An unstoppable gush of wild words. I am pinned against the side of my car, clutching my keys, unable to say a thing. Her words continue to gather momentum and all I can do is watch and listen.
“On the first visit she asked me did I know Jamie wasn’t very stable? Now I am hardly one to judge a person on that, since my family is not what you’d call normal. My brother, the drug addict, has been diagnosed with severe epilepsy. Apparently he did all those drugs in an effort to self-medicate; his system was encouraging him to find something that could help him, so it’s not his fault he’s a drug addict. But he also has severe obsessive compulsive disorder.”
I don’t remind her that she has told me all this about her brother before. I am surprised that she doesn’t remember.
“And now I have to go for an epilepsy test which Justin really doesn’t understand. You don’t have epilepsy, he says to me, and I say I know, but I would still like to have the test. My brother had to be committed to a hospital – he was playing Russian roulette in front of my family the other night, and my grandfather nearly had a heart attack, I tell you. And how did my brother get the gun? Because he’s a hit man, as we have just discovered. Not that he kills people, or anything, but he breaks their legs and things. Turns out, he’s a debt collector. That’s how he earns his money for the drugs.”
I hope she starts winding down soon.
“So he’s going to be committed, as soon as there is room for him and this whole thing is putting a huge strain on my parents’ marriage. And my level of tranquillizers has been increased and I can hardly get through a day at work without falling asleep.”
I have heard that tranquillizers are effective appetite suppressants and I wonder how, if she is on a high dose, Thin Lisa manages to eat as much as she does, as often as she does. Of course, with me, it’s always about the food. Never mind hitmen, drug addicts, and the like. I wonder what kind of tranquillizer she is on but I force my mind back to what she is saying.
“Justin is making me see a psychiatrist,” she says. “He says that because I don’t want to have sex with him I am abnormal and he says that my arguments are illogical and irrational and that I must see someone.”
“Well, it must be hard to argue with a man who has all kinds of degrees in the Classics,” I say. “They can punch holes in any discussion. But I thought he was in Germany?”
“He came back as soon as I let it slip that I was involved with someone else. He flew back the very same day. I told him about Jamie and he phoned Jamie and threatened to kill him. By then I wasn’t really sure how I felt about Jamie anyway, which was making me feel very guilty. I did tell him at one point that he was the one for me and I did go and meet his dying father and he thought we’d be together forever and why wouldn’t he, when I told him we would? But by then I had lost interest in Jamie and then he had that breakdown at work. He started crying in front of everybody and had to go home and his editor came to speak to me and told me I was a bitch and a slut and that I had broken Jamie’s heart.”
Wow, have I ever missed a lot. Between my calorie obsession and Max fantasies, I clearly have no clue what is going on around here.
Thin Lisa twists her huge pale hands and continues. “Jamie has been coming to my window in the early hours of the morning to try to see me but he leaves when he hears Justin shouting at him. But Justin has problems of his own, you know? His father, after thirty-two years of marriage, suddenly hit his mother and broke her nose, so that’s why Justin is staying with me. His mother is in one bedroom, his father in the other, so there’s no room for him in his own apartment. Although I can’t understand why he isn’t worried that his father might hit his mother again, them being in the same place and all.”
I shift quite obviously from one foot to the other but reading body language is clearly not one of Thin Lisa’s strongest points.
“But I am moving in with another girl soon, so Justin will have to make a plan. He is supposed to be going to Cambridge in September but now he isn’t sure he wants to leave me. I don’t want to go and get some boring little job in England while Justin is getting his career together. Which reminds me, Jamie is paid nothing for being the creative director, nothing. I told him he should say something but he really is weak in that way.”
“I heard Jamie asked for a transfer to the east coast office, to take up a really junior position,” I say. “Now it makes sense.”
Thin Lisa sighs. “That’s probably my fault. I told him it would be kinda nice to live on the east coast but I wasn’t serious for God’s sake. I mean, you go there to retire. He said I didn’t even have to get a job, that he would support me. And Leone is furious with me because she’s in love with him and now he’s leaving and I broke his heart. I know I did him wrong but I didn’t mean to. At least Jamie understands my OCD.”
“Your OCD?” I wonder what’s next. I feel like I have been in this basement for a lifetime.
“Yes, my obsessive compulsive disorder,” she tells me. “I have it all the time, although mainly at night. Justin won’t let me do my rituals. Like if I put a glass down a certain way, he moves it and stuff like that. He says it’s ridiculous and illogical and that I should just stop it. As if it were that easy. But I need Justin’s cold, hard, super intelligent brain in my life, just like I need Jamie’s gentle, kind, creative one. Justin gives me the edge I need. He tells me what to do when I am unsure. In this new job for example, the one I might take, Justin is the one I call upon, not Jamie. But Justin is very jealous by this new job offer, but of course it’s one way to get my foot in the door.”
I have lost track. I have no idea which new job offer she is referring to, she had simply told me she was looking around. I am reluctant to enquire in case it opens up a whole new avenue of rant.
“I took Justin, his mother, and my parents out to dinner last night. I thought he’d like it but he sat and sulked the entire evening. I just can’t win with him.”
Her eyes fill with tears and I feel sorry for her. I also feel horribly trapped and not just a little embarrassed by it all. I feel like she is telling all of this to the wrong person.
“I know I am not rowing with both oars in the water,” she says, still tearful, “but at least I am trying and it isn’t easy. And now Jamie is ignoring me. He says he has to, to get his life back, in order to protect himself, but what about me? I also need him. I know I can’t give him the everlasting love he wants but I need him, just like I need Justin.”
She suddenly looks at me as though seeing me for the first time. She stops abruptly and fiddles with her car keys.
“Well, I must go,” she says, her voice flat. “Justin is going to be home soon. I am so tired. I think I should take this new job, get a new flat, get a whole new life together, start again. I’m not interested in working here anyway; the people here are too narrow-minded. I need something more powerful. I’m not prepared to work a menial apprenticeship until I am nearly middle-aged and you know this is a very sexist environment. As women, our opinions really don’t count. I want to get ahead, really get ahead.”
I look at her and realize that I mistakenly confuse her sophisticated appearance for maturity. I also think that maybe the world is too small for her and that she will never be happy and she will never really get to have the good time she wants, the good time she feels she is entitled to simply because she is so beautiful, with her porcelain face and her long, long legs. I have seen how aware she is of her beauty and even as she has been talking to me, so distressed, she has run her hands over her thighs, stroked her hair, and patted her face with her fingertips.
No, she is not unaware of her power and mostly what she feels is frustration at being forced to play on a field in a small-town arena when she is Super Bowl material and everybody knows it.
She gives me a quick smile and walks away, chat time over. I have been dismissed.
I get into my car, more than a little dazed.
I get home and realize that Thin Lisa had me pinned to the side of my
car for over an hour, in the cold, damp parking garage. I let myself in the house, walk over to the liquor cabinet and take a generous slug of whiskey. Then I get a small container of fat-free strawberry yogurt out of the fridge and I sit on the sofa and think that my life, while fraught with myriad food issues, may be a better place to be in than hers. I realize while Thin Lisa can eat all the desserts she wants, her life is an unenviable mess.
But then again, I think, before I start feeling too happy about being rounded little dysfunctional me, let’s not forget something. Thin Lisa will be forgiven for whatever she does; she will be given power on silver platters; she will get more money and better jobs; she will get whatever she wants. She will break hearts, behave badly, go crazy, and do it all over again as many times as she wants, all because she is beautiful and has perfect legs. Who cares whether she’s got all her ducks in a row when she looks that damn good? While I, on the other plump hand, will have to fight tooth and nail for the even the smallest of victories.
I stroke Freddo’s broad back and decide to forget about Thin Lisa for the moment, and think about my sister’s upcoming weekend visit instead. I have even taken the Monday off, so we’ll have a whole three days together. There’s no doubt it is going to be very interesting indeed.
Princess Isis and the life coach
MY SISTER, MADISON, ARRIVES. She barely makes it through the front door before she starts telling me she is the reincarnation of Princess Isis. She was mummified and buried alive which, she says, explains her fear of being hugged too tightly.
I am disconcerted. Isis again? First Brit and now Madison. I wonder what it means. I want to tell my sister about Brit but she is talking at high speed, and it is impossible to get a word in.
She says Cleopatra wanted Isis dead because she was such a great beauty and because Mark Anthony wanted her, as did Julius Caesar. My sister says Cleopatra had Mark Anthony killed and she also had Brutus kill Caesar in of a fit of jealousy. She says the fact that she was born on the Ides of March is significant; it’s all linked.
I ask her if she means the goddess Isis and she says no, she means Princess Isis and glares at me as though I am trying to negate her new beliefs. I decide to change the subject and look it all up later.
I have been meaning to look up Brit’s goddess website too, even though it doesn’t seem to have worked out for her.
Madison has, in response to my repeated urgings, come to visit me for a long weekend, from B.C. The idea of her visit initially seemed like a good one; her boyfriend was coming to town for a work-related affair and they would come together.
Shortly before they were due to arrive, my sister very nearly didn’t make it. She phoned me on Wednesday, the day before Thin Lisa’s basement meltdown, to tell me she had a premonition the plane was going to crash. Apparently, she hadn’t been feeling well, and she said both her psychic and her doctor were in agreement, her liver was the problem. Even the horrific nightmares she suffered were liver-related – she had to cleanse her diet and her life.
But, liver woes aside, the psychic also told my sister she has definite clairvoyant potential. Then the night after she booked the plane ticket, my sister had her premonition about the plane crash.
I didn’t want to be the one responsible for her death by telling her to ignore a premonition, so I told Madison that if she had a feeling the plane would crash, then she shouldn’t come. But I was disappointed by her canceling. I had planned our entire weekend and I was looking forward to seeing her. I wanted to hang out with her and do sisterly things.
The weather in Toronto is gloomy; February at its worst. Dark, with heavy rain that melts the snow, leaving slushy, brown mud everywhere. I feel quite depressed really. Miranda has been avoiding me; she is gaining weight fast with the baby and doesn’t want to see me, and I feel lonely without her. So, that lunchtime, when I thought Madison wasn’t coming, I went out and bought a fat-free muffin and a bottle of vanilla-scented bath salts to cheer myself up.
I got back to the office to find another message from my sister; her boyfriend had changed airlines for her, she wasn’t going to be on the crashing plane, and it was all going to be fine, she was still coming over.
After her second call, I thought I should give her the bath salts as a gift, and I wondered if I should give the muffin to Brit since I was no longer sad and my reason for deserving it no longer existed. I also knew that a bakery’s version of fat-free and mine were poles apart. I thought all these things and then before I knew it, I had eaten it. The muffin was gone and I was filled with sorrowful guilt.
I tried to ignore that anxiety and concentrate on looking forward to my sister’s arrival. I had mixed feelings about seeing her boyfriend again. Greg is a former rugby jock who went over to play in England in his youth and now he works for a sports store. He is coming to Toronto for a huge marketing blitz at the convention centre downtown. Even at school, I found him to be disconcertingly intense. I think about Max and compare the two men in my mind. They are both similar in a way, both poster boys for overblown athleticism and I find it odd that while I can be so infinitely attracted to Max, something about Greg makes my skin crawl.
Saturday morning arrives and Greg lands first but he takes a taxi straight to the sports fair. Madison had told me he’d meet us at home in the afternoon.
I feel like I have been waiting in the airport for hours, when Madison finally emerges from the sliding glass doors. “You look so thin,” she says, by way of a greeting. “When did you get so thin?”
She does not look thin; she is a good few pounds heavier than the last time I saw her and she’d not been thin then.
“I’m just the same,” I mutter, and wish I could crawl under a tent.
In the car, on the way home, she talks nonstop about her life, her job, and her cat, who has emotional and mental issues. I interrupt her to ask her what she’d like for breakfast.
“Oooh,” she says, “Emmentaler cheese, grilled on 12 Grain Bread with lots of margarine. I’m only going to start my diet on Tuesday when I get back, so I may as well enjoy myself this weekend. I am going to eat all the things I love.”
We get home after stopping at the store, and I watch as my sister makes herself two doorstep sandwiches with the Emmentaler cheese, margarine, mayo, and bacon while I eat an apple.
Mathew is busy with his newspapers and his horses. He and my sister greet each other cordially and he vanishes back into his study.
My sister has already put awful pressure on me, telling me I am too thin. I tried to bank some calories before her arrival, so if I end up eating bit more while she is here, I’ll be okay, but I am worried nevertheless. I already know about her upcoming diet from both her and my mother, but I foolishly thought it would be an unspoken thing. But food is not an unspoken issue with my sister. We’re never allowed to talk about the things that really worry her, for fear of what might be unearthed, but we can always talk about food.
Because, for her, once the additional pounds are gone, all the other issues, all her worries and problems, will magically vanish too.
But I have to try to really talk to her, because it’s what I always do. “I have such a sense of unfinished business about our childhood,” I say to her. I am massaging her neck, because she has a terrible headache and I am trying to ease the pain. She has taken a handful of pills but they haven’t kicked in.
“I can’t help but feel like we vanished out of the lives of a lot of people who were very important to us, and us to them. Remember when Mom and Dad were really social people and there were always hordes of people hanging around? It was a constant party and then it just stopped, like someone flicked a switch. We moved to the other end of town and it all just vanished.”
I rub her neck and continue. I am sitting on the sofa, and she is on the floor, resting her head on her arms. “And it’s not like we slowly lost touch with all those people,” I say. “It’s like we just vanished. Noise one day, absolute silence the next. I think that’s why you started
climbing out of the windows and escaping at night to go partying,” I tell her. “You always hated sleepovers at other people’s houses, but then you suddenly couldn’t get enough of being away from home.” My sister is quiet but I need this conversation, even if she doesn’t.
“I tell you what I think,” I say, unable to stop. “I think maybe Mom had something going on with that golfing instructor of hers and Dad found out. I think that’s why we moved. I mean, didn’t it seem odd to you, she was having lessons pretty much every day, then suddenly they stop, we move, and everything shuts down? And they were arguing all the time. I was even worried they were going to get a divorce.”
“Well, you know how jealous Dad can be.” My sister raises her head. “And he has always been very possessive about Mom. But I can’t see her doing that, she just likes to flirt a bit. Hmmm, I think the pain is a bit less. Carry on rubbing, it feels nice. No, I think it was that cult thing Mom was getting into, the one Dad called a cult, that women’s group she found. I know Dad hated it and they argued about that, I heard them.”
I am baffled. “What group?” I ask.
“Some woman at her golf club got Mom involved. I don’t know exactly but from what I heard Mom wanted to go on a retreat with them and Dad was furious and said no but she went anyway.”
“When on earth did this happen?” I am astounded. “And where was I?”
“You probably had your head in a book,” my sister says. “When Mom came back, she was all excited about this stuff she was going to do to change her life, you know, study things, do this, do that, and I figured it was all going to get crazy so I went to stay with Tiffany for a couple of days to let it all blow over. When I came back, Dad said we were moving. Well anyway,” she says, putting her head down, her voice muffled, “Mom never had an affair from what I know. And from Tuesday on I am going to be healthy.”
“What has your doctor told you to eat?” I ask, always ready to pick up a diet tip or two, thinking I’ll deal with this new information about my parents later.
The Hungry Mirror Page 23
