Big Girl Panties (6 page)

“I guess now would be a bad time to tell you I've taken up smoking?” Holly tried to bring some flippancy to the situation. The attempt was unsuccessful and she saw his eyes flash with genuine anger.

“If I thought you were the least bit serious, I would actually think about throttling you.”

“Geez. Lighten up. I'm having enough trouble with one addiction, thank you very much. I'm just trying to stop the shakedown here.”

He didn't want to shake her down, force her into talking about the things that she might not be ready to admit. He watched her silently continue to bite her nails, absorbing the information he had given her. She heard him, and for now that would have to be sufficient. He wanted her back into the proper head space before they fully got into her session.

“One thing is certain: the most common denominator in both compulsive eating and binging is the cycle of food replacing emotion. Depression is an emotion that ranks high on that list and is something that has been in the forefront of your life the last couple years, no matter how hard you might try to suppress it. Have you thought about seeing your doctor for it? Maybe a therapist?”

“Oh, sure.” Holly made no attempt to mask her disdain. “Let me go blather my problems and take advice from someone who in all probability is crazier than I am. Yeah, no thanks.”

“Don't be so quick to assume there's anyone out there crazier than you,” he teased. “But for the sake of argument, how about just calling your regular doctor? Surely any doctor worth his salt would recognize the depression that comes with becoming a widow.”

“Why?” she asked him heatedly. “So they can start mixing drug cocktails to keep me from feeling anything at all? Or better yet, they give me some great new drug they didn't bother to fully test and I wake up six months later growing a tail?”

“Okay. I get it.” He was quick to try to defuse her anger, attributing it to the fact that running to see a doctor for something that wasn't outwardly hurting her was something she probably couldn't afford. Especially considering that he was taking up a chunk of her cash flow. Plus she did have a point. “And by ‘get it,' I mean that I totally understand and in many ways agree. I'm always in favor of trying holistic means before running to the pharmacy, definitely in cases like this. And you're in luck for employing other tactics. Endorphins are natural chemicals in the body that fight depression. They release during physical outputs of energy, and you're certainly doing plenty of those.”

“You think?” she asked him, the sarcasm fully back in place. It was uncomfortable knowing he obviously had spent a lot of time thinking about her, or at least her situation. With her situation being that she was an out-of-control, nonstop-munching, gluttonous freak.

“Holly, I want you to do me a favor. I want you to start writing down what you eat. Every morsel of anything you put in your mouth. It's not a test or even something I want you to share with me, unless of course you want to. This is strictly something I want you to do for you. And if you're feeling stressed or depressed, I want you to note what you're feeling while you eat. Can you do that?”

“You're never going to ask to see it?” she asked him skeptically, grabbing a towel off the shelf where he kept them.

“Nope,” Logan said, taking the towel from her and laying it flat on a weight bench before pointing at it, the unspoken command for her to get into position for a set. He added before going to get the final piece of equipment they would need, “Just by doing it, you'll feel like you have more control and can see when your peak stress-eating times are. Then you can make adjustments from there. You can see when you are or aren't getting enough fruits and vegetables, when you're eating too much junk or not getting enough water. You'll start getting a clearer picture of the patterns you might want to work on changing. And when you notice depressed feelings coming on, you can try to head them off by doing something else, even if it's something simple like taking a walk. Hell, you can come here to do cardio whenever you like, even if I have another client here. Just give me a call with a heads-up. Remember, the rules are simple. For every calorie you take in beyond the minimum your body needs to function, you want to burn one out with exercise. The more intense the workout, the more calories you'll continue to burn after you're done. And as far as the food journal goes, I'll always be willing to look at it if you want to tweak it, but I promise I will never ask.”

Holly left that session with a surge of new motivation. Much of the conversation was about not what was wrong with her but what was right with her. Logan hadn't laid judgments on her, just presented clinical facts. But he had also done his homework. He gave her suggestions for things to do that were within her control. There were no gimmicks involved, just hard steady work. She didn't really see what would be so helpful about writing her food intake down, but it sounded simple enough. Plus the competitive side of her hated the prospect of coming up short if Logan went back on his promise and asked to see it. She decided to give it a try.

Logan told her she needed an arsenal. Having gotten used to eating mostly takeout, she started with a fruit bowl. Bananas and pears were her weapons of choice. Soon grapes and apples joined in. She began perusing salad bars like she was shopping for fine antiques. She made her goal variety. Once a week, she tried a new food. She tried to pick ones she'd always turned her nose up at in the past, like salmon and tofu and hummus. Sometimes she was pleasantly surprised, other times she still felt like barfing.

It didn't take her long to figure out that if she wrote down what she was going to eat before she ate it, she made better choices. The entire plan was wildly successful for several weeks, until the “Milky Way Malady” struck.

Holly wanted a Milky Way. It should have been simple enough; she ate them all the time. But when she bought it, she realized her journal was at home. Not willing to deviate from her strategy of “write first, eat second,” she dropped the candy bar in her purse and waited until she got back to the house. The scrumptious candy bar consumed her every thought on the drive home. It virtually called to her from inside the confines of her purse. She salivated at the thought of creamy caramel and nougat wrapped up in chocolaty goodness. She got home and made straight for the kitchen. She pulled out the candy, opened the food diary, and grabbed the pen.

And then Holly saw all the other entries within the journal. All the healthy eating logged within the pages of her budding success story. She just couldn't bring herself to write down what she was sure would be the beginning of her downfall. The pages began to blur. She slammed the journal closed and pushed herself away from the counter. Without even realizing, she began to pace back and forth in the kitchen.

“You're just a stupid candy bar!” Holly yelled at the Milky Way.

The Milky Way sat on the counter, in between the fruit bowl and the journal, an innocent candy bar representing caloric catastrophe. She could almost feel the bananas giving her the evil eye.

“I just won't write it down,” she rambled out loud. “I don't have to write it down. I'm only doing all this to show up Logan in case he asks. And he's never going to ask. And why do I have to do everything he says, anyway? I'm the one writing the checks.” Satisfied with her logic, she opened the Milky Way and took a big bite. And then another.

The first two bites were everything she thought they would be. Chocolaty goodness and heavenly sweetness danced around her mouth. By the end of it, she was sick to her stomach. It was nearly choking her. All the joy of the first bites was gone, lost in the guilt of failure.

She skipped dinner that night, an attempt to recoup the calories consumed in her fit of confectionery rage. She went to bed early, hungry and defeated. She tossed and turned. For hours, sleep refused to claim her. Logan's words replayed like a broken record in her head. She knew what she had to do. Getting out of bed, she wearily padded downstairs and flipped the light on in the kitchen. Taking the pen, she opened the journal to the last entry. Pressing down so hard with the pen it nearly tore the paper, she wrote:

MILKY WAY—FEELING?—INSANE.

Holly dragged herself back upstairs. Once in her room, she sat on the bed and laid her head in her hands.
It shouldn't have to be this hard,
she thought.
A candy bar shouldn't have the authority to ruin someone's day.
She was terrified this was going to end like it always did in the years of candy-bar consumption before it, with a mindless three-day feeding frenzy. She wished there was someone she could talk to. It was too late to call Tina, not that Holly really wanted to anyway. She didn't even know how to put into words what her problem was, other than that a candy bar had her on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Tina would never understand what was going on in her head right now. No matter what stance Tina took, whether supportive or disappointed, Holly knew it would be the wrong one.

It was time for her security blanket.

It wasn't really a blanket. It was Bruce's favorite old green flannel shirt. She couldn't wear it; she hadn't been able to fit into any of Bruce's shirts for years. But when all other coping mechanisms failed and all the food couldn't fill the hole in her soul, Holly would pull it from the closet, fold it up, and lie with it under her cheek. When he first died, she slept with it, taking comfort in everything about it. It had well-worn softness and the scent of Bruce that remained secure within its fibers. It tricked her momentarily into thinking he was still there. She got up and went to his closet, where all his clothes still remained. She pulled it off the hanger and held it in her hands. And then, without knowing why, she stuck her arm in the shirt's sleeve. Then she did the same with her other arm. With her thin cotton nightgown on underneath, the shirt accepted her intrusion. She pulled the front of it closed and, with excited shaking fingers, began to button it. And then she raced to the mirror.

The shirt wasn't loose on her by any means, but it wasn't about to rip either. Her breasts were unforgiving and the button at the center of her chest strained. She quickly unbuttoned that one. But the rest of the buttons were all secure, and while the shirt was snug, it showed no signs of stress. She stared at herself in the mirror for several long moments with tears building up in her eyes. She hadn't really looked at herself in the mirror in a long time, with the exception of brushing her teeth in the morning. Now she was staring into the reflection of herself wearing a shirt deemed too small for as long as she could remember. The shirt was giving her a hug. She tilted her face up toward the heavens.

“Thanks, Bruce,” Holly whispered through her tear-filled smile.

She took the shirt off, folded it up, and got in bed. With the shirt securely under her cheek, she fell asleep.

Chapter Six

L
ogan kept his word and never asked about Holly's food journal, but he was certain she'd made some alterations, because three months into training she was down forty pounds. It was a healthy weight loss, indicative of lifestyle changes and not drastic measures. Her curves were not yet obvious, but her round face started showing high cheekbones he hadn't noticed before. The double chin was receding and she positively glowed. She didn't get overly excited by her evolution, consistently referring to each pound as “just a drop in the bucket,” nor was she ever outwardly critical or discouraged by her progress. She maintained the same focused determination she'd had since she started. It was a winning combination and Logan couldn't help patting himself on the back. Sure enough, his duckling was well on her way to becoming a swan.

Holly thrived on Logan's encouragement. His positive energy started accompanying her wherever she went. His upbeat catchphrases would come to her like the lyrics to her favorite songs. She never told him about the night with the Milky Way but tried to look at it as a turning point. She hadn't crumbled and turned into a rampant eating machine. She woke up the next morning and got right back on track.

It probably didn't hurt that she had a training session the following day. As soon as she walked into his building, the candy bar was all but forgotten.

Holly began to look at herself in the mirror more. She would strip down to her underwear and pose in front of it, as if in a weight-lifting competition. She marveled at the way her muscles popped out when she flexed them. She could feel her ribs beneath her skin. Her collarbone started showing prominently. There was still plenty of flesh around her midsection, her bottom, and her legs, but it was tighter. She could contract it and it would respond.

She looked strong. She felt strong. She was strong. Logan confirmed it every time he saw her. His warm bedroom eyes held the truth of his conviction. His easy smile communicated his relentless enthusiasm. She couldn't help but believe it. They had a partnership, each of them with different reasons for the same goal. She wanted to make him as proud of her as she was grateful to him.

She was changing, both physically and mentally. She felt braver and ready to take risks.

She knew where she wanted to start.

W
ith his cell phone on the nightstand chirping happily, Logan opened one eye and looked at the clock: 1:42
A.M
. He reached out blindly toward the glow of the phone, thinking that if the person on the other end wasn't one step from death, he or she soon would be. He didn't recognize the number. When he mumbled a sleepy hello and heard nothing on the other end, he was tempted to throw the phone across the room and out into the hallway. Just before he drew it away from his ear to push the
off
button, he heard a little rush of air.

“Logan?” A tiny voice. It sounded muffled, wavering.

“This is he. Who is this?” he grumbled. Whoever she was, he wasn't in the mood.

“It's Holly.” She released an uneasy giggle. “I'm on my home phone. You said I could call anytime.”

He immediately sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, rubbing his face. “Holly? What's up? Everything all right?”

There was another long moment of silence followed by a shaky, “Actually, no. I'm in trouble. I think I'm about to do something stupid.”

As soon as he heard the word “trouble,” the rest of her words became gibberish. Without asking any more questions, he confirmed that he had Holly's address in his BlackBerry and told her to stay put. He threw on a pair of basketball shorts and a T-shirt, jumped into his black Navigator, and plugged her information into his GPS. It wasn't until he was halfway across town that it dawned on him—he hadn't even found out what was wrong. For her to have called him at all, much less in the middle of the night, could only mean an emergency. Was she hurt? Was she in danger? Had she been robbed or assaulted? Logan found that with each question, his foot pressed harder on the accelerator. He flew recklessly through quiet streets, his alarm increasing with the speedometer. His GPS's mechanical voice instructed him to turn onto her street. Even in the dark he became aware of the change in scenery. Trees lined the road and huge houses sat atop manicured hills. He saw the house number she'd given him illuminated on a sign stationed near a mailbox just as his GPS instructed him to turn into a long drive. The landscaped lawn stretched to a rather impressive modified colonial. A white sporty BMW convertible was parked in front of the circular driveway. He looked at the address again. This girl was chock full of surprises. As he pulled up next to her car, she opened the front door of the house, appearing to be completely unharmed and in her usual state of dress, sweatpants and ratty tee, though he hadn't seen the fuzzy pink bedroom slippers before. She stepped outside.

“Holly. What's going on? Are you all right?” He jumped out of his car and rushed to her side, not sure if he was talking about her crisis or the suddenly obvious fact that she wasn't a destitute widow.

“I'm fine. And I'm really sorry to have bothered you, Logan. You didn't have to come here. We probably could have handled this on the phone. But please, come in.”

They walked through the spacious foyer, the house fully lit. When they got to the kitchen, she let out a heave of disgust and threw her arms in the direction of the granite-topped kitchen island. “This is what's going on.”

She flung herself into a chair, unwilling to meet his eye. Logan looked at the island and grimaced. On display, right next to the meticulously kept notebook that served as her food diary and a bowl of fresh fruit, was a Sara Lee Coconut Crème Pie, a box of Twinkies, a two-liter bottle of Coke, bags of both Lay's Sour Cream and Onion potato chips and M&M's, and a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream.
She called me in the middle of the night because she was on the brink of a binge?
He didn't know what annoyed him more—the fact that he had just become the food police, or the painfully apparent fact that she could've paid full price for his services after all. She wanted his help? She'd get it.

“Get your running shoes on,” he ordered abruptly, then began systematically returning the contents of the kitchen island to the freezer and random cupboards while she did so.

Logan took Holly outside and they walked briskly down her driveway. Neither of them spoke. The only sound besides their footsteps was the late-summer crickets getting in what would soon be their final songs of the season. Then Logan started to jog, taking every uphill route he could find. It took Holly real effort to keep up. After twenty minutes of trying to match every one of his long strides with two shorter strides of her own, Holly came to a grinding halt.

“Enough. Uncle. You win.” She slowed down to a walk, and so did he.

Logan was peeved, but he didn't want to admit it. He wanted answers but wasn't even sure what questions needed asking. He felt out of the loop. He felt taken, though he could never once recall being lied to. How could he have been so stupid? She told him she lived in Englewood Cliffs, a town that prided itself on its exclusive multimillion-dollar McMansions. What did he think, she was living in a cardboard box in front of one? He had made the assumption she was flat broke because of her haggard appearance and her reluctance to ever divulge any information about herself. He childishly took comfort in one thing though: while he was barely out of breath, Holly was huffing and puffing.

“What's really going on here, Holly?” he demanded. “Who are you?”

“What do you mean? I was in total danger of eating all that crap.” She tried to inhale without involuntarily shuddering. “Do you think I'm kidding you? You'd want me to call if I was going to put a bullet in my head, wouldn't you?”

Logan was caught off guard, all thoughts of the mystery surrounding her momentarily suspended. He stopped walking. She seemed really serious. Would she really have eaten all that food in one sitting after all the hard work she had put in over the last four months?

“You really would have eaten all that junk? At once?” He didn't bother to mask his awe, or his anger. Why was she so willing to get in the way of her own success? Settling his hands on his hips, he scolded her. “What could have driven you to do something like that in the middle of the night?”

Even in the light of nothing but the moon, he could see her eyes growing glassy, reflecting its beams when she peered up at him.

“Cleaning closets.” She tried to add a sad little smile and failed miserably.

Logan instantly understood. His heart gave a loud thud. She had been packing up the last remnants of her husband.

“I just thought it was time, I guess,” she added wistfully. “Maybe I was wrong.”

Abandoning his initial harshness, Logan turned to his professional expertise. “Maybe it is time, and you just have to rise to the challenge. Your endorphins should be raging right about now, and you look like you'd rather vomit than eat. I could stay awhile and help you with the closet.”

Holly gave him a genuine smile he could see through the darkness. “It's almost done. I'm down to the nitty-gritty. The stuff I can't see being recycled.” The smile slowly faded.

“Come on; let's get it done,” Logan said, doing his best to sound encouraging. They walked at a more relaxed pace back to the house. He followed her up the stairs and down the hallway toward her bedroom.

Glancing into another room, he stopped short. “Holly? What about this one?”

The room was unlike any of the others he'd passed. This room was stark, sanitary, and sterile. From the plain white walls to the barren wood floor, the only contents of this room were a hospital bed and some medical equipment. There were oxygen tanks and monitors, all wheeled into one corner with the cords wrapped neatly around them. The bed was nothing but a mattress lying flat inside its adjustable frame with chrome half rails on each side. He stepped inside the room and instantly felt its sacredness. On one wall, the wall opposite the blindless windows, was the only decoration that adorned the room. It was a huge framed photograph of mountains; snow covered them at the top, and a refreshing lake at their base mirrored them. The backdrop sky was perfectly blue with the exception of a few puffy white clouds in the distance. It took up nearly the entire wall. Logan felt his chest start to tighten. Was this the last thing her husband saw before he died? He looked at Holly standing in the doorway.

“This is a beautiful picture,” he told her somberly.

“Isn't it?” Holly said from her spot in the hallway. She hadn't been in this room in almost a year. After the funeral, when everyone returned to their own lives, she'd spent days in it. She would sit on the rented hospital bed and think,
This was the last place Bruce was alive.
Surely his spirit would linger, freed from the confines of pain, she told herself, even if only long enough to point her in the right direction. Ignoring the hospice's calls to arrange a pickup, she kept paying the bill on all the equipment in the room and waited for a sign that would tell her what to do next. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. The instructions never came, the hopelessness mounted, and she walked out of the room and into despair. She never shut the door to it though, just in case. To see Logan in the room was both amazing and unsettling. The ultimate positive life force was standing in the middle of the death room.

“Holly,” Logan asked her gently, breaking into her thoughts, “maybe you want to put this stuff in storage?”

“I don't own it,” she replied, devoid of any emotion.

“Is it included in the things being picked up tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Would you like it to be?” His voice was soothing, his eyes full of compassion.

It only took one look at his face, and Holly knew the answer he hoped she would give. She wordlessly nodded her head, maintaining the same blank expression.

“Do you own any tools?” he asked in the same comforting tone.

“Tools?” she repeated, confused.

“Screwdrivers, wrenches, stuff like that?”

“There's a box in the garage,” she said from the doorway. She watched Logan walk across the room to grab a monitor in each hand before joining her.

“Let's go get it,” he said pragmatically. “They'll never be able to get this bed out the door without removing the rails and the legs. Who needs a couple of goofballs in here scratching up your hardwood floors and banging into your walls? We'll put everything together downstairs and it'll all be in one spot for when it gets picked up.”

She took one of the monitors he was holding and he followed her back downstairs. They dropped off the monitors in the dining room and she took him to the garage. He made casual chatter that she didn't hear a word of. To acknowledge she heard him would require responses on her part. She wasn't capable of coherent responses; she was one step from a blathering mess. She wanted to be numb and focused and not bother him with further drama. She had done too much of that already. He didn't seem to mind her being distracted. He wasn't disapproving of the fact that she had effectively put off this horrid chore for well over a year. He picked up the toolbox; she got a Ziploc bag for the nuts, bolts, and screws; and they went back upstairs.

“I've got this,” he told her before going back into the bedroom, “if you want to finish up someplace else.”

She felt the look of relief spreading over her face. He knew. It was like he could feel her agony. She nodded mutely at him and retreated to the safety of her own room. An empty box waited for her and automatically she began to fill it with Bruce's most personal effects. She started with the bathroom and his toiletry kit, which contained his electric razor, his deodorant, and the cologne she occasionally got him to wear. She removed all his prescription bottles, many half full, making a mental note to dispose of them properly. Holly pulled his toothbrush out of the holder, where it was stationed beside hers. She looked at her own toothbrush, now alone in the holder, and swallowed the lump in her throat. It seemed so final now. A toothbrush that hadn't been used in almost two years had the power to create such a void. Holly quickly left the bathroom.