Big Brother (21 page)

Fletcher filled the silence. “I did say
beg
.”

Men did not readily prostrate themselves, though I wondered why not; throwing yourself on another’s mercy is so much more effective than hectoring and force. Fletcher had melted me so, huddling over the sad crumbles of a dry-looking muffin that he regretted ordering—in modern America, even a lousy muffin could incur a crippling social disadvantage—that I could not say flat-out no.

“Let me think about it,” I said.

We caught up on kid stuff, and it was obvious that matters between him and Tanner were going seriously south. For years I’d acted as a buffer, managing food fights by preparing the children escape valves of mac and cheese. I curved their defiance into droll communal mockery with my Fletcher doll. To discourage my stepson’s iffy ambitions, I told manipulative stories from my invidious childhood, whereas Fletcher went for imperatives: you
are
going to college. I’d seen it between Travis and Edison when my brother was seventeen, the exact age at which young men make the awesome discovery that they don’t have to do what you say. Woe to any parent at war with a teenage boy: you lose.

“I’ve tried and tried to get him to visit me and Edison, and he blows me off,” I said. “I almost get the impression that it’s only solidarity over how dumb this dieting stunt of mine is that still keeps you two on-side.”

“There may be some truth to that. He doesn’t think you’re coming back. He’s practicing living without you. I guess I’ve been doing the same thing—without much luck. But it’s not like Tanner doesn’t care. The real problem is he does.”

When we parted beside the bicycle it was too cold to linger, but while fastening his helmet Fletcher couldn’t resist a final pronouncement that soured somewhat his artful beseeching inside. “This living with your brother, Pandora, in your forties—it’s a little weird. And it’s regressive. Like you’re going back to being thirteen, and your mother’s just died, and your father ignores you, and you’re clinging to big brother for a port in the storm. That was almost thirty years ago. I don’t think this is healthy.”

“To the contrary, the tables have turned. It’s more like going back forty-four years—and I’m the firstborn. I’m the boss now. I say go for a walk, Edison goes for a walk. He drinks his four envelopes a day, and he hasn’t cheated
once.
Maybe he’s tired of being the ‘big brother.’ I think he likes being ordered around. As for our living together being ‘unhealthy,’ it can’t possibly be less healthy than Edison a month ago.”

“Honey, I hate to tell you this. But I’ve done some poking around online. Know how many people who lose more than thirty pounds keep it off five years later?
Five percent.
Even those poor bastards who get bariatric surgery and live on two tablespoons of tapioca. Who sometimes drop poundage in the hundreds. You realize how much, on average, they keep off over the long term?”

“I’m not sure I want to know.”

“Seven pounds.”

“Why are you being so”—I reached for Edison’s lingo, which was infectious—“so
dark
on this project?”

“I’m trying to protect you.”

“You’re trying to discourage me.”

“I’m sorry, then. I didn’t mean that. I only thought you should know the facts.”

“Statistics aren’t personal destiny, or you’d have had two-point-two kids.”

“You’re right,” Fletcher backed off. “Of course you’re right.” Leaning down to kiss me, he knocked my forehead with his visor, and we laughed. “
Please
come home,” he implored after we’d kissed with more success. “I won’t interfere with your weight-loss tutorial. But I want you back in my bed.”

As I scuttled to Prague Porches, I had to confess: it seemed a reasonable request.

W
hen I walked in, Edison was feverishly wiping down our white laminated table with paper towels. “Hey, babe. Just doing a little house cleaning, dig? So how was coffee with the hub? Any news on the home front? Any idea when Cody’s dropping by next? I downloaded a couple of tunes for her. She should really be introduced to Monk.”

Finding surprising energy reserves during ketosis was one thing, acting jumpy and hyperactive quite another. A thick, spicy aroma mixed with the usual smog of tobacco, as if I were suffering hallucinations of the nose.

“Coffee was all right,” I said warily. “You know, that table can’t have anything but mint-tea rings. I don’t see why you’re working so hard.”

“Gonna do anything, do it right. Got pretty slick at wiping down tables at Three Bars before they kicked me out.” Despite this frenzy of cleanliness, he discarded the paper towels on the kitchen counter above the trash can. He washed his hands with the thoroughness of Macbeth, splashed his face, and scrubbed his mouth with a dishtowel.

“Edison,” I said on a hunch, “how’s your breath today?”

“Whoa, you don’t wanna come near me! Afraid I been lax on the fluid intake. You know what that’s like: dead rat. So what’s on the program tonight? Scrabble? Seven-card stud? There’s a Jennifer Aniston rom-com on at eight-thirty, which isn’t my bag, but I know you got a soft spot for that shit, and I could probably stand it.”

If Edison was volunteering to watch Jennifer Aniston, something was fishy
.
I eased into the kitchen, where Edison blocked my way. “Excuse me,” I said, reaching behind him to shove the paper towels through the trash-can flap. It met resistance. I pulled off the top, and the few things I’d thrown into a fresh liner that morning—empty BPSP pouches, a defunct box of laxatives, and the packaging from a couple of gloriously long books I’d ordered from Amazon—now bulged at the top of the pail. I lifted the liner out. Sure enough, another bag scrunched beneath it, angular with folded cardboard. That’s when I pinpointed the smell: pepperoni, and garlic-butter stuffed crust.

“Edison, how could you.”

“How could I what?”

I couldn’t decide whether to shout or weep. “Tomorrow is our one-month anniversary. Why would you blow that? After
thirty-nine pounds
?”

“Got no idea what you’re talking about.” Edison was already rounding from innocent to hostile.

“Skip it,” I said furiously. “You left the box. Why destroy a flawless winning streak for one crummy pizza?”

Edison folded his arms and narrowed his eyes to slits. “Well, whaddya think?
I got hungry
.”

“You’re supposed to be hungry! After all we’ve sacrificed—was it worth it? For one greasy, sneaky gorge fest, that you probably shoved down in less time than it took to cover it up?”

“Yes, if you wanna know the truth! It was
great
. It was the best fucking pizza I ever ate!”

“I don’t believe that. I think it was polluted with an aftertaste of
stupidity
, and
self-hatred
, and BETRAYAL!”

“You mean betrayal of
you
. This was all
your
idea, and I’m supposed to get in lockstep with
your
program, and be a good little doobie all day long because sister says! Well, I may be fat, but I’m still a man, and if
I
want to order a pizza I’ll order a pizza!”

“You have some nerve! You think this is how I
want
to be spending my life? Dissolving little envelopes of powder and thinking up diversions to fill interminable evenings and babysitting my older brother? I may be slightly overweight—in fact, technically I’m already down to the acceptable BMI for my height—but I didn’t have to go on this gonzo diet! I could have cut back on carbs and skipped dessert like a normal person and accomplished the same thing on my own account, couldn’t I? Most of all, I could have stayed home! Don’t you think I miss my husband? Do you imagine I enjoy sleeping by myself every night, when I have a warm, handsome man waiting for me two neighborhoods over? Do you think I like having become an absentee mother, as if I no longer had custody and Fletcher and I were already divorced? I have put—EVERTHING—on the line for you, and you’ll throw all that over for a pizza! I’m grievously offended! You’re an ungrateful, selfish BABY and a total CREEP!”

I had been irritable, but thinking back I’m not sure I’d ever lost my temper with my brother. Thinking back, I hardly ever lost my temper with anybody.

“You left me alone,” he said sulkily. “I had a crisis, and nobody was here to help me.”

“I have to be able to leave you alone! If nothing else, I have a business to run. If I have to hold your hand twenty-four-seven just in case you’re possessed by a killer zombie who wants a cheeseburger, this is never going to work!” I flopped into a recliner. The adrenaline was subsiding, and left me weak. “You know I was just bragging about you. Fletcher couldn’t believe it. How much weight you’d lost. How faithful you’ve been. And now I come home to
this
. Fletcher’s always said you didn’t have it in you, and he was
right
.”

“He claimed I wouldn’t last a week. He wasn’t right about that.”

“What, so now you’ve proved you can make it past a week, never mind? The deal was you get back to
one-sixty-three
. And you remember what else I said at the outset, don’t you?”

“What.” He knew what.

“I said if you ever cheated the experiment was over and I was out of here. When you ordered that pizza, you can’t have forgotten that little detail. So you either want to do this all by yourself, or you want to stay fat. Which is it?”

Edison looked down at his hands. The loss of thirty-nine pounds had reduced the fleshiness of his neck, but he retained the proportions of a little boy. “I didn’t mean to throw the whole thing over. I had a lapse, that’s all. I’ll go back to the motherfucking shakes tomorrow. I promise.”

“You promised before. Besides, you don’t need me. You’re obviously developing your own method: the Pizza Hut Diet. So go ahead. It doesn’t take two to order the sausage and jalapeño.”

“I do need you,” he mumbled. “I can’t do this by myself. I fucked up. I’m sorry.”

“Are you assuming your minder is a gullible softie? Who doesn’t mean what she says. It’s my goo-goo-eyed little sister, after all. Who will always trot after big brother, whatever devilish, secretly attractive badness he gets up to.”

“It’s not like I didn’t take you seriously, man. But, Christ, when you go to AA and confess you fell off the wagon, they don’t kick you out. They don’t say, you’re obviously not a fucking saint, so we’re washing our hands of your imperfect, mortal ass. It’s more like: we’re all sinners, and we’ll support you one day at a time. Don’t see why you can’t tear a page from their playbook.”

“I can’t do this if I can’t trust you. I don’t want to come back here every day and have to search the garbage.”

“It won’t be like that, man. Come on, Panda Bear!” He kneeled by my recliner, assuming a suitor’s position that he’d have difficulty getting up from. “Fix us some tea. Then we can watch that Jennifer Aniston flick.”

As if Edison had spied on my tête-à-tête with Fletcher, he seemed to be making a hearty stab at
outbegging
my husband. Yet a smile played around Edison’s hammed-up hangdog. He’d always been able to inveigle permission to go to a Roy Orbison concert from our mother when he was grounded, just as Caleb Fields had wrapped Mimi Barnes around his little finger, too; for all I knew, Edison had mastered the technique of wearing down women from watching
Joint Custody
. Besides, he knew that the prospect of having come this far only to throw in the towel made me sick.

“Think of it this way, babe,” he wheedled. “It was like those sorry suicides who leave empty bottles of Percocet scattered around the bedroom. I didn’t have to leave the box in the trash, did I? I could have taken it to the cans out back and committed the perfect crime. I wanted to get caught! It was, whaddya call it, a
cry for help
—!”

Though my brother gave every sign of having started to enjoy himself, suddenly his face blanched and shone with a light sweat. His expression of distress did not appear conjured for effect, though physical discomfiture would have made for a clever ploy. “Oh, man. I don’t feel too good. Panda, you gotta help me up here. I gotta get to the head pronto.”

By the time I’d helped pull him to a stand, Edison had unbuckled his belt. Jeans sliding, he shuffled in a double-quick waddle to the bathroom. Once he emerged ten minutes later, he had to lie down on the couch. I brought him a Diet Coke.

“You can’t come off a monthlong liquid diet with a wolfed-down pepperoni pie.”

“Yeah, well, duh,” he groaned. “Satisfied now? I got my comeuppance. And I got a queasy feeling the punishment ain’t quite through.”

After Edison made two more trips to the john, we did end up watching
Friends with Money
that night, while he recovered lying down. After I’d taken my turn in the bathroom—which still reeked—he stopped me on the way to bed.

“Yo, Panda. We cool? I’m into it, man, like four shakes a day, end’a story. But I gotta have moral support. Somebody to hang with. And so far it’s been, you know, kinda hip. The walks and shit. Trips to the mall, where I never thought I’d ever be shopping for a smaller belt. It’s not like I take you for granted, kid. I know I’m taking you away from your family. But if you give me a break this one time, like, just cut me this little bit of slack, I
swear
it won’t happen again.”

I appreciated that he didn’t try to slide back to business as usual without acknowledging my concession. “All right,” I said. “But you’ve used up your only Get Out of Jail Free card. One more pizza box in that trash can and you’re on your own, understand? Mother was a pushover. I’m not.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“And brush your teeth. You have rat breath from ten feet. Worse, rat with extra cheese.”

I
called Fletcher the next day. “It means the world to me that you want me to come home. Even if that entailed my still being Edison’s coach. But I just—”

“You’re not coming back.”

“Somehow this whole hothouse setup . . . Keeping tabs from a distance wouldn’t be the same. Having someone to report to and to celebrate his progress, at least for now having company on the program—it helps.”