Fat Chance (7 page)

I
t was the memory of the chunks of ripe avocado ignited by zesty bits of onion, lemon juice and cilantro that was the lure at Rosa Mexicano. It was a tough reservation, unless you were, well, me. Tex and I always start with frozen margaritas, the widemouth glasses encrusted with a ring of coarse salt that bites gently into your lips. We go through one round, then another. They slide down easy with chips and guacamole served just right in a thick pebbly stone mortar. We follow with beef enchiladas, sizzling steak or shrimp fajitas, or maybe grilled pork chops with black beans and rice. South of the border soul food. Tex and I hadn't had dinner together in almost two weeks—a record—and now he was sitting opposite me and looking at me funny.

He scratches his head. “Something wrong, Maggie?”

“Why?”

“You lost weight. You okay?”

“Not ‘You look good, you look thinner.' Duh, ‘You lost weight.' Am I okay?”

Tex raises his eyebrows. He's on unsteady ground now, I know his every facial twitch.

“Yes, in fact, I've never been better.” I toss my head back. “I am just
terrific
.” I can't help snapping at him.

He holds his hands up in surrender. “You look great, you do, it's just that you never lost weight
deliberately
before…” He shrugs. “So I figured…”

“Well, stop figuring, and thanks for the left-handed compliment.” It made me wonder about the kind of compliments he gave Sharon. Did he tell her he liked her dark roots? That he didn't mind the chipped red nail polish? That he found her hard edge appealing? I flash him a venomous look, then turn away.

“I never thought you needed to lose weight,” he adds, almost muttering to himself. “I mean, I thought you looked good the way you were… I mean, who likes boyish, skinny women. They look sickly, underfed.”

I'm dining with the village idiot. And it was getting worse. I stare at him incredulously. “I looked good the way I
was?
The way I
was
was
fat.
” I shake my head and then reach for a corn chip, but think better of it and bury it in the salsa as though I'm stubbing out a cigarette.

“So what's happening on Metro?” I spit out the last word like a curse. Why was it that even the smartest men seemed to have these deep gullies of ignorance? I never could understand how a man could be so brilliant in one area—tort law, for example, or quantum physics—while showing himself to be totally ignorant in understanding the basic human needs for love and compassion.

In women, on the other hand, ignorance was spread more evenly, like frosting on a cake. Tex could be so sharp when
it came to the intricacies of a story. Every detail, every nuance, registered viscerally. But when it came to the fine points of anything to do with women, he was hopelessly dense. Was that why he went from date to date until he met Sharon, who, I was willing to swear, wore contacts to make her eyes look green? Sometimes I suspected that he even read the personals, and it wasn't to look for dangling participles. What was he looking for anyway?

Thirty-nine-year-old newspaper editor, former football star, warmhearted, well-intentioned, but brain dead on issues relating to women, in need of smart, sexy broad with thick skin and infinite tolerance.

“How does Sharon stand you?” I say, trying to hold back a laugh. “You're hopeless.”

He looks back at me like a wounded puppy, then slowly, a glint appears in his eye and his frown turns into a grin.

“I grow on women. It just takes a while.”

It's impossible to stay mad at Tex. While narrowing his eyes and holding my gaze, his fork surreptitiously slides underneath the leftovers on my plate. Without looking down, I trap his fork with mine, then push my plate over to him.

“Here, have my fat.”

We talk about changes on the desk, and laugh over plans for the newsroom renovation. The only subject that never comes up is California.

 

Toes in position, my nocturnal track attack begins. Donna is wailing, “She works hard for the money, but he never treats her right.” Left, right, left. I stop, lost in thought, arms clinging to the padded chest support as if it's a life raft.

It wasn't just battling to lose weight that fueled my unease, it was feeling in my heart of hearts that I had betrayed a trust. As a journalist, I'd be the first one to point a finger
at hypocrisy, yet outwardly I was championing fat acceptance while inwardly eschewing meat and potatoes for fish, fowl and field greens.

I could blame it on Mike Taylor, but if it wasn't him something or someone else would have spurred me on to give it one last shot. The urge to get thin lingers in your system like nicotine. Years after giving it up, you're never completely released from temptation. It's an addiction, and you never recover, you are perpetually recovering.

It was consoling to think of this last all-out try as an outward-bound adventure. Living on the edge. It wouldn't work out, but it was exhilarating to think that it might….

Of course I was Irish Catholic with the genes for dark introspection and misery. I could envision myself as a desperate character in a play, fifty years from now, with long trailing tendrils of gray hair as coarse as a Brillo pad. I'd be sweeping, trapped in a stone cottage by the ocean, the waves pounding on the shore outside, and the NordicTrack—along with a carton of corroded weights—a memorial to the past, standing by the fireplace like the bones of a long-dead mate.

Well, maybe it wasn't guilt, just fear. I was in a panic at the thought of reaching out, stepping over the mundane borders of my life to make up for all those Saturday nights in my bedroom.

I head into the kitchen and start preparing dinner—a low-cal green pepper filled with rice and a smattering of beans. While I wait for the rice to boil, I watch the traffic outside going down Second Avenue. If I had any regrets in this life, I wanted them to be over what I
had
done, not avoided doing. I had already spent enough time on the sidelines.

Remember photographer Bert Stern writing that lame
account of how he resisted the opportunity to sleep with Marilyn Monroe? He was glad, it would have ruined the fantasy, the myth of Marilyn, or some such nonsense. OH PUH-LEEZE.

Yet I have to admit I'm scared, panicked at the thought of doing something wildly out of the ordinary. Of course offers like this were as rare as fruitcakes in August, so why in hell shouldn't I follow my passion? No, I wouldn't think this thing to death. I'd just go—lightly—my luggage, the laptop, snug dresses, long-lasting makeup, a bottle of Contradictions, and…the SHOES.

Maybe what was slipping away was more than just pounds. I'd never felt better, and the truth was that thin was looking pretty good.

 

Five weeks into my routine, I am down thirty pounds, so what is wrong with the face that is staring back at me in the mirror? Not face. Faces, that's it. The glaring pool of one-hundred-fifty-watt, soft-white bathroom light was indisputably illuminating not a single, but a double chin. Contouring with makeup, no matter how awe-inspiring the artistry, couldn't make it disappear. Two palettes of Bobbi Brown's toasty blusher later, the futility of a brownout hit me hard. So instead of groping for the bible of self-acceptance, I reach for the phone book and the number of a plastic surgeon who has gained a reputation for facial microsuctioning. I put in for a week off—enough time for the bruising to disappear, and buy myself a jar of vitamin K cream and another of arnica that I'll use to ward off bruising.

“Here's the game plan,” I tell Tamara, like a sergeant in the marine corps. “I'm out for a week of vacation. I'm tired, overworked, resting at home, doing a little apartment work. I'll be in and out a lot, hard to reach…and a week later, I'll be back, looking like the time off served me well.”

“Maggie, this has gone way beyond that small-potatoes diet—”

“We don't use the
d
-word around here, remember?”

“You're entering the major leagues now—you're talking the knife, anesthesia—maybe you should think about—”

“No, I don't want to think, it doesn't burn fat. It's time to act, and I'm depending on you to run interference for me, keep the newshounds at bay and share in my passion play.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes, I'm definitely doing it.”

“No, I mean about thinking burning fat.”

“God, who knows?”

Tamara gives me that look.

“You think I'm nuts, okay, say it.”

“Noooo, you're just being sucked off into a midlife twister—but go ahead, do the crazy shit, get it out of your system. At least you're single. Maybe it'll work out in the end like it did for Flossie.”

“What did she do?”

“She got married and five years later ran off with the window cleaner.”

“And what happened then?”

“He kept her windows so spotless—”

“What happened to
her?
”

“Well, the love affair didn't last but two months, and her marriage went bust, but Flossie's no dope. She rounded up all of that stud's friends, and started a house-cleaning service. Now she's making half a million a year, and has her pick of the stable.”

 

Tamara sits in the softly lit waiting room with the husbands of other patients, waiting for me to emerge. When I come up, she's deep into an article called “Facial Sculpting,” pinching the sides of her face and the slack under her chin. It's contagious, I think. It occurs to me that maybe the good doctor gives a bulk discount. Tamara tries not to look startled, but fails miserably. That's why I love her.

I know I look like the Pillsbury dough girl. The thickly wound compression bandage snugly puffs out my face. She runs over and hugs me.

“You poor pathetic creature,” she says, and her voice gives away the fact that tears are forming in her eyes.

“Don't get soft on me, Tamara. It's just like analysis, except the knife makes you feel better faster.”

I drape a knockoff Hermès scarf flecked with horse bits and saddles around my head, '50s Italian-film-star-style and strut out of the office behind wraparound sunglasses. But nobody is fooled. Not one person comes running up to me yelling “Sophia Loren,
cara.
”

We cab it to my apartment, past the silent stares of the doorman. I make Tamara leave. I can't stand to see her pathetically sad puss, and I go to bed with a Tylenol with codeine and the cold comfort offered by a body-bag-size sack of ice. The old me is disappearing, a little more every day.

 

“So Larry comes by and says, ‘Where's Maggie hiding out these days? Haven't seen much of her lately,'” Tamara says, in her daily phone report. “He pointedly left it unclear whether he was referring to your presence or your weight.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Lectures, guest appearances, Maggie is everywhere. Want her cell number?

“‘Cell?' he says. ‘Where is she, in solitary at Rikers Island?'

“I yawn and tell him to go get someone indicted and then strut away in my Manolos. And you know what he says?”

“I give up.”

“‘
Mama mia.
What have you got on your feet?'

“‘Just shoes,' I say. ‘Shoes that show toe cleavage.'

“‘What? Show what?'

“‘Toe cleavage.'

“‘And I thought I heard of everything,' he says.