The Fat Girl (12 page)

Ellen ate her food very slowly and neatly, while my mother and I did most of the talking. My mother did make tea, and it dripped out of the teapot spout all over the table.

After we left, Ellen didn’t want to go home. She asked me to drive her out to the beach.

“The beach?” I said. “Why the beach?”

She mumbled something about a girl in one of her classes who told her that she and her boyfriend often drove out to the beach at night to watch the moonlight on the waves.

“There’s no moon out tonight,” I said, but I drove out anyway and parked above the ocean among a bunch of other cars. Loud rock music came from the car on our left.

“But there’s nobody there,” Ellen said, looking through our car window. “Do you think they just forgot to turn off the radio?”

“No,” I told her. “They’re still inside, only they’re making out down on the backseat. That’s why you don’t see any heads.”

“Oh!” she said.

I put an arm around her and began telling her how proud of her I was. I told her that I thought she should keep working on her posture, but that I liked the way she kept her head up while she was speaking to my mother.

“Jeff,” she said, looking away from me, “Jeff, did you ever . . .”

“What, Ellen?” I kissed the top of her head.

“I mean—did you ever come out here with . . . with Norma?”

“No,” I told her, “not with Norma.”

“With . . . with anybody else?”

“Maybe.” I laughed. “But don’t worry, Ellen, I’m not going to drag you into the backseat. Not you.”

“No,” she said, “no. I didn’t think you would.”

Later, as I drove her home, I told her I thought she ought to quit taking lessons with Ida O’Neill.

“You go at least once a week and sometimes even twice or three times,” I told her. “It cuts into our time together.”

“I won’t go so often,” she said quickly. “I’ll only go once a week from now on.”

“What’s the point, Ellen?” I said kindly. “You’re never going to be really good at it.”

She didn’t say anything. I was driving her home, and I was feeling calm and happy and very much in love. I reached over and took her hand, and she said, “Jeff!”

“What is it?”

“I don’t want to give up ceramics. I like it . . . I love it . . . and I think . . .”

“What do you think?”

“I think I’m going to be good at it someday. I’m getting better all the time. Dolores Kabotie—you’re not in the class anymore—but she was looking at a pot I made last week, and she said she thought it was very unusual.”

“That doesn’t mean she thought it was good.”

Suddenly, Ellen was crying. I could hear her big, heavy sobs. I pulled over and put my arms around her and pulled her wet face against mine.

“What is it, Ellen? What is it?”

“Oh, Jeff,” she cried, “don’t make me give it up. I love it so much now, and I know I’m going to be good at it. I just know I will, and you’ll be proud of me. Please, Jeff!”

I knew she’d never learn to make a decent pot in her life, but what could I do? I loved her, didn’t I? I only wanted her to be happy. That was all I ever wanted for her. So I told her she didn’t have to stop, and she kept kissing me and kissing me with her wet face full of tears.

fifteen

By the end of March, Wanda was coming over for dinner nearly every Wednesday night. Every so often, she’d spend the weekend as well. She complained all the time to my mother about Linda.

“She’s a real slob, Mom. You should see the inside of the stove. It makes you want to throw up. And the shower is so tacky. I wish I didn’t have to use it.”

“Why do you stay?” I asked her one night as I was driving her home.

“Because I love it,” she said.

“But you complain all the time about Linda.”

“That’s only because I want Mom to feel good. Linda’s the greatest. She never yells at me, and the kids are cuties. Okay, Sean does have a temper and David gets into my things, but they’re good kids. And Dad—well . . .” She laughed. “You know Dad.”

It hurt me, watching my mother’s hope blossoming.

She never did turn Wanda’s room into a sewing room. Instead, she bought a new, frilly bedspread for Wanda’s bed and some lace curtains for the windows. She was always on good behavior when Wanda came home. I tried to warn her.

“I think Wanda’s skin isn’t looking too good,” said my mother one morning at breakfast.

“Like most other fourteen-year-olds,” I said.

“Well,” said my mother, “you never had any trouble with your skin. I think it’s her diet.”

“You’re right,” I agreed. “She does eat a lot of junk food.”

“No,” said my mother. “When she lived here, I was pretty careful to see that she didn’t. But of course, now . . .”

My mother slowly chewed on a piece of toast and waited for me to answer. I knew she wanted me to say that Wanda wasn’t looking good, that she’d look better if she were back with us. She wanted me to say that I thought Wanda might want to come home. I didn’t say anything.

“Last time she was here,” my mother continued, “she told me that Linda goes in for a lot of starches. Sometimes she even serves rice and potatoes at one meal. Wanda says they’re all overweight.”

She waited for me to agree.

“Dad is,” I said finally, “a little. But Linda and the boys are kind of thin.”

“Wanda says they’re all overweight.”

“Mom,” I said carefully, “I think Wanda can take care of herself. You don’t have to worry about Wanda. She always lands on her feet.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said my mother between her teeth. “All I said was that Wanda’s skin was bad.”

“That’s right, Mom,” I said, getting up quickly and picking up my plate. “I agree, so let’s not get into a fight.”

Of course we did, and my mother went right on hoping.

By the end of March, I knew that I wanted to marry Ellen. Maybe not right away—we were too young for that. But in the fall, if we both went to the same school, we could start living together. Plenty of kids did nowadays. There shouldn’t have been any problem. My mother might have made a fuss, but she’d get over it. And Ellen’s family would have agreed to anything I wanted. They were crazy about me. They knew I had transformed their daughter and they came right out and said so, particularly Ellen’s mother.

I was sitting with her in the living room one Saturday evening, waiting for Ellen to get back from Ida O’Neill’s.

“She won’t even let me pick her up anymore—she’s getting so independent,” her mother said proudly. “She takes the bus everywhere, and soon she’ll have her own license.”

I looked at my watch. It was six thirty.

“Doesn’t she usually get back earlier?”

“Sure she does. Especially if she knows you’re picking her up. She doesn’t want to lose a minute.” She smiled at me. “Are you hungry, Jeff? How about some cheese and crackers?”

“No, thanks, Mrs. De Luca. We’re supposed to be having dinner with that friend of hers from Weight Watchers—Nancy Something.”

“Nancy Rosenfeld. You haven’t met her yet, have you, Jeff?”

“No, but Ellen keeps talking about her.”

“Well—she really is a lovely girl—nice figure too. She lost over eighty pounds and she’s been giving Ellen all sorts of tips.”

I knew I wasn’t going to like Nancy Rosenfeld. Mrs. De Luca kept on talking, and I tried not to be irritated. Ellen was late, and it wasn’t the first time. If it wasn’t Ida O’Neill, it was Nancy Something, or another friend she’d made at Weight Watchers. I looked at my watch and Mrs. De Luca said, “You know how the buses are—she probably had a long wait.”

“I could have picked her up,” I said. “I finish work at five, and I could just have gone over and gotten her. We could have gone right from there to meet her friends.”

“I guess she wanted to come home first and change. I fixed her wine-colored caftan today. It just hangs on her now. She’s lost about thirty-seven pounds.”

“I keep telling her to get some new clothes,” I said.

Mrs. De Luca laughed. “I know, Jeff. So do I, but she keeps saying she wants to wait until she can wear regular clothes. A few months ago, I never would have believed it possible. Before you took an interest in her, Jeff. She’s a different person because of you.”

The look in Ellen’s mother’s eyes was nearly as overpowering as the one in Ellen’s eyes.

Ellen arrived home at seven fifteen. She came flying through the door, her cheeks glowing.

“Oh Jeff,” she said, “I’m so sorry, but I was waiting for the kiln to be unloaded. I made you something. I wanted to give it to you.” She held out an object wrapped in newspaper.

“We’re going to be late, Ellen,” I said, trying to control my annoyance. “Weren’t we supposed to meet them at seven o’clock?”

“Oh, I called Nancy and changed it to eight. I’ll hurry and get dressed. But Jeff, aren’t you going to look at what I made for you?”

I unwrapped it and found a fat, blotchy cream-colored mug that had JEFF printed on it in crooked orange letters.

“Wonderful!” I told her. “Thanks a lot—and now I think you ought to get ready.”

I could hear her bubbling away to her mother, her laughter billowing down the stairs. It should have made me feel happy, but I wasn’t looking forward to the evening. I preferred having Ellen all to myself.

The evening was a flop. Nancy kept chattering on and on to Ellen about the people in their Weight Watchers’ group. I didn’t like her. She was nineteen, a student at City College, and she wore cheap perfume that made me sick to my stomach. She also kept giving Ellen advice on how to dress.

“You can probably start wearing regular clothes now,” she said, “something with a little more shape. You don’t have to keep wearing those old sacks. Why don’t we go shopping next week?”

“Okay,” said Ellen.

“You don’t have to buy a lot of things because you’re going to keep losing weight, but it will probably take another six months before you get all the way down.”

“Oh no!” wailed Ellen. “I wanted to lose it all before my prom.”

“When is the prom?” Nancy asked.

“The end of May.”

“Well,” said the Voice of Experience, “you might lose another fifteen or twenty pounds by then. You’ll look nice, but you won’t be all the way down.”

“She’ll look gorgeous,” I said, “and for the time being, she can manage with the clothes she has. I think she looks pretty good the way she is.”

“I do too,” said Nancy’s boyfriend. He was a little weasel-faced fellow who worked at McDonald’s and had a smell of fried onions about him. He kept eyeing Ellen all through the evening. “She’s kind of classy, the way she dresses. Even if she was thinner, she’d look good in those clothes.”

I didn’t need his support, and by the end of the evening I felt like knocking him down. I didn’t like the way he kept looking Ellen over, and the way he always managed to brush up against her. She didn’t notice. But I told her later, back at her house. I told her I didn’t like Nancy, and I certainly didn’t like her boyfriend.

“But why, Jeff?”

“Because she’s a big busybody—sticking her nose into everybody else’s business. And her boyfriend is a punk. Didn’t you see the way he was coming on to you? And Nancy doesn’t have any taste at all, with that cheap perfume and her sleazy clothes. When the time comes, I’ll go with you to buy new clothes. Okay?”

“Okay, Jeff, but she’s such a nice girl, and she’s been so good to me.”

Ellen was high that night. She kept yakking on and on. She wanted to tell me about the ceramics class at school—about Dolores Kabotie, Roger Torres, and Norma Jenkins.

“Dolores made a wide pot with the most beautiful handles you ever saw. She glazed it all in a shiny black glaze and scratched wonderful swirling designs down at the base.”

“That’s nice,” I said.

“Roger’s been working on cobalt glazes. He’s kind of secretive.”

“I never liked him much,” I said.

“Oh, he’s okay when you get to know him. Norma says he’s just got a mild paranoid streak when it comes to his glazes. Otherwise he’s okay. Norma says . . .”

“What’s this with ‘Norma says’?” I interrupted. “Since when have you and Norma gotten so chummy?”

Ellen laughed. “I guess we are getting kind of friendly. She’s a very nice girl.”

“I told you that a long time ago,” I said, “but I also remember you saying that you hated her.”

Ellen said lightly, “I must have been jealous of her then, but not anymore. I think she’s just great. She’s the best potter in the class, but she’s not stuck up about it. Yesterday she showed me how to apply slip to a partially dried pot . . .”

I hardly ever saw Norma anymore. Once in a while, she’d come bounding down the hall, hair flying, arms full of pots. Sometimes I’d lose myself in the crowd. Whenever she saw me, she’d flash a big smile and look as if she’d like to stop and talk, but I always moved on. She was ancient history to me.

Ellen’s voice turned worshipful as she continued talking about Norma, Roger, and Dolores. She sounded like me a few months back.

“Ellen,” I asked her, “do you ever think about suicide?”

She stopped chattering and took a deep breath. “No,” she said, “not anymore.”

We were sitting on the couch in her living room. As usual, the rest of her family had evaporated as soon as we appeared. I wanted her to tell me she never thought about suicide anymore because of me.

“It’s because of you,” Ellen said. She turned her face towards me. Her green eyes seemed to grow bigger and bigger as she continued losing weight. I touched her soft face and felt the happiness inside me deepen.

She lay her head on my shoulder and began to talk. “It was miserable, Jeff. I couldn’t escape out of it. I was trapped inside all that fat, and the more my mother talked and the shrink talked and everybody else talked, the worse it got.”

Her head felt heavy on my shoulder, but I didn’t move.

“I talked about killing myself, and sometimes I liked to think about it when there wasn’t anything good on TV. But you know, Jeff, I never would have done it, because I always knew there was going to be another way out for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I knew something was going to happen.”

“You mean a knight on a white charger was going to come along and rescue you?”

“Yes—that’s what I thought for a while—like in the fairy tales. And you did come along. But it wasn’t that either.”

Her head was too heavy and I began squirming. She lifted it and smiled at me.

“Well, what was it then?”

“I knew I was going to change. I knew a time would come when I would change. I always knew it deep, deep down. And I think you must have known it too. I think you must have understood that I really wanted to change. You were wonderful to me, Jeff. I’ll never forget the way you saw something in me that nobody else saw.”

Her eyes glowed with that worshipful light. I took her hand. “I think we’re good together, Ellen. I think we’re wonderful together. That’s what I want to tell you. I want to talk about us—nobody else. I think we should live together. In the fall, I mean, when school starts. We still haven’t heard from the schools we applied to, but if we decide to go to the same school, there’s no reason why we can’t get a place together. I hope it’ll be San Diego, but if we don’t get in there, we probably will in Santa Cruz or Riverside. Lots of kids live together nowadays.”

Ellen hesitated and looked away. “Sure, Jeff,” she said finally. “But . . .”