Eating Heaven (3 page)

Should I sneak through the condiment aisle to the cash register? Throw money at the beanie-clad young checker with lower lip fuzz, and make a run for it?

“For crying out loud, Eleanor,” I mumble. “It’s not like you’re eleven years old.” I’m thirty-eight, in fact, flying straight into the face of forty. I doubt most people this age quake at the thought of their mothers catching them with chocolate bars in their groceries.

She rounds the corner, spots me, and says, “Ellie, dear! What a nice surprise.”

As petite as a teenager, she is stunning in a tailored raincoat, a pretty sylph of a scarf bringing out the hidden jade of her eyes. Even in the damp Portland mist, her dark curls are neat and coiffed, her ever present rose lipstick in place. It’s no wonder every man on the planet loves her.

I pull the basket tighter against me, wishing I’d filled it with big, bulky things like boxes of bran cereal or five-pound bags of flour.

“Mom. Hi. I’m just, um, getting ingredients for an article.” Implying, not for me. I pull a bag of carrots on top of the pudding. “What are you doing in town? I mean, you didn’t call or, or anything.”

“Oh, we just thought we’d be impulsive and drive in to celebrate the first day of spring—have some lunch, do a little window-shopping.” She reaches to smooth her hair, eyeing mine, and continues. “Country life is wonderful, but the shopping is less than spectacular, as you can imagine.”

A from-the-can cook my entire childhood, my mother has become a born-again gourmet, which, like reformed cigarette smokers, is the worst kind.

She turns to her new husband, who has now walked up to join her, and takes his arm. “John, what time’s our reservation, dear?” Without waiting for his answer, she turns back to me. “We’ve found this wonderful little restaurant up the street called Chanterelle. You’d love it, Ellie. It’s our new favorite.”

“I think I told you about it, actually.” And apparently, this isn’t the first time they’ve driven an hour into Portland, into my neighborhood, without telling me.

“And the wine list! Well, you know, living in wine country now, we’ve gotten pickier. Haven’t we, John?” She turns and shines her benediction upon him, and he smiles back in that grateful-puppy way most people do in her presence.

“Would you care to join us, Ellie?” John asks, his easy solicitude a testament to years in the real estate business. “I’m sure we could get a table for three.”

Mom’s eyes do that little sweep thing up and down the length of me, almost quickly enough that I shouldn’t have noticed. My face simmers and I’m suddenly too warm.
Please let a fire alarm go off, a tornado blow through the door, anything.
I wish this basket were bigger, my body smaller, my hair smoother, my inclination more toward fashionable clothes than comfortable ones.

A fraction of a second too late, Mom says, “Of course, dear, where are my manners? We’d love to have you.”

“No, that’s okay,” I say. “I can’t, actually, I’m on deadline. I’m working on a piece about French food for
Cooking for
—”

“Oh, now, we couldn’t possibly take you away from your work, honey.”

The relief is palpable all around.

Even though I know I shouldn’t, especially in front of the new husband, I ask, “Have you talked to Benny lately? He’s been really sick.”

“Well, you know that horrible flu is going around. Everyone seems to have it. I just keep knocking wood that we haven’t gotten it yet.” She reaches up to tug at the scarf at her throat, loosening it slightly.

“I don’t think it’s the flu,” I say, trying not to sound testy. “Maybe you could call him and convince him to go to the doctor. You know how he is, but he might listen to you.”

“Mm,” she says, her noncommittal answer to everything, then changes the subject. “And how are you, dear? Everything okay?”

“I’m fine,” I say through clenched teeth. “Everything’s fine.”

She looks at her watch, and John says they’d better hurry. We
exchange empty pleasantries as if we’re former neighbors, and then she’s gone, a cool breeze leaving trash and my own silent screaming in its wake.

I turn back to the cheese case, try to refocus. I have to find a way to take most of the calories and all of the fat out of
Brie en croute
for a piece called “Lighten Up Your French Favorites.” Cheese in pastry, for God’s sake. I love my life as a freelance writer, the way lifestyles editors count on me for my food expertise and dependability, but I want to write for someone other than 110-pound soccer moms between carpools and dental appointments, women who feel guilty if they use half-and-half in their coffee. I want to be a real food writer and work for the good food magazines, the
Gourmets
and
Bon Appétits,
where anything less than five hundred calories is just an hors d’oeuvre.

“That had to have been your mother.” The younger and nicer of the sisters who run the market is standing behind the case, wiping her hands on a white apron. “You look so much alike.”

“No, we don’t,” I say.

She smiles. “I know, people have told me that my whole life, too. Pisses me off. What can I get you?”

“I don’t suppose you have anything like low-fat Brie, do you?”

“No, but I do have a new triple-cream with toasted walnuts that’s amazing. Want a sample?”

Does a pig want truffles? “Well, just a little,” I say, disappointed at the sliver she shaves from the wheel to hand me.

Walking home through the drizzle and bustling lunchtime crowds, I pass bento stands and soup-and-salad bistros, suddenly and desperately in need of something to eat. Nothing sounds good, nothing sounds right until I’m almost upon Frozen Moo. I push through the doorway into waffle-cone sweetness, past the only other people in the place, a thin couple sharing a hot fudge sundae, and toward the young alterna-girl behind the counter. Half of her hair is platinum, the rest shocking pink, and she’s dancing with abandon to loud 1970s funk music. Despite the weather and her own zaftig size, she wears the skimpiest of tank tops, like most eyebrow-pierced young women do these days. I wish my
generation had that confidence. I feel funny showing even my thick upper arms in the full heat of summer.

“What’s shaking?” she asks, when it seems obvious to anyone watching that she is. Her hips are gyrating in little circles now, her hands above her head; she looks like a flamenco dancer, shaking the ice cream scoop like a maraca. Somehow she manages to make her size look exotic and sexy, and I wonder how she got this way, this free and uninhibited.

“Hi,” I say, settling my bulging shopping bag between my feet. “Can I have a dish of Mocha Fudge Chunk, please?”

“Single? Double?” Her lips are as plump and enticing as the rest of her, and I feel older and plainer by the second.

“Hmm. How about a double? I’m sharing it.” I motion my head toward the door, like my hunky husband is waiting outside. Like she cares. The girl obviously eats plenty of ice cream herself.

She dance steps to the right, leans into the case, and begins to dig.

The bell on the door tinkles, and I turn to fake smile at the svelte and stylish woman who’s just entered the shop. She fake smiles back and sweeps her eyes over me the same way my mother just did.

My ears go hot, my scalp, my chest. I turn back around but I can feel the woman behind me, her eyes struggling to take in the girth of me, the expanse of cotton jersey across my butt.

“You looked like you could use a triple,” the girl behind the counter says, and I wish I could just disappear. She hands me what looks like a snowman built by Lilliputians; it’s gargantuan even by my standards. “The extra scoop’s on me.”

I shove bills and coins across the counter, take the dish, and say, “Thanks! My husband will love you,” jovially and loudly enough for the woman behind me to hear, then sprint for the exit.

In the vestibule, I stop to juggle my wallet back into my purse without dropping the groceries or the ice cream. On the bulletin board, amid peace rally and Yoga-robics flyers, a pretty business card with swirling watercolor hues catches my attention: S
UZANNE
L
ONG
, MSW, F
OOD
T
HERAPIST
. I’m scoffing at the title—what, she counsels bananas?—until I read the rest:
SPECIALIZING IN CONTROL ISSUES
,
ESPECIALLY THE LACK THEREOF
.

The heat returns to my face, and I pull open the glass door to escape into the cool, moist outdoors, then stop and look back. The shop girl is handing the stylish customer a child-size dish of something peach colored, and the thin young couple are engrossed in feeding each other spoonfuls of hot fudge. The music has changed; a husky-voiced young man sings about his girlfriend’s wonderland of a body.

On the bulletin board, the business card glows in the silver afternoon light, and I read it over and over. A food therapist? I’ve never heard of such a thing.
Control.
I swallow, not looking at my hulking dish of ice cream.
The lack thereof.

After making sure no one’s watching, I put my bag down and step over to yank the card from its thumbtack, and slide it into my purse.

Outside, I’m still lightheaded, shaky. The cute little shops and rehabbed Victorians look different, more colorful and detailed than I’ve ever noticed, and the trees look taller, the light stranger. Trendy-third is bustling, bumper-to-bumper with luxury SUVs and eco-hybrids, hippie Volkswagen campers and kamikaze bicyclists. People sit beneath the awnings at Coffee People, linger in doorways, amble up and down the street with leashed dogs, strollered babies. Sun-starved Portlanders can smell spring a mile away, and even though it looks like any other misty winter day, they’ve all come out to herald its arrival. Usually, I’d join right in, but all I want is to disappear.

The top scoop of ice cream starts a precipitous slide, and I look for a place where I can eat in private. I follow a narrow sidewalk between two buildings and back out of sight from the street. The permanently shaded walk is wet and mossy; my right foot skids across a bright olive patch, sending the ice cream dish and grocery bag into the air. I flail wildly not to fall, and end up with a scoop of ice cream in my left hand.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I say, looking behind me toward the street, then at the scatter of groceries on the ground, the other two scoops of ice cream splatted on concrete. For a moment I consider dropping the remaining scoop and going back into the shop for a napkin.

That’s what a sane person would do.

Instead, I hide behind a Dumpster, lean against the cool concrete
wall, and slide down so that I’m sitting on my haunches. Then I bring the sweet comfort of Mocha Fudge Chunk to my lips.

The next afternoon, I’m seated on a chintz-covered couch inside the elegant old mansion I’ve always admired at Twenty-fourth and Lovejoy. Suzanne Long, MSW, Food Therapist, asks me if I think I have an eating disorder.

“Eating isn’t the problem,” I tell the trim, pretty, perfectly kempt and perfectly nice woman in front of me. “Stopping is.”

Meant to sound lighthearted, but yesterday’s little episode scared me more than any of the others. I don’t know what happens. There are just times when I lose complete control and all that matters is filling the black hole of my stomach. It’s as if I’m sleepwalking, even though I’m wide awake, eating and eating whatever it is that feels like it could possibly sate me—Thai noodles, French toast, chocolate chip cookies—but it never helps. I just end up feeling disgusted and disgusting, sick to my stomach and sick of my nauseating secret. One thing is for sure: I hope never to eat Mocha Fudge Chunk ice cream again, especially not from my bare hands, licking between my fingers, crouched in a near-fetal position with the smell of Dumpster all around.

“Besides, there’s no way I could be bulimic,” I say, wondering how on earth someone this thin could understand. “I haven’t thrown up since fifth grade.”

“Not everybody purges,” she says, leaning back into a chintz armchair and crossing one slender leg over the other.

Kids at grade school called me Ellie the Jolly Green Jelly. I was tall for my age. I still am. I’ve always been big-boned, bigger than my sisters and classmates, and just big enough that people see my bigness before they see me.

In fifth grade I switched to my full first name. I figured no fat jokes could rhyme with Eleanor. I was wrong. Jeffrey Hanover immediately began to sing, “Ellie, Ellie, Eleanor, can’t get out the kitchen door.”

“How did you react?” Suzanne asks.

“I don’t know.” I try to think back. “I probably ate.”
Heh, heh,
I laugh. Another little joke, but Suzanne Long’s not having any of it.

“And now?”

“Well, now I try not to think about it. Isn’t that better than getting caught up in what everyone else wants me to be?”

“Who wants you to be something else?”

“Who doesn’t?” Nobody likes a big girl, Mom always told me.

“And what do you want?” Suzanne asks, a reasonable question. She squints through her stylish rectangular glasses.

I start to speak, and stop. I open my mouth again and nothing happens. My face is growing warm, and I’m afraid I’m about to cry.

“Let’s start with something else,” she says, shifting in her seat. “Let’s start with food. Tell me about your relationship with food.”