Thinner Than Thou

by Kit Reed

  “Is that what that was?”

  “Give or take. That’s when the gloves came off.” Annie starts to protest but Kelly silences her with a look. She is fixed on what they did to her. “On the penal corridor, they could stop pretending. They had me where they wanted me. That’s when they stopped pretending to fix me and concentrated on what they were really trying to do. Little snacks when I was least expecting it. Every time I went to sleep I would wake up to a full dinner tray and I’m talking five or six times a day and a couple of extra suppers in the night. After a while they were open about it. The bitches brought in food and sat around and watched me eat. Their friends came down. Deds from other floors. They brought in everything I could cram down in one sitting and then they brought me more, and when even my personal queen-sized eat-o-meter hit FULL they sank the IV, first stop on the death train to the stomach tube.”

  Mother/daughter. Frightened, Annie grabs her mother’s hand. Her shudder is so violent that it runs right through Marg.

  “Fortunately, I’m very good at what I do,” Kelly says with an odd little giggle. “So when they rolled me on the scales yesterday I guess they saw something that they liked. There was yelling. There were phone calls. A delegation came. I couldn’t see them clumped up behind the one-way mirror, but the room was bright and I knew they could see me. I couldn’t hear them, either; I saw shadows moving behind the mirror while in the room with me …” She coughs. “In the room with me, ack this is awful, the Dedicateds’ doctor pulled back the sheet. He pulled back the sheet and, sheesh it was embarrassing, he showed the guys behind the mirror everything I’ve got.” She stops.

  Marg says, because it is expected, “That’s obscene.”

  “Bingo.” Kelly is sitting bolt upright now. She whispers to make it clear that this next thing is just between them. “I think that may be the point.”

  “Like, somebody out here wants to, um, look at you?”

  “I hope that’s all he wants to do!”

  “Shit!”

  “Language!”

  “Shut up, Mom.”

  It takes Kelly a while to find the right words so she can go on. “So, OK, the guys behind the one-way mirror clear out and then the doctors clear out and then this ditzy Ded they put in charge of me comes in and instead of shoveling food into me and sneering while I eat, she is extra polite. And she says the scariest thing.”

  “Kelly, what?”

  “OK. This Dedicated Sister who’s been so rotten to me? She is absolutely beaming. She pats me on the shoulder and she says, ‘You know, we’re very proud of you.’ How creepy is that? Then she rolls my gurney into the shower and when she has me all clean she makes me put this new gown, and this is the worst. It’s pink.” Kelly pulls back the daisy-patterned sheet and lifts a pale shoulder so they can see. Pink net ruffles cascade across the front and hang foolishly from her bicep like a ballerina skirt. “Then she tilts me back over a basin and washes my hair, and when I try to ask questions while she’s coming at me with the makeup and the hot comb all she’ll say is, ‘We’re all so happy for you,’ and I’m not happy, I’m life, ‘Shit!’”

  “Language!” Marg covers her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “I’m like, ‘Shit, why is somebody like you happy for somebody like me?’”

  “You should be, Mom.”

  By this time Kelly is so excited that she’s doing all the voices. “The stupid woman says, ‘Everyone at Wellmont is rejoicing for you.’ I tell her, ‘That’s bullshit,’ and she says, ‘No, really, it’s true. Our convent has been greatly honored, do you want to know why?’ And I go, ‘Why?’ And then when I’m all cranked up to find out what’s up with the bath and the ruffled nightgown, she gets all kittenish and won’t say. She wants me to grovel or something, you know, covers her mouth with her fingers like some big secret is bubbling in there like a witches’ crap potion, pushing to get out. I lie there wondering and she stands there not saying anything. She wants me to beg. Now, the last thing Kelly Taylor does is beg so I don’t say anything and I don’t say anything, and she’s boiling over. Like, she’s dying for me to ask so she can brag.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Marg says without knowing exactly what she means.

  “Finally she can’t stand it any longer and she just comes out with it, and shit!”

  “Yeah,” Annie says to her mother. “No shit.”

  “What,” Marg cries. “What?”

  “You know what this scrawny, hideous Dedicated Sister says to me, can you guess what she says? She says, ‘Because you have been chosen. The freshest, the fattest, the fullest, the most beautiful and face it, the most wanted.’ The woman is all beaming and then her voice goes into this like, special, significant tone the Deds like to use when they’re trying to impress. She says it slowly, like, to make sure I get it. She goes, ‘Wellmont gets the credit for providing the next Special Chosen One.’”

  “Chosen for what?”

  “Yeah, well!”

  “Come on, Kell.”

  “She says to me, ‘You will be the new queen.’”

  “Queen!”

  “OK. You think this is creepy, this is nothing, compared. Get ready for the really creepy part.” Kelly pauses. When she speaks again, her usually cheery voice is altered. For the first time she sounds scared. “I’m a present for the Reverend Earl.”

  Rapt, the three in the truck fall silent as the tumblers click into place. Everything they face and every insult they have suffered is part of the same operation.

  Marg explodes: “Shit!”

  Annie laughs nervously. “Language!” ,

  Kelly says with feeling, “No shit.”

  They are at the bottom line.

  Everything the woman and these two girls and millions like them have followed and feared or fought or fled or run after for all these years is tied up in a single enormous enterprise. Thin and fat, beautiful and not, fit or flabby, they have all been sucked into this single, monumental commercial hoax. The Reverend Earl gets rich selling THIN when what he really wants is fat.

  They don’t have time to talk about it now. There is the smooth snick of a key in a lock and one of the doors to the truck opens a crack as somebody slips inside.

  Kelly says out of the hush, “Who’s there?”

  “Don’t be scared.” The voice is nice. The speaker comes closer. His pallor is not far off the white of the immaculate jumpsuit he is wearing, with a gold wing and silver stripes on the shoulders and the Sylphania logo embroidered on the pocket.

  The Abercrombie women freeze. On the gurney, Kelly draws herself up proudly. “I suppose you’ve come for me.”

  “In a way.”

  Marg picks up a longshoreman’s hook. It’s the only thing she can find. “If you touch her I’ll kill you.”

  “Not everybody who works for the Reverend Earl believes in what he’s doing,” the stranger says. “I’m trying for a rescue here.”

  Kelly stirs. “A rescue?”

  Marg jabs with the hook. “I’m warning you.”

  “Mom, I think he’s here to help.”

  “If you’re here to help,” Marg says, “who the hell are you?”

  “My name’s Gavin. Gavin Patenaude.” He can’t keep himself from adding, “You may not know it but you’re in Sylphania. I just got made an archangel here.”

  “Sylphania.”

  Kelly says to Marg, “Yeah. You didn’t figure it out?”

  Gavin says, “It took years, and now I’m throwing it all away.”

  Annie spits, “The Reverend Earl!”

  Marg has seen all the infomercials; she learned all about the degrees when she still thought she had a chance to raise the money to come. “So,” she says to Gavin. “You’re the Reverend Earl’s archangel and you’re trying to help us?”

  He nods. “I bought into the whole thing, I was totally into it until I found out.” .

  “Found out?”

  “He put me in charge of his new program,” Gavin says. Fresh knowledge
makes him wince. Pressed as he is, he falls silent.

  “About …”

  “About what he’s doing to the old people.”

  This hits Marg Abercrombie in a spot she didn’t know needed protecting. “The old people!”

  “You haven’t heard about Solutions? It’s his new, big thing.”

  “For old people.”

  “For old people. They sign over their savings for a lifetime of free vacations mixed in with phased living and perpetual care, and then …” The new archangel is trying to decide whether to tell them the rest. Finally he shakes his head. “You don’t want to know. I’m here because I couldn’t let him get away with it.”

  Anxious, why does it make her so anxious? Marg hits a high, uncertain note. “So you think you can stop it?”

  “I hope I can. But first we have to get out.”

  Her next words come out in a moan; she wants to be brave but she just can’t help it. “I know.”

  “Look,” he says. “We don’t have time to talk about this now. Are you going to let me help you or what?”

  Marg is studying his face. Inside the truck, at least, she is in charge. She has to be careful here. She has her daughter and somebody else’s daughter to protect. When she proceeds, she proceeds slowly. “I don’t know. I think so.”

  Kelly says, “Don’t worry about me,” but nobody hears.

  “Then put down that damn hook and listen. Do you think you two can help me move this gurney out?”

  There is a silence during which Marg and Annie consider the matter. Kelly is so heavy that the rubber tires are almost flat. It’s going to be hard to move. Once they push it to the end of the truck there’s the ramp to negotiate. First they have to slide it out and set it down. Even with the ramp in place, it’s a steep incline to the ground. It took four men to roll Kelly from the lip of the loading dock onto the ramp and from the ramp into the truck, and the ramp was dead level there. Gavin studies them. They study him. The Abercrombie women and the renegade archangel turn to Kelly. A few minutes ago she was all, “go ahead and leave me,” but Kelly is a different person now.

  Gavin doesn’t need to tell them they don’t have much time. Nobody speaks. Nobody wants to speak just now because none of them wants to call the shot.

  The next thing that happens surprises all of them. Quietly, because big people are practiced at moving quietly and often make a point of it, Kelly slides off the gurney and stands next to it. When she hits the floor the truck rocks but, landing, she doesn’t make a sound. Their friend is wobbling slightly, but her head is high and her expression is as noble as the profile on a Parthenon frieze.

  “Kelly.”

  “Kell!”

  Kelly says, “I’ll walk.”

  30

  Journal

  It’s a long night that knows no turning. There have been some changes here.

  Zoe and I sat with Betty until we thought it was safe to go. We waited until we were sure there was nothing moving outside. We didn’t exactly have a plan, but we couldn’t stay here. We wanted freedom. Vindication. Revenge. We wanted to escape this giant cow barn, which spelled out in hay and straw and stalls fit for cows what the Reverend Earl really thought of his best beloved. Of us. We were angry and vengeful. We felt betrayed. There was the scorn. The shame. The formula. One way or another, whatever it took, we vowed to make him pay. Balancing on the billowing water bed, I boosted Zoe to the top of the wooden enclosure. She had her hands on the ledge, poised to throw a leg over and slip down when the whole building shook. The ground vibrated as heavy vehicles—trucks, I think, God knows what kind of machinery—rolled into place outside.

  I said, “We’ve gotta get out of here.”

  “Not now! That would be the mobile unit,” Betty said.

  “Quick! Is there a back door?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Windows?”

  “No.”

  “Jerry, I’m scared.” Zoe slid down from my shoulders and struggled to get her balance on the billowing water bed.

  We heard men’s voices. Guards? Work crew? What? “Shhh,” I said uselessly. “Shhh Zo.”

  “That would be them setting up the portable soundstage,” Betty said stolidly. “This is what happens when a new … when the new queen comes.”

  “Queen!”

  She raked me with a don’t-be-stupid look. “You have to think of yourself that way. How do you think I live with myself? You can put up with a lot when you’re his queen. But now …”

  Zoe finished, “He’s bringing in a new queen.”

  “The son of a bitch is replacing me. So you might as well settle down kids, it’s going to be a long night.” She gestured at the big screen. “You might as well kick back and see it here, live. Her confession. His sermon. You know.”

  “The infomercial!” I staggered under the power of my personal instant replay: the night I spent trapped in front of Mom’s HDTV, the heavenly infomercial that converted me. My ordeal in the Barcalounger, tipped back and helpless, fixed on the Hour of Power. It all came in on me. The Before shots complete with testimonials. Those poor people! So fat and so ashamed. “You were on the …”

  “You know I wasn’t the first.”

  “I thought you looked familiar!”

  “But he promised I would be the last, and now …”

  Zoe said, “Oh, Betty!”

  “And now I’m not. The unfaithful rat. He wants the whole world watching when he brings her in.”

  “Your, ah. Replacement?”

  “Yep, my replacement.” One minute Betty was a broken woman. In the next, everything changed. She patted her quilts, making a place for us. “Watch it here, watch it now. See it live.”

  “We can’t stay here.”

  “You can’t leave, either. Not with Earl and all his angels outside putting on his show. But be cool.” As I watched the brokenhearted deposed queen turned into a new person, upbeat and resourceful. “I have a Plan B.”

  “I thought you wanted to die.”

  “Oh, that.” For the first time in hours Betty grinned. “Don’t worry, I’m over it.”

  “You’re going to kill him.”

  “In a way. I’m going to ruin him.”

  “Explain.”

  “You don’t get where I am without a Plan B. You’ll see.” Moving fluidly for a woman who spent her life in bed, Betty brought her giant television to life and dropped in a DVD. On the screen we saw the back doors to a TransWorld moving van fall open and then we saw Betty, at least I think it was Betty, just a half a world thinner than the woman lounging here in her mass of rumpled silk; we saw the young Betty come down the ramp with her hands folded in front of her crotch in a fit of modesty, as though she felt naked instead of massive and luminously beautiful in a ruffled chartreuse nightie that covered her heavy thighs and exposed crumpled knees that were already bigger around than most men’s heads. She sighed. “This is the way it goes.”

  “You poor thing.”

  “No. That poor girl!” Betty went on. “See, first he makes you feel like shit. Later you beg. At the end, he forgives.”

  As we watched, that younger, thinner, hideously embarrassed Betty walked down the off-ramp to the moving van with amazing grace and came blinking into the light. Angels in white exercise suits supported her by the elbows and put helping hands on her butt as she climbed onto the flatbed truck with its portable soundstage, where the event would unfold. And what we heard on the track, before Betty put her fingers to her mouth in a shushing gesture and muted the giant TV? What we heard on the track was the Reverend Earl’s familiar, powerful and seductive voice coaching his newest find: Yes, Betty, it’s time for you to tell your story to the people and remember, sweetheart, smile! Every time you tell your story, you are helping! You’re speaking to the whole world out there, and you’re coming to them live.

  “But before he forgives, you have to confess. Then he makes you grovel. You know I wasn’t the first one, right?”

 
“That’s the worst part.” If there were others, I thought, why was the barn empty except for Betty here? I wanted to ask her what happened to the others, but I was afraid.

  Zoe was fixed on the figure on the screen. “Is that really you?”

  Outside there were heavy footsteps going back and forth. The sound of lumber being dropped. There was hammering. There was shouting and there was the stutter of a nail gun. Meanwhile, inside Betty’s stall we were so engrossed in this vision of the pre-formula Betty and her anguished confession that we barely noted it. By the time the racket stopped and the voices receded we were too mesmerized to care. We didn’t realize until much later that while we were fixed in front of Betty’s recorded tragedy, rapt and reliving little tragedies of our own, the work crews outside the entrance to the cavernous barn had finished doing whatever they were doing to the set for the Reverend’s live TV show and had gone away.

  “Yep, that’s me,” Betty said as the camera moved in for a close-up of the televised Betty’s pink, embarrassed face with its tragic smile. “Wasn’t I pretty?”

  Zoe’s voice was soft. “You really were!”

  “Yeah.” The big woman drew herself up as I watched. “Hell, I still am!”

  Zoe murmured, “You go, girl!”

  Dashing away tears, the image on the screen began its confession. My name is Betty and I am a foodaholic. We knew the formula. We didn’t have to hear. By the time the TV testimonial came to an end and the Reverend Earl stepped into the pin spot in his white suit and began to uplift his global audience with that suddenly silver hair flying and those sweeping gestures that gathered them in and that trust-me smile that kept them in the tent, my Zoe was weeping for poor Betty and for us and everything we’d lost and I was close to losing it too.

  When she could speak my lover said, “But what happened to you in Sylphania? People are supposed to get thin!” Grieving and puzzled and thoughtful, Zoe cried, “Oh, Betty, what did he do to you?”

  “Truth? You want to know the truth?” She turned to us with the history of the world written on her strong, astonishingly pretty face. “Truth is, he wants me like this.”