This Is My Life (29 page)

T
hey traveled three thousand miles to see their mother, and when they arrived, she was nowhere to be found. Opal and Erica stepped into the clamor of the San Francisco airport and looked around for Dottie. She would be huge and glowing in a dotted caftan, Opal imagined, perhaps just a little less huge than usual. Before they embraced, they would have to exclaim over how well she looked, tell her she was really making progress. But Dottie wasn't there. Instead, they saw a young man holding a cardboard sign that read “O. and E. Angels,” and Opal realized that this meant them.

“It sounds like a football team,” she whispered as the man put their luggage in the trunk of a car. She imagined telling her mother the story later. Even now, after not seeing her for six months, she still pictured Dottie rolling her eyes and opening her mouth to laugh.

It was the heart of summer, and New York had become a difficult city. Both Opal and Erica knew that the apartment would eventually be turned over to their mother; this was their final summer, this was
it
. In the fall Opal would move back to New Haven, and Erica would start looking for a cheap place downtown, near NYU. In these last days the apartment seemed even more mythical than ever. The air conditioner seemed to put a preserving layer of frost over everything. Nothing changed up here on the twelfth floor; it was like Shangri-La.

When Dottie called, asking them to come, telling them she would send them airline tickets, Opal had been reluctant. It was a complicated reluctance, she realized; she didn't want to leave her life, even for a few days, but also, she was afraid. Who knew what Dottie had become? Right now she was just a voice on the telephone, just a stick figure on the back of a postcard.

“Please, girls,” Dottie said when she called. “It would mean a lot to me. I'm not allowed to leave while I'm on the program; it's a house rule. But I really want to see you. You can stay at a nice hotel nearby. Come on.”

It was as if there had been no rift between them. She didn't mention Norm at all, and apparently wasn't going to. Obviously, Erica said later, Dottie was trying to apologize in her own oblique way. “We should go,” Erica said. “Among other things, I'm curious.”

So now they were traveling in the back of an airport limousine down the Pacific Coast to Carmel. The day was unrelentingly clear, the sun slashing in across the backseat. Dottie had the ability—the talent, really—to conjure just about any desired response from both her daughters.
Come
, she said, and
they jumped on an airplane and flew all the way across the country to see her, because she was their mother, after all, the biggest mother anyone could have, and she took their breath away.

But nothing could have prepared them. The woman who met them on the sun deck of the Lexington Clinic bore little resemblance to Dottie Engels. It was like identifying a body in a morgue, Opal thought, like the moment when the filing cabinet is slid open and you are made to look.

As she stood out in the warm light, observing her mother for the first time, she tried to find something to latch on to; her eyes quickly moved up and down, then side to side. Her head ached from the lack of recognition; everything was familiar, but seemed
off
. Opal felt as though she were a stroke victim reaching for a word, but the word no longer fit.
Chair
, she thought.
Table
. She turned to Erica for guidance, but Erica also looked confused.

Dottie Engels was no longer fat.

Nothing bloomed outward; there was no real girth to her. The weight that remained seemed unevenly distributed, hanging on her like loose clothing. For the first time Opal realized that her mother was not tall; it was as though her height had deserted her along with her width. What remained was a small woman with red hair and round shoulders and a round face, who looked out of shape, as if after a long winter of hibernation. She almost looked delicate, Opal thought.

“God,” Erica said, and they both just stood there, still holding their luggage, unsure of how to proceed.

Opal remembered one of her favorite books from childhood,
Are You My Mother
? about a baby bird that falls from a nest,
and goes around asking this question of a variety of animals and objects. But
are
you my mother? Opal wanted to ask now, before she would even move closer and let herself be hugged. This woman didn't look like the type who would throw her arms around you and press you close; instead, she would probably hold you a little bit away from her body, and your cheeks would gently brush against each other, the way women sometimes do when they meet for lunch. But Dottie Engels's embrace was surprisingly muscular; she moved forward to hug both daughters, and her eyes were shining. Still Opal hung back a bit. Tell us a joke, Opal wanted to say; anything loud and raucous and out of date, so we can be sure it's really you.

—

T
his has been extremely rough going,” Dottie said later, when they were sitting in her room upstairs. The room was small and clean and antiseptic, and both windows provided dramatic views; it was like the living quarters in
The Magic Mountain
. Dottie heated some water for tea on her hot plate. “Which isn't to say that rough is necessarily bad,” she went on. “It looks like a country club, right? But you should see how difficult the regimen is; that's the reason I couldn't meet your plane. I had a yoga class I couldn't get out of. I told Linda it was just for the afternoon, but she said no. There are no exceptions around here. I apologize; I hope the ride was okay.”

Opal could not stop staring. She wanted to look and look.

“I know,” said Dottie. “You can't believe it, right?”

Opal shrugged. “It's a shock,” she said. “You didn't tell us.”

“Well,” said Dottie, “it's not so easy to talk about. I didn't want to jinx it. And part of me doesn't even believe it.”

“How can you not believe it?” Erica asked. “You can just look in a mirror.”

“It's difficult to explain,” Dottie said. “I still don't feel thin. I feel fat; I think I always will. I keep expecting to look at myself and see the old me.”

Oh, me, too
, thought Opal.

“Sometimes,” Dottie said, “my body aches the way it used to. A doctor here was talking about people who have arms or legs amputated, and how they still feel pain in places that don't exist anymore: ‘phantom limb pain,' it's called. That's the way I feel now.” She shrugged. “I told a friend here that someone ought to write a book called
Fat Like Me
, about a thin woman who pretends to be fat so she can see what it's like being a member of an oppressed group.”

Opal smiled. Dottie looked thin, but she also looked older somehow. She perched on her small metal bed and drank her cup of tea, and Opal stared at her, unabashed, the way Dottie's fans used to stare in restaurants or on the street. “Look all you want,” Dottie said. “It's free.”

“I'm sorry,” Opal said. “I didn't mean to.”

But Dottie assured her it was fine. “You know, I'm used to being stared at,” she said. “It's been that way my whole life; first for being fat, then for being famous, and now for
not
being fat
or
famous. So it really doesn't faze me. Life's one big freak show.” She paused. “I don't know what will happen when I leave here,” she said. “I'm not getting my hopes up. Sy wants to go look at fabric in Africa, and he wants me to come with him. Can you picture me on an elephant?” She smiled. “One of these days,” she said, “I'm going to walk into Ross's office and say, ‘So, can
you get me some work? Then he'll be the one to have the heart attack.”

“When do you think you'll be able to leave?” Opal asked.

“I can't be sure,” Dottie said. “The important thing is to keep the weight off. Some people leave here and they just balloon right up again. I still think about food a lot; sometimes I think I would sell my soul for something really bad, like Twinkies or Devil Dogs. And cigarettes, too. We're all addictive personalities here; we have these therapy groups and talk about our addictions.”

The voice was the same; the familiar ironic tone, the rasp that could continue a routine even while people were roaring and waitresses were setting down drinks on tables. This was the same voice that could lift above any audience and keep going. Now Dottie told stories of the weight-loss program: the careful diet, which a clinic nutritionist had personally prepared for her, the endless mornings of exercise, the yoga classes, the behavior modification therapy.

“It's all natural,” she said. “None of that vacuum cleaner surgery where they suck the fat right out of you. Here they make you lose it yourself.” She paused. “At first I hated being in a place with only fat people,” she said. “It's like looking in a mirror—a fun-house mirror. Some of these women, when they heard I was here, came up to me and told me how much they always loved my work, and that I was an inspiration to them. A couple of them had even brought along dresses from my line; I couldn't get over it. I'd be sitting there in the dining room, looking at somebody, thinking
That woman's dress looks familiar
, and then I'd remember why.” She paused. “There are a couple of other
celebrities here, too,” she said, “but I'm not allowed to reveal their names. You'd think we were at the Betty Ford Clinic or something.” Dottie sipped her cup of tea. So Opal kept staring, and Erica did too. They sat in unnerving silence for a while, looking at Dottie as though she were a museum piece, until finally Dottie stood up and stretched. “Okay, the show's over,” she said. “I've got to move around a little; it's part of the program. Come, I'll show you the place.”

She gave them a tour of the clinic, taking them to see the gleaming gymnasium with its rows of weights and dangling rings. One lone man lay under a set of barbells, just paused there, like a mechanic slid beneath a car. They moved on, past the small, sunny dining room, where Opal could hear the laying of silver, and out to the saltwater swimming pool and sauna. As they walked past the sauna, Opal peered inside. She was startled to find a large, naked woman asleep on a slab of wood. This was Dottie's whole
life
: living among strangers, lying beside them on burning planks.

When it was time for Dottie to go to dinner, Opal and Erica took a cab out to their hotel. In the room they put down their unopened luggage, and lay flat on their backs on the matching beds, staring up at the stippled ceiling. For a long time no one said anything. From outside in the hallway Opal could hear someone shoveling ice from the ice machine. It was evening at the Ramada Inn in Carmel, California; guests of the hotel were fixing drinks, unwinding, removing clothes, and lying in their own climate-controlled rooms.

Over at the Lexington Clinic, Dottie Engels was sitting in a dining room full of the hopeful and the desperate, her dinner portion meted out on her tray, the sliver of fish as dry as a relic,
the carrots tiny and slender, as though they had been uprooted prematurely. Dottie would stay at the clinic for several more weeks, and then she would return to New York and try to cook herself similar dinners, try to take care of herself in this new manner. Out on the streets of the city, few people would recognize her. Dottie could walk down any street and holler in people's faces, but they would just squint at her and wonder if perhaps she was someone they had gone to school with. The face is sympathetic, they would think, but then they could take it no further.

Finally Erica spoke. “It's going to take some getting used to,” she said.

“I don't think we will,” Opal said.

“Oh, I'm not so sure,” said Erica. “Things happen, you get used to them. Then they're just not so important anymore, you know? Other things take over.”

But Opal didn't know if this was true. The change both astonished and frightened her; she felt as though her mother had not so much changed as disappeared. Opal turned on her side away from Erica, away from the light. “You okay over there?” Erica asked.

“Fine,” said Opal, and she reached for the phone to call downstairs for dinner.

—

T
he next morning they met their mother early. She wanted, she announced, to go running. “Every day I have to exercise a little,” she said. “I can run or swim or use the weight room. I thought we could all jog together for just a couple of minutes. Nothing too strenuous, I swear.”

“I don't have sneakers with me,” Erica said, with obvious relief.

But Dottie was unmoved. “Oh, we can just run barefoot along the beach,” she said. “We won't go far, and we'll go very, very slowly, Erica. I swear you'll be able to handle it. We can stop anytime you like. I mean, I'm hardly Babe Didrikson myself.”

At first Erica resisted, but finally she came around, and they walked outside and went down a steep flight of wooden steps that led to the water. Opal could feel the wind and sun in even measure. They started tentatively, kicking up small whorls of sand. Dottie stayed in the middle, and every once in a while she would shout out something encouraging, like “Keep it up, girls!” or “Just a little longer!”

I have never seen her move
, Opal realized, and even though the pace was almost stunningly slow, she was impressed. Dottie's head was tilted up, her mouth open to take in more air. Erica looked winded too, trailing a foot behind, and Opal could hear her breathing come in small gasps.
You get used to it
, Erica had said. Opal saw the three of them years before, fleeing the house in Jericho in the early evening, climbing into the station wagon and driving off, and she remembered how, just a few nights later, lying in what had once been Cousin Kenneth's room, she began to forget the way her own room looked: the flimsy white furniture she had once begged for, the stuffed animals propped on the window in a military row. She also began to forget the way her father looked and sounded; his voice faded out and his body left his suit of clothes, like a soul ascending. The same might be true for one's own body, Opal thought. Dottie had shed a skin, and maybe eventually she would forget what she had been,
would forget the way she had once stood onstage, her body filling a sphere of projected light.