by Chris Baron
than when I started.
I rest at the mirror again,
stare into an unfamiliar face.
Less chin now,
square jawbones,
the puffed slope
of my cheek
slides into
a less dimpled mouth.
I turn sideways,
suck in my belly.
There has never been
a time where I haven’t held it in.
My love handles
rise over my shorts,
but they are smaller now,
barely enough to squeeze.
I go to the breakfast table.
It’s just my mom and me.
Level two, she says. It begins today.
She sets down her copy
of The Diet Book,
dog-eared,
raises a cup of coffee at me in victory,
slides a bowl of cottage cheese,
and a pewter dish with twenty-four almonds.
I bite into halves
so they last longer.
Old Photo
My mother searches through
endless boxes of papers,
and finds an old photo
of a time in New York,
at P.S. 6,
where once I played
the part of a king
in a school play.
Other kids
wore cardboard armor
and swords made of tinfoil.
But as the king, I wore
a costume my proud parents rented me.
King Henry the Eighth,
red velour with golden trim,
white sheer tights expanded over my legs,
a crown, and even a real sword.
In the picture of that day,
my face is noble,
on top of too many chins,
my belly spilling over my gold belt.
This was the first time I noticed you were chubby.
How did that happen? she asks.
Me too. I noticed it then.
But not for the first time.
Stuck in the City
Alone,
my mom
off to deal with lawyers, clients, customers,
maybe even my father, I think,
but she doesn’t say it.
It’s a whole list I don’t understand.
I have to leave early
and come home late every day this week, she says.
I live out Level 2 the best I can,
more carbohydrates than Level 1,
even a little sugar, but only from fruit.
I pour twenty-four almonds in a bowl,
grab a coffee cup of blueberries,
and roll a piece of salami tightly
with a slice of Swiss cheese.
I make it fancy on a plate,
pour a glass of diet soda.
I pass the tall mirror
in the hallway
to make sure the weight
didn’t somehow come back.
I look at myself,
first straight on,
then I turn to my side,
suck it in,
let out my breath
because the weight is still gone.
I sit on the couch
and turn on the TV.
I eat almonds
and watch Magnum P.I.
on Netflix, like I do with my father.
We love to watch old shows together.
The actor’s Hawaiian shirts
unbuttoned too far,
like my father’s shirts.
Sometimes when we were back in New York,
my father sent me
to the market down the street
to get cupcakes and Hershey’s bars,
and then we would
sit and eat them all,
him explaining
the plot of Lost,
or watching reruns of
Happy Days
or Hill Street Blues.
The couch feels good.
I’ve been away from couches
and TVs, computers, and Magnum,
and Voltron, and everything else.
When each new show starts,
I taste cupcakes and potato chips,
smell oatmeal cookies,
feel chocolate melting on my tongue.
I breathe,
eat a blueberry instead.
Sardines
During these long days,
I sit sometimes
in the empty space
and wait for him,
the sound of his keys in the door
or the smell
of the sardines
he eats every day.
I walk to the kitchen
open the pantry door,
find cans of deviled ham
and uncut salami.
But on the third shelf,
just below the beanless
chili, the beef jerky,
I find
the tiny
star-shined tin
of sardines.
His sardines.
The ones he told
me were only for grown-ups.
I put it on the counter,
unhinge the lid
with the square key,
and slowly peel the metal back.
I stand in the kitchen.
I hear doors open and close.
I hear buses slip
and buzz along wires.
The kitchen
fills with a faraway sea.
I eat all the sardines
one by one
and lick
the tin
clean.
Atari
Once, in New York,
after many nights
of working late,
my father came home with
an old Atari 2600
tucked under his arm
and a brown paper bag
full of Atari games
and dumped them on my bed.
He unplugged my Nintendo,
pushed aside my Xbox,
and we stayed up all night
playing Adventure and Breakout
way past my bedtime.
But sometimes I waited,
and he didn’t come home.
No Eyes on Me
I ride my bike to the bagel shop
my dad used to take me to.
When I get close,
I slow down,
look inside the window,
thinking he might be there
at the corner table
where we usually sit,
his coffee steaming
over his lox, eggs, and onions.
I ride my bike
across the city,
from the Marina,
over green Fort Mason,
down to the wharf.
I ride all the way
up Divisadero
to Haight Street
to the comic-book store.
I feel good.
The city is mine.
When I get home,
I pull a stack
of new comics
out of my backpack.
It’s quiet. I look around.
I can almost hear
my father’s voice
from the living room,
calling out, Ari, you home?
It’s strange how suddenly
my parents decided they
could leave me by myself.
But I think I might be getting
the hang of it. Freedom.
Taking care of myself.
Creating my own life.
I stretch out on my bed,
my body a little tighter now,
skin against my muscles,
stomach flatter,
slow breathing.
No voices,
no fire to burn
or hands to dream
of holding.
&nb
sp; No trolls to carve
or stories to write
or gates to lock,
or trash to take out.
No giant terra-cotta
demon spirits, Melinda,
or angels or alien talismans,
no people up and down the streets
or beach sirens
or pounding waves.
No sleeping on a camping mat
beneath freshly painted murals.
Just moments
with no eyes on me.
Grandma’s Letter
At the mailbox,
I find a letter from my grandma.
A part of me imagines
that someday soon
I’ll be back on the subway to Brooklyn,
eating too many
lemon-flavored Italian ices
and winding up in her apartment,
the cleanest place in all of Brooklyn.
I open the letter and
pull out a folded
piece of stationery,
blue flowers in the center,
laced over a faded
Star of David.
Behind the ten-dollar bill
are the words,
Ari, we love you.
We hope you are happy.
We hope you are skinny.
Skinny.
I can hear her thick accent
and the kindness in her voice
that doesn’t mean to wound.
If I ever wrote a letter back, I might tell her
that I am, in fact, not skinny.
I am happy, and feeling more like myself.
I wonder how they remember me.
How even across a distance like this
she thinks of my size.
What If?
I want to talk to Lisa
about the letter.
I want to text her,
but I don’t have a cell phone,
just this old landline.
But then I have a sudden thought:
What if things have changed?
What if Lisa already went back to the beach,
and she’s hanging out with those older boys.
What if she and Jorge
went on some adventure
without me?
What if her mother
won’t let her go back at all
and the nursery and the beach
break off in a great earthquake,
the trolls we made fall into turbulent
waves and grinding sand.
Middle of Level 2
I’m due after this week
to lose three more pounds,
but in the morning,
I feel like my stomach
is twice the size.
I walk to the mirror
in the hallway
and stand straight, then sideways.
Years of looking,
of seeing, or hearing
words about my body,
make it impossible
to see clearly.
I feel like I am suddenly
off track,
filling up
instead of deflating.
At the scale,
I imagine
24 pounds
of victory,
fat squashed away.
24 pounds
no longer
me.
I step on.
Left foot.
Right foot.
My eyes squint tightly.
When I open them
I lose
my breath.
This can’t be right.
21 pounds was the last time,
but now,
in the cool morning,
5 pounds have found
their way back to me.
16.
16 pounds
since it all started.
How could this happen?
I put my fingers
in the waistband.
I feel for the free air
between my body
and my belt.
Still there.
I take my shirt off.
I look for the fat kid
in the mirror.
He’s there and not there.
Indiscretion
In The Diet Book,
the doctor warns us to beware of indiscretions,
that we all make mistakes
from time to time.
After induction
in Level 1,
I taught my body
not to eat carbs.
Devour fat, body!
Eat the fat,
and that is what it did.
In Level 2, the body is adjusting
to its new ways of digesting.
It searches for fat,
a memory of Doritos
and Coke in a can.
The body gets mixed
up in Level 2.
Processes slow down
in the memory
of old food.
Carbs find their way in
as subtle suggestions,
a roll at dinner,
an extra handful of peanuts,
too much fruit,
or just the crust of a pizza.
Indiscretions.
I walk to my closet,
stare at my clothes.
Most are dark,
slimming, as my mother says.
Not a single horizontal stripe.
I promised myself
new clothes
at the end of the summer.
I will buy new jeans
and slim-fit shirts with stripes.
I feel my bones
loose inside my body.
I feel tightness in my pants
and the cling of my shirt.
My skin cells tingle
with every touch of fabric.
This has to be in my head.
On a website, I read about
what to do when the diet
stalls. It says,
Be good to yourself,
lower your carb intake,
shock your body,
starve it again.
Exercise.
I hold the book in my hands,
stare at the picture of the doctor on the cover.
Maybe he doesn’t know everything.
How does being good to myself
mean I have to shock my body?
To starve it?
This can’t be the only way.
By now the cover
is creased and dull.
I’m getting tired of it.
I close it, hard, and put it on the shelf.
I am being good to myself.
Post-its
On the wall
in the kitchen
near the window
on the bulletin board
there are yellow Post-its
written in parent handwriting,
like flags from
when life was normal.
Milk,
work at three,
call grandmother,
and somewhere, in the far, far corner
are the words, written by my father,
Wednesday, July 25th, 4 p.m.
and the word Rabbi.
Today.
There is no one to see me take
the Post-it off the board,
no one to know or remember
that this appointment ever existed.
I look at the phone,
willing my father to call at this moment,
tell me to get moving,
but not this time.
No air-and-tear-filled speech
about how his rabbi was good to him,
even after all the bad things
he said he had done as a kid,
getting in fights, being late
to synagogue, and sometimes
even lying to his parents.
He told me that seeing the rabbi,
the ga
thering of my study papers,
my cassettes, tying my shoes
and combing my hair, the quiet walk,
the silvery touch of the mezuzah
entering the synagogue on my own,
all of it is ritual.
Part of my story. Part of my becoming a man.
I hold the Post-it,
alone
in the quiet apartment,
no one to tell me whether
to go or not.
Something, for once, seems up to me,
standing near the apple bowl,
yellow Post-it between my fingers
with the word Rabbi
in felt marker.
I look at the refrigerator.
I think about my father.
I think about my choices.
I think about who I am,
who I want to be.
I think about the beach
and Lisa
and how the world
feels so big sometimes.
If I leave now,
I might make it.
The Visit
I scrawl a note,
attach the Post-it,
so she can see the date.
I spread it on the counter,
Mom, back at 6.
I eat a Slim Jim,
a new Level 2 snack,
lock the door behind me.
The Marina is warm,
fogless in the late
afternoon, and I
pedal slowly
up Divisadero
and into Pacific Heights.
I don’t know the words
by heart,
so I practice
the cadence
of the prayers
with my breath.
The rabbi’s office
below his apartment
is dusty and dark.
I knock until the brass knob
turns, and he pulls me inside.
It smells like old sofas,
like chicken broth and frying pans,
like my uncle’s house
on Long Island.
He asks me if I’m hungry.
I am, but I say no.
I’ve never been here without my father.
He sits down in his gray chair,
and he says my name the long way.
He looks at me through his glasses.
It’s quiet
like thick curtains.
In this moment,
I feel his hands
cover mine.
He looks at me
like he sees something
