Teenage Waistland (10 page)

Char’s acceptance letter was in her mailbox this afternoon, so she dragged me the two blocks over here to find out what came in my mail.

“What’s the rush?” I groan as my house comes into view. “It’s clear I’m not getting in.”

“Shroud, positive energy,” Char says pulling open my rusty mailbox. “East!” she screams when she spots the Park Avenue Bariatrics return address among the flyers and bills. “It’s thick. It must have forms!” I grab the envelope and back away from her. I read the acceptance letter twice to myself before Char grabs it from my hand.

“Shroud baby, you so did it!” she yells, alternating between high-fiving and hugging me and doing the Char-strut back and forth in the street, waving the acceptance letters over her head and shouting like a lunatic. But I’m more stunned than anything and, as tears run down my face, all I can think is
Thank you, Betsy, thank you. You won’t be sorry. You’ll see. I’ll make you prouder than you’ve ever been of anyone
.

“Shush already.” I wipe my face and laugh.

“So stop with that, Shroud! Just run inside and give your mother the good news so we can hit Mario’s and celebrate!” Char shrieks, breaking into another strut.

I shake my head and start walking in the direction of the restaurant. “C’mon, Char. She’s probably still sleeping. I’ll tell her tonight.”

Later, when I open the door of the darkened house and hear the muffled sounds of the TV, I pull the acceptance envelope out of the mail pile and shove it into my purse. I don’t want Mom to get nervous and frightened about the surgery all over again. Not, at least, until I send in the check.

“Hi, Mom,” I call. “I’m home. Do you want to see the mail?”

“I’m Marcie Mandelbaum, I’m from Alpine, New Jersey, and I’m not a joiner.” I announce this at my first and, if I had it my way, last meeting of the Teen Bandsters support group. It’s my turn to do the usual introductory rap and I’m standing in a circle of fat kids on bridge chairs, feeling ridiculous.

“What do you mean you’re not a joiner?” Bitsy asks.

I look around. One girl pouring off her seat in a big red sweatshirt is smiling vacantly out into space; another, with a thick gold lip ring and multiple nose rings, is scrutinizing me with such intensity, it’s as if all the ringed creatures on Planet Pierce are expecting a full report. Most of the other kids, though, appear to be in one of the various stages of sleep.

“I don’t join things—group things,” I say. “I join book clubs—like the kind where you get three books for free and then are required to buy a new one every few months. Not the kind where you sit in a circle and spill your guts to complete freaking strangers with nothing in common.” I shrug. “Except for being fat.” A couple of snickers around the room.
I plop down hard in my seat to punctuate being done and check my iPhone for messages behind the handouts Bitsy passed around earlier—Jen’s supposed to stay riveted to her cell for support during this humiliating enterprise.
I’m a hit with the Twinkie squad
, I type, but Jen’s not texting back.

Bitsy clears her throat—that special kind of prolonged phlegming grown-ups do when they really want to say, “I know you’re texting. Put that damn thing
away
.”

“You’re wrong about being overweight being the only thing you have in common, Marcie,” Bitsy announces loudly, like it’s her ace in the hole.

A jolly blonde spilling out of a low-cut white T-shirt with a black bra underneath—from Victoria’s Big Fat Freaking Secret, no doubt—quips, “I guess we’re all also buying our clothes from Omar’s Tent Emporium,” and I swear the floor is shaking from the acres of flesh rumbling with laughter.
Goody, it’s stupid fat-joke time
, I text.
JEN!
She’s still missing in action, but I’m relieved the attention is off me.

Bitsy does one of those phony smiles where the sides of her lips go up but her eyes don’t crinkle. “Firstly, Charlotte—”

“Char, remember? I prefer to be called Char,” Jolly Blonde says loudly. This sumo wrestler girl, who’s sitting so close to Char it’s like they’re attached, puts her head in her hands.

“Firstly,
Char
,” Bitsy says crisply, “this room is a haven where we discuss our problems without ridiculing them. Please don’t degrade yourself and others. And please don’t call out.” Bitsy stands up and walks the interior of the circle peering at each of us intently, as if we’re playing Duck, Duck, Goose and someone is going to get whacked on the head at
any time. “Secondly,” she finally says, eyeing
me
, “you all indeed have something very important—and very wrong—in common.” The room is finally completely silent.

“You all believe that weight is your only problem—and that once it’s gone, your lives will be magically fixed.” She’s pacing the circle again, searching our eyes for reaction. All’s deathly still except for the vibrations from my phone.

Tony? Stephen? WTF? To my horror, my worst enemy digests Jen’s text and lets out a tremendous snort—the kind with both nose and mouth involvement that sounds like a fart. Silence broken and all eyes are back on me. Bitsy swirls around like an animal that has spotted its prey.

“Marcie, can I take it that you disagree with me—that you
don’t
think your life will be magically fixed once you lose weight?” she challenges.

“Oh no,” I cannot resist saying. “I couldn’t agree with you more. My best friend was banded in Mexico like a year and a half ago, and she’s lost like a gazillion pounds. It’s totally
crazy
how many problems she suddenly has.
Boyfriend problems
, that is.” I hate cracking up at my own wiseassedness, but thankfully everyone else is laughing too, and even Bitsy’s smiling.

“You’ve raised a great point, Marcie,” she says brightly, totally ignoring the fact that she’s been spanked. “Dramatic weight loss brings with it a whole new set of experiences, both positive and negative. Would you mind telling us a little
about your friend, Marcie? About her experience before and after the surgery?”

I oblige by whipping out my phone. “How about a show-and-tell?” I say. “Pictures being worth a thousand words and all.” I hand it to Bitsy and show her how to flip back and forth through the photos. The first one is of Jen and me up in Cambridge at a poetry reading three years ago. She’s slumped in her seat holding her fingers to her temple as if she wants to blow her brains out—we both have this aversion to bad verse. But at 255-plus pounds, the girl is all over the place, even with half her left arm and leg cut out of the frame. I’m standing beside her in the center of the picture, my hand resting on Jen’s shoulder; I’m dressed in my beloved
I SEE DUMB PEOPLE
T-shirt and my favorite Abercrombie destroyed jeans (size 9 in juniors, thank you)—and I’m
laughing
. I doubt anyone in the group will recognize that girl because I certainly don’t. The second shot is of Jen in a black minidress at the spring sophomore formal. She’s posing with my dad, who’s got his arm around her little waist, and I get a quick pang thinking about all the dinner-table debates Jen and I would get into with my dad—they sometimes even went on until the wee hours of the morning. Ever since our friendship began, Dad’s been like Jen’s second father—or maybe even her first given that hers is hardly ever around.

Bitsy gets the hang of the photo flipping and says, “Okay everyone, come take a look. Marcie’s got some excellent before-and-after pictures of—” She looks at me.

“Jen,” I say. “Jennifer Redding. My best friend from home.” The kids are crowding around Bitsy and oohing and ahhing. Even sullen sumo girl is beaming, and jolly Char is fist-bumping everyone in the room, saying, “We have so seen
the future, and it’s smokin’.” A hulking silent mass of flesh in a Syosset High football jersey—the guy from the info session—springs from his coma and grunts, “Wow,” to no one in particular. The only other guy in the room is a freak with a thick red unibrow and no neck, but even with his disability, he’s still managing to bob his head up and down in approval.

Everyone drifts back to their places and Bitsy hands me my phone. “We like to bring teen success stories into group to share their weight loss experiences with the Lap-Band, and Jen certainly seems to be one,” Bitsy says. “Do you think she’d be willing to come in and talk to us?”

“Most definitely!” I exclaim. “Jen’s been torturing me with instant updates on, like, every ounce she’s lost, hour by hour, every day for a year and a half. I’d be more than happy to share the wealth.”

“She should just Tweet,” Football Jersey Boy mutters.

I lean forward and give him my
you don’t know the can of worms you just opened
raised-eyebrow look. “Lap-Band Dancer on Twitter, My Big Fat Mexican Lap-Band on Google blogs, Feminist Pilates on YouTube—need I go on?” I lean back in my chair and watch my fellow Bandsters crack up.

Bitsy stands and claps her hands for silence. “Thank you, Marcie. Please ask Jennifer about our invitation
later
. Put your phone away now.” I raise my hand. “Yes, Marcie, what is it?” Bitsy says.

“Um, Jen said yes already. She’s coming to the city for next week’s session.”

Bitsy interrupts the new round of laughter. “Your texting speed is impressive, Marcie, thank you. Now, everyone, the rule here is when you walk into this room, your phones get turned off. Not on mute, not on vibrate.
Off
.” She watches
as I slip my phone into my bag under the chair, then she takes her seat again in the circle and leans forward.

“I’m glad you’ve all gotten a glimpse of where this journey may take you. And, indeed, you’ll all feel much better once you lose weight, physically and psychologically, but we are going to return again and again to my original premise: your weight is not your problem, it’s merely a
symptom
. We’ll be discussing exercise, nutrition, and strategies for handling different issues with your band that may emerge, but remember, the Lap-Band is going around your stomach, not your head. The most important goal of this group is to help you learn to address the habits and emotions that are driving you to food. If we don’t eradicate the problem at its source, your attempts at losing weight or, later, maintaining your weight loss, will fail. Or other, even more undesirable addictions may emerge.” Bitsy stops to evaluate her effect on the group. The expressions in the room are equally divided between
WTF is she babbling about?
and
Whatever—can we just go home now?

Bitsy shakes her head and sighs. “People, dieting without dealing with your underlying issues is like playing Whac-a-Mole. Even if you hit the eating mole on the head, another mole will pop up somewhere else.” I clamp down on my worst enemy before it shrieks
Whack this!
Bitsy looks around the circle like we’re a bunch of morons.

“Okay, let’s get back to learning about each other and the Lap-Band. Charlotte—Char, why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself and your relationship with food?”

Char jumps to her feet, gives Sumo Girl a mock look of horror, and then raises her eyebrows at me. Another one of those fat-people conspiratorial gestures. I grin anyway.

“Hello, everybody! My name is Char Newman. I’m fifteen, I live in Westchester, and I’m a foodaholic.”

“Hi, Char,” we drone. Sumo Girl looks as if she wants to sink into the crappy linoleum floor.

“I’ve been in a serious relationship with food for about three years now,” Char continues. “Some people start out slowly—they toy with their food, move it around on their plate, and then finally eat it. So not me. I’m hot and heavy from start to finish. Total scarf city.”

“Even food you don’t like?” says a dark-eyed girl in this very large, very orange
I’M PHAT
T-shirt. Char squints at her like she’s a distant galaxy. Even petrified Sumo Girl laughs.

“There’s no such thing,” Char says, putting her hand on her abundant hip and raising one eyebrow this time. A couple of cheers from the peanut gallery, Jersey Boy’s being the loudest. Sumo Girl rolls her eyes. Bitsy uncrosses her legs and leans toward Char.

“So you haven’t always been overeating. Though girls often begin putting on weight when they hit puberty, it’s not typically extreme. Can you tell us if anything specifically prompted this change in your eating behavior?” Bitsy Glass, Captain Freaking Buzz Kill. The room goes quiet again and Char glances down at Sumo Girl, who nods almost imperceptibly and then returns to studying the floor. Char glances around the room and then again at Sumo, who’s now either wincing or has her eyes closed completely.

“Look, this is very personal, and I hope that East here doesn’t mind me sharing,” she says.

“Again,” Bitsy says, “this place is our haven to talk things through and help each other. Please. Go on.”

Char breathes deeply and goes grim. “Three years ago,
Mario’s opened up less than four blocks from East and me. Pizza, calzones, and killer cannoli. But they also do a mean fried calamari and brilliant penne with vodka sauce. Not even going to mention their heavenly cream claws. We stopped in one afternoon, and Mamma Mia, that’s all she wrote.” Char stops talking and hangs her head. We’re all just looking at her.