150 Pounds (4 page)

Someone booed her, but she ignored it, continuing with her facts: “There’s a great book out there called
The Fattening of America
. Its authors cite that over the past three decades, only
decades,
American obesity rates have more than doubled. It accounts for ninety-three billion dollars in health bills a year. So you can boo me all you want. The numbers speak for themselves.”

“Are you okay, honey?” Oprah asked Shoshana. “I could see that might not have been something you were ready to talk about on national television.”

She’d done CPR on him, and how odd it had been to put her mouth on top of her own father’s gummy white lips. She’d put one hand over the other, pumping on his huge chest she’d pressed her face against so many times as a child when he’d give her a bear hug. One of his eyes was half open and it terrified her, like a monster in a horror movie. She’d dripped tears on his face, finally screaming, “Help!” over and over again until her mother ran outside, the screen door flapping and slamming behind her. She had been in the middle of baking a cherry pie and had flour on her hands and an apron which scattered like confetti as she ran toward her husband and daughter. “Oh, Bill!” she’d screamed.

“Yes, I’m fine, thank you.” She’d finally found her voice. She tried to conjure up her calming image.
Palm tree waving in the wind …
Oh, to hell with it. God! Why was she such a wimp? She wished she had something on Alexis, something to trip her up and expose her. But she had nothing, nada, zilch. She wasn’t really much of an arguer anyway, had always hated fighting and avoided it at all costs. Combine that with her nervousness about being on TV and she was lucky she’d managed to get out two words up here.

Oprah was a professional and knew when it was time to wrap things up. “We’re going to go to commercial. When we get back we’ll have our resident personal financial consultant, the wonderful Suze Orman, back to help us curb those shopping sprees.” She leaned forward toward her audience, a twinkle in her eye. “I’m going to hide my checkbook under my seat, just in case she tells me I’ve been spending too much. I suggest you do the same! We’ll be right back!”

The cameras panned away. Alexis turned toward Oprah. “I’ve always wanted to know what happens when you go to commercial,” she said, as if nothing were odd, as if she hadn’t just struck a blow to Shoshana.

Oprah smiled at both her guests. “Thank you for coming on the show, ladies, my assistant will see you back to your families.” It had been a good segment, having these two bloggers on. Her producer had suggested it, and she’d been glad to implement both the popularity of weight blogs and women’s issues at the same time. She’d thought Alexis had been the perfect villain and Shoshana the hero. Shows didn’t always work out this smoothly, but today had. Oprah had known the information about the girl’s father, she had excellent researchers on her staff, but she’d chosen not to use it, and wasn’t sure how she felt about Alexis doing so. On the one hand it created tension, which always makes for good TV, but she wished Alexis hadn’t brought up Shoshana’s father’s death; it obviously had been devastating for her. She’d clammed up ever since. And clamming up made for very bad TV.

A woman wearing black jeans, a blue button-down shirt, and a Yankees baseball cap approached the stage. A large black apronlike belt was strapped around her middle, and she began touching up Oprah’s makeup, quickly taking out brushes and an eyelash curler. “How’s your niece doing?” Oprah asked the woman. Shoshana and Alexis didn’t get a chance to hear the specifics of how this particular child was feeling as the same skinny guy with the clipboard and headphones who had been with them in the green room was now offering his hand to both girls, and Shoshana accepted, feeling the soft material of the couch beneath her palms as she stood up.

Emily and her mother were waiting in the green room. They arranged happy looks on their faces for Shoshana’s benefit. When they saw their daughter and sister walk down the hall, they squealed and ran to her, covering her with kisses.

“You were amazing!” Emily yelled, hugging Shoshana so hard she nearly fell over. Shoshana put her face in her sister’s neck and inhaled her original scent of patchouli oil and strawberry bubble gum. Emily’s eyes flashed as Shoshana realized she was glaring at Alexis, who was retrieving her purse from a small locker. She sat down on a couch and changed into much higher heels.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Emily spat from across the tiny room. “You obviously have some serious mental issues.”

“Em, shush,” her mother said, embarrassed. She hated conflict, like Shoshana. But Emily hadn’t traveled around the world as a roadie for the Dropkick Murphys or tattooed half of Manhattan to let some horrible woman show her big sister up on TV.

“Rumor has it my sister’s blog has twice the readers yours does,” she spat at Alexis, who was still struggling with the strap of her flashy Miu Miu pumps. She had a Hello Kitty Band-Aid wrapped around her heel.

“Close,” Alexis said calmly. “She has five million, I have three. And I read her blog every day. I’m a big fan of her writing, it’s smart and witty.”

Emily was momentarily silenced. “Well, whatever,” she said finally. “That was still a dirty move to bring up our father. Obviously you don’t have any family values or else you would never have mentioned his death just to prove a point.”

Shoshana and her mother were both beet-red by now. They held Emily by each arm and tried to escort her out of the room, so they could get back to the Four Seasons and rest before their flight back to New Jersey in the morning.

Alexis walked right up to Emily and looked her in the eye. “I’m sorry you feel that way, but I felt it pertinent to mention that although fun to read, your sister runs a dangerous blog that suggests unhealthy ways for young women to live. Accepting yourself as fat is an unhealthy notion. I did not bring up your dad to upset any of you, but because it was important information for Shoshana’s readers to know, and she doesn’t ever talk about it on
Fat and Fabulous.
”

Emily, Shoshana, and her mother stared at this tiny, thin woman with that fashionable clothing and sad face. Shoshana held on to her mother and sister, her hemp purse held tight against her frame. She felt a white-hot rage, and, being a good-natured, friendly girl, it was hard for her to tell anyone off. She finally came up with a comeback, but her voice shook: “I feel sorry for you, really. You seem very unhappy.”

Alexis opened her mouth, her expression pained, and held out her arm as if to ask them to hear her out, but the three Weiner women turned and sashayed out of Oprah’s studio, arms entwined, hips swinging. They signed out with security, thanked everyone on set, and were whisked into a limo parked directly outside. The driver had a menorah stuck with suction cups to his dashboard, which made Shoshana smile. She watched the city fly by outside her window, people walking through gray slush, clutching shopping bags, their faces flushed red with the cold. Stores had holiday lights strung throughout, giving the streets a cheery glow. Hanukkah had passed last week, and Christmas was just around the corner. She had to remember to buy gifts for her roommates. Maybe before her flight in the morning.

As the doorman greeted her and her family, Shoshana realized suddenly that she was exhausted. “Being a superstar is tiring,” she said once they’d passed the ornate lobby in a flash of sound and faces, taken the elevator to their room, and flopped onto the gigantic feather bed. It was late, and outside her window were star-shaped ice crystals. A soft powder of snow had fallen, bathing the room in a periwinkle light. There was laughter on the sidewalk, someone ringing a bell for holiday collections, the honking of the street bus.

Emily jumped into bed beside her, and their mother wearily sat down in the middle of both daughters.

“Let’s order ridiculously expensive lobsters off the room service menu and watch cheesy porn,” Emily squealed.

“Emily, don’t be crass,” Pam said, getting up and changing into pretty pink flowery pajamas. “Besides, I don’t want to put it on the hotel room’s bill; I know Oprah is paying for it.”

“Mom, she’s like a zillionaire,” Emily said, rolling her eyes. “Besides, her assistant told me to when we were backstage. I believe her exact words were, ‘Live it up in Chicago!’”

“And lest we forget, it’s not every day we get to stay in the Four Seasons,” Shoshana said, pinching Emily on her large behind. In retaliation, her sister slapped at her hand.

Pam saw she was up against a losing battle. “Well, all right, but
just
the dinner, girls. Not the, er … other thing.” Pam and her husband had dutifully saved all their earnings, socking money away for their girls’ educations. She rarely spent money, and
never
on herself. When her husband had been alive he’d take her to dinner for their anniversary and she’d feel so guilty about the cost of the food she would debate between three possible menu items for nearly fifteen minutes while the waiter stood there patiently. Bob used to tease her that her autobiography would someday be titled
I Should Have Had the Fish.
She smiled now, remembering.

Emily was working the sleek white phone by the bedside. “I’ll have three lobsters, two bottles of Dom Pérignon, and a bowl of chocolate-covered strawberries,” she trilled.

“Emily Anne!” her mother hissed, mortified.

Shoshana laughed and leaned back against the plush bedding. She reached into her pink laptop case and pulled out her computer, plumping up some pillows behind her back and pressing the power switch. One of her many girlfriends, Nancy, was updating posts on her blog while she was away. Shoshana had written about a recent
New York Times
story about how stored fat could help safeguard against certain diseases, and she wanted to check if she’d gotten a lot of responses. She watched her mother and sister bicker over whether to watch
Eclipse
or
The Switch
. After a few minutes the bellhop came with the food on a silver tray, and left after Emily flirted with him, turning his cheeks pink.

Shoshana scrolled through the message boards on
Fat and Fabulous.
The usual, from
Skinny Chick
readers, who thought Shoshana was spreading a “dangerous message,” but for the most part the results were overwhelmingly positive. She even saw that a doctor, a man from a hospital in Boston with the screen name “Dr. Bill,” had posted that he thought the article should be republished in a medical journal he ran. Having more positive comments than negative always made for a good day. She thought briefly of Alexis, who was probably on a flight home now or maybe alone in her hotel room eating carrot sticks, and whether she suffered from the same torture of reading through her message boards daily and being besieged with negative posts. The girl struck Shoshana as the cliché tragic case, the popular girl with a hidden resentment for other women and who therefore hid behind her eat-healthy blog to spew hatred for anyone different. But what she couldn’t shake was the feeling that Alexis hated
herself
more than anyone else.

She was interrupted in her thoughts by a flying pillow that bounced off her head. “Come on, Shoshana, can’t you turn that thing off for one fucking day?” Emily yelled, as she drank champagne straight from the bottle.

“Language!” Pam exclaimed.

“Sorry, Mom.”

“But I agree with your sister, Shosh. Let’s have some girl time. You’ve done enough today to raise women’s spirits.”

“Okay, you both are right. I’ll sign off. Looks like a lot of readers are going to watch the
Oprah
segment in the morning; I just hope they don’t think I was a total douche.”

“What’s a douche?” Pam asked.

“It’s a feminine hygiene product,” Emily responded dryly.

“Emily! I know that,” Pam said, exasperated. “Your sister was using it in a different context.”

Shoshana giggled.

“Anyway, sis, you were fabulous,” Emily said.

“Fat and Fabulous,” Pam chimed in, giving her oldest daughter a pinch on the cheek.

Sandwiched between her mother and sister, eating lobster off a plate with a gold ring around it, Shoshana still could not shake her thoughts about Alexis. She may have beat her in the argument on
Oprah,
but wherever she was tonight, she couldn’t be as happy as Shoshana felt right now with her mother and sister, her two best friends in the world.