Teenage Waistland Read online

  This twig at the Massapequa party said, “Whoa. You need a mansiere, like a brassiere, but for men. Ha-ha.” I’d have strangled her with her padded brassiere except she’s dating one of the guys on the team. “Shut up, Boney” was all I said. But since then, it’s been out there—that skinny girl’s laughter in my head. Even when it’s not in the locker room, or the halls, or at other parties, it, her, the whole moobie thing—it’s always there.

  “Bobby?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So you don’t know about—?” She’s pointing again. I gotta look straight ahead.

  “I’m driving. Sorry.”

  “Honey, I think you should try to be part of it. I know how unhappy and self-conscious your weight makes you feel. Plus, it’s just not healthy for you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “There were only a few boys there, so you have a good chance of getting in. I’m excited for you, Bobby. You too, right?”

  Exciting is being starting offensive lineman and creating a huge hole for the running back. Leveling guys—that’s exciting. Having girl surgery to get rid of girl boobs—no. Surgery because girl diets don’t work—no. Not exciting.

  “Yeah. I’m excited, Mom.”

  “I have a good feeling.” She sighs and does her deep breath thing. “You should tell Dad how strongly you feel about this when we get home. Don’t be afraid to express how being heavy bothers you—you aren’t your father and his feelings don’t have to be yours. Get it off your chest, Bobby. Did you hear what I said?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No pun intended,” she says, and pokes me. “Seriously, you need to talk this over with Dad.”

  I feel more tightening in the pit of my stomach.

  “Don’t worry. I explained to him how your self-esteem is more important than, well, anything else, and he said he’ll try to be open to the idea.” Mom, as usual, reads my mind. It’s funny. My dad is like my best bud, but Mom keys in on things he doesn’t. Like me missing junior prom. But I probably couldn’t fit into any tuxedo. And I don’t dance. Zoo and Craighead hounded me to come, even without a date.

  “I know a few girls going stag. I’ll set you up, Refrigerator-Man,” Zoo had said. “Maybe you’ll get lucky, lose your V-card.”

  “I don’t need anyone to fix me up,” I lied.

  Prom night, I stayed home and watched TV with Dad and a box of Krispy Kremes. It was fine. But Mom pulled this ad for the Lap-Band trial out of the paper, so I guess I’m not the only one who knows everything is not all good.

  “Refrigerator-Man. Buddy,” Dad calls. “You’re late. I tried to call you in the car. Get over here. Beckett’s on the mound.”

  “What’s the score?” I plunk down on the couch.

  “Bottom of the second. One nothing.”

  “Nice.” I’m shoveling onion dip with a Ruffles potato chip.

  “Forget that. Here.” Dad passes me large containers of lo mein, fried dumplings, and greasy spareribs. “Just delivered. Hot. Egg rolls too.” He motions with his chin. Sundaes will be later, after dinner. More tradition.

  I grab the plate and chopsticks Dad set out for me.

  “Thanks,” I say, emptying the lo mein carton. “Did you see that?” Dad’s playing it back even after the replay and we cannot believe the call.

  I’m ripping into the spareribs when Mom enters the den. Shaking her head at the two of us slobbering down the food and screaming at the TV, she kneels to pick up some stray kernels of fried rice on the carpet.

  “There’ll be no more of this if he gets into the trial.”

  “Shhh. Watching,” Dad says, pointing his slimy finger at the TV. Mom frowns again and sighs deeply.

  “Fine. I’m off to yoga, and then to close up the store,” she finally says, and bolts. Except, two seconds later, right when Jeter is sliding into second, she strides back in all huffy and slaps down the paperwork from the bariatric place on the coffee table. Dad pushes it aside so he can get to the duck sauce packets. Mom pushes it back.

  “He wants this, Rob. He needs this. Tell him, Bobby,” she says. I act like I don’t hear her. “Bobby?”

  “Game’ll probably be over around six. Wanna just pick up some meatball subs for dinner on your way back?” Dad says, his eyes fixed on the screen. “And make sure the back gate to the lumberyard is double-locked this time.”

  “No, I’ve got chicken marinating in the fridge.” She throws me a meaningful look and takes off, muttering something about the mess.

  “Bye, Mom,” I yell.

  It sucks that I’m making her do all the pushing. I get that. I might not be as hyper about it as she is, but really, I want this as much as she wants it for me. I just don’t know how to explain it to Dad, and Mom can talk to him better anyway. When the Energizer Bunny comes on at commercial, I lean over to pick up the brochure with the Lap-Banded-stomach drawing on the front, and then look at my plate. With that little pouch, I’d only be able to cram down one fried dumpling. Dad pulls the brochure out of my hand.

  “So? You want to do this liposuction?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “It’s horse manure, is what it is. Did she convince you?”

  “No, it’s my decision.… I mean, if you’ll let me.”

  “If I’ll let you? This isn’t even you talking—it’s your mother. What about football, son?”

  “What about it?”

  “What about it? For God’s sake, kid. Do you think they need a ninety-eight-pound weakling on the front line to trip the other players?”

  “No way. I’ll stay strong. I’m gonna stay all-state, Dad; what, are you kidding?”

  He’s leafing through the forms and papers. Dad was all-state too. Offensive lineman, same position as me. In his Syosset High yearbook stuff like Robert Konopka, you gorgeous hunk, remember me, and I love you was written in curly girl handwriting surrounded by little hearts. I saw it in the basement with his college football stuff. Memorabilia. It sucked seeing those words next to my name under a picture of a guy looking exactly like me—minus the moobies. We don’t do the senior/junior thing. My dad and me are both Robert Konopka. For a while, people would say Little Bobby and Big Bobby. When I shot up to six feet two and went from 275 to 335 pounds, though, Big Bobby wasn’t the big Bobby anymore.

  “Says here that for the first six weeks, you’ll be on liquids and pureed foods and less than a thousand calories. That’s nowhere near the amount of energy you’ll need for football. And what week in August does practice start? Says here you’ll need six weeks to heal before you’re able to do any strenuous exercise.”

  Damn. Forgot about the recovery period. It’ll be close. “Dad, I promise. I’ll be fine by the time I go back. I’ll make sure of it.”

  “You promise? You won’t have your strength, not sipping water and eating baby food, not at a thousand or even two thousand calories a day.” Dad’s looking at me now. He hasn’t even noticed the game’s back on.

  “I’ve got plenty of excess energy. I’m wearing it.” On my chest.

  “And Coach? What does he say about it? He thinks his top lineman needs to slim down too?”

  I grab the fried-rice container, but it’s empty, so I toss it back on the table. “Dad, please let me deal with Coach, okay? It’ll be fine.”

  “Not so fast. Watch who you’re talking to. You and your mother just don’t get this. And this thing’s the price of a car.”

  “Obviously, I’m working at the store this summer, so if the money—”

  “Hey. Listen. Our store. Your store one day. And then your son’s store, when you’re too old for it. And it’s not the money.” He’s shaking his head. “You’re big. So what? You’re big—we’re big, Bobby. You, me, Grandpa. It’s who we Konopkas are. That’s no good anymore? You’re the top all-state lineman in the league. That’s no good either?”

  “No. All-state is like everything to me. I’m proud—”

  “Certainly made me proud. My son holding up our family tradition.”<
br />
  “I’m not gonna even be as good. I’m gonna be better. I swear.”

  Dad studies my eyes until I look away. “I don’t think so, Bobby. I just don’t see how,” he finally says, and turns his attention back to the game. A-Rod is at bat and he cracks the ball past Lowell.

  “That guy’s a force,” Dad says, pushing the table away so he can stretch out his legs. I watch how excited he gets at some stranger’s talent and it occurs to me how kids at my school and people around town—even kids in rival schools—all know my name. I hear them on the field. “Ree-fri-ger-ay-tor!” I need to stay all-state, he’s right—it’s who I am. And glancing at Dad’s expression when the next batter strikes out, I know there’s another Robert Konopka who really needs this too.

  “A-Rod’s so strong, it’s ridiculous,” I say.

  “Got nothing on my boy,” Dad says. He leans toward me and swats my leg with the rolled up Lap-Band booklet in his hand.

  4

  The Cheat Sheet

  Sunday, May 17, 2009

  East

  “Lemme see that.” Before I can even release the top button on my jeans and find a comfortable position on her carpet, Char grabs my questionnaire for the psych appointment from my backpack and starts riffling through it. “Are you crazy? You can’t say this. Your Lady of Shroudness, this is so not the kind of answer that’s gonna get you selected.” She’s tapping at the question that reads I can’t have fun when I have to watch what I eat. Evaluate this statement as it relates to you.

  “What’s wrong with what I wrote?” I say. “If we enjoyed life without food, we wouldn’t be morbidly humongous.”

  Her nails are digging into the papers as she’s examining them. “Don’t you get it? You can’t be honest!”

  “Well—”

  “No. No. No.” She’s reading and shaking her head, and when she looks up at me, it’s as if she’s detected a foul smell. “You checked off ‘emotional eater’ and ‘use food to self-medicate.’ Are you kidding, East?”

  “No. It’s true. Eating always makes us feel better.”

  “How are you possibly on high honor roll? If you were a cutter, would you tell them that too?”

  “If you were listening to the nurse, you would have heard her say how important it is to be honest about our eating behaviors.”

  Char takes a deep breath and loudly blows it out toward the ceiling. “Okay, let me spell it out for you. This surgery requires us to make drastic lifestyle changes. The purpose of this questionnaire is to help them evaluate our ability to make these changes. The only correct answers are the ones that make us look like excellent candidates. So save the honesty for your diary.” She yanks a stack of papers from her desk and waves them in my face.

  “Stop,” I say, batting them away. “What is all that?”

  “The keys to the kingdom,” Char announces with a bow.

  I must still be staring blankly, because she tosses my questionnaire onto her chair and smacks her desk.

  “I downloaded this booklet from the American Society of Bariatric Physicians website. It’s a cheat sheet, East—the answer key! It contains the official guidelines that doctors use to make their psychological assessments. Exactly what we need to say to get in! I pretty much cribbed the whole thing for my questionnaire.”

  “You did not! Let me see.”

  “It’s already done and gone, girlfriend. My mom mailed it yesterday.”

  I pull myself up off the carpet and sit on her bed without taking my eyes off her. Why wouldn’t we mail them together? And since when has she—have we—gotten so desperate? Finally, I say, “This is still surgery, Char. Even if it is laparoscopic and they’re only cutting tiny holes instead of completely opening us up. We need to be hon—”

  “You’re still so not getting this, East. We can’t risk not getting in! Next year, all this could be gone!” Char grabs a handful of her stomach and punches her hip. She stares at me for a moment for emphasis and then sits next to me on the bed. “Seriously, East—one year from now—think of a place you’d like to be, looking all thin and fab.”

  The picture flashing through my mind is Bobby with his arm around me at my junior prom, but Char’s always suggesting we take a bus up to Cornell to visit Julius so we can meet some “hot college men.” “How about Julius’s graduation?” I say.

  “Bingo!” Char yells, bouncing back to her feet. “Imagine you and me showing up together in Ithaca next spring looking all hot and sexy—think about how excited Julius would be to see you thin again!” She’s strutting around in a circle with her chest out and tossing her hair.

  “What? Ugh, gross. Who wants to look hot for Julius?” I laugh, making a face like I just drank sour milk. Char stops mid-strut, grabs the guideline sheets off her bed, and thrusts them at me. Then she retrieves my questionnaire from her chair and goes back to studying my answers.

  “See? Another wrong answer. You can’t say that you turn to food to deal with negative moods, stress, and depression. According to the guidelines, psychos, depressives, and mental cases in general are bad candidates because they’re less capable of sticking with the program. A whiff of mental illness and you’re so out,” she snaps.

  “I’m just being honest about my ‘relationship with food,’ okay?” I mutter. When you can count your important relationships on two fingers, should you really give one up?

  “Fine, do it your way.” Char sighs. “Keep on sounding like your miserable Shroud self so they skip over you and pick a jollier kid.”

  “Fine,” I growl. “We’ll do it your way.”

  Char erases huge portions of my answers and then tosses my questionnaire back at me. “Oh, before I forget—under dieting history, make sure to list at least ten different diets so they see how much serious effort you’ve put in without results.”

  “Ten diets?” I wail. “I can’t think of ten.”

  “Pfft. Sure you can. We’ve been on at least a hundred. Here, off the top of my head, in alphabetical order: Atkins, the Blood Type diet, the cabbage soup diet, Fat Loss for Idiots, the French Women Don’t Get Fat diet, the grapefruit diet, the Hollywood Diet, the Negative Calories diet, Nutrisystem, Weight Watchers, and the Zone.” She crosses her arms smugly and smiles. My best friend, the Rain Man of diets.

  “Uh, what about the No-Fad Diet diet?” I ask, and Char throws a pillow at me. “Okay, ‘Describe yourself how you think family and friends would,’ ” I read aloud. Friends. N/A I write in the air and say, “Not applicable in the plural sense.”

  Char snatches her pillow back like she’s going to need to throw it at me again. “What about Friday night?”

  “Mary and Diane probably invited me only because you asked them to.”

  Char shrugs. “We still had fun, and it’s important not to sound like a loner.”

  I sigh. “Is it okay if I put that people would describe me as smart, maybe a little too serious, and shy.”

  “Yes, good,” Char says. “Forget the ‘shy’ and ‘serious,’ though. And add that you’re a good daughter, sister, and friend. Wait, forget ‘good’ and put in ‘reliable.’ ‘Reliable’ sounds better.”

  “It sounds canned.”

  Char rolls her eyes. “It sounds like you’re responsible and dependable—a good little girl who’ll change her eating habits, be positive, and do what she’s told, no questions asked. Except for the part about you being positive, we wouldn’t even be lying. Seriously, you always do what you’re supposed to do. And I promise—the minute we’re accepted into the trial, you can go right back to catastrophizing the hell out of everything.”

  “That’s a relief,” I mutter.

  “Okay, now.” She’s reading the next question over my shoulder. “ ‘When did your weight seem to become an issue and was it tied to any specific event?’ ”

  Char and I hardly ever talk about my dad, but I know we’re both thinking that was when I—we—started gaining. “I’ve got this one,” I say.

  “Good, cause I gotta pee,” C
har says. I watch her walk out and then return to the questionnaire.

  Up next, Weight History. I skim the annual checkup reports my pediatrician’s office faxed for the bad news. Age: 12, weight: 115; 13, 165; 14, 220; 15, 268.

  Fighting tears, I flip back to finish off the Eating Behaviors section.

  What generally signals you to stop eating?

  A. I feel satisfied and full.

  B. I feel uncomfortably full.

  C. I am disgusted with myself.

  D. I never really feel full.

  I circle C several times and then erase it and circle D to bypass another tiff with Char. This is like those quizzes in Seventeen magazine. I’ll tally my points and turn to the answer key, only to discover there’s no hope for me.

  “My mom said to remind you to take the leftovers from tonight’s chicken. It’s on the counter wrapped in aluminum foil,” Char says as she bounds back into the room. I smile and shake my head.

  “How is there anything left over after what we ate?” I try to joke, but the last part gets caught in my throat. Crystal always makes extra food so that I can have something homemade to eat the next day. Every time she does it, though, her feeling sorry for me makes me feel sorrier for myself. “Okay, I’m done with this stupid thing, I think.”

  “Really? The first page too? The family background part?”

  “Right,” I mumble, rustling the sheets back to page one. “That part. Guess I saved the best for last. Ugh.”

  “Ah, yes, definitely time for some—ta-da—M&M’S,” Char says, producing a fresh king-sized bag from under her bed and tossing it to me. I tear it open and cram a large handful straight into my mouth to get the chocolate running through my veins as quickly as possible. Then I pour more into my hand and pass the bag to Char. She puts it on her bed without taking any. Then she sits on the floor, next to me, and starts pulling on the carpet fibers. “Things sometimes run in families,” she finally says.