Good Luck with That

by Kristan Higgins

  Dinner was stiff and awkward, Rafael doing his best to charm my mother and brother and failing miserably. Mason, on the other hand, peppered him with questions about Spain, the Dominican Republic, California, Alabama and Texas, all places Rafael had lived.

  My mother looked puzzled the entire time, and Hunter didn’t make eye contact with anyone except his son, issuing terse orders—sit up straight, don’t play with your fork, why aren’t you eating, stop fidgeting.

  “Hunter, I was very sorry to learn that you lost your wife,” Rafe said. “And Mason, your mother.”

  Shit. Leah had been gone for almost a year, but we never spoke about her.

  Silence fell over the already quiet table, and Hunter leveled a hate-filled look at me. “My dead wife is none of your fucking business,” he said, making Mason flinch. “That’s just great. Great. Thanks a lot, George. Mason, we’re leaving. Now.”

  Mason’s eyes filled with tears. “Bye, G. Bye, Mr. Santiago.”

  “I’m so sorry to have brought up a painful subject,” Rafael said, standing up. “Please forgive me.”

  Hunter ignored him, grabbed Mason by the arm and towed him out. A few seconds later, the front door slammed, and they were gone.

  “It’s not you,” I said in the ensuing silence. “That’s pretty much how my brother leaves every family event.”

  Big Kitty tutted. “Really, Georgia, did you have to tell your . . . friend about Leah? You know how much your brother loved her.”

  “Was I supposed to pretend she’s still alive, Mom?”

  “Again, I am very sorry to have brought up a difficult topic,” Rafe said.

  “He was just waiting to have a tantrum,” I said. “It’s what he does, it’s who he is.”

  “He must be very sad.”

  I rolled my eyes. Sad and asshole were different things.

  “When do you go back to Spain, Ramone?” Mom asked.

  “Rafael,” I said, sighing.

  “I’m sorry. When do you go back to Spain, Rafael? There, are you happy now, Georgia?”

  “So happy.”

  “I am an American citizen,” Rafe said. “I was born in Huntsville, Alabama, actually. My father is an engineer. He was working on the space shuttle at the time. Most of my childhood was spent in Barcelona, however.” He smiled. “I will be staying in New York for the foreseeable future.”

  “And your parents . . . are they . . . can they . . . stay?”

  Rafe looked at me in confusion. I closed my eyes. “They’re American citizens, Mom.”

  “Georgia, please. You act like I’m racist.” She snorted and poured herself some more wine, sloshing a little on the tablecloth. “Ramone, I am the furthest thing from racist in the entire world.”

  Later, as I was putting on my coat, my mother whispered, “At least someone wants you.”

  Yeah.

  We left and got into the car. Rafe sat there a minute, hands on the steering wheel. “So, do you think they liked me?” he asked, and we laughed so hard it took us fifteen minutes before we were safe to drive.

  But . . . there’s always a but, isn’t there?

  Here’s what Rafe didn’t notice.

  The looks that said, “He’s with her?” any time we held hands. One night we went out for dinner, and afterward, Rafe went to get the car. As I waited, the server said to me, “It’s so nice to see a brother and sister who get along so well.”

  Brother and sister? Me with my straight blond hair, green eyes and white, white skin, Rafael the complete opposite? He’d kissed me twice, damn it! “He’s my boyfriend, bitch,” I said, leaving to wait on the sidewalk. When he pulled up to the curb and asked why there were tears in my eyes, I said it was the cold.

  He had no idea about my insecurities, and I hated myself for having them. The girls of Camp Copperbrook used to talk about this, listing our qualities . . . smart, kind, loyal, funny, everything that mattered. I’d been taught to remember the good parts of myself.

  But I was also the girl who’d hidden in her room at home to eat marmalade straight from the jar. The girl whose cousin had shown her how to barf when I was ten. The girl who had stopped being invited to sleepovers in seventh grade because Taylor Rhodes told her “we don’t want to be seen with you anymore.” I was the girl who had won the New England Regional Debate Tournament and found a note taped to the back of my sweater that said fat-ass. I was the girl at Princeton who overheard a roommate whispering in the hall that she didn’t want to room with me next year because the sight of me getting dressed made her feel sick.

  I couldn’t tell Rafe about those things. They were just too pathetic, and the last thing I wanted was his pity . . . and for him to start wondering if all those people had a point.

  When Marley met him, she was fantastic. “Nice to meet you, Rafael Santiago—oh, and by the way, I’m only ever going to call you by your whole name because it’s so stinkin’ beautiful.”

  “My whole name is Rafael Esteban Jesús Santiago,” he said, grinning.

  “Oh, my God. I believe in cloning, just for the record,” she said, putting her hand over her heart.

  Sitting there, smiling, holding my boyfriend’s hand, I had the dark thought that Rafe and Marley would make a better couple. Marley was funny and bright, always the life of the party, making friends wherever she went, just like Rafe. Though she weighed more than I did, her size wasn’t as big an issue to her as mine was to me.

  But for whatever reason, he loved me. Me.

  When he proposed, in bed, during sex—Marry me, Georgia, please say you will—well, how was I supposed to say anything but yes?

  It was like looking through a keyhole at the most beautiful garden in the world. If I could get in, I would be so happy there.

  So I told my mother, who asked if I was pregnant, and he told his parents, who cried with joy.

  I took a job in Manhattan. A week before we’d met, Rafe had agreed to be a partner/executive chef at a place in the city, and he’d said he’d give it two years. We found an apartment, but Rafe said it would make his parents happier if we didn’t officially live together before the wedding. I thought that was adorable.

  Plus, then I could starve myself and do sit-ups till my abdomen screamed in pain, and I could take diuretics and Rafe wouldn’t know.

  I was getting married. Everyone would be looking at me, Fat Georgia, and I wanted to be as beautiful on our wedding day as I could possibly be. Rafe deserved it.

  But who was I kidding? It was all about me. The ultimate challenge, the unreachable star for fat girls everywhere—to be slim on our wedding day. Slim, slender, sylphlike, willowy, lissome, svelte . . . even the words were lovely.

  My eating issues bared their sharp teeth. I subsisted. Celery. Cottage cheese. A spoonful of peanut butter. I only ate regular food when I was with Rafe, and then I only took a few bites.

  I dieted myself down to the thinnest I had been since eighth grade, thin enough to wear a dress size that they actually had in stock at Vera Wang. I was light-headed much of the time, exhausted, but I was going to be thin on my wedding day, goddamnit.

  Rafe’s parents wanted us to get married in a Catholic church, and because I was vaguely Protestant and couldn’t actually remember the last time I’d been to a service, I said yes. Also, because it pissed off my mother.

  At my bridal shower, my size was discussed a great deal. How amazing it was, how fantastic I looked, how horny Rafe must be now that I was “tiny,” how did I do it, was it hot yoga or gastric bypass or cabbage juice or phentermine? I smiled demurely, seething inside. It was none of their fucking business (and yes to the cabbage juice; that was a fun week, let me tell you).

  Marley changed the subject and asked about my job, but it didn’t work. No accomplishment of my life measured up to my weight loss, apparently. Princeton, Yale, my shocking salary as an attorney, my apartme
nt on the Upper West Side . . . who even cared? I was thin! Or thinnish.

  “Just a few more pounds to go,” my mother said. “Fifteen. Twenty at the most.” I looked at her sharply, surprised despite a lifetime of experience with her priorities. I wanted to tell her about my nights spent in the bathroom, puking till nothing but bile came up, or taking drugs that gave me diarrhea so bad my ass was raw. I wanted her to say that Rafe was the luckiest man in the world, that he’d better be worthy of me, her precious, brilliant little girl.

  Instead, she pinched my waist. “Yes. Fifteen at least.”

  “Be careful when you get pregnant,” one of her friends warned. “If you don’t lose the weight, he’ll stray.” Like he was a dog who’d wander off, tempted by a steak.

  Rafe wanted kids. Of course he did. Thinking about dark-eyed babies made my heart hurt with so much love that I nearly cried. Was it normal, I wondered? Was loving someone supposed to be fraught with terror?

  Our wedding was huge, Dad sparing no expense for his oldest daughter. The ceremony was held at Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe en San Bernardo—that is, the most beautiful, colorful, lively church I’d ever seen, with pictures of overfed little angels and the Virgin Mary with golden beams shining out of her and Jesus bleeding on the cross. I thought my mom and my half of the guest list might faint when they came in. Flowers everywhere, incense, the ceremony in Spanish and English. Rafe’s three sisters were my bridesmaids, Marley my maid of honor, Paris our flower girl, Mason our ring bearer. Emerson, who had asked not to be in the wedding party, came up from Delaware.

  As my father, who was crying like a baby, walked me down the aisle, I had a flash of panic. There were so many people in the church that I couldn’t see Rafe. An instant, rock-solid conviction flashed through my head. This was a dream. Of course he wasn’t there. I would never get a guy like that. And even if I did, it wouldn’t last.

  Then he was there, and riptides of love and fear warred in my heart. As we said our vows, Rafe’s beautiful brown eyes were wet.

  How could this last? This woman lighting candles in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary wasn’t me! I wasn’t the type for this wedding, this family, this man. Rafe was going to find out, and he’d leave me.

  Our plan was to go on a honeymoon to Spain next year, after we had established ourselves in our jobs. But even as I talked about it at the reception, I knew. I wouldn’t be going to Spain. I felt it in my bones. Things like this didn’t happen to people like me. But I smiled, and tried not to cry, though I had to press my face into Rafe’s shoulder during our first dance as husband and wife. Everyone, including my husband, assumed my tears were tears of joy. Not terror.

  My dad gave us three nights in the Central Park Suite at the Mandarin Oriental as a gift, and Rafe carried me over the threshold and everything. Then we moved into the small but lovely apartment on the Upper West Side, and real life began.

  Rafe had the restaurant. I was a first-year associate in a huge law firm with nine hundred other lawyers, hustling every day into the Chrysler Building with the other overworked associates. Rafe came home at two a.m., and I got up at six thirty, sometimes earlier, since there was a competition at my firm—as there was at all big, important firms in the city—for who could put in more billable hours.

  When we were together, though, it was . . .

  Oh, I want to tell you how perfect it was. How loving and kind he was, because he was. How my heart actually sped up when he came home, how he would kiss me so gently if he thought I was asleep, how he’d get up to make me breakfast, even though he’d only been asleep for a few hours.

  All those things happened. I just didn’t trust them.

  I started to get jumpy. The three-day honeymoon had caused me to gain five pounds, my body starved for calories, greedily storing each one away. At work, it was too easy to say yes to Chinese or Thai food, to grab an overstuffed sandwich or hot dog. I’d tell myself I’d only take a few bites, but as I worked through every lunch, I’d find my meal gone.

  And then, I’d come home to an empty apartment filled with luscious food made by my new husband’s hands.

  The weight started to come back. Of course it did, but that too-familiar feeling of failure did not stop me from eating.

  And then, there was this . . . thing Rafael did. All the time, and it drove me crazy.

  He constantly told me how beautiful I was. I know what you’re thinking. The bastard! How dare he! He loved looking at me. He’d come into the bathroom when I was taking a shower and pull back the curtain to chat and give me the Spanish look of love, and I hated it. I’d spent my entire life covering up, and he wanted to peel away everything, literally and metaphorically.

  One night after we fooled around, I got out of bed and pulled on my sturdy cami, panties and pajamas.

  “Why are you getting dressed, corazón?” he asked. It meant heart in Spanish. Even the endearment was too much, too big, too hard to believe, and I hated myself for thinking all those things.

  “Because it’s bedtime,” I said, keeping my voice casual.

  “Sleep without clothes.”

  “I get cold,” I lied.

  “I’ll keep you warm.” His eyebrow lifted, and there it was, that surge of disbelief and love and irritation all rolled into one. Sex (still in the dark) was one thing. Letting him see my naked body without prep time, without posing, holding in my stomach, showing my least-worst angle? No, thanks.

  He didn’t get the hints.

  I didn’t want him to fondle my ass when I was brushing my teeth. I didn’t want to be told over and over until it was just white noise that I was beautiful, hot, sexy, whatever. Sometimes I felt like saying, “Can you knock it off for one day? Please?”

  You’d think that being told all those nice things would’ve helped my self-esteem. Instead, it did the opposite. It constantly made me aware of my body, its many flaws and imperfections, my cellulite and stretch marks unearned by pregnancy.

  I was much more comfortable when we were talking over dinner, preferably out somewhere, so that he wouldn’t immediately turn whatever conversational intimacy we might have into sex. Those times, walking along the High Line or Christmas shopping for his family . . . those were a hundred times happier for me than when Rafe started kissing my neck while I flossed.

  One night when Rafe was working (like most nights), I decided I had to start eating healthy again, as I sort of had in law school. I purged the fridge of everything bad—mayonnaise, cheese (we had eleven kinds!), the sickly sweet soda he loved, wine, beer, the super-fat and horribly delicious coconut yogurt, four kinds of ice cream (his weakness, not that it added a single damn pound to him), the cured meats, the orange-almond pudding he made that was as addictive as meth and about as good for you. Rafe took cream and sugar in his coffee. Cream. Not even half-and-half.

  I got rid of it all.

  “What has happened?” he asked when he opened the fridge the next day. “Have we been robbed? Where is our food?”

  “I’m not feeling great these days,” I said. “I thought we could do some clean eating.”

  “Corazón, where is my . . .” His face showed his disbelief. “Where’s the cream? Where’s the lamb I bought yesterday? No wine? All this food, gone? Wasted?” He turned to me, horrified.

  “I brought it to the soup kitchen.” What I could, anyway. They wouldn’t take anything that was open or homemade.

  “Without even asking me? There was at least four hundred dollars’ worth of food in there . . . Georgia, you should not have done this.”

  “Not everyone can eat the way you can, Rafe. Everything is too rich.”

  “So you throw away a week’s worth of food?” He slammed the fridge closed. “I am a chef! I need certain foods here, to practice and experiment.”

  “Even though you have an entire restaurant at your disposal?”

  “This is
my home, too. You cannot just throw away food because you don’t want to eat certain things.”

  “Okay. Sorry.” I wasn’t. He’d made two kinds of cake on Monday, his day off. Two! I “took them to work,” by which I meant I ate half of one Tuesday night when he was at the restaurant and threw the rest in the trash before I could eat even more.

  He sat on the end of the couch. “I know you have gained a little bit of weight, Georgia.” I flinched inside, because this was the first time he’d ever mentioned it. “But that does not matter to me. I hope by now you know I think you’re beautiful.”

  “Oh, okay. So now that I have your approval, I can just let go of everything else.” Like him saying that could take away a lifetime of hatred and obsession over my physical self. The ego of it. The typical male, thinking that if he loved you, all must be right with the world. “Has it ever occurred to you that your opinion is not the only one that matters?”

  He blinked. “What do you mean?”

  For an instant, a massive wave of rage and helplessness and hurt almost crashed down on us, drowning us in an ocean of blood from every little cut I’d endured since before I could remember. She could be so pretty. Too bad she doesn’t look like you. Just stop eating. Doesn’t she care about her weight?

  It was too much, too big, too scary. “Look,” I said. “I want to eat a little healthier than you cook. Is that so much to ask? Have I offended you by asking that? If so, I’m very sorry.” I wasn’t, and he knew it.

  “Fine!” He threw up his hands. “We will eat healthier. In case you’ve been too busy to notice, your husband is a chef. He can cook anything you want.”

  “Maybe I don’t want what you make.”

  That got him. “Yes. Because I am such a terrible cook and am scheming for you to have heart disease and die young and inherit your millions. You have found me out, Georgia.”

  “Why are you being such a dick? You know what? Never mind. I have work to do. I’m sorry, but I can’t fight about food right now. I’ll give you the money and you can buy more cheese.”