Conversations With the Fat Girl

Conversations with the Fat Girl11

CONVERSATIONS WITH THE FAT GIRL

A NOVEL

?Engaging and poignant and heartbreakingly real, Liza Palmer's tale of

best friends, true love, and just what size happily ever after wears is

a winning conversation.?- JENNIFER WEINER, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF GOOD IN

BED, IN HER SHOES, AND LITTLE EARTHQUAKES.

1 Praise for

Conversations

with the Fat Girl

?Filled with deliciousness. but its calories are far from empty Liza

Palmer has created, to borrow her own heroine Maggie~ phrase, a pink

Pastry box of magic.

-Gayle Brandeis, author of Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiation for Women Who

Write and

The Book of Dead Birds: A Novel

?In this touching story from Liza Palmer, Maggie learns to let go, move

on. and-finally-trust herself. This is a from-the~heart debut you soon

won't forget!?

-Megan Crane, author of English as a Second Language and Everyone Else's

Girl

This is the story about two best friends, boundary issues, and the

unraveling of a shared history Liza Palmer puts her finger delicately,

yet forcefully, on the crucial moment in every failing friendship, the

one where we must choose either to untangle and extricate ourselves or

become erased by our own compliance.

-Amanda Stern, author of The Long Haul

?Conversations with the Eat Girl is a wry, dry, and ultimately winning

novel featuring a saucy heroine to whom all girls (fat and thin) will

relate: Maggie starts out looking for excuses, but ends up finding herself.'

-Wendy Shanker, The Fat Girls' Guide to Life

2 3 Conversations

with the Fat Girl

Liza Palmer

NEW YORK BOSTON

4

If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this

book may have been stolen property and reported as ?unsold and destroyed

to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has

received any payment for this stripped book.?

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead,

is coincidental.

Copyright ©2005 by Liza Palmer

All rights reserved.

5 Spot

Warner Books

Time Warner Book Group

1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

Visit our Web site at www.twbookmark.com.

5 Spot and the 5 Spot logo are trademarks of Time Warner Book Group Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition: September 2005

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Palmer, Liza.

Conversations with the fat girl / Liza Palmer-lst ed.

p.cm.

Summary: ?An overweight waitress ponders her relationship with her best

friend, who had once been overweight herself, as her friend prepares for

a wedding?-Provided by publisher.

ISBN 0-446-69395-2

1. Overweight women-Fiction. 2. Female friendship - Fiction 3

Waitresses-Fiction. 4. Weddings-Fiction. I Title.

PS3616.A343C66 2005

813.6-dc221 13010562

Text design by Meryl Sussman Levavi

Cover design by Brigid Pearson

Cover photo: Conistock Images

5 For my mom

6 The risk it takes to remain tight inside the bud

Is more painful than the risk it takes to blossom

-ANAIS NIN

7

Depends on the Size of the House

Why is a bulldozer in front of my house? There is a handwritten note

pierced on the nail where my summer wreath

once hung. The summer wreath flow lies on the ground next to my front

door. I coax my dog, Solo, back inside and pull the door closed

Dear Tenant:

I hope this note finds you well. I have decided to turn the

back house into a lap pool. Please vacate by the end of the

Week.

It is already Thursday I keep reading.

It has been a pleasure being your landlord for the past three years and

I wish you the very best of luck. Please let me know if you need a

reference, as I would be honored to let everyone know what a great

tenant you were. Thank you.

Sincerely

Faye Mabb, landlord [smiley face]

8

I hold the lime-green scalloped note in my hand and look to the front

house. My landlady is notorious for stunts like this. I thought painting

my house at 4 am, was bad, but nothing remotely compares with this. The

bulldozer's a nice touch.

I always thought I got lucky finding Faye Mabb's back house: decent rent

and a safe location. Over the last three years, I've learned to keep my

head down and stay out of her way.

I squeeze past the dusty bulldozer and walk the fifty or so feet to

Faye's front door. Note in hand, I ring her doorbell. Faye opens the

door quickly I know she has been watching the events of the morning

unfold through a crack in her yellowing curtains.

?I'm tearing down that back house,?Faye burbles through the metal screen

door.

?My house? How can you tear down my house?? The note is now wet with my

perspiration. The tips of my fingers are starting to turn a grainy

lime-green color.

?In forty-eight hours,? Faye says. Even through the metal screen door I

can see she is decked out in full regalia. Her white-rimmed sunglasses

are perched atop her ratted bottle-blond hair. She is wearing her usual

floral, skirted bathing suit, folds of tanned, leathery flesh cascading

out top and bottom.

?You can't kick me out in forty-eight hours. I've got nowhere to go.?I

have my hand on the cold, metal screen door.

?Maybe you and your little dog can live in that Fancy New Car of yours.?

Faye gestures out toward the street with her mass of teased hair.

?At least give me a week. I can find a place in a week.?Faye is swirling

the ice in her ever-present highball, poking at the cubes with her

bejeweled fingers.

?Fine. A week.?Faye cocks her head back and takes a long look at me.

9

Conversations with the Fat Girl

Thank you.?I oblige. The ice cubes flutter around the glass excitedly as

her hands shake with glee . . . glee or the first stages of liver

failure. Fingers crossed for liver failure.

?But the bulldozer stays.?And then she slams the door.

I hack away slowly and continue to the street, where my Fancy New Car

awaits.

For now, the best way to deal with this is not to deal with at all. I

get in my Fancy New Car, leave my soon-to-be demolished life, and head

toward my mom's house, which rests ~ the hills overlooking the Rose Bowl.

.

Pasadena, a suburb just outside Los Angeles, bursts with scenes straight

from the California postcards off the spinning rack. Children playing

outside, blond beauties in convertibles, and incredibly fit people

running for fun, a pastime I never quite bought into. Rumor has it that

each year thousands of people move to Pasadena after watching the Rose

Parade. But I grew up here and could never imagine living anywhere else.

Even though Pasadena is several freeways away from LA proper, the

religion of perfection is still widely practiced here. Walking into

local malis or filling my car with gas, I have often felt like I've

stumbled into a casting call for the newest sitcom:

Pretty Girl 4?or ?Hunk 2.?If you've ever been told you're beautiful or

?should go into acting,? you end up here. This means the lop 1 percent

of the beautiful people in the nation are just walking around the city,

willy-nilly. Then there are people like me, who anywhere else would be

categorized as ?normal.?But in LA, if you're over a size 0 you're just

shy of a circus sideshow.

It's the beginning of summer and I have the air conditioning on in my

Fancy New Car, a Volkswagen Beetle. A car that is neither Fancy, nor

New. It's just newer, and apparently fancier, than

10

my last car. Somehow it has made Faye Mabb nervous that there may be

some type of revolution a-brewin'.

Even in the confines of my air-conditioned car, I feel hot already My

long brown hair is up in its usual ponytail. I check myself out in the

rearview mirror at a stoplight. I try to focus on the good. The brown

eyes seem inviting, but are they almond-shaped because I am ?exotic?or

is it just my cheeks pushing them up so fiercely? My lips are full,

which is a plus considering they are the gatekeepers to the gapped front

teeth lurking behind them.

The V-neck T-shirt and Adidas workout pants are already sticking to my

body I swore I wouldn't be here again. Hot and uncomfortable. I have

made New Year's resolution after New Year's resolution swearing to lose

weight once and for all by summer. Summer, with its tank tops and

bathing suits dangling in front of me as the constant brass ring just

out of reach. I want to be able to dress appropriately for the climate

and not feel the need to hide under layers of clothes that are far too

hot and way too confining, It is approximately two hundred degrees

outside but I actually considered putting on my long black sweater over

the shirt due to paranoia regarding back fat. What if I couldn't control

it by tugging and/or strategic lunch-table placement?

There is an implicit understanding that Mom is driven everywhere. She

has her light brown hair done every four weeks, nails manicured every

week, and is presented with new, shiny baubles on every calendarable

holiday by her beloved new husband. My mom has looked exactly the same

for as long as I can remember. She stands a mere five foot two, and as I

grew taller it became apparent that I got no genes from her side of the

family Like my sister, who's possibly even shorter, Mom is physically

tiny Once again, it became apparent that I got no genes from her side of

the family. Insulated in winter clothing,

11

Conversations with the Fat Girl5

which in LA means a flirty sweater, my mom probably doesn't tip the

scales at a hundred pounds. But her presence cannot be missed. One

raised eyebrow, one purse of the lips, and whole civilizations topple. I

question my dependence on her. She has always been the family sounding

board, and my sister and I have tried to be hers. I don't trust this

quake-ridden California earth, but I would walk sure-footed on my

mother's word.

She sits in the passenger seat fiddling with the seat belt as we drive

to lunch at EuroPane. We discuss the cost of fighting Faye Mabb and her

?eviction.? My mom is a divorce lawyer in town and begins the

conversation by educating me on just how illegal Faye's little eviction

is. The question then becomes whether or not I want to stay

?She was laughing and joking about me and the dog living m the back of

my car,? I tell my mother as we order at the counter.

Wooden tables and chairs dot the bakery's cement floor. It's the wafting

smells of fresh bread and pastries rather than flourishes of decor that

make this bakery a great destination.

?Joking about you having to live in the back of the car? She said that?

Asshole.? Mom takes a bite of her strawberry yogurt parfait as I make an

apologetic face at the server. When my two nieces were learning to

speak, the family feared their first word would be ass hole, based on

its ample usage by their dear, doting Grammy

?I've been meaning to get out of there anyway This is just a way of

nudging me out earlier. I'm okay with it. I really am.?My voice cracks

as I pull two diet sodas out of the self-serve refrigerator and rig my

chair so my back will face the wall.

?Everything is going to be okay-better than okay?Mom stirs in her granola.

?I know... I know.?

12

I think about languid Sundays with coffee brewing and Solo at the foot

of my bed. The Household Chore Chart I made. I begin to cry When Mom

looks at me, I valiantly brush the tears away I feel eight years old again.

?Change is hard,?Mom says.