Thinner Than Thou Read online

  Superhighways in these parts are designed to move people, but secondary roads like the one they are on today are calculated to make them stop. Turnoffs are easy. So is getting back on the road. Lights are timed so that intersections flip by with seductive regularity, punctuated only by billboards carrying quotations from the Reverend Earl, the yellow-haired guru of the good life in which everyone is slim and beautiful in a state the Reverend Earl calls the Afterfat. He broadcasts 24/7 from the Glass Cathedral, or somebody does, and gazillion people like the twins’ mom pray to him and send money like he is the answer to their prayers.

  Mom is, OK, after three children Mom is self-conscious about her weight, and even if she wasn’t, who would want to risk a ticket from the Fashion Police? It’s weird in a world so focused on how you look that even with everybody trying to be beautiful, so many grownups fail.

  This means nothing to the three riding along in Dave’s Saturn because at their age bodies like the ones society prizes and the Reverend promises to the faithful come as a natural right. Look at Betz with her firm bare arms and that taut, smooth belly peeking out of the designer gap between the tank top and her relentlessly taut lo-rise jeans. Silky rib cage under the truncated tank top, sweet little bellybutton diamond stud to call attention, daisy tattoo peeping out of her waistband just above the hip. These kids and the kids they hang out with take their bodies for granted—you know, the kind you run around in without thinking when you’re some-teen and never gonna get old, running their palms down sleek thighs with entitled smiles that expose beautiful square teeth. Any problems with their features, like crooked noses, have already been fixed. At their age, perfection is close.

  For the parent generation, it’s hard. They can forget about perfect anything, hit forty and life is a holding action from there on, and if in a few more years Mom and Dad can’t manage it and somebody comes after them, OK, it will damn well serve them right.

  Send Annie away, will they? They’d better watch their fucking step or in a few more years the twins can get them sentenced to a year in exercise camp or one of those high-end granola-and-lemon-juice diet spas. Stupid grownups have to starve and jog or sweat it off or gasp over the Abdomenizer and they’re still gross, but when you’re the twins’ age you assume it’s their own stupid fault. Serves them right for getting old. To stay in the ballpark people like Mom and Dad atone and suffer and burn excess calories doing Power Yoga or spinning or Pilates or the complete course at the Sign of the Crossed Triceps because it is written that everybody over a certain age is doomed to starve or work it off or both; “no thanks, I can’t,” “just a sliver for me,” “oh, I never eat anything white.” Where they used to be young and beautiful and relaxed, they get all tense and craven because the ones lucky enough to catch some wasting disease may be OK but for everybody else, putting on years means putting on weight.

  They may preach beauty and moderation but Betz knows that people like Mom and Dad often sneak food and scarf it when nobody’s watching and holy as they are, they sit at the table with their eyes glittering: Are you going to eat that? See, the metabolically challenged, which is most of us, fix on the next meal like alcoholics focused on the next drink. Wallowing, Mom and Dad eat and then they atone in the steam room or at the gym and when all else fails, they turn to the Reverend Earl.

  Thin is the new religion, but not for buff, seventeen-year-old Dave or wiry Danny and certainly not for Betz.

  And Annie?

  That’s another story.

  2

  How do you end up where Annie is?

  It takes a while. Like, this has been coming on for years, since she turned fourteen, and it’s about your body and in all those complicated ways you half understand and don’t want to think about, it’s also about sex. OK, you’re an ordinary pretty girl until you start sneaking around, which is how you Get in Trouble. You Get in Trouble and now look at you!

  This is how it starts. You’re turning fourteen and you’re kind of in love with a guy in your grade. You’re an ordinary pretty girl, trouble with your hair but nice figure, no effort, and you’re kind of in love. You go along breathing sweetly and not having to think about your heartbeat, no effort, until something happens—one of those little, unexpected glitches in the program that’s supposed to be your beautiful life. Suddenly everything is hard.

  Accidentally your grades slip, or teachers who liked you start to yell or overnight girls you thought were your friends start laughing behind your back or suddenly your folks get weird—you hear them fighting in the night, whatever; you think you’re going along fine and then … You love this cute boy and he blows you off or at gym class you fall off the top of the bleachers and break your wrist and have to go around in a cast. Different. It turns out you are different. One day you’re going along just like everybody else and then something happens and, wow, you get—from out of nowhere!—that life is more precarious than you thought. You are so fucking vulnerable! You thought you were protected because you were you, and therefore special, and you’re not. You aren’t special. You could be anybody. Anything can happen to you. Anything.

  The weight of the universe comes crashing in on you like that: smallpox or train wrecks or lost airplanes, home invasions or wars or suicide bombings, random postatomic crap, take your pick, it’s all pertaining to you! Girl in your grade gets snatched out of her bed right in her very own house and they actually suspect her parents until they catch the guy next door, all this is going on right down your block but when she gets taken you read about it on the Web and when they finally find the body you hear about it on the news. Or you walk in on your folks having the discussion, ideal Mom and ideal Dad talking about who moves where after the divorce. Or else you see a doctor show on TV and every day when you wake up the first thing you have to do is feel in your armpits for lumps or cough onto the mirror because in certain diseases blood in the sputum is the very first sign. Shit happens. Now all of a sudden you get it. You get that when shit happens, it’s happening to you!

  Everything is precarious.

  You used to go along without even thinking about it but now you get hung up on the rhythm of your own breathing and the stutter of your pulse. Your heart used to beat all day every day without you giving it a thought. You hardly heard. Now it’s all you hear. You can’t stop it, you can’t control it. You can’t even make it thud regularly, like normal people’s do. It’s so loud that you can’t stand to be in the same room with it but there’s no way out. You can’t control your life!

  The inside of your head has been stripped down to the bare walls and the furniture overturned and smashed to bits. There isn’t much left. You look at your naked body in the mirror: huge and pink and disgusting, and you think: This, I can control.

  When you and all about you are losing theirs, there is this one thing you can do. You consider your body: At least this is mine.

  It is your secret. Your secret, that you cherish because you have hit on something that is all yours. Work hard and in time you’ll have exactly what you want.

  You are a genius, a sculptor, perfecting the one thing you can change.

  It turns you into a liar, but a charming, skillful one. You are sexy, raunchy, careless about everything but this private part of yourself which you alone control. You embrace what you are doing. The discipline. How strong you are, working on this special, secret thing so religiously. It’s hard but in time your body responds like a trained cheetah, doing your bidding. It changes to fit your template as you get up before dawn to go running because it has begun happening and you want to make it happen fast. It gives you tremendous power and the best part?

  It is your secret. You are doing all this and nobody knows. You use it to get even with the people you hate; so what if Mom and Dad would freak if they found out. Who says they have to know? You can be right in the same room with them and they’ll never guess, but to do this over time and to maintain it, you have to stay alert. Run at dawn and go out again every night when the family’s in
bed, it’ll help keep you in shape. Hide behind your clothes. Put on extra layers when you’re around your parents so they won’t guess your secret, smile at them like you have zero secrets. Keep it from everybody, even your new boyfriend. Make them all think you’re doing just like everybody else does these days, keeping fit, when in fact you are trimming your huge, flabby, disgusting body. You have to get it under control! If you can do this, you can do anything, you think. Two years of starving and working off what you eat and you’re a finely calibrated machine. Another year and by the time you’re seventeen you’ll be able to run on air and water, you won’t need food! ,

  You get high on the possibilities but. Watch out.

  Watch what you say and watch what you wear and watch what you do at mealtimes or they’ll find out. Be particularly careful at dinner, when everybody’s there. If they scowl at your cluttered plate let them see you pushing the food around. If Mom narrows her eyes when you cut your chop into little pieces and hide them underneath the lettuce, create a diversion so they won’t know.

  —I’m sorry, I had a hamburger and a shake on the way home.

  —My favorite! I promise I’ll eat it later.

  —You sit where you are, Mom, I’ll clean up.

  Your little sister watches you scraping food into the Disposll and asks, “Are you … ?” and you say, “No way, Betz. Not me. Nah.”

  If they think they see a pattern and start asking questions tell them somebody had a double chocolate birthday cake at lunch or tell them you had that Big Mac or one too many Frappuccinos on the way home from school and if they sit you back down and try to force you? Eat enough to satisfy them, gobble it down and wipe your mouth, yum yum, and after that—you know what to do. What you do to your body is your secret. Then go out after dinner and wind yourself like an anaconda around this nice boyfriend of yours, Dave, and what you and he do together is secret too.

  For a while, everything comes down just the way you want.

  Naturally you need to get some big new outfits to hide what’s happening to your body, big sweaters and overalls are good and so are painter’s pants, you don’t want them to see what’s going on, and if there are questions, tell Mom it’s the style. You study yourself in the mirror nightly, watching your body change. Fat, you think. So hugely, obscenely fat. Fat, fat, fat, it is disgusting, and at some level you are thinking, It can’t go on like this, I can’t go on like this, what am I going to do? And all the time society is hard at it, hammering kids like you, Annie Abercrombie, into a perfect mold.

  , Listen, Annie’s girlfriends all want perfect, they do! Who wouldn’t want to go around perfect in this hard, perilous world? With back-to-back disasters and kidnappings and gross diseases we’ve got trouble enough.

  Let’s go after goals we think we can reach.

  Girls like Annie Abercrombie grow up slim and lovely and whatever isn’t immediately lovely, surgery will fix. Unless of course, they are a little overweight, in which case there are the many Slenderella camps complete with support group meetings and spangled bikinis and diamond navel studs as part of the built-in incentive plans, and if all else fails, there are the Deds. In this day and time it is so easy! Truth may not be beauty but beauty is definitely truth and you can keep the population beautiful as long as you catch them young.

  Unfortunately, poor Annie’s body is changing according to a template that doesn’t match the national norm. After two years trying, she finally has what she wants. She was able to hide it for a long time—those loose string sweaters even in hot weather, bright, shaggy clothing in impenetrable layers, but when a girl like Annie Abercrombie finally gets what she wants she brings shame down on the family and she can’t hide it any more.

  Eventually your condition becomes obvious.

  Eventually, they find you out.

  Do you want to know how it happens?

  Accidentally. Unless at heart you are like the serial killer who gets more and more careless, aching to get caught. One morning you come in late from running and the parents are up. Daddy is in the kitchen so this time he catches you in your tank top and shorts. You whip past him in a hurry but you see that calculating squint. His arm shoots out. “Not so fast!”

  You shout over your shoulder, “Later,” but when you come back down in the huge sweater that you think of as Old Faithful, he doesn’t dare ask the question, he can only squint.

  Mom beats you to the kitchen that night and catches you scraping your full plate into the sink. “Not hungry?”

  You lie. “I’m stuffed. I know I shouldn’t, but had another Big Mac and a McFlurry on the way home from school.”

  She shrugs and goes quietly but you can tell by the mean slant to her eyes that she has started watching you. It makes it more exciting, knowing they are watching you. Sooner or later you forget to lock the bathroom door. Are you secretly proud, hoping someone will see how far you’ve come, or are you ashamed because you haven’t come far enough? God, all this work and you are still getting fat. You look so gross! Mom catches you stepping out of the shower and gasps. You rush past but she snags your elbow, stopping you cold. “Annie, my God. Is that what I think?” Not your fault her eyes bulge.

  Hello, Mother. Impressed much? You can get past this. Be brave. Play dumb. “What, Mom? Is what what you think?”

  You’ve been doing OK, you think you can get past this but you can’t get past your mother, not today. She has you by the arm and she is staring at you, studying your changing shape. “Annie, aren’t you getting a little …”

  “No, Mom. Now, let go!”

  “Oh honey,” she cries, she tries to make it sweet but her voice is edged with shock. “How could you?”

  You try to dissemble. “How could I what?”

  “How could you let yourself get this way?”

  “I’m not any way, I’m just the same.”

  “Look at you! Look at your condition.”

  Raise the towel. Stonewall those remarks about your condition. OK, you are in a condition. Cool! Lower your shoulder and try to muscle her out of the way. “It’s nothing, Mom.”

  “Oh, honey.” Then she hollers, “Ralph!”

  She marches you into the bedroom. She puts both hands on your shoulders and turns you in front of the mirror. “Just look!”

  Ug, you think. In this light your long thighs glisten and your bloated pink belly looks like the Goodyear blimp. FAT. I am gross. Disgusting. Fat! “I’m sorry.” You start to cry. “I’m so sorry, Mom.”

  But she isn’t about to forgive you. You are an affront to the family. They have documentaries on TV about people like you. You should have split the minute she called for Dad. By the time he came into the room you were in your big terry robe and Mom was wailing, “What are we going to do!”

  He answers fast, as if it had never been a question. “Take care of it, of course.”

  Brazen it out. “What do you mean?”

  He is shaking his head, like, he is all tsk tsk tsk. “You know there are places for girls like you.”

  Your voice comes out all thin because you are trying so hard to keep control: “I can take care of it here, OK? Mom? Dad?”

  She says nothing. He says nothing. You are scared shit. Finally she cries, “Oh, honey, how could you do this to yourself?”

  She means: How could you do it to us?

  The worst part is what you see in their faces: the shame! Right there in front of you they talk about covering it up, like you are an old bone they have to bury, the apotheosis of their shame. Quick, sweep this thing under the rug. Cover it over, get it out of the house. Send her away quickly, before anybody finds out. If this gets around our daughter is ruined, and so are we. Dad is letting his fingers do the walking. He’s been busy entering phone numbers into his PDA but for now he says, “You are in bad trouble, missy, but don’t worry. We’re going to find a place you can go until it’s over. If we do this right and do it fast enough, not even the twins will have to know.”

  By this time you are cryi
ng hard. “I can take care of it. I can take care of it. I promise. I will.”

  Mom tries, “Why don’t we just send her to the country, Ralph?”

  Daddy is scowling into his PDA. “I want results guaranteed.”

  You are trying to promise but you’re crying so hard that the words come out all bwaauah.

  Mom is secretly on your side. She whispers, “Ralph, those places cost a fortune.”

  You watch him thinking about the money. “OK, here’s an outpatient clinic we can try.”

  “Honey, I’ll go with you,” Mom says, but you’re all, No.

  When you can speak you nod and gulp reassurances. “I can do it on my own, Mom, I promise.” You wheedle. “I know I can do it better if you let me go alone.”

  Mom blinks those spiky lashes, scattering tears. Boy, is she relieved. “Promise?”

  “I promise.” You may even mean it at the time, and if you can’t bring yourself to go into one of those places and if you ride right past the office where they made your appointment, and if you spend the day at the movies instead, who’s to know?

  Mom says motivationally, “I’m so proud of you.”

  Yeah, right.

  Dad says, “When you get your figure back I’ll buy you a car.”

  There is the brief period in which they believe you really went. Then Daddy catches you in the upstairs hall. You see him looking you up and down with those eyes like calipers. Fear knifes into you because you know what’s coming. Calipers, my God! “OK, Annie, time’s up.”