I nodded and Verena frowned. She wanted to know why I had started taking Y——and I told her it was because of depression, obviously, but she asked if there was a “precipitating event.” I told her I didn’t want to relive the drama, that it was too long ago. I gave her the short version. “There was a boy in college. It was just silly.”
“It couldn’t have been silly if it caused you such pain. What did he do?”
“He rejected me,” I said. She wanted to know why. I bent over and played with the strap on my sandals, looking at the floorboards. “He liked me but he was afraid to get involved with me.”
“Why was he afraid? You don’t seem scary to me.”
“I think he thought his friends would laugh at him.”
“He sounds like an asshole.”
“I had a breakdown over it.” I thought about the library window and the librarian and the days afterward when I couldn’t stop crying. I didn’t tell Verena any of these things.
“Why not just find another boy, one who wasn’t an asshole?”
“There were no other boys for me.”
“There are plenty of boys.”
“Maybe for someone like you, but not for me. There wasn’t the possibility of another boy.”
“Ah.” Verena sat back in the chair. She asked if I still cared about him.
“His name is Tristan,” I said. “And, no, I don’t care about him anymore.”
“Then why have you continued taking Y——?”
“I don’t want those feelings to come back again.”
She wanted to know what my love life had been like since Tristan, but I told her I hadn’t had one.
“What if you were to get a boyfriend now?”
“I don’t want a boyfriend now.”
Verena wanted to know if Alicia would take Y——. She sometimes asked such obvious questions. “Alicia won’t need Y——,” I said.
I was hoping that Verena was ready to leave. I had never admitted such things to anyone. I wouldn’t be able to look at her the next time I saw her.
Instead of leaving, she asked for a glass of water. I was a bad hostess, unused to guests. Once her throat was wetted, she started with the questions again, only this time she had my psych evaluation form in her hand. Finally, I thought. She wanted to know why I’d decided on the surgery. I remembered the day I called the doctor, and what had prompted me to call him, but I wasn’t willing to share that, so I spoke more generally. I told her that I’d tried everything else, but nothing worked.
“The surgery can change me,” I said.
“You’ll be malnourished. There could be other major side effects too. You could even die.”
“I could die from being fat.”
“If you eat healthy food and exercise, then it doesn’t really matter what size you are.”
“I’ve heard all of this from my mother. I know you’re against the surgery, but I’m going to have it regardless of what you say. I’m not going to let you take away my dream.” She had already taken away my Baptist dream as a teenager and now all these years later she was trying to take away my dream of the surgery. “If you don’t sign my form, I’ll just have someone else sign it. I don’t need your twenty thousand dollars, either, even though you promised it to me.”
“You’ll have it,” she said. “I’m not a dasher of dreams, Plum. Your dream, as it were, is to look different. To be smaller.”
“I want to look normal.”
“You live on the hope of becoming Alicia, don’t you? Without the possibility of this transformation, you’d rather die than live, you said.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“You didn’t hesitate when I asked you.”
“It just came out.”
“But where did it come from?”
She left the question dangling and stood up from her chair. She walked to the front window, then back again, considering something intently.
“It’s time to discuss the first task of the New Baptist Plan.”
“I thought today was the first task?”
“I was getting to know you today. Now that I know you better, I want you to consider reducing your dosage of Y——and then quitting it all together. You said Alicia wouldn’t take Y——.”
“I’m not Alicia yet.”
“One day I’ll do this, one day I’ll do that. That’s what I’ve heard from you all day. Let’s start bringing the future and the present together, just a little bit. Alicia wouldn’t take Y—— and so neither should Plum.”
“I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”
“If you don’t think you’re ready to become Alicia, then maybe you shouldn’t have the surgery. The weight will come off quickly. You need to be prepared.”
She had a point. I had thought of giving up Y—— many times, but whenever I had missed a dose, I’d wake up in the morning feeling as if someone had poured molasses into my head, gumming up all the gears and switches. I explained this phenomenon to Verena.
“That’s why you never quit medication like Y—— cold turkey. You can cut your thirty-milligram tablets in half and we’ll try the half dose for a month. If things go well, after that you can quit completely. Think it over,” she said, gathering up her things. She handed me a card with her contact information, a red card to match the red-walled house.