Thirty-One
Fern tiptoed down the hall to her parents’ bathroom.
She didn’t want her mother to know she pre-weighed herself before the Thursday-night Weight Watchers meeting.
She disrobed and stepped on the scale, forgetting to breathe.
Down two more pounds! She hopped off and did a little dance in front of the mirror.
Even she could see she was much less jiggly, although not exactly firm.
Not firm Fern yet. Oh, how her tune had changed since last fall.
If Fern had planned on ditching Weight Watchers as soon as she could, her father’s leaving had upended that possibility for the foreseeable future if not for her entire future.
At first, Fern sat through those meetings clutching her food diary in one slightly sweaty palm, picturing herself as an old woman sitting in the same room, probably wearing the same jeans and sweater because nobody stepped on the scale in an outfit that might add ounces—pounds!
—to their original weigh-in number. She sat in disbelief every week as some of the members slipped into the restroom to change into the outfit they had worn for their first weigh-in.
Not even Honey was that crazy. “We need to start, ladies and gentlemen!” she would holler to the back of the room where weigh-in took place monitored by a volunteer, sometimes Fern, who would watch as person after person removed shoes, sweaters, belts, jewelry before they stepped on the scale.
“You’re not losing a pound; you’re losing a bracelet!
” Honey would yell to no effect. One memorable week, one of the regulars, Stella, hit her lifetime goal wearing a pair of shorts she had to hold up with two hands and a dangerously loose tube top. In the middle of January. In Rochester.
Fern could even admit she enjoyed the version of Honey who ran the meetings.
That Honey was quick and confident and sometimes funny.
She would introduce herself the same way at the top of every meeting.
“Hi, everyone, and welcome. My name is Honor, but I’ve been called Honey since birth, so I was born into this kind of work.
” Everyone would laugh every week, even the people who remembered when she used to say: “And then I married a grocer! If I can keep my figure trim and healthy, anyone can!”
Honey wouldn’t acknowledge it out loud, but the spike in attendance since the scandal was quietly thrilling to her.
She knew people had come to see if she was a mess, if she’d mention Finnegan’s all the time as she used to (the answer was no), but most of them stayed and became members.
Fern’s attendance, and attendant weight loss, was such a bright spot in Honey’s life right now that Fern couldn’t consider leaving.
Not yet. She’d even made some friends as Honey had suggested she might.
Two girls from her school: Phoebe was a senior (“big-boned,” declared Honey) and Jenny a sophomore (“Those thighs will be obstinate,” Honey predicted).
They would compare notes on what they were eating at the school cafeteria and trade tips for best snacks.
Fern and Phoebe seemed to have a similar trajectory.
They’d lose a pound one week and gain two the next.
Lose three, gain two. Up and down, up and down.
But their friend Jenny dropped weight every week.
She’d already lost twelve pounds and had a hot pink achievement ribbon that she wore to school every day like a veteran decorated for extreme bravery in the face of a bowl of potato chips.
One Saturday, the three of them went shopping and out to dinner at a place Honey had recommended that had an enormous salad bar.
“Measure the dressing!” she told Fern, slipping a set of measuring spoons into Fern’s backpack.
“So many calories. And don’t forget to refuse the breadbasket, and diet soda only. ”
They all obediently filled their plates with salad greens and raw vegetables, passing by the macaroni salad, potato salad, bins of shredded cheese and hard-boiled eggs.
They measured their lite Italian dressing and cut their food into smaller pieces to make the meal last longer until Jenny said, “This stinks.” She returned to the salad bar and piled a plate with actual sustenance and plopped it down at the center of the table.
“How do you lose weight eating all that?” Fern asked. Jenny raised a brow and pursed her lips, like Fern was thick. “What? What is it?”
“Okay, well, if you must know.” Jenny opened the little zippered compartment on the front of her navy Champion backpack and pulled out a small brown bottle with an eyedropper.
“Eye drops?” Phoebe said.
“No, moron. I put a few drops of this into my coffee every morning and I don’t get hungry until the end of the day. Then I have whatever I want for dinner. Also? I have tons of energy. I’ve cut ten seconds off my sprint time in track.”
“How do I get some?” Fern said.
“My mom gets it from her doctor,” Jenny said. “She calls it pep juice. I’m sure she’d get some for you. She wouldn’t care. Whatever it takes to be thin! That’s what she always tells me.”
Within days both Phoebe and Fern were equipped with a little brown bottle of their own and it was, indeed, magic.
Fern dropped five pounds in one week. She hardly thought about food most days, just like she’d always imagined was possible.
She assumed every skinny person she knew didn’t think about the next meal the minute they finished the one they were eating.
Honey was over the moon. “See! Sometimes it takes a bit for your body to adjust to your new way of eating.” She proudly pinned the hot pink ribbon on Fern’s blouse two weeks later.
Fern wouldn’t wear it to school, of course, but she liked having it.
Phoebe told them they were crazy. “That shit is speed,” she said to them after a couple of days of taking it.
“It’s going to wreck you and your metabolism.
I’m done with Weight Watchers.” Phoebe was a candy striper and planning on becoming a nurse, and loved lecturing anyone who would listen about “the societal pressures surrounding women’s bodies and internalized negativity.
” She showed up at school one day with her heavily underlined copy of Fat Is a Feminist Issue.
She wanted them all to read and discuss.
Jenny snorted and handed it back to her. “Uh, no thanks.”
“She’s British,” Phoebe told Jenny, who had an unhealthy obsession with the royal family, magazine photos of Prince Charles lining her locker. Jenny wasn’t swayed.
Fern was torn. She liked Phoebe. She wanted to read the book and discuss with Phoebe.
But she also liked losing weight and reluctantly admitted her mother had been right.
It had helped her self-confidence. She still stuttered, but she talked so quickly now thanks to the pep juice it wasn’t quite as noticeable.
One night she opened the book, and the things Susie Orbach wrote about resonated with her.
Why was she always trying to make herself smaller?
Why did women have to be small? She considered telling her mother about the drops and talking to her about body image and feminism and how thinness was a tool used to control women within a patriarchal structure, but she knew how that conversation would go.
But she and Phoebe started having lunch together every day, and although Phoebe looked askance at Fern’s lunch, a plate of lettuce with undressed tuna and cucumber slices, the low-calorie dressing in a little cup on the side so Fern could lightly dip each forkful into the tasteless vinaigrette, they never ran out of things to talk about.
Phoebe invited Fern to come to visit her at work, and soon Fern was working as a candy striper at Rochester General.
One Saturday morning, she ran into her pediatrician.
“Fern!” he said, surprised and pleased and a little confused.
He eventually mentioned her weight. “It’s a lot to lose in a short amount of time,” he said.
“Are you doing it in a healthy way? Getting all the nutrients you need?”
Phoebe was standing behind him and Fern glanced at her quickly.
“I’m doing Weight Watchers” was all she said.
Phoebe shook her head dismally and Fern felt awful.
But the only time her mother didn’t look distraught these days was when she saw Fern’s diminishing body.
True, because of the drops, she was having a horrible time sleeping, but what was Jenny’s mom’s motto? Anything for thin?
One night, unable to sleep and hearing Dune moving around downstairs, she put on her robe and went to find him. He was sitting in the living room in the chair she used to think of as her father’s. He had a heavy cut-glass crystal tumbler in his hand with some kind of brown liquid in it.
“What are you doing?” she said as she entered the living room.
“Man of the house,” he said, raising the glass in a toast. “Haven’t you heard? Having a man-of-the-house beverage. Want some?”
“No,” Fern said. “Empty calories.”
He nodded. “How’s school going for you these days?”
She laughed. “Aren’t you taking this dad thing a little far?”
“Aren’t you taking the mom thing a little too far? Going to those meetings? You know you don’t have to if you don’t want,” he said kindly.
“They’re not bad,” she said. “I’ve made some friends.”
“Do you ever hang out with, uh, Bridie?”
“Yeah. Not Clara, though. She’s—I don’t know. Weird.”
“Weird how?” He tipped the glass back and emptied it.
“I guess she’s taking the mother thing too far. She’s, like, cleaning all the time and cooking and won’t let Bridie go to—the other house for dinner.” None of them had come up with anything better than “the other house” to refer to where Nina and Finn now lived.
“Weird.”
“Do you miss her?” Fern and Dune had never talked about it, but Fern knew about him and Clara. She had from the very start.
Dune stood up abruptly. “No,” he said, walking toward the bar for a refill.
“Should you drink that much?” Fern asked. “Isn’t that stuff really strong?”
“I can handle it,” he said.
“Sorry I asked about Clara. What happened wasn’t fair to you guys.”
He replied without looking at her: “I could give a flying fuck.”
“Okay,” she said brightly, even though she had a bad feeling as he sloppily refilled his glass. “See you in the morning.”