“Bill, you’ve been like a father to me, a mentor. If you hadn’t originally conceived of this column and shaped it—practically laid it out from A to Z—we wouldn’t be leading the papers in this city, and probably the country, in health coverage.”
His color is rising—what man didn’t succumb to shameless flattery? “So why sabotage that success by changing the whole gestalt of our column? America doesn’t need to kill more trees to read about the thin perspective. The news is fat. It’s spreading worldwide—Christ, obesity is rearing its ugly head in New Guinea, even the Cook Islands. Nobody was fat there twenty years ago. It’s a global issue! How could you possibly turn the clock back and change the entire focus of your brilliantly conceived column that could well set us up for a Pulitzer—”
“Well, I haven’t put anything into the paper yet…” He looks off as if he’s trying to come up with some face-saving proposal. “If you’re truly through traveling, and ready to put in the time again—even more time now to right things—I suppose I could reinstate the column.” His round face slowly wrinkles into a smile.
“Great, great, done.” I jump to my feet. “Why don’t we have lunch. I feel like celebrating. God, I’m so starved already. What time is it?”
Wharton looks at his watch. “It’s only ten-thirty. Why don’t we say twelve?”
“Great,” I say nine more times before walking out. “We’ll celebrate the rebirth of the column and the rest of my life.” I turn and see him cocking his head to the side, not sure of what he just heard.
Weightier Issues
While my weight is sure to go up and down, because of my odyssey I’m now more certain than ever before of who I am. I feel that I truly like the person inside me.
The weight matters less than my personality, my soul, my spirit. I accept myself more, and so I feel closer to my readers—heavy or thin—in their daily struggles with obsessive eating, and the emotions that surround it. Yes, I do love food, I always will. But I also love the body that it goes into, and I now promise to respect it more. I vow to move more, exercise, work the machine because it was created that way. Left immobile, the body would wither away, like a vestigial organ.
You’ll also hear more from me now about the very real dangers of obesity. That said, I still feel strongly that the health risks should not push the overweight to suffer through punishing regimens that doom them to short-lived successes and long-term weight cycling. It makes far more sense to forget about dieting, and simply make modest but long-lasting changes in lifestyle that you can live with. (And yes, you can replace sodas with just plain mineral water.) Your body is your physical reality, you have to live inside it, in peace and serenity.
And, lastly, don’t forget—you don’t have to be perfect to be loved.
I sign off and call out to Tamara. I haven’t seen her since I came back.
“Tamara? T A M A R A? Hey—anyone around here know what happened to my sidekick?”
Justine is passing my door and sticks her head in, staring at me incredulously. “You’re here?” she says.
“Obviously.”
“You should have told your secretary,” she says snootily.
“What do you mean?” I’m getting nervous now.
“She’s on her way to L.A.,” Connors says coolly.
“What? What for?”
“To rescue you, my dear. She said you needed help, and she left here with fifty dollars she borrowed from me, and a bran muffin from the coffee cart.” I stare back at her, not knowing what the hell to do now. Then it hits me and I start dialing Taylor’s private line.
He answers the phone, but he doesn’t sound like himself. Is he coming down with a cold? Did I just wake him out of a dead sleep?
“You gotta friend named Tamara?” He’s pissed.
“Mmm,” I say. “Pourquoi?”
“The pourquoi is that she just punched me out, and I can’t stop my goddamn nose from bleeding.”
“What?”
“I answered the door in the middle of the night and this girl with a camera is standing there. She says she’s looking for you.”
“Oh no.” My eyes are closed.
“Oh yes. She seemed to think I wronged you in some awful way.”
“There were all these crossed signals, Taylor. I am sooo sorry.” I’m afraid to ask my next question, but do anyway. “It’s not broken, is it?”
“No,” he says. “I guess I should be thankful.”
“You should be thankful that I’m gone.”
“Well, you’ve got devoted friends,” he says. “She called you the sweetest lady on the face of the earth, and then called me a miserable son of a bitch for making you so upset.”
“She didn’t quite get the full story,” I say, pushing out my cheek with my tongue.
“Listen, I gotta get more ice,” Taylor says. “I’ll talk to you later, Maggie.”
I hang up and get into a cab.
Tamara looks as if she hasn’t slept for days as she stumbles through the front door of her building, barely nodding hello to the doorman. She approaches the elevator, then she stops in her tracks and does a double take. I’m sitting on the lobby couch, where I’ve been parked for the past three hours.
“Maggie. Maggie?”
“Welcome home.” I’m up on my feet and we’re looking at each other eye to eye.
“I figured out how to get thin,” she says, letting her bag drop.
“Oh?”
“You live on plane food.”
“That so?”
“Yes, ma’am. The economy-class diet—limp vegetables, soggy pasta, tough meat. You take a bite of each then leave the rest over. It couldn’t add up to more than a hundred calories, according to my calculations.”
“I’ll use that.” My toe starts tapping then, the culmination of a three-hour anxiety fit. Tamara and I just look at each other. “So, ah, been anywhere interesting?” I say, cocking my head to the side.
“Yes, I’ve been chasing down movie stars…. Wait till you see the pictures. Bloody great. Living color.”
“And why is that?”
“Money, fame…no,” she says, stamping her feet. “For you, Maggie. I…you’re my best friend, Maggie. And I couldn’t stand the idea of losing you, and you losing yourself. I went out there to help…to bring you back.”
“Oh God. To what?”
“To…your senses?”
“You’re the only one left who thinks I have any.” I’m smoothing the lapels of Tamara’s jacket, nodding my head, and then I throw my arms around her neck and hug her. We’re both crying, and I’m not sure why, but then it hits me that there isn’t anyone else in the world that I know who would do what she did—not counting the punch in the nose.
“So which one of us is crazier?”
I’m carrying Tamara’s bag and we ride up to her apartment. It’s almost lunchtime and we’re both starving. I go through her refrigerator, opening up the fruit and vegetable bins and looking behind the cartons to the back of the shelves.
“In the old days we would have eaten now, right?”
“And how,” she says.
“We probably would have boiled up a pot of spaghetti, thrown together a tomato-and-pepper sauce with some pepperoni, made an arugula and radicchio salad, cut open some Italian bread and slathered it with butter and tons of garlic and toasted it to perfection. And for dessert, we would have had some coffee Häagen-Dazs, with crumbled chocolate chip cookies on top.”
“That’s right,” Tamara said. “In the old days.”
“What the hell, you want to eat?”
She starts to laugh. “You don’t have to ask me twice.”
“I mean after all we’ve gone through, at least we deserve a decent meal, right?”
“Nobody ever got fat on just one meal,” Tamara says.
“Who said that?”
“You did.”
“Don’t quote me to me.” I take a bottle of white wine out of the refrigerator, pour it into two glasses a
nd offer a toast: “To what happens to the best-laid plans.”
If readers were interested in my personal life before California, afterward, it reached a new high. The majority of letters applauded my honesty and openness. (They should only know.) I showed myself to be as vulnerable to the desire to be thin as they were, they said. (A good share of readers said they only wished that they had the same gorgeous motivation as I did to change.) Many were eager to follow my lead and said that they would consider exercising. But now I also had a little hate cabal out there, and those letters were mean-spirited, vitriolic and bitter. One was cc’d to the Catholic Archdiocese. So much for sainthood.
I filed the hate mail away. Maybe Tex was behind it. Probably had a voodoo doll made in my image with a charm around its neck. I hadn’t seen him since I was back. It would be interesting to see how he would react to me if we ran into each other in the elevator. I thought about calling him, and then decided against it. Did I dare go to see him? Repeat the mortifying walk I had made up to his desk? Why not? No one at the paper would ever say, “Maggie? Maggie who? No, I don’t recall ever meeting her.” Whatever else they would engrave on my tombstone, they’d never put the word anonymous.
I pad softly to the back of the newsroom and crane my neck. This time I wish I’d worn a chador. I couldn’t bear the thought of getting the same reception again. Well, whatever. I walk closer, only to come up behind an empty chair. There’s a small needlepoint pillow on it: “Out align.” Meant for me?
“Where’s Tex?” I ask offhandedly.
“Tex-as,” Larry says. “His mother died.”
“Oh.” I can’t help biting my bottom lip. “I didn’t know.”
“Yeah,” Larry says. “Out of the blue.”
“Do you have a number for him?”
“Yeah, except I don’t think you’ll be able to reach him. After the funeral he’s traveling around for a week or so.”
“Where?”
He shrugs. “He doesn’t always make a point of explaining his whereabouts.”
“Sharon with him?”
“Legs? I guess.”
Legs? Why do they all have to act like such jerks? “Good to see you, Lar.”
“Hey, Maggie,” he yells after I start to walk off. “How was California?”
“Out of this world.” I get back to my office, grab my coat and decide to take myself out to lunch. Nobody else was offering.
twenty-two
Maybe I’m never going to not think of eating and gratification in the same breath, but at least when I go out to eat now, I feel as though I’m holding the reins. I wanted to have an elegant lunch, and since there was no one to share the table with (I passed on lunch with the publicist for Godiva) I decide to enjoy my own company.
Going out to lunch alone at a restaurant that has starched white tablecloths and fresh flowers and waiters who keep their eye on the level of water in your glass, however, means assuming a role. You need to appear confident, secure, using body language that tells everyone around you that you’re glad to be by yourself, you enjoy your own company and relish the privacy—isn’t it such a rarity? Your carriage makes it clear that you are alone by design, not sheer desperation.
So I make a reservation at a favorite Italian restaurant where the maître d’ is savvy enough to greet me with a warm smile instead of the dreaded “table for one?” I stride back to a banquette along the wall, casually spread my napkin over my lap and raise my eyebrow to signal for the waiter. No, I didn’t bring a book. I wasn’t going to bury my head or distract myself. I was going to stay in the present. I order a mineral water, and then sit back and look around. Couples mostly, or groups of four. Business meetings, and one pair of starry-eyed hand-holders.
I think about Taylor—his face, then his body—and then push the thought out of my mind. I did the right thing leaving. No matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t cast off the image of myself as a Mike Taylor groupie. (He’s so hot!) There could never be equal footing between us. The celebrity mythology was just too cosmic to go away. It would always feel like another world to me. And his fans would always have a greater claim on him than I would. How many women could he share himself with? The distance between us now helped my perspective.
I scan the menu. Clever eater that I am now, I took the bite out of my appetite before I left the office by having a large Granny Smith apple. Sanity would govern my choices. Salad to start, then chicken lemone with roasted potatoes. I close the menu. No need to dwell on the options. One of my pet peeves, in fact, is when people agonize over the choices, wringing their hands over what to have.
With one hand shielding the spray, I squeeze a wedge of lime into the sparkling water. The table looks art directed. The lime coordinates with the petite green-and-yellow pottery pitcher filled with yellow tulips, and next to it, a tall rectangular bottle of grass-green olive oil. I drizzle some out into a little platter, sprinkle it with chips of coarse salt, and then dip a wedge of thick-crusted Italian bread into the fragrant oil. A perfect marriage of tastes. Then, as if a magic spell had been cast over me, I sit back and feel immensely happy.
I’m transported by the surroundings to a small Tuscan hill town—a cerulean-blue-painted ceiling, terra-cotta floor tiles, and ochre walls. Businesses are closed for three hours—it’s time for lunch and then siesta with work behind me. Such balance in one’s life, such harmony.
I step out of my life and put things in perspective wondering how fate will resolve the conflicts in my life. I remember being a child and plucking a daisy—he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me. Now, though, I’m not sure how I want the game of chance to come out. Still, at this moment, it doesn’t matter. I love myself, and there’s no one I want to change places with. Being Maggie O’Leary is just fine. Today, in fact, it feels terrific.
I think of my father and the unconditional love that only a parent can offer. He died two years ago, and I carry a little of him around in me. I was special to him. He never said it, but I just knew. Aside from my crazy love life, I knew that he would be proud of what I had done with my life, and how it had turned out. He always believed in me, and it made me believe in myself.
Now, not only has my career skyrocketed, I’ve come to know a lot more about myself over the past few months, and it had nothing to do with years of therapy. It’s from life lessons. I’ve grown smarter about health, and am unafraid of writing about that, even if it contradicts a lot of the thinking that originally made me popular.
Okay, so I had done a colossally stupid thing by flying to L.A., imagining that I could escape my problems by getting back into Taylor’s arms, but there were worse things I could have done. At least I now knew that movie-star looks might be the starting point in a relationship, but not the basis for one.
The waiter arrives with the salad, a massive pyramid of tangled greens, lightly dressed with a vinaigrette dressing. It was a brilliant mix of sweet and bitter greens, as crisp and flavorful as any salad I could imagine. Then the chicken: tender scallops with a lemony glaze. Bite by bite, I eat each golden piece. When the dessert menu is placed before me, I eye it, admire it, and then close the leather-bound book. I sign the check, leave a generous tip and walk out into the midafternoon sun. I decide that I’ll start a column, and then visit my mother.
Weight Loss Pays Off
Now there’s an economic incentive for losing weight—it pays. The IRS recently weighed in with new sympathy for the overweight. Next time you do your taxes, make sure to deduct your weight-loss expenses as a medical deduction.
This new IRS ruling could well point the way to other institutions—such as insurance companies and federal programs such as Medicare—to foot the bill for weight-loss-related expenses as well. But that doesn’t mean you can deduct expenses for a fancy health club or a week at the Golden Door. The only accepted deductions will be for weight-loss programs for medically valid reasons.
What does this really mean? For the first time—hooray—the government recognizes being overw
eight, and the problems that go with it, as a disease.
I turn back into a child every time I climb the stairs to the brownstone. My memories are drawn back to the warm summer nights when neighbors sat out on their patios on aluminum folding chairs with glasses of tea or iced coffee, and dishes of ice cream.
The women, dressed in snap-front housedresses, would gossip about the neighbors, or local merchants. “Ever since they sold Sal’s, it’s gone downhill,” Mrs. McAlary would decree as she held out her leg and studied the varicose veins that crisscrossed it like purple ropes. “They give you less manicotti, and now they charge you for the salads.”
I think back to the time the man in the adjoining brownstone died. Mr. Katz. Everyone in the neighborhood, including Sal, came over to Mrs. Katz’s house with covered dishes of food. That confused me. Someone had died. Why were they having a party?
I ring the bell and wait. Finally, my mother opens the door and greets me. She’s wearing a pink flowered housecoat and matching pink plastic slippers that flap against the back of her callused heels when she walks. She’s wearing bright pink lipstick, powder, too. All those times, when I was a child, I remember opening the medicine cabinet and examining my mother’s powder like it was some magical beauty dust that only adults were privy to. I liked the smell of it, and the design of the white-and-coral box. It was made by Coty. The puff was caked with pinky beige powder. Rachel. The color sounded like the name of a beautiful girl.
Next to the powder there was a red Maybelline eyebrow pencil—“light”—tweezers, and a deep pink lipstick with a sweet smell. I think it cost about a dollar twenty-nine and came from Woolworth’s. I hadn’t looked into the medicine cabinet in years, but I was sure that it would look the same, except, maybe, for a new puff.
“Nice surprise,” my mother says. I kiss her and smell the powder on her soft cheek.
“I took the afternoon off.”
“Come in, I just made coffee, and I have some delicious cookies. There’s a lot, I brought home extra for you to take home.”
Fat Chance Page 21
