Page 12 of The Husband Diet
I created my ‘wear it with your baggy jeans’ look. It didn’t catch on at school, though. Could you imagine me in an enormous lilac off-the-shoulder dress that ‘tapered’ down the hips? No, I didn’t think so either, unless you figured me as one of the dancing hippos in Disney’sFantasia.
Why was it so difficult for Marcy to understand that not every woman could dress and look like a model? That for some people it was difficult even to look decent? She’d been born gorgeous. I hadn’t. Why couldn’t she just chill out and concentrate on my good qualities, like my excellent communication and organizational skills? The fact that I was a great cook, a great manager and a very hands-on mom. All qualities she’d never had.
And now, at almost thirty-five, I felt like the unhappy high-school girl again. Was this my life, running around in ever-decreasing, sad circles? Was there to be no pleasure whatsoever in my life? Never, ever again?
I turned in my seat to call my head waiter. ‘Mitch, can you have someone bring me the dessert cart, please?’
‘Of course, Mrs. Lowenstein.’
Marcy’s mouth fell open. ‘Dessert? Aren’t you full enough?’
I looked at her, all dolled up and daintily wiping her mouth. No. I’d never be full, because the emptiness inside me went miles deep. Nothing could sate my hunger for love, my need to feel accepted even if I didn’t look like Judy or didn’t, not even at ten years of age, fit into Marcy’s clothes. I know because I’d tried playing dress-up in her closet once when I was a little girl and had gone back to my room heartbroken. Not even her shoes had fit me.
As she graciously declined the cannoli, the Sachertorte and even the almond parfait, I motioned to Mitch for a slice of tiramisu. Spoonful after spoonful, I could already feel the joy and satisfaction spreading inside me, dissolving Ira’s unkind words.
Marcy leaned in. ‘I’m talking life-changing surgery to you and you eat life-threatening foods?’ she hissed. ‘Erica, what is the matter with you? Have you got a death wish?’
And then it struck me that if Marcy hadn’t always been so judgmental, making me feel inadequate and blubbery, I might have liked myself a little more, for both Ira and myself. Just enough not to feel ugly or, worse, dull. And then I wouldn’t have felt so empty all the time and wouldn’t need to comfort-eat to compensate for the pain inside me. If I’d had my mother’s life and looks, I’d have been happy. But if I’d simply had her love and support, I’d have been serene and self-accepting.
Most of all, if I could better my life and move to Tuscany (where I’d chase my laughing children across the golden fields), I wouldn’t have to sit here and listen to this.
But here I was for now, an overweight, under-loved, struggling career woman-slash-housewife forever trying to finish tasks and keeping on top of it all. Ever trying to lose weight with three-week diets (I couldn’t manage for longer) that only made me fatter than before I’d started.
As I sat there and silently ate my tiramisu under Marcy’s resigned eyes, I realized that if it hadn’t been for Warren’s birth, Ira wouldn’t have proposed to me in that snowy, slippery backyard thirteen years ago.
And now with one unkind word, I’d been catapulted back to my teenage years, once again conscious of my heavy bum and heavy dark clothes. OK. I was obese. Got it. Now what was I going to do with that information? What was I going to do with all the emotions bubbling and festering, like an infected wound, inside me? With the fear of failing my diet? The anxiety, the humiliation of remaining me when everyone else expected me to look like a model?
And now, after two kids, with years of not being able to get to the gym and eating up everything from the kids’ plates as well as mine, here I was, a product of my own unhappy choices. You can’t imagine what a big part frustration played. You drink a glass of water and you instantly start bloating, bloating, bloating until you start to leaven like bread. Then one horrible morning, you look down and can’t see your feet anymore. And when you search your once pretty face in the mirror, you see two of them, or at least one the size of two.
I desperately looked into myself as I swallowed my dessert and my tears so Marcy wouldn’t see, and delved for the me I once met briefly fifty kilos ago. The one who had lured Josh Irons onto a moonlit English beach and driven all those British boys mad. The one who, albeit only for a few years, fit into the coolest clothes. The one with the awesome butt. And the confidence of a lioness.
Now, I was a big, fat clawless cat, meekly wandering through the wilderness, trying to get to the other side unscathed, all the while graceful antelope, sleek wolves, jackals and hyenas were passing me and turning away in scorn. I was an unwanted stray in the jungle of my own life.
AndIra wasn’t having sex with me until I fit on his lap without the two of us bowling over. How could the world want you if your own husband didn’t accept you? How could your man love you if you recoiled in horror at the sight of yourself?
Plus, lately I was hungrier than ever because Ira would watch me like a hawk at dinner, scowling if I ever went for a second piece of bread or put too much on my plate. But he heaped his up to the ceiling, because he was skinny. The truth was he had skinny arms and legs and bony shoulders (how come I’d never noticed that before?), and was actually much shorter than I thought.
And so because I had this immense emptiness to fill, when the coast was clear, I’d sneak a snack between doing the dishes and the laundry, gobbling it down in one quick gulp lest he figured me out. Which of course he almost always did. His radar would bleep and he’d sneak up behind me and tap me on my shoulder, growling his usual, ‘Christ, you’re not eating again, are you?’ Ever tried swallowing when someone’s just scared the crap out of you?
For a family of no specific religion, Christ had made many an appearance in our house, and in every room, too. In the bathroom: ‘Jesus Christ, Erica, why don’t you step on that scale and face reality?’ In the living room: ‘Jesus Christ, Erica, why don’t you move over? You’re taking up the whole sofa!’ And finally in the bedroom: ‘Jesus Christ, you’re snoring again!’
At the beginning of my diets, I was always a loose twenty, meaning my jeans would fit comfortably. After a stint of dieting, I’d lose some weight, even to the point that I needed a belt, and then, boom – I shot right back up andoversize twenty. Which meant my clothes became so tight they cut into my waist and stretched across my boobs, buttons threatening to pop, leaving unsightly gaps.
‘By the way, are you wearing a nude-colored bra again?’ Marcy said. ‘Why are you trying your best to look like Mrs. Doubtfire? What about the sheer pleasure of being sexy and beautiful? It’s important to a woman, but you don’t understand because…’ Marcy closed her mouth and took another swig of her Martini.
I looked at her expectantly. ‘What? Because I’ve never been sexy and beautiful?’
And down she went with the ‘I never said thats’ and ‘Why do you have to put words in my mouths?’
All my life I’d had to listen to Marcy praising Judy’s mermaid figure and how all the boys went gaga over her and how proud she was of her. Never mind that Judy went through guys like an Eskimo through snow and that she’d have been a high school dropout if I hadn’t helped her through that year she came home pregnant. Never mind that prior to that, Judy had been coming and going every evening, and that for her,everynight was date night. I couldn’t even get a friend to come over on a Friday night because they were all busy out with boys as if the world were ending and they didn’t want to die virgins.
Was this what it had boiled down to? My own family not accepting me because of the way I looked? Was losing weight really all it would take to make my own mother and my husband love me?
5
Cuts Like a Knife
So at the tender age of thirty-four and because I wanted to be happy again (and possibly have another husband-induced orgasm if I wasn’t asking for too much), I accepted it was time. After twelve years of marriage to Ira, and with a great deal of ‘support’ from my mother, I’d been bullied, badgered and finally blackmailed into it.
