Page 10 of The Husband Diet
Paul looked at me, his eyes shining with what I knew was compassion, and sighed. ‘Alright, but only if you promise to leave him.’
‘Paul! All I want is a damn doughnut.’
‘And all I want is for you to be happy. Erica, you can’t go on like this. The kids can’t go on like this. You need to send him to hell once and for all.’
As if it were that easy. I remember the old Ira and our evenings together, having a quiet dinner and a chat on the sofa.
And very often, we’d take it from the sofa to the bedroom. Now, there was nothing much left to take anywhere. The person I’d become – although I kept a roof over his head and food in his belly – haddisappointedhim.
I hoped he was just going through a phase. Because I couldn’t stand it. And if I couldn’t stand by my man in his time of need, then we were toast. I’d promised to love and cherish him. For the sake of our marriage. For the sake of our children. I could deal with it. If I ran a leviathan like The Farthington, I should be able to do everything, including saving my marriage. Provided I still wanted to.
Because sometimes, and it was becoming more often than not, I wished I could just… wiggle my nose and make him disappear. Or at least make him change. But that wasn’t happening. He’d spoken his mind. The die had been cast. It was lose weight or lose him – live in Boston or go to Tuscany on my own. But I was no longer sure I wanted to play by his rules.
‘So, no doughnuts – are you’re saying Ira was right?’ I challenged.
Paul rolled his dark eyes. ‘It’s not your looks or your sex appeal I’m worried about. It’s your health.’
‘I’m perfectly fine,’ I assured.
‘You are now. But what about when you get older? A fit body is a successful body. And it houses a happy mind.’
A fit body houses a happy mind… Could he be right? Would I find happiness on the lower end of the bathroom scale? Would being lighter not only make me feel better, but also make me more satisfied about my life? Technically, yes. I’d look better and feel better. Was it really down to being slim again? Yes – I remembered the looks I got when I was thin and it felt great. It had empowered me.
There was no cartwheel I couldn’t (in my younger years – I haven’t tried lately) accomplish, no race I couldn’t win. I’d wake in the mornings thinking, wow! Not only do I not feel like shit anymore, but I also feel good! No headaches, no stomach aches, no backaches that would keep me twisting and turning in bed (thrashing like a pig on a spit, according to Ira). I’d have to grip the bars of our wrought-iron bed to be able to turn over, my back was so bad.
‘You’re starting to sound like my mother,’ I huffed. ‘How did we get from talking about your latest squeeze to me?’
Paul shrugged. ‘Because for the last few years you’ve been miserable – and Carl’s boring the crap out of me. I’m thinking of a way to get rid of him. Speaking of which, tell me again how you killed Ira last night,’ he giggled, suddenly more flippant, and I grinned despite myself.
It was a harmless game, really, but a real sanity-saver. I forgot all about the doughnut as pleasant images caressed my mind, and I brightened and stifled a giggle.
‘I hung him upside down to dry in the sun for days, like my nonna Silvia’s ham joints,’ I answered. ‘And when his carcass was ready, I made some real groovy leather bags.’
Paul’s eyes flashed. ‘That’s still too light a treatment for Ira.’
I don’t need to tell you that Ira and Paul weren’t bosom buddies. My husband wasn’t tolerant of anyone different from himself. It was a wonder he married me, an Italian Catholic, when his family had always hoped that one day, he’d meet a nice thin Jewish girl.
Ira tolerated Paul politely enough when he was around, but in the evening, he’d sniff the air and sigh. ‘I can tell by the smell of the cheap perfume that your gay friend’s been here again.’
Not even the fact that Paul was a respected freelance costume designer who traveled the world for his living (and whose butt had never seen a desk chair) could sway Ira.
‘Sunshine,’ Paul said, cupping my clenched jaw with his free hand and bringing me back to reality as we reached my front door without my realizing. ‘Instead of having these visions of murder, why don’t you just leave him already?’
Why? he kept asking. For two excellent reasons: one was twelve years old and the other eight.
‘I can’t. He’s my husband.’
‘What, you don’t think you could live without him? Please tell me that not even you are that masochistic?’ Paul begged.
Ira’s revelation of his lack of desire for me certainly put things in perspective. I was living with a man who didn’t find me attractive. How far were we from the end? Were we really at stage four and I was just in denial? Was it worth trying to save a marriage that Ira didn’t seem to care about anymore?
*
After dinner, Paul sat down with Maddy (did I mention I loved him and would marry him in a heartbeat?) and did their usual thing, drawing clothes for her paper dolls. She was becoming alarmingly similar to my mother, who was a fashion victim and the emptiest head on the planet if you didn’t count Maddy’s paper dolls.
At eight years old, she was so confident, so pretty.
Please, God. Make her as intelligent and grounded as she is pretty, and not an airhead like Marcy or my sister, Judy. Make her be a good wife and mother, if that’s what she wants, and spend time with her family. Make her be successful and happy with anything she wants to do.
