Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life (12 page)

“No grapes. Understood.”

I spent the rest of the summer shredding scripts and being called “Chelsea” at
Sex and the City
, happy to earn my trod-upon-intern stripes. Every morning, I’d pass the Riker’s discharge bus, the stream of newly released inmates a cheering reminder that I was on time for work. I had a desk by that point, but the kitchen-copy room was where I spent most of my time. Each morning, I’d put out breakfast cereal at 9 a.m., shred and file for a few hours, then pick up and deliver lunches down to the set. At 2 p.m., I’d unlock the chocolate closet and release its bounty upon the office.

Mike was right to speak its name with such fearful reverence. Inside this closet were tubs of Hershey’s miniatures, bulk bags of fun-size candy bars, and box after box of Oreo snack packs. Evidently, it wasn’t just me who had a problem with sugar. Before they thought to buy a lock, this closet had been savagely pillaged all day, every day, leaving the poor bastard who’d preceded me to constantly restock the thing. It had become an actual budget problem.

I never ate a single thing from that closet. Each afternoon, I’d arrange a cornucopia of treats on the kitchen table, artfully piling cookies and chocolate bars to the delight of production assistants and postproduction assistants, who would blearily stumble out of edit suites to grab a cache of sugar from my generous heap of plenty. I myself was satisfied with the sanctioned tablespoon of peanut butter Judy had prescribed in case of emergency. Well, “satisfied” wasn’t quite right, but seeing as every afternoon at 2 p.m. felt like an emergency, I was blowing through half a jar of peanut butter every week.

I kept it in the bottom drawer of my desk, Don Draper style, and reached for it the instant I was finished with my chocolate-closet duties. I’d level off a tablespoon and allow myself a lick. Then I’d place the spoon into a paper cup and push it to the far corner of my desk.
Shred, file, copy, and repeat.
If I was going to make that tablespoon last all afternoon, I had to make every lick count. But, as soon as that cup hit the corner, I’d be desperately fighting the urge to grab it, grab the whole jar, and scoop it all into my face with one bite. I literally fantasized about this scenario. What would it feel like to have an entire mouthful of peanut butter? I hadn’t had sex yet, but surely, peanut-butter mouth would be better.

The day after my appointment with Judy (and the Final Pig-Out dinner of oily pasta and Carvel Flying Saucers that I’d eaten that night), I’d begun her strict regime of low-carb, low-fat, high-protein, and absolutely-no-refined-sugar. This was how grown-ups ate. This was how you crossed the boundary from childish loser to lithe, adult sophisticate. The secret was simple: You just had to be hungry, all the time. People like the staff and crew could raid the chocolate closet every afternoon, but those four iconic women in front of their cameras existed in that other realm. It was part of their job to be thin; that was how we wanted them, and so they were. When I thought of it as part of my job, sticking to this ascetic regime was simple. Not easy, but simple. With every lost pound I felt closer, not to the famous actresses, but to famous-actressness. It wasn’t about my own fading acting aspirations so much as my new dream to just be someone better. I could figure out who that might be later; the important part was she would be thin. So, with pleasure, I packed up containers of apple slices and broccoli snacks (not carrots—too many carbs) that I could bring on my commute into the city.

Mom agreed to pay for a nutritionist, but she’d seen it all before. She’d long since given up policing my eating, having watched me try and fail so many times to pull myself together. I was grateful to live without her open criticism, but in my heart I felt more like a problem she’d washed her hands of. And as the years went by, my weight became a mere irritation, trumped by bigger, louder problems growing in our home. It was fine, though. I would be thin and she would be well.

Mom walked through the kitchen one night, a tall acrylic tumbler in one hand and a pack of cigarettes in the other. She no longer hid the smoking habit she’d taken up sometime in the last year (“A lot of people started smoking again after 9/11”). Sloshing around in the cup was another secret we weren’t allowed to talk about.

I didn’t know for sure when she had stopped going to AA nor when she’d started drinking again. Earlier that summer, we’d been at a neighbor’s pool party, when I’d looked up from the water to see her standing by the grill and tipping back a Mike’s Hard Lemonade. The sight so stunned me that I plunged back underwater as if to wash it away. That night I’d gotten up the guts to ask her if what I’d seen was true. That time she was contrite, promising that she would stop—soon. Instead she’d become a sloppy sneak, hiding the wine in opaque water glasses. More than once I’d found the cups half drunk around the house, and approached her with the evidence, upset and afraid. But she wasn’t sorry anymore. She was enraged at being caught, and at me for catching her.

That night in the kitchen, I knew better. If she saw me so much as glance down at the glass, her fury could last for days. But though I kept my gaze level, I’d been watching her all summer from behind every corner. It wasn’t just the drinking and the smoking. She seemed to vibrate with tension and was never fully present in the room, even when she was right there, talking to me. I stayed up late, peeking out the window for glimpses of the flashlight she used when she gardened all night. I listened at the bathroom door when she was in the tub in case she’d nodded off. Only once did I have to burst through the door and blow my cover, waking her up with a childish scream. I’d felt the ice grow thin beneath me since catching her that time, and now as she stopped to survey me in the kitchen, I turned nervous and smiley. She paused for a moment to ask exactly what I was doing.

“Making breakfast for the rest of August!” I had pulled a stool up to the kitchen counter, turned on last week’s episode of
Sex and the City
, and got out the measuring cup. Opening box after box of Fiber One, I carefully portioned out half cups of cereal into small Ziploc bags, then laid them out in rows of five.

“And you have to use three
hundred
bags to do it? Don’t you think it’s rather wasteful?”

I paused, looking at the heap of litter I’d generated. Behind me, the TV chirped, “You have slept with eight men and we’re still on appetizers!” and my gut did a sick flip.

“I’m sorry.”

She pursed her lips, exhaled hard through her nose, and headed out to the front porch.

During my last week at
Sex and the City
, Mike popped by my desk just as I was beginning my afternoon liaison with the peanut butter jar.

“Hey listen, you wanna go downstairs tomorrow?”

Downstairs
meant the set. I’d poked around plenty during off hours, sticking my head out of Carrie’s window and even sitting in Aidan’s chair for ten seconds, until a lighting guy walked by and paused to make deeply pitying eye contact with me. During shooting, I only made brief trips to the stage, delivering documents or someone’s dinner, then mouthing a silent
You’re welcome
and tiptoeing out of the room while thirty feet away, Charlotte fell in love with her divorce lawyer, even though he was bald.

“Really?” I asked Mike. I knew what he meant.

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Everyone gets a turn.”

Being an extra was the unofficial intern perk. I’d already been given a slew of
SATC
hats and shirts, including the beloved baseball tee, but this was the real prize I’d been waiting for. Many of my fellow script shredders had opted out simply because being an extra is fist-eatingly dull. But I was up for anything that meant standing ten feet closer to the fantasy. The next day, as instructed, I arrived at the coffee shop set wearing a colorful but not-too-bright dress and waited with the handful of background actors hired for the scene. I waved a sheepish hello to Gary, the assistant director in charge of extra coordination. He didn’t know my name, but he waved a friendly reply, recognizing me as the girl who brought the Krispy Kreme delivery every Friday.

“You’re down here all day?”

“Yeah, I’m taking my turn.” I gestured to my dress and heels and the fact that I wasn’t holding donuts.

“Great. We’ll definitely get you in there.”

Of course he would. All the other interns who’d opted in got their chance to shine, blurrily in the background. Anyway, it was a small group of extras that day: just me, four women, and a couple of guys in suits. We all loitered patiently while the scene was lit, then shot from one angle, then relit for the next. With each setup, Gary came out and surveyed us in a loose lineup, pulling one or two new bodies into the scene. Shoot, cut, reset. We sat, we stood, and we sat back down again, trying to pretend that this whole thing felt nothing like picking teams for dodgeball. During the fourth hour, one of the suit guys decided we were friends.

“Are you an actress?”

“Sometimes.”

“What roles do you usually play?”

I thought of Dave and Maureen back at Rainbow Management saying I was best friend or girlfriend material.

“Best friends, mostly.”

“Yeah? I thought you’d play, like, biker chicks.” He vroom-vroomed an invisible bike in front of him. I gave him a chuckle because it felt like he was waiting for one, and instinctively folded my arms in front of myself. Only then did I look around and start to do the math. There were just a few of us left to be placed and the scene was almost finished. I sat down on a cooler and realized what was happening. My outfit wasn’t the problem. The other extras were dressed just like me, but they were also thin. It hadn’t even occurred to me, because how could it possibly matter? If I showed up on screen at all, it would be as a passing blur in the distance, or the back of my left arm. But with each line-up, Gary looked us up and down and asked someone else to step onto the set.

“I can change?” I offered. I had four other outfits folded in a duffel bag, just in case.

“Nope, you’re fine, it’s not that. We’ll get you in there, don’t worry!”

Gary never picked me. I packed up and headed for the subway, deciding never to tell anyone about this stupid day that I’d gotten all excited for, as if it signified anything at all. I cold-comforted myself with the knowledge that plenty of extras who get called in never wind up being placed in the scene. It happened on sets every day. Still, on that particular day, I was the only one who wasn’t. Maybe it wasn’t “that.” Maybe it wasn’t anything. But when you stand around all day not being picked, it’s hard not to imagine what made you so unworthy of sitting, out of focus, behind the cool kids’ table.

T
he afternoon I moved into my freshman dorm at Boston University was hotter than any other day that summer. Elevators clogged with families and moving dollies dinged constantly outside my open door.

My mother and Steve had left hours ago, after Mom had been getting visibly antsier by the minute. I was equal parts anxious about her agitated state and glad to be free of it—now I could nest. Up went the 8×10 stills and miniature posters from movies like
Say Anything…
and
Love Story
. Out came my new sets of jersey Twin XL sheets. I put on an audiobook of
She’s Come Undone
for company. I’d read or listened to the book at least three times before, and it was comforting to travel through the sad, familiar story as I unpacked my stash of Fiber One, fat-free vegetable soup, and the whole peeled tomatoes I ate straight from the can. The entire bottom drawer of my dresser was devoted to diet-friendly foods, and beneath that lay my scale.

My new roommate, Jenna, was just one of the things that made this place not my high school. She was bright and cheery, a Midwestern cheerleader with three older sisters and parents that hugged and teased and left their baby with tears in their eyes. My last roommate at Walnut Hill had been a riot grrrl devotee who videotaped herself tripping and then watched it repeatedly for her own amusement. Jenna was more into Mandy Moore.

“Do you want to come to the dining hall with me and Casey?”

Who was Casey? She had a Casey already?

“No, that’s okay. I’m going to get organized.” Read: I’m going to measure out cereal baggies and watch
Mulholland Drive
.

My entire freshman-year social life can be summed up by that exchange.

Over the next few months, Jenna developed into her college self, going to parties, finding a friend group, and making tipsy conversation with guys. Straight guys! For all that talk about straight, white males running the universe, it was a demographic I hadn’t had much contact with since I was fourteen. Just before my Walnut Hill graduation, I’d gotten in an argument with Sydney over whether or not all guys wore makeup.

“A lot of guys wear eyeliner, right?”

“Not really, honey. That’s just here.” She’d spent two years in “real” high school, and had even had physical contact with a straight guy. The two dry-humping sessions she’d had essentially made her Anaïs Nin in my eyes.

“But
all
guys wear concealer at least?”

“No, dear.”

It was part of the reason I’d chosen BU over the small, liberal arts colleges everyone assumed I’d opt for. At a school with over twenty thousand students, at least
some
of them must be males who were interested in females, and statistically, I’d have to hit it off with one of them. According to every movie ever made, that’s just what happened in college. Soon enough, I would surely be fumbling through my first relationship with a sweet but goony guy who liked my taste in cinema and who would introduce me to things like sex and Goldschläger. We’d break up by Christmas and I’d be on to the next dude, eventually meeting The One with whom I’d be sharing off-campus housing and pregnancy scares by senior year. Roll credits.

But in order for that to happen, I needed to leave my room. Leaving the room was not my thing. Making new friends seemed exhausting, and I was tired enough with my new academic schedule and the time and energy it took to manage my diet in the face of the dining hall’s curly fries. Furthermore, I was scared out of my mind. I was intimidated by the innate social skills of Jenna and her fellow fun havers. (I was also scared of alcohol, having had yet to discover the social lubricant of cheap Chardonnay.) I was anxious about making party conversation or hallway chat before class. And guys? It’s taken me ten years to realize that I was, in fact, more scared of the freshman males of Boston University than of the newly released inmates on the Rikers Island bus.

Then there was my mom: a nugget of worry in the back of my mind that grew larger every day. I’d gotten her on the phone once since I’d started school, but neither she nor anyone else at home had called me to check in for three weeks.

It wasn’t so different from my years at boarding school. Typically, I’d leave two or three messages asking her to call me, eventually leaving one with an urgent, specific reason (“Can you please call me back this time? I just have a quick question for my medical form, and I need to turn it in tomorrow.”) Within a few days, my phone would ring, and I’d hear her voice, casual and rushed: “Hey baby, what’s up?” Then, I’d have to fabricate a question about my medical history on the spot.

But now there was only silence. I tried at different times of day, even in the middle of the night, but each time I only got my sister’s recorded voice on the answering machine, asking me to leave a message after the tone.

My Walnut Hill friends were off having their own wonderful and terrible college experiences, though we kept tabs with e-mail and the occasional four-hour phone call. Each time, I hung up feeling farther away, resentful of their new lives and friends and haircuts.

Anyway, who had time for friends? I’d just make new thin-person friends as soon as I got skinny. For now, without the burden of other humans in my life, things were going great. My diet was going great. Every morning I’d wake up, weigh myself, pee, then weigh myself again. The number was always lower than the day before, and even if it was just a quarter of a pound, I could breathe easy. Plateaus were death, so I decided I wouldn’t even hit one. On the best days, like the morning I dipped out of the 190s and into the 180s, I would literally jump with delight, mutely cheering on my success so as not to wake Jenna, who was sleeping the sleep of the not-crazy. It is a fact that I once spontaneously high-fived myself in the mirror.

After my morning weigh-in, I’d dress in silence, grab a baggie of Fiber One, another baggie of vitamins, and an apple. The key was making breakfast last until midmorning, or I’d be famished and crazy by lunch. Throughout my morning Rhetoric 102 lecture, I’d nibble on the little brown cereal twigs, which only fueled the existing rumor that I was eating actual rabbit food.

Lunch was usually a vegetarian burrito (no rice, no sour cream, tablespoon of guacamole, all of which I mentally reported to Scary Judy) and a huge bowl of raw tomatoes drenched in balsamic vinegar. That dining hall burrito was, by far and away, the culinary highlight of my life. I felt sincere excitement at feeling its substantial weight in my hands. I ate the whole thing in a matter of seconds, once I got to my table and laid out my lunchtime companion,
People
magazine.

I’d worked out a class schedule that left most of my afternoons free, so after lunch I’d head back to my dorm room for a few solid hours of reading or, more often, lying belly-down on my bed watching reruns of
South Park
on my laptop until Jenna came home and told me about her day, one which did not revolve around rabbit food and cartoons. Then, of course, it was time to work out.

“What’s that weird smell?” Jenna asked me one day, looking up from the textbook resting on her lap. We were having a study night together, our weekly ritual that culminated in
8 Minute Abs
and a reward episode of
Will & Grace
on our teeny TV/DVD player.

That weird smell was my side of the room. I’d started going to the Bikram yoga studio two blocks away for a nightly class every day of the week. The practice, held in a room heated to 115 degrees, consisted of twenty-six poses performed facing a mirrored wall. It fit my bill perfectly: comfortably repetitive, physically challenging, incredibly uncomfortable at times—all in front of a mirror in which I could stare at my shrinking, sweat-soaked body parts. When I left, it was not with a calm, clear mind, but with the relief of a child leaving the dentist’s office. I loved and dreaded it in equal measure, and soon enough was going twice a day. I was officially abusing yoga.

The benefits of hot yoga abuse include constant thirst, trembling muscles, and a laundry-bin stink you can no longer hide from your roommate, no matter how many scented dryer sheets you stash around the room. But I was losing weight even faster now. I’d first met with Judy in June. By November, I’d lost sixty pounds.

The morning I hit that milestone, I looked up from the scale and around my empty room, beaming with joy at no one. Jenna was gone for the weekend. The whole floor was still and sleeping at 8 a.m. on a Saturday. I wanted to call everyone, but there was no one to call. Instead, I celebrated with
Will & Grace
.

A week later, my phone rang. It was early in the evening, and I was half working on a paper, half chatting with Jenna and her friend Chris while they finished a pizza on her bed. I remember that I was drinking a Diet Coke. I remember that Chris was wearing a baseball hat. The whole room smelled like greasy leftovers.

It was Steve. “Hi. Did Mom call you?”

“No. I called her yesterday, but never heard back.”

“But you haven’t heard from her today or tonight?”

“No, why?” My whole body began to throb, each follicle and pore twanging with alarm.

Steve gushed a pressured sigh into the phone. “She took off this afternoon. She was upset.”

“What do you mean?”

“No one’s heard from her. She left a message on the machine. She was very upset.”

“What did she say in the message?”

Jenna looked up at me, a question on her face. Chris poked her in the side and she swatted vaguely at his hand.

“She said she had to leave.”

“Where?”

“I have no fucking idea, Kels.”

“Did something happen? What else did she say?”

“Nothing. I have to go. I’ll call you back.”

My fingers gripped white around the phone as he disconnected.

“What happened?” Jenna asked. I let her question bounce around in my head.

“My mother is missing.”

“What?!”

“She left this afternoon and no one’s heard from her.”

“Are you serious?”

I nodded and turned back to my laptop, staring at my last paragraph. Without noticing, I’d begun to take quick, shallow breaths. My scalp and face prickled with heat.

“Kelsey, oh my God. What does that mean?”

Slowly, Jenna got off the bed, and came over, putting her arms around my shoulders from behind. The gesture felt so intimate and generous that I felt a dull nervousness over how to respond. I patted my fingers against her arm, expecting them to loosen, but she held on.

“She left a message saying she had to leave. She was upset.”

“Come on, hey,” Chris jumped in, stepping over the pizza box. “She probably got in a fight with your dad and took off.”

I stared at my computer. I could smell Jenna’s conditioner as her hair brushed my shoulder.

“He’s my stepdad.”

“Yeah, just calm down. She’s pissed at him and went for a drive.”

I looked up at this complete and total fucking idiot. He smiled into my face, a shitheel doctor hushing a fussing child.

“Relax.”

My mother used to whisper “Mommy always comes back” when I was little and could hardly bear to see her leave for a trip to the grocery store. Fiendish though it may be, I cannot help but wonder if both of us feared that one day she might not.