150 Pounds Part 15

She'd left the door unlocked and Noah threw it open.

"Babe!" His brown eyes were lit up. "Guess who I just met?" He'd let his hair grow long, and he ran his hand through it now, letting the soft curls stick up around his head like a crown. Alexis loved twirling bunches of it around her finger as they lay in bed.

The sun shone through two buildings across the street and made a vertical line of golden light across Alexis's face. He was struck as he always was by how beautiful she was to him. He was too excited to notice her stricken look, and, being Noah, didn't seem deterred that she was bottomless, her underwear and pants strewn about on the floor.

"Wh ... who?" Alexis asked. Might as well delay telling him and ruining the rest of both their lives.

"Tony Andrews! He came by right after you went jogging past us. He reviews restaurants for New York magazine. He heard about my idea, you know, a laid-back kind of microbrewery normally found in Colorado but plunked down right in the middle of Manhattan? And he wants to write up Off the River Ale House as soon as it opens!"

"That's so great, Noah. I'm happy for you," she said flatly. She climbed down off the toilet and curled the test stick into her palm, dropping her arm behind her back.

He glanced at her face and frowned. When Noah frowned, he somehow had the ability to look even cuter. He'd taken off his s.h.i.+rt to help the contractor measure and install booths and his brown torso was sleek with sweat. "What's wrong? Billy said you were upset."

Not knowing what to say, she thrust the pregnancy test at his chest, as if she were jousting with a small plastic sword.

"Oh." He squinted at the small plus sign. "Never saw one of these in person before. Only in the movies."

"That's all you can say?" she shouted.

She heard Billy rustling on the couch, and tried to lower her voice. "What the f.u.c.k am I going to do?"

She hastily bent down to put on her pants, struggling with the b.u.t.ton so hard it popped off, falling to the floor and bouncing twice before landing on the shower rug. Noah reached over to help her but she pushed him away. She sat back down on the toilet, head in hands, and sobbed quietly, hopelessly.

He was quiet for a moment, thinking. "Hey. Look at me, at least." He put his hand under her chin and raised her blotchy face gently up to his.

"It's not what you're going to do. It's what we're doing. We're in this together, you know."

"But how did this even happen?" Alexis cried, looking up at him. "We used condoms, every time."

"Well..." Noah said, chewing his lower lip, which in any other situation would have made Alexis want to kiss him. Instead, she stood and leaned over the toilet and vomited for a third time. She felt Noah's large, cool hands holding back her hair, and she had a sudden sense of deja vu from the hospital, when he'd held her hand while she was st.i.tched up. The st.i.tches had since dissolved, but they'd left a slight white line.

She shook off Noah's hands and leaned over the sink to splash cold water on her face, shutting her eyes as she did so. She roughly wiped her face on the monogrammed hand towel Billy bought her for her nineteenth birthday to be ironic. "Because we're like a married couple!" he'd said gleefully.

"There was that one time, after we went to the movies in Union Square? I remember we were arguing about whether the b.u.t.ter they put on top of popcorn is real or not. Remember, we didn't have any condoms that night so we just ... didn't use one?"

"f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k f.u.c.k," Alexis wailed. "How could I be so irresponsible? This doesn't happen to people like us. It happens to stupid people."

"Alexis," he said softly. "This happens to all kinds of people. I must not have pulled out in time-"

"Stop. Just stop," she said, putting her hands over her ears. She sighed deeply. "So what now?"

"Now we go grocery shopping." Her list had fallen onto the shower mat and he bent down to retrieve it.

"Let's go buy..." He glanced down. "Popsicles."

"Are you on drugs? f.u.c.k the Popsicles!" Alexis cried.

Noah crossed his arms and leaned against the wood doorframe. The muscles in his forearms bulged. "Alexis, it's not such a bad thing, you know. Some people might think this is actually ... a happy day, really." He picked up steam as he spoke. His optimism, though usually a welcome s.h.i.+ft in thinking for Alexis, served now only to annoy her.

"There are so many people who can't have kids," Noah continued. "And we're not spring chickens. I'll be thirty this fall. It's not like we're teenagers. I can support you and the baby. I've been saving money since college. I was going to put it toward the restaurant, but I can easily cut back there." He made up his mind as he spoke. The news had been shocking, of course, but Noah was nothing if not malleable, able to change direction, easygoing. And Alexis hated him for that. It wasn't practical.

"Are you f.u.c.king delusional?" she screamed. She was seriously reconsidering ever falling for Noah. "This is no time to be Mr. Optimist, okay? This is a disaster. This is worse than Hurricane Katrina. This is September Eleventh."

"This is not September Eleventh. Or Hurricane Katrina." He took a deep breath. She'd shaken off his hands from her shoulders, and they hung now at his sides like weights. "Don't be so dramatic. It's your body ... but..."

"You're d.a.m.n right it's my body. And I have the right to choose. And I choose getting rid of this ... this growth as soon as possible. It's June. Bathing suit season. It's already making me fat."

Noah punched the wall, tearing a large-sized hole in the plasterboard. Alexis jumped. "You're not fat!" he shouted. Anger was so out of character for him that Alexis took a step back. "You are a size four! Do you know how many women would die to be a size four? My sister! My mother! Most of the women in America! And yes, you have the right to choose. And I will support that choice. But you're not making a choice here. You're basing your decision on what you'll look like in a stupid swimsuit. I'm so sick of this skinny s.h.i.+t. It's crazy!" He picked up her phone, which had fallen out of the pocket of her pants. "And this stupid b.u.t.ton you press every time you eat something. It has to stop!" Before Alexis could stop him, he lifted the window behind him with a loud squeak, pushed up the screen, wound back his arm, and chucked her phone as far as he could.

Holy s.h.i.+t. She was so full of anger she literally saw red for a minute. Who was she, if she couldn't count her calories? It was part of what made Alexis, Alexis. Those tiny black numbers that adjusted throughout the day beneath her fingertip filled her with calm. She'd been in control and now she wasn't. The mood in the little room s.h.i.+fted into a scary calm, the eye of the storm. She set her shoulders back. The softer Alexis that had emerged recently, surprising her deeply, ran into a hole and hid. And the blackness she'd lived with since Mark died seeped back out. She realized it had never left. Her voice was a measured whisper.

"Thanks a lot, Noah. That phone cost a lot of money. So that's how you really feel, isn't it? You think what I do for a living is stupid. You think what I've done with my life, how I've earned a living since college with not a single dollar from my parents, is ... what's the word you used? Crazy?"

"No, no, that's not what I meant." Noah looked pained. He wiped white plaster off his forearm. It tugged something within her, to see the big guy get upset, but she wasn't going to let sympathy back her down from the rage she hadn't tapped into since that evening in March when she'd sliced open her finger and fate had sprinkled that pixie dust over her and she'd met Noah, that rage she'd had bottled inside her for the three years since Mark had died and her parents had essentially disowned her.

"Alexis. Alexis, I-"

"Don't. Don't even say it." She didn't want to hear his I-love-you. She didn't want to hear anything else from him ever again.

"You don't respect me. All this time, all these months I've been helping you build your restaurant. I scrubbed that fur shop on my hands and knees, I held that chili-making contest for the neighborhood, I ate a million fattening wings."

She spit out the word.

"And for what? This is how you really feel. You think Skinny Chick is stupid. You think I'm stupid. Well, I don't need you. I was doing just fine on my own, before I met you."

"Alexis, whatever you decide, I want to help you."

"Stop," she said. "Just go." She pushed on his chest, which was solid, and she could feel his heart flutter beneath her hands. "I'll send you the bill for the abortion."

It was a horrible thing to say, cold and unfair, and she knew it the second the words left her lips. Noah looked shocked, like he'd been punched in the stomach. Resigned, he turned away and walked out of the bathroom. She kept thinking he'd turn around. She heard the apartment door open and close, and just like that, the man who had walked into their lives and made them all fall in love with him was walking down the stairs and out onto a very crowded New York street.

She wouldn't see him again for three months. And by then, everything had changed.

Fat and Fabulous I was crossing the street between Was.h.i.+ngton and Bloomfield in Hoboken today, leaving my Vinyasa yoga cla.s.s and feeling really good in my body after the workout, when out of nowhere a fire-red Ford pickup truck came screaming around the corner, its engine so hot and the car so close it left a scald mark on my calf.

As I gathered my bearings, having almost been killed in broad daylight, the driver leaned on the horn and shouted out the window, "Move your fat a.s.s, lady!"

Now, it's been quite some time since I have encountered a FBA, or in layman's terms, a Fat Bigot a.s.shole. I was out of practice. I just about managed to flip him the state bird. It just brought me right back to why I started Fat and Fabulous. I've written (some may say even harped) about this many a time, but this blog is about healthy at any size, and ridding the word "diet" from your vocabulary (I always gained all the weight back, and statistically, so will you).

I wasted so many years hating my body, wearing XXL T-s.h.i.+rts over my bathing suit when I went swimming so I looked like a tent with t.i.ts, yo-yo dieting that put strain on my heart, trying to fit into the mold the media has set out for young women.

I have an e-mail folder where I put all of my "troll comments," or people with bad intentions who want to post mean comments on Fat and Fabulous. I think there is a special warm place somewhere in h.e.l.l for troll people, like Mr. Ford.

But, I digress. When I heard Mr. Ford's slur it brought me right back to my roots. Fat and Fabulous's goal is to force people to see Fatties in a whole new light, a pink, s.h.i.+mmery, luminescent one. I want FBAs to see not all of us are fat because we stuff our faces with junk food every night.

We once had a commenter on the message boards who posted stories about receiving nasty remarks because she uses a motorized scooter when she shops at Target. Really she uses the scooter because she has arthritis in her legs, but people automatically a.s.sume she is fat and lazy.

One of my favorite arguments (and you know I have many) is that everyone has one really skinny friend who eats like a linebacker and yet magically remains thin. Yes, of course we hate her, but we also can learn an important lesson there. Why is it that people believe it is possible to eat this much and stay skinny, but somehow they think it impossible to eat healthy food and yet still be fat? FBAs think we eat candy bars for breakfast, ice-cream sundaes for lunch, and donuts for dinner.

I launched Fat and Fabulous to start a conversation about Fat, and what it means to Americans. One of my bloggers, Jessica, wrote a story about a year ago (you might remember it) called "Thin for a Year," about when she went on Jenny Craig and lost two hundred pounds (which she has since gained back, but she says she feels okay with that). Jessica couldn't believe what a different world she was in-she felt like "Alice, when she falls down the rabbit hole." The cute barista at her local Starbucks grinned at her when he handed her a tall hot chocolate. Her parents told her how "proud" they were, apparently about the weight loss, though Amanda also happens to have a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Princeton and has published, twelve, yes, count 'em, twelve books. Aren't these accomplishments worthy of receiving flirtation and pride, more than the fact that you can fit into skinny jeans?

Another reason I started this blog was for my sister, Emily. This is the first time I have ever written about it, but Emily is a bigger Fattie than myself, and she's taken s.h.i.+t for it her whole life. I remember kids calling her "tub-o-lard" on the playground, and "Pillsbury Dough Girl" in ballet cla.s.s. Emily is my favorite person and I won't stand to see someone I love so much get hurt.

I write this blog not only for my sister but for Angela White in Omaha, Nebraska, who wrote a beautiful post about her mother, who kept going to the same doctor for her entire life, even though that doctor told her, after only superficial exams, that her chronic shortness of breath was due to her being overweight.

Angela's mother pa.s.sed away two months after gathering up the courage to seek a second opinion, whereupon she found out she had asthma. She suffered an immense asthma attack while out buying groceries and hadn't yet filled the prescription in her purse for an inhaler. Angela blames her mother's doctor-his prejudice against her weight blocked him from making an accurate diagnosis and his negligence was fatal.

But back to yesterday, back to Hoboken. After I caught my breath, and felt the anger with the FBA subside, I smiled. I smiled right there in the intersection, because he had done me a favor: he'd reminded me of all these reasons I mentioned above for why I started Fat and Fabulous. I smiled because I have a life, amazing friends, and I don't have time to worry about whether or not my a.s.s jiggles as I walk across the street. I smiled because I love the h.e.l.l out of lip gloss, face creams, Betty White, Italian festivals, and now apple orchards. I enjoy life, and this guy doesn't.

Because I eat what I want, which is sometimes asparagus and sometimes a frickin' cheeseburger. So what if I can't go braless, even at night? So what if I get glared at on planes, in the supermarket, in line to get my oil changed? I'm a person. With a mind, body, heart, and soul. And I'm a good person who eats (mostly) healthy food. This redneck a.s.shole brought it all back, and for that I can only say, Thank You. And I hope you someday get over having such a small p.e.n.i.s you have to buy a large truck to compensate.

And on that cla.s.sy note, loyal readers, I am taking a little mini-break from Fat and Fabulous. Before you start running for the hills, please note that this is only temporary, while I get the farm I inherited from Aunt Mimi in working order as a true apple orchard. As some of you know, for the last three months I have been splitting my time between my (very crowded) apartment in Hoboken and my little shabby chic farm in Chester. I have learned how to trim apple trees from twenty feet to ten, to hand-pull the weed vines that like to wrap themselves around the apple tree trunks, to hunt and destroy apple scab, a nasty disease that looks like the zits I got in middle school, and lastly, to bake the best apple pie on the East Coast. (I'm not kidding-I found Aunt Mimi's recipe, and let me tell you, it's awesome!) Come September 1, I hope to be open for business as a real, live, working orchard! So if you live around Jersey, or even if you don't, Fat and Fabulous readers from far and wide will be able to come to Shoshana's Apple Orchard for meet-ups, book groups, and apple-pie-buying excursions! See you in three months. In the meantime, my friend Jane will be posting a great story about yo-yo dieting to fit into her wedding dress which almost led to disaster, and Andrea, who is a frequent contributor, is going to continue to write her column about healthy and yummy summer c.o.c.ktails.

Dr. Amanda Weber will also be posting weekly about healthy eating, and also writing a riveting column on the language of anorexia-how to spot the hidden signs in your friends. See you all in the fall!

XO,.

Shoshana.

It was a rare Friday night that Shoshana didn't have any guests sleeping over at the farm, and this weekend was no exception. Her mom and Emily sat on the new couch given to her by Joe Murphy and Greta, which Shoshana knew Greta had probably picked out and Joe had paid for. It was a dusky purple Crate & Barrel microfiber wraparound in a much larger design than ever would have fit in her Hoboken apartment. Shoshana was able to balance living in both places, which felt worlds apart. She was a city mouse and a country mouse. She recently learned that before she died Mimi ingeniously had the property declared as a historic landmark, and its land was also preserved. Therefore, Shoshana's taxes would be low enough to allow her to keep the Hoboken apartment.

In the past three months, she spent nearly every day here, and with the a.s.sistance of Joe Murphy ("a.s.sistance" being a relative word; he mostly sat in a lawn chair and sipped from his flask) she'd cleared out the jungle behind the house and gotten started on owning her own orchard, a notion that gave her the chills. Greta brought her shoe boxes full of black-and-white pictures of the farm in its heyday.

Joe taught her to recognize disease and treat it, how to cut the branches and allow the optimum amount of sunlight through. He provided a rich history of the farm, including more stories about her father as a child.

Every night, Shoshana walked over the hills with Sinatra to dine with him and Greta. Greta had patiently cleaned the farm with her, refusing all Shoshana's offers of pay. Shoshana often wondered what arrangement Greta and Joe Murphy had; Greta did all the cooking and cleaning, but the two bickered night and day, driving one another crazy.

Greta was fond of saying refrains like, "That man wouldn't remember to eat breakfast if it weren't for me." Or, "I doubt he even knows his own Social Security number. He'd be dead in a gutter if I didn't take care of him."

Joe Murphy put up a great show that Greta was the "beast on his back," but as she got to know them Shoshana could, even more than initially, see underneath how dependent on and grateful to Greta he was.

Her mother and sister had been visiting just about every weekend, and Emily had dropped a few comments about moving in, which then caused their mom to state that she might as well move in as well. Then Andrea asked if she could stay on the couch this weekend because Aggie had been driving her crazy with her kleptomania and weird sculptures: "If I have to smell that girl's patchouli one more day I'm going to strangle her with one of her dreadlocks!" The farm couldn't have come into her possession at a better time; Shoshana loved her roommates dearly, but with Jane's wedding tomorrow morning, everyone had been a little on edge at the apartment, especially Jane. She was glad she had a place to get away from the commotion.

Two days ago, Shoshana went back to Hoboken to power-walk with Nancy, her wealthy, cop-dating friend who lived uptown and helped Shoshana with her blog from time to time. Afterward, she and her roommates ironed out Jane's final preparations with her wedding favors. Jane declared if the four girls did not help her stuff three hundred high-heel-shaped cookie favors into cellophane she would never speak to any of them again.

"Have I been a Bridezilla?" she trilled, after Shoshana's fingers felt like they'd fall off any second. She glanced at the clock. It was three in the morning, and they'd finally finished the favors.

"Of course not," Andrea said, ma.s.saging her wrist.

"Don't be silly," Aggie said, rubbing her eyes.

"You've been like an angel sent from the heavens," Karen said, yawning.

The girls caught each other's eyes and burst out laughing.

"Liars!" Jane screamed, though the worry line that had been in her brow in recent months was slowly dissolving.

"Oh, you gave it away with that silly angel line," Shoshana said to Karen, throwing a shoe cookie at her.

"Just wait until you all get married," Jane yelled. "You'll see how crazy it makes you. I feel like I was kidnapped by aliens and now I'm just getting my brain back."

Needless to say, Shoshana hadn't gotten a lot of sleep last night, so when Greg asked if he could crash at the farm and the two would drive to Long Beach Island the following morning together, where the wedding was to be held, Shoshana agreed, as she'd have a ride. Greg had quit drinking alcohol recently to be healthy, so she loved forcing him to be the designated driver. Besides, she hadn't seen him in nearly three months, though they still talked on the phone every day.

Wanting to hear more about his latest conquest, Shoshana invited Greg out to see her new digs, and accompany her to Jane's wedding. He'd shown up around eight, when the fog was still a glistening blanket over the hills. She heard the crunch of the white gravel she'd had refilled by a local contractor, then the slam of his BMW door. She ran outside barefoot, excited to show him all the improvements she'd made on the farm.

She looked at Greg. He'd dressed his short and muscular frame with khakis, a polo s.h.i.+rt from a Montclair golf course, and brown boat shoes. She took in his thick eyebrows, full lips, and hazel eyes that twinkled mischievously. And above the top lip, could it be?

"Dude, what's with the 'stache?" she asked, giggling. "It's very hipster." Except it wasn't exactly manly, more like light brown fuzz.

Instead of answering, he'd just stared at her.

"Uh, who are you and what did you do with my best friend?" he asked finally.

Shoshana blushed. The crazy thing was, after years of wis.h.i.+ng she were thinner, followed by years of accepting herself just as she was, she was feeling insecure about her weight loss. Over the last twelve weeks, after walking the mile back and forth to Joe Murphy's house, sometimes twice a day, clearing weeds and vines, chopping back apple tree branches, eating local food, and digging in the dirt to plant a vegetable garden beside the house, Shoshana had lost thirty pounds.

She started noticing her jeans slipping off her waist, and, not thinking anything of it, looped one of Mimi's old scarves through as a belt. It was also the lack of a d.a.m.n ShopRite for miles that brought Shoshana to the farmers' market here on Sat.u.r.days. Also, Greta put Joe Murphy on a low-sodium diet for his heart (although Shoshana caught him sneaking all kinds of snacks when he was out walking in the fields with Patrick O'Leary), and as a result of eating dinner at their mansion nearly every night she grew to like the zucchini soup, ham sandwiches on wheat toast, and good, healthy cooking Greta served.

"I don't know what you mean," Shoshana said nonchalantly to Greg. A bird called out and received a hurried reply from a feathered friend inside a nearby willow tree as she turned and walked over the threshold into the house. She'd replaced Mimi's large, moth-eaten Oriental carpet with an oatmeal-colored sisal rug, and found a pretty, blue-colored gla.s.s light fixture for the entryway ceiling. Joe Murphy painted the walls a deep burnt orange, swaying frighteningly on the ladder while drinking from his flask. "This is fun!" he'd exclaimed. "Used to paint houses for a dollar a day back in Ireland. Haven't held a paintbrush in sixty fockin' years!"

She'd kept Mimi's photographs up around the house, enjoying their black-and-white nostalgic vibe. Joining them on the wall were three of her father's paintings; she felt happy each time she walked by them. Her mom and Emily were sleeping over frequently, and, along with Greta, had helped her wash all the dust from the dishes in the kitchen, beat the rugs outside with a broomstick, wash the linens, and replace the old sixties refrigerator with a new one. She'd taken the silk handkerchiefs off the living room lamps and thrown out the living room curtains, flooding the small room with light. Shoshana was proud of the changes; she'd kept the heart of the place intact but contributed her own flair in the decorating. She surveyed the room with Greg as he stepped inside, and noticed he was still gazing intently at her.

"Okay, I may have lost some weight."

"Shoshana, you look fifty pounds lighter!"

"No. Not fifty pounds." She blushed. "Thirty." After posting many times about the importance of not weighing one's self, Shoshana had finally bit the bullet and found a rusty old-yet-functioning scale in the upstairs bathroom and tentatively climbed on. She'd bitten her lip in surprise when she saw the number read back to her, the needle hovering very closely to the 175 mark. She hadn't been under two hundred pounds since middle school.

Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. "Greg, I don't know what to do."

He smiled and put his arm around her. "Shosh, you should be proud of yourself."

"I didn't do this on purpose!" she wailed. "It was all that d.a.m.n climbing up ladders and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g apple trees and hauling branches to the road and walking Sinatra over these hills. I miss being fat."

He chuckled.

She stuck her tongue out at him. "It's not funny!"

"You're a babe both ways, but..."

He c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at her.

"What? Just say it."

"Okay, don't hit me again. But isn't it a little easier to get around now? To fit into clothes? To breathe?"

"But I'm not Fat and Fabulous anymore," she moaned, sinking onto the new couch. Greg sat beside her, patting her knee. She wore her favorite brown cords she'd had since high school with her Birkenstocks, and a light, airy hippie blouse in a size ten she'd bought at a neighbor's yard sale down the road and which she still couldn't believe she fit into.

"Don't worry, you're still pretty fat," he said.