Teenage Waistland Read online

  The table is heaping with some of my favorite foods—macaroni and cheese (emphasis on cheese), barbecued chicken wings with four-alarm sauce, and steak fajitas. Well, heaping isn’t exactly the word. The special dishes Abby made at my request are on small plates—single servings, a tasting, really. What are overflowing are the salad bowl and salmon and veggie stir-fry. I can’t believe they’re torturing me with paltry portions on the night before surgery.

  I’m not even done polishing off my first fajita when Liselle starts in. “Ya know, Marcie,” she says in her idiot East Coast Valley Girl accent, “June’s mother got a Lap-Band last year, and she’s gained, like, thirty pounds.”

  Gran is out of the gate before Abby or Ronny can respond, lest Liselle, God forbid, talk me out of anything. “Liselle, honey, your friend’s mother is obviously eating things she shouldn’t—”

  “And the Lap-Band is a tool for weight loss, not an automatic cure,” Abby cuts in, probably terrified that Gran will say something to set me off.

  But Gran never lets anyone derail her train of thought. “Marcie is dedicated to losing her weight, and I know she’ll do beautifully.”

  Dedicated? Hounded and harassed is more like it. The macaroni and cheese congeal in my mouth. I put my fork down. “Liselle, you’re a brain-dead little bimbo. Which makes anyone who likes you, like June, a brain-dead bimbo. And, given how genetics work, it’s highly likely that June’s mother is also brain-dead. Therefore, I ask that you please keep your whole network of stupid out of my face.”

  Liselle cocks her head and puts on a little pout. Poor angry fat girl. I’m noticing that she’s wearing the silvery blue eye stick that came in the Sephora makeup kit Abby got each of us, and it goes much better with her pale blue eyes than my crap brown ones. I’m tempted to wash it off her with my peach iced tea.

  “Listen, Marcie,” Liselle tries again in her fake sugary voice. “It’s just so radical. I could help you with your diet and exercise, you know. Look at me, and I love to eat.” I glance at Liselle’s plate. A small lonely pile of overcooked vegetables. Yeah, a real gourmand. And that’s when she remembers to eat.

  I want to say—sweetly, of course—Liselle, I know you don’t like facts getting in your way, but nearly ninety percent of people who lose weight gain it all back—and more—within five years. And, surgery is the only clinically proven solution for long-term weight loss for people who get to be my size. But my idiotic lip is quivering and I’m afraid my voice will break if I try to speak.

  Abby smells another disaster and jumps in. “Sweetie, I’m sure Marcie appreciates your concern. But she’s tried very hard to diet and she’s convinced—we all are—that this surgery is the right answer.”

  “And she’s going to do just beautifully, you’ll see,” Gran rasps again.

  “She’s going to have scars, you know,” Liselle mutters before going back to moving food around on her plate. She knows how to hit the old lady where it hurts.

  “Shucks! Now I won’t be able to be like you and wear a thong bikini with my butt cheeks hanging out,” I snarl. “So classy.”

  Gran shakes her head like she’s bewildered about how a vile creature like me could descend from someone as delicate and refined as she, while Abby launches into her usual diatribe about my filthy mouth. She’s halfway through the part about not raising a guttersnipe, whatever the hell that is, when I push away from the table and walk out.

  My dad’s not picking up his cell and he’s not in his office, so I dial his home number on a lark—he’s hardly ever there. Tonight, someone is—a woman answers, and I slam down the phone and hit redial to make sure I dialed right. But the number’s right. Dad’s seeing someone and he didn’t tell me. I speed-dial Jen to vent and maybe see what she knows, but her cell rings once and goes to voice mail. Out cold, probably, still sleeping off the booze. Some best friend! WTF?

  I hop out of bed and pull out my stash from behind a huge bag of clothes in the back of my closet. It’s not even seven p.m. yet—I have a good five hours before all food and drink must stop. Barbecue chips and an Almond Joy sound about right. And my favorite book, Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Blue van Meer is a smart and freaky sixteen-year-old who gets to travel around the country having adventures with her professor father after her mother is killed. Not that I’d ever want Abby dead. Just absent. That way I’d have to live with my dad. It’d be the two of us.

  Book in hand, goodies in lap, propped up by a mountain of fluffy down pillows covered in cream Ralph Lauren linens, and sinking deliciously into my Tempur-Pedic queen-sized bed, I begin to calm down. Abby disapproved when she saw how Ronny’s decorator outfitted my new bedroom when we moved in last year. White and cream everywhere, except for the part of the walls above the wainscoting, which are a cool mint green. “Marcie is going to get it filthy in no time,” she wailed. Then she shook her finger in my face. “No food in bed—no chocolates, candies, nothing.” Ronny just laughed.

  My bedroom is the only aspect of my life that improved when we moved to Alpine. And I’ve been pretty good about keeping the duvet cover clean. There’s only a small area of discoloration, from the time Jen came down two Thanksgivings ago—a few weeks before we went to Mexico for her surgery—and we ate pizza on the bed while watching The Parent Trap for the zillionth time. Yeah, on my thirty-six-inch flat screen that pulls out of the antiqued white armoire across from my bed. My father’d have a stroke if he knew. We didn’t have any TVs in our old house, so I was an outcast as a young child, not knowing the Barney song. But while the other kids were still pooping themselves and laughing with glee at the moronic antics of a purple dinosaur, I was reading on my own by age four. Dad taught me how. He had teachers’ hours and Abby was always working late. We didn’t dissect the universe on long road trips, like the father and daughter in Calamity Physics, but we did go to lots of museums and libraries together. I’m back to the part where Blue van Meer starts hanging around with the Bluebloods, the cool, artsy clique at her new prep school. I glance at my clock radio. Nearly eight and Jen hasn’t called me back. Neither has Dad, but at least he’ll be there tomorrow. Dad wasn’t all that hyped about this surgery—he asked me the same question about fifty times: Were Abby and especially Gran bullying me into it? “Of course,” I told him, but I also told him that I wanted this too, especially after the writing-seminar chair episode. I’m not going to be gorgeous or anything, like Jen, when I’m thin, but my body won’t get in the way of things like it does now.

  Before I got huge, there was this kid at Fuller who sort of had a crush on me—Ralph Meyer. The superstar of geeks. He was tall, refugee-camp thin, and hideous besides, with razor-thin lips that could hardly cover his mossy braces. I instructed my friends to rescue me by faking a trauma if they ever caught him cornering me on campus. But Jen took it too far and made me look like an idiot. One Friday afternoon, Ralph was telling me about an open-mike poetry thing he was doing over the weekend, and Jen runs up to us fake weeping and shouting: “Marcie, Marcie, my father was running with the bulls in Pamplona and got trampled.”

  Ralph said, “Funny, weren’t his legs just crushed in a freak train wreck in Botswana last week?” and walked off. I told Jen she didn’t have to overdo it like that, but she huffed that her father was just in Pamplona and Botswana—he’s some State Department bigwig who’s always traveling. It was actually the bulls and the train wreck that I thought pushed the envelope, but there’s no winning an argument with Jen, and that’s one of the reasons I love her.

  Still, I thought the whole thing was sort of funny until Ralph submitted a poem for the Fuller Review. It was called “Beauty Ain’t My Truth,” and it was about how two people who shared the same soul never found each other because they were wrapped in a skin that the other couldn’t see through. It was such a beautiful sad poem that I texted Ralph to tell him I loved it and that we were going to run it, but he didn’t reply. And when I’d see him around Fuller or in town, he’d look the other way. I couldn’t get him out
of my mind. Not that he was my soul mate or anything. But he was the most talented person at Fuller and even I couldn’t get past his looks.

  That’s what the surgery is also about for me. I don’t need to be beautiful, but I don’t want to be a sideshow. When the other half of my soul comes searching for me, I don’t want the blubber to stop him from recognizing me.

  WTF! My cell is almost vibrating itself off my night table. “What?” I groan into the phone. I can’t make out the caller ID because I’m not wearing my glasses, but who else could it be so late at night?

  “Marce—it’s me, baby girl. How’re ya? Just wanted to say I love you, girl, before your big day!” Jen is slurring through her sobs—and the sound of traffic in the background. New York City traffic!

  “Jen, it’s one in the morning. Where are you?” I bark.

  “Marce, I need—” she blubbers.

  “You need? My surgery’s tomorrow!” I howl, cutting her off.

  “Marce, please. Chuck kicked me out! I have no place—” Jen sobs louder.

  “Chuck? That loser from Coco’s party? You are still in New York!” I scream into the phone. Jen’s betrayal is so mammoth, I can’t even wait for a reply. I turn off my phone, throw it against the wall, and cry myself to sleep.

  17

  Going Under

  Thursday, July 16, 2009

  East (−7 lbs); Char (−4 lbs)

  I’m in the downstairs bathroom so I don’t wake anyone. It’s three-thirty a.m. and we don’t need to leave for the hospital for another two hours. I’m biting the inside of my mouth so I won’t scream, Forget it, I’m not going through with this. I almost went there last night, but Char was so tense and overly sensitive about, like, everything, that I didn’t want her coming down on me for being a big fat catastrophizing Shroud loser. Especially since she must be so upset about not having her surgery with me.

  It started when we were in the family room, digging into the Mario’s take-out bag in front of the TV—my “final pig-out,” even though I just got a chicken Caesar salad without dressing. I got up to bring Mom’s lasagna to her bedroom, and when I returned, Char had taken Julius’s high school graduation picture off the wall.

  “What are you doing with that?” I said. “My mom will kill you if you get tomato sauce on it.”

  “Don’t get your panties in a twist, East,” Char said. “It’s protected by glass. I was just thinking of how time passes, you know, and now Julius is getting married.…” Char banged the wall as she rehung the picture and left it cockeyed. We ate dinner in silence on the couch, not even bothering to turn on the TV. After we cleaned up, we went up to my room, and Char crawled straight into bed.

  I asked her as casually as I could if everyone still thought she was having her surgery right after mine, but she flipped onto her side, putting her back to my face. “I don’t see why your mom can’t just pick the hospital records up herself. Then Betsy and Dr. Weinstein can lay off about this stupid appendectomy of yours and put you back on the surgery schedule. It’s not right that I’m getting the surgery tomorrow and you’re not,” I said.

  “I’m really tired, East, and you know how upsetting this situation is to me. I only told you because we’re supposedly best friends—please don’t throw it back in my face by bringing it up over and over again.” Supposedly?

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I just know how much you want this surgery, and this is like the dumbest reason on the planet to hold it up.”

  “Thanks. Can we just go to sleep now? You’ve got a big day ahead of you.” Char pulled the blanket up around her shoulders and I shut off the light. I heard her tossing and turning for a few minutes; then she sat up and announced that the bed was uncomfortable, and could she sleep in Julius’s room instead?

  I switched the light back on. “Seriously? You used to always sleep in this bed, Char. Besides, the linens in Julius’s room are probably all dusty. Why are you angry with me?”

  Char rubbed her eyes. “I’m not angry at you. Honestly, though, I’d rather sleep by myself tonight.”

  I shrugged, and Char grabbed her pillow and blanket and left.

  All the forms and consents have been signed and I’m on deck. The nurses are really nice, and they’ve let Char sit with me while I wait for the anesthesiologist. More accurately, Char plowed her way through the doors that said Medical Staff Only and they were kind enough not to kick her out. I guess she felt uncomfortable sitting in the waiting room with my mom—a black velour mountain bent over a bag of wool, working her needles in a frenzy, as Char put it. I laugh nervously.

  “She’s fine—don’t worry. But listen,” Char says. She’s all jumpy and speed-talking again like her normal self. “Big props for me on the blog idea.” Char put up a blog for everyone to stay in touch while we’re home recuperating, especially since it’ll be over a week before Teenage Waistland meets again. “Oh, and Marcie says good luck to us.” Us, the supposed best friends.

  “When did you speak to Marcie?” I cut in. It’s seven-thirty a.m. Certainly not this morning.

  “Last night, when I couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t too late, so I called her. So listen to this,” Char plows on. But I feel my blood start to boil. Char wanted to be alone last night and not with me so that she could chat it up with Marcie? I struggle not to react as Char continues.

  “You know how Jen bailed on Marcie the day before her surgery because she was so hungover from Coco’s party?”

  “Yeah, you told me that already,” I mutter, fighting tears. It’s unbelievable how involved Char has become in every morsel of these people’s lives.

  “It turns out that Jen didn’t go home early. She used Marcie’s surgery as an excuse to hook up with a guy—the one she met at Coco’s party. Ronny’s chauffeur dropped her at Penn Station for her train back to Boston, but as soon as he pulled away, she got into a cab—”

  “She just turned sixteen, right?” I cut in, completely nauseated. “That guy looked at least twenty-five. I can’t believe Jen would do something that stupid—sober, anyway.”

  Char frowns and shakes her head. “Age means nothing when you’re in love.”

  “Love? Right.” I laugh. “Obviously it was a booty call. Why else would a guy with an apartment want anything to do with a sixteen-year-old? Isn’t that statutory rape or something?”

  Char stands up briskly like she’s ready to take off. “That’s so not the point, East! Jen called Marcie from the street, drunk! At one a.m., the night before her surgery! Marcie hung up on her, so Jen spent the night at Marcie’s grandmother’s apartment.”

  “Can we please forget Marcie and Jen for now, Char? I’m about to have surgery! And I’m scared.” Char sits down again and her expression softens.

  “Chill, girl. You’ll be completely knocked out. You won’t even know what’s happening.”

  “They put you out when you had your appendectomy, right? Did it hurt? Do you remember any of it?” I ask.

  “Yes, no, and no! And I’m sure it’ll be the same with this.” She’s snappy all over again.

  “I’m still freaking about that video,” I offer, trying to find a neutral subject.

  Yesterday, Char and I watched a Lap-Band surgery video she found online. It started with three surgeons in scrubs and masks standing around a fat inert body. They’re holding long metal rods that have barbecuelike tongs with teeth at the end, and they’re smiling for the camera. The next scene is inside the body—they pumped air and shoved a flashlight into the abdominal cavity so you could see the goings-on. One of the tongs pointed at all the organs for the camera. See, here’s the liver. Fatty! And there, if we just lift up the stomach for a moment, is the spleen. We watched in horror as two pairs of tongs guided the Lap-Band around the stomach while a third was moving globs of fat out of the way. One wrong move and a vital internal organ could get punctured. Just as they finished sewing the band around the stomach, Crystal popped in to ask us if we wanted some sandwiches. Char shut the browser.

  “
We didn’t get a chance to see them close the incisions,” I say. Four of them, each supposedly about an inch long, across the upper stomach. And then a bigger one closer to the belly button for installation of the port.

  “So you could be catastrophizing it and wondering if you’ll bleed to death?” Char says, finally smiling again. “Or is pooping on the table while you’re unconscious your Shroudtastrophe of the moment?”

  “Don’t be silly. I got over those scenarios minutes ago. Now I’m working on never waking up from the anesthesia.”

  All I can remember is the anesthesiologist injecting something into my IV and saying I’d begin to feel sleepy.

  “You’re done,” Char says, hovering over me in the recovery room, where she’s probably not supposed to be either. “It went perfectly. No pooping whatsoever. Or none that Dr. Weinstein mentioned to your mom when he came out of surgery.”

  I’m still drowsy, and in excruciating pain.

  “Where is she?” I croak.

  “She went home.”

  “She left me?” My stomach is killing me and I start to cry.

  “It’s okay, honey,” Char says, and takes my hand. “When Dr. Weinstein said you’d be in the recovery area for another hour or two before being taken to your room, she was so relieved and exhausted from the stress that I suggested she go home. If there’s an open bed in your room, Dr. Weinstein said I could stay with you overnight.”

  A nurse comes in and asks me to rank my pain on a scale of one to ten. I tell her “a million,” and she promptly pumps a cylinder of morphine into the port on the hand Char isn’t squeezing. And as a warm, happy feeling floods everything else away, I squeeze Char’s hand even tighter. Char. My one and only “we.”