Conversations with the Fat Girl

by Liza Palmer

  The night ended with us driving by Caroline Pond’s house to see if she was home from her Volunteer Gala Ball Fund-Raiser. She was. I waited in the car for thirty minutes while Caroline told John about her evening, so John could recount every detail back to me on the long ride home. John yelled to Caroline that he would be back in “twenty” and hopped in the car. As we pulled into the driveway of my house, I remember thinking how awkward these last moments were going to be. What was the end of a date like? Is this where he would finally unveil the real John Sheridan? I tried to remember every detail so I could retell the story of my first kiss to Olivia. Olivia who had set her sights on Ben Dunn, the senior starting quarterback who made The John Sheridan look like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and was famous for referring to girls he had been with as “They’ve Been Done by Ben Dunn.” Classy.

  I sat still in the passenger seat trying to put what I thought was my best kiss-me face on. I remember pouting my lips a little and slightly glazing over my eyes. In retrospect, it must have looked like I was having a small stroke.

  John quickly announced that he had fun but it was getting late, so . . . Had he learned nothing from his days at the Round Table? John leaned over and wrapped one single arm around my shoulder as his car idled loudly. He then proceeded to pat at my back like an impatient mom burping her full-to-bursting new baby. I kept both arms at my side and just sat there, floating above what was happening. Did he not want to give me the wrong idea? I floated back down just in time for one last pat. I pressed a smile out and stepped from the car. Did he think he just gave me some big, beautiful moment I would cherish and retell at family dinners? Could he have possibly thought it was anything but awkward and embarrassing for both of us? No, John Sheridan believed he had given me the thrill of a lifetime. I just felt robbed.

  “Why don’t you give yourself a fucking break?” Mom snaps me out of my walk down Memory Lane.

  At this point, a small blond family turns around.

  “Could you hold it down?” I beg.

  “You never give yourself a break. You’re going to drive yourself crazy if you live like this for the next couple of months. The wedding is not about you. It’s about Olivia and Adam. I know this is completely foreign to you, but a lot of people think you’re pretty amazing looking.” Mom sips her diet soda and glares at the small blond family, a Pasadena fixture.

  “What about my house?” I whimper.

  “What about it? You’ve outgrown it, Maggie. Faye Mabb did you a favor. The only favor she’ll ever do anyone, I’m sure.”

  On the way home from dropping Mom off, I allow myself to imagine my new home: an airy summer cottage with hardwood floors and tons of windows. I begin switching radio stations, desperate to find the correct soundtrack for my vision. The chiffon draperies dance in the wind as classical music lilts through thick Craftsman-style walls. (Do all of the radio stations play advertisements at the same time?) In the fantasy, I walk out on the porch with my mug of steaming coffee, put my hand on the aged gray banister, and look out at the lush flora and fauna as the sun slowly rises in the dewy morning hours. A song finally comes on that I enjoy. I tap along on the steering wheel, quietly humming to myself.

  Who needs that shithole of a house I’m living in now, anyway? Truth is, it really isn’t all that great. The water pressure feels like a slow piss. I have to share my residence with thousands of spiders. I have visions of myself sleeping at night with them, not Solo, at the foot of my bed. Solo was miserable in that backyard being tortured by the legions of cats and their devil offspring.

  Faye’s back house was the first place I ever lived by myself. I paid the rent, the water, and the phone bill by myself. I have to believe I’ve got more of that in me. Somehow losing this house has become the queen of all my other unaccomplished goals and red-circled failures. Surely I can find a new place to live.

  I pull into an office supply store. Once inside, I ask the man behind the counter if he thinks I can pack a whole house with just thirty-six boxes.

  “Depends on the size of the house,” he says. His vest is hanging on his body as if management throws them on their employees in some warped party game gone horribly awry.

  “I’m not packing the actual house, you know,” I say, noticing his name is Dennis, who according to the enlarged mug shot on the wall behind him is the newly crowned Employee of the Month.

  “Yeah, I . . . I’m saying that if you got a big house, you pro’ly have a lotta stuff. Little house . . .” He trails off, as any Employee of the Month would.

  “Little stuff. I get it.”

  I buy all thirty-six boxes, thank the Employee of the Month, and cart the boxes out to my car. I stop at the local health food store and pick up the only unhealthful things inside: ginger cookies, chocolate stars, and the closest thing to a soda I can find. I grab a couple of apples on the way to the counter and some cans of tuna. That way the guy at the checkout might not notice the bad stuff. Then I throw in a different type of soda—a mandarin orange soda. Now he’ll think I’m shopping for a roommate: a roommate who enjoys mandarin orange soda, ginger cookies, and chocolate stars. I’ll tell him I’d like these items bagged separately.

  I pull down my street feeling newly empowered. For three long years, I begged Faye Mabb to treat me civilly. For three long years, I had to park my car on the street, even though Faye Mabb’s long, sacred driveway sat unused after she stopped driving altogether.

  Today I will pull into The Sacred Driveway right behind the bulldozer. Faye stands in all of her bathing-suited finery at the edge of the driveway, trowel in one hand, the other held akimbo at her withering, pachyderm hips.

  “Can I help you?” I ask, opening the trunk of my Fancy New Car.

  “You’re supposed to park out front,” Faye says, her tongue pushing at the corners of her tight-lipped mouth in search of loose bits of saliva.

  I straighten my back and breathe deeply.

  “Yeah, well, about that. Since I’m going to be moving out, I figure I should have full access to The Driveway. I can’t start moving my stuff out if I’m parked all the way out on the street, now can I?” I realize my arms are frozen in a game-show hostess manner and The Driveway is now behind Door Number Two.

  “You just pulled in,” Faye manages to say as she digs out the loose saliva from the corners of her mouth and proceeds to investigate.

  “I bought these boxes and I have to take them all the way into the house,” I say, pointing to my destination one foot away from where I am standing. Suddenly all the way seems exaggerated.

  “So take them in and then move the car.” Faye flicks the saliva from her fingers, then bends down to weed her bed of tulips, giving me enough visual material to populate every nightmare I will ever have.

  I think about it for one second. What is she going to do? I’ve already been evicted and I know I can take her if it comes down to that.

  “I’m going to keep my car parked here,” I say.

  The wind blows my hair over my shoulder, and I imagine the slow-motion shot of a girl victorious walking into her house. One foot falls in front of the other, hips locking into place. Faye Mabb standing there, throwing her fist to the sky, arms flapping like the bat she is, and saying, “That girl. Who can control that girl?” My Fancy New Car will stay there as a reminder to Faye of the dawning of a new age.

  It’s all fun and games until a few hours later when Faye’s son, Stan, stops by and blocks my Fancy New Car in The Sacred Driveway. I now have to knock on Faye’s door and beg Stan to move his car, promising never to raise my voice to his harpy of a mother ever again.

  I decide to put a call into Olivia on my cell phone as I get in my car to leave for work. The battery is low, so this will be a short call. I am already ten minutes late, and I’ll hear about my tardiness throughout my entire five-hour shift at the coffeehouse. My manager, Cole, will see to that.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Thar She Blows

  Olivia Morten and I met when we were twelve
years old. We found each other in physical education class. Olivia and I would stand against the chain-link fence and watch as the team captains chose every other student, until it got down to the two “fat girls.” At that age, this just meant I was developing earlier than all the other girls. Olivia, on the other hand, was officially overweight—even at the age of twelve. As the agonizing minutes passed, we were eventually chosen and promptly benched.

  At first I hated Olivia. People began to lump us together as one single Fat Entity—moving about the playground in an amoeba-like fashion, glomming onto groups of people at will. Before Olivia came along, the cliques of girls at my school tolerated me. I convinced myself I was on the outside because I was a little chunkier than most. I never once took into consideration that they just might not like me. With Olivia, I was now part of a new club I didn’t want to belong to. I imagined there was this constant deliberation about the “fat girls.” Olivia couldn’t run, but she could catch and throw. I could never catch and throw, but I could run. Who was the better athlete? Who was more agreeable? Who was more desperate? I never questioned whether these scenarios were based on actual facts. Once you’re labeled in school, no amount of factual information can unstick it from your psyche.

  When it was just me, I was never under such a microscope. Before Olivia, I would position myself just outside a group of popular girls, craning to hear the latest gossip and noteworthy fashion tips. I laughed when they laughed and sputtered nonsense when they spoke to me. But it worked. It worked for me and my twelve-year-old fantasy of what friendship was supposed to be. As the months passed, I found myself forever on the outside of the group at the end of that picnic table, craning my neck and never getting any closer. I wanted to be popular. I wanted the life they led. The valentines. The designer clothes. The pack of friends.

  Olivia was cocky for a twelve-year-old. Hers was always the first hand to go up after any question. I heard she beat up Reed Anderson in fifth grade for calling her out in kickball. I found myself drawn to that. Day after day, after spending my obligatory time at the end of the popular table, I would walk up to Olivia with her tinfoil-wrapped soda. She was consistently flippant and never once asked me to sit down. One day, I motioned for her to scoot over, and she begrudgingly obliged. I tried complimenting her lunch. I tried gossiping about the other girls. Nothing. Then one day I cracked a joke about squirrels and our math teacher and for the first time I made Olivia Morten laugh. I held this position in her life for the next fifteen years.

  By the time we reached our high school years, we had developed a rich fantasy life. One of our favorites took place in an upscale, imaginary bar in Old Town Pasadena. Olivia and I, both pounds lighter and under the tutelage of a well-respected stylist, toast with our flutes of bubbling champagne and scan the room. Mary Benicci, Gretchen Bliss, and Shannon Shimasaki enter the imaginary establishment. Our hatred of Mary Benicci, Gretchen Bliss, and Shannon Shimasaki bridged both the imaginary and real worlds. They were on the high school swim team, had dates to every dance, shopped at the mall, and had pictures mounted on their dressers of all the events they attended with their endless ranks of smiling, tanned-faced friends.

  The fantasy would inevitably turn to revenge. The threesome of she-devils enter the bar to our raised flutes of champagne. We turn around slowly. The record screeches to a halt (it appears there is now a circa-1970 record player in this establishment). The years have not been kind to the threesome. Mary is “intimately corresponding” with prison inmates. Gretchen refuses to admit that her high school sweetheart has been seen canoodling with an as-yet-unnamed man and Shannon has gained approximately three hundred pounds, causing her friends to worry she’s “eating herself to death.” Our equally fit lovers—The John Sheridan, now a veterinarian, and Ben Dunn, a movie star—join us. John and Ben chime in as we point at Shannon Shimasaki’s stomach, squealing, “Looks like you’ve found what we lost,” at the top of our lungs, gales of our laughter filling the restaurant. We then ooh and ahh at Mary Benicci’s proclivity for prison inmates and shudder at the thought of turning a straight man gay. This all takes place as “our men” both break down in tears as they propose marriage in tandem on bended knee.

  Back in our sweaty, pimple-ridden real world, Olivia and I ordered up our usuals at a local fast-food eatery and tried to forget a future both of us knew would never happen.

  By the time Olivia and I went off to college, she could be officially classified as “morbidly obese.” I was gaining ten to fifteen pounds a year pretty steadily, but I had to go some to catch up to Olivia. We spent four years at University of California at Berkeley hiding in the library and driving across the Golden Gate Bridge late at night—she told me it made her feel weightless.

  One night during our senior year, Olivia drove me to the entrance of the Golden Gate Bridge. She parked the brand-new car her parents gave her for getting whatever it was she did to have her parents lavish gifts on her. We got out of the car and headed to the walkway of the big orange bridge. It was a freezing night in San Francisco, but the wind felt good and the city smelled wonderful. I looked down at the water and saw the lights of the city twinkling back at me. Olivia was leaning over the fence and down at the water below. A passing car of young males with nothing better to do honked and yelled out, “Thar she blows.” Olivia straightened herself and turned to me. Her blond hair was now dyed a more sunflower color with beautiful highlights. Her skin had cleared up nicely, and she was dressed in the height of plus-size fashion. But at that angle, on that night, on that bridge, she was still just another fat girl. I was good at giving advice and picking Olivia up after these kinds of comments, but I could never follow these prescriptions myself. Had someone yelled that at me, I would have been deciding whether to just go right over the side of the bridge. While Olivia dressed to get attention, I made a promise to myself to blend in to the background as much as possible.

  My life is about never putting myself into that situation. I never call attention to myself. That is the code I live by. I don’t go into movie theaters late. I don’t buy tank tops. I don’t sing along with the car radio. I try never to walk in front of anyone. I constantly pull at my clothes. I walk with my eyes to the ground. I constantly apologize for myself. I don’t like hugs. I don’t look in mirrors. I don’t smile in pictures because of a possible double-chin incident. It boils down to this: If I am invisible, no one can make fun of me.

  Olivia didn’t have the ability to become invisible. Her sheer size made her the epitome of visible. But it was visibility at a distance. You couldn’t avoid looking at her and how big she had gotten. But you also couldn’t touch her or get close to her because of how big she’d gotten.

  That night, I remember smiling at her and coming toward her. I had my whole speech planned; I was even working on a joke about how at least they were well read enough to make an obscure whaling reference here in San Francisco. She tilted her head back so that I could see her take a slow swallow. I could see her breath in the cold night air as she finally exhaled. Olivia was never one to talk about the pain we shared or the shame we carried with us. I never said a word.

  The next day, she made the calls to set up her gastric bypass surgery.

  “Hey Olivia, it’s me,” I trail off on her answering machine, thinking that maybe she’ll pick up after hearing who it is.

  She does. “Wait!” Olivia picks up huffing and puffing.

  “What are you doing?” I squeal.

  “I was bringing groceries in. What’s going on?” I can hear the crinkles of a bag in the background.

  I imagine my best friend now. It’s been five years since the surgery. After the first round, going under the knife became second nature to Olivia. She went in for two more plastic surgeries to “correct” certain problems and side effects of the surgery. Her goal: the elusive size 2.

  Her hair is perfect. A blond, messy shag that takes forty-five minutes to look like it’s right out of the shower and windblown to perfection. She has dark
brown eyes that until recently went unnoticed because they were hidden by bangs, excess flesh, or her habit of never looking anyone in the eye. She is probably wearing full eye makeup and just a swipe of pink lip gloss. I can see her pressed white peacoat and camel shift dress now. Olivia swore she would never wear black once she started losing weight. I’ve never seen so much as a black barrette in her perfect blond hair.

  But she’s still my Olivia. The tinfoil-wrapped colas are still her history, just as they are mine. Her life is now eerily mirroring our high school fantasies. I just thought it would involve me more.

  “I have to move in one week,” I say, turning down Colorado Boulevard.

  “Girl, you should have moved a long time ago.” I can hear cans being put on tile counters and cabinets being open and closed. The contents of those cans will be eaten one tablespoon at a time.

  “Yeah, I know. I just feel a little guilty because this is happening right now. With the wedding and everything,” I say.

  “Oh, don’t worry; it won’t affect me. Come on, now, that’s crazy talk,” Olivia says.

  “Right . . . right. How’s Adam?” I stop at a red light and watch the minutes pass. I’m sure Cole is doing the exact same thing right now.

  “Fabulous. He’s in India for some Doctors Without Borders thing.” Olivia sighs.

  Olivia met Dr. Adam Farrell when he was the featured speaker at a PR event she put on for his hospital. It was almost a full year and half after she graduated from Berkeley and nearly two years after the surgery that changed her life forever. Dr. Farrell flew in from Washington, DC, and when Olivia met him at the airport she knew then that he was the man she would marry. She still has the sign she held at the airport with the words DR. FARRELL. I hear it will be on display at the wedding. She will probably have armed guards surrounding it. They were engaged a few years later, and not too long after, Olivia packed up her West Coast life and moved three thousand miles away.