You and Me and Him (3 page)

The locker room is already full of half-dressed hard-bodies when I get there. I make my way to a semi-hidden corner behind some lockers and heft my backpack onto the bench. Next comes my best version of what my old swim team coach used to call a deck change. I put the gym clothes on, then wriggle my street clothes out from under them, thereby exposing the least possible surface area of skin and undergarments.

This may seem like a lot of effort to avoid a few seconds of vulnerability, but it’s a necessary survival mechanism. We’ve been dressing down for PE for four years, but it only took two weeks to figure out that the girls’ locker room is fraught with dangers. And don’t even get me started on the subtle art of using technology to reveal other girls’ dirty little secrets. Cell phones are officially banned but constantly in use. Expose your body in that room, and you better be sure that the only thing that gets out there is that you are perfect in every way.

Once changed, I file out with the other girls, tugging my shorts and shirt over my widest parts. Tom stands with some sophomore and junior boys, and he waves when I walk in the gym. I wave back but line up near the door.

Ms. Perry grimaces when she sees me, checking my name off the list on her clipboard. She raises her whistle to her mouth with a skeletal arm. One shrill blast and the chitchat dies down. We line up, count off, and go to our respective corners. I look around for Tom. He’s headed right for me, grinning. He gives me a thumbs-up and plants himself next to me. Some of the other kids are looking at him and whispering, but that comes to an abrupt halt at the sound of Ms. Perry’s whistle.

“These will be your activity groups for the semester,” Ms. Perry shouts. The four teachers begin to move to the four corners.

I close my eyes and say a silent prayer to the PE gods:
Not Perry. Not Perry. Not Perry . . .
When I open my eyes, Ms. Perry is standing in front of our group, her clipboard out, whistle clenched between her teeth, and her eyes on me. She blows the whistle. I flinch.

“This group’s with me. Fall in for three laps around the field, and meet me by the north soccer goal in eight minutes. Go!”

Students leap into action, streaming around Ms. Perry and filing out the door and into the sunshine. In Ms. Perry’s presence, I am like a hunted rabbit, frightened and frozen. Tom and I end up at the back of the pack. By the time we pass her, she is already shaking her head and making marks on her clipboard.

“Wow, she really likes that whistle,” Tom says, loping beside me.

“You have no idea.” I try not to pant as I lumber through the first few hundred yards of the run. You wouldn’t think it to look at me, but I am actually a pretty active person. I was a competitive swimmer for four years, until the end of eighth grade, followed by a brief, obsessive volleyball phase during freshman year. I walk and hike for hours in the cedar and fir forests that surround our town and hardly break a sweat. But running has always been my downfall. Any fitness or strength I gain through other activities exits my body the minute I accelerate to even a slow jog. Watch me run and you’ll assume I’m one of those kids who lie on the couch eating Cheez Doodles and watching reruns of
Saved by the Bell.
When I run, I sweat. I wheeze. I clump around like my legs are formed from lead.

I do not want Tom to see me at my worst. “Hey, listen, save yourself! She said eight minutes, and we’re already behind. Running: not my forte. Making Ms. Perry like me: also not my forte. No reason to hitch your wagon to my falling star. That’s PE suicide.” I am breathing heavier now, and beads of sweat start to form on my forehead, under my bra, behind my knees.

“No, I’m good,” Tom says, jogging beside me, not a drop of perspiration on him.

I look around. We aren’t at the very back of the pack—some of the girls are walking—but we aren’t going to make the eight-minute mark either. I put my head down, working to keep my breath even and think of a way to avoid becoming a panting, red, sweaty mess in front of Tom. No go. Even if he ran ahead, he would be there waiting at the end. Oh well. If the sight of me post-exercise grosses him out, he can suck it. “You really should go faster. There’s still a chance Ms. Perry won’t hate you.”

“Nope. I’m fine. Just enjoying a leisurely run with my new best friend.”

“New best friend? Seriously? Doesn’t all this new-kid-with-a-heart-of-gold shit get old?”

Tom laughs. “Too much?”

“Yeah. Maybe a little. Are you always this friendly?”

“I guess so. It sort of becomes automatic when you’ve moved as much as I have. You learn to make a good first impression.”

“Ahhh, so this isn’t the real you? After a few days, you’ll turn into a total jerk?”

“Maybe not a total jerk. I think I’m only occasionally jerky.”

“Doesn’t it wear you out to be so charming?”

“You have no idea.”

We jog for a bit without talking, the only sound my laboring lungs sucking in air.

“If you lift your chin up instead of looking at the ground, you’ll get more oxygen,” Tom says.

I pretend to ignore him, but after a minute I lift my chin and find my breathing sounds and feels a little less desperate. After a few hundred yards of actual oxygen intake, my legs feel stronger too. And with my chin up, I can see the hillside of evergreen trees sloping behind the school and smell the late summer blooms from the hedge of heather growing along the fence line.

We finish the run in silence, and in spite of how it began, it isn’t the worst three laps I have ever run. We don’t make it in under eight minutes, and most of the rest of the class is waiting in the bleachers, bored, watching us down the home stretch. Some varsity wrestlers moo when I cross the finish line.

Tom stops, staring at them. He glances at me to see if I heard. I roll my eyes and sit on the bottom row of bleachers.

Tom climbs a couple rows up the bleachers toward the wrestlers. “Hi,” he says. “Did you just moo at me?”

The wrestlers look confused.

“Is this some sort of Northwest welcome? Should I moo back?” he asks. “Or maybe some other farm animal sound is more appropriate. A pig, maybe? Or a chicken?” Tom clucks at them, and they shift from confused to pissed off. A couple people snicker. Tom turns his back on them and sits down on the bleachers next to me. Ms. Perry says nothing, but I can see her draw two large zeroes on her clipboard.

It is almost seven when my mom walks in the kitchen that night. She kicks off her heels, drops her keys in the owl-shaped bowl on the counter, and hangs her bag on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. It tips over backwards, spilling her files out on the kitchen floor.

“Bring a little work home?” I say, watching her gather the folders and shove them back into the bag.

She puts it by the living room door, rights the chair, and collapses into it, rubbing her feet through her stockings.

I pour her a glass of wine and bring it to the table, kissing the top of her head.

“Thanks, honey. Yes, a little. I take the files for a ride in my car, then take them right back to work the next day. There’s never enough time to get all my students’ papers graded. Not if I want to do it right.” She sips the wine, closes her eyes, and sighs.

Her eyes pop open. “How was your first day? Tell me all about it. Who’d you see? What did you learn?” She watches me pull a pan of my homemade mac and cheese from the oven. The bread crumbs are golden, and the pale cheese bubbles around the edges of the glass baking dish.

Mom frowns. “Mac and cheese? It looks great, honey. But I think we need to start eating healthier, don’t you?”

I pull a bag of mixed greens from the fridge and pour them into a bowl. “Salad.” I turn my back on her and start banging around the kitchen, getting the rest of the meal ready. “Could you tell Dad it’s time to eat?” I say, not looking at her. I feel her hand on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry, honey. I am so grateful that you made dinner, and that you help out so much. But I know how hard you worked this summer. And you lost a little weight. I don’t want you to slip back into old habits.”

I turn to face her. “Mom, I lost four pounds this summer. Four pounds! Not exactly a before-and-after story!” I slam the plates on the counter and toss the forks down next to them. They skitter across the orange Formica, banging against the backsplash.

“Maggie, don’t . . . Come on.”

“Mom. Listen. I know you’re trying to help. You’re always trying to help. But I think it’s best if we accept the inevitable and stop talking about this.” I move the casserole from the stovetop to a trivet on the counter and shove the serving spoon into it. “Daaaa-ad! Dinner!” I yell.

Mom starts in on her standard speech. I’m sure you know the one. Pretty face. Great personality. If you’d lose some weight. Blah, blah, blah.

“Mom!” I interrupt. “Give it a rest!” I start to dish up some mac and cheese and discover I have lost my appetite. Putting the plate on the counter, I wipe my hands on the dishtowel and stomp upstairs.

I throw myself on the bed, fuming at my mom’s oblivious efforts to reform me. I have been hearing this shit my whole life. And I mean my whole entire life. As a baby my cheeks curved like peaches. By the time I was walking, my legs drew affectionate pinches from my mother’s friends. But as I got older, the baby fat everyone hoped I would shed began to look like it was going to take up permanent residence around my middle, my thighs, my chins, and anywhere else it could take hold. When puberty hit about three years earlier than it did for most of the girls I know, hips and boobs rearranged the bulk a little, but the overall effect was the same. I have been on diets. I’ve seen doctors and nutritionists and counselors, and anyone else who might turn the cellulite tide. The thing is, I don’t remember a time when I didn’t take up more room than almost every other kid I knew.

And it wasn’t that I was lazy. I was always busy. I roamed our neighborhood, riding bikes, playing in vacant lots, torturing my Barbies with a neighbor kid’s Tonka trucks. During the summer I’d swim for hours in the local pool, but even with double workouts and swim meets every other weekend, my fat cells defended their territory.

So for seventeen years, my mom has expounded all the positive self-esteem crap that parents are told is good for their kids. And for the most part, it’s worked. I feel pretty darn good about myself, much better than most of the bulimic coat hangers who occupy the top of my high school hierarchy. But Mom can’t help mentioning the big “but,” or should I say my big butt? I want to be thin. Of course I do. Who would want to go through life fat? And I like who I am except for that one detail. But it’s a detail that nobody else seems to be able to see past.

I lie on the bed awhile longer, scuttling back and forth between anger and angst. Then I realize. I’m not hungry. I sit upright and plant my feet on the floor. I passed up mac and cheese.
Homemade
mac and cheese. My own secret recipe homemade mac and cheese. I scan my memory, trying to figure out when was the last time I skipped a meal. When was the last time I didn’t feel like eating? Maybe when I got the stomach flu in eighth grade?

I pace, cracking my knuckles as I process this new information. As someone who has tried every diet in the book, I am highly attuned to the combination of hope and fear that flutters around the beginnings of any weight-loss possibility. But then, as I pace, I start to think about the mac and cheese. And then my stomach rumbles and the moment passes. I flop back on the bed, trying to recapture that feeling—or lack of feeling, I guess—but it’s gone. I roll sideways, kick on my slippers, and pad downstairs for a bowl of pasta.

The door to my parents’ room is shut, so I know Mom’s in there with her work. When she has stuff to do, she locks herself in the bedroom, sits up on their king-size bed, and spreads the piles of papers all around her. She wears those noise-canceling headphones, but she never has any music playing on them. She puts them on to keep out all the other noise.

Dad is putting plates in the dishwasher. My dad is one of the only people I know who makes me feel physically small. He’s not overweight; but he’s built on a larger scale than the rest of the world. He used to play football, and even though he’s a little softer now than he was back then, he’s still a pretty impressive guy.

“Hey, Monkey,” he says as I slide onto one of the stools. “What’s up?”

I sigh, resting my elbow on the counter, my chin in my hand.

“First day give you trouble?” Dad asks.

I shrug.

“Mom give you trouble?”

I push back the cuticles of my right hand with my thumb.

“She worries,” Dad says.

“Why can’t she just shut it about my weight? It always ends with a fight.”

“Your mom loves you, Maggie. You know that.”

“You love me. You never make me feel like shit,” I say.

“Maggie, watch the language.”

“Sorry. You don’t make me feel like crap.” I pick at a glob of dried cheese on the counter. “Do you worry about me?”

Dad is silent for a few moments, and this is a bit of a shocker. Things are always easy with Dad. It never occurred to me that he might be worried too.

I scrape at the cheese harder, avoiding his eyes.

“Like your mom does?” he says finally. “No. But I worry that you and your mom will miss knowing each other. I worry that you won’t see how amazing you are, or how amazing she is. I worry that you don’t give yourself or her enough credit.” He looks at me, and I feel like I’m eight years old, before all this stuff mattered, because I know that’s how he sees me. The tears come, and Dad leans across the counter toward me. He takes a tissue and dabs at the corners of my eyes, like he did when I was little.

I give him a sad smile. “Thanks, Dad.”

He dishes up a small plateful of macaroni and pops it in the microwave. When it’s hot, he grabs a fork and napkin, lays them on the counter, and presents me with the plate of steaming, fragrant mac and cheese, swirling it under his arm first in what is supposed to be a fancy waiter move.

“Mademoiselle,” he says in this French accent that sounds more like someone from a former Russian republic. “Tonight we have a delicious pasta with zee fromage and zee crumbs of bread on zee top.”