Читать книгу The Divorce Diet - Ellen Hawley - Страница 9

DAY

4

Exercise: I lie in bed letting Rosie pull my hair until I hear my parents leave for work, then I haul myself up and change Rosie.

For breakfast, my diet book says to eat one ounce of cooked cereal, one tablespoon of raisins, and one cup of nonfat skim milk.

Breakfast: coffee, black; 2 spoonfuls of instant mashed potatoes, cold.

Exercise: With a spoon, I scrape cereal from around Rosie’s mouth. I ask, “Were you going to eat this?”

Snack: 1 spoonful of baby cereal.

Exercise: I drop my pj’s and Rosie’s sleeper on the floor. My bed’s still covered—more or less, since I haven’t bothered to make it—by the black chenille bedspread I begged my mother to buy me when I was in high school because I thought it was so sophisticated.

If I hadn’t been the kind of person who thought a bedspread could make her sophisticated, I might not have been impressed with Thad and his suit and I wouldn’t be separated and miserable right now. My problems are, therefore, the fault of this bedspread.

I roll it in a ball and stuff it in the back of the closet.

My invisible guru must have been hiding in there somewhere, because she makes a pronouncement:

Set a goal weight that’s realistic for your height and body type, then find a quiet moment during your day and visualize yourself at that weight, healthy and attractive—and thin.

Have you been paying attention to what’s going on around here? I ask.

She’s not good in discussions, though. I’ve noticed this before.

I take the poster of Johnny Depp off the wall and I fold it in quarters and put it in the wastepaper basket with all the respect due to a burial at sea. I try to visualize myself thinner but what I see instead is myself as I was in high school, when my life was going to be sooo much better than my parents’.

I look inside a couple of the boxes I brought and decide to unpack later, because I have something more important to do now: I walk to the bathroom, take my clothes off, and stand in front of my parents’ scale. I tap it with my toe and wait for 000.0 to appear. I wait for 000.0 to disappear.

I don’t step on the scale.

This is a sign: 000.0 is my goal weight. I visualize myself at that weight. I’m extremely attractive. There is nothing left to embarrass me.

I put my clothes back on and open my diet book.

For lunch I’m supposed to eat a “Skinny Minnie” sandwich. This is a low-calorie hot dog bun filled with half a cup of shredded zucchini and carrots, one slice of low-fat luncheon meat, and two ounces of shredded plastic, and topped with half a tablespoon of nonfat mayonnaise, half a tablespoon of nonfat plain yogurt, one set of quotation marks, and dashes of lemon juice, pepper, onion powder, and airplane glue. For dessert, I get one medium apple stem.

It’s odd, but I don’t feel hungry.

I play with Rosie. I burst into tears. I remind myself of all the ways Thad was less than perfect, but feel a gaping sense of loss anyway.

Lunch: remainder of the instant mashed potatoes, cold; 1 slice of individually wrapped, pasteurized, processed imitation cheese food; 1 fingerful of ketchup, scraped from the neck of the bottle.

Exercise: I nurse Rosie.

Calories burned: oh, thousands.

I turn on the TV, but discover that my parents don’t get the Food Channel, so I turn on the radio. Whitney Houston is singing about how she’ll always love somebody or other. I’m guessing he either just left her or is about to.

“Oh, get over him,” I tell her. “There’s plenty more fish in the toilet bowl.”

She won’t listen—we never do, somehow—so I turn off the radio and call my former neighbor so we can get the babies together for a playdate tomorrow even though they’re too young to actually play. They do seem to enjoy looking at each other. I forget to tell her I’m no longer her neighbor.

I shop for dinner using my credit card, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Thad’s credit card, with my name on the plastic and his on the bill, and I feel bad about using it, but worrying about my feelings is a luxury and I can’t afford luxuries just now. I’m broke, remember?

On the way home, I stop at a discount store and buy a jumbo pack of disposable diapers while Rosie screams in the cart.

I say, “If these are a problem for you, you’ll let me know, right?”

She says, “Of course I will, Mother, but if disposable diapers are easier for you, I don’t mind at all.”

Or something very much like that. It’s all in knowing how to interpret the vocalizations.

I drive to my parents’ house, unpack the groceries, and stare blankly around the kitchen.

Rosie whacks her plastic duck against the linoleum and I tear a chuck steak out of its package. I sear the meat until it purifies the kitchen of all unhappiness. That lasts for about a second. I add red wine, tomatoes, fresh rosemary, an onion that I don’t sauté first because my guru doesn’t approve of fat, and a can of defatted beef broth that the diet fairies left in the cupboard for me.

I inhale. If I can smell this, I’m alive.

Being alive is good. Everybody says so.

While the stew simmers, I pick Rosie up and wander into the bedroom. I unpack a few of Rosie’s sleepers, lose interest, and drop them on the floor.

I turn on the TV, flip channels, and turn off the TV. I put Rosie on the floor for a nap, since her crib’s at what is now Thad’s house.

In my old desk drawer I find a stack of test papers from high school. Except for math, my grades were good, and that depresses me. It meant I was going someplace, or everyone told me it did. Not back to my parents’ house; someplace real.

If I’m going to stay here, I have to get out of the habit of opening drawers. I throw the papers in the trash with the poster of Johnny Depp.

When I had my own house, I believed in recycling. I still believe in recycling, it’s just that I can’t do it right now.

I drift into the kitchen and stir the stew. I add potatoes, parsnips, carrots, and salt tears.

Will eating this make you happy? my guru wants to know.

For a minute, I tell her. Maybe even two. That’s the best I can expect right now.

Have you even looked at your meal plan? she says.

I look at my meal plan. I’m supposed to have “Day-at-the-Beach” salmon steak, which is half a cup of tomato juice mixed with half a tablespoon of lemon juice and a heaping tablespoon of sand, all poured over three ounces of salmon and baked.

What a pity the stew’s already cooking.

I close the book before I get to the side dishes.

I open cupboards to see what else the diet fairies have left for me, and I read the ingredient list on the instant stuffing, the instant potatoes, the instant soup. I call the cable company, claiming to be my mother, and arrange for my parents to receive the Food Channel. Her password is “passable.” Always. If they make her add numbers, she adds 13.

Adding the Food Channel means I’m staying forever, doesn’t it? I’ve moved in with my parents, and I’ll be fifteen until I die of old age and despair.

I stir the stew again. The smell reminds me that I’m alive.

Being alive is good. I instruct myself to remember that.

Eventually my parents get home.

Dinner: beef stew with root vegetables simmered in red wine; French bread with unsalted butter.

Exercise: My father says the unsalted butter tastes like hand cream.

“The good chefs all use it,” I say.

“I can’t see why.”

“Because it’s better.”

He gets the plastic tub of whipped imitation butter out of the refrigerator and greases his bread with it.

It’s his house. It’s his stomach. I keep my mouth shut.

The bowl that held my stew is empty. Did eating it make me happy? I can’t seem to remember. Are fifteen-year-olds ever happy?

Mostly not, but Rosie will be.

I tell my parents I’ll pay for the expanded cable service.

My father says, “With what?”

“I have a little money. Besides, I’m looking for work.”

I don’t mention the credit card. Teenagers are like that.

My mother says, “But I don’t understand why—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.

“Okay,” she says. “Don’t get huffy.”

“I’m not huffy.”

It’s all I can do not to flounce into my room yelling, “Why is everything always my fault?”

I nurse Rosie.

Snack: red wine, but really only the tiniest bit.

Exercise: I ask myself, Will drinking this make me happy?

You bet your sozzled ass it will.

I pair up Rosie’s socks and arrange them methodically in the top dresser drawer. I arrange the rest of our clothes methodically on the bedroom floor because they’ll be easier to find there and because whatever my younger self left in the lower drawers my current self doesn’t want to find. Then I wander into the living room to watch a TV special on Lizzie Borden, which my parents chose without, apparently, any sense of personal risk.

Or irony.

Or even oddity.

When it’s late enough that I can decently crawl into bed, I take Rosie with me and curl around her.

I try to sleep.