Part 20 (1/2)

No, dear readers, I lost weight because I inherited this old farm I've been blogging about, and I set out on a one-woman crusade to turn it into a real working apple orchard. Since spring I have been weeding, walking strange dogs with Irish names, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g trees into half their former size, lugging bushels of brown apples across the orchard to make cider, and painting, sweeping, hanging shelves, and learning how to retile a bathroom.

I've also been buying my groceries at the local farmers' market, a habit I strongly recommend if it is available where you live. Walking into town and asking a farmer what vegetables are in season is education, exercise, and also you get to chat up farmers, who know their produce in and out. We've had posts about buying in season before, but I have to admit I never actually did it! The richness in flavor of a fresh zucchini or tomato is nothing to sneeze at.

This blog has grown exponentially in the last three and a half years. Without all of your pretty little fingers clicking and navigating onto my site, recommending it to friends and family, I'd be nowhere. I know I can give just as good advice chubby instead of Fattie, continue to post great nutritional and funny stories, and be your rock when this c.r.a.p society we live in tries to make you feel unworthy due to your weight. I am here to accept all your comments and questions. That's what Fat and Fabulous is all about. Plus, when I gain back the weight (which is a very likely possibility) I know you'll have my back! Shoshana's Apple Orchard is opening. A lot of you who live in the Tri-State are coming. I can't wait to welcome you with open arms and free cider! More posts soon. Wish me luck, I'm more nervous than when I lost my virginity. Maybe because I was drunk when I lost my virginity. But, as always, I digress.

XO,.

Shoshana.

”Oh, my G.o.d, have you seen this yet?” Emily sang out, throwing a New York Post onto the kitchen table with such unrestrained glee in her voice that Pam looked up from her position by the table where she'd just placed two steaming-hot plates of bacon and scrambled eggs. The table was handmade with a piece of driftwood Shoshana bought on eBay, and propped up with two crates. The eggs were laid that morning up the road at a farm where Shoshana donated a lot of firewood, and in return received free eggs. Things in Chester were done this way, an old-fas.h.i.+oned trading of amenities. There was a trust system here.

As Emily breezed into the kitchen from her trip to town and Andrea brewed a fresh batch of coffee, Greg and Shoshana went over the business plan for her orchard on an Excel sheet that made Shoshana slightly cross-eyed. They weren't getting much work done. Suddenly she got a pop-up message on her computer that there was a problem. Did she want to send an error message to Dell to report the issue?

”What are you doing?” Greg asked, looking over her shoulder.

”I'm sending an error message to the server so they fix the problem.”

”What, you mean, like, that little message box that pops up when your computer can't load something on a Web site?”

”Yeah. That.”

”Shoshana. No one actually looks at your error message, you know.”

”Of course they do. I always click the b.u.t.ton that says 'send error message,' and someone reads it and maybe fixes the problem for other browsers.”

”And who is this person who does it, like, some little old guy with a white beard and silver wand who sits in a cardboard box all day with a laptop, wires running every which way, and he just solves all of the world's computer problems?”

”Perhaps...”

Greg laughed. ”You are such an optimist. I love it.”

”Would you two shut up for one second?” Emily shouted, pointing to the paper. ”You gotta read this, Shosh.”

Shoshana picked up the paper. As she skimmed the page, her eyes widened. Page Six held a photograph of Alexis Allbright, looking shocked as she exited a Whole Foods supermarket, a strikingly handsome and built black man carrying grocery bags beside her. They were both midstride, and it appeared her companion was shouting at the photographer, making a fist in the air with his free hand. Andrea, who sat across the table and read the article upside down, let out a gasp in the room, which had grown quiet.

MOO! HAS NEW YORK'S MEDIA QUEEN GONE TO THE COWS?

As this picture shows, blogger and socialite Alexis Allbright has put on weight. One Upper East Side doctor we queried estimates seventy-five pounds. Famous for lambasting in the press everyone and anyone whose BMI wasn't up to snuff, it's ironic that the queen of mean is now, well, fat as a cow herself.

”Isn't that the young woman from Oprah?” Pam asked, pouring coffee into several mugs. Then, ”Gregory, get your feet off that chair.”

Abashed, Greg said, ”Sorry, Mrs. Weiner.”

Shoshana giggled. Pam felt Greg was the son she'd never had, and was known to spit into her palm to fix his cowlick.

”That's the b.i.t.c.h who tried to show up Shoshana,” Emily said. She smacked her fist down on Alexis's surprised face, causing the plates on the table to clatter. ”And now she's a Fattie! I love it! Serves her right.” Frank Sinatra, lying underneath the table in the hope of swallowing a bit of dropped food, let a bark in agreement. Andrea snuck him a slice of bacon.

Shoshana still was in Hoboken several times a week, but her pooch had quickly acclimated to country life, chasing rabbits in the orchard and getting spoiled on sleepovers at Greta and Joe's, where he had oddly enough fallen deeply in love with P-Hen, the peac.o.c.k, and wouldn't be deterred, even when she pecked at him constantly. He was also best friends with Patrick O'Leary. Both dogs kept Joe Murphy company on his walks around the hills. Greta bought Sinatra a bed monogrammed with the words OL' BLUE EYES.

Shoshana frowned, holding the newspaper closer to her face. Alexis looked caught unawares, her eyes wide and confused, trying to s.h.i.+eld her midsection with a shopping bag. Shoshana frowned.

”She might not be the nicest person, but I don't think she deserves being called a cow in the Post,” she said finally, setting down the paper. ”It's not exactly a win for feminism today. Besides, she definitely did not gain seventy-five pounds.”

”She looks about fifty pounds heavier, at most,” Andrea said. ”The Post always exaggerates.”

It was the weekend, so everyone was gathered at the farm. Emily had moved in three weeks ago, and took the train into the city every day. Andrea, Pam, and Greg slept at the farm Fridays and Sat.u.r.days only. They'd stayed up last night playing The Sopranos Trivia Game. Pam had shocked everyone by winning with the correct answer to: ”Who helped Christopher bury his first victim in the start of season one?” Shoshana and Andrea guessed Paulie, but it was Big p.u.s.s.y. Emily and Shoshana had collapsed in a fit of giggles at their mother saying, ”Big p.u.s.s.y,” and even Greg kept asking Pam for the answer again, just to hear it.

Joe Murphy was often ill these days, but he and Greta came by for the game. Shoshana worried about his health from time to time, but she figured at his age he was not about to quit drinking whiskey or smoking cigars. Shoshana had never had this much fun, surrounded by the people she loved most. The farm was a magical place.

Emily was still stuck on the Post article. ”Shosh, don't you see you've won? She might have had the last word on Oprah, but she looks like a fool in the paper! You deserve to gloat over this. Please gloat.” Emily was wearing two slim silver rings in her nose, and she'd dyed her hair flamingo pink. Today it was in pigtails, and she wore black-and-white-striped tights and yellow overalls the color of a parakeet. She looked like a plus-size punk-rocker bee.

”I don't know.” Shoshana glanced down at Alexis's picture once more. ”It doesn't feel like a win. I just feel sorry for her, to be honest with you guys.”

After breakfast she wandered upstairs to make her bed and get out the old junior high school yearbooks of her father's she'd found in the attic. He'd been on the basketball team, a surprise to all. The pictures were hilarious; he had long hair to his waist and a sweatband wrapped around his forehead. He'd been a big guy even then, the number 5 on his jersey stretched out across so it looked like an s. A Superman costume.

”h.e.l.lo, honey.” Pam wore scrubs with puppies on them; she was about to leave for work at her nursing job in the pediatric ward. Shoshana could hear her ragged breathing as she caught her breath after walking up the flight of stairs, and wished for the thousandth time there had been some way that instead of losing seventy-five pounds all herself, she could have taken the pounds from her mother and sister, with all three of them losing twenty-five each instead. Emily and Pam couldn't be happier for her, which made it somehow all worse. Or, as Emily put it, ”h.e.l.l, you lost the weight through hard work fixing up this dump. You should be f.u.c.king proud.”

”Hi, Mom. Driving to work?” She hugged her mother, inhaling her sweet smell of soap and cinnamon.

Pam looked around the room. Mimi's quilts still hung on the wall, and Shoshana had added some personal touches with Lilith Fair posters, her father's pretty paintings, and small, colorful blue and green vases of different sizes carefully placed on the fireplace mantel.

”Yes, just leaving, sweetie. Hey, I don't know if I've said it enough, but you know how proud I am of everything you've done with this farm. Your father would have loved to see it fixed up.”

Shoshana rolled her eyes and smiled. ”I know, Mom. You say it, like, a hundred times a day.”

”Well, it's true. Your sister and I love spending time here with you.” She sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed. Shoshana wished Pam didn't always look guilty about sitting down on beds, chairs, and people's living room couches. She seemed constantly aware of her weight, as if it were an evil twin who went around offending people.

”I wanted to tell you that I agree with what you said about that girl from Oprah, the one in the picture?”

”Alexis?”

”Right. Can you call the newspaper up, maybe give a counter-quote?”

Shoshana stared at her mother. She fingered the patches on the quilt bedspread, and placed the yearbooks beside her. ”Mom, she was horrid to me on TV. I feel badly that the press is slamming her, but I dealt with people judging me because of my size my entire life. And she's not even a Fattie! She probably weighs the same as me. I don't think it can hurt for her to walk a mile in my shoes for a little while.”

Pam looked thoughtfully out the window, which had a stunning view of the orchard. A crow flew by, its wings spread widely. Fall was her favorite season, always so beautiful in New Jersey. It had been Bob's busiest time for work, tending to people's lawns after summer droughts, planting new trees and bushes.

She paused before answering her daughter. ”I understand what you're saying. But I disagree with Emily. I don't think people watching Oprah that day saw you on the losing side of the battle. I think they saw you as victorious, because you took the higher ground. You didn't get personal, the way she chose to do about Dad. You kept things professional, and even made everyone laugh.”

”You're just saying that because you're my mom,” Shoshana said, smiling slightly. But there was bitterness in her words. The Oprah experience had truly hurt her feelings-crushed them, really. She was fine with being questioned about the motivations behind Fat and Fabulous; it was a fight she was willing to take on, for all the fellow Fatties out there. But when Alexis brought up her father, and the way his weight had contributed to his death ... it knocked all the air out of her chest, left her defenseless. It was like the scene in Gladiator, where Joaquin Phoenix stabs Russell Crowe in the chest quickly and stealthily, seconds before battle. Russell fights back, but he's been weakened by the wound. Alexis was a dirty fighter.

”Of course I'm saying that because I'm your mom,” Pam said, throwing her arm around her daughter. ”But I also mean it. I'm not alone in thinking you took the higher ground. All my girlfriends in my book club agree with me. I'm asking you to consider standing up for her.”

”But isn't it enough if I just privately agree the article is mean?” Shoshana asked. ”Calling up the paper and making a statement just continues this stupid rivalry the media has made between us. The press loves instigating fights, and this would add fuel to their fire.”

”Just think it over, honey. That's all I'm asking.”

”Will do, Mom.” She pulled the yearbooks onto her lap. ”Hey, guess what? I found these old yearbooks of Dad's. From junior high.” She called loudly to her sister. The farmhouse was small enough that you could easily hear from one level to the other. ”Emily!”

Her sister peeked her head in the room a few seconds later. ”What?”