Part 15 (1/2)
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?