“You gonna eat any of that yourself?” I looked up at my brother and was surprised to see that he looked almost angry. His arms were folded tightly across his chest. His lips looked thinner than usual and his eyes seemed shallow, like he’d put an invisible shield behind them that blocked out the kindness in his soul that he’d shown me only moments before.
“You’re giving your lunch to your dog, Porshe.” Now my brother sounded angry. He never called me anything but Sissy unless he was pissed.
“Chill out, would ya? What’s wrong with you?” Now I was getting pissed. “I don’t eat all four ounces of it because it has too many calories, okay?”
“And how many calories do you eat?”
“Fourteen hundred a day, like everyone else.” I hated lying. I found myself doing so much of it lately. I couldn’t tell anyone the truth anymore.
“Bullshit. You can’t be eating that much. You look really thin.”
It was all I could do not to smile. What with Vera calling me Skinny Minnie and now this, I had had a really great day.
“That’s not a compliment, idiot.”
Damn. I must have smirked.
“I know.” I knew he didn’t mean it as a compliment because of the tone of his voice, but how could anyone ever take “you look really thin” as anything but a compliment?
“Okay—I’ll gain a little weight. Jesus.” When attacked, defend by lying. “It’s not deliberate. I’ve just been working too hard lately.” I was watching him become more relieved, but there was obviously something more that he needed to hear.
“I know I’m too skinny.”
That did it. He looked happier, his lips fuller, his eyes not so cold. His arms fell to his side.
“Don’t you have a meeting?” I asked him.
He nodded.
“Okay then. Bugger off.” I kissed his cheek and smiled.
He reached into my bag to pet Bean. He started to leave but then turned back toward me.
“Just because you work with someone who’s skinny, doesn’t mean you have to be skinny, too.”
19
I SAT ON Suzanne’s couch. Seeing Suzanne had become a pretty exciting ritual for me as I got to show her how well this little student was doing with her homework. I had certainly lost weight on her program, even though I had to lie about how many calories I was eating. I never went back to 1,400 calories a day because I didn’t need to. After Ann’s visit, I actually never went back to 1,000. There was no point in increasing my daily calorie intake when 600 to 700 was working so well for me. My weight loss had slowed down slightly since going under 110 pounds, and that was even more reason to stick with the lower calorie consumption.
“How many calories are you eating, Portia?”
“Fourteen hundred.” I answered her with a slightly incredulous tone in my voice, hoping that the tone would convince her that I was telling the truth.
“Can I see your diary?”
I reached into my bag for the journal, careful to pull out the right one. There were two journals in my bag at all times, the real one and the one for Suzanne. Not only did the real one show my actual calorie consumption, it had notes and messages in it as incentive for me to stay on track. I used the same motivating techniques in my diary as I did when I was a kid striving for high honors in my ballet exams, but whereas I wrote, “You will not get honors” on a sheet of paper for the ballet exams, now I wrote “You are nothing,” on every page of my diary. I don’t know why, but that statement filled me with fear and then the desire to be “something.” I always used the thoughts of being nothing and going nowhere to help me achieve goals. When I was a teenager studying to get into law school, I would repeatedly listen to a Sonic Youth song called “Song for Karen” about Karen Carpenter, who died from anorexia. In the song, the phrase that Kim Gordon repeats, “You aren’t never going anywhere. I ain’t never going anywhere” was like a mantra for me and pushed me to study longer, to try harder.
But I knew my motivating techniques weren’t conventional and I couldn’t share them with Suzanne. Especially because in my diary I referred to my homosexuality, which was something she didn’t know about. I could imagine how horrified Suzanne would be if by accident I pulled out the real diary and she saw YOU ARE A FAT UGLY DYKE written all over it. She probably thought she’d never even met a lesbian. It made me smile just thinking about the expression on her face if she’d known there was one in her living room.
I handed her the fake journal. It was very time-consuming having to make up the “proper” amount of food with its weight and calories. Thank God for the calorie counter. But the most annoying thing was putting variation in my pretend diet. I had to pretend to be interested in a wide variety of foods, which I wasn’t. Most people aren’t. My mother ate practically the same thing every day. In fact, I only ate seven things: turkey, lettuce, tuna, oatmeal, blueberries, egg whites, and yogurt; eight if you included Jell-O. She looked over it as I sat opposite her feeling like a schoolkid who cheated on a test. Only when she handed it back to me was I aware that I had been holding my breath.
“What does your exercise program look like, Portia?”
“You didn’t tell me to write it down.” Even though I had wanted to brag to her about the amount of exercise I did, I didn’t write it down. At least not in the fake diary I made especially for her.
“No. I’m just curious. What kind of exercise do you do?”
“I run, mainly. Pilates, sometimes. But running, I guess.” I told her about the amount of time I spent on the treadmill and that I’d found a way to run on it for my entire lunch break at work without ruining my makeup. I told her about my long drive to work and how I liked to break it up with a run. I knew she’d be proud of me. It must be heartbreaking for a nutritionist if her clients are too lazy to increase their exercise to help her do her job. I bet they’d blame her, too, if they didn’t lose weight.
“I found this nice, tree-lined block just south of Wilshire where I can run because sitting for too long kills me.”
“What do you think will happen if you sit for too long?”
“I’ll get fat, Suzanne! Diet is only half of it, you know.”
She looked concerned. The look didn’t surprise me because she always looked concerned when I spoke. I had decided that that was just how she looked all the time. I learned to ignore it.
“Portia, can I ask, do you get your period regularly?” She looked slightly embarrassed at having to ask the question.
“Sure, I guess.” I’d never really thought about it. Because I wasn’t scared of getting pregnant, I didn’t really pay attention to it. I thought back over the last couple of months and realized that I couldn’t remember having it.
“No, actually. Now I think about it, I can’t remember the last time I had it.”
She nodded her head repeatedly, but the movement was so small it was almost imperceptible. If I hadn’t have been looking directly at her, I wouldn’t have seen it. But her silence commanded my attention. I found myself breathlessly waiting for her next word, yet I didn’t know why.
“Portia, have you ever seen anyone . . . like . . . a counselor . . . who could help you deal with your weight issues?”
I was confused. Wasn’t she helping me deal with my weight issues?
“You mean, in the past?”
“Yes. Did your mother have you see anyone when you were a teenager?”
I went to Jenny Craig and Gloria Marshall. I guessed I could tell her about that.
“When I was fifteen—the year off school to model—I went to a couple of weight-loss centers.”
I told her that after the Fen-phen-type drug didn’t work, my mother and I decided to consult the dieting professionals. Jenny Craig was first, with its eating plan and meals in cans purchasable at the counter after each group session with fat women in chairs sitting in a circle. I didn’t lose weight. I gained it. I stopped eating the canned food and became too busy with homework to attend the scheduled meetings. But my mother and I discovered Gloria Marshall, with its flexible schedule and gymlike atmosphere and so I joined that as well.