Or something very much like that. It’s all in knowing how to interpret the vocalizations.
I drive to my parents’ house, unpack the groceries, and stare blankly around the kitchen.
Rosie whacks her plastic duck against the linoleum and I tear a chuck steak out of its package. I sear the meat until it purifies the kitchen of all unhappiness. That lasts for about a second. I add red wine, tomatoes, fresh rosemary, an onion that I don’t sauté first because my guru doesn’t approve of fat, and a can of defatted beef broth that the diet fairies left in the cupboard for me.
I inhale. If I can smell this, I’m alive.
Being alive is good. Everybody says so.
While the stew simmers, I pick Rosie up and wander into the bedroom. I unpack a few of Rosie’s sleepers, lose interest, and drop them on the floor.
I turn on the TV, flip channels, and turn off the TV. I put Rosie on the floor for a nap, since her crib’s at what is now Thad’s house.
In my old desk drawer I find a stack of test papers from high school. Except for math, my grades were good, and that depresses me. It meant I was going someplace, or everyone told me it did. Not back to my parents’ house; someplace real.
If I’m going to stay here, I have to get out of the habit of opening drawers. I throw the papers in the trash with the poster of Johnny Depp.
When I had my own house, I believed in recycling. I still believe in recycling, it’s just that I can’t do it right now.
I drift into the kitchen and stir the stew. I add potatoes, parsnips, carrots, and salt tears.
Will eating this make you happy? my guru wants to know.
For a minute, I tell her. Maybe even two. That’s the best I can expect right now.
Have you even looked at your meal plan? she says.
I look at my meal plan. I’m supposed to have “Day-at-the-Beach” salmon steak, which is half a cup of tomato juice mixed with half a tablespoon of lemon juice and a heaping tablespoon of sand, all poured over three ounces of salmon and baked.
What a pity the stew’s already cooking.
I close the book before I get to the side dishes.
I open cupboards to see what else the diet fairies have left for me, and I read the ingredient list on the instant stuffing, the instant potatoes, the instant soup. I call the cable company, claiming to be my mother, and arrange for my parents to receive the Food Channel. Her password is “passable.” Always. If they make her add numbers, she adds 13.
Adding the Food Channel means I’m staying forever, doesn’t it? I’ve moved in with my parents, and I’ll be fifteen until I die of old age and despair.
I stir the stew again. The smell reminds me that I’m alive.
Being alive is good. I instruct myself to remember that.
Eventually my parents get home.
Dinner: beef stew with root vegetables simmered in red wine; French bread with unsalted butter.
Exercise: My father says the unsalted butter tastes like hand cream.
“The good chefs all use it,” I say.
“I can’t see why.”
“Because it’s better.”
He gets the plastic tub of whipped imitation butter out of the refrigerator and greases his bread with it.
It’s his house. It’s his stomach. I keep my mouth shut.
The bowl that held my stew is empty. Did eating it make me happy? I can’t seem to remember. Are fifteen-year-olds ever happy?
Mostly not, but Rosie will be.
I tell my parents I’ll pay for the expanded cable service.
My father says, “With what?”
“I have a little money. Besides, I’m looking for work.”
I don’t mention the credit card. Teenagers are like that.
My mother says, “But I don’t understand why—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.
“Okay,” she says. “Don’t get huffy.”
“I’m not huffy.”
It’s all I can do not to flounce into my room yelling, “Why is everything always my fault?”
I nurse Rosie.
Snack: red wine, but really only the tiniest bit.
Exercise: I ask myself, Will drinking this make me happy?
You bet your sozzled ass it will.
I pair up Rosie’s socks and arrange them methodically in the top dresser drawer. I arrange the rest of our clothes methodically on the bedroom floor because they’ll be easier to find there and because whatever my younger self left in the lower drawers my current self doesn’t want to find. Then I wander into the living room to watch a TV special on Lizzie Borden, which my parents chose without, apparently, any sense of personal risk.
Or irony.
Or even oddity.
When it’s late enough that I can decently crawl into bed, I take Rosie with me and curl around her.
I try to sleep.
DAY
5
Exercise: I lie in bed and let Rosie play with the window shade until my parents slam the front door and it’s safe to crawl out.
My non-diet book is lying on an open section of floor, where I don’t remember leaving it. My diet guru must have put it there and chosen a passage for me. The clothes have edged away from it.
I pick it up.
Today you will take charge of your life by eating foods that you know are good for you, it says. Pay attention to how your body feels on this balanced diet. Do you have more energy? Are you more optimistic? Do you feel better about yourself?
Oh, yes. I feel so good I may just die of it.
For breakfast, it says to eat a two-ounce bran muffin and a cup of nonfat skim milk.
I check the kitchen cupboards for a bran muffin the size of my thumb. When I don’t find one, it is not, I admit, a complete surprise.
Okay, the person I want to become plans ahead. She makes grocery lists. She reads her non-diet book faithfully and ahead of time. If she finds a very small nonfat bran muffin growing in a field of chocolate éclairs, she’ll eat the bran muffin and only the bran muffin, and she’ll skip away happy.
I could make myself do all of that, but it will happen naturally, as soon I lose weight. There’s no point forcing it.
Breakfast: coffee, black; ½ loaf of stale French bread; unsalted butter.
Exercise: I stare at the French bread and ask myself whether eating it will make me happy.
I laugh bitterly.
I play airplane with Rosie’s cereal and say, “Mmmm.”
Snack: remainder of the baby cereal.
Exercise: I tell Rosie, “If you’d eat this the way good babies do, Mommy wouldn’t have to eat it for you and ruin her diet.”
It’s not a diet, my invisible friend says. It’s a lifestyle. It’s Natural.
I don’t answer and she goes away.
I nurse Rosie and call Thad at work, suggesting we meet