The Husband Diet, page 3
‘It’s so awkward.’
He felt it, too, then, the distance between us. Maybe now he’d agree to see a marriage counselor. Long moments of equally awkward silence followed and I waited with bated breath for him to open up to me.
‘I can’t do it,’ he finally said. ‘I’ve tried, but you’re way too big and I’m too tired to make the effort.’
‘Come again?’ I said, no pun intended, my eyes searching for him in the low light.
I could see the silhouette of his head and I was happy I couldn’t see his face.
He sighed and was silent before he answered. ‘All these years I’ve been on your case about losing weight. And you never listened, never cared. And now you’ve blown to a size twenty… and it’s just too much.’
I sat in stunned silence.
‘Look,’ he said apologetically. ‘I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but you have to face the facts here. A normal woman is a size ten.’
Had he done a study project on it? What did he consider normal? And was this what he’d been thinking all these years during which I gave birth to and nurtured his children – and him? That I wasn’t the size of a normal woman? And that loving the woman who had been by his side all these years required an effort?
I stared at him, my heart falling, flailing, to the deepest part of me somewhere inside.
‘You won’t have sex with me because I’m big?’ I said, unable to believe it. ‘Don’t you think that’s being a little superficial?’
He shrugged, his eyes downcast. ‘Maybe. But I can’t keep lying to you. Your body is putting me off. I’ve begged you to lose weight. I’ve tried giving you all sorts of signs to make you understand.’
I snorted, too hurt to show how thin skinned I was. ‘You mean being an asshole was a sign?’
‘There’s no reason to be offensive now, Erica.’
‘Oh, because you’re paying me a compliment? You think living with you and all your hang-ups is easy?’
He shrugged again, unable, or unwilling, to elaborate.
‘Do you think it’s normal to act like this?’ I demanded. ‘Do you think every man in the world whose wife is a bit big acts like you do? I’ve seen other men adore their big wives.’
He sighed. ‘Contrary to what big women think, men don’t like all that flab.’
I blinked back the tears and his face softened.
‘Look, I’m sorry, but for years your mother and I have been asking you to do something about your weight.’
Which wasn’t true. They’d been bashing me about it, pushing all sorts of surgery at me. Stomach bypasses. Restrictive rings – the works. At home I had a whole library of brochures and printouts courtesy of the two of them.
‘I don’t want to undergo surgery, if that’s what you’re so subtly hinting at yet again,’ I snapped.
He groaned. ‘You know what? It’s late. I have to get up early tomorrow.’
‘You can’t just drop this bomb on me and then turn over and go to sleep. What kind of a monster are you?’
‘A tired, exhausted and fed up one,’ he sentenced, scooping up his pillows (all four of them) and leaving our bedroom with a slam of the door.
I sat in bed with my hands over my mouth, staring at my flannel pajamas swinging from the hook on the door. They seemed to say, See, stupid? You should have stuck with us and saved yourself the embarrassment.
I’d tried to skirt around the various issues of my teeth-grinding, talking in my sleep, hoping it was just a phase, but nothing. That was it. He’d spelled it out to me, loud and clear. It had boiled down to lose weight or lose him. This was his ultimate ultimatum.
I honestly hadn’t seen it coming and now I wasn’t sure how traumatizing the latter result would be, to be honest.
When a man is no longer interested in what’s under your dress, there’s no amount of cooking, ironing or candlelit dinners that will save the day. Once he’s off you (literally, too), he’s off you for good. Never mind all the efforts you’ve made to try to see him as George Clooney. Never mind all the sacrifices you’ve made, period.
Outside, the iris bulbs I’d planted were somewhere deep in the ground, under three inches of the first snow, enveloped in the cold dark earth, practically dead until the first warmth caressed them back to life. In spring, they’d sprout and bloom, as beautiful as ever, right on cue. But it was going to be a long winter.
I leaned out the window, taking in the silent white world that was my dormant garden, and remembered one night on a Sicilian beach when, as a child, I’d had to pick my way through campfires and couples making out. Even my cousins who had brought me along had disappeared. That sense of loneliness had overwhelmed me then and now, instead of snow-filled clouds, I saw starry Sicilian skies and smelled the smoke from the campfires from so many years ago.
My husband doesn’t want to make love to me anymore.
How had Ira and I changed so much? There were so many hidden feelings between us and the good ones were rapidly fading like stars at dawn.
Maybe being thinner would make a difference between us. I’d tried everything else and nothing had worked. If I lost weight, it would improve my life on all levels and it would bring me back to life. But would it bring the old Ira back into my bed? Just how badly did I want him back there? Surely I’d forget him if I had to. Just like my mattress that didn’t have memory foam technology, meaning it was as if Ira never had been in my bed at all. I, too, could erase him from my memory, as if he’d never existed. Could I do it if it came to that?
3
Jump to Stage Four?
‘Dump him!’ my best friend, Paul, exclaimed as we lugged our delicatessen food home.
Freshly baked ciabatta with oregano, stuffed peppers, baked potatoes with rosemary, veal involtini parcels simmered in white inzolia wine and my favorite, tiramisu. Take that to the bank, Ira.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said as I hefted the bags and inhaled the marvelous fragrances, already envisaging a revenge feast.
Well, maybe a goodbye-to-food dinner, kind of like my own version of The Last Supper or something.
‘I can’t believe it. What am I saying? Of course I believe it. That little shit is capable of anything,’ Paul scoffed. ‘Too tired to make the effort. Blown to a size twenty. As if he was Aidan friggin’ Turner!’
Paul sooo got me. ‘I know, right?’
Every week, the same story – Paul telling me to dump my husband and me biding my time, waiting for a miracle to happen. Only now I knew it wasn’t just our hectic work life sapping the strength out of him that made him always cranky. It was my fat ass.
He no longer saw me as he used to and it was true – I’d gone a long way down from the young preppy, free-spirited and sexy girl I used to be. At least I had been before the kids. Ira couldn’t understand why I’d never lost the baby weight. Fact was, it wasn’t just the baby weight. It was the doughnut weight, the apple pie weight, the tiramisu. It had nothing to do with the baby fat.
Yes, I’d packed it back on after Warren and Maddy were born, but I was simply returning to my old (big) self who Ira hadn’t seen before because he’d met me during my two-year stint of slimness when I’d been a size fourteen. And even then he’d had something to say about it. He’d told me I was pretty but that I needed to lose just a tiny bit of weight. What a joke.
Ira didn’t understand me. I was born hungry and nothing could fill me. I liked to blame my mother for never loving me the way she loved Judy and Vince, my siblings. I liked to blame my love for cooking, or Le Tre Donne, my aunts’ Italian restaurant. Or even the desserts section at my local supermarket. But in truth, eating made me happy. It comforted me and made me feel like everything was alright. And up until then, I hadn’t given a damn about my weight. Inside, I was still me. And I still managed to dress nicely thanks to the plus-size sections in Macy’s department store.
But it was soon becoming obvious to me – once my La Vie En Rose designer shades had dropped off my nose – that the weight was really starting to weigh me down. I was a busy working mum who could never go fast enough, with never a moment to spare, always running late, always dropping things on the way to the car and wheezing when I bent to pick them up. Of course if I lost some weight, I could actually keep up with the kids and face anything they threw my way.
Who knows, maybe I was hoping I’d lose weight out of sheer force of concentration and become this irresistible woman whom Ira couldn’t help but make love to. Because dieting was hard. I was always too hungry and there was always amazing food around me. If I didn’t have time to bake it or go back to Little Italy, there was always the shop around the corner.
‘I’d say you’re at stage four,’ Paul diagnosed, which, according to his scale of one to five in troubled relationships, was just before divorce.
‘Nonsense! We’re just in a rut.’
‘And you’re in denial.’
‘Is it really just because I’m big?’ I asked.
There had to be more, even if, essentially, Ira had dwelled on my looks. He’d literally spelled it out to me, but it still hurt to believe.
He shot me a skeptical glance. ‘Sunshine, only a real man deserves a real woman. That’s my official version. My real opinion is Ira’s always been a shit.’
‘That’s not true,’ I countered. When we’d met, Ira was different. He was sexy, alluring, with so many goals in life. I huffed. ‘He doesn’t even want to go to Tuscany anymore.’
Paul had been helping me trawl for farmhouses through an Italian connection of his in Siena but so far, nothing was affordable. He’d suggested settling for a normal house in the country, but I’d put my foot down. No more settling for me. I wanted the real deal this time. I’d earned it.
‘Doesn’t want to go to Tuscany?’ Paul echoed. ‘The guy is beyond helpless. What are you waiting for to split the scene?’
I stopped to admire the doughnuts in the bakery window. Paul tugged on my arm.
‘Sunshine, no.’
I cast a longing look at him, my best friend, the one person with whom I could chew the breeze and be myself with, something we rarely did around anyone else.
‘Just one,’ I pleaded. It had been ages. Well, two days, really. Oh, the chocolate glaze! ‘What’s one measly doughnut? Besides, whose side are you on? Why can’t I be big and be loved all the same? You love me.’
‘Sunshine,’ Paul said. ‘I love you, but I’m never gonna have sex with you. You know I don’t do women.’
‘If you weren’t gay, would you? Do me?’
Paul chuckled. ‘And you need to ask? Of course I would.’
‘Even though I’m big?’ I insisted.
‘You’re not big. You’re beautiful. Like the Renaissance women – soft and squeezable. Who wouldn’t want you?’
‘Then don’t give me a hard time if I want a doughnut.’
Paul looked at me, his eyes shining with what I knew was compassion, and sighed. ‘Alright, but only if you promise to leave him.’
‘Paul! All I want is a damn doughnut.’
‘And all I want is for you to be happy. Erica, you can’t go on like this. The kids can’t go on like this. You need to send him to hell once and for all.’
As if it were that easy. I remember the old Ira and our evenings together, having a quiet dinner and a chat on the sofa.
And very often, we’d take it from the sofa to the bedroom. Now, there was nothing much left to take anywhere. The person I’d become – although I kept a roof over his head and food in his belly – had disappointed him.
I hoped he was just going through a phase. Because I couldn’t stand it. And if I couldn’t stand by my man in his time of need, then we were toast. I’d promised to love and cherish him. For the sake of our marriage. For the sake of our children. I could deal with it. If I ran a leviathan like The Farthington, I should be able to do everything, including saving my marriage. Provided I still wanted to.
Because sometimes, and it was becoming more often than not, I wished I could just… wiggle my nose and make him disappear. Or at least make him change. But that wasn’t happening. He’d spoken his mind. The die had been cast. It was lose weight or lose him – live in Boston or go to Tuscany on my own. But I was no longer sure I wanted to play by his rules.
‘So, no doughnuts – are you’re saying Ira was right?’ I challenged.
Paul rolled his dark eyes. ‘It’s not your looks or your sex appeal I’m worried about. It’s your health.’
‘I’m perfectly fine,’ I assured.
‘You are now. But what about when you get older? A fit body is a successful body. And it houses a happy mind.’
A fit body houses a happy mind… Could he be right? Would I find happiness on the lower end of the bathroom scale? Would being lighter not only make me feel better, but also make me more satisfied about my life? Technically, yes. I’d look better and feel better. Was it really down to being slim again? Yes – I remembered the looks I got when I was thin and it felt great. It had empowered me.
There was no cartwheel I couldn’t (in my younger years – I haven’t tried lately) accomplish, no race I couldn’t win. I’d wake in the mornings thinking, wow! Not only do I not feel like shit anymore, but I also feel good! No headaches, no stomach aches, no backaches that would keep me twisting and turning in bed (thrashing like a pig on a spit, according to Ira). I’d have to grip the bars of our wrought-iron bed to be able to turn over, my back was so bad.
‘You’re starting to sound like my mother,’ I huffed. ‘How did we get from talking about your latest squeeze to me?’
Paul shrugged. ‘Because for the last few years you’ve been miserable – and Carl’s boring the crap out of me. I’m thinking of a way to get rid of him. Speaking of which, tell me again how you killed Ira last night,’ he giggled, suddenly more flippant, and I grinned despite myself.
It was a harmless game, really, but a real sanity-saver. I forgot all about the doughnut as pleasant images caressed my mind, and I brightened and stifled a giggle.
‘I hung him upside down to dry in the sun for days, like my nonna Silvia’s ham joints,’ I answered. ‘And when his carcass was ready, I made some real groovy leather bags.’
Paul’s eyes flashed. ‘That’s still too light a treatment for Ira.’
I don’t need to tell you that Ira and Paul weren’t bosom buddies. My husband wasn’t tolerant of anyone different from himself. It was a wonder he married me, an Italian Catholic, when his family had always hoped that one day, he’d meet a nice thin Jewish girl.
Ira tolerated Paul politely enough when he was around, but in the evening, he’d sniff the air and sigh. ‘I can tell by the smell of the cheap perfume that your gay friend’s been here again.’
Not even the fact that Paul was a respected freelance costume designer who traveled the world for his living (and whose butt had never seen a desk chair) could sway Ira.
‘Sunshine,’ Paul said, cupping my clenched jaw with his free hand and bringing me back to reality as we reached my front door without my realizing. ‘Instead of having these visions of murder, why don’t you just leave him already?’
Why? he kept asking. For two excellent reasons: one was twelve years old and the other eight.
‘I can’t. He’s my husband.’
‘What, you don’t think you could live without him? Please tell me that not even you are that masochistic?’ Paul begged.
Ira’s revelation of his lack of desire for me certainly put things in perspective. I was living with a man who didn’t find me attractive. How far were we from the end? Were we really at stage four and I was just in denial? Was it worth trying to save a marriage that Ira didn’t seem to care about anymore?
*
After dinner, Paul sat down with Maddy (did I mention I loved him and would marry him in a heartbeat?) and did their usual thing, drawing clothes for her paper dolls. She was becoming alarmingly similar to my mother, who was a fashion victim and the emptiest head on the planet if you didn’t count Maddy’s paper dolls.
At eight years old, she was so confident, so pretty.
Please, God. Make her as intelligent and grounded as she is pretty, and not an airhead like Marcy or my sister, Judy. Make her be a good wife and mother, if that’s what she wants, and spend time with her family. Make her be successful and happy with anything she wants to do.
And please, let Warren be a patient man, and be kind to his wife and children, even if she isn’t a raging beauty. Let him understand the beauty inside people.
I sat on a kitchen stool with a glass of wine, observing my mini three-dollar-each succulent cacti plants, perfectly aligned like little soldiers on the kitchen windowsill, their thorns sticking out proudly as if to say, look at us – we don’t need Erica’s TLC! We can survive without water! And boy, could they. I’d forget to water them for weeks and they’d be there for me, resistant, alive and beautiful, even with little purple or pink flowers sticking out from the top, no matter how much I neglected them.
I wish my poor kids knew the same survival techniques, but I guess I was asking too much. Hell, I wish I knew them. Look at me – I can survive without sex with my husband! What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Maybe one day I’d have time to plant a beautiful rose bush right by the front door, so every time I came home I’d be greeted by beauty. Roses, the symbol of love. I sighed. Life wasn’t perfect and if I had no sex life, there were also other things I still had to master – like being the prefect wife. I was trying with all my heart. In any case, I always had plan B: envisioning the day my fantasies of killing my husband became reality. God, sometimes life was a pain in the ass.
4
Mother Marcy?
‘Ira told me you’re still refusing surgery. Really, Erica, it’s the least you could do to save your marriage,’ my mom scolded me as she took a sip of her Martini.
I glared at my mother, sitting in her size four YSL designer number opposite me at lunch at The Farthington Hotel, my domain. She never came to see me at work, so I’d figured it must be something important, namely her next shopping spree in Europe.
