The Husband Diet (A Romantic Comedy) (6 page)

“I don’t need surgery,” I mumbled into my bag. “Or a husband that doesn’t love me anymore! I can do it on my own!” Which, I suddenly realized, was true. It wasn’t necessary for me to take such drastic measures to lose weight. Would I rather be diced up and have a cheating husband than lead a healthy lifestyle on my own? A bike-ride round the park a couple of times a week, giving up dessert. I could do that. A whole new start! I could take charge
now
. I knew I could.

“Good for you!” Paul chimed, slapping my exposed butt. I retrieved my boots and stuck a long leg up onto the dashboard to put them on, but my feet were swollen.

“Stuck,” I huffed after a few minutes of pulling and huffing.

“Here,” Paul said, leaning over me. “Damn, you’re right. Hang on a minute.”

And with that, he got into the seat behind me and reached around me (he had long arms) so he could pull them on from behind me.

“Right this moment my husband’s bonking a bitch in stilettos, and I can’t even get my boots onto my fat feet!” I bawled uncontrollably as I upturned my bag looking for a tissue. “I’m a fucking disaster—a joke! No wonder he cheated on me!”

“Sweetie, don’t be ridiculous. You are not a joke. You’re a wonderful, well-respected woman.”

Suddenly sirens blazed out of absolutely nowhere and a female cop on a motorbike pulled up alongside us, peering into our car, wide-eyed.

“What’s going on here?” she demanded and we froze. We must’ve looked a sight. I was naked with a coat over me and one leg stuck in the air as Paul grunted and heaved to pull my boot on, my lap covered in dubious-looking cosmetics, creams and magazines. Enough to put you away for good in puritanical Boston.

I looked up at the agent and, not finding any words, began to bawl all over again.

“Please, officer,” I heard Paul shout over my howls. “Don’t mind her. Her husband badgered her into going for a stomach bypass while he was screwing someone else.” He took a look at the hefty policewoman and craftily added, “A skinny bitch.”

The policewoman raised her eyebrows in disgust. “You’re kidding me.”

“I hate men!” I cried.

“Sunshine—you have to leave him,” Paul urged. “Now’s your chance.”

The officer peered closer into the car. “Lemme get this straight. Your husband cheated on you?”

“Uh-huh,” I sniffed, wiping my eyes and taking deep breaths to calm down.

“After he told her to get a stomach bypass or
else
,” Paul confirmed.

“Divorce him,” sentenced the policewoman.

“I know, right?” Paul exclaimed. “I’ve been telling her for years.”

“He should pay you alimony,” the policewoman opined. “Have you got any evidence? In court you need proof.”

“Proof?” I shrieked, waving the cell phone under her nose. “What more proof do you want?”

The policewoman’s lips moved as she read the text message and then glared at me. “You should’ve pulled a Bobbit.”

“Bobbit was neutered because he wanted too much,” I corrected her. “My husband doesn’t want—oh, forget it. Take us in, officer, and let’s end this shitty day in grand style.”

The woman’s big brown eyes softened. “Tell you what. You put some clothes back on, Ma’am, and I’ll pretend I never saw you. Okay?”

I wiped my eyes and nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry for the hassle, officer.”

“And besides—you’re beautiful just the way you are. Happy Bobbit Day,” the plump woman smiled. A beautiful smile. Maybe, one day, if I ever decided to play for the other team, I could always look her up.

After she waved us off like dear old friends, my cell phone began to ring.

“Erica, this is Doctor Bowers. What happened?” asked my bypass doctor.

“I’m sorry, I... I panicked.”

A bored sigh. Lots of people jumped ship before the fat feast. We’d talked about it and I’d assured him it wouldn’t happen to me. But that was before I knew I had a cheating, no-good slime-ball of a husband.

“All right. It’s okay. Let’s meet in my office and we’ll discuss this calmly. Okay?”

“Uhm, no, I can’t.”

“I understand. You need time. Next week?”

“No, I, uhm... I’ve changed my mind.”

Silence.

“Gotta go, Doctor Bowers, sorry! Thank you for everything!”

And I hung up, a new, braver, determined me. There was no way I could ever forgive Ira for cheating. There was no way I could forgive Ira for everything. Not even the gaping years of loneliness looming ahead or the fact that big women were, according to Ira, out, could change my mind.

Erica had finally left the building!

Chapter 6:

One Way (Out)

I
’ll spare you the moment Ira got home and realized I hadn’t gone through with the operation. His eyes widened in surprise to see me there, and then narrowed when he saw I was still
all
there. Perhaps he thought I’d come home looking like Pamela Anderson, or maybe even his panties-less lover in stilettos. I don’t think anyone told him it would actually take
months
for me to shed the weight, and that they wouldn’t just hack off the fat bits like a cut of meat at the butcher counter. Like I wanted to do to him right now. All the murder fantasies and I finally knew what my unconscious had known all along. My eyes swung to the knife block in the kitchen, then back to him.

The asshole would’ve let me go through with a life-threatening operation when all this time he’d had his own Pamela Anderson waiting for him under the sheets.
Bastard.
This was the ultimate, the worst offense he could’ve thrown at me.

I knew I could do it on my own now. Not just the diet, but my whole
life
.

“Erica,” he said, “What are you doing home so soon?”

“I didn’t go through with it,” I answered simply, feeling my cheeks turn to fire as I looked at him superciliously, forcing myself to not hurt. But who was I kidding? Inside I was dying, tearing myself to shreds smaller than his lover’s panties. Horny bitch. Horny
bastard
. How could he throw away twelve years of marriage and two children for an hour’s romp in the sack? Pardon me—eight minutes on a good night.

He frowned. “Didn’t go through with it? What the hell, Erica, we discussed—”

“I know about your affair,” I said calmly.

He sighed. “Are you at it again? I’m not having an affair.”

“You dropped your cell phone in my hospital bed. She sent you this message.”

He patted his breast pocket and I held the phone out for him to read when instead I wanted to ram it up his nostrils. Dirty, pathetic, cheating bastard.

Pale, he looked up at me in shock. I could see his mind churning, looking for another lie. He swallowed, his eyes wide. “Erica, we just—”

I exhaled and it hurt like hell, as if an eighteen-wheeler had fallen from the sky during a storm and landed smack dab onto my chest. “Don’t bother, Ira. I’m not interested. It’s done and I can never forgive you.”

Awkward silence. No
I’ll do anything to make it up to yous
, or
Can’t we just start all over agains?
Instead he nodded, as if he was all too eager to get out of there. How
humiliating
for me.

“What about the kids?” he asked. “How… do we break it to them?”

I inhaled—slowly. Exhaled again. How the hell do you tell your kids that Mommy and Daddy don’t love each other anymore? How do you relieve them of the gut-twisting pain and ensure their lives will actually benefit from it?

I shrugged, feigning indifference. “We tell them in the New Year. No point in ruining their Christmas. Until then you stay here and act like a decent father for once.”

He thought about it at length, as if debating, and my evil eyebrow shot up.

“Surely your lover in stilettos and no panties understands you have children that will always be more important than her, no matter how many tricks she turns?”

He blinked at me and I now feigned surprise, slapping my forehead. “What am I
saying
? That goes for
good
fathers! But you don’t care about this family, Ira. All you care about is yourself. And I’m sick of it. The kids are not idiots. They can see what is happening here.”

“The kids have nothing to do with this,” he spat.

“They have everything to do with it!” I spat back, only louder. “You are upturning their entire world!” Which was only half true, really.

Sure, divorce was always painful. But in my heart I knew there was nothing keeping us together anymore as a family. All those years, slaving for him, to make his life comfortable, to compensate for his own shitty mother, working day in day out for years on end to finally be able to buy Quincy Shore Drive, to support him, raising our kids single-handedly, then going to his office on weekends to scrub his urinals and sort out his accounting books. And what the hell had I got out of it if not shattered confidence and a broken heart?

Maybe Maddy and Warren would actually benefit from this separation, seeing Mommy and Daddy unburdened by love woes? Then a thought. His lover would, if it lasted, eventually want to become part of the kids’ life. Or would she? Some people don’t want to know. Sooner or later, I’d find out who she was. There was no way I was exposing my kids to a homewrecker.

No. Divorce was the only solution now. Emotionally and financially. Because, at the rate he was going, given the time and trust, he’d wipe me out completely. We had a prenup, the house was in my name. I had
Nonna
’s inheritance. All I needed was to get my life back in gear. And my dream house in Tuscany.

Screw Ira. Somebody screw him, because I sure wouldn’t be doing it anymore. Not that there was any danger of that happening. And yet, although our marriage had been sinking for years, betrayal had come as a surprise. And it hurt big time.

Sure, I knew my weight had been an issue, but what about him, and the way
he
’d aged? Shouldn’t that have been a deal-breaker as well? Kind of like the
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander
thing?

I should have seen the signs. He liked that I cooked all the time, but whenever I put something in my mouth that wasn’t a leaf of lettuce or an apple, he’d go ballistic.

On Fridays I always baked multiple recipes in my fantastic, multi-function oven. Once, I remember, I’d made a pizza, a roast with vegetables and an apple pie. Which, out of sheer frustration (or gluttony, call it whatever you want, I don’t care anymore), I’d polished off, one slice at a time, in the space of an afternoon. And then he’d pushed his empty plate away and said, “That was great, Erica. How about that pie I can smell?”

“Uhm, didn’t I tell you? It was an apple crumble. It didn’t turn out that good—I burned it, so I threw it away.”

Ira had turned in his seat and stared at me. I’d tried to keep an honest-looking face, but I was sweating. That’s why I never made the selections for the drama groups at school.

“You ate the whole thing,” he sentenced as if pronouncing someone—or something—dead.

My mouth screwed into a grimace and my eyes fell to my empty plate.

There we went: three, two, one…

Keep it light, Erica,
I’d told myself.
Keep it light. Don’t let him hurt your feelings.
What I should have done was read the damn signs of our
crumbling
relationship. This was the life I’d lived up to that point.

Chapter 7:

The Final Countdown

T
he next morning—my first as an unburdened woman—I rose extra early, woke the kids up and drove them to school where we parked and ate muffins. We were the first to arrive, and would probably be the last to leave after school, because I couldn’t envisage going home as long as
he
was there.

Two more months to Christmas. I could do it. If I’d pretended everything was all right all these years, what were sixty measly days?

As if to speed up time, I worked like a madwoman all day, never stopping once, and at the stroke of three I hauled my betrayed ass out of the office and picked up my kids. Only instead of taking them home where Ira was bound to return sooner or later, or to a healthy alternative like my aunts’ restaurant, I took them to McDonald’s. I was going to turn them into blimps at this rate. They obliviously munched on their Happy Meals as I worked out my war strategy.

Was he going to be a decent man at least now and share the responsibilities? Notice how he didn’t ask for my forgiveness. Not that it was happening. Or would he go as far as claiming full custody? That wasn’t happening, for two reasons.

The first was obvious and the second was that it would never even
occur
to Ira. What the hell was he going to do with their continuous arguing, the constant questions (that’s the way kids
learn
, I’d told him) and the howling when he failed to pay attention to them? But maybe, just maybe, out of vengeance, I would reward him with every-other-weekend custody, that way he wouldn’t be able to flop onto the sofa and watch his Saturday games and Sunday reports. It would serve him right. But it would also kill me to think of them abandoned to their own devices while Ira acted as if they weren’t even there.

To hell with him. It was time for a change. Many changes, in fact. That was it. Time to go on a real, no-nonsense diet. It was settled. No more waiting until the
involtini
or the
lasagne
leftovers were finished. There would always be good food around me and I just had to learn to deal with it. Besides, I owed it to myself as well to keep fit and healthy for my children. I didn’t want to be clutching at my heart, collapsing and leaving them in Ira’s hands, did I? No, it was definitely time.

One week later, when I got home dripping with rain and groceries after a trip to the supermarket (I didn’t even look at the snack-food shelves!), I hardly recognized our house. I can’t begin to describe it. Magazines, videogames, Chinese takeaway cartons strewn all over the floor, the coffee table and even the sofa. A baseball game was on full blast, and so were the kids, hyper to their limit, bouncing off the walls and running around and rolling over my pristine sofa with sticky fingers. The kitchen sink, a glance told me, was loaded to the ceiling with dirty dishes, and even some dirty clothes littered the hallway.

“Hi, Mom!” was Warren’s greeting as he sped by me on a skateboard. On my wooden floors. And that’s when I realized that smack dab in the middle of it all, sitting in his favorite armchair, was Ira, hidden by his usual paper. So much for his promise to be there for the kids. I preferred it when he wasn’t.

Keep it light, girl,
went the voice inside my head, and I tried to erase the image of me going around to the local gun shop to buy a bazooka. Just until the New Year. Then Ira would be gone and my house would be a nicer one. In every sense.

I put down my bag and he looked up.

“Hey… here’s dinner,” he said, nudging a carton of leftover Chinese takeaway (which he knows I absolutely hate and can’t eat anyway) with his foot. Now, I’m sure you think I’m exaggerating just a little. I can assure you I’m not.

Just two more months,
I told myself.
And then I’m really free.
“Why are the kids still up? It’s ten o’clock.”

He shrugged. “They didn’t want to go to bed just yet,” he answered, still camouflaged in his sports section.

“Ira, they
never
want to go. They’re
kids
. It’s up to us to set the rules. Just how much chocolate did you let them have? And look at this place!”

Ira glared at me and stalked into the guest room, slamming the door. And to think I’d once been prepared to stick a rubber duckie in my mouth all night for him.

* * *

“I heard,” Marcy said as I was chopping parsley and garlic with my brand new half-moon cutter. She was pretending to visit her grandchildren; i.e., downing a martini. She and this conversation were the last things I needed after the day I’d had.

“He told you?” I asked through tight lips, as if she was trying to pull all my teeth out and keeping my mouth firmly shut would actually stop her. I put my half-moon cutter down and speared her with my hairy eyeball.

She took a sip from her martini and said coolly, “Ira’s not very good at keeping secrets.”

I kept my evil—and suspicious—eye trained on her until she buckled and waved her half-empty glass, the liquid sloshing around dangerously near the rim, and sighed.

My hands found my half-moon again, squeezing the handles tight. “What did he say?”

“Oh, lots of things.”

Christ, if Marcy had suddenly become Ira’s confidante, he must’ve been desperate. Or very crafty. She’s the only one in the family who would gang up against me. Even Judy and Vince would support me. “Like what?”

“That you grind your teeth at night. Go see Dr. Jacobs, no?” she said simply.

Obviously he wasn’t telling her everything. How
dare
he talk to my mother about my faults when all I seemed to do was put up with his?

“He also says you’re still going on about Tuscany after all these years. What an absurd idea, Erica. What are you going to do in Tuscany?”

I didn’t even need to think about it as I chopped away. “Be happy.”

“But you’d be all on your own. We have very few relatives left there.”

“Suits me,” I sentenced as I began to dice some onions to a pulp. After all, I wouldn’t be on my own. Paul spent six months a year in Europe.

“Is it because of your bedroom problems?”

“Wha-at? I’m not talking about that to you.”

“Oh, get over yourself. You need to learn the secrets of keeping your man.
Good sex.
”

I rolled my eyes at her. “Marcy, get real.”

“I am real,” she assured me. “You think I kept your dad on a leash all these years because I was a good cook?”

Highly unlikely
, I thought to myself, and seeing the look on my face, she nodded. “Exactly. It was the
sex
.”

Today, singledom didn’t scare me. And I definitely wouldn’t go back on the shelves again because I wouldn’t be interested in being picked. Not that there was any danger of that happening. I’d probably end up with some deluded, divorced guy and we’d end up pouring our hearts out to each other on Date One. Pathetic.

Besides, I didn’t need a man. I had everything I needed. Great kids. A fantastic job. A good house. And Paul. If I could afford to take the kids to Tuscany right now, I’d go in a heartbeat.

“If you’d only listened to me and gone ahead with the operation instead of running like a mouse. Really, you’d have solved all of your problems. I told you how important sex is; why can’t you understand?”

Obviously Ira hadn’t confided in her completely, the slimy bastard.

“He was cheating on me,” I said as I chopped away, pretending it was Ira’s neck over and over.
Chop! Goes the dick’s head.

“What?” Marcy said.

“He’s sleeping with someone else,” I repeated, big tears plopping onto my ingredients for tonight’s special—Miserable Minestrone.

“You see?” she said simply. “Sex. It’s all men want, and if you can’t give it to them then they look somewhere else. Now take my advice—go reschedule the op and see if he’ll give you a few months to change.”

I whirled around to look at her.
I
was the one that had to change? What friggin’ planet did she live on? In that moment, more than ever, I realized that Marcy and I would never ever be able to speak the same language, and that I was never going back upon any of my decisions. Life changes included.

Somewhere deep inside me, there was an amazing Erica waiting to burst out of my heavy life.