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I arrive exactly on time. The whole ordeal with the kitten has turned me off to cooking, and since I can’t go without eating, I figure I might as well take Ann Banks up on her invitation.
I wasn’t going to. I am not very good with people I don’t know. Come to think of it, not so good with the ones I do know, either.
Tonight is the first time in a long time, since before, since long before that, truthfully, that I’ve made any kind of effort. Even so, it is evident right away it wasn’t enough. To say that I am out of place would be an understatement. I am out of place. My flat, mousy brown hair has nothing on the women here. They’re well put together, with their cultivated, salon-colored, cut, and styled tresses. It’s like a fucking shampoo commercial. Except that I am the only one twenty-five pounds overweight and wearing clothes that don’t fit.
Not to mention, I couldn’t find my contacts. Since I couldn’t very well afford to go in blind, not tonight, not ever again, not with so much at stake, this meant wearing my glasses. They’re not the cool kind, either. They’re thick rimmed and pointy, the kind you buy when you’re naive enough to think you already have a man and no one else’s opinion matters. Let that be a lesson.
Speaking of lessons…not only is my hair and eyewear lacking, I clearly missed the memo about dressing up. My dark jeans and sweater are boring and plain in comparison to these women. Not unlike the rest of my life.
When Ethan said I let myself go, he wasn’t being intentionally cruel. He just didn’t know what it felt like to eat real food. He didn’t know, not until after we were married, how tight a lid I kept on the real me and how life might look if I let it slip. Still, the weight and my appearance are not what made me lose my husband. But they certainly didn’t help.
Now that he has one foot out the door, or rather both of them, if I’m honest, they aren’t helping me get a job either. And I desperately need a job. They say appearance doesn’t matter. But it so obviously does. As my husband said once, who in their right mind would trust you to handle their business if you can’t even take care of yourself? Ann says your outer appearance is just a reflection of how you feel about yourself on the inside. Her critics eat her alive for it. They call her a fat-shamer. But even I have to admit, she isn’t entirely wrong.
I used to be fit. In shape. On top of things. But that seems like ages ago. I was a different person then. I am not that person anymore.
I never imagined I’d be in this situation, although in hindsight, I really should have. It’s fascinating the kind of damage people can do to themselves. It sort of just sneaks up on you. You think you know how low you can go, but really, there’s always another level, another rock bottom.
This is the way it is, Ann says in her book. And then you die. You just sink lower and lower until the bitter end. Basically, it’s like you’re digging your own grave with all your bad decisions. Decisions can be different, she wants you to know. Things either get better or they don’t, and then some part of your body gives— maybe it’s your heart or your lungs or a combination of the two—and then you die. It doesn’t have to be this way, Ann says. But usually it is.
Ann says a lot of things. She believes in survival of the fittest, and she wants everyone else to believe in it too. But there are too many stupid people in this world for me to embrace that notion wholeheartedly.
Anyway, I need a job, and I don’t have a job. And when you don’t have a job your mind takes you places. Dark places.
My mind has hung out in those dark places for a while. Ethan hadn’t wanted me to work. Initially, I’d been fine with that. But that was when life was full of promise for what lay ahead. That was when I had someone else’s income to count on. I hadn’t even missed much about my career at first, except for the connections. But then, I landed here at this dinner party and now I can see, I should have been more patient. Everything has a solution.
People mingle. People drink. People consume. No one speaks to me with any depth—but why would they? We have little in common. They’ve come for a party, and I am the opposite of that, too solid a reminder of what they might become if they aren’t careful. Run down. Overweight. Alone.
No one wants a mirror held up to the fact that they, too, can slip, that things and people can be taken away without notice, simply because they can.
That’s not to say the neighbors are unkind, even if they refuse to meet my eye. Probably most of them don’t even notice me. Probably, like Ethan says, I am imagining things.
It doesn’t feel like I’m imagining things. And anyway, like Ann writes in her book, feelings can be deceptive.
I have to give Ethan credit for being right about something. If I look closely, I can see he has a point. These people, they aren’t thinking about me. They’re all busy trying too hard. Most of the women here rarely get this dressed up on a weeknight. Even a Friday. There’s not much to do in this town, and it’s obvious they are eager, overly so, for the chance to feel seen.
I almost feel sorry for them. I want to text Ethan and let him know I understand now. It was all in my head. I want to make jokes, with our eyes from across the room, the way we used to. I want to feel his hand on the small of my back, his fingers intertwined with mine. I want to feel my back against the wall, my hair wound tightly in his fist. I wouldn’t even mind his hand around my throat, suffocating me in the way only he could.
Mostly, I want to be eager to leave, eager to be alone together, eager to see the night end. But the night goes on forever and it never ends.
I’d like to tell him he had been right about other things, too—things I am now seeing in his absence. I want to tell him you can see a lot if you look closely enough. But I can’t. Not yet.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SADIE
If you can’t beat ’em, you m
ight as well join them. In her book, Ann suggests that if I can change—if I can lose the weight, make friends—my life can be okay again. Not like before. Different. If I give it my best shot, if I try hard enough, things can be even better. Impossible, if you ask me. But to Ann, nothing is impossible.
I hope she isn’t wrong, because I don’t have long to figure it out. Currently, I have fourteen months of saved income left, minus what the cat is costing me. If I look on the bright side— the way Ann tells you in her book—it is still well above what the average American has in savings.
Unfortunately, this town isn’t exactly cheap.
Ethan always wanted a big house, in a nice neighborhood, and back then, so did I. Back then, I hadn’t budgeted for living in it all alone.
But I can’t dwell on that. Not now.
Now, I have to do what Ann says and become the change I want to see. I’m getting a head start by standing at the Bankses’ bookshelves, scanning their selection, when out of the corner of my eye, movement catches my attention. A teenage girl comes bounding down the stairs. It is obvious right away she is Ann’s daughter. The striking eyes combined with the same friendly smile give her away. They’re almost the same person. I watch as the girl surveys the crowd, clearly searching for someone. Unlike her mother, she hasn’t yet learned to hide the things she doesn’t want others to see.
