Autobiography of a Fat Bride (9 page)

I Think at Night It Flies

I
t’s 2
A
.
M
., and I’m sitting on my couch in the living room in the dark, wearing only a sweatshirt and my underwear. I have a stuffed, fleece alligator in my right hand, and am shaking it at the growling creature stalking my feet. Neither my husband nor I have had a full night’s sleep in a week.

It was completely our fault and we knew it. We bought into the dream, refinancing our patience and sanity to do it. When we spotted the puppy in a wet cage at the pound, she was soaked, crying, and shaking. As she licked our fingers through the wire, her coat dripping and matted, we knew we had to save her and take her home. After she had been spayed the next day, we went to retrieve her, and were presented with a sweet, lolling puppy and the words “Here’s your dog. Don’t wash her for ten days.”

“This is a good dog,” my husband said as we watched her sleep that night in her newly prepared wicker bed. We both marveled at how lucky we were to have such a calm, well-dispositioned puppy.

The next morning, however, my husband frantically woke me up. “I think there’s something wrong with that dog,” he said. “She’s showing symptoms I saw in
Old Yeller.
She keeps biting me and growling, I’m about to name her ‘Foamy’ and take her out to the barn to put her down.”

“That’s okay,” I said, getting out of bed. “She’s just coming around, getting used to us. All puppies bite and play.”

But when we entered the living room, it looked like a blizzard had struck. “This wasn’t here a minute ago,” my husband said, picking up a torn, shredded piece of toilet paper from the floor.

“It’s my fault,” I admitted. “I shouldn’t have left the roll on the coffee table.”

“Did you leave the Tootsie Rolls from Halloween out, too?” he asked, lifting up his foot, displaying the chocolate prize that had lodged between his toes.

“Do you want me to say yes,” I said slowly, “or tell you the truth that we didn’t have any left?”

That was when we realized that the puppy wasn’t GOOD when we brought her home, she was just SEDATED.

The commercials for Puppy Chow don’t show this part of dog babyhood on TV, I learned over the next couple of days. They don’t show that after spending forty bucks on puppy toys, her favorite playthings will actually consist of an empty toilet paper roll and a plastic tampon applicator she wrestled out of the box. They don’t show the puppy lunging for my ears like Mike Tyson, or her miraculously producing two sounds at the same time, a growl and a primal scream, like a Tibetan monk. They don’t show the already existing pets in the house ducking for cover under beds, in closets, and behind bathtubs, fearful that their private parts will be mutilated by puppy teeth, the only part of them she can reach. They don’t show that new puppy parents should always wear hiking boots, or face the wrath of those same teeth gnawing at their ankles like a paw stuck in a trap. They don’t show that she will try to claw her way to freedom via your recently refinished wood floors, or that you will smell doody everywhere, but won’t find it until it’s attached to you. They don’t show that she doesn’t even like Puppy Chow, and prefers to fish her meals out of the deposits left in the kitty box.

I think that someone should have the responsibility of telling you this before you get a new puppy, because people forget. It’s been eleven years since the last time I brought a fuzzy creature home, the same creature who is now a graying, chunky old lady that looks at me from behind the pillows on the couch with disgust out of her one good eye.

“How could you have been so stupid?” she seems to be saying to me. “I thought you guys were being ‘careful.’ I don’t know how this happened. I sleep at the foot of the bed and I’m with you ALL THE TIME. Now I’ve got this dog that wants to nurse on me, and I’m seventy-seven years old! Look at you, you’ve got a smashed Tootsie Roll stuck to your shoe.”

The cat’s sentiments were easily as hostile. “I hate you more now than I did yesterday” was the message he sent me. “I’m going to pee on something you just bought!”

They were right. We had lost complete control of our house, relinquished it to a three-pound hairball of terror that caused my husband to speculate aloud, “I think at night . . . IT FLIES.”

How were we supposed to know about the dangers? There certainly wasn’t a sign posted outside of her cage that read, “This puppy will cost you 742 hours of sleep, six fights with your spouse, the respect of your other pets, $3,000 to repair valuable antiques, and will think for a very long time that ‘no-no’ means ‘Good girl! Do it again!’ ”

After taking her to the vet and confirming that she was not rabid or an infant grizzly bear left at the pound by mistake, my husband decided to try his own method of reclaiming control.

“GRRRR! GRRRR!” he mimicked as he played with the puppy on the couch.

“I don’t think you should do that,” I snapped. “You’re teaching her to be vicious!”

“Don’t pick at your ankle scabs. The smell of fresh blood excites her,” he whispered back. “GRRRR! I’m teaching her that I’m in charge. I am the alpha dog!”

The puppy backed down for a minute, rolled onto her back, and grew quiet.

He looked up and smiled. “See?” he said.

“Well, then, I’m not going to bother making dinner,” I said. “The cat just had a bowel movement big enough for the both of you.”

“GRRRR,” he said, lunging for my ankle.

Sweet Ride

T
he key was gone.

It was GONE.

It had been looped around my finger the second before, and now it had vanished. I was in big, BIG trouble.

The first thing I did was leave my groceries in front of the checkout and I ran as fast as my two-ton legs would carry me.

Oh God, oh God, I kept thinking as I felt my fat, and particularly my two most prominent abdominal tubes, bounce up and down as I gathered all of the energy I had been storing for the past fifteen years precisely for an emergency just like this and RAN.

I ran out of the store like a quarterback, complete with noises. I didn’t really care. I just needed to know if I was going to live to see another day.

I ran into the parking lot, stopped short, and skimmed the horizon. Red roof, brown roof, truck roof. BING! Silver roof, black louvers on the back window of the 1984 300ZX, she’s safe.

I breathed a sigh of relief. She’s safe.

My mother’s car was SAFE.

I was already back in the store when I realized that although the car was still there—no one had stolen it—I still couldn’t get in it. The key was mysteriously gone. Vanished.

I have nightmares about things like this, stress dreams that cause me to wake up in the middle of the blackness, clawing at my own skin. In these dreams, I have my mom’s car, and I have eaten the key. Or I have fed it to my monkey-baby. Or have traded it for a fifteen-year-old Monte Carlo with a chain steering wheel and a barely clothed, abundantly endowed, and lust-absorbed Viking maiden painted on the hood.

It’s true. I hate that car.

Haaaaaaaaate it.

When I’m driving that car, I feel as if danger is all around me, ready to give me a big hug. I feel like I’m a target for every driver who didn’t make their last insurance payment. I feel like there is no safe place to park it, that as soon as I walk away, the battered door of a 1975 Plymouth will rip through the body of my mother’s car like a can of tuna. Every time I pull into my driveway, I pray that my foot correctly hits the brakes and not the gas, because I feel like I’m going to drive the Z right through my kitchen. I feel like a midget because it’s so low to the ground, and I basically have to roll out of it. And, worst of all, when I’m driving it, I feel like Stevie Nicks. I constantly find the words “Stand back, stand back,” “Chain, keep us together,” and “TUSK!” running through my head, and on more than one occasion, I’ve had to look into the rearview mirror to convince myself that I’m not wearing a gauze dress, or have something tied around my head or silver sprinkly things on my face.

I’m living the horror of the eighties all over again. The car is telling me to get my hair frosted, slap a snake bracelet around my bicep, do some speed, and date a guy with a bilevel.

I feel like that car makes me seventeen again, which is the exact age I was when my mother traded in her Country Squire station wagon and brought the Z home. My boyfriends would drop me off at home after a date, gasp, “Wow, dude, is that your car? The 300? Um, I’ve changed my mind and you are prettier than Andrea Zakalovas, after all. She only has a 280Z.”

I hate the Z.

My car, my little Honda Accord, is broken, and has been in the shop now, as of today, for ten days. When I realized I wasn’t getting it back, my parents offered to let me use the Z, and though I protested, though I told them that they’d probably get it back damaged, they gave me the key anyway.

I was distraught on the way home that day, so upset, I had to stop and get a Cherry Limeade at Sonic. I paid the girl with $1.29 in assorted change, and began to count it for her when she stopped me.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I trust you.”

Who? I thought as she towered five feet above me as I looked up at her basically from the curb. You mean ME?

Then I stopped myself from laughing. Take a good look, a voice inside my head mentioned.

I’m a midget driving a 1984 300ZX, it’s got 58,000 miles on it, and K-EZ is the only station the radio will get.

What’s not to trust?

What’s not to trust. My finger, from which the key to the Z had been hanging, is still empty. I’m mere seconds away from a full-fledged panic. I can’t find the key. It’s not in my purse, not in either of my pockets, not in my hand.

I’ve lost it.

I’m going to have to call my dad, call my dad and tell him I’ve lost the key to the car. I am in so much trouble.

I’m going to get yelled at.

Then I’ll get the silent treatment.

Then, I’ll get grounded.

I bet he’ll ground my husband, too.

Wait!! I have a husband. My dad can’t ground me, I have a husband! I don’t live at home anymore, and he’s too scared of my neighborhood to drive down there and make sure I stay in the house!

Thank God I’m too old to get smacked. I became old enough last year that it ceased being discipline and is now considered felony assault.

“Ma’am! Ma’am!” I hear a small voice cry from behind me, and then I see it. Looped around the cashier’s forefinger is a yellow neon-colored number one, the key to the Z hanging limply from it.

I gasp with relief. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I repeat over and over to her, as I pull out my own set of keys and hook the one to the Z onto them.

“This chain,” I say to her, almost out of breath, “this chain will keep us together!”

Marathon Man

I
t didn’t hit me that he was serious until he brought the box home.

“Look,” my husband said, lifting the lid and exposing two matched bright and shiny shoes. “They’re new!”

“Those look like running shoes!” I balked.

He took a deep breath and shot me a look. “They
are
running shoes,” he said, shaking his head. “I told you I’m going to run that marathon with some people at work. We’re a team!”

I never believed him. How could I? We’re not running people. We’re not even people who walk very fast. We’re shufflers. Look at our shoes. It’s always the outside rim that gets worn out first. That’s more of a mark of Quasimodo than Jesse Owens.

“We’re not built for that sort of thing. The most athletic activity we engage ourselves in is chewing,” I said, shocked at how much I really did sound like my mother. “Bringing those things into this house is sacrilege!”

The thought of my husband jogging secretly scared me. One of the big reasons I married him was because he wasn’t a jock. That was on my list of things to avoid when choosing a spouse. Don’t marry anyone who weighs less than you. Don’t marry anyone who refers to you as “my old lady,” “the Warden,” or “babe.” Don’t marry a guy who drives a Camaro, has cropped hair in front though the back is long, savage, and free, and who ever in his lifetime wore a Warrant T-shirt. Don’t marry a guy who would rather burn calories than sit on the couch with me, eating chips and dip. Even the first time my husband watched a basketball game I was horrified and felt betrayed but figured, well, at least he’s sitting down. Our relationship is still solid.

“Did you want to borrow a bra?” I said. “Those things hurt when they bounce up and down, you know.”

“I’m going to pretend to ignore that last comment because hatred is better than carbohydrates when it comes to fueling an athletic body,” he said, lifting his leg up to the arm of the couch and leaning over toward it. “I’m going to take it out on the track!”

“Okay, Marathon Man,” I shot. “But you just remember what happened last time you did something sporty!”

I didn’t really need to remind him. We’re still paying the bills for the ambulance ride and the months of physical therapy he had to endure after hitting a sandbank on a dirt bike last year and dislocating his shoulder. While his brother went for help, my husband lay in the desert for a couple of hours like a pork chop as big, filthy birds started to circle from above. When he finally got to the hospital, they shot him up with morphine, after which he burst into a monologue of Elizabethan verse and scared a couple of nurses who were dressing his arm in a sling. Fortunately, the accident happened in October, so for Halloween, we put a ballpoint pen in my husband’s hand and he went as Bob Dole.

I had visions of this marathon ending the same way. I was convinced that he would finish this race on a stretcher after he ran into a light pole or a parked car. I, in turn, would be forced to spend the remainder of the day listening to a soliloquy from
Macbeth
in some emergency room, repeatedly telling him that the damn spot was nothing more than the crust of the Ding Dong I’d dropped in my lap at breakfast.

For a month, my husband trained, stopped indulging in bad habits, and started eating dried fruit. He had become determined, dedicated to his dream. He had become a runner.

The night before the race, I had a horrible nightmare. I was at the race, watching the runners, and all of a sudden, loud peals of laughter broke out from the crowd. As I looked to see what was causing the commotion, I saw my husband pass, and I gasped. He was running like a girl. His little arms twirled in circles as they flailed from his body, and people started to point, calling out, “Look at the girlie guy! Hey, Pansy Man, are you running or making meringue?”

I was just waking up from this dream when I smelled something foul, and noticed my husband sitting on the edge of the bed. Next to him was a little jar of Icy Hot, and he was generously smearing it on every part of his body that bends.

“You smell like a rest home,” I said. “If you insist on putting that in your hair, there’s nothing I can do to help you.”

“Take it out on the track!” I heard him say to himself as he walked out of the room. “Take it out on the track!”

“When you run, Forrest, run,” I called out after him, “do me a favor and keep your hands down at your sides! Think of manly things, like chopping down trees or building fires, and don’t even picture a lemon meringue pie!”

When the rest of his team arrived at our house, they pinned their numbers on and did some last-minute stretching.

I saw him as he pointed to two overflowing ashtrays on the coffee table and showed them to the team. “This is Laurie’s, and this is the Warden’s, too,” he continued, picking up my inhaler. I scurried back into the hallway before I was forced to listen to the healthy people giggle.

An hour later, I was at the ballpark, standing with the rest of the people watching the runners cross the finish line. I was afraid that I had gotten there late, but after I saw that the runners who were finishing were still in fairly good physical condition, I was sure I hadn’t missed my husband. I stood for a while as the crowd cheered them on, and suddenly, I smelled old people and then I saw him.

He jogged right past me, thin streams of sweat running down his face, his eyes staring straight ahead. He wasn’t even bleeding, though there were little bits of grass and a candy wrapper stuck to one of the Icy Hot spots. No one was laughing, his arms were bent at the proper angles, and by some divine miracle, his shorts hadn’t risen up between his thighs.

He had done it.

I jumped and waved and heard myself scream, “Yea, honey!” and inside my heart, I felt a little flutter, but I don’t think it was a heart attack from physically exerting myself.

I think that, maybe, it was pride.