150 Pounds (21 page)

Shoshana passed a long line of people waiting for Carlos Bakery to open.

She arrived at the train station and took a moment standing on the cobblestones outside to crane her neck and view the vast building. Only half the train station was active. The other, abandoned years ago, had brilliant copper turrets turned bright lime-green from age that reminded Shoshana of the peaks in the Statue of Liberty’s crown. Rumors had persisted for years the town would turn this half into a mall, as if there weren’t enough malls in New Jersey already.

Walking into the station was like stepping back in time; conductors stood around in their dark blue uniforms, New Jersey Transit logo in gold on their breast pocket. They swung pocket watches, crossed their arms, and shot banter back and forth with coworkers, and wore 9/11 pins with the words
NEVER FORGET.
They often took off their stiff caps and peered at bright orange schedules tucked into the inside brim.

The flower salesman paced back and forth in front of his products, ever hopeful. Shoshana bought Gerber daisies, salmon-pink, canary-yellow, hothouse-orange, and she picked out the scratchy green filler leaves as she craned her neck searching for her track on the large board.

Her train was on track seventeen, which was only half covered with roof, and Shoshana caught a wet wind rushing over her from the direction of Jersey City. Spread out before her were the Gold Coast buildings, thrown up in a haste during the real estate boom of the early 2000s. Their glittering steel cast reflections into the Hudson River, as if someone were holding up a mirror and trying to burn ants.

On the train, she settled her large bag down next to her on the seat and reached her hand in to pet Sinatra, who had cheerfully come along for the ride. She produced a small bone from the pocket of her sweater, which he devoured with gusto, his crooked tongue touching her hand as she fed him.

Shoshana stuck her ticket inside the little loop on the stiff brown plastic chair in front of her and listened to Joss Stone on her iPod against the
click-clack
of the train’s wheels. She opened her laptop and managed to pull a wireless signal out of the air and checked the recent message board comments on
Fat and Fabulous
. Yesterday she’d interviewed a gym teacher from Pennsylvania who devised a sports program curriculum for large girls who wanted to work out together after school but not enter traditional sports teams. So far she’d failed to get sponsorship from her town, but Shoshana hoped posting a story on it would shed enough light on her cause that the teacher would receive funding. She edited the interview for punctuation, cut some of its length, then hit the “go live” button and experienced that little thrill she got whenever she wrote a great entry that would generate a lot of feedback from her readers.

She checked her e-mail, and read a letter from a sixteen-year-old in Idaho who wanted to know why a major clothing label had canceled their plus-size line without an explanation. Shoshana wrote back: “Not sure re: cancellation. Will contact corporate HQ and post their reply on F.A.F.”

She then read another e-mail from the social committee of her temple, the United Synagogue of Hoboken, asking if anyone was able to put together fruit baskets for their upcoming book club meeting. They were reading
The Help.
It was a departure from the usual zipper-ripper romance novels or silly beach reads she usually liked. The meeting was next week and she was only one chapter in. Her blog took up so much of her time, and now, with going to Mimi’s house and getting things sorted, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever finish the book.

She sighed. What was with the fruit basket idea, anyway? Had the whole world gone mad from lack of calories? What ever happened to book club wine-and-cheese parties? Or at least coffee, brownies, and chitchat?

Sometimes she felt like she had to be the one to “bring on the awesome,” which was a phrase she used often on her blog. Hearing the women in her book club constantly moan about how they hate their bodies depressed Shoshana. She knew it was merely a ruse to get Shoshana’s treatment of kind words and positivity (after all, she was famous for helping women end the cold war with their bods), but at times she felt like she was speaking to a brick wall; her friends would just nod her to death and then go out and skip dessert and moan about the width of their thighs the second she turned her back.

She hit “reply all” and wrote: “Hey, everyone, I’ll be there for the book club mtg. However, fruit baskets are not really my thing. A strawberry on a stick can only go so far. I’m just sayin’. Anyone up for mimosas and brownies? I am sure even Smaller Fats or Non Fats would enjoy them. If so, hit me back, I’d be happy to bring everything.”

She logged back on to her blog and posted a picture from two weeks ago. Her roommates had thrown her a twenty-sixth birthday party in the back room of Onieals bar. Underneath the picture, she typed: “This is why they tell fatties not to wear stripes.” She stared at herself, beefy arm thrown around Andrea and Greg, mouth a perfect, kissable pink from the new lipgloss Emily had bought for her that night. She was wearing a blue and white nautical dress and white flats that the weather had cooperated long enough for her to slip on. She’d thought the dress very trendy, and she smiled just looking at it. She knew she looked big and she didn’t care. She loved her body. Eat your heart out, Victoria Beckham. Under the text, she added: “To those people,
Fat and Fabulous
says, ‘Fongool!’”

On the train, watching Jersey flit by in colors muted into pastels by the condensation on the window, she fiddled with the tiny diamond stud in her right nostril.

Emily had pierced it with a sewing needle when Shoshana was sixteen. Her little sister held an extremely high tolerance for pain and therefore thought everyone should be pierced and tattooed. Only Emily was bossy about it, and after begging Shoshana to let her “experiment,” she’d tilted back Shoshana’s head on her mother’s impractical purple velvet couch, which got so hot in the summer your thighs got a fever, and stuck an ice cube up her nose. Then, she’d walked into the kitchen to hold the needle over the stove’s flame.

Shoshana watched Emily as she rotated the needle around and around in the orange fire. Unfortunately, the glow cast upon her lit her face like a carnival monster and Shoshana began having second thoughts.

“At least put a towel under your neck to catch the blood,” her father had said, stopping home from work for lunch and not appearing the least bit surprised by what his two daughters were up to. “You don’t want to get any on your mother’s couch.” He was traipsing through the house, cakelike mud trailing off his boots and making tiny brown pancakes on the front hallway carpet. He wore a red and black flannel shirt that Kurt Cobain was out making hip at the time. His gut strained against the cloth, two missing buttons near his navel proof he wasn’t sticking to the Weight Watchers diet his doctor had ordered for him. His jeans had rips in both knees, and green stains from kneeling in the grass.

The good thing about their dad owning his own landscaping business was that he often was hired by the wealthier neighbors in the large houses a few blocks away, and would come home on his lunch break, setting his saw or his lawn mower or his black plastic trays of bulbs on the front porch. He worked all week, taking only one day off in the year: for their mother’s birthday, May first. Every year on that day he would buy new dress socks at ShopRite and put on a green and yellow plaid flannel tie and take Pam to dinner and a movie. Later that night, Emily and Shoshana would hear the mattress squeaking, and Emily would lean over the side of her bed (they slept in bunk beds from post-cradle until they were in their late teens) and stick her finger down her throat, rolling her eyes, and they’d both giggle uncontrollably, the thought of their parents naked and slick like baby seals and rolling around on white sheets totally grossing them out.

On the day Emily pierced Shoshana’s nose, their father arranged a frayed white towel underneath Shoshana’s chin and then sat down at the kitchen table and ate a roast beef sandwich Pam had made for him before she left for her afternoon shift at Overlook Hospital, where she was a nurse in the recovery room. She was the first person people saw when they woke up from surgery and realized they weren’t dead, a white and gold halo surrounding her head if she were leaning too close to the windows, sunlight streaming in and lighting her like an angel.

“You’re getting mud all over the house,” Shoshana scolded him, only it came out as “Yumgettingmverdaouse” because the ice was inhibiting her breathing and shoved halfway up her nose to “numb it good,” as Emily had told her.

Her father chewed his food slowly. “Does your mother know you two are up to this?” He wasn’t mad. He was genuinely curious. His daughters were a constant source of amusement for him. He wanted to know what made them tick, why green was Shoshana’s favorite color, why Emily collected buttons from flea markets. When they were small he taught himself to braid, and would set their hair in beautiful cornrows or plaits.

Pam was the disciplinarian, after he’d handed each girl twenty dollars, or bought them their second ice-cream cone. This sometimes left her exasperated with her husband. But she loved her big bear of a man, everybody did.

“Um … not exactly,” Emily said, peering at the needle. “I think this is ready.”

“You think or you know?” Shoshana called out from her position on the scratchy velvet couch. She was getting tired of counting flies in the ceiling light. They’d mashed into one big black speck now: a Jackson Pollock.

The pinch in her nose hurt more than she’d expected, but that was because Emily’d had to stab her three times before she got the needle through. “It always looks so easy when James does it,” she said, mentioning the tattoo and piercing mentor she was working with after school.

“Maybe I should have had him do it, then,” Shoshana said dryly, holding the towel over her nose. It felt like a yellowjacket was perched on her face, stinging her. Her eyes watered.

“Noooooo!” squealed Emily, throwing her arms around her big sister. “It’s good for me to practice.”

“Is that thing going to set off metal detectors at the airport?” Bill asked, talking with his mouth full of sandwich. He’d come into the room and stood in the entryway, one muddy boot up against the doorframe. “’Cause if so, I’m not going to be seen with you,” he joked.

Now Shoshana turned the tiny diamond stud around in her nose, remembering the shadow her father’s body had thrown on the sandy wood floor, the wild pink hair Emily had tied with orange yarn in two buns on the sides of her head, the sound of the percolator bubbling in the kitchen. Dad took his coffee black. “Anything else is just water,” he’d say.

Sometimes, even though he died three years ago, it was almost as if he were still alive, his deep, booming voice calling out for their mother down the hallway when he couldn’t find a clean pair of socks or chuckling over some idiot he read about in the paper.

He loved to peruse the crime section of the
Star-Ledger
. His favorite stories were when a thief was caught and arrested because of his own stupidity. “Look at this moron,” he’d say, sitting in his leather chair and laughing so hard he’d turn an alarming shade of red. Shoshana would peer over his beefy shoulder, squinting at whatever story he was so amused by. It was always the bank robber who left his wallet at the bank, the thief who wore his mother’s dress to rob a jewelry store, and then she’d seen it on television and called the cops to turn her own son in.

Sometimes, even now, Shoshana would buy the paper just to look for stories that would have made her dad laugh. She’d run her hand over the print, blackening the pads of her fingers.

The train’s signboard lit up with
NEXT STOP—CHESTER
and Shoshana gathered up her purse (today’s was the ever-popular I’m-not-a-plastic-bag one) and Frank Sinatra and headed for the front of the train by the doors, grabbing on to the back of a seat for balance as the train rocked into the station. The conductor did that series of mysterious conductor tasks, such as putting down the huge metal platform, throwing a few unlabeled metal switches, and jogging down the steps as the doors opened.

“Thank you,” she said. She always thanked the conductors, even though no one else did. It made her feel good, being polite. The tall, skinny conductor gave her an odd look. People in Jersey weren’t usually so friendly. Usually it was a clear sign you were from somewhere midwestern—or Idaho.

She wore her favorite green wrap sweater. It had just begun to be warm enough not to need her winter coat anymore. She made a mental note to shop for a light spring jacket, but every year around this time she looked and never liked anything in the stores. The coats made for women her size always had ruffles sewn willy-nilly on them, as though being fat meant you also wanted to look six years old. She drew the wool collar of the wrap around her neck as she walked from the train to Mimi’s house. A warm drizzle made her face wet.

The last time she’d been here was when their father was still alive, and Mimi was just starting to lose her marbles. She’d made Emily and Shoshana egg-salad sandwiches, but when Shoshana bit into hers she heard a distinct crunching sound; Mimi had left some of the shell. Shoshana saw her sister’s pink mouth twist across the table with disgust as she took a bite.

“There’s eggshell in here,” Emily blurted out.

“I can feel it crunching on my back molars,” Shoshana said.

“Shhh,” her father had said, glancing up to make sure Mimi was still puttering around in the kitchen trying to roust the teakettle to boil. “Be polite.”

“Does being polite mean having to have my stomach operated on?” Emily had asked. Shoshana had kicked her under the table.