Authors: Beth Fehlbaum
Big Fat Disaster
DISASTER
Beth Fehlbaum
F+W Media, Inc.
For all of us,
who wish to be loved just as we are.
I desire the things which will destroy me in the end.
SYLVIA PLATH
Who in their right mind thought it would be a good idea to put our family portrait on my dad’s Senate campaign postcard? Why is my face covered by the address label? Shouldn’t it be on the other side of the postcard?
I grimace as I peel away the label, imagining what it would be like to find these five people grinning like idiots in my mailbox. I mean, if I wasn’t
me
, and I didn’t know the truth about these people.
Us, that is.
Do people actually see us as Dad’s “package deal”? He says that when people vote for him, they’re getting the “whole package.”
What does that even mean, anyway?
I hold up the postcard to the light, as if being able to see through it would change the way I see us. But the colors are too dark, and, anyway, a photo can’t tell the whole story. No one who gets one of these stupid postcards has any idea who we really are.
I toss the postcard onto my father’s desk and stare at the address label stuck to the end of my finger.
Package deal, my fat butt.
My dad, Reese, played college ball for the UT Longhorns. He was a linebacker then, but he’s an investment banker now, and he’s running for the U.S. Senate. My mom, Sonya, used to teach fourth grade, and she was Miss Texas twenty-two years ago.
My oh-so-perfect-in-every-way older sister, Rachel, is about to leave for college (pause here to praise Jesus), and my little sister, Drew, like Rachel, looks like a carbon copy of Mom. They’re all overly concerned with what they look like, I guess because they like what they see when they look in the mirror.
Sadly, I did
not
escape Dad’s Incredible Hulk–like genes or his weight problem. My mom, sisters, and the mirror do a fantastic job of reminding me that I am
The Fat Girl
.
As if
I could ever forget.
Last week, Drew took a break from admiring herself in the full-length mirror at the end of the hall when she noticed that I was eating ice cream in front of the TV. She flipped her hair back over her shoulder like Mom does, and sounded like
Mini-Mom
, too: “Do you know how many calories are in that? Where,
exactly
, do you think it will look best on you?”
As Drew turned back to the mirror, she dropped her hair brush. Lucky for her, she bent to pick it up at the exact moment that I rocketed the bowl through the air—
Slam!
—a direct hit to my arch nemesis, the mirror! That sucker broke into about a hundred pieces, and about the time that Drew recovered enough to start bawling, the frame fell off the wall.
Totally worth losing my iPhone.
Totally.
Sometimes I hear the old lady campaign volunteers whisper about how good-looking my dad is—like, he’s in his late forties, but anybody can still see the UT Austin football star he once was. He’s unmistakably my father, but the qualities that make Dad attractive even though he’s a big guy are the same ones that make me consider myself genetically doomed.
When a women’s magazine profiled the Senate candidates’ wives, the reporter and photographer came to our house to take some photos. They were about to leave when the reporter said, “Sonya, would you mind just one more photo? We’d like to have one of you and the children.”
Drew called me out of my room. I stepped into the living room, and the photographer took me by the elbow and guided me right back out. “Sorry, this one’s of immediate family only.”
Drew giggled and said, “Colby’s my sister, too, silly!”
We took the pic and as the reporter was wrapping up the interview, Mom leaned in and said, “Um, your people can Photoshop Colby, right? Make her look a little more like she belongs with us…?”
Sure enough, when the article ran, I still didn’t look like I could be the spawn of a former Miss Texas, but I also didn’t look like the person I see in the mirror.
Too bad that the person in charge of Dad’s campaign postcards stuck with reality instead of Photoshop.
Rachel appears in Dad’s campaign office doorway. “Colby, what’re you doing? Let me sit at Dad’s desk. The Young Conservatives choir just arrived. You need to go get ready.” She doesn’t look up from texting on her phone as she moves toward me.
I don’t budge from the chair. “I don’t feel like singing today. I’m not going.”
Rachel sighs. “Yes, you
are
. You know Mrs. Hamlet will pop a blood vessel if you’re not in place for the national anthem. Move it.”
“I still think it sucks that you don’t have to sing anymore. You’re not leaving for college until Saturday.” I align the address label vertically over Rachel’s image, leaving only her spindly legs visible on the postcard. I rub it, trying to smooth the edges.
“Don’t you think Mrs. Pendergrass and her crew of Dad’s groupies put those stickers where they did for a
reason
?” Rachel whips the postcard away from me and tosses it atop the others in the box on the floor. “They’re trying to
attract
voters, not
repel
them. Now heave yourself out of that chair and go put on your tent.”
I imagine the suffocating heaviness of the American flag–sequined choir robe in the midsummer heat, and I nearly scream.
I jerk Rachel’s phone out of her hands as she settles into Dad’s chair before I’ve even cleared it completely.
“People think you’re sooo sweet. If they knew the
real
you…” I tap Photos on the phone screen. Rachel lunges for my hand. I jerk it away and knock over Dad’s tall mug of coffee. It pours onto his desk pad calendar and spills over the edge of the desk onto Rachel’s skirt.
“You idiot! Look what you’ve done!” She bolts from the chair and yanks the phone away. “I’ll be so
glad
to get away from you. You’re an embarrassment to
all
of us.”
“Run to the bathroom and grab some paper towels, will you?” I’m frantically moving stacks of papers, books, and Dad’s knickknacks from the growing coffee puddle, and a framed photo of us on our spring break hiking trip sails off the side of the desk onto the floor. “Shit!” I look up at Rachel. “Please? Help me? I mean, this is partly your fault, you’re the one who…”
She shakes her head and smiles smugly. “Nope. I was never here. I don’t know a thing. You’re on your own.” She squares her shoulders and wrings the coffee from the hem of her skirt, then rotates the skirt on her waist so that the stain is in the back. Unflappable, just like always. “I’m going to the rally now. Hear that, Colby? The music’s started. You’re late.”
I grab a box of tissues from the bookcase and sop up most of the coffee. I sing the first few words of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” as if I’m where I’m supposed to be: sandwiched behind super weird Candy Geary, who never seems to shut up, and in front of super stinky Ronald Maynard, who smells like canned cat food. He wears a Friskies-scented cloud the way some guys wear Axe body spray. But I can’t do so much as make a face, because I have to be nice to everybody. It’s part of being
Reese Denton’s
daughter.
I shove the coffee-soaked wads into the empty tissue box, toss it in the trash, and look around for another box, but my eye catches on the campaign postcard and my big fat face staring back at me from the center of my otherwise perfect family. Was it true? Did Mrs. Pendergrass purposely place the address labels on the wrong side just so that she could cover my face? I thought that she and all the other geezers liked me. I lean down to the box on the floor, pull out a handful of postcards off the top of the pile, and quickly thumb through them.
