchanging niceties with one another, discussing their exciting weekends. A couple of people say hello to me but I dodge them for the most part, wend my way to the far corner of the office and find my new office: a cubicle between the gal who writes movie reviews and one who writes obituaries.

I sit down to my new (old) desk, and sift through the stack of mail that has gathered since last week. There is a noticeable absence of invitations, announcements of restaurant openings, and any other hint of my former stature. Obviously Barry has pillaged my inbox along with every other aspect of my professional life.
All this time he fed me like a fatted calf. While I stood there with mouth wide opened. Why I oughtta...

My gaze is drawn to an envelope with familiar looking handwriting on it. The scrawl looks like something they teach you in med school, it’s that illegible. But I do recognize the name on the front: Abigail Louise Cartwright Jennings. Jennings in parentheses, oddly.

I open the letter to find this:

Dear Abbie,

Get it? Dear Abbie. Like the famous newspaper column?

I know, you’re not laughing right now. I know you’re not, because even after all these years, I know my Muffin. You probably don’t believe it, but I do. After everything that’s come between us, even.

Muffin. I flinch at that reference.

I saw you in the Post the other day. Usually I go straight to the sports, then Page Six. But when I saw that face smack on the cover, hot damn, I knew it was you. It was a no-brainer. I didn’t even know your last name—you got married?—but I could tell. I saw your mother and me in your face.

I guess life’s gotten ahead of us, hasn’t it? I had a stroke a few years back and can’t move like I could. Now they tell me my ticker’s ticking down. Nothing much for me to do each day other than read the obituaries in the local paper and maybe watch a few ball games on TV. I know it’s too late to make amends. I don’t even want your forgiveness—I don’t deserve it. But I do owe you some explanations. I’ve got some things to say that I think you should hear. I beg of you, please indulge an old man his dying request.

He proceeds to give me a phone number at the nursing home he’s at in Jersey. As if I’m going to go visit him. Give a dying man a chance to alleviate his guilt. As if. My father, the commodian. He should be flushed. I forgot that he had a really corny sense of humor at times. He didn’t know I was married? So what. Would he have even cared? Historically his track record would prove that not to be the case. He says we haven’t seen each other in too many years to even recall? Well, I can recall, to the precise hour.

I was eleven years old. It was 9:31 p.m. My chocolate pound cake, which I was baking from scratch, was due to come out of the oven in eleven minutes. The perfume of warm chocolate was at that point wafting throughout the kitchen, where I sat at the pink speckled formica tabletop working on my history homework. I got up to start fixing the penuche frosting, had the butter melting on the stove in one pan, the milk heating up in another. I added the brown sugar to the butter, stirring till it boiled, then let it thicken for a minute.

Upstairs the arguing had commenced. Tonight was worse than previous nights—I could tell that things were being thrown. The sound of heavy objects hitting the walls reverberated downstairs to the kitchen. I began to hum to myself. When that didn’t work, I started to read aloud my recipe, over and over again, louder and louder to block out the sounds from above.

Something shattered, I don’t know what. I heard heavy footsteps on the staircase. My father pushed open the kitchen door—it was the type of door that swung open on a hinge and closed behind itself, like at a wild west saloon. Which was probably fitting, because this sounded like the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. My father didn’t say a word, but he was breathing heavily, as if he’d just run a couple of miles. His hand was bleeding in about five different places. He walked over to the kitchen sink, turned on the water, and ran it over his the wounds. I could see the overhead light refracting in the shards of glass sticking out of his palm.