Nothing To Lose (A fat girl novel) (21 page)

“A miscarriage…”

“Oh, no. I cut myself on the seat. See it broke and I cut myself.”

“What’s going on there?” It was a man’s voice. The man who had been annoyed with the night’s receipts.

“It’s a long complicated story,” said Myrna. “Get me a clean dish towel.”

“Don’t give me that crap.” He thought she was being perverse. “I’ve got a dining room full of people.”

“She broke the toilet seat and her thigh got caught in it. She’s got a bad cut.”

“You mean the fat one? I saw her go in. Oh, my god, she broke the seat? I’ll get a cab. She can go to St. Vincent’s. St. Vincent’s is the closest.”

“First get me a clean dish towel.”

Myrna, the waitress pulled her underpants gently over the cut, bandaged her thigh, slung her pocketbook securely over her shoulder and told her to have St. Vincent’s send the bill to Martin Lord, who was the owner of the restaurant. “Let him pay it,” she whispered. “He’s lucky you don’t sue. I’ll tell your boyfriend.”

For the first time she thought of Bob Waller. The urge to laugh was so strong; she had to bite on a paper towel. What would he tell Sylvie? It was a moment of exquisite humiliation. It affected her hearing. Her ears seemed stopped with blood, her face, too. Engorged. Too much blood rushing to all those emotional centers, plus an iciness that stopped digestion. She was in turn very hot and very cold.

“This is a new one,” said the intern at St. Vincent’s while the night surgeon sewed seventeen stitches into her thigh. He said it was a messy ragged cut. She asked them to call Don and Pierre and then was sure they would not come. Why should they come? She hardly knew them. She didn’t even know why she needed anyone to come. A cab could take her home.

Food is love. That was the thought that floated across as she lay recovering in a cubicle. Mother love. But she had stubbornly decided long ago that Bernice was okay. Better than a mother who smothered you with kisses but screeched if you dropped crumbs on the floor. Bernice had never screeched. She wasn’t a big talker but she wasn’t introspective either. And as for love? Who knew what Bernice had loved? She had loved the radio. Little Richard and the Four Freshmen. But she wasn’t dumb. It was Harlan who was dumb and a bully. He was service manager for a major appliance corporation. He loved to scare people with the size of their repair bill. “Oh, that’s going to cost you some money, yes sir. We’re talking about big money here.”

She had always been afraid of Harlan. Once he had come into her bedroom with a sticker in his hand that he placed on the window. She was certain it was a mark for something sinister even though he explained it was a tot finder, a sign to alert firemen where a child slept. Whenever she awoke and looked at that sign, she never liked it.

They had moved her to a stretcher in the hall when Don and Pierre walked in, immaculate, pressed, brushed. Tears came to her eyes. “Over here,” she said. They had given her a shot of Demerol, so the story was patchy but they got the main points.

“Poor bastard,” said Don, referring to Bob Waller.

“Bizarre,” said Pierre.

The wound healed surprisingly fast. The only discomfort was in sitting. She had to sit on the edge of her seat and sleep on her side. The surgeon assured her the scar would be slight. A lawyer came to see how she was and she signed a letter saying she would not sue.

“My god,” breathed Sylvie into the phone. “What happened?”

“What did Mr. Waller say happened?”

“He was incoherent. He said it was the third worst day of his life.”

“I think he was being modest. What were the other two?”

“The day his mother died and the day his wife left him.” She could hear Sylvie’s voice building up to an accusation. “April…how could you?”

“How could I what?”

“Ruin a perfectly viable situation.”

“Sylvie, I’ve got to hang up now. I can’t talk anymore…it’s just too much to explain.” She put the phone in its cradle and felt an enormous sense of relief.

Chapter Twenty-One

SUIT-O-RAMA, said the window sign.

“Crap-O-Rama,” said Don with contempt. He held up a chartreuse and pink checked suit with large pearl buttons. “What would you turn down in favor of this?” He turned to April, who had arrived to get information for window signs. “What would make you wear this suit?”

“The Boston Strangler.”

“Oh, please, don’t kill me. I’ll wear it.” He looked at the suit once again. “On the other hand, go right ahead and kill me.”

“There were only four months of the year that Jason didn’t sell his awful budget coats. During April, May, June and August, he sold his awful budget suits and his awful budget raincoats. The raincoats weren’t putty or beige or gray but a pinkish gray/beige or a sick iridescent green.

“Why do they have to be this awful color? Asked Erica each time he presented them at a merchandise meeting.

“What’s wrong with the color?”

“It’s awful. Why can’t they be a nice putty or tan? As long as you’re starting from scratch every year, why can’t they make them in a nice color?

“Look girlie, I’ve been selling these raincoats in this store, in this color, for twenty years. They march right out of the store.”

It was true. The raincoats marched right out of the store like the rats of Hamelin. It was the price. People loved Lorenzo’s $21.00 raincoats. And every time his two-page Suit-O-Rama ad ran, his suits – at $24.95 – marched right out, too.

April agreed with Don, there was little on earth worse than a cheap suit. A cheap suit was indicative of everything that’s wrong with life: gaudy, insubstantial, no attention to detail, unreliable. The lapels are too stiff, the skirt seams not always straight. Too little interfacing, the colors garish. The blues not true blues, the reds with too much purple. The greens with too much blue. The checks much too large.

A suit event that’s a New Jersey tradition. Tell your mother. Tell your grandmother. Would you believe checks? Right now when you need them most. The new longer skirt (a year late,) the double-breasted jacket (fake double-breasted with dummy buttons,) the wide lapel, tailored to fit, (tailored to bind and pucker,) all the newest colors, (the same dreary colors we had last year,) at one unbelievable price. Yes, this was true. $24.95 was an unbelievable price. They were waiting for the doors to open when Jason’s suit event started. April and Don with all their snide remarks couldn’t argue with that.

Don worked silently, pinning suits on two mannequins. How well his clothes fit. How tastefully he dressed. This morning, he had on a putty shirt with matching pants in cotton hopsack, slightly gathered in front, European style. His tie was lemon yellow organdy lined with silk. She looked down at her own drawstring pants of heavy cotton. They gathered between her legs, making the inner seam shorter than the outer ones. She had on her black, low-heeled shoes that needed re-heeling.

He watched her looking at herself. “This little number comes in size 20 if you change your mind.” He held up the pink and chartreuse suit.

“What are we playing? Get the writer?”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Is there any way of bringing up your weight so it doesn’t make you angry?”

“No.”

“So we can’t ever talk about it?”

“What is there to talk about?”

“What is there to talk about?” He walked around in a circle, a deer stunned by automobile lights. “To begin with, there are fifty or sixty pounds to talk about. Each one weighs as much as” – he picked up a mannequin’s foot – “this. Feel it. Sixty of those all over your body. Think of what that’s doing to your liver and your pancreas.”

She knew he knew absolutely nothing about her liver or her pancreas. He was trying to scare her. Well, she could scare him by pointing out what drugs did to his system, not to mention his brain. “Then, of course,” he continued, there’s your l-i-f-e. Are you satisfied to live out your days without s-e-x-u-a-l attention?” She flinched but said nothing. “Thirdly, there is the waaaste of it.” He wrenched three syllables out of the word waste. “The waste of your face.”

“Such a pretty face,” she mimicked.

“Joke about it if you want to, but it isn’t funny. There’s nothing that’s harder to come by than beauty. There was a survey and they found out that beautiful people were considered more honest, more reliable, more intelligent, than the ugly ones. It was in The New York Times. The Science Section. It said beautiful people were hired faster, married younger, made more money at their jobs and were treated better by salespeople and waiters.”

“That’s awful.”

“Unless you’re the pretty one, which you are.” He rubbed her cheek. “Gorgeous skin.”

“You just like it because it’s white.” It gave her a little fearful thrill to joke about his being black.

“Hmmm. You think? Your skin is not found every day of the week.” She was amazed how this pleased her. She wanted him to do ten minutes on her skin.

“Yeah?” She looked at herself in a nearby mirror. “You really think so?” Then, seeing she was playing right into his hands, she took up her pencil. “Did the article say beautiful people also got their hearts broken?”

“Huh? You think you have the franchise on heartbreak?” He said it in a way that invited questions. “You’re not the first or the last to have someone walk right over your body.”

“You?”

“Yes, of course, me. There’ll never be anything like that again. Well…I’m too old now anyway. Those things only count when you don’t have line one, or sag one. You know what I mean?”

“No. You look perfect to me.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Perfect? No. Far from it. Well-groomed? Yes. Exercised? Yes. But perfect? No. Things happen to the old bod.” He was silent a moment. “He, on the other hand, was perfection. The first time I saw him my heart skipped a beat. Literally. I was having an irregular heartbeat. I thought I was going to die right there. It was awful. I told him everything. I said, ‘I can’t walk out of here and out of your life. I’m wildly interested in you’ – that was putting it mildly. ‘Do whatever you want because I’m not leaving your side.’ You know what he said to me? You want to know what Lucrezia Borgia said to me?”

“He said, and I quote: ‘Aw, shaddup,’ with this bored wave of the hand. He sounded like a young Bette Davis. ‘Aw shaddup’”

“And then what happened?”

“I stayed, of course. All he had was a face but that was enough. One look and you gave him anything he wanted. His face was his brain.”

“And you loved him?”

“Loved him?” He looked at her as if she were stupid. “He was my life. I would have breathed for him if he’d asked. Let me tell you, he wasn’t beyond it. I fed him. I, who had never lifted a spatula in my life, learned to use a whisk to beat the eggs for his omelets and a mallet to tenderize his veal. And this vicious little chopper in a jar to mince the parsley that decorated his plate. Many nights, he would look at me over a candlelight dinner and whisper: ‘Whaddja put in this stuff anyway…I can’t tell whad I’m eating.’

“One day, this hunk – his IQ would have had to go in parentheses – says to me, ‘Our script needs a rewrite,’ Our script? I said. What script? ‘Our script. You know, it’s a metaphor for our life. Our relationship.’ I played for time. Something was fishy. Someone had put all these new words in his mouth. Someone from California. It sounded definitely like West Coast crapola.

“You think our relationship needs a rewrite? ‘That’s right.’ He was tugging at his Eisenhower jacket and buffing his nails on his pants. In what way? ‘Oh, in every way. I want to go to California.’ I was just getting started in the fashion business. I couldn’t just pick up and go. He said, ‘It’s either your career or me.’ I thought he was joking so I said, If that’s the way you want it, ta,ta.”

“What happened?”

“He left.” Don’s eyes got wider in his face. He looked miserable. “The next day, he packed his clothes and left.”

“My god, just like that?”

“No. He left me with a two hundred dollar phone bill and intestinal parasites.”

“My god, how?”

“Don’t ask. It’s too gruesome. It’s my own fault. Instead of going to a gay doctor who would have seen immediately what was what, I went to a jerk who treated me with enemas. Enemas. That only gave the darlings an elevator ride home.”

“I can’t take this,” said April, shaking her head. “I just…it’s too much.”

“You said it,” said Don. “It’s too fucking much.”

“You have Pierre.”

“True. But I’m very mean to Pierre. The only time I’m really nice to Pierre and stop hassling him is when I’m on hash. Then I’d be nice to my dead dog.”

“Are you on hash a lot?”

“Don’t ask.”

“But you do love Pierre?”

“Don’t ask.”

She turned all this information over in her mind. Not that she could do anything about any of it. “Do you think I could change? Do you think I could be normal again…I mean lose the weight and everything?” She hadn’t known she was going to say that.

He looked surprised and his face took on a childlike excitement. “Jesus, I think so. Why not? Imagine a thin, little thing stepping out of you. Oh, I can’t stand it. Be still, my heart. You’d be gorgeous.” He said it again as if the idea was blazing in his mind. “You know…you’d be gorgeous.”