150 Pounds (32 page)

When posing for family pictures her mother always demanded, “Alexis, put one leg in front of the other! Now put one hand on your hip! There, now you look pretty.” It was making the best of her pudgy, adolescent body, and couldn’t she look at her pregnancy as a situation to make the best of? She wasn’t quite sure yet how she would financially support the baby as a single mother and with Billy’s medical bills streaming in, but that was why she was driving up to Connecticut today.

Since she had decided to keep “the littlest monster,” as Billy referred to the baby (because he was convinced it was a Lady Gaga fan already), she’d begun speaking in her mind to it. Sometimes thinking about Noah and their fight made her feel overwhelmed, so she would try and think of other things like Billy getting better, or turning thirty. Her conversations with the littlest monster were shy; two strangers getting to know one another.

She took a lot of baths in their tiny tub, which Vanya scrubbed clean and into which she had put several bumpy octopus decals, so Alexis wouldn’t slip. Her bump was tiny and hard, like a watermelon. It felt strange, like she was an actress and the baby was strapped to her body for a role. She had tiny purple lines on her hips which she put oil on every night. At first they had horrified her, but she’d grown used to them. Every day felt like a lesson in humility; it took her much longer to walk to the gym, which she went to only once a week now.

Alexis would stand in front of the mirror and run her hands over her breasts, which were still small but decidedly rounder, like puffed-up versions of themselves. She liked bathing at night, slapping the water with the flats of her palms, which made her feel oddly happy. She couldn’t talk to it out loud, it felt too strange, so she would have private conversations with the baby in her head.
Hello,
she would think.
I’m your mother. Um … it’s nice to meet you. I hope you are comfortable in there. I hope you will like me.

At first, no matter how often Billy told her she looked fab, she still didn’t believe him. She felt like everyone was staring at her on the street, thinking how fat she was. But as the weeks went on, after she heard the baby’s heartbeat, felt it turn over (just once while she was folding laundry!), she stopped resenting the changes it was making on her body and secretly began feeling a tiny bit proud of her growing belly. Just a little. She found herself sticking her bump out farther than necessary while in line buying a newspaper, and catching the eye of another pregnant girl at the gym, putting her hand on her belly and rolling her eyes, earning a smile back from the other mother-to-be, as if, yes, she was going through the uncomfortable yet thrilling experience, too.

Billy also helped: “You’re Posh Spice, baby. You’re Heidi Klum with one of Seal’s baby seals. You’re Skinny Chick: the maternity version.”

He had grown slightly obsessed with Heidi Klum and Seal’s little family, hanging up large, colorful photographs of their three children around the apartment. “Stella will look just like their kids!” he’d say, clapping his hands together and smiling. Though she had yet to find out the gender, Billy had already decided it was a girl and named her Stella. “Stella is the queen bee of the classroom. Stella is the popular chick in high school,” he would say, as if it were obvious.

The baby was the only topic that made Billy smile these days. He’d already had three rounds of chemotherapy that made his jet-black hair fall out.

Recently she found him in the shower, crouched and sobbing. At first she thought it was a cat meowing, the sound was so high-pitched and thin. “Oh, Billy!” she’d cried, opening the glass door and squatting next to him, fully clothed. The water rained down upon her face like a river current, blurring her vision. She felt her dress start to soak and tried to hold his frail body. Clumps of black hair were spread around the shower basin, looking like large black spiders.

“I was going to shave my head, to beat the cancer to it,” he’d said, his voice low and wobbly against her neck. “Just last night I made a mental note to ask you to buy me a new razor, so I could do it today. But it just started fucking
falling out
.”

She hadn’t known what to say. All she could do was hold him. She was then three months pregnant, and felt like her whole world was caving in. Billy was getting sicker, and she missed Noah. Every week like clockwork a check would arrive. It was just a little at first, fifty or a hundred dollars. But as the lines for Off the River Ale House started stretching all the way around the block, the amounts greatly increased. Each one came with a note, pleading for her to take his calls. He’d continued to accompany Billy on half of his chemotherapy appointments. In fact, Noah and Alexis had arranged a schedule via e-mail, so that Billy never had to go alone.

“I feel like I’m the child of a joint-custody arrangement,” Billy said sarcastically to Alexis one night, as they sat on the couch with each other’s feet on their laps, watching
Heathers
. “Love those crazy bitches,” he’d say, when she popped in the DVD.

After the first vomiting incident when she’d gotten the pregnancy test, Alexis had been virtually symptom-free. Well, symptom-free if you didn’t include the weight gain, which had come on fast and furious.

“It’s that little baby Seal in there, one-quarter Rastafarian,” Billy would say. “He’s easygoing, mon. No throwing up. No sore feet. No problems.”

Alexis rolled her eyes as she watched Julia Roberts insult Cameron Diaz with: “Crème brûlée can never be Jell-O.
You
could never be Jell-O.”

“Billy, just because Noah is half black doesn’t mean he’s Rastafarian. He’s from Colorado.”

He adjusted his scarf. Since losing his hair, he started wearing vintage Armani scarves tied on the side of his head like a pirate.

“Whatever you say. One love, baby. One love.”

Alexis laughed, despite the fact that they were talking about Noah and talk of Noah always made her feel sad. Sad and very, very confused. Each time she opened an envelope with a check inside, accompanied by one of his stupid Post-its and boyishly messy handwriting, she felt a deep sense of confusion. She might have made a mistake, refusing to see him, turning him away. He’d been the only guy who had ever really
gotten
her. He made her laugh. He could cook. He loved her best friend. And he oozed sex appeal. What more could a woman ask for?

She was upset to the point of grinding her teeth at night. The sound was so loud she bought a mouth guard at Sports Authority, like some kind of ice-hockey player. She knew the root cause of the teeth-grinding was Noah, but she seemed unable to fix it. She’d always been stubborn; she just had to get used to the idea of being a single mom. How could she be with someone who kept pestering her to drop everything she stood for? Noah was relentless in the brief time they’d dated, hiding her scale so she couldn’t find it; causing her to have to cancel workout sessions because she was lying around in bed with him into the late afternoon; cooking huge, fattening meals as he tried out different recipes for his restaurant … the man was clearly too different from her for it to work. Plus, even though he was working around the clock to set up the restaurant, he had a lazy, laid-back side that she didn’t care for. He considered rock-climbing exercise, or walking uptown to Rollerblade in Central Park to be fun. Alexis had a very strict workout routine she’d stuck to for years, and Noah kept trying to get her out of her comfort zone. She had to admit she’d slightly enjoyed these new activities, especially when he’d taught her to yell out, “On belay!” and cupped her on the butt as she ascended the rock wall at Chelsea Piers, but she had a lot on her plate right now with Billy’s illness, and she really shouldn’t have been wasting time zigzagging around the city with Noah. One night in his apartment he actually got her to try smoking pot. Pot! Like those ridiculous skateboarders she’d so loathed in high school. And the awful part was she’d liked it! They’d watched
When Harry Met Sally
and giggled uncontrollably. Apparently, he would “partake in smoking the kind bud from time to time.” Lying in his bed, with Oliver’s warm body at her feet, smoke curling up to the ceiling, she’d felt really, truly happy. She’d relaxed. And she realized now what a mistake that was. Her columns had been slipping, the writing not as sharp. She’d been living like a child with Noah, and it was time to grow up. She’d gotten herself
pregnant,
for god’s sake. Never before in her life had she acted so irresponsibly.

Billy would not leave her alone about making up with Noah. However, it was too late to repair things. Getting his friends back together was the only thing that gave Billy any of his old feistiness back; he was able to yell and coddle and charm and give Alexis the silent treatment as he made the case for why Noah was
the guy for her
. She let him badger her because it put a flush back into his cheeks.

It had been three months since the Bathroom Incident, as she thought of it. She ran her hand over her belly (it was so hard!), back and forth as she drove. Noah’s restaurant had blown up into a colossal-sized success. She’d even heard rumors that TLC was courting him to do a cooking show. He didn’t need Alexis Allbright and all the baggage that came with her in his life.

The lines outside the brewpub grew as summer strongly resisted fall’s approach and the blacktop streets of Manhattan cooked like tar soup. The temperatures roared into the eighties. From her window she watched Noah arrive at the restaurant every morning. She was sleeping later these days, but she still set her alarm to see him pull up in his junky Subaru and hop out, Oliver leaping from the backseat and following Noah inside. He didn’t know she could see him. Billy caught her watching him one day. “You really should talk to the guy, you know,” he said.

The weekly checks from Noah couldn’t have come at a better time. They were really hurting for money. Advertisements on
Skinny Chick
had slowed to a snail’s pace. As Billy’s medical bills, well …

The bills were what forced her back here today, right now, driving past hedges and BMWs, nannies and tennis courts, and everything else she hated most in the world that made up the town of Greenwich. Noah’s checks had saved her from being thrown out of the apartment, but they were still swimming in debt. Those white envelopes with the plastic windows showing up every day in her mail made her fearful for their future.

Familiar sights swam into her vision as Alexis turned onto the street where she and Mark had grown up. Her street was named Happy Lane, which she found ironic, given the dispositions of her parents. She was wearing a black cotton maternity dress Vanya had brought home last week from Old Navy. “Of course it’s black,” Billy whispered when Alexis opened it. But she’d been touched.

“Thank you,” she’d said to her roommate the next morning, passing her in the hallway.

“Well, I noticed you hadn’t bought any maternity clothes,” Vanya had answered shyly.

It was true. The idea of shopping for pants with a pouch or an Empire waist dress freaked her out, even though her little belly ball clearly hung out of her tank top at the gym, which was how Sarah had been the first person outside of home to point out her pregnancy. She was down to the last hook on her very expensive and very useless La Perla bra, and had felt shocked when she found her feet no longer fit in some of her favorite high heels.

“Holy shit!” Sarah said one day, eight months pregnant herself, her stomach sticking out like a shelf from her sculpted and toned body. “Alexis, you’re knocked up!”

They were sitting on the mat, Alexis about to begin a series of military sit-ups. A woman sitting on a blue exercise ball nearby glanced at Alexis with surprise.

Tears immediately sprang to Alexis’s eyes.

Seeing her friend distraught, Sarah grabbed Alexis by the arm and escorted her to the little office at the back of the gym the personal trainers shared. It was empty at the moment, and they sat down in black leather chairs facing one another.

“Alexis, honey, you can’t do sit-ups when you’re preggo. It’s bad for the baby.”

“This baby!” Alexis said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. Staring at the glistening trail of snot, she couldn’t believe how pathetic she’d become. “It is so demanding! I’ve gotten so … so fat! Sarah, I weigh a hundred and forty-five pounds, for god’s sake! I’m a total heifer!”

Sarah hid her smile. “I’d noticed you gaining weight, but Alexis, you still look really great. Look on the bright side—now you have boobs! I just thought maybe you were eating differently. And besides, I don’t see you as often anymore. I know you must be going through a lot with your friend so sick.” She put her hand on Alexis’s shoulder and squeezed.

It was true. Alexis had cut down on her private training sessions with Sarah in order to save money for Billy’s medical expenses. She hadn’t told him about it, and on former gym days she hid it by taking the bus to McNally Jackson Books and whittling away time curled up in a chair reading.

“Honey, it can’t be that bad. The father … did he do bad by you? He, left?” Her pretty Latin skin flushed. “He didn’t hurt you, did he? Because Aldo keeps a shotgun in the spare room, and I am not afraid to use it.” Her voice turned to a whisper. “Did he hit you, Mama?”

Alexis was startled. “Oh, my god, Sarah! Nothing like that. No, we had a fight.”

Sarah’s eyes widened.

“No! A, um … verbal fight.” She swiped her nose with the back of her hand again. She felt pathetic. “I got mad because he called
Skinny Chick
crazy, but I think he just meant … I think he just meant I was too hard on myself.”

Once the words were out it was like the earth shifted underneath her feet, the clouds parted, and Alexis was able to view just how ridiculous she’d been when it came to Noah. No, he hadn’t smacked her around. He hadn’t walked out on her when he found out she was pregnant. In fact, it was the opposite:
she’d refused to see him.