Chapter 63 #2
They followed her over to the lettuce and celery. Then to the meat section, where she agonized over the bacon. The store had
stopped carrying her favorite brand.
Hope’s arms were still crossed. “Imagine you lost weight,” she said in a fierce whisper, “and your sisters cut you off.”
“I can’t imagine losing weight,” Cherry whispered back.
“Don’t be such an asshole, Cherry.”
Their mom dropped a package of bacon into the cart. She needed ground beef next. And Claussen pickles. Flour. Canned olives.
Bottled spaghetti sauce.
Hope was fuming.
Cherry was fuming, too. She stopped the cart at the end of the condiment aisle while their mom kept walking. “I’m not being
an asshole,” she hissed. “I didn’t leave you off the thread. Honny started a new thread—”
“I expect this from Honny.” Hope put her back to their mom, facing Cherry. “She’s a gossip. And she can’t tell the difference
between funny and mean. But I don’t expect it from you, Cherry.”
“Look. I’m sorry you’re feeling left out. I am. But, you cut us off first. You’ve been completely dishonest with all of us!”
Hope huffed again in disbelief. “How have I been dishonest?”
“Hope, you lost a hundred pounds, and you told us you were watching your carbs.”
“I am watching my carbs.”
“Okay.” Cherry rolled her eyes. “Well. This is why we have a new group thread.” She started pushing the cart toward their
mom.
Hope stayed where she was. “It’s nobody’s business how I lost weight.”
Cherry looked back over her shoulder. “It is when you lie about it!” She was still trying to be quiet. “It’s an indictment
of the rest of us!”
“That’s paranoid and narcissistic, Cherry.”
“ ‘Narcissistic,’ huh? Spare me your internet therapy.” Cherry stalked back toward her sister, abandoning the cart. “If you
sit there at Thanksgiving saying that you did this by counting carbs, it makes it seem like everyone else just needs to be more disciplined. But it isn’t about discipline—it’s about GLP-1 agonists.”
Hope clenched her jaw. And her fists. If this was Honny—or maybe even Faith—Cherry might actually worry about getting punched. “You want me to be honest,” Hope said, “is that right? You think that would go well? If I told everyone that I was taking . . .” She stalled out.
“Ozempic,” Cherry supplied.
“Mounjaro, actually . . . All it would do is make everyone uncomfortable. You’d all judge me. And you’d think I was judging you.”
“Hope! All of those things are already happening!”
“Yeah, on the group thread that I’m not on!”
Cherry threw her hands in the air—right into the shoulder of a man who was trying to get by. “Sorry,” she said. She looked
around for their mom, and found her standing at the end of the aisle, watching them, holding a jar of mayonnaise. Cherry walked
back to the cart and pushed it toward their mom. Hope followed her.
Cherry’s mom set the mayonnaise in the cart, ignoring their tense jaws and flushed faces. “I just need a few more things.”
“Lead the way,” Cherry said.
They followed her to the frozen food aisle. Cherry could hear Hope’s huffy, angry breathing behind her.
“You can’t even look at me,” Hope said. “I talked to your boyfriend for an hour at Thanksgiving, and you didn’t say a word.”
Cherry didn’t look at her.
“My therapist says it’s jealousy, but it feels like you’re all trying to punish me.”
“I’m not trying to punish you.”
“Then why can’t you look at me, Cherry?”
“I can look at you.” Cherry didn’t.
“Do you hate me that much?”
“For fuck’s sake, Hope”—Cherry wheeled on her—“I don’t hate you. I just—I feel completely betrayed by you.”
“Be-trayed?”
“Yes!” Cherry was crying suddenly. (Maybe not suddenly—her cheeks were already wet.) “Because you’ve been telling me my whole life that it was okay to be fat.
You used to say to me—when I was just a little girl—that I would never be skinny, so I shouldn’t worry about that.
That I shouldn’t starve myself or pin all my dreams on losing weight.
I should just worry about being healthy and being the best me I could be.
” Cherry wiped her nose on the back of her wrist. “You’d say, ‘I’m never going to be skinny, and I don’t care, because my life is better than all my skinny friends’. ’ ”
Hope looked startled. “That’s exactly what Mom used to say to me . . .”
“Well, I believed you, Hope. Because you were beautiful. And you had a cute boyfriend. And a good job . . . And I thought that being fat wouldn’t
be so bad if it meant being like you.” Cherry shook her head miserably. “So yeah, the fact that you took the miracle skinny
drug just as soon as it was available? It fucking sucks. It’s like we were all on the same team, and you wanted off that team. You don’t want to be like us. You were lying when
you said that we could be fat and happy.”
“I wasn’t lying.” Hope still seemed startled. “That’s not what any of this means.”
“Well, that’s the subtext when the text is ‘I’m watching my carbs.’ ”
“This isn’t—” Hope was crying now, too. More messily than Cherry. (She must have less practice.) “God.” She wiped her eyes. “This isn’t about you. Can’t you see that? It isn’t about Honny. Or Joy. Or Faith. This is about me, Cherry. My body. My life.”
Hope held her hands away from her slim hips, palms out. “I was diabetic . . . My knees hurt all the time . . . My blood pressure
was high, my cholesterol was high, I was constantly out of breath—and I was gaining more weight every year, no matter what
I did or ate. I was in free fall.”
She brought her fingertips up to her temples. “And I know that’s just the story of every woman in our family. I know that’s
Grandma. And it’s Mom. But what if it doesn’t have to be me? I have three kids, and I want as many years with them as I can get. I want to meet my grandkids. I want to be able to walk.”
Cherry folded her arms. She shifted her weight back. “I didn’t know you were diabetic.”
“I didn’t tell anyone. I was ashamed.”
“It’s not your fault,” Cherry said softly. “It’s genetic.”
Hope waved a hand like that didn’t matter. She took a few breaths. She wiped her eyes again and looked at Cherry. “I’m still
the same person, you know?”
“You are and you aren’t . . .” Cherry said, still being soft, but not quite relenting. “You walk through the world completely
differently now.”
Hope looked like that was the worst thing Cherry had said so far. Her face crumpled. “You sound like Danny.”
Cherry was taken aback. “Danny?”
Hope had already started walking away from her.
Cherry looked back at their mom. She was standing close enough to have heard the whole thing. She looked sad from her head
to her feet. “Go,” she said.
Cherry left the cart and rushed after Hope—who had disappeared into the maze of the supermarket. Cherry walked toward the
exit, looking down each aisle, then out to the parking lot, toward Hope’s SUV.
Hope was sitting in the front seat, leaning over the wheel with her head in her hands.
Cherry stood for a second outside the car.
Then she opened the passenger door and sat down. Hope didn’t look up. She was taking deep, trembling breaths.
Cherry put her hand on Hope’s arm.
Hope shrugged it off. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.
“Okay,” Cherry whispered.
“And I don’t want you to tell any of this to Honny and Joy and Faith.”
“I won’t,” Cherry promised.
“They’d love that . . . ‘Hope lost weight, and her husband fell out of love with her.’ ”
“They wouldn’t,” Cherry said.
Hope looked up at her, red-faced and snotty. “That’s not what’s happening—with Danny. It’s not that simple.”
Cherry just nodded. She was crying, too.
“We were already having problems . . .” Hope said, “before . . .”
Cherry nodded again.
“We were arguing constantly and constantly frustrated with each other. And there were . . .” Hope looked at her lap. (She
had a hell of a lap now.) “. . . other things, too. You get older, and you hardly recognize each other. You hardly recognize
yourself.”
Cherry was really crying. She kind of hoped Hope wouldn’t notice.
“I didn’t talk to him about the Mounjaro,” Hope said. “That was a mistake. I own that. And then . . . I wasn’t really prepared
for how upside down it would make me feel to lose weight. Like a stranger in my own body . . .” She glanced over at Cherry.
“Good. But foreign.” She shook her head. “Ashamed. Not always good, actually . . .” She grabbed a used Starbucks napkin from the
cupholder and blew her nose. “And Danny . . . well.” She looked down again. “There are other things, too.”
“I’m sorry,” Cherry whispered.
Hope looked up at her, intently this time, into Cherry’s eyes. (Hope’s brown eyes were so big now. Unencumbered by her cheeks.)
“I’d like to say that I’m sorry, too . . . but I’m still not convinced that it wouldn’t have made things worse if I’d been
honest with you.” She let out a loud breath and rolled her eyes at herself. “Which is also what I said to Danny.”
“I didn’t know you were having such a hard time,” Cherry said. “With your health.”
Hope shook her head, agitated. “Oh, it wasn’t just my health. It’s not like I did this”—she gestured at her stomach—“for wholly
noble reasons. I was tired of being fat, Cherry. I’ve had forty years of it, and I’m tired. I’m sorry if that disappoints you. Maybe I’m not the same person.”
“Maybe not . . .” Cherry said. “But you’re still my sister.”
Hope looked up at her.
Cherry reached for her hand and took it.
Hope didn’t shake her off this time. She started crying again. “I’m such a mess, Cherry.”
Cherry squeezed her hand. “I can tell.”
Hope laughed. She lifted up her other arm and hid her face in her elbow. “Oh my god . . . I’m such a mess.”
Cherry moved sideways in the seat, turning toward Hope. (The SUV was so roomy.)
Hope let her arm drop to her lap. “Danny and I are . . . I don’t know what we are. He’s been sleeping on the couch.”
“Have the kids noticed?”
“They think it’s because he snores. He does snore, but I’ve never cared. He’s staying at the firehouse sometimes.”