You and Me and Him (22 page)

“It’s okay,” I mumble. “You care. I know. I don’t . . .” I’m not sure what else to say. “Anyway, thanks.” We both stand there for a minute, unsure how to proceed. “Sooooo, alphabetize or toilet?”

“Yes,” Quinn says, and we both laugh.

“Sweeping it is.” I grab the broom and head for the far corner of the store, chasing down dust bunnies under the fixtures. But every few minutes, I stop sweeping and watch Quinn.

He keeps flicking at something at the back of his neck, like he can feel my gaze but is trying to shoo it away. Irritated, he turns. “What?” He’s brushing now at his nose and hair.

“Nothing.” I go back to sweeping.

Quinn turns back to the stack of records.

I glance up, wondering how to begin.

“What?” Quinn turns to look at me again. He sounds irritated, but he’s smiling this time. “And don’t say ‘nothing.’ Spill it.”

I lean the broom against the record bins and make my way to the counter, not meeting his eye. “I guess . . . I wanted to thank you. Again.”

“For . . . ?”

“For, you know, giving a shit.”

“Oh, that.” He studies me. “I thought you were mad about that.”

“No. Not mad, not really. Surprised. And, okay, a little mad that you were right. But not about everything. You weren’t right about everything.”

“I was right?” Quinn leans forward. “Which part was I right about?”

“About running, I guess.”

“So, what are you running from this week?” He pats the stool across from him.

I slide onto the seat, stare at my hands for a second, then dive in. “Nash hates me. Kayla screwed me over. Tom kissed me. He likes me, but only as a friend. And my mom thinks I’m fat.”

“Anything else?” he says.

I shake my head.

Quinn claps his hands together and rubs. “Okay. One at a time. Nash will get over it. My mom always told me I was fat too. Kayla’s a bitch.” He leans in and puts both hands on my knees. “Let’s talk about Tom.”

A warm blush rises to my hairline, but then I register everything Quinn just said. “No, wait. Back up. Your mom told you you were fat?”

“Yep. Until I left home at seventeen. No, wait, she still does.”

I eyeball Quinn. He’s oldish, but he’s still pretty good-looking. And definitely not fat. Not even close. “Were you?”

“Nope. Never was. But I believed I was. So inside, I felt fat.”

“But you’re not.”

“But I am inside.”

“And that means . . . ?”

“That means I let someone else tell me things about myself that weren’t true, and I made them true. And that was a stupid thing to do.”

“But my mom’s right,” I say, indicating my ample frame.

“Was she always right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Let me put it this way: How long have you believed you were overweight? A month? A year? Five years? How long?”

I think about this for a minute, and I realize that I’ve always thought I was too big. That I took up too much space in the world. “Always,” I say.

“And how long has your mom been telling you, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, that you need to ‘watch your weight’?”

I think about this. “Always,” I say.

“Chicken? Or egg?” Quinn asks, grabbing my knees again.

“Huh?”

“Which came first? Your mom telling you or you believing it?”

“Being fat came first,” I say.

“Bullshit.” He’s so adamant; I have to consider the possibility that he could be right. “Do me a favor. Go home later and look through some old photo albums. And then you need to ask yourself again: Which came first?” He looks at me a minute longer and then releases my knees.

“Now, Kayla? What did she do?”

I explain about Tom kissing me, and Kayla guessing, and Kayla telling Nash, and how now about a million other people think I did a lot more than kiss him. And I tell him how that little reveal morphed my life into something lonely and painful and frustrating. “How do I fix this? I have no clue how to make it up to Nash,” I say.

Quinn taps his forefinger on his chin. “Harsh. I guess it’s possible Kayla might have just misunderstood,” he says. “But she told a story that wasn’t hers to tell, and she needs to apologize.”

“Yeah, like that’s going to happen,” I say.

“You need to make it happen, Miss Maggie!” Quinn says. “You are leaving too many balls in other people’s courts. Kayla, Nash, Tom: according to you, they all get to decide what happens to Maggie. You need to get some balls of your own!
Cojones,
that is.”

“But—”

“No
but
s. Make Nash see you stumbled, but you’re the same wonderful friend you always were. And make Tom see he’s a fool to kiss and run. Make Kayla apologize for being unworthy of your friendship and trust. You need to show them what Maggie Bower is made of. Do it! Make it happen!” Quinn waves me away and switches out the Roxy Music that’s been drifting under our conversation. The needle drops and Quinn starts gyrating as Blondie belts out “One Way or Another.” I get the message loud and clear.

Once home, I go right to the hall closet and start pulling out boxes until I unearth the bin with the family photo albums. I settle myself against the wall and choose an older album: Maggie as a baby.

Peering at the photos, I try to be objective, searching for information, evidence that I have always been overweight. The baby I am looking at has round, chubby cheeks and sturdy arms and legs, but no more baby fat than you’d expect to find, well, on a baby.

I discard that album and find one from my preschool years. Maggie at her birthday party hitting a piñata. Not a lithe child, but not overweight either. Maggie riding a bike, muscles flexed and tan. Maggie at the pool, a polka dot two-piece framing a belly that’s childish and round but not overly fleshy.

I trace my school photos and class pictures through grade school. I am taller than most. Bigger, but not fatter. I close the book and lean my head against the wall, eyes closed. Chicken? Or egg? That was Quinn’s question, and now it’s mine too.

I’m not about to start blaming my mom for my weight. An egg contains the possibility of a chicken, and I knew that I must contain, genetically speaking, the possibility of fatness. But why Fat Maggie instead of Athletic Maggie or Brainy Maggie or Punk Rock Maggie? Why did I choose to push the overweight version of myself out of the egg instead of some other version? I’m still sitting in the hall, my elementary school photo album slung across my knees, when Mom gets home.

“Mags?” she calls. Her book bag thumps onto the kitchen floor and then the two smaller bumps as she kicks off her shoes. “You here?” she tries again. Her head appears at the bottom of the staircase. “What are you doing, sweetie?”

I gesture at the album resting on my knees. “Looking at pictures.” I scoot over a bit, making room for her on the wall.

She stands over me for a few seconds, deciding, then slides down and pulls the album partway onto her own lap so she can see it. “Oh, look at that,” she says, smiling at my fourth grade school photo.

I make a face.

“I know you hate that picture. But I love it. To me it was the last year you were a little girl.” Her finger strokes the rise of my fourth grade cheek. “So long ago,” she whispers.

I swallow, trying to muster the courage to ask the question I need to ask. “A little girl,” I say, my voice soft. “You mean before I got fat?”

Mom stiffens beside me. “Oh, Maggie.” She flips the page and looks at fifth grade. My face has changed. The angles are more pronounced, and the nose is a little big for the face, but I’m still smiling. Flip again, and the angles are starting to get lost in a face that looks more round, less content.

“So here’s the thing, Mom,” I say. “I’ve only been overweight a little while, a few years.” I turn back the pages of the album. “See, not here.” I turn again. “Or here.” I turn the last page, landing on my sixth grade photo. “It doesn’t really show up until here.” I point, and my mom takes her hands off the album. She folds them in her lap. “But I feel fat; I’ve always felt fat. I am a lot of other things. I’m smart and funny. I’m a good friend and a good cook. I’m kind to animals and small children. But my weight is the only thing about me you ever seem to notice.”

“I notice other things,” she says.

“No, Mom, you don’t.”

“I do too.”

“Okay, fine. You notice other things, but my weight is the only thing you ever mention to me.”

“I’m trying to help.”

“Well, stop helping.”

She doesn’t say a word.

“Mom, I don’t blame you. But I need you to leave my fat alone. Don’t look at it; don’t try to change it. Don’t mention it. Don’t even think about it.”

She laughs a little at this. We sit there, both of us trying not to think about my fat. “I know you mean well, Mom, but I have to understand, why the obsession?”

Mom rubs her eyes, pressing her palms into her sockets, and then she gets up, goes into her bedroom, and returns with a shoebox. She sits, placing the box in my lap. “Open it,” she says, and starts gnawing at her nails.

I lift the lid off the box. Inside are photos, old concert tickets, a dried-up corsage, and a few other crumpled and dusty odds and ends. I start to look through the pictures. They all show the same girl, full face, wide smile, but there’s a sad something in her eyes. When I look into those eyes, the unfamiliar parts of the girl’s face snap together.

“They’re mostly from high school, but there’s a few elementary school photos in there too,” Mom says, her voice quiet.

“Why haven’t you showed these to me before?” I ask.

“I don’t show them to anyone. Not even your father has seen most of them, although Grandma showed him a couple when we were still dating.” She’s chewing her thumbnail like a crazy woman now. “I guess I hoped by worrying about your weight, by hoping you didn’t end up like me, I could keep it from happening.” She lifts out one of the pictures and studies it. Mom at about fourteen, hair feathered, braces. “Growing up was hard. The teasing. The loneliness. I didn’t want things to be so hard for you. I thought I could protect you from that, but now you’re telling me I’ve made things worse.”

“No, Mom. Not worse,” I say. “But I wish I’d known.” I gesture to a photo of her at about my age, dressed for some sort of special occasion. She looks pretty.

“Well, that’s not something you bring up in casual conversation. ‘Oh, Maggie, by the way, I was fat the whole time I was growing up. My first eighteen years were painful and lonely. I thought you’d want to know.’ Not easy to wedge in between ‘eat your vegetables’ and ‘do your homework.’”

“I just mean it would have been nice to know why it’s so important to you.”

Mom takes the photograph out of my hand. “I lost weight twenty-two years ago, and I still feel like this every day,” she says, her voice shaking a little. “I couldn’t bear the idea of going through that again with you.”

“Mom, I’m not you. Heavy or thin, I’m not you, and my life is not your life.”

“But it’s so much easier . . . You’re so lovely, if only . . .” But she doesn’t know how to say what she wants to say without telling me to lose weight.

“You don’t get it,” I say. “Mom, you look beautiful. You’ve always looked beautiful.” I point to the photo in her hand. “You look beautiful here.”

And this, I guess, is the right thing to say, because the floodgates open and my mom is sobbing beside me. I sit and let her cry, my hand on her knee. After a bit I get up for some tissues, hand them to her, then settle back against the wall to wait.

When her tears subside, she turns to me, handing back the photo. “I did the best I could,” she says.

“I know, Mom. And I turned out okay. Self-esteem mostly in tact. Only minor bouts with teenage pain and suffering. Well done! Time to give both of us a break.” I smile, and she kisses my forehead.

“Maggie, you are so much smarter than I was at your age. Actually, I think you’re smarter than I am now.”

We both laugh, and I rest my head against her shoulder.

“I guess I need to know that you care about other stuff besides what I look like,” I say. “I need to know that you see more even if other people don’t.”

“I do, Maggie. I do.” Mom starts in on another round of tears, and I join her.

We’ve both cried ourselves out by the time Dad comes home and finds us laughing together in the hallway.

“What in the world are you doing?” Dad surveys the wadded-up Kleenex and splayed photo albums.

“A little mother-daughter bonding,” Mom explains. Mom and I look at each other and collapse into giggles.

Dad shakes his head and retreats downstairs.

“I’d better go get dinner started,” she says, patting my knee. She follows Dad down to the kitchen.

Gathering the albums, I carry them to the closet, but then stop. I like the Maggie in these photos, and I don’t want to lose sight of her again. I detour into my room, toss them on the bed, and put on
Body and Soul,
one of my favorite Billie Holiday records. I lie next to the photo albums, flipping through them, choosing pictures from different sections. Arranging the photos in chronological order, I tape them around the border of my mirror and step back so I can see my own history, my own life. It turns out Quinn was right. I like what I see. I smile as the soothing voice of Billie Holiday sings “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” I know for the first time that she’s absolutely right.

Nothing much has changed the next day except my attitude. Every time Nash looks at me like I’m a ten on the slut-o-meter, or I see Tom with Kayla dripping off his arm, it makes me even more determined to show them they can’t mess with me. A small kernel of an idea is forming, a way for me to make it clear I’m not going to play their reindeer games.

I’m holding it together in my classes, except I realize I have skipped too much PE. I’m in danger of flunking, which would mean another semester with Ms. Perry. So I give myself a pep talk and grit my teeth through yet another timed run. I am, of course, one of the last to cross the line. Most of the other students are resting on the bleachers, waiting in bored silence for the stragglers. When I get close to the end, the row of horn-dog wrestlers at the top of the bleachers start grabbing their junk and thrusting their crotches at me behind Ms. Perry’s back.