Slim to None Page 15

  After a while I was so tired from crying and tugging away from my grandmother and shrieking at my father that I just about went limp, and then my grandmother, my strong oxen of a grandmother, was able to scoop me up and carry me away and I watched over her shoulder as my father and his good family grew smaller and smaller and smaller right before my very eyes.

  That night, we went home and made chicken and dumplings and she fixed me a large chocolate marshmallow milkshake and she taught me how to make homemade fudge. And for a little while I felt full again.

  * * *

  Cognac loves to chase bicyclists. Which can be a real hazard on the streets of Manhattan. Take today. I was walking down Fifth Avenue when a delivery biker came screaming past us, and Cognac took off in the opposite direction, his powerful body motoring me along enough that I am sure I burned off that grande mocha (it’s still "M" day) I’d just about finished before spilling the remains while in hot pursuit of the biker. I managed to get Cognac under control just before a taxi nearly careened into him. The episode left me shaken, which is why I’m now in search of a large bag of peanut M&Ms because, honestly, what stress-ridden woman wouldn’t seek solace in them after everything that’s gone on? If it was a "B" day I’d have a Baby Ruth. Even though I’d far rather have European chocolate but it’s definitely not "E" day.

  I tuck into a lovely little park on East 53rd, one of those hidden gems in Manhattan, complete with a waterfall, where you don’t even have to buy anything to sit down. I pull up a chair, securing the leg over the handle of Cognac’s leash handle, and plunk down to catch my breath. At least the dog won’t be going anywhere for a while, anchored as he is by my ample weight. The soothing waterfall drowns out all the city noises. It’s a lovely place to contemplate everything, and nothing. I close my eyes and try to tune out all of the stresses of my life and be one with the water. I know, it sounds a little Zen, but what can I say? I’m nearly asleep when I hear a familiar voice behind me.

  "’Scuse me, miss—that seat taken?" I look around to see George, of all people, pointing at a nearby chair. "You look lost in thought."

  I extend an arm out for him to sit down. Cognac gets up and gives him a lick. "Actually I’m trying not to think at all. Thinking is too much work."

  "Something wrong?"

  "Better question would be ‘is anything right?’ If so, I’d love for someone to tell me."

  "I got nowhere to go and I’m all ears," George says.

  "Gee, George, that’s awfully sweet of you to offer, but you’ve got your own troubles."

  "Troubles? What troubles? I’m a free man. I do as I want, when I want. Don’t pity me. I’ve made my choices and I’m happy with them. Can you say the same thing?"

  I pause, not really knowing if I have the correct answer for him. For that matter, is there a correct answer?

  "I don’t know, George. I just don’t know any more. A few weeks ago if someone asked me if I was happy I’d have said ‘the happiest!’ But today, it seems like everything has tumbled over pell-mell on top of me. Like I’m having a life-earthquake or something and a huge fissure has opened up on me. I’m not sure what I want or even what I should want."

  I reach into my half-pound bag of M&Ms and grab a handful. I offer them to George.

  "Nah, that stuff’ll kill ya," he says as he reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a pack of smokes.

  "Oh, and that’ll add years onto your life?" I laugh at him.

  He shrugs. "Filthy habit. You wanna know a secret?"

  I nod my head vigorously. I love secrets.

  "I figured one of the side benefits of moving to the city like I did was that I’d give up smoking. It’s the damndest thing, though. Everyone’s always willing to share a smoke around here. And the great outdoors," he gestures around him, "it’s the last bastion of free-smoking that exists."

  He extracts a cigarette and taps it against the table, packing in the tobacco, then lights it. He takes a long drag on the cigarette, and holds in the smoke. I don’t dare tell him now how much I detest second-hand smoke.

  "Yep, one of the simple joys of life to me." The smoke snakes out of his nostrils. "But it got to the point I could never smoke anywhere. Sally banned it from the houses and the cars. My kids banned it from their places. My secretary wouldn’t even let me sneak them in my own private office, for cripes sake. Smoke-free building, she’d say. After a while you just give up. I figured living on the streets, the last thing I’d even think about was smoking. But I’ve found that some days there’s not much else to do but smoke."

  "Food’s too important to me to ruin it with nicotine."

  "What are you talking about? The perfect way to end a good meal. Better yet, kicking back with a Cohiba."

  "Says you. But all that smoking kills your taste buds, George. I know plenty of women who smoke so they don’t eat. I could never sacrifice the joy of eating just to be thin."

  I don’t know if he feels guilty or what, but he stubs out his cigarette after the next drag.

  "So what’s weighing so heavily on your mind that you had to escape the city to ponder it all?"

  "Everything. Just about everything has gone wrong. And I don’t know what to do. I’m starting to wonder if my priorities have been screwed up all along." And then I just let go in a torrent of pent-up angst. I tell him about William and about my father contacting me and Jess and Barry and my dieting. I don’t mention Sally’s visit, figuring that’s an ace in the hole I need to save for another time.

  "That’s a lot on your plate."

  "Excuse the pun." He laughs at my comment. "Of course everything I really want on my plate, I can’t have."

  "You mean like the really decadent, fattening stuff?"

  I nod my head. "Exactly."

  "But can’t you have it? Just maybe not as much?"

  "Not if I want my job back. Which I might not get anyhow, since it seems that Barry has become the toast of the town. And all I seem to be is toast. Burnt toast."

  "Are you sure you even want to be the toast of the town? Have you thought about why you want the job so badly? Especially if they’re going to put you through such misery to get it back?"

  I don’t have an answer to that. I mean, I love my job, but why? Because I love food. Because I love to write about food. I love to bring people into the fold, into my figurative home and feed them, nurture them, give them a little bit of what Grandma Gigi gave me. I love the experience of food. I love that food can take the place of things.

  "I love that food can take the place of things," I repeat quietly, not realizing that this time I actually say aloud what I’m thinking.

  "What things?"

  "Huh?"

  "You just said ‘I love that food can take the place of things.’ What things does it replace?"

  I shrug my shoulders while I try to come up with an answer. "Maybe what I mean is food can fill in for other things that aren’t there. Like food can take away sadness and replace it with happiness. It’s sorta like that pothole over there." I point to the nearby curb. "Obviously something’s missing in that road. Cars drive over that the wrong way, they lose their hubcaps. But then finally the city comes along, they fill it with asphalt, and it makes it better."

  "But does it make it better for good? Or until the asphalt comes out and the hole returns?"

  "Does it matter? It fixes what’s broken."

  "I don’t know about that, Abbie. What you’re talking about only patches it up. It doesn’t exactly fix it. And probably creates other problems along the way. It’s like when I got tennis elbow. I kept playing tennis—I was in the club championships and I wasn’t about to screw over my doubles partner because of a little injury. But I tweaked my swing because it hurt so damned much. And tweaked it enough that the next thing I know, my shoulder was injured too. You do one thing, it screws
up something else is all I’m saying."

  "What if it can’t be fixed?"

  "Everything can be fixed. You’re talking to a captain of industry. It was my job to fix anything and everything."

  "Maybe where you come from things can be fixed. But in my world, it’s not so simple."

  "Perhaps you’re just not looking at things the right way. Or maybe you’re trying to take the easy way out. Instead of repaving the road, you’re just filling up the pothole with—"

  "—With homemade ravioli in a sage butter sauce," I say, actually thinking out loud again. "Or maybe freshly-ground pork sausage with fennel, grilled and served with Italian gravy over Tuscan pici."

  "Did you ever think that food isn’t fixing your problems in life, Abbie, and maybe just contributing to them?"

  I look over at him. "What are you, basking in advice from that fancy Park Avenue therapist of yours?"

  George clasps his hands together as if in prayer. "Forgive me for overstepping. Maybe it’s easier to see how to fix someone else’s problems than one’s own. Or maybe I am being an armchair shrink. But I’m looking at your issues and I think you need to just think long and hard about what’s important to you. And maybe while you’re at it, figure out if you can get to the root of what it is you’re filling. And why."

  He gets up to leave.

  "Say, George, I was thinking," I say, hoping to catch him before he leaves. "Maybe I should take you and Sally up on that offer for dinner at your place. It might do me good to get out of the city for a night. What do you think?"

  Caught off guard, he doesn’t have a chance to ponder it too much. "If you think that’ll help you out, I’m willing to consider it. Anything for you, Abbie."

  * * *

  I end the day with an alphabetical transition. In other words, I’ve unilaterally decided that the letter "M" diet has turned into the Letter "O" diet. This is because the only thing that will get my mind off of everything are the Oreo cookies I bought at the bodega up the block from my home. Someone told me about Weight Watchers point system and while I don’t have the actual point schedule—I mean, that would mean having to go weigh myself publicly to join, right?—I’m guesstimating. I figure I could have an orange ("O" food), or maybe four Oreos. That would be about the same volume of food, wouldn’t it? Perhaps my Oreo math isn’t quite kosher, but I can’t seem to stop this self-sabotage train on which I’m riding.

  * * *

  I’m so furious with myself for having snarfed down those cookies, I scurry up to the bathroom to brush away the evidence. Lady MacBeth, I am. Only trying to dispel with Oreo evidence, not blood. As I spit out my toothpaste, the telltale Oreo cookie effluent seems to mock me: You’re only cheating yourself, Abbie Jennings. You’re only cheating yourself. As penance I write my column before going to bed, even though I can’t wait for my head to hit the pillow.

  IF IT DON’T FIT, DON’T FORCE IT

  by Abbie Jennings

  My husband rushed into the room to check on me when I was getting dressed recently.

  "Sweetheart—is everything okay?"

  "I’m fine! Why do you ask?"

  "I was worried because you were talking normally and all of a sudden I heard a sharp intake of breath—I thought you’d hurt yourself."

  A sharp intake of breath...Betrayed by the dreaded gut-sucking inhale, a trick I have mastered in order to wedge myself into my ill-fitting clothes. And now my dogged determination to pretend all is hunky dory in my weight-world has been thwarted.

  With the dawn of each day, I confidently step out of bed embracing my newly-commenced diet with the zeal of a missionary. Yet as the day progresses, and my determination wanes, the notion of starting the diet tomorrow becomes more and more appealing. I’ve grown used to this pseudo-diet rhythm, the think-I-can ultimately yielding to the don’t-really-wanna. Alas, my clothes are now beyond snug, and much as I’d hoped that just cutting back on what I ate would melt the pounds away, I know deep down in my ample gut that the only way to thin-dom is by abandoning my jaded ways.

  I’ve always had a yin yang-ish relationship with food. Intensely connected to food, glorious food. An indulgence of the senses: the texture, the taste, the feel, the sound. Not just nourishment, but so much more. The intangible lure of the nirvana-esque experience of biting into something so transforming that you want to name your first-born child after it. Yet there’s that dark side: food, so determined to make me lumpy, fat and frumpy. So easy to add on layer upon layer of food byproduct (i.e. fat) onto my body. The price for a moment of sheer gastronomic pleasure equals a lifetime of hard work paying penance for my dining sins.

  That’s where I find myself in my complicated relationship with food—not caught with my pants down so much as unable to get them up in the first place. In this no-carb, no fat, no flavor, no pleasure world in which we live, I now must weigh—that most unforgiving of verbs—my options. Is it worth the momentary pleasure of a bite of this or that, for the enduring suffering that ultimately accompanies it? Ah, ah, ah, a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips. I’m living proof of that old chestnut (there I go, always thinking food).

  I lament the damage done from my intimate relationship with edibles. The closet full of clothes that once looked great on me, now relegated to decorating my hangers. The realization that my sagging willpower—or lack thereof—has left me in a state of excess.

  I’m ready to admit that the Momily warnings were true: my metabolism is rapidly slowing down with age, just as every mother warns you. In fact, I fear I may have to forego sustenance entirely lest I’m resigned to wearing duvets, tents or tablecloths for lack of better fitting clothes.

  I’ve long wrestled with dueling intent when it comes to body weight. On the one hand, I was raised by my mother to worry about it, taught that how much someone weighs is very important. On the other hand, I also learned early on from my grandmother to love and appreciate food. Conflicting wants and needs irrevocably ingrained and entwined in my psyche. And stubbornly, I want to fight our national predisposition for feminine thinness, for continual denial of food in exchange for having the boyish figure of a teenager. I want to live in a world in which size is irrelevant, that who we are far outweighs how we look.

  But overriding that, alas, I also wouldn’t mind fitting into my clothes again.

  Okay, so maybe once I re-lose the weight I’ve gained and lost a dozen times in the past fifteen years, I’ll be able to moderate my intake. Occasionally indulge in a celebratory apple or something. But then again, maybe life’s too short to worry so much about it.

  Maybe my destiny is to enjoy the here and now, and just get bigger clothes.

  I hate when I read "Try that Jennifer Aniston Diet." There was no diet!

  Jennifer Anniston

  Chop Six Nuts, Eat until Full

  It’s breakfast time, yet again. Time to figure out what in the hell I can actually eat that might inspire dieting success. Before me on a doll-sized rose-patterned china plate (really a demitasse saucer from Grandma Gigi’s china service) are the following items: two cubes of cheese, one inch by one inch in proportion, a half strip of bacon, and six peanuts, split into halves to go further psychologically. In the accompanying demitasse teacup is exactly one half-cup of homemade chicken stock.

  Once William is seated, I too sit down at the table. I lift my fork and knife to my plate in preparation for cutting.

  "What the heck is that on your plate? And why is it Lilliputian?"

  "It’s my breakfast," I say as I begin to cut my peanuts with a knife. The first nut shoots off my plate, pings William in the eye, then ricochets back up to the end of the table.

  "Ouch!"

  "Oh, honey, I’m so sorry!"

  Who’d have known that a small breakfast could be so treacherous? After checking his eyeball for damage, I reach across the table to salva
ge my marauding nut; I can’t afford to lose one fifth of my entire breakfast so randomly.

  William looks down at the dog, shaking his head. "What do you say, Cognac? I’m betting this diet lasts till oh, about 10:21. a.m."

  "Ha. Ha. Very funny," I say, trying again to carve my peanuts into smaller pieces, thinking I can extend the duration of this meal just a little bit this way.

  "Abbie, don’t torture yourself like this. I love you just the way you are."

  I smile, feeling somewhat gratified. I know I’m lucky to have married a guy who likes a little meat on his woman’s bones. "I appreciate your moral support. But really, I’m going to do it this time. This time I’m going to love this diet and stick to it, come hell or high water."

  William, whose patience with me is wearing quite thin, I know, rolls his eyes as he wolfs down the pancakes I fixed for him. I’m personally very impressed with my willpower—I didn’t even nibble the dribbled pancake dots that fell onto the griddle as I cooked his breakfast. Normally I could make an entire meal on those alone (drenched in a puddle of warm Vermont maple syrup of course). Well, especially because I rationalize that the pancake drippings that just happen to cook alongside the actual pancakes don’t have calories, since they’re not really pancakes. Right?

  But no pancakes for me, since today, I’m trying the South Beach plan. I mean if it worked for Jennifer Anniston, surely it can work for me. Only thing is I’m not exactly following the proscribed South Beach recipe plan. I just can’t bring myself to settle for some of the vile recipes the author passes off as food. I mean, throughout that entire diet, the highlight of it is a "treat" known as Cinnamon Surprise. Would you like to know what Cinnamon Surprise consists of? A piece of whole-wheat toast with a dollop of low-fat cottage cheese, topped with a generous sprinkling of cinnamon. Broiled. Oh, my God, I truly think if I have to resort to spending my days looking forward to my Cinnamon Surprise, that life as I know it is over. Just take me out back and put me out of my misery.