“But that’s what…” That’s what you told me. Except had Eileen ever said those words? Or had she simply sent Abby to a summer camp where the management believed them to be true?
Abby thought of every tasteless, joyless meal her mother had ever served; the years of every plate being half filled with vegetables, the grilled chicken breasts and sweet potatoes with the merest gloss of butter. She thought of how there were never cookies that weren’t SnackWells in her mother’s pantry, how there was only ice milk, never ice cream in her freezer, and how any cake—apple cake for break-the-fast at Yom Kippur, yellow sheet cake with chocolate frosting for Abby’s birthday—would disappear the day after it had been served, even when there should have been plenty left over. “Gone,” Eileen would say when Abby would work up the nerve to ask about it, and Abby knew better than to make further inquiry. She just understood that the cake had been disappeared, and that she was wrong, and weak, for asking, for wanting more.
“It worked for you, didn’t it?” Abby asked.
Eileen rubbed her fingertips against her forehead, then lower, to smooth her eyebrows. “No,” she said. “It didn’t.”
Abby stared at her mother’s sinewy arms, her short, highlighted hair and flat chest. The last tomato, split in two, dripping on the cutting board. The knife beside it. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I had gastric bypass surgery, after the three of you were born.” And if Abby had been surprised to learn that, once upon a time, Eileen had been fat, she was now shocked, almost to the point of speechlessness.
“When?” she asked, her voice rusty.
“When you were three, and Simon was five, and Marni was seven.” She picked up the knife, then set it down. “Your father was dead set against it. Back then, it was much newer, and a lot riskier. ‘There are side effects,’ he told me. ‘You could die.’ But I’d gained weight with each baby, and I hadn’t been able to lose it, and my doctors were starting to say all the things doctors say, about being prediabetic, about how the weight wasn’t good for my joints and heart. They’d lecture me about my weight, even if I was there for an ear infection.” Her face had changed again; her expression now rueful and angry. “I remember once I had a stomach bug. I couldn’t eat for a week. I was throwing up constantly. And when I finally got sick enough to go see a doctor—which I hated doing, because, no matter what I was there for, I always got the same lecture…”
“… they congratulated you.” Abby’s face felt numb. Eileen nodded.
“My doctor told me to keep doing whatever I was doing. Which was puking nonstop.”
“I hope you got another doctor,” Abby said.
Her mother smiled sadly. “I got the surgery. I told your father that I wanted to be healthy, so I could be around for you, and him, a long, long time.”
“Not healthy. Smaller,” said Abby, her voice sharp. “You wanted to be smaller.”
“Smaller. Okay. Fine.” Eileen raised her hands in surrender. “You’re right.”
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe you weren’t the one with the problem?” Abby asked. She could hear how loud her voice was, how angry she sounded. “That maybe it was the world’s problem, not yours?”
Eileen’s head drooped. “I wasn’t going to change the world,” she said. “Maybe I should have tried. Probably that would have been the better thing to do. The braver thing.” She sniffled, and Abby tried to harden her heart, to hang on to her rage, lest she end up feeling sorry for Eileen. “But I’ve never been very brave.” Eileen looked up. Her eyes were teary as she met her daughter’s gaze. “I’m not like you.”
Abby swallowed hard. She knew how to handle a disappointed Eileen, a judgmental Eileen, an Eileen who was angry or frustrated or bitter or resigned. She did not, she realized, have the first idea what to do with an Eileen who was sorry, an Eileen who was actually apologizing, admitting to her mistakes and telling Abby that Abby was the brave one. A formerly fat Eileen. An Eileen who’d once been like her.
Abby licked her lips. “Did Dad end up being okay with you getting the surgery?”
“Oh, he was terrified.” Eileen’s lips curved in a small, private smile. “I wore him down. I told him there were side effects to being overweight.” She shook her head. “I told him it was my body and my choice. And, eventually, he gave in.”
Abby put her hands on the counter, trying to ground herself. She could smell the warm bagels and her mother’s perfume; could feel the cool air of the kitchen, could hear, faintly, her stepfather, upstairs on the phone. Gary the Businessman didn’t take even the High Holidays off.
Speaking slowly, Abby said, “So my whole life, you’ve let me think that you’re a naturally thin person, and that if I just ate like you, I’d be thin like you. And, meanwhile, your stomach’s the size of a tennis ball.” That bubble of anger was swelling, supplanting her sympathy and sadness. “Why didn’t you tell me? Do you have any idea how it felt, growing up fat with a mother who looked like you?”
Eileen addressed the counter, not meeting Abby’s eyes. “I didn’t tell you because I thought if I was careful when you were little, if I made sure you never gained weight in the first place, then you wouldn’t end up…”
“Fat,” Abby snapped.
“Lonely,” said Eileen. “Unhappy. I didn’t want you to be left out. I didn’t want other kids being mean to you, the way they were to me. And I didn’t understand how much of it was genetic. I don’t think anyone knew back then.” She drummed her fingers lightly on the countertop. “I promise, I really did want things to be easier for you than they were for me. When you started dating, I wanted you to have options. And, when you were grown up and going out into the world, going to college, applying for jobs, I didn’t want people to judge you. To look at you and think that you were lazy, or weak. And I know the world has changed, and people see things differently now. I know you can be healthy without being skinny. I know that there are doctors who won’t bully you, or assume you aren’t taking care of yourself when you’re bigger, or blame every health problem on your weight.” She paused for a breath. “I understand that I didn’t always make the right choices, or explain myself very well. I know you’re angry at me. But I thought—”
Abby’s mind replayed what her mother had told her, seizing on the words dating and options. “What about you?” she said. “Did you marry dad because you didn’t have choices? Because no one else wanted you?”
“Oh, Abby,” her mother said sadly. “I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know who else might have wanted me. I don’t know how it might have turned out.” She gathered up the sliced tomatoes and arranged them on the platter, then started scooping cream cheese out of its plastic tub, into a glass dish. “If I hadn’t married Bernie, I wouldn’t have had you. Or your brother and sister. So I can’t regret it. Not at all. And I know I’ve made mistakes. I know I haven’t always done the right things.” She looked Abby in the eye. “But everything I did, right or wrong, I did because I love you. I only ever wanted things to be easy for you.”
“And for me to look good in your wedding pictures,” Abby said, her voice tart.
“Well, yes,” Eileen said. “That was part of it. A silly, superficial part. I’m ashamed about it. And I apologize if I ever made you feel…” She swallowed hard. “Not beautiful. Because you are. And you always have been. You’re beautiful, inside and out.”
Now she’s going to hug me, Abby thought. Then I’m going to stand up and find out that I’m wearing ice skates, because hell has frozen over. Or I’m going to wake up in the hospital in Seneca Falls with a concussion.