Stars (The Butterfly Trilogy) (41 page)

San Fernando Valley, California, 1959

I
HAVEN'T HAD AN ORGASM IN EIGHT MONTHS
," S
HIRLEY
suddenly announced.

     Knitting needles and flipped-through magazines went still as the other women in the waiting room all looked at her.

     "I don't know if the problem is with my husband or me," Shirley went on, speaking with an urgency that made you think she was about to catch a bus and wanted to get everything said before it got there. Shirley weighed 290 pounds; she had been coming to the Tarzana Obesity Clinic for one month. "Dick and I used to have such a great sex life. I never had a hard time coming, but now—nothing."

     Her companions stared at her. They had been talking comfortably for the past twenty minutes, ever since Philippa came into the waiting room and said, "Hi, is anyone having as much trouble on this diet as I am?" and they had all started to talk. But confessions so far had skimmed along a safe,
nonthreatening plane: one woman said she wanted nicer clothes, another wanted to look good in photographs. Shirley's comment broke a scary rule, and no one knew what to say.

     In fact, some of them weren't sure what she was talking about, like Mrs. Percy, who was seventy and had arthritis so bad that her hands looked like crabs. "I didn't know women had them," she said.

     It seemed she had spoken for them all, because there were nods of agreement.

     "Well, we do, honey," Shirley said, "and I'd give anything to know what's affecting me. I mean, Dick and I still have sex as often as we can, but after five kids, and putting on the pounds with each one, here I am a blimp and facing a baffling problem. I tried asking
him
about it," she said, thrusting her beehive hairdo in the direction of Dr. Hehr's office, "but he just said not to worry about it."

     She thought a moment, staring at a poster on the wall that showed an obese woman about to put a big piece of cake into her mouth, with a caption underneath that said "Think First!" Then she said more quietly, "I think maybe it's me. I don't like the way I look, my body, I mean. When we get into bed, I feel myself kind of freezing up. I'm getting inhibited about my fat."

     Cassie Marie spoke up next. "I get really bad cramps every month. They're so bad sometimes that I can't even get out of bed. My gynecologist suggested that they might ease up if I lose weight." Cassie Marie weighed 190 pounds; only five minutes ago she had said she wanted to lose weight so she'd look good in photographs.

     "I work in a drugstore," Philippa said, and eight sympathetic expressions turned to her: Go on, honey; spill it all. "Mainly in the cosmetics department. Some girls were having trouble deciding what kind of powder to buy the other day, so I tried to give them some advice. After five years, I know cosmetics pretty well." She shrugged. "They just stared at me, and then they went away, giving each other amused looks."

     "Sure!" Shirley said. "How could a fat girl possibly know anything about anything! Especially about looking beautiful!"

     Murmurs of agreement rippled around the waiting room, and Philippa thought of how Rhys would pat her on the head whenever she had tried
to tell him anything. Would he have listened to her if she had been thin? Would he be alive now if she hadn't had these sixty extra pounds?

     The only one who hadn't spoken so far was Bobbie Ziegler, who worked at the Bank of America down the street. Now she said, "My mother died when she was forty-five. She weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. I'm forty-four and I weigh two hundred and thirty. I'm so scared."

     "I guess we're all scared in one way or another," Cassie Marie said, and she attacked her orange and brown zigzag afghan with her crochet hook.

     Philippa looked at her watch. It had been a week since her first visit to the Tarzana Obesity Clinic and she was dreading facing Dr. Hehr.

     Exactly as she had predicted, her first week on his diet had been a nightmare of shaky hands, dizziness, and heavy perspiration. At times in the afternoons she had thought she might even faint, it got so bad. But she was determined to stick to Dr. Hehr's menu, determined to lose weight. When the stomach pains and diarrhea got to be too much, she thought of Hannah Ryan, her new friend, suffering through the same thing, and so she had faithfully eaten exactly what was written on the menu, and at the times prescribed. But at the end of the seven days, Philippa had lost only one pound.

     Now she asked the others how they had done in
their
first week, and all claimed dramatic results. Millie Fink said she had had an astonishing eight-pound loss. Knowing that Dr. Hehr was going to accuse her of cheating, Philippa sat dreading her interview. She wondered if Hannah had had any success. They hadn't spoken since their lunch at Cut-Cost a week ago; they were to meet again in a little while, after Philippa's appointment, and weigh themselves on the drugstore scale.

     Dr. Hehr fixed a stern eye on her, but it held a twinkle nonetheless, to show that he cared, like a father, and that he understood female weaknesses. "Little girl, you've been cheating."

     "I have not," Philippa said. "I followed the diet exactly."

     "Mmm," he said, "I doubt that. Your mind is on other things—boys, most likely. That's the trouble with you girls. You don't concentrate. You don't dedicate yourselves to anything. I said, Philippa, that you have been cheating on my diet."

     "But I haven't!"

     He laughed. "You can't fool me, little girl. The facts speak for themselves. You should have lost more than one pound this week. The average loss is six pounds. So, tell me," he said, leaning forward like an uncle she could confide in, "what did you do? Sneak some donuts? Stop by the ice cream store on the way home?"

     "Dr. Hehr, I followed the menu exactly as it's written. As a matter of fact, I wanted to ask you why I feel so awful on it."

     His bushy brows lowered and cast shadows over his eyes. "You shouldn't feel awful on my diet. You're supposed to feel
healthy.
Mmm," he said again. "What do you mean by 'awful'?" When she described her symptoms, he said, "Have you ever been tested for diabetes?"

     "No. At least, I don't think so."

     "It's a remote possibility, but that might be your problem. All that fruit—fructose, you know, is a form of sugar. All right, let's stay on the safe side for now. Here's the second week's menu. If the fruit bothers you, well, then, substitute with a vegetable. See how that works. On your way out, make an appointment with my nurse for a glucose tolerance test."

     "I owe it all to you!" Hannah said as they settled into their booth and Philippa handed her the next week's diet menu. The surface of the table was sticky, but they could see the streaks where it had been wiped with a damp cloth. "I lost four pounds!" Hannah said. "I had no idea! Thanks to you, Philippa. I feel like celebrating." Her eyes squinted over at the cheesecake display, then she looked back at Philippa. "I guess I shouldn't, huh?"

     Philippa smiled.

     "You were right," Hannah said, nearly bouncing on her seat, the little gold earrings flashing with enthusiasm. "Dieting with a friend is so much easier! All week I was tempted to cheat, but I kept thinking of you, sitting at your landlady's sumptuous table, sticking to your cottage cheese and hamburger patty. I focused on today, too, on getting on that scale by the door. You know what? I didn't want to disappoint
you.
Isn't that weird? I didn't want you to think, Oh well, Hannah's a lost cause. So I stuck with it. Four pounds!"

     Visions of Alan Scadudo danced in her head.

     "But now we have to figure out what
your
problem is," she said, calming down. "I didn't feel shaky or light-headed even once; in fact, I've never felt better. What if you do have diabetes?"

     "Then I'll take care of it. You had no problems at all?"

     "Oh well, my mother's mad at me," Hannah said. "She takes my dieting as a personal insult because we have the same body, the same dumpy shape. She figures if I don't love my body, then I clearly don't love hers. I'm insulting her somehow."

     She scanned Dr. Hehr's second-week menu and said, "Cabbage Tuesday and Thursday night again, I see. All you can eat. Big deal. We're allowed one slice of wheat bread a day now. That's good. Still a lot of fruit, though." She looked at Philippa. "What are you going to do about this?"

     "Oh, I'll stay with it. Eat more vegetables and cut back on fruit. Maybe the blood test will turn something up."

     That night Philippa took out her little cloth-bound book, the one she had wanted to give to Rhys in the hope that the wisdom it contained would save him, and she wrote, "No one is fat on purpose."

     She then wrote about the other clinic members, whom she referred to as "sisters" in the little book. She started the list with Shirley and her sexual fears, and Mrs. Percy, who was hoping to ease her arthritis with weight loss, and Cassie Marie, who had debilitating cramps. She added Rhonda, a switchboard operator who wanted to look good for her daughter's wedding so she wouldn't embarrass her; Millie Fink, the pet shop owner, who at fifty had just gotten divorced and was anxious to date again; Thelma, who thought her husband was cheating on her; and the very morose Dottie, who, after much encouragement from the others, made the painful confession that her husband hadn't touched her in years.

     As she sat back and contemplated the list, barely aware of the "Dragnet" theme coming up through the floor from Mrs. Chadwick's living room, Philippa realized that she was beginning to understand some of the hidden and more serious ramifications of being overweight. Within the four plain walls of Dr. Hehr's waiting room, she had felt the currents of anger, fear, unhappiness, depression, and—worst of all—defeat.

     During the second week Philippa lost four pounds, and the unpleasant side effects, though still there, were greatly reduced. But when she went in
the following Saturday and tried to explain this to Dr. Hehr, he said, "Your blood tests have come back normal. You don't have diabetes, no hypoglycemia, no blood problems whatsoever. I want you to go back to eating the full fruit allowance."

     "But it makes me feel so awful, Doctor, I can hardly work. People at the drugstore have noticed."

     "It's all in your mind, little girl. Trust me. Your body will make the adjustment, and then you'll thank me for having been firm with you."

     But when Philippa stood on the scale in the waiting room the following Saturday, after a week of constant hunger, cravings, and feeling faint, she was crushed to see that she was only down a pound and a half.

     She joined the now familiar faces and, taking a seat, said, "Hi!" trying to hide her acute disappointment. "Are any of you having difficulties with this diet? I can't seem to handle the fruit. And I'm not losing as much as the rest of you are."

     "I'm sure having problems," Shirley said, casting a quick glance toward the nurse, who, at that moment, was weighing someone on the scale outside her window. "I can't eat grapefruit. It burns my stomach something awful. I told Dr. Hehr, but he said it was my imagination. So I eat it."

     "My problem is the spinach," said Cassie Marie, her orange and brown afghan nearly completed, she crocheted so fast. "I just can't digest it. But I eat it because we have to, don't we?"

     "You know what my real problem is," said a newcomer named Miriam, who weighed over three hundred pounds and who was needlepointing a canvas held on stretcher bars. She had been with the clinic for six weeks but had had to change her Thursday appointment to Saturdays. "I'm a nibbler. That's just the way I am. But we aren't allowed any snacks on this diet. Oh, I've lost twenty-nine pounds so far, and I'm thrilled with that. But it's so god-awful boring. And I do get hungry between meals."

     "But there are good things about this diet," Mrs. Percy said with optimism, her crippled hands in her lap. "We don't count calories. I've always hated that. It's such a bother."

     When Philippa met Hannah at Cut-Cost, her friend said she had lost another two pounds; she was ecstatic.

     "It's you!" she said. "It's
all
because of you! Philippa, you were right about the need for a policeman. I just wish it was going better for you."

     "It will," Philippa said, "just as soon as I figure out what my problem is."

     "By the way, one of my cousins, who is heavier than I am, would like to join us next week. Would you mind?"

     Philippa didn't mind at all. In fact, she was thinking of inviting two of her clinic "sisters" to the Cut-Cost get-together, Shirley and Cassie Marie. "I think they could do with a little outside help," she said with a smile.

     Philippa realized with dismay that the diet had become the focus of her life. All she could think about was food. In the past, before the diet, she would go all day without eating, without feeling hungry until late in the afternoon, by which time she could look forward to dinner. But now, by starting off with juice and a slice of toast and a piece of fruit, she was ravenous by nine o'clock in the morning. She would spend the next three hours focused on the cottage cheese and hard-boiled egg that was waiting for her in the refrigerator in the employees' lounge. Dinner was the best meal on Dr. Hehr's diet, because he allowed six ounces of meat—he always specified what kind of meat, such as a lamb chop one day, hamburger the next—and unlimited amounts of vegetables. Philippa found herself taking advantage of those unlimited vegetables, stretching the meal out over the evening, nibbling on carrots and green beans while she studied and did homework.

     Hannah brought her cousin to the next Cut-Cost lunch, and three of the obesity clinic patients came with Philippa. They had to take the biggest booth, and then it was a squeeze. They shared secrets and confidences and left declaring that they felt a lot better than whenever they left Dr. Hehr. By the following week, all eight of Philippa's clinic sisters wanted to follow her to Cut-Cost, and Hannah's cousin, who had started the diet and lost three encouraging pounds, brought two friends. They had to move the lunch meeting to Denny's down the street, where individual tables could be put together to accommodate the large group. Hannah volunteered to type up the menus for those who didn't go to the clinic, because she had access to a good electric typewriter at work.