At the office, it’s the usual midmorning drudgery. I’m doing the seven steps it takes to open the mail while drinking black coffee. Itsy Bitsy is scheduling, while secret-eating a kardemummabullar, a cardamom bun, at her desk. She’s pretending to secret-eat for my sake, to make me laugh, like look what a pig she is, she can’t even wait until lunch. She over-crackles the paper bag, does shifty eyes before each superbite. She’s wearing this sixties minidress with matching white go-go boots like something stitched out of my nightmares. Seeing me watch her, she waves, her cheeks plump with kardemummabullar. I wave back, and the hate I feel is bottomless. The hate could drown us both. She swallows and mouths, Lunch, at me like it’s a question and I nod in spite of myself.
In that photo of my father and me, the one where I’m as small as the girl I hate, the one where he is gazing down at me with such love and incomprehension, the one taken before he left and before I grew up heavy like my mother, I’m looking right into the camera. It might have been the last time I looked right into a lens and smiled with no reservations, with no shame. He showed me this photo recently, when we met for a strained lunch on my last birthday, when I was at my biggest, before I met Tom, before I started losing. He included it in an album of photos that he gave me as part of my birthday gift, one that was presumably meant to show me that I hadn’t always been fat. Look. See? Where did I get this idea? Maybe from my mother, he said. Probably it was all from my mother. She always struggled. But you? Look. But all I could see was the caption sticker above the photo that read, “Great Time Every Time,” which I could never picture my father purchasing, let alone pasting decoratively into an album. Which is how I knew he hadn’t put the album together himself. Probably he’d had one of his secretary-mistresses do it, or maybe it was a temp like me and the girl I hate.
My phone buzzes. She’s just texted me: “Pineapple orgy at Kilimanjaro! Om-nom-nom-nom!!!! }8D.”
I’ve eaten there with her before. It’s this sandwich and cake shop that has nothing to do with Africa, despite its name and decor. Under a black-and-white still of Serengeti cranes, I’ll watch her eat a monster-size ham and Gruyère panini with pineapple chutney, slurp down a mango, strawberry, and pineapple smoothie, then scarf a slice of pineapple upside-down cake. By the time the waitress sets that slice in front of her, I’ll have finished eating half of my veggie delite wrap, even though I will eat as slowly as possible. By the time she cuts into her cake, my hands will be empty. And with her mouth full of cake, she’ll say something about how I’ve only eaten half the wrap. She might even point. She might even reach across the table and point at it, my sad, uneaten other half. And I’ll have to say something awkward about wanting to save this other half for later, which we’ll both know is a lie. I might even ask the waitress for a to-go bag, but she won’t be fooled. She’ll look at me like, Huh, and take another bite of pineapple cake. I text back, ;D, and as I do this, the hate shifts, spreads its wings in me, becomes almost electric, like love.
I Want Too Much
One of these days I’m probably going to kill Trixie. I have my reasons. I can hear her squawking to another customer just beyond the fitting room door, which isn’t actually a door it’s a curtain, it’s a dark red curtain like a Lynchian portal to hell. On the other side, Trixie is telling some woman how, with some cute boots, that skirt could really be cute. Or a cute shirt! What about a cute shirt? What about a cute shirt and cute boots?! So cute.
Something happens inside me whenever Trixie says the word cute. My shoulders meet my ears. Heat crackles up my arms. And I grow afraid behind my curtain, bracing myself for the moment when the shrill edge of her voice becomes pointed in my direction. Because it’s only a matter of time. The robin’s egg spaghetti strap number she chose for me has my tits in a stranglehold and she’ll be coming to check on that soon. There’s a soft quick click of heels, the papery rustle of overly moussed hair, a long-nailed hand tugging on the curtain.
Then: “How are we doing in here?”
“Fine,” I say.
Anyone else would be daunted, even offended by my tone. It’s awful and I never use it on anyone but Trixie. But she bounces back just fine.
“Okay,” she says. Then: “Can I see?”
Her voice rises to an impossible shrillness on the see. I can feel her see in my teeth roots.
“No,” I say.
Because Trixie never helps. Because of Trixie, I have already made several regrettable purchases.
“No?” she repeats.
She knows my no isn’t a real no. She knows it’s the no of a petulant child refusing to play her part. It’s true that when it comes to shopping for clothes, I have a history of having a bad attitude. That’s what my mother said to me all the time. You have a bad attitude. You’re making this harder than it has to be. Especially now that I’ve started losing, she seems to think everything looks good on me and is particularly intolerant of my complaints.
Trixie’s cooing at me to come out, come out, so I do, I pull back the curtain and stand before the mirror under the track lighting, Trixie hovering behind me.
She looks me up and down, her head cocked to one side.