But when I decided to take control of my eating, to try to reverse the diabetes I had acquired, to ease the pain in my joints, to prevent further health issues and hopefully ward off a heart attack, Charlene pulled away from me. And when I left the firm to go to culinary school, she essentially dropped off the face of my earth. I tried to maintain the friendship, never preaching about my program or even suggesting she make changes herself, knowing firsthand that there is nothing more irritating than someone currently successfully managing her weight trying to get a fat person to drink whatever Kool-Aid is the flavor of the day.
I even tried to get together with her at nonmeal times so that she never had to listen to me order something healthy and feel pressure to do so herself. Because you know what sucks? Sitting across from little Miss Egg White Omelet with Tomato Slices Instead of Potatoes, when what you want is a stack of pancakes dripping with butter and syrup and a side of sausage. If you order what you want, you feel judged, and if you order something healthy, you feel like a phony, not to mention disappointed. I suggested spa dates instead, afternoon shopping, theater matinees. She found a million excuses to avoid me, and eventually I stopped trying.
You’d have thought that as I started to shrink, Andrew’s ardor would have increased. After all, while there was less and less of me to love, what was there was more and more strong and flexible. We could have managed positions that would have been impossible before, but the smaller I got, the less interest Andrew had in sex, and what had been a three- or four-night-a-week habit dwindled first to once a week, then every other week, then once a month. By the end, it had been so rare I stopped keeping track. He supported me through culinary school, helped me buy and open the store, and then he left.
It was a month after he left me, at the final walk-through when we sold our house, that I found out it was Charlene he had been sleeping with for nearly two years. He left his phone on the counter, and when it rang, I saw it was her on the caller ID, and everything fell into place.
“CHARLENE?” I had screamed. “You’ve been fucking Charlene?!?”
“Lower your voice, the real estate brokers are right upstairs.”
“I don’t care if the goddamned queen of goddamned England is upstairs. It’s Charlene, isn’t it?”
Andrew sighed, as if it were very inconvenient to have to deal with me. “Yes, all right? Is that what you need to hear? Yes. I’m in love with Charlene, I’m moving in with her. Please don’t be a drama queen about this.”
“I’m the drama queen? You’re the one behaving like you’re starring in some afternoon soap opera. Really, Andrew, you couldn’t have gone more cliché if you tried. It’s pathetic.”
“I had really hoped we could be friends, Mel, after all this time, but you’re making it very hard.”
That was when I realized fully that I hated him. That I hated who he was and what he had done to me and what he had turned me into: some shrill ex-wife berating him in public, embarrassing herself more than him. I would not let him turn me into the worst version of myself.
“Andrew, I don’t think I want to be friends. In fact, I’m pretty sure that if I met you today at a party I’d not want to know you.”
“Have it your way.”
“Don’t you worry. I intend to.”
I’m not the only woman to lose her man, and certainly not the only one to lose him to someone she thought was a good friend. But I do believe I’m the only woman I’ve ever heard of who got thin, and then had her husband leave her for a big girl. If it wasn’t so humiliating and hurtful, it would be almost funny.
So now, I focus on my new life. The life where I make barely enough to keep my head above water. The life where I’m divorced from the man I thought was my soul mate, who turned out to just be a lying, cheating piece of shit with a serious fat-girl fetish. The life where I live in a little two-bedroom condo in Ravenswood Manor, a quarter the size of my old house, but all I could afford to buy outright with my settlement from the sale of the Lincoln Park house, since with the cost of the business, I couldn’t afford to carry a mortgage as well. The life where I drive a Honda, wear Crocs instead of Jimmy Choos, and eat the way a normal person is supposed to, while trying every day to quiet the demons in my head that crave butter and cream and sugar. The life where I am diabetes-free, fit, and strong, with a healthy heart and a prognosis of a long life, and every day hoping that I’m getting closer to believing it can also be a happy one.
I look around me, at the haven I’ve tried to create for myself. When I bought the condo, I’d done it fast, because I’d needed a place to be, and I couldn’t stay at Phil and Kai’s forever with my belongings languishing in storage. Andrew and I, being lawyers, knew exactly how to get around the legal issue of separation, signed affidavits that we had been living separate lives under the same roof, which unbeknownst to me, we had, and got the Chicago version of a quickie divorce the same week we sold our house. My broker luckily found out about the condo before it was listed, and I made a full-price cash offer. We closed within two weeks, and I moved in right away.
I purposefully attempted to make it a sacred, healing space. I decorated in shades of dove gray, silver, and ivory, with touches of robin’s egg blue. I picked soft textures and natural elements: mohair on the down-filled sofa, chunky tables of waxed driftwood. I built on my collection of bird’s nest-themed art, finding prints and small sculptures to scatter around, focusing on the symbolism. The work that goes into the creation of a simple and functional place of safety and comfort. The life-affirming message of making a nest. The life that might happen within.
I get off the couch and stretch, the warm light coming through the tall windows reflected in the wall of muted silver-leaf, a major splurge requiring two artisans to work for three days to painstakingly apply the six-by-six squares of delicate leaf and then burnish and seal the wall with a darkening agent, so that the whole thing glows like moonlight under a gossamer pewter veil.
I head to the kitchen, which had been the thing I fell in love with the first time I saw it, a bright space with stainless-steel appliances, treated concrete counters, white subway tiles on the walls and a subtle blue floor. It’s a third the size of the kitchen in my former house, but economical use of space makes it a cozy place to work. Everything I need is within reach: my best knives on the counter, spices and herbs in a specially installed wall unit, pots and pans hanging overhead from a wrought-iron rack.
I need to shake off the morose thoughts, and nothing does that as well as testing new recipes. With Chicago in the throes of comfort-food cravings, I have been working diligently to find ways to create some healthier versions.
And today, what I need, what I want, is mashed potatoes.
CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES WITH VANILLA FROSTING
Pink and lavender, with a black plastic door, and one 60-watt lightbulb. I was the queen of the Easy-Bake Oven. And no different from a drug addict who buys in bulk and sells at a profit to feed his own habit, I sold my little cakes and cookies to my classmates at school to supplement the mixes my mom bought for me. I was the only eight-year-old I knew who had figured out exactly how to convert a large box of cake mix into the appropriate measurements to work with the limitations of my equipment. The only one who quickly abandoned the frosting mixes and learned how to make her own from scratch with confectioners’ sugar and butter and flavorings. I had good experiments, adding walnuts and chocolate chips to batters, trying flaked almonds on top of caramel icing. And bad experiments; root beer-flavored cake with vanilla frosting does not, despite one’s best intentions, ever taste like a float. But chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting, those are always somehow exactly what one needs, and quickly became my go-to combination for every occasion. Through these experiments it became clear to me, and to my mom, that cooking was something I was instinctively good at, and brought me great pleasure. Beyond the eating, which had an element of uncontrollable necessity that never fully sated, the cooking was serene, calm, and soul satisfying.
/> “T-minus three minutes,” Kai calls out from the front of the store.
“Okay!” I call back. We’ve been knocking out the basics all morning. . . . Asian chicken salad, fruit medley with mint, wheat berry pilaf with dried cherries and almonds. Kai roasted six chickens and a turkey breast, and grilled a whole flank steak, which he sliced thin across the grain. We have green beans in a spicy garlic marinade, braised black kale with smoked turkey, and roasted brussels sprouts. Our signature Morning Energy muffins, bursting with golden raisins and walnuts, sunflower seeds, millet, flax, and sweet with honey are cooling on a rack. We have thawed today’s soup specials, which we cook over the weekends and freeze for the week, a golden butternut squash, smooth as velvet, and a chunky pasta fagioli, with whole wheat pasta, white beans, and loads of veggies.
While we will continue to cook throughout the day, adding new things to the case, and replenishing items as they sell, having this basic work finished is always a relief. Especially since Ashley called to say that her car locks were iced over, and she might not make it in at all today.
Kai bounces into the kitchen, his crazy hair spiked in all directions. He is a tiny man, shorter than my five-five by at least two inches, with delicate features. The almond eyes and straight jet-black hair are the only clue to his Japanese heritage. His skin is deep caramel and his lips have his African American father’s fullness. He showed up last Halloween dressed as Tina Turner, and damned if he didn’t pull it off. His legs are spectacular.
“Okay, the door, she is unlock-ed,” he says dramatically. “The people, they are not lined up. But they come, I know that they come.”
“I hope that they come, grasshopper. Or we will be eating chicken all week,” I say, gesturing to the six glistening birds in the case.
“Better too many than too few,” he says, shrugging. “After all, you’ll just use the leftovers for chicken salad and wraps and stuff tomorrow.”
“True enough. Did you and Phil have a good weekend?”
Kai stretches his lithe arms over his head, the sleeves of his spotless chef’s coat sliding down around his elbows, revealing forearms riddled with the burns and scars that are the hall-mark of our craft. “We did indeed. Had some of our friends over for dinner on Saturday night.”
This is my favorite part of Tuesday morning, hearing what Kai cooked over the weekend. He is a fearless and inventive chef, and Phil is a serious foodie, so they entertain constantly.
“Tell me. Slowly,” I beg him.
“Well, darling . . .” Kai purrs. “First, a little plate of nibbles. Gingersnaps with a chunk of Port Salut drizzled with white truffle honey and chopped chili, a recipe I absconded from Phil’s friends Peter and David when we visited them in New York last year.” I can feel the mix of sweet heat and creamy cheese on my tongue. “Then, little espresso cups with kari squash soup. Braised short ribs with a pomegranate bourbon glaze, your famous asparagus salad, smashed fingerling potatoes with mascarpone and lobster chunks and chervil, and vanilla panna cotta with mixed berries macerated in elderflower liqueur and chocolate tuiles.”
“You bitch.” I’m literally salivating.
“Don’t be a hater. You never say yes when we invite you. So you don’t get to eat the magical meal.”
It’s true that I have consistently declined almost all of Kai’s invites. But not, as I have allowed him to believe, because I’m concerned about the decadence of the food. I know that even the most luscious meal can be balanced with a few days of healthy eating and a little extra exercise. I just can’t bring myself to see how he and Phil interact, the powerful love between them, the way they look at each other. Living with them after the separation was so hard, even though they were beyond sensitive to my condition. Their friends are a lively group of fun and interesting folks, but I don’t do well at parties. I love to listen to people, and forget to speak, and come off as either bored or aloof. I always end up hiding in the kitchen, and on more than one occasion have been mistaken for hired help. I’ve always been something of a social loner, preferring to gradually build trust with a small group of friends. I can put on social skills when I need them, at business events and meetings and such. I’ve been told I’m a dynamic teacher; get me started talking about how to cook something and I’m off to the races, but it’s a façade, carefully adopted, and emotionally draining.
When Andrew and I were together, we preferred our own company to that of others. We both worked so hard and such long hours, what little time we had was spent cocooned together. We didn’t really have a “group,” rarely entertained, and mostly ended up either home alone, or as the last addition to someone’s table at a fund-raiser. I have a couple friends from college, a couple from law school, only Kai from culinary school. Slowly I am getting friendly with customers, but so far those relationships are kept well within the walls of the store.
“Kai, you know one of your dinner parties would put me in a butter coma for a week.” I laugh it off and pretend that it doesn’t sting, that I don’t wish I could just be free and easy with a group of boisterous strangers, hanging out and talking about nothing. That I could be in a room with two people who are deeply in love with each other and not think that there is potentially something sinister and damaged just beneath the surface. “Besides, I was here till nine thirty, and even I can’t justify being that unfashionably late to a dinner party.”
“You kill me, Slim.”
Kai always calls me Skinny Minny, or Slim, or Little Bittle, among other nicknames. It is lovely and endearing, but still shocks me that he says it without irony. I’m still a fat girl on the inside.
The door opens, bringing with it the bitter chill air, and the tinny scent of impending snow. A tall, lithe woman in a long tweed coat flies in the door.
“Hey, Melanie, hey, Kai!” She huffs, rubbing her hands together and heading for the food cases.
“Not-so-plain-Jane in the house,” Kai chirps.
“Hi, Janey, how’s the yoga business?” Janey owns Stretch, a yoga and Pilates studio a block away, and has become not only a regular customer, but one of those almost-friends as well. She refers a lot of her clients to the store, and we have done a couple of joint events that have been very successful.
“Bendy. Very bendy. I’m going to need lunch and dinner today. One of my instructors called in sick, so I’m teaching double classes. I need some serious protein and whole-grain carb action.”
I walk over to the case and help her select a balanced set of dishes to get her through her day, including half a chicken, much to Kai’s smirking delight. As I ring her up, we chat about the weather and business. A couple of other customers wander in, and I mentally prepare for the lunch hour.
There are enough local small businesses that we do a decent lunch business from about eleven thirty to one thirty. And more and more people are also picking up things to either eat for dinner or to supplement whatever they are cooking at home. The day gets into a groove, people in and people out, the explanations of ingredients and health benefits, referrals to specialists. A mother whose son was diagnosed with celiac disease, a newly minted vegetarian worried about getting enough protein. And the inevitable defeated large woman searching for the next way to try to get control, praying for magic, with deep down surety of failure.
I try to be open and encouraging of everyone, but take special time with the big gals. I share my own story, recommend inspirational books, and give them the numbers for Carey or other nutritionists. I show them the framed fat picture I keep behind the counter to remind me where I have been. I look them deep in the eyes and tell them that they can do it. They usually leave with a stack of books and pamphlets, a sack full of food, and, at least I want to believe, a glimmer of hope in their hearts.
I’m happy to see them walk through the door, and also sad. Because only about 10 percent of them ever come back. Usually they check out the nutritionist websites, and see that it can be an expensive proposition. So they decide that they can do it on their own, just e
ating the food they have bought from me, and reading the books. They feel energized and motivated.
But motivation without support lasts about three days. Then the desire to celebrate kicks in, and once you are off the wagon for one meal, you inevitably decide to bail on the day. One day of decadence and the week seems shot, and the mental decision to “start again on Monday” seems almost logical. Knowing that Monday is coming means the rest of the week is a mindless binge. And now you are back where you were. And no matter how much I share that this was and is my struggle, no matter how much I say that I gained two pounds for every four I lost, up and down, two steps forward and three steps back, these women I try to bond with, they don’t come back. As if I will judge them, or be disappointed in them. On the one hand, I’m thrilled that they come in. On average they double or even triple the spending of any other customer, but I write them off, even though I don’t want to.
We usually have a lull around two, allowing Kai and me to take stock of what we think we will need to get through the day, clean up and prep, and get ready for the shift change, when I lose Kai’s exuberant and slightly manic energy for Delia’s comforting warmth and wry observations.
I always take the time to sit down and eat something, even though I’m rarely hungry then. But if I don’t, I’ll be randomly snacking, picking at the ends and scraps of things, not even realizing what I am doing. Carey once had me set up a video camera in the corner of the store for an afternoon and then watch and write down everything I ate. Nearly four hundred mindless calories, eked out in single bites and little nibbles—a half a piece of this and a quarter piece of that. I was astounded. Nearly 20 percent of what should be my ideal daily intake, without ever really tasting or enjoying the food. So now, I make a plate, balancing some protein, some whole-grain carbs, and some healthy fats so that I have a slow, steady burn of energy in the afternoon, and don’t let hunger creep up on me.
Good Enough to Eat Page 3
