The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted (17 page)

“It’s not an engagement or anything.”

“Actually,” Marsha says, “you didn’t want to celebrate our engagement, either. You wanted to keep that quiet, too.”

“Altogether different,” Tom says.

“What is,” Marsha wants to ask. “Dieting and getting engaged? The reasons for keeping it, whatever ‘it’ is, secret?”

Oh, but why get started. He was very shy back then, she knows that, he was unsure. For her part, she was pregnant, diffidence was not so much an option, action was her only 130

t h e d a y i a t e w h a t e v e r i w a n t e d option. It was the early seventies. And although abortion was legal in some states, although Marsha in fact made an appointment to get an abortion and Tom drove her to the clinic, in the end she could not do it. When they took some blood from her arm before the procedure, she thought,
Don’t. That’s the baby’s.
And then in the waiting room, when she looked around at all the faces of the women who would also be terminating that day, she had a sudden rush of feeling that made her leap up and bolt from the clinic. She stood on the sidewalk, her purse pressed hard against her middle.

Tom followed her, took her arm, and said, “Me, too.” That was their engagement announcement.

But that was years ago. Now they’ve been married for so long, the kids grown and gone, and Tom and Marsha are starting to worry about the things fifty-somethings worry about, including cholesterol and blood pressure and car-cinogens. Last time Tom went to the doctor he came home with a bad report card and orders to lose at least twenty pounds or else he’d have to start taking medication. He sat glumly at the kitchen table and said, “I’m not going to a goddamn gym, either. I’m not going to bench-press next to some nineteen-year-old who has oiled up his muscles and can’t take his eyes off the mirror.”

“There might be a lot of men your age at the gym,”

Marsha said. At which he gave her a look, and Marsha understood that Tom just didn’t want to go the gym, period.

“We could walk together,” she told him. “And you can come with me to Weight Watchers.” She had recently reenrolled.

“Oh, no,” he said. “I’ll take the heart attack. I am not going to Weight Watchers.”

“You don’t even know what it’s like,” Marsha said.

“You’ve never been to a meeting. Why don’t you just—”

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He held up his hand, traffic cop style. “Marsha?”

“Okay,” she said. “You use whatever method you want.

I’ll help you. I’ve been dieting all my life. I can show you lots of things that will really help. And men lose weight much faster than women; you’ll lose a good five to seven pounds a week.”

He looked up at her, full of hope.

“Really,” she said.

“Okay,” he said, sighing, and she clapped her hands together, then pretended it had been to try to catch a fly buzzing around the room. “Missed,” she said, pointing to the black speck on the wall.

On Saturday, they go to the mall to buy good walking shoes. “You could be a role model for men,” Marsha tells Tom. “By admitting that you’re going on a diet, you could give other men permission to—”

“Please, Marsha.”

“What.”

“Don’t get all New Age on me.”

“I’m not! This is a vital service you could provide. A great inspiration. A lot of men really need to lose weight, but they don’t know how to—”

“Oy.” He covers his ears.
“Stop.”

“Fine,” Marsha says.

Just this morning, Tom selected his very own weight loss clinic, he won’t say where, but it’s a place where you meet with a counselor one-on-one, every day, and you get weighed every day, too. He has been given a little notebook where he is meant to record what he eats. To show her support, Marsha has said she’ll go on the same diet, and she will rely on Tom to tell her what she can and can’t have. She thinks it will keep him from feeling emasculated—he has 132

t h e d a y i a t e w h a t e v e r i w a n t e d described the waiting room at the clinic, the plastic roses, the pink walls. But would it be so awful for him to thank his wife for praising him? Couldn’t he consider her suggestions instead of covering his ears like a three-year-old?

Marsha picks up the pace, making sure that Tom is con-tinually just a little behind her. They bought their shoes, and now they are going to find a place to have lunch. They pass a few windows where Marsha would like to stop and look at the merchandise, but never mind, it’s more important to punish her husband for another five minutes or so.

The truth is, he doesn’t even know she’s punishing him, but Marsha knows, and that’s the important thing. Her self-esteem and all. Her ability to confront an issue when it happens. She imagines her therapist sitting in her comfortable armchair in her blue office giving her a thumbs-up. Not that Marsha really likes her therapist, she hates her therapist. She would like to talk about that sometime, but imagine the awkwardness. It would be like a picture in a picture in a picture or something. Anyway, why bring it up; as soon as Marsha gets some more self-esteem, she’s going to dump her therapist. God. The annoying way she has of leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, saying,

“Can you tell me more about that?”

“I am!” Marsha always wants to say. “I am telling you about it!” But instead she nods and dutifully finds some other detail to include, some other item to add to whatever sorrowful laundry list she has dragged out for the day. Oh, therapy is an awful thing. Who started it anyway? Did some cavewoman go on way too long to another cavewoman who, after she listened, said, “Okay, next time? I’m going to have to charge you for that.” A friend of Marsha’s recently told her, “You’re not supposed to like therapy. It’s supposed to be painful. That’s how you know it’s working.”

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“Well, I’ll tell you what,” Marsha began, full of out-rage, of argument, but then nothing followed. She was like a car engine that turned over and quit. Sputter sputter stall. Sputter sputter stall. Anyway, therapy
was
helping—

Marsha felt happier, stronger, more optimistic. But the magazines she could buy with what she spent on therapy!

Once she mentioned that, and her therapist said, “So you feel that you’re not entitled to therapy
and
a magazine.”

Marsha answered by scratching the side of her neck and looking out the window. Then she looked at her watch.

“Well, our time is just about up,” she said, and the therapist said, “How about if I be the one to decide that?”

Marsha decides to stop punishing Tom and slows down to match her stride to his. “I’m starving,” she tells him.

“No,” Tom says. “We’re on a diet, remember? You can’t eat now. It’s ten-forty. It’s not even eating time.”

“Well, then I want a coffee,” Marsha says. “I need something.”

They go to the stylish kiosk, and Marsha looks at the menu. “A large café caramel, please,” she tells the kid, the
barista,
she supposes. Behind her, Tom snorts. She turns around. “What.”

“That is not ‘a coffee.’ That is a liquid sundae.” When the kid asks what kind of coffee Tom wants, he says, “I’m fine.”

“I can have this,” Marsha says. “I just have to count it.”

“Uh-huh,” Tom says. Then he says, “You’re going to be very bad at this.”

Marsha feels the blood rise in her face. Who does he think he’s talking to, some novice, some rank beginner like him? “Do you know how many diets I’ve been on?” she asks.

“My point,” he says, lightly.

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t h e d a y i a t e w h a t e v e r i w a n t e d She sucks the whipped cream off her coffee. Chews it.

“I’m not even starting today, anyway,” she says. “I’ll start tomorrow.”

At lunch, Tom gets a salad and Marsha gets a cheeseburger with barbecue sauce and bacon, and waffle fries, which she loads up with salt, because she, as opposed to some people, does not have high blood pressure.

On Sunday morning, when Tom comes downstairs, Marsha says, “I can’t start today, either. I forgot and ate breakfast.”

“What did you have?”

“Grape-Nuts.” And a lot of sugar sprinkled on top, she does not add.

Tom scratches his head, yawns. “Well, you can still start today, but I’m going to have to penalize you. That’s too much starch.”

“Too much starch,” Marsha says.

“Right.” He pulls out a carton of fat-free yogurt from the refrigerator and closes the door with his hip, which Marsha has never seen him do and finds effeminate.

“Exactly how much starch can I have?” she asks.

“A piece of bread.”

“How many times a day?”

“Once.”

“Pardon me?”

“Once!” he says. “You get one piece of bread a day!”

“Go to hell,” Marsha says. “I’m not doing this diet. It’s stupid. I’m doing Weight Watchers, where you eat whatever you want so long as you—”

“I told you it wasn’t going to be easy. And
you
said”—and here Tom does his high-voiced imitation of Marsha—

“
I
know, but
I
can do it! I want to be on the same diet as
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you,
I want to
support
you! And it will be easier to
cook
if we’re on the same diet!”

Marsha runs her tongue back and forth across her front teeth, thinking. Then she says, “Yeah, but you didn’t tell me that thing about the bread. You know how much I like bread.”

“Do what you want,” Tom says. He begins eating his yogurt. He makes it look good. It makes Marsha want some, and now she’s gone and had Grape-Nuts, a.k.a. Too Much Starch.

“Fine,” Marsha answers. “I’ll do your diet from whatever cockamamie clinic you go to, which probably isn’t even accredited and is staffed by charlatans.”

Tom loads up his spoon again, leans over toward Marsha. “A tip: If you cut the bread in half, it seems like more.

Piece in the morning, piece at night.”

Salads. Salads, salads, salads, that’s what they eat. And cantaloupe and pineapple and watermelon and apples cut into little pieces, which they eat with toothpicks in order to make it seem “fun.” They eat chicken breasts and chicken breasts and chicken breasts, and one time Marsha puts pineapple and green and red peppers and onions on top and calls it “Festive Hawaiian chicken.” She actually says this; she puts the dish down before Tom and says, “Voilà: Festive Hawaiian chicken.”

“Aren’t you mixing metaphors?” Tom asks, and she tells him never mind, this is just to make them feel excited about eating, for a change.

“Know what would make me excited?” Tom asks. “A three-inch steak, that’s what would make me excited.”

“Fettuccine Alfredo,” Marsha says. “Apple crisp with vanilla ice cream.”

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t h e d a y i a t e w h a t e v e r i w a n t e d

“Don’t even go there,” Tom says. Which Marsha thinks makes him sound both effeminate and Valley Girl.

The next Saturday, when they’re out taking a walk, they decide to go to one of their favorite pizza parlors for lunch, but they agree they’ll only get a Greek salad. But then Marsha says she thinks she’ll get a seafood pocket instead.

No potato chips to accompany it, no Coke, nothing like that. Water. Water and a little seafood pocket.

“You can’t have that,” Tom says.

Marsha lets go of his hand. “Why not? It just has a little mayonnaise on it. We’re allowed to have salad dressing.”

“Not the same,” Tom says.

“Is too,” Marsha says.

“Is not.”

“Is too.”

“Look,” Tom says, “I’m not going to argue with you. If you want a sub sandwich, get a sub sandwich.”

Marsha stops walking and turns to face him. “I didn’t
say
sub sandwich. I said seafood
pocket
! I used to get the spicy
Italian ,
extra
cheese
! Now I’m only getting a
FUCKING SEAFOOD POCKET!
”

From behind her, Marsha hears the short, tight exhalations of a jogger. Their next-door neighbor, Marty, runs past them. “Hey,” he pants, holding up a hand.

“Hey,” they say back, together, and watch him run off.

Not an ounce of fat on that one. Or on his wife.

Tom turns back to Marsha and speaks quietly. “Either you do this diet or you don’t.”

Marsha orders the Greek salad. And when she has finished she is no longer hungry and crabby. She is grateful that she stayed on the diet, and she tells her husband that.

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“That’s right,” he says. “A moment on the lips, forever on the hips.”

What kind of weird clinic is he
going
to?
Marsha wonders. “You already told me that one,” she says.

“Okay, then, how about this: Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels.”

Marsha thinks about this. Then she says, “Not true.”

“I know,” Tom says, and sighs.