Nothing To Lose (A fat girl novel) (19 page)

She sat down with two of the portions to watch Mother Wore Tights with Betty Grable and Dan Dailey. She spread a small towel on her lap, feeling happy and lighthearted. She felt…with it, a tired but accurate description of her progress.

On the way home on the train, Don had made an observation about Jason, the budget coat buyer. “He’s on good terms with his asshole,” Don had said. She had blanched, not even certain what he meant, but knowing it was accurate. No matter how indelicate or unflattering, Don was always accurate. She knew also that Jason would have no trouble referring to Don as a fag. He would say, “That fag, what does he know?” Or he might say, “That fucking fag,” which reflected a frustrated, unfocused anger. Don, on the other hand, was sinister and imaginative and scathing, which reflected a cold but fully calculated disdain.

When the movie was over, April was surprised to see that she had finished all seven portions of her tuna loaf. She couldn’t remember eating them all and now the happy, satisfied feeling was gone. She felt full, dazed and uncomfortable. She went to the bathroom to brush her teeth. When she came out, the telephone rang. It was Don.

“Pierre and I have a bet,” he said. “I said you were probably eating right this minute or very recently and that you probably ate more than you ate with us. Pierre says no. Who’s right?” She felt trapped and angry with him for making her feel that way. What an insulting, mean bastard. The tuna rumbled in her stomach. “Well, is it true? Am I right?”

“It’s true,” she said in a whisper, “but what made you think that?”

“Fat people always eat in private. They eat normal portions in public and then pig out in private. It’s not exactly my theory. Or very new. It’s a well-known fact.”

“I see.” There was a dull, awful buzzing in her head. She longed to hang up. On the other hand, she didn’t want Don to know he’d upset her. “Okay, you won. Was there anything else?”

“Yes. Pierre is crazy about you. He wants to save you. Make you over. More precisely, he wants me to save you.”

“Yeah, well, I guess his mind isn’t challenged making éclairs and mousses.”

“That’s not a very nice crack.”

“Huh? Is it the pot calling the kettle black?” Oh, my god, he was black!

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” he said prissily. “And I’m still glad you got home without being accosted.”

“Ta ta” she said and hung up.

Chapter Nineteen

After a cool, wet spring, the summer of 1980 had turned unseasonably hot. Terrible storms and tornadoes battered the Midwest. Cuban refugees were pouring into Key West. The Native American look and the Western Look vied for fashion silliness. Headbands and faded denim clothes that might have been thrown out the year before were the uniform of the trendy.

Alan Leeds, Merlow Hess and Jack Tobias, the furniture buyer had rented a house on Fire Island at Ocean Bay Park, that was next to the more conservative Point O’ Woods where Fred Burdette was going to spend the summer. In early June, Luis had been a guest at both houses during two very warm weekends.

During that time, Luis accompanied Fred to a Family of Man testimonial dinner and dance where Fred’s father, Lionel, was to receive an award for endowing a rehabilitation center for teenage drug addicts.

At their table was Harry (Buzz) Gargan, brigadier general and head of Fort Laughton, Texas, also being received into the family of man. Sitting next to Buzz Gargan – beauty and the beast – was his daughter, Lisanne, a spectacularly wholesome young woman with unretouched blonde hair, light lashes, little makeup and a toga like gown that exposed one dazzling shoulder.

She asked Luis to dance and Luis, ignoring Buzz Gargan’s immediate and disapproving frown, expressed delight and led her out onto the floor. She looked vaguely familiar and after a few minutes Luis realized she was the girl in the Mike perfume commercials. Mike, for the outspoken woman. Confident. Devastatingly feminine. They should have added: Brash. Cruel. Devastatingly hyper. In the commercial, the woman walks briskly in a park with a man who is having the tiniest struggle keeping up. Suddenly, in a moment of total surprise, she whirls around and plants a kiss on his mouth. It’s not a tender kiss. It’s a smug I’m-calling-the-shots kiss.

“Mike,” Luis whispered into her ear, “for the outspoken woman who is her own person. Are you your own person?” Or Daddy’s girl?

“I wouldn’t mind being your person,” she said audaciously. Then she giggled. “Is that too brazen?”

“Not at all,” he reassured her lamely. “It’s very….very Mike.” Her nervous, girlish giggle rekindled his interest which was eighty percent physical. She had an electric effect on him, something that wasn’t automatic. Maybe it was the thrill of rousing the wrath of Buzz the Beefy.

When Buzz Gargan wanted to leave, his daughter revealed that she preferred to stay. Father was suspicious. He stared at Luis with the look he might have perfected for commie-pinkos and asked, “Are you a fairy?”

“No, sir.”

“Good.” He turned to his daughter. “Lisanne, come home this weekend. It’s your mother’s birthday.” When he walked away, Luis was happy to see that he limped.

Meeting Lisanne Gargan definitely turned Luis around. Right away he began to regain his old energy and cheeriness. As to why she had this effect on him, it was hard to say. Their conversations were so insubstantial it amazed him. How could he contemplate an ongoing relationship with a woman with whom he couldn’t have a meaningful conversation? He even wondered whether he wasn’t unconsciously following some macho Latino code of coupling with a soft, uncomplicated woman who would be devoted to his happiness. She was handy in the kitchen – a no-no to most single women – and wrapped all kitchen refuse neatly in paper towels, wastefulness he found endearing.

She wasn’t dumb either, although the speech patterns of eastern Texas, unfamiliar to Easterners, sounded dumb. She made as much money as he and had already invested in real estate – a ski condominium in Vermont – that had doubled in value while he had lost money. Like the army brat she was, she had an extraordinary sense of duty and did volunteer work on Tuesday nights – running the movie projector at the veterans’ hospital – and on Saturday mornings – taking toddlers from the St. Christopher’s Foundling Home for outings.

“Do the veterans ask you out?” he wanted to know.

“Oh, no. I never get chummy with them. I keep it general.”

“And they never ask you personal questions?”

“Sure. They ask me if I have a boyfriend and I say ‘yes’/”

“That’s it? Just ‘yes’?”

“I change the subject or ask if they want me to write letters for them or to get a book from the library wagon.”

“What about the babies? Don’t you get attached to the babies at the Foundling Home?”

“Not so that I think about them after I leave. I’m involved with them all the time I’m there, but once I leave, I’m gone. Thinking about you…or work. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. Your attitude’s very healthy. Very realistic.” He admired her lack of false sentimentality. Obviously she cared or she wouldn’t go in the first place.

“It’s better not to get too deep,” she sighed and stuck her hand under his shirt. “That doesn’t include you, buddy. I want to get very deep with you.”

“Good.”

She appealed to him on a level that was new to him. Maybe it was her lack of vulnerability. She didn’t have that crushing fear of separation that paralyzed many women he knew. A week of no calls could change a pretty, intelligent woman into a fretful, anxious one. They took it personally. It didn’t make him feel powerful. It made him feel sad and determined not to raise expectations he couldn’t fulfill. He had the distinct feeling that Lisanne would be sad for an hour, tops, if they parted forever.

Many evenings she sat on the floor working on hobbies with yarn and needles. Her blonde hair would fall over her face and she’d tuck it behind her ears over and over, like a careless child. He would sit on the floor with her, slip his hand up her fine, long legs, nuzzle her ears and neck. “Oh, bunny” – during amorous moments she called him bunny – “do you feel like it?” she would ask in surprise. And here is where the relationship deviated from the simple. What she meant by ‘it’ wasn’t what he meant by ‘it,’ because although she allowed herself to be fondled in the most lascivious way, she wouldn’t consent to actual intercourse. “I just can’t bunny.”

“What are you going to do when you get married?”

“Then, of course, I’ll do it.”

“Are you trying to blackmail me into marrying you?”

“No. I’m too young to get married. Daddy says I shouldn’t get married until I’m twenty-eight.” And when she saw his chagrin: “I know it’s silly. It doesn’t make any sense because I’ve let you do all sorts of things that are sexier than putting it in, but well, it’s the way I was brought up. I just can’t do it. Can’t you understand?”

“Yes, of course, I understand,” he lied. In the back of his mind he was sure that at one time or another, he would convince her and win over Buzz Gargan.

But she didn’t relent. Many nights he had lain on top of her crazed with lust and begged her to open her legs. “Lisanne, we’re two adults. I’m going to go blind from coming on your stomach. It’s bad for you, too. You’ll get gum disease. Gingivitis comes from lack of vaginal penetration. It really does.”

“Just don’t put it in, bunny. Do whatever else you want, but please don’t put it in.” On a really desperate night, when he was sure he’d won, she said, “I don’t want you to invade my body with your invading rod.” After that, he kept his invading rod to himself for an entire week.

Her reticence worked on him in two ways. He began to regard her vagina on a par with the Holy Grail. To invade it was a Holy Quest. He knew with certainty that the moment she was Lisanne O’Neill, she would open her legs as wide as the Grand Canyon. Oddly this appealed to him, too. Her high-mindedness.

Then there developed yet another wrinkle. Maybe she didn’t want sex at all. When she asked, ‘Oh, bunny, do you feel like it?’ and he replied, ‘Yes, I feel like it,’ she would kiss him on the lips and say, ‘Then I feel like it, too.’ He wondered if this quick response had been learned at her mother’s knee. When Buzz Gargan came home from maneuvers and wanted it, did Mrs. Gargan immediately decide she wanted it, too?

“How do you feel?” he would question her. ”Tell me how you really feel.”

“I feel like being close to you.”

“And…?” He wanted some admission of lust.

“And…doing it.”

“All right then,” he would say, exasperated, “take off those ridiculous shorts and we’ll do it.”

“You’re angry.”

“No, I’m not. I’m ready for love,” he would reply grimly.

“You don’t like my answer.”

“I love your answer.” The crazy thing was, he was ready for love. No amount of love talk or handling would have made him hornier than Lisanne’s compliant, ‘If you want to do it, I want to do it, too.’

He couldn’t even share the irony of it with her because she had no sense of irony. What she had was a strong sense of duty and he knew, as if he were plotting a campaign, that a sense of duty and lots of energy would, in the long run, make for a better relationship than an ironic sense of humor. There was a lot to be said for her sunny, uncomplicated disposition. He had had liaisons with many women who didn’t know how to be cheerful. They were passionately involved in one thing or another. One wanted to dance. Only to dance. Another potted. There were somber, glazed containers all over her apartment. Lisanne was not like that. Her work was only something to do until she got married.

So, if he was so happy with her, why didn’t he just marry her and get it over with? He didn’t know why except that he felt it would be better to marry during one of his up tick periods. Another year in New Jersey and then he’d marry her.

Chapter Twenty

One night in late summer, the telephone rang and a voice April had never heard, high but self-assured, asked if she was April Taylor.

“Speaking.”

“My name is Bob Waller.” There was a moment of silence. “I’m calling at Sylvie’s suggestion. I’m recently separated and she said you were in the same boat.” Again a long silence that she didn’t feel obligated to fill. “Hello…are you there?”

“Yes.” Another silence.

“Well, are you?”

“Am I what?”

“In the same boat?”

She had a vivid picture of herself and Bob Waller in a flimsy rowboat, in the middle of the ocean, wearing business clothes. Yet she felt no responsibility to be friendly and helpful. Sylvie had no idea how fat she’d become. This man would show up at her door and faint. What could she tell him: I’m very fat, can you take it?” “I guess,” she finally answered Bob Waller.

“I have a little boy who spends the weekends with me. How about you?”

“How about me what?”

“Do you have children?” He asked hopefully. He would be disappointed if she were any less emotionally stranded than he.

“No.”

This made him thoughtful and silent. So what? He was the one who wanted to row out of the harbor of loneliness into the port of togetherness. She considered offering him this metaphor but decided against it because she could feel herself seething with anger. Why? What did she have against this stranger?