Читать книгу The Divorce Diet - Ellen Hawley - Страница 8

DAY

3

Exercise: I wake up feeling like Thad whacked me on the head with a sledgehammer. Rosie’s crying. I check my skull for dents, then haul myself out of bed, pick Rosie up, and change her while she blows raspberries.

My diet book is waiting for me. It’s been waiting all night.

Do not undermine your own weight loss efforts, it says. When you’re tempted to eat something that isn’t on your meal plan, ask yourself: “Will eating this make me happy?”

I ask myself, Will anything make me happy?

It seems wiser not to answer this question.

For breakfast I’m due a quarter cup of high-fiber cereal, one cup of nonfat skim milk, and one banana.

Nonfat skim milk is nonfatter than plain old skim milk. When I drink it, the excess weight will leap off my body and attach itself to Thad, where no one will mind it because men don’t have to be thin. In an alternate reality, an improved version of myself is pouring a glass of it right this minute.

She might even drink it.

Breakfast: coffee, black.

Exercise: The coffee doesn’t make me happy. I admit that. Strictly speaking, though, I didn’t eat it, so it doesn’t count.

Besides, it’s nonfat skim coffee, black.

I chase Rosie’s mouth with a spoonful of baby cereal. I pretend to eat the spoonful of baby cereal. I say, “This is disgusting, kid. You should sue.”

When Thad grumbles into the kitchen complaining about his back, I snatch Rosie up and run to the bedroom, where I listen while Thad opens more cupboards than I’d touch if I were cooking a ten-course dinner for the queen.

Any queen.

How can he not know where things are in his own kitchen? Especially since it’ll go on being his kitchen once it’s stopped being mine. He’ll get the coffeepot too, and the Mikasa dishes and the pots and pans, the spatulas and the blender, and they’ll sit around gathering dust. Because he doesn’t cook, and I won’t have a kitchen to put them in.

The thing is, I don’t want some other kitchen to put them in. I want this kitchen. If he gets the house, I should at least get the kitchen. I’ll disconnect the stove and refrigerator and haul them out to the curb where they’ll rust, just so Thad won’t have them.

He might not even notice they’re gone.

He leans in at the doorway.

“Maybe I should stay with a friend or something till you get yourself sorted out.”

I play with Rosie’s fingers.

“That’s okay. I’ll go by and talk to my mother at lunchtime if I have to.”

This is where, if he were smarter, he’d ask why I didn’t try that yesterday. I have an impulse to explain anyway: A very small and dedicated band of terrorists has cut the phone lines to every member of my family. Why? Well, obviously because my family stands for Good Things and the papers tell us every day that terrorists don’t like that. His family wasn’t affected. Does this tell you anything?

Until now, I never thought of Thad as not-smart. I watch him walk out the door and remember that when I first saw him I told my roommate, “He’s got a nice little butt.” He also had a nice little suit, but I didn’t want to sound like that mattered to me. I was cooking underground dinners then—strangers were paying actual money for the privilege of eating in our apartment—and my roommate was serving them, and we were the cutting edge of the alternative dining experience. Or we thought we were, and we had a waiting list, so a decent number of people must have agreed. Enough cash walked through our door that I cut my hours at my real job to very part-time and cooked increasingly complicated dinners, riskier dinners, more beautiful dinners. I don’t know how long Thad waited for a chance to eat at the card table by our living room window, but he showed up with a group of friends one night and his way of flirting was to act like a human being instead of like testosterone in a suit, and the next morning he e-mailed to say how wonderful the meal had been and would I be offended if he asked me out?

I wouldn’t be. I liked him. And he had that nice little butt.

He still has a nice little butt, although I can’t remember why that seemed to matter, or when he stopped acting like a human being.

I call my mother and ask if I can meet her for lunch. She wants to know why.

“Maybe it’d just be nice if I met you for lunch?” I say.

She doesn’t sound convinced, but agrees anyway.

The plate of chicken bones is still on the living room floor. It wouldn’t cross Thad’s mind to pick it up because, after all, it’s not his. His blanket is still on the couch, and it wouldn’t cross his mind to pick that up either because, even if it is his, I do that sort of thing, which makes it invisible.

I leave both of them and carry Rosie to the basement so I can carry her and the diapers back up, and I fold the diapers. I play with Rosie and stare at the plate of chicken bones for a long time before I shove it across the floor so the blanket almost drips into it but doesn’t quite.

I drive to my mother’s office, where I wait while she shows Rosie off to everyone who works within a football field’s distance of her desk.

Lunch: ½ garlic bagel with light cream cheese, which unlike nonfat cream cheese is edible; skim milk; double chocolate chip brownie with coconut topping.

Exercise: My mother holds Rosie while they say “Ba ba ba” back and forth and look very pleased with each other.

“I’m leaving Thad,” I say when I can’t listen to one more “ba.”

“But why?”

“It’s not working,” I say.

“We’re not happy,” I say.

I’ve been catapulted back to my teens: She’s asking how my date went, and I would tell her absolutely anything except the truth. Even if I didn’t do anything worth lying about.

Has this woman ever heard of privacy?

Okay, I have no idea why I don’t tell her the truth, but I’d rather paint my butt blue and dance naked on the rooftop.

She tells me happiness is something two people build over time. She tells me about the time she almost left my father because he—

I stick my fingers in my ears.

“Mom, I don’t want to know this.”

My guru chooses right forgodsake now to whisper that I should consider my new way of eating as a physical, mental, and spiritual makeover.

Could you wait? I say. I can’t ignore both of you at the same time.

She waits. My mother’s mouth stops moving and I take my fingers out of my ears.

She tells me how much she loves me, even if I don’t believe it right now, and that she doesn’t want me to make a mistake I’ll regret for the rest of my life.

“I won’t,” I say. “I’m not.”

What I do regret is taking my fingers out of my ears.

“Can I move home for a while?” I say. “Just till I get on my feet again?”

My mother sighs.

“Would today be okay?” I ask.

On my way back to what’s about to be not my house, I stop at a liquor store and scrounge a carful of empty boxes.

I pack my clothes.

Snack: 1 slice of multigrain toast with 1 tablespoon nonfat strawberry jam imported from an exotic region of France.

Exercise: My guru is silent, so I take on her job as well as my own. I remind myself that snacking doesn’t have to make me fat.

Good, I say. I’m relieved to hear that.

I pack Rosie’s clothes.

Calories burned: as many as are in a slice of toast with imported strawberry jam. Plus one.

This is such good news that it calls for a snack. Which doesn’t have to make me fat.

Snack: 1 slice of multigrain toast with remaining chicken half and homemade garlic mayonnaise left from a few days ago that I’d have to either throw out or leave for Thad if I didn’t eat it myself, and I do hate to throw food away.

Exercise: I pack Rosie’s toys. I pack her cereal, the cold-pressed, single-estate extra-virgin olive oil imported from an obscure region of southern Italy, the vinegar made from organic raspberries grown in an obscure region of northern Minnesota, the nonfat chemical alternate-reality stuff grown in an obscure corner of a laboratory in Illinois that claims to be food and that I bought for my non-diet, which I’m going to continue because if I don’t I will have started it for Thad and I didn’t, so there. I pack my non-diet book and all my cookbooks and find a three-year-old birthday card from Thad stuck between a couple of them.

I remind myself what happens to women in fairy tales when they open things they shouldn’t, but we already know how well myself listens to advice, don’t we?

Myself opens it and reads the first line: “Dearest One.”

I burn the card in the sink.

I nurse Rosie and put her in the crib for a nap.

I turn on the Food Channel, ignore it, and write Thad a note: “I hope this is a temporary madness. I don’t want to make a permanent division of our household items, so I—”

The note has as much to do with me as the conversation Thad and I had on Day One. I don’t use words like madness and items.

I burn the note in the sink and write another one. Halfway through, I realize I’m writing the same words in almost the same order.

I burn it in the sink.

I pull the battery from the smoke detector.

I write, “I love you very much and I hope that—”

I burn the note in the sink.

I write, “I’m taking some of my stuff. I’ll get the rest later. If I’ve taken anything you want, let me know.”

I wash the ashes down the drain. With luck, they’ll plug it up forever.

No, I don’t mean that. I love this sink. I love every ashy inch of its drainpipe and don’t know how I’ll manage my life once I leave it behind.

I weep.

I sort my CDs from his and leave a stack marked, “Are these yours or mine?” on the coffee table. I pick up the plate of chicken bones and set it on the pillow.

I pack the baby-care books and leave everything else, including a really beautiful wooden salad bowl with matching tongs that Thad gave me for Christmas. He’ll see that I’ve left them and feel bad about what he’s done.

He’ll see that I’ve left them and won’t give a rip.

He won’t see them at all. They’re like the plate of chicken bones. They’re like me.

I set the battery from the smoke detector in the salad bowl and hope he burns to death as a punishment for not noticing.

I feel really bad about hoping that.

I turn off the TV and load the car. My car, I remind myself, registered in my name. I wake Rosie and look around one last time.

I drive to my parents’ house without weeping once. Except at the first corner, and that doesn’t count because it’s only a little bit and it’s not about Thad, it’s about the house. And the neighborhood. I love this neighborhood.

Dinner: my mother’s meat loaf; instant mashed potatoes; frozen peas and carrots, all in unmeasured amounts; off-brand diet soda.

Exercise: My father helps me pile boxes in my old room and I open a few of them while my mother plays with Rosie.

My mother comes in and sits on my chaste little single bed.

“What I don’t understand—” she says.

“You don’t have to understand,” I say. “We weren’t happy. Isn’t that enough?”

How was your date, Abigail?

Fine, Mom. We hung around the mall, then a spaceship landed and little green aliens carried him away screaming, so I don’t think I’ll be going out with him again.

“Well, if you think you’re going to find anyone better—”

“I don’t want to talk about it, okay? We weren’t happy, I moved out, and I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fine,” she says. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

She goes back to the living room and turns on the TV. I open more boxes and stare inside. Time passes. Or I assume it does. That’s what time usually does. At some point I notice that I’m still staring into the boxes and I tear myself away, walk into the living room, and plonk myself on my parents’ plaid couch.

Rosie says, “A ma ma ma ma,” and reaches out to me from my father’s lap.

I pick her up and she melts into me for about three seconds before she pushes away, reaches for my father, and says, “A ma ma ma ma.”

We watch the TV shows my parents choose—one on venomous snakes and one about mummification through the ages.

If I flipped over the cushion I’m sitting on, I’d see the hole my mother burned in it when she still smoked. I used to work my finger into it, thinking that if I made it big enough they’d buy a new couch and if I did it slowly enough they wouldn’t know it was me, but we don’t get rid of things in this family, we just flip them over and sit on them.

I feel mummified. And aged.

Not to mention venomous.

I wash Rosie, nurse Rosie, take her to bed with me, and lie in the dark.

I try to sleep.