The funeral attendees erupted in applause then. I pulled a Kleenex from my purse and dabbed my eyes.
“I want to celebrate my mother’s life and her accomplishments today,” Keith Richmond continued. “I hope you will join me in the reception area outside after the service.”
The violinist began to play “Ode to Joy” as Keith Richmond left the podium. Everyone filed out of the pews, heading toward the doors. Kate and I stood where we were until the aisle was free. We followed the crowd around the church to a spring meadow. Tables were set up with appetizers and punch.
“We need to talk to him to let him know we were here,” Kate said. She was young, but she knew how it worked.
We walked to the tables laden with food and put stuffed mushrooms, prosciutto wrapped cantaloupe, spanikopita, fried chicken tenders, and chicken salad on our plates. A young woman who couldn’t have been more than eighteen handed us cold cups of punch at the end of the line.
I wasn’t very hungry, but I nibbled at the food on my plate and drank the punch.
“He’s over there by the tree!” Kate whispered intently. “Let’s go talk to him so we can go.”
I wondered then if Kate was already so jaded by her annual fund job that she had been untouched by the service and the eulogy. But I understood that she had a boyfriend waiting for her at the beach, that she had given up the beginning of her spring break to attend this funeral. I did understand all of that. She was still very young and inexperienced.
Kate grabbed my arm and led me through the crowd and stopped right beside Keith Richmond. He was talking to and elderly man. We waited. Then Keith turned his sad eyes our way.
“Mr. Richmond,” Kate said extending her hand. “We’re from Wellington. We’re so sorry for your loss.”
Keith took her hand and said, “Thank you.”
I extended my own chubby hand and he took it in his hand, not in a handshake; he cradled my hand and put his other hand over it.
The tears were still fresh in my eyes, threatening to fall.
“It was a beautiful service and a beautiful eulogy,” I said, choking up on the word eulogy. I thought I was going to start crying. He looked at me with his gray eyes of sorrow and I looked at him.
“Thank you,” he said sincerely. “I appreciate your coming today. This was my mother’s church her entire life. I felt it was appropriate to have the service here.”
“Very appropriate,” I said. “Please let us know if we can do anything for you.”
And then it was over and Kate was walking up to the front of the church and down the road where we had parked. I followed her.
“I’m glad that’s over,” she said when we got in the car. “I thought it would never end.”
“I thought it was nice,” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “It was nice. I’m glad we came.”
I didn’t believe her.
Kate talked about her boyfriend all the way back to Marshall. I listened and said “uh huh” and “really?” and all of the stuff you say when someone is monopolizing the conversation. But I kept thinking about Keith Richmond and his remembrance of his mother and his sad silver gray eyes. I was grateful when Kate dropped me off at my house.
“Have a great break,” I said. She waved goodbye as she drove down my driveway. It had been a long time since I’d been on a spring break vacation at the beach.
Chapter Three
Midnight was sitting by her food bowl when I walked in the kitchen door. I opened a can of her favorite blend—beef and liver—and put it on her plate. She started to eat like she hadn’t eaten in a week.
I took my phone out of my purse and turned it back on. I had forgotten to turn it back on once Kate and I were in her car. Didn’t matter. There was only one person who wanted to get in touch with me and he had left a voice mail and four text messages.
I texted Jim back: “Please don’t try to contact me anymore. I’m on spring break. I’ll be in touch when it’s over. Or my lawyer will.”
Jim texted back right away: “Ok,” he wrote.
It was nearly eight o’clock by that time. I looked in the refrigerator and found a full bottle of chardonnay, a head of lettuce, and a container of blueberry yogurt. I ate the yogurt leaning against the kitchen counter, then poured myself a glass of wine.
The house felt a little lonely, but peaceful. Gone was the tension that I now realized had been plaguing my marriage. There was no one to please anymore, and I was relieved about that. I walked up to my bedroom and kicked off my low heels and stripped off my black suit that had begun to feel cloistering. I grabbed a pair of sweat pants out of my drawer and put on an extra large T-shirt. My stomach stretched the fabric of the shirt.
Back downstairs, I took my glass of wine out to the patio and sat in a chaise. Until the past few years, we had eaten dinners on the patio when the weather was good and hosted parties out there with our closest friends, which always included Sam, Jim’s partner, and his wife Bitsy. The woods encroached fairly close to the deck, giving an intimate feel. That night, I enjoyed that even more than usual.
After an hour outside, I went back inside for a blanket and my iPod player. Back outside, I lit the lantern on the table beside the chaise and listened to The Beatles and Jason Mraz and everything in between. I sipped my wine and poured myself two more glasses before I went back inside to bed.
The next morning, Monday, the first real day of spring break, I made myself a piece of toast. I had no appetite at all, but I didn’t feel exactly sick either. I just didn’t want to eat. Couldn’t eat. I was already eaten up with anger. But mostly I was eaten up with hurt.
I sat down at my computer in the den and brought up Google. I keyed in Kimberly Williams, as I had so many times before.
When I met Jim at a party in our junior year of college, he was with someone he had been dating for a couple of weeks. Jim and I kept bumping into each other—in the kitchen where the food was, on the porch where the keg was, in the hallway that led to the bathroom. After a couple of encounters, we started laughing when we saw each other.
“You again,” Jim had said, laughing on about the fifth or six encounter.
“You’re like a bad penny,” I said.
He had brown hair with a little wave in it and strong, even features that could only be described as handsome. Hell, he was great looking. But he was with someone.
The day after that party, Jim called me. He got my phone number from Sheila, who had given the party.
“Hey,” he said when I answered the phone.
“Who’s this?” I asked suspiciously.
“It’s the bad penny,” he said.
And that was how we began. It was months later that I learned about Kimberly Williams. I was glad I hadn’t been the rebound relationship—the poor girl at the party with Jim had been that. I was the next one, and that felt a lot safer when I realized how hard Jim’s break-up with Kimberly had been.
I knew very little about Kimberly back then in our early days. Jim said she was an artist. She was tall and brunette, but I only learned that after questioning him with as much subtlety as I could muster. And that was the end of it. We never talked about Kimberly again. We dated the rest of our junior and senior years. We met each other’s parents. His lived in Louisiana, mine lived right there in Marshall.
We married in August following graduation and right before Jim entered law school. We had agreed that I would work while he attended law school. I got a job in the development department of the university and began my career as a communications specialist. I learned to write fast and furious, putting out press releases and writing copy for brochures and alumni magazines.
By the time Jim graduated from law school, I had advanced to assistant manager of communications in the development office. He started working as an associate at Watkins & Watkins. It wasn’t long after that that we decided to start trying to have a baby. Jim was making pretty good money and I had my salary. We were living in a townhouse at the time,
but our plan was to buy a house in the next five years.
We bought the house, but we didn’t have a baby. I never got pregnant. We tried, oh how we tried, but it didn’t happen. I went to specialists, Jim went to specialists, but no doctor, no test, could find anything wrong with us.
By the time we were thirty, Jim had become a partner in the firm and I had become the manager of communications for development for the university. We had no baby, but we had careers. And we had a house we had lived in for two years.
I threw myself into renovating and decorating our old Federal-style house. I studied paint colors and wallpaper. I had the hardwood floors refinished. I hired a seamstress to make drapes for all of the rooms. I redesigned the kitchen with new cabinets and countertops and a travertine floor.
Still, at the end of the day, Jim and I had no baby. By the time we were thirty-two years old, we had given up on that. We had given up on in vitro and adoption. We never mentioned it anymore. We had parties with our friends, at our house or at theirs. We went in groups to vacations at the beach and the mountains. I thought we were having a pretty good life together, even if we didn’t—couldn’t—have children.
Through the stress of the infertility, I had started to gain some weight. Not much, at first.
On my wedding day, I had starved myself for a month on a liquid diet to squeeze into a size six, very fitted dress. I looked fantastic. I remember being afraid to eat at my own reception; I thought I might bust the seams of the dress.
As soon as the wedding was over and we were on our way to Jamaica for our honeymoon, I started eating normally again and quickly got back to my usual size eight.
I maintained that size for several years. When the infertility regime began to take its toll, I expanded to a size ten. That was okay. I could still buy cute clothes and looked good. Jim made an occasional joking comment about me getting fat, but he didn’t seem unhappy about it.
Near the end of our infertility traumas, I blossomed into a size twelve. I could handle that, though I tried not to think it was double the size of my wedding dress. Did that mean I had doubled in size? I didn’t think so. I wished the number on the label of my clothes didn’t matter so much to me. But it did. I can’t deny that it mattered a lot.
So I joined Weight Watchers with my co-worker Jenna. WW had set up a weekly meeting at the health center and Jenna and I trudged over there every Thursday for a weigh-in and encouraging words from the counselor, who had lost eighty-two pounds on Weight Watchers.
I weighed 174.5 pounds that first day at WW. Jenna weighed 176 even, just a pound and a half more than me! And I thought she looked pretty fat! Jenna shared her weight with me unashamedly that day, but I didn’t share mine with her. I was too embarrassed. I was squeezing myself into my size twelve clothes at that point, but knew I was really at least a fourteen. Embarrassing.
I bought the special chocolate bars and cookies WW had on display as soon as you walked in the door. Only two points! I measured my food faithfully. I avoided the fattening spreads at events that I had to attend for my job. I got a plate of fruit and told myself I didn’t care about the meatballs or stuffed new potatoes. I worked hard at WW.
At the end of a month, I had lost ten pounds and Jenna had lost fourteen.
Jenna, my fat friend, weighed less than me! I could not believe it. That was not going to do at all. I doubled up my efforts, ate even less than WW recommended.
And I lost a half a pound. Jenna lost another four pounds! This was not going the way it was supposed to go. Not at all.
Still, I kept at it. I was determined to get below Jenna’s weight. I walked every day at lunch; I ate like a pauper.
And then Jenna lost another three pounds and I stayed the same weight as the week before! It was so unfair! I was starving myself, walking every day.
The next Thursday, I told Jenna that I had too much work to do to go to Weight Watchers that week.
“Okay,” she said with a little concern.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll go next week. Just can’t do it today.”
But I didn’t go the next week. I made another excuse to Jenna. “Got to run errands today,” I said.
By the next week, Jenna didn’t ask me to go. She went by herself and when she came back, she was so excited. She had lost twenty pounds total and received her second gold star from WW!
I hated her.
Chapter Four
I was thirty-three years old when I joined Weight Watchers. By that point, Jim was working late hours every night. He had made partner, but he still worked late. Now, I wonder if he was cheating on me then.
I watched Jenna become a stick figure while I stuffed my face. I stopped at Krispy Kreme on the way into work every morning and got a chocolate covered donut and a regular donut. I ate one on the way into work, the other after I reached my desk.
A few months after my Weight Watchers debacle, Jenna moved to the Education Department with an upgrade. I was glad to see her skinny ass go. Her dwindling figure was a constant reminder to me of the failure I was.
Over the next four years, I continued to eat, making lavish suppers that involved pasta and potatoes and rich sauces. I might not have been attracting Jim with my figure anymore, but he certainly loved the food. Usually, he ate it later when he got home. I had already gorged hours earlier and was glad he couldn’t see how I shoved the food into my mouth like a starving person. When he got home, I scurried to make his plate, then hovered around him, waiting for the compliments. He always gave them to me.
But he didn’t compliment me about anything else anymore. He didn’t grab me out of nowhere like he used to do. Like when I was doing dishes at the sink and he would come up behind me, pressing himself into me. Our intimate moments had dwindled from at least once a week to every few months. I tried several diets after my WW failure—Atkins, South Beach, Sugar Busters, cabbage soup, HCG drops—but nothing worked beyond a few pounds lost before I caved in again to my love of carbohydrates.
A few weeks before I caught Jim in bed with his mistress, I was forced to go to the doctor with a debilitating case of bronchitis and got weighed for the first time in three years. I wanted to slap the nurse that forced me on the scales. My heart sank when the nurse moved the scales from the 150 mark to the 200 mark. She tapped it gently with her fingers and I turned away, refusing to see the number. I wanted to protest, wanted to say, ‘This is not me! This is just a temporary nightmare. The real me wears size eight!’
The nurse didn’t seem to notice my anguish; she dutifully wrote down my weight so Dr. Sanders could look at it, further humiliating me. When I finally saw Dr. Sanders, I asked him to check my thyroid because I was sure something was wrong.
He did. It wasn’t.
That was when I tried the HCG drops diet that promised a pound lost every day. I dutifully ate my celery sticks and three ounces of fish or chicken every night. I was on five hundred calories a day. Who wouldn’t lose weight with that? And damn if I didn’t lose a pound a day! I was so encouraged. So what if I could barely walk anymore? So what if my vision became blurry? I was losing a pound a day!
And then my body must have protested, because after fifteen pounds, I stopped losing a pound a day. I stayed the same or, God forbid, gained a pound!
I was so weak by that point that I had to start eating more if I planned to continue working. And that was the end of the HCG diet.
And that was when I caught Jim in bed with Kimberly.
Chapter Five
I had been avoiding mirrors for years, but every now and then, I caught my reflection—in a window or mirror—and was horrified by the rotund person I saw. I tried to forget the awful image, push it away. I refused to recognize myself. But deep down inside, I couldn’t deny that was me in the reflection.
I managed to haul my fat ass to my job every day. I had a good job, but worried constantly that I might lose it because I had gotten so fat. It seemed that every woman hired in our department was twenty-six years old wi
th three years of communications experience. And they looked good. They sidled up to the Vice President of Development in their pencil skirts with matching jackets and heels showing off their well-formed calves. Development was all about appearance. Those chicks could steal my job!
So, when my department, which handled communications for the entire university, was given the task of promoting Kimberly Williams, alumni and accomplished artist, my insecurity took a stranglehold on me. Chubby me was going to have to promote Jim’s old girlfriend who had broken his heart.
I assigned the task to a twenty-six-year-old who had been hired recently as a communications specialist. Red-haired Carly wrote the press release and the Facebook messages, along with the brochure that was mailed to all alumni.
Even though I chose a hands-off approach to the promotion of Kimberly Williams, that didn’t stop me from obsessing about her. I read every single thing I could find on the Internet about her, sometimes scanning twenty pages of searches when I was feeling particularly obsessive.
After graduation from Wellington, Kimberly had gone straight to New York City to become a famous artist. Every young artist’s dream, right? Only it happened for Kimberly. I suspected that her Mediterranean looks and long dark hair advanced her career because I didn’t think her art was that good. Oh, yes, the critics thought she was good. But I found her semi-impressionistic, semi-abstract works to be almost childish. Totally lacking in talent.
The worst thing about it was that Kimberly would be teaching painting as a visiting professor for the spring and fall semesters. That really got under my skin. I hoped that I’d never have to meet her or have anything to do with her. If I was honest with myself—and I often wasn’t—I would admit that I was embarrassed to meet her, to have her know who I was and who I was married to. I could envision the pity for Jim in her eyes when she saw what a cow his wife was. I cringed to think about it.
The Sweetest Revenge Page 2
