The Lighter Side of Large (7 page)

“Go play in your room, sweetie.” I avoid Fi’s question.

Bang-Bang-Bang.

“All right, you asked for it. I’m calling the police. I mean it!”

Abe wanders from his room to the kitchen. “Mummy, I can’t play my videogame with all that noise. Can I open the door?”

“No,” I say and try to focus on the romance novel I was reading before Sands descended on the comfort of my misery.

The banging stops and I breathe a sigh of relief. I just can’t face anyone, not after what happened on the Date from Hell. So I stay at home, avoiding calls, knocks at the door and emails from inquisitive minds.

“Bella! What in the world is wrong with you?”

I nearly come off the sofa and spill tea across my lap. Sands is standing in the doorway between the kitchen and living room.

“How did you get in here?” I demand.

“Abe let me in the back door,” she says.

Abe parades into the room. “Look, Mummy, Sands gave me a dollar!” He holds the coin aloft as if it is the greatest treasure the world has ever seen.

“I want a dollar, too!” Fi cries.

Sands pulls another coin out. “Here you go. Now kids, I need to talk to your mummy, so run outside and play on the trampoline awhile.”

Abe crosses his arms. “That’ll cost you another dollar.”

“Scram. NOW.” Sands points toward the door. Abe and Fi run out.

Sands plops down on the opposite end of the sofa which makes a horrendous screech, while I get up, making the other end screech. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To get a dishtowel to clean up the mess you caused by barging in here uninvited,” I reply dryly.

“I wouldn’t have been uninvited if you returned my calls in the first place,” she retorts. “Now talk. What happened on your date that’s so bad to make you cut off your friends?” I ignore her as I grab a towel and mop up the tea on myself and the sofa. “Bella, come on. You can’t hide in here forever.”

“I might as well,” I mutter.

Sands shakes her head. “Cat found you with sleeping pills and liquor. Bella, what were you thinking?

“So that’s where my pills and the rest of my vodka went. Tell Cat I want those pills back.” When I had awaken the next morning on the kitchen floor, a cushion under my head and a blanket over me, I thought I was going crazy.

“It’s a good thing she took them and cared enough to stop by and check on you. God, Bella, you’re so freaking selfish sometimes. Can’t you think about anyone but yourself? What about Abe and Fi? What about your dad and grandmother?”

My jaw drops. “Selfish? You’re calling me selfish? You have no idea what I’ve gone through. You have no idea what it’s like to be fat and betrayed and abandoned and insulted, so until you do, don’t lecture me about being selfish.”

Sands relents a bit. “Bella, come on, you know I love you like a sister and I just want to help. We all do.”

“Blasting me for being selfish is your way of helping? Thanks, but no thanks.” I drop onto the sofa, which screeches again and sags under my weight. Like my heart.

“Will you look at yourself?” Sands says.

“I try not to,” I grumble.

Sands moves over and places a hand on my arm. “You know what your trouble is?”

I glare at her. “Don’t even start. I don’t want to hear it.”

She grips my arm. “But you need to. Your trouble is that you are so low on yourself, you opened up your legs for a hug.”

My eyes pop out of my head. “Oh. My. God. You think I slept with my date? That’s not what happened at all.”

Sands looks confused. “So you’re not hiding and tried to kill yourself because you hate yourself for sleeping with him?”

“No!” I bellow. “Sands, give me more credit than that. I did not sleep with him. Not that I would have wanted to from the way he kept texting his ex-girlfriend the entire time, besides the fact he said I was so fat that I probably hadn’t slept with anyone for so long that I should take what I can get because I was ‘aching’ for it.” Sands looks stunned. “Oh yeah, it’s true, he really said that, and then accused me of embarrassing him when I walked out of the restaurant.” I hold out my arm, which still carries a bruise from Wesley’s grip.

And then the tears come. I held onto them for days but now they flow. Sands hugs me until I can cry no more.

“Thanks,” I sniffle as she hands me a tissue. “God, I felt so terrible. I lied about my weight to get someone’s -
anyone’s
- attention and instead of looking at the real me, he calls me fat to my face. I hate men. I really do. They don’t care about your feelings or your mind. They just care about looks and once they get you in bed, it’s all over and they move onto the next woman.”

Sands hands me another tissue. “You know that’s not true. That’s just the excuse you tell yourself because you’re so scared of not being accepted. You hide behind your weight and sabotage any real relationships that potentially could be good for you by picking them to pieces. I’m not saying that’s the case with this date, but I watch you do it with others all the time.”

“Who?” I demand, affronted that Sands can’t just commiserate with me. She has to accuse me of wrongdoing.

“Tiresa, Mika, Mama Rose, me, Riyaan…” she rattles off.

I am astonished. “May I remind you that Tiresa and Mika sabotaged any relationship we had. Don’t you dare blame me for what happened.”

Sands throws up her hands. “I’m not blaming you. I’m pointing out your foibles so you can correct them and move on with your life. You need to learn to love yourself and accept that you are a fantastic person, worthy of good things and good relationships. It’s only then that you are going to see the good things in your life and not reject things and people because they’re not perfect. You use rejection as a defence mechanism. You reject before you can get rejected. Stop it and you’ll find yourself not getting rejected.”

“What does this have to do with my rotten date?” I yell.”Everything!” Sands yells back. “If you accept yourself then you won’t lie to others about your weight. If you don’t accept yourself, no one else will except for other rejects and freaks.”

I sigh. “Since when did you become a psychologist?”

Sands squeezes my shoulders. “I don’t need a degree in psychology to see what’s right in front of me. Bella, I don’t mean to make you upset or tell you how to run your life, and Lord knows I don’t have all my ducks in a row. I just…” she grasps for the right words, “-just don’t scare me like that again, okay? I was waiting for your call to tell me how the date went when Cat shows up at the gym and tells me she found you passed out with sleeping pills and you had been drinking. And then you don’t return my calls or emails. Do you know how scared I was? Promise me you won’t do that again?”

“I promise,” I say. “I promise, because I doubt I’ll ever go on a date again.”

•

Sands agrees to watch Abe and Fi while I run to the store for a few groceries. There aren’t many people in the store in the middle of the afternoon, yet I still duck my head as irrational fears fill my mind that someone from Yummy’s Restaurant or the street or the bus will recognise me.

I head for the fresh food section first. Grapes for Abe, oranges for Fi. I run through the rest of my mental grocery list, hardly looking at the giant pyramid of oranges as I grab them and shove them in a plastic bag.

Bread, cereal, biscuits,
I think - and then jump. It’s not an orange I’m touching. It’s a hand.

I look up and into the green eyes of a man. A not

bad-looking man. In fact, he’s really rather cute with his dark wavy hair - short on the sides and longish on top - medium height and a slight build. The cliché isn’t lost on me and I laugh out loud at the absurdity of the situation.
They met over oranges at the grocery store,
ran through my mind, the result of reading too many romance novels. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention,” I apologise.

He smiles, the world becomes brighter, and I melt. Of course, my hair isn’t done, I wear no makeup and my t-shirt and sweat pants are wrinkled. We were destined to meet because I look my worst.

“No, I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention either.” He chuckles. “Which can be potentially bad for both of us if we accidentally grab something other than oranges or someone’s hand.” Now I really laugh. “Or it could lead to a first date. You never know about these things.”

Did he really just say ‘first date’?
I wonder. “When the cops come to arrest you for groping store patrons, I’ll be your character witness. Maybe you’ll only get probation and a fine,” I joke.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. You’re just as guilty of groping as I am. Perhaps we’ll be cellmates once we’re thrown in jail.” My laughter echoes through the produce section. “Here, you take it,” he hands me the orange.

“No, you had it first.” I hand it back.

“Too late,” he says, grabs three small oranges and juggles them. “I already have what I need.”

I applaud. “Bravo, bravo.”

The man tosses each one high into the air and catches them behind his back, ending his performance with a bow. “Thank you, thank you. I’ll be performing on the street corner for the rest of the week and signing autographs.” He bags the oranges and hold out hand. “By the way, I’m Jae. With an e.”

I’m delighted he is continuing the conversation. I take his hand. “I’m Bella. With a B.”

Jae shakes my hand, a warm, firm grip. “Bella - short for?”

“Isabella.”

“A lovely name for a lovely lady,” he says, his handshake lingering.

I can’t believe I’m standing in the grocery store, making small talk with a cute stranger after an embarrassing encounter. I look like crap but don’t care. He’s smiling; I’m laughing. Life is good for once.

“And when you’re not juggling on the street and groping people in stores, what do you do?” I ask as we finally disengage.

He fiddles with his watch, a very expensive-looking sports watch. “I just opened an adventure tourism company to take people white water rafting, kayaking, hiking, biking, skydiving - you name it.”

“Skydiving?” I exclaim.

Jae shrugs. “Yeah, well, it keeps me out of stores and out of trouble for the most part.”

I laugh again, my loud boisterous, hear-me-coming-from-a-mile-away laugh. “You are adventurous.”

“And how do you keep out of trouble?” Jae asks.

“Who says I do?” I tease and Jae laughs. “Seriously, I’m a stay-at-home mum.” The words fly out of my mouth. I normally hide the fact I am unemployed, but what do I have to hide from Jae? What do I have to lose? Nothing, so I might as well enjoy myself while I can.

“Now that sounds adventurous,” Jae comments. “Motherhood has got to be the most courageous job on the planet.”

Cute, well-built, good taste in clothes, smart, sympathetic. Not bad, not bad at all.
“It’s exhausting that’s for sure. But it’s worth it.”

“The best things in life are.” Jae nods. There is an awkward pause when neither of us speaks. I am reluctant for the conversation to end and, unbelievably, he appears that way, too. I reach for another orange. “Do you shop here often?” he finally asks.

“Usually,” I reply, turning to place the bag of oranges into the shopping cart. My butt bumps the display stand and disrupts the delicate balance of the fruit pyramid. First one, then three, then a dozen, then more tumble to the floor with exponential velocity. It’s an orange avalanche as the pyramid collapses and floods the floor with fruit.

“Oh no, oh dear.” I panic, scrambling to retrieve some.

“Let me help,” Jae says, already crouching down to pick them up.

But it’s a hopeless cause. No matter how many we put back, more tumble down. A store employee comes to the rescue.

“No worries, I’ll take care of it,” he says. I can almost hear his thoughts continue:
just get your big arse outta here before you cause even more damage.
“I’m so sorry,” I murmur. My face is burning from embarrassment, not just because other customers are watching and sniggering, but because I look bad in front of Jae. My self-esteem crumbles as fast as the pyramid did and I think of nothing beyond escaping this citrus apocalypse as fast as I can.

Without a word, I navigate my cart around the oranges and race for the bakery. In the sanctuary of bread and buns I nurse my wounded pride.
So typical,
I moan.
My fat butt literally gets in the way of me being socially acceptable.

I grab a loaf of bread and try to remember what else I need. Cereal, biscuits - and tampons. That’s what slipped my mind. The biscuit aisle is empty, which saves me the trouble of squeezing past other customers and garnering unspoken judgments:
she shouldn’t eat biscuits; she doesn’t need more sweets; yeah, like the low-cal ones will help her.

The cereal aisle is two rows over. I push past the next aisle and see Jae - and speed up before he sees me. One row over, the cereal aisle is crowded with four other carts. I decide to go down it anyway when Jae appears at the opposite end. We catch each other’s eye. I panic and whirl my cart around and take off. Abe and Fi can eat toast for breakfast.