When in Doubt, Add Butter (22 page)

“Maybe. But you’re looking at the negatives instead of the positives, and believe me, if you look at the negatives, you’re going to see plenty. It’s like statistics that can prove whatever theory you want. So turn it around a little.”

“How?”

“You’re still working for her, right?”

“Incredibly, yes.” I couldn’t quit. I would have loved to, but I couldn’t.

“So watch her. Be aware that she might be behind this and watch for a vulnerability and then”—she flipped her palm in front of her—“turn it on her.”

She wasn’t entirely wrong. If Angela tipped her hand, I could address this directly. “Good advice.”

She smiled and sat back. “Hey, it’s how I make my living.”

“How long have you been doing that?” I asked her.

“What, being a shut-in, making money anonymously in front of the computer screen?”

I smiled. “Yes, that.”

“Since I was twenty. Ten years.”

It had never occurred to me to wonder how old she was, but the news that she was thirty somehow surprised me. She seemed older.

She must have read my thoughts in my eyes—and if anyone could, it would be her—because she said, “I know, you thought I was older. Most people do. I think it’s because I don’t have that youthful spring in my step.” She smiled, but I could tell she didn’t feel it.

“Is that why you started doing this? Because it was hard to get around?”

“Ah. No. Believe it or not, when I was twenty, I weighed a hundred thirty-three pounds.”

“Really?” I couldn’t mask the surprise in my voice. I wanted to ask what happened, but there wasn’t a way to do that without sounding incredibly rude.

“My mother was a rail, but my father was very heavy,” she said. “Still is. Nothing like me, though.” She gave an awkward shrug. “I was so determined to be like my mother that I dieted insanely in high school and college. Barely ate a thing. Almost no nutrition, I realize now. Celery isn’t exactly a powerhouse of vitamins.”

“That’s for sure.”

“So I got no exercise. But I was thin enough to model for the store. Until I ‘ballooned’ to a hundred and thirty-five pounds, that is. Then I looked like a blimp next to the other models and
plus size
wasn’t cool in those days. On the runway or on the street. My boyfriend dumped me, and I guess that’s when I just stopped caring.”

She sounded so defeated, it broke my heart.

“A hundred and thirty-five on your frame is nothing,” I said. “How tall are you?”

“Five eight and a half.” She nodded. “I see now just how ridiculous it was that I bought in to that, but at the time, it was very painful. Obviously, it’s more painful now.…” She looked down at her form, sitting on the sofa like an unsteady pile of tires.

I won’t pretend for a moment that I knew how she felt or how hard it really was for her, but I have struggled with weight in my own way as well. After the baby was born when I was eighteen, my body changed in a lot of ways. In many ways, it never came back. To this day, I have the faint white road map on my hips and lower abdomen that shows the astute observer exactly where I’ve been in my life.

After the baby, like Willa, I was vigilant about diet and exercise in college, and like Willa, I had experienced the draining effects of lack of fuel in the body.

Unlike Willa, I kept it up for years, fighting my body’s pleas for nutrition. It wasn’t until I stopped working in the corporate world and started cooking that I actually developed a healthier relationship with food.

And my body.

Now my body conforms to its natural state: curvy, with a narrow waist but hips and boobs and upper arms that no one would ever mistake for a twelve-year-old boy’s (the ideal I had aspired to for so long). Once, I would have considered this body hideously fat. I would have been horrified at the prospect of “letting myself go” to this degree.

Now I’m horrified that I ever thought that way.

And I was looking at a dramatic illustration of how badly that line of thinking could potentially go.

“Do you know what this feels like?” she asked suddenly. “It’s like being trapped inside a tiny, claustrophobic place.” She looked at me, and I saw she was crying openly.

But I was careful not to invade her space. This felt like an important revelation, and I didn’t want to interrupt it. “What do you mean?”

“This body, which must look so enormous to you from the outside, feels like something wrapped tightly around my real body, keeping me from moving, from running, from swimming. From driving a car, from flying in an airplane, from even leaving the house.” Her voice trailed off. “People look at me, I know this, they look at me and imagine me to be some lazy pig who derives enormous pleasure from consuming disgusting amounts of unhealthy food. That’s just not true. I can think of no greater pleasure than”—she thought for a moment—“to be able to take the steps to the top of the Washington Monument as fast as a child. And not die.”

“There’s not a reason in the world you can’t get there,” I said. “How much weight have you lost in the past two weeks, since you first started being vigilant about the diet?”

“Twelve pounds.”

I gasped. “Are you
kidding
? That’s
great
!”

She snorted. “It’s like throwing two deck chairs off the
Queen Mary.
Statistically insignificant.”

“It’s fantastic,” I said firmly. “And you’re doing it in a healthy,
permanent
way.”

“As long as I can afford you!”

“Well, I’m not looking to lose any more work, but the truth is, you could do what I’m doing. Easily.”

“I doubt that!”

“No, really. I’ll teach you. Come on.”

“Nooo, no. I’m the one who can’t be trusted to have ingredients in the house, remember?”

“That’s why you need to learn to buy the
right
ingredients.”

“I don’t know.…”

“I do.” I went to her and put a hand out to help her off the sofa. “We’ll start now.”

And thus, I began my first cooking lesson.

I had to be mindful of the fact that there would come a time, in about seven months, when I would have to take some time off, and I didn’t want to leave Willa—who by then I hoped would have made tremendous progress—alone to fend for herself.

I didn’t want to make myself obsolete, of course. That was the danger of teaching a person to fish, so to speak, instead of just preparing a nice thick swordfish steak with tropical salsa and rice pilaf.

But it was a chance I had to take.

Chapter 17

“I don’t care what Angela’s saying or doing,” Penny said, “you can’t afford to be worrying about this right now.”

And there it was.

No, it wasn’t just me I had to think about. I had run into this
exact
problem when I was a teenager and too young to reasonably have an answer to it, but I never, ever thought I’d come up against it again. And I had spent an adult lifetime being
really
vigilant in order
not
to run into this again.

Yet here I was.

A more woo-woo person than I might have called it fate.

I, on the other hand, just called it bad luck. I had stolen condoms from my friend’s bedside table drawer without checking the label, the expiration date, or even to see if they were novelty items made from chewing gum. In short, I’d told myself I was being responsible when, in fact, I was masquerading for my own sexual convenience.

Not that I thought I “deserved” the result as a consequence for being irresponsible or something. I had been completely confident I was being responsible. At the time, additional vigilance hadn’t seemed necessary.

Hindsight, of course, was 20/20.

Now I had to keep my eyes open.

“I think you need to expand your horizons,” Penny said. “Think about working new places so that when one goes down, it doesn’t mean the end of your career.”

I nodded and reached for a cookie. She started buying those Danish butter cookies from Costco right when they started selling them around Halloween, and I’d probably already put on two pounds from them in the past three weeks.

Or from something.

“I have been,” I told her. “It’s not so easy, though. I’m a luxury in a bad economy.”

She smiled. “Oh, honey, you’re a luxury in
any
economy!”

“Right. This has always been my problem.”

“It’s always been your
choice
! You took a huge chance leaving the corporate world, and it paid off! You have a wonderful job, you work for yourself, and all of that took courage most people don’t have! Yes, it’s hard sometimes, like now, but you’re living your dream.”

As was so often the case lately, my eyes teared up. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be complaining.”

She shrugged and took a cookie. “I don’t know, you’ve got plenty to complain about, too!”

I had to laugh. “Great.”

A moment passed, and then Penny grew serious and said, “Have you thought about finding him?”

Mack. “Not much.”

“
Not much
because you don’t intend to or because you don’t think you can or what?”

Another cookie. “
Not much,
meaning I’ve thought about it a ton and have seriously wondered if there’s karmic significance to the fact that it was a big clusterfuck when I ran into him at the grocery store.”

“Karmic significance?”

“Like, maybe I’m not supposed to be with him. He was physically significant, obviously, but maybe not spiritually.”

She looked at me, aghast. “Are you joking? That is the dumbest thing I ever heard!”

“I would think you, of all people, with your belief in psychics and signs and fate and all of that, would be on board with this.”

“Okay, you want signs and fate? You met a stranger in a bar, had an instant attraction to him, took
more than reasonable
precautions to stay safe, yet ended up pregnant anyway. Tell me that’s not meant to be!”

“Of course, I could argue with some of that.”

“Of course you could, but it wouldn’t ring as true as what I just said. This was meant to be. There is no question.”

“Then what about the other pregnancy? Was that
meant to be
as well?”

“Of course.”

“Then fate isn’t always very nice.” Tears filled my eyes and burned down my cheeks.

“No,” she agreed, handing me a box of Kleenex from the table next to her. “It isn’t.” She rested her hand on her belly and moved her thumb along it thoughtfully. “But most of the time, I think fate just isn’t always very
clear.
So far, it’s not clear for you, but it will be.”

I wanted that to be true. I really, really wanted it to be true. But I was deeply afraid that it wasn’t. That this was all a mistake or a glitch that would become the exact nightmare for the child I was carrying now that I had worried the last time would be for the child I gave up.

Just the thought made me cringe. I had gotten pregnant by accident not once but
twice
in my life. From the outside, that made me look like an absolute idiot.

What business did someone like me have raising a child?

“I’m afraid,” I said.

“Of what?”

“Of not being good enough.”

“We all are.” She looked down and gave a dry spike of a laugh, but I saw her swipe a tear from her eye. “Every single day. You just have to do your best.”

Charlotte came into the living room then, wearing bright little pajamas that had cartoon cowgirls and horses all over them. Life looked so easy for those cowgirls. “Mommy?”

“Yes, honey?” Penny put out her hand, and I gave her the box of Kleenex back. She dabbed at her eyes. “What are you still doing up, Char?”

“I thought I heard Gemma.” She looked at me shyly through the thick glasses she wore.

I held out my arms, and she threw herself into them, sitting on my lap. The fabric was warm, and just a little pilled, and I remembered
exactly
what those kinds of pajamas felt like to wear.

It was unexpectedly poignant.

I gave her a squeeze. “I’m sorry I didn’t go in and say hi, but I thought you were asleep.”

“As you’re
supposed
to be,” Penny said, falsely stern. I’d seen this before. She and Charlotte were pals, and many, many times Penny had kept Charlotte up watching old movies or playing board games.

A small hope surged in me. I’d spent a lot of time thinking about the potential negatives here, but I hadn’t really allowed myself the luxury of looking at the potential positives. The snuggle time, the cookie baking, the arts and crafts, the bedtime stories, the thrill of watching a person I already loved grow from wordless infant into whatever he or she would eventually be.

These thoughts didn’t come without melancholy, of course, and they never came without thoughts of the last pregnancy. Hopefully, that would change when this baby was born and the reality superseded the memory and imagination, and sadness if not regret, that had been brewing all these years.

“Good night, Gemma.” Charlotte threw her pipe cleaner arms around my neck and hugged me.

“Good night, baby.”

My eyes met Penny’s, and she nodded.

She knew.

Mother-to-mother, she knew I was struggling with the past I’d let go and the future I was facing now.

*   *   *

Absentmindedness. That was another thing I remembered from being pregnant. I had gone all the way to Mr. Tuesday’s to make his dinner, and I’d forgotten the key.

I stood at the door and rang the bell. No answer. Of course. So instead I sat down on the hall floor with my back against the wall and took out my phone to call him and find out if one of the neighbors might have a key, or the doorman, or someone.

As soon as I’d dialed, a man got off the elevator, his cell phone ringing.

A very familiar man.

“Mack!” His name exploded from my mouth before I could stop it. Then suddenly everything hit me. What was he doing here? He had lived here all along? Had I been strolling past his door this whole time, oblivious of the fact that he was right there behind it?

Then the heavier stuff set in. I was pregnant. My heart sank. I was pregnant.