The Fat Girl (10 page)

I could hear Wanda talking to him in the background, telling him it was all right, that Mom had sounded calm.

“It’s not all right,” I said, but in a low voice. “Wanda doesn’t know anything. She should have . . .”

“What’s that? Wait a minute, Wanda, I can’t hear Jeff.”

“I said it was crummy what she did.”

“I know, Jeff. I think so too.”

Wanda began talking again.

“She’s the most selfish, little . . .”

“What’s that? Just a minute, Wanda. Look, Jeff, why don’t you come over one evening, and we’ll be able to talk.”

“I can’t,” I told him. “Especially now.”

“I know what you mean. Your mother needs you—that’s right. But in a week or so, when it blows over a little bit, come on over and let’s talk.”

“I’ll see.”

“We’ll talk it over, Jeff—it’ll be all right. You’ll see. But I don’t want you to think it was my idea.”

“Okay, Dad, okay.”

“Because I told her . . .”

Wanda started talking again.

“Look, Dad, I’ve got to go now.”

“Just a minute. Just a minute! Please, Wanda, just stop talking for a minute.”

“I’ve got to go.”

“Why don’t you call me, Jeff? Maybe from a pay phone.”

“I don’t know, Dad. What’s the point?”

“I want to talk to you. Maybe I can meet you somewhere. I don’t think you really understand.”

“Okay, Dad, I’ll call.”

“I’m working the late shift next week so call me before Monday.”

“Okay, Dad, good night.”

“Good night, Jeff, and don’t forget I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”

My mother came back into the kitchen after I finished talking. Even though she didn’t want me to, I helped her with the dishes. Later, we sat and watched TV together, and when it was time to go to bed, I gave her a kiss. Ordinarily, we’re not a kissing family.

“What’s that for, Jeff?” she said.

“Oh, nothing special,” I said, trying to laugh.

“You’re a good boy, Jeff,” she said softly, “but I want you to stop worrying about me. Wanda is old enough to make up her mind, and if she wants to go and live with her father, I’m old enough to accept it.”

“That’s right, Mom.”

“So let’s just get things back to normal. You don’t have to cater to me, and you don’t have to change your life.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“Now let’s get to bed and get a good night’s sleep.”

Which is what I did. Maybe, I figured, Wanda was right. Maybe my mother would be better off without her.

thirteen

I told Ellen I was planning to drop ceramics for the spring semester.

“But why, Jeff?” she asked. “Your pots are really beautiful.”

“No, they’re not,” I told her. “And besides, I’ve lost interest. I’m just going to spend my last term in high school floating. I only have to take one class in chemistry, one in American history, and maybe I’ll take a tennis class and that’s it.”

“I have to take American history too,” Ellen said. “Maybe we can be in the same section.”

“Okay. And what else do you have to take?”

“Just another English class and another French.”

“And what about P.E.?”

She made a face. “I always got off because I was so fat. The doctor gave me a note saying I didn’t have to.”

“But I want you to take P.E.”

“No, Jeff,” she said. “I can’t put on shorts. Please, Jeff, don’t make me.”

I kissed her mouth and ran my hand through her curly, springy hair. But she put an arm on my hand and pleaded, “Please, Jeff, don’t make me.”

“You need it, Ellen. Your body doesn’t have enough muscle tone,” I explained. “Especially now that you’re losing all this weight. Your skin’s just going to hang if you don’t do exercise. Let’s see—what about swimming?”

“Please, Jeff, I just couldn’t get into a bathing suit. Not yet, Jeff. Don’t make me!”

I patted her soft shoulder and said, “Okay, Ellen, don’t get upset. You know I’m not going to make you do anything that’s not good for you. Hmm—how about tennis?”

“Please, Jeff!”

“Okay, well that leaves gymnastics or maybe jazz dancing. They’ve just started giving courses in jazz dancing, and I think you can wear your clothes, but you will get a good workout.”

“Do I have to, Jeff?”

“Yes, Ellen, you do. But you know what?”

“What, Jeff?”

“Maybe I’ll take it with you.”

She looked up at me with her eyes full of love. Of course she agreed. She agreed to everything I told her in the beginning.

Except for ceramics.

“You can drop it too,” I said. “There’s no reason why you should keep taking it either.”

She was wearing a purple tunic over a purple pair of pants that day. The neckline was a deep V, and I liked the way the purple contrasted with her white skin. She was watching me, solemnly. “Do I have to?” she said.

“Have to what?”

“Have to drop ceramics?”

“Don’t you want to?”

She shook her head, and hundreds of fat little curls swished in the air. “No, I like it. Ida O’Neill says it’s a good idea to work every day if I really want to improve. She thinks I should stay in the class, even if Ms. Holland isn’t such a good teacher.”

“Well, you don’t have to study with Ida O’Neill either. Why don’t you just drop the whole thing? I only suggested it originally because I didn’t think you had enough interests. But now that you do, you don’t need it.”

Ellen thought for a moment. “Interests? Like what?”

“Well,” I explained, “you’ve got me, haven’t you? And you’ll take jazz dancing, and I think I’m going to take you to a few basketball games . . . We’ll see . . . We’ll talk about other interests as we go along.”

“But I like ceramics,” Ellen said. “Don’t you think I’ve improved?”

One of her pots, a little, tubby, shiny pink one was sitting on the kitchen table with a fat, little cactus plant inside it. We were sitting there, me munching cookies and drinking milk, and Ellen slowly sipping a diet soda. Other tubby pots with shiny glazes had been distributed throughout the house, mostly in the bathrooms, by her tactful mother.

“Of course,” I said indulgently, “and if you really are enjoying it, Ellen . . .”

“Oh I am, I am,” she said.

“Well then, why don’t you just go right on.”

“Thanks, Jeff,” she said.

I was bringing Ellen home for dinner that Saturday night. We spent Friday night together, and I kept reassuring her that my mother would like her. It was late when I returned home that night, and my mother had gone to bed. There was a note from her telling me not to eat the cheese pie in the refrigerator, that it was a low-calorie one she was planning to serve for dessert on Saturday night when Ellen came for dinner.

Saturday morning, Wanda was coming over at about ten to pick up her things. I had to leave the house at eight thirty to be at the hardware store by nine. My mother was still asleep, which was surprising. Usually she gets up early every day, even on weekends when she doesn’t normally work. I tiptoed around the house, and carefully closed the door when I left for work.

My father was waiting for me in the hardware store when I returned from lunch at one o’clock.

“Jeff,” he said, “can you come outside? I need to talk to you.”

I followed him outside the door. Wanda, I figured, it had to be Wanda. His face looked grim. She was giving him a hard time. Good, I thought. Now he’s getting a taste of her moods and bad temper.

“I’m very sorry to tell you this, Jeff,” said my father, “but when Wanda and I got to your house . . . Well, Jeff, it’s okay now . . . she’s going to be okay . . . But your mother, we found your mother . . . She . . . she’d taken sleeping pills . . . She tried to commit suicide.”

I must have staggered, because he put his arms around me. I could smell his sweat, and I remembered how I used to smell it when I was a little boy and he’d held me in his arms.

“It’s all right, Jeff. Why don’t you take off the rest of the day? I’ve got my car here and we can go back to my house. Wanda’s there. She’s been pretty upset, but she’ll feel better when she sees you.”

“Where’s Mom?” I said.

“At the hospital. She’s all right now, Jeff. The doctor said . . .”

“I want to see her.”

“Okay, Jeff, I’ll take you there. They’ll keep her there a week or so until the doctors feel she won’t do it again. I don’t know if she’ll even be awake now, but I guess you can see her.”

She was awake—barely, lying there, small and dark, with a smile on her face.

“Why did you do it, Mom?” I said, trying not to cry. My father was waiting for me outside in the waiting room. I took her hand. It felt cold. “Why, Mom, why?”

Her hand began patting mine. She didn’t say anything. She just smiled and patted my hand.

“Just because that little bitch, Wanda, went away? Is that why, Mom?”

“No,” she whispered finally. “No . . . maybe . . . yes . . . but it wasn’t your fault, Jeff . . . Don’t feel bad . . . You’re a good boy . . . Don’t feel bad.”

The nurse made me leave, but I told my mother I’d be back the next day.

“Pick up some things,” said my father, “and we’ll go to my place. You’ll stay with us while she’s in the hospital. Later when she comes out, if she comes out, I’m not sure, Jeff, but maybe you’d better plan on staying with us.”

“No,” I told him. “I’m not staying with you. And I don’t want to see Wanda. It’s her fault. If it weren’t for her, Mom never would have done it.”

“Don’t say that, Jeff,” my father said, putting his arm around me as we walked out of the hospital. But I pulled away this time. “Jeff! Jeff!” said my father. “She’s a very unhappy woman. She always was. Nobody can change that—not even you. And you know—I don’t want to criticize her—but for a mother to lay this kind of trip on her own child! Do you know what Wanda’s going through now?”

“I don’t care what Wanda’s going through,” I shouted at my father, “and I don’t want to see her. Just take me back home—my home! That’s where I want to go.”

He argued, but he couldn’t shake me. We drove around while we argued. Then we ate some pizza and drove around some more. Finally, the two of us came back to my place. I kept telling him he could leave me, but he said no. I didn’t want him to know it, but I was afraid to stay by myself and I was glad he stayed over. He slept in Wanda’s bed, and at night I woke up shaking with terror for the first time in weeks. I walked past her room and looked inside. He was asleep—my big father in Wanda’s small bed. He didn’t belong there. He had no right sleeping in my mother’s house. It made me angry seeing him there, and I wondered what would happen if he woke up. Would he know I was scared? Would he put his arms around me and tell me it was going to be all right-that everything was going to be all right?

But he didn’t wake up. I walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and saw the low-calorie cheese pie wrapped carefully in plastic paper. I had forgotten all about Ellen. I ate half the cheese pie and thought about Ellen. After a while, I calmed down and was able to go back to bed.

My father refused to leave the next day unless I came with him or found someone to stay on at the apartment with me. I called my Aunt Lisa, Mom’s younger sister, and told her. She wanted me to come and stay with her and Uncle Roger in Kensington. I refused. My father was talking to me all the time I was talking to my Aunt Lisa. I couldn’t hear either one of them. Finally, I handed him the phone, and he and my aunt talked while I wandered around the kitchen. I was hungry and I opened the refrigerator as my father said, “Sure, Lisa, that’s right. You understand I don’t want to leave him, but he won’t come with me. Sure, Lisa, thanks, Lisa . . . I sure appreciate . . .”

There wasn’t too much in the refrigerator aside from the half of the low-calorie cheese pie. Ellen! I had to call Ellen. She must have sat around waiting for me the night before, wondering what had happened.

“Okay,” my father was saying into the phone, “why don’t we meet you over at the hospital?”

“Dad,” I said, “I’ve got to make a call.”

“Sure, Lisa . . . in about an hour and a half . . . Sure, Lisa . . . Goodbye.” He hung up and began explaining to me what my Aunt Lisa had said to him and what he’d said to her.

“Just a minute, Dad,” I told him. “I’ve got to make an important call.”

Ellen answered after one ring. “Hi, Ellen,” I said. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t call you yesterday. Something happened—my mother—well, she’s in the hospital. She’s all right now, but it was kind of tense here, and I’m sorry, Ellen, I just forgot.”

“That’s all right, Jeff,” Ellen said. “I knew you’d call. My mother said—well, never mind what she said. But I knew you’d call.”

My father was sitting in the kitchen waiting for me to finish, so he could tell me the arrangements he and my Aunt Lisa had worked out. He was pretending to be looking at a magazine and not listening to me, but I knew he was. I wanted to tell Ellen how much I loved her, and that she’d never have to worry about me standing her up. I felt all choked up at the way she trusted me so completely, but my father was sitting there, pretending to read a magazine. So I just said, “You never have to worry about me, Ellen. I can’t talk now, but I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

“I’ll be here, Jeff,” she said.

Aunt Lisa met us at the hospital. She was carrying a plant, and she told me she’d stay on with me at the apartment until my mother returned. She and I both went in to see my mother while my father waited outside. My mother was sitting up in bed, her hair combed, her face carefully made up, that little smile still there.

“Lisa!” she said when she saw my aunt. She wrinkled her nose as if something smelled bad.

“Hi, Sue,” said my aunt. She kissed my mother, and the two of them smiled carefully at each other.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, and waited for somebody to say something.

“Well,” said my aunt finally, “I thought I’d never get here. You should have seen the traffic on the bridge.”

“It’s always like that on Sunday,” said my mother.

“But not like today.”

“Lisa, have you got an emery board?” my mother asked. “One of my nails broke this morning.”

Neither of them said anything about my mother’s suicide attempt. My mother asked after Uncle Roger, as if she’d just seen him, and my aunt told a couple of funny stories about some of the customers in her sporting goods store.

“How about a milk shake, Sue? I bet the food here’s atrocious.”

“I’m used to hospital food,” said my mother, “but my throat is awfully dry.”

“Well, I’ll just run down to the coffee shop. What about you, Jeff? Would you like a milk shake too?”

“No thanks, Aunt Lisa.”

“Soda?”