Chapter One
He wouldn’t look at me anymore. Not even an occasional blurry-eyed peek over his bifocal glasses, but I guess my body was just too much for the grizzled old veteran to bear.
I never really took a good look at myself either: the ruddy rolls of fat that made my face look like an astronaut’s head after taking off her helmet in the vacuum of space; arms that looked like segmented sausage casings twisted at the ends to keep the meat from poring out all over the butcher’s floor; feet swollen by enough Auntie Anne’s pretzel salt to melt a blizzard on the interstate; and a belly that was one big round mound of fat from the countless calories of the calzones I never counted.
“Cassie, I’m afraid you have type two diabetes,” my doctor said.
I sat there wrapped up in three gowns that had been hastily pinned together by his nurse to cover me for my weigh-in. I was too big to get up on the examination bed – you know that thing with the crinkly paper – so I had to push two armless chairs together and plant my ass on the cold squeaky vinyl.
“Type two diabetes is actually not caused by your body’s lack of insulin production, although it can be. In your case it’s caused by your body’s inability to use the insulin it generates properly. Your internal organs are simply too…” He looked around the room searching for just the right word. “…too over-taxed. And your pancreas is no exception.”
I knew what he was going to say next. He said it every time I saw him, but it hadn’t made one ounce of difference.
“You need to lose weight Cassie. You really must lose some weight.”
I didn’t say anything. I was done trying to convince him that I had tried. I was done trying to explain the impossibilities of latest diet I had failed at. I was done trying to feign that I still really gave a shit. But this time he didn’t close my file and usher me out of his office like a lost circus sideshow. No, this time he finally looked me in the eyes: “Cassie, you are obese. Morbidly obese. Do you know what that means?”
Either one of those words was bad by themselves. I knew that. But together they sounded particularly awful.
“It means you will die from being overweight. And not someday in the future. You will die within one year. Most likely sooner.”
He had consulted, cajoled and even coaxed me before, but this was the first time he had been so specific, so final. Food was supposed to have an expiration date, not me.
“As you know, I have mentioned the lap band, but that’s not a possibility any more. Your heart couldn’t take the stress of the operation. And I know exercise isn’t really an option until you shed some pounds. I’m afraid your condition is only treatable through diet.”
Well, if that’s the case, I thought, I’d better treat it with the pepper crusted pork chops and peanut butter pie at TGI Friday’s. That’s how I treated everything in my life: with food. Get a speeding ticket; eat a pie. Feel the excessive stare of the traffic cop; eat two pies. Pay the speeding ticket; eat a half-gallon of ice cream to go with the pie. I was an emotional eater, big deal.
***
I loaded myself back into my car and sped back toward my hometown of Verona, Wisconsin. Just outside of the beltline that circles Madison, Verona is a “hiccup in the highway” because highway 151 runs right up to it, curves around in a big horseshoe, then continues back on its way southwest toward Mount Horeb. Its nickname is “Hometown USA” which means it is special in its plainness. A close-knit community that is limited in scope and based around family and schools. Its homes are modest and painted without much flair. Its streets are straight and its parks are unembellished. Not unlike the people who choose to live here.
Like other small Wisconsin towns, it also has its share of high-caloric possibilities. There are a high per-capita percentage of cheese shops, butcher shops, candy stores, fast food and ice cream stands. There is even a locally famous restaurant called BratFirst that serves something known as Butter Brats that are served on a butter-basted roll with Sauerkraut and bread and butter pickles. It is sheer buttery bliss and I had eaten my share. Once, at a summer festival known as Bratfest, I ate a record sixteen of them. But I just didn’t limit myself to the annual eating contest (which I won handily over Larry Von Schnaben by the way), I just liked the flavor of a fire-grilled brat that had been marinated in beer for twenty-four hours. Sue me.
Despite all this, Verona wasn’t the “fattest” town in Wisconsin. Which is probably due more to its German ancestry than anything else. Being of good German stock must help the locals ingest massive amounts of beer, cheese and meat with greater ability than the Scandinavians or the Poles who make up other fatter towns in the state. But I was easily the fattest woman in town. Everybody knew it. However, people never pointed it out. Partly because they were raised not to draw attention to other people’s physical qualities, and partly because they were secretly afraid that there “but for the grace of god…” Occasionally, a small child would react to my heft, but it was no different than how they would react to seeing an elephant for the first time. Or a blue whale. It was just so overwhelming to them, that if they had a “polite-ness” filter, it was over-rode by their astonishment. But, like I said, I never saw it. Because when you add weight an ounce at a time, you never really see it all pile on.
It’s the same thing with love.
***
When I walked back inside my house all I could think about was dinner with my best friend, Cheryl. I just wanted to get upstairs, shower, and dress for our night out. I considered this task much like an airline turns around their airplanes. It was all logistics. How fast could I get this jumbo cleaned up, serviced, and back out on the runway? But waiting for me on the tarmac was my husband Grant.
Grant and I met when we were students at the University of Wisconsin. Back then I was much lighter and in my prime “pretty years.” Everyone has a period of about three to five years when they are at their prettiest: their skin is clear, their eyes are free from wrinkles, they have a figure, and there are no visible stretch marks or varicose veins. The rest of their life is somehow always compared to that. It’s the time when every picture taken is saved. You could be eighty years old and you’ll still pull out a handful of photos from the “pretty years” and thumb through them like they were taken just yesterday. And if you held them up to present day photos of yourself, or to your reflection in a mirror, you’d think “who the hell is that person and where did she go?”
Anyway, I had met Grant in one of my accounting classes. He was a marketing major and was only there to fulfill one of his requirements, but later he told me he took that class so he could meet me. In my “pretty years” I used to be something to look at. I am tall, have long jet-black hair and, when I wasn’t struggling with my weight, well… let’s just say the guys noticed me. A lot. And so did Grant, which was okay by me. Grant Roberts is a handsome man. So handsome, many people think he is gay. Because in Wisconsin, if you’re too good looking, the men tell the women that you’re gay even when you’re not. It greatly culls their competition.
“Psssst. Did you know Grant Roberts is gay?”
“Really?”
“Are you kidding? You ever see a straight guy look like that? His hair is so perfect. His eyes… so evenly spaced. And his teeth. Those are not the teeth of a red meat eating man. And did you see the sweater he wore the other day?”
“No.”
“It was a sweater vest.”
“Oh my God.”
***
“What’d the doctor say?” Grant said as I walked through the door. Grant always wanted to hear what the doctor had to say because the doctor always said what he wanted to hear – that I had to lose weight. It was his way of bringing up the topic he so desperately wanted to talk about. But I never did.
“He said I have to lose weight,” I said as I tried to make my way around him and upstairs.
“We can do this, Cassie,” he said as he gently grabbed my arm. “I know we can.”
But we’d been through this so many times before. To his credit, however, he had tried to help me in every conceivable way. He’d tried the gentle approach, the friendly approach, the companion approach, the “we’re all in this together” approach, the medical approach, the straight-forward approach, the humorous approach and the non-approach. And whenever one of these approaches got through and I’d start a diet or begin to exercise he was the happiest guy on the planet – smiling, talkative, supportive. But when I’d fall off my plan, you could see him withdraw again. And I guess I kind of liked it that way. Mutual strained existence is much easier to deal with than the absolute horrible truth.
“Did he say anything else?”
I knew I had to tell him. I owed him that much. So I tried to make my voice all happy and sing-songy: “Oh, yeah. He said I have diabetes.” I tried to pull away from his grasp but he pulled me back.
“Whoa, what?”
“Yeah, he said I have, ah, an early stage of diabetes. It’s no big deal.”
“Do you have to take shots?”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that. It’s type two.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It’s type two. It’s nothing.”
“How do you treat it?”
“Diet and exercise.”
“Well?”
“I don’t want to talk about this right now.”
“What else did he say?”
“He said I have to lose weight.”
“Yeah, you said that.”
“I have to lose weight or…”
“Or what?”
“I will die.”
His eyes opened like they were blasted by dynamite. “He said you will die?”
“Or might die, I don’t remember.”
“When? When did he say you would die?”
“Sometime… you know, like, within a year.”
Grant started waving his arms around. “This is what I’ve been worried about. This is what I told you about!”
“Well I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, as I turned to head upstairs. “I’m late for my dinner with Cheryl.”
“We need to do something Cassie. We need to do something now!” I could hear him continue to pace back and forth after I had escaped upstairs to my bedroom. And after ten years of marriage I could even hear his consternation. It’s nothing audible, but wives have this amazing sensitivity. Just as men have the gift of being able to tune out everything a woman says; we have the exact opposite gift of being able to hear everything they are thinking and feeling. We can even interpret their grunts and burps. I’m certain there’s science that supports this.
Up in my closet, I dressed for my night out with Cheryl. As I was looking for a pair of shoes to slip on, I saw my life spread out before me on my closet shelves. I had never thrown out a pair of shoes and they were like a museum display of my life: the pair of pumps I used to be able to wear in my early twenties when those thin little heels could bear the load of a much slimmer woman, the pair of espadrilles I bought in Cancun when I used to enjoy going to the beach, even a pair of “fuck me” boots Grant had bought me for our third anniversary (leather). Those were the real deals. Black, all leather, Bruno Magli high-heeled boots with silver buckle accents that dripped all kinds of up against a brick wall alley sex. I loved those boots.
Grant had bought them because somehow, in the weird twisted back part of his mind, he remembered that it was O.J. who had worn Bruno Magli shoes, and from that moment on, he equated that brand with Hollywood, sexual trysts, and enraged passions. He never really chose to dwell too much on the homicide part of it.
As I got bigger though, the smaller shoes got shoved to the back as larger shoes replaced them. But all of them didn’t go into retirement quietly. There was one pair of red Michael Antonio python pointed pumps that I couldn’t bear to stop wearing. I loved them so much I would spray Pam on my feet and use a long shoehorn – which in my case looked like a tiny metal playground slide – and force my feet into those gorgeous leather uppers. What I wanted to imagine passed for sexy toe cleavage, I now know looked more liked five fat hogs wrestling for position at the trough.
I always put my shoes on first. Ever since I was a little girl, it was an irrational fear of mine that there would be a fire and I’d have to run out into the snow in my bare feet. But all I could find to wear that night was a pair of mismatched flats (one brown, one black) and a pair of white padded Reeboks. You know, the kind nurses and old men wear. I chose the flats, obviously, because even a mismatched pair is far less embarrassing.
Then I put on a black pullover and realized that all the clothes that still fit resembled each other. They were all basically black pullovers of some kind. It wasn’t so much a look I was going for, but a feel. The kind of fabric and the looseness each one gave around my mid-section. And because tonight I was thinking about doubling down on the pork chops, I picked the loosest fitting of them all.
On my way back downstairs, I knew that Grant would still be pacing about and want to pick up our conversation right where we left off, so I thought I’d wait until his back was turned before I would sneak out. However, it’s impossible for a woman of my size to sneak anywhere. The stairs would creak in anticipation even before I set foot on them. But when I made my way down again, he wasn’t pacing at all. He just sat catatonic on the couch pretending to read a magazine.
“I’m going now,” I said.
“All right.”
Like my doctor, he wouldn’t even look at me. I guess he had slipped back into a funk when he realized I had no intention of doing anything about my weight. So he feigned interest in some article in People. But I knew he hated that magazine and wouldn’t be caught dead reading it.
“Take your truck?” I liked taking his pick-up truck because it had bigger doors than my Taurus and, because it was higher, was easier to get in and out. Plus, the suspension was much stiffer and I didn’t bottom out when I went over the railroad tracks.
“Keys are on the counter,” he said without emotion as he flipped the page.
I didn’t waste a minute. I grabbed his keys and headed to the garage. As my ankle adjusted its angle on the accelerator, Grant’s truck, and its now massive payload, sped toward the Friday’s in Middleton and my date with destiny.