Given that most people presumably contend with just this rattling disconnect between who they are to themselves and what they are to others, it’s perplexing why we’re still roundly obsessed with appearance. Having verified on our own accounts the feeble link between the who and the what, you’d think that from the age of three we’d have learned to look straight through the avatar as we do through a pane of glass. On the other hand, I sometimes suspected that my female employees who were lavishing fifty dollars per week from their modest salaries on makeup had mastered a secret that eluded me most of the time and only intruded when I looked at snapshots: like it or not, you are a what to other people. You may not recognize your heavy thighs, your cornflower eyes, but they do, and competent interface with the rest of the world involves manipulating that irrelevant, arbitrary, not-you image to the maximum extent. Ergo, if the makeup’s application was skillful, that fifty bucks could not have been better spent.
Which brings us back to weight. Ever since Edison gave me cause to, I’ve made a study of this: the hierarchy of apprehensions when laying eyes on another person. Once a form emerges from the distance that is clearly a human and not a lamppost, we now log (1) gender, (2) size. This order of recognitions may be universal in my part of the world, though I do not believe “size” has always been number two. Yet these days I am apt to register that a figure is slight or fat even before I pick up a nanosecond later that they are white, Hispanic, or black. Especially when the subject in question is on the large side, many of us probably detect “on the large side” even before determining large person of which sex. Accordingly, in eyewitness testimonies to the police, “slim,” “average-build,” “heavyset,” or some more refined variation thereof features without fail. In fiction, authors who do not immediately identify roughly how much a character weighs are not doing their jobs, and walk-on thumbnails in short stories invariably begin something like, “Allison, a tall, skinny girl with freckles” or, “Bob was an affable, gregarious man whose enjoyment of imported British ales was beginning to announce itself in his waistline . . .”
This is important if only because each of those three weight categories we used at Baby Monotonous attaches to a constellation of character traits—a set of stock qualities that, with no other information to go on, we impute to size. Mind, there is no neutrality in this game. As in countries like Australia, where participation in elections is a legal obligation, being one weight or another is a kind of voting that doesn’t allow for abstentions. You are three-dimensional, and you have to weigh something.
Begin with “average”—like most middle positions, considered the dullest and least worthy of comment. Yet even “average” in this morass of preconceptions has grown complicated. Here in Iowa, anyway, we are no longer in accord on what dimensions qualify as standard. Granted, lofty health authorities have sought to impose the “body-mass index,” thus providing a numerical definition of the normal—although I’m stymied by how the formula of “weight divided by height squared” invented by some Belgian in the early 1800s has suddenly become so fashionable two centuries later.
In Westdale Mall in Cedar Rapids, the norm is another story. My fellow citizens are so consistently broad of backside, round of shoulder, stout of leg, and plump of bicep that we might all be trooping across a canvas by Fernando Botero. Like cubism, futurism, or art deco, giantism has become a recognizable style in which the bulk of the population is drafted. Strolling public promenades, I am often struck by a powerful collusion, one in which during the years leading up to Edison’s arrival I had participated to the hilt. I would think: these people are nearly all heavier than I am, so I’m not overweight. Size is relative. If everyone is fat, no one is fat.
Despite the Midwest’s sneaky, steady expansion of what constitutes average contours, we still blithely assume that every one of these so-called normal people would desperately like to be thinner. It’s taken as a given that Mr. and Ms. Average are dissatisfied with their weights, avoidant of mirrors, inclined to take their dress or jean size as a personal indictment, and sufficiently anxious about getting on a scale in the presence of others to put off doctors’ appointments for months on end. It stands to reason, then, that these days even mid-range mass in America’s heartland conveys a disposition to shame, frustration, and disappointment—if also a constitutional inclination to cut other people slack.
But what, or rather who, is the skinny? By conceit, the rail-thin are harsh, joyless, and critical. They suffer from the same chronic dissatisfaction as average-size people, but on top of applying a ruthless ruler to themselves they are reliably dissatisfied with you. Their proclivity for self-control inexorably bleeds into controlling everyone else as well. They don’t know how to have a good time, and don’t hesitate to poop your party, too. Scrawnies are superior, haughty, and elitist. Vain, self-centered, and cold. Picky. Stingy and withholding. Aloof. Uptight. Judgmental and condescending. Brittle, not only in appearance but in demeanor and bearing. Dishonest (likely to decline the offer of dessert because of feeling “far too full”), and insincere (“You look terrific!”). Nasty, although usually behind your back. Fearful, not only of food but also of people who eat it, as if libertinism might be contagious—thus prone to an unconscious apartheid, instinctively partial to the company of their own withered kind. Rigid—God forbid you should invite one of these paragons for a drink when it’s time to go running.
One small subsection of the skeletal manages to get credit for an intellectual absorption in higher things than lunch or a scatterbrained tendency to skip meals out of forgetfulness, but they are all men. There lives not a slender Western woman about whom it is presumed at first meeting that she is too involved in her work to remember to eat.
Stick figures imagine they inspire envy, when in fact they excite dislike. Incredibly, the self-starved never appear capable of taking any pleasure in the very vessel for which they’ve sacrificed. So get this: despite the correlation of emaciation with smugness, they seem always to wish they were even thinner.
Lastly, the well and truly fat. I think we long ago put to rest their reputation for jollity. Misery, more like it. Melancholy, perhaps. Helplessness. Self-indulgence and self-deceit. Defensiveness. Resignation to the present; fatalism about the future. Self-hatred and self-reproach. Shyness. Self-pity, albeit richly deserved; a persecution complex, although ought it be called a “complex” when you’re genuinely persecuted? A self-deprecating sense of humor. Humility. As a consequence of having all too often been on the pointy end of malice, kindness. An enfolding warmth. Generosity. Born of self-evident frailty, cheerful acceptance of whatever might also be wrong with you. A longing to be left in peace, and a preference for staying home. Gentleness. Harmlessness. Languor. Frankness. Ribaldry. A down-to-earth nature, and a lack of pretension.
Now, these are stereotypes, and exceptions amid real people of every size are legion. Moreover, I’ve been as brainwashed as the next woman into accepting the prescribed dimensions of a fetching figure. Nevertheless, when I look at the lists of attributes we instinctively ascribe to the very thin and the very fat, I would rather be fat.
My disquisition on photographs may have seemed a departure from our story. It wasn’t.
In the few days leading up to Edison’s flight back east, I’d been pressing him to decide how he wanted to mark his departure. Cody, I emphasized, would be heartbroken, and I would miss him terribly, too. On this last point, I was sincere.
Admittedly, for weeks I had been impatient to see the back of my brother, indulging in frequent fantasies about a return to regular life. I had repeatedly rehearsed arising at my leisure to switch on a kitchen radio that was already tuned to WSUI—as opposed to KCCK, the only station in Iowa that plays nothing but contemporary jazz. I would catch the beginning of Morning Edition with no concern for waking anyone with sleep apnea in an armchair. Gloriously, I would drizzle my coffee with two tablespoons of half-and-half from a nearly full pint container that
would last through the rest of the month. I cherished the vision of coming home from Baby Monotonous and saying absolutely nothing. I pictured dinners with my family when alternating chefs weren’t at war, and we weren’t faced with either a nauseously mammoth feast or savagely drab, ascetic fare as penance for the night before; in short, I pictured Fletcher preparing his signature polenta, but remembering the Parmesan cheese. I looked forward to having frequent sex with my husband again, after which I would drop blissfully to sleep, rather than staring at the ceiling for an hour after yet another terse, furious wrangle over whatever Edison had most recently broken.
For I may have been torn over whether Edison’s overeating was a sign of depression, but there was no question that his overeating was depressing me. I couldn’t wait to escape the nagging sense that I should be doing something about my brother’s weight, while at once feeling at a loss as to what that might be. Removed from his bad influence, I would lose what was now at least twenty pounds. I would drag out my bicycle, Fletcher’s condescension be damned. I would send Edison newsy emails while he was on the road in Europe—updates on Cody’s progress through Simon and Garfunkel’s catalogue, or Tanner’s blessed reconsideration (well, I said this was fantasy) of a foolhardy career path. I yearned for the halcyon day when Edison Appaloosa would not be my problem.
Yet I knew full well beforehand that the moment I waved goodbye at security—washing my hands of my brother and returning smartly to what passed in America for a happy family and a pile of new orders at Baby Monotonous—I would feel hollow and morose. Tortured by that sagging, empty maroon recliner. Sheepish about having resumed our eclectic musical diet of R.E.M., Coldplay, Shawn Colvin, and Pearl Jam, only to find that these previously beloved pop classics now sounded facile. Perplexed over why I had not consciously enjoyed what I had mostly dismissed as background noise, when I was obviously developing a taste for jazz despite myself. Saddened that despite a rare, sustained exposure to my brother’s expertise I still couldn’t distinguish John Coltrane from Sonny Rollins. Self-flagellating about the fact that, though I’d sometimes put on one of Edison’s own CDs while he was here in a theater of interest, I had never listened attentively to a single one. Mortified that I had failed to get my brother to talk about his broken marriage or his estranged son. Dismayed that I had never come to any understanding of what had driven him to get so big. Crestfallen that I’d had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to truly get to know my only brother as an adult, and I’d squandered most of his visit on waiting for him to leave.
So when I said I’d miss him, I meant I would miss what we had not experienced, and I don’t know what that’s called: nostalgia for what didn’t happen. I knew that when he left I would feel dreadful, and in that sense during his final few days in our house I did savor his company, which at least reprieved me, however briefly, from my own remorse.
It was the Saturday before Edison’s Tuesday flight, and we’d just finished one of my brother’s overkill brunches: french toast. Making an effort to be sociable on Edison’s last weekend, Fletcher (I want DRY toast! I want DRY toast!) had joined us with his unbuttered whole wheat. Tanner and Cody left to meet friends at the mall. Somewhere between noon and one p.m., the phone rang.
Travis.
My brother talked to our father about once a year and had thus filled me in as to what Travis really thought of Baby Monotonous—rather, “your sister’s toy company.” For his no-account, plain, below-the-parapet second-born to have made a name for herself with “doll babies” was apparently a leading source of his trademark consternation. My father’s affront was one of the few bankable benefits I reaped from my peculiar product’s popularity. In a word, revenge. While ours was one of those many families in which it was hard to pinpoint what exactly we kids might crave revenge for, this sense of deserving compensation for a big, ineffable, nameless atrocity persisted nonetheless. Yet I knew I was being small-minded. Travis was pathetic. Triumphing over the guy in his seventies was therefore itself pathetic, and way, way too late.
As a rule I talked to Travis more like once a month, since these dutiful daughterly calls made me feel less like a heel for otherwise dumping a delusional monomaniac on Solstice merely because she lived nearby. (But, hey. Her choice.) My father asked rarely about my affairs, and even then in a cursory manner (“How’s tricks, Pandarama?”). Then we could get on with the important business of Travis’s non-life now that even companies who produced the most mortifying products had dropped his endorsement (Ab-Sure, which made medical trusses, was the last to go).
Thus far Edison and I had twice placed joint calls to our father, during which I had barely gotten a word in edgewise. These three-way conversations had been quite a contest, since it was a hard call whether Edison or Travis was more of a windbag. First Travis would fume that nowadays TV stars raked in nearly as much moolah as the Hollywood kind, when he’d earned “chump change”—our father’s backhanded fashion of informing us that he had already spent most of aforesaid chump change, so no, we would not be inheriting any money to speak of. With no pretense of a segue, Edison would then reminisce about his Rio tour in 1992, listing every unknown-from-Adam band member and describing a wild impromptu jam session in a tough, dangerous favela.
Thus on hearing our father’s voice when I picked up the phone that Saturday my heart sank: there goes an hour down the drain. But I did wonder at the fact that, contrary to custom, Travis had called us.
“Pandorissimo!” cried my father gaily. His benevolent embellishments of my name were meant to bestow the family nonentity with Personality for a Day. With a woebegone look, I mouthed Travis to Fletcher. Noticeably more genial as Edison’s exodus loomed, he was sponging up the french-toast custard that had dribbled all over the kitchen floor.
“Now, listen,” Travis barreled on in my ear. “Have you seen this new series Mad Men? Pretty noteworthy that AMC is commissioning original drama now, and I’m thinking I might be able to capitalize on some opportunities there. But everyone I run into out here can’t shut up about this show. I’ve checked it out, and for the life of me I don’t see it. Set in the early sixties, fine, hardly real ‘historical’ drama, in my book. All this buzz about the sets and the clothes, when I could have tricked out the whole season with a trip to Goodwill. Lotta that show’s mileage is from Christina Hendricks’s bazookas. Cheap shot. And this whole man-with-a-past, not what he pretends to be. Hackneyed beyond belief. Give me The Fugitive any day.”
“I can’t say. I haven’t seen this new show,” I lied. “We don’t watch much TV.”
“That’s what everybody says. Listen to folks in this town, you’d think they all lived in caves without electricity. Then in the same breath they start slobbering about Mad Men. It don’t compute, kiddo. Now—Pandorable. That was right nice of that hunky carpenter of yours to email a pic of your birthday. Sorry about not giving you a shout on the day, but I had such a stack of fan mail to get through that I didn’t manage to fit it in.”
“So this is my birthday call?” I wasn’t thinking sharply. I merely noted that, had Fletcher not sent our group snapshot, Travis would have forgotten my birthday altogether. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
“Down payment on next year’s, anyway. Meanwhile, your jazz artiste brother still camped at your place? Cooling his heels before the next whirlwind tour?” I said yes, he’s right here. “Why not put the little man on, then?”
I handed Edison the phone and went back to the griddle.
“Yo, Trav, you just caught me,” said Edison from his recliner, after licking his fingers. (So close to his departure I’d resigned myself to my role as an “enabler,” and the night before I’d made a lemon-almond tart for dessert—trying to make up for my eagerness to be rid of him in the most unfortunate manner possible. Edison was dispatching the leftovers.) “Heading for the Apple on Tuesday, then on the road in Europe—”
It was not Edison’s style to telescope his musical plan
s into a half sentence, but something down the line pulled him up short. His face flushed. I hurried around the prep island until I could hear the sound escaping from the receiver: our father hooting.
“I don’t have to listen to this,” Edison said quietly, and pressed the disconnect.
“What happened?” I said. “What did he say?”
He stared straight ahead and breathed. He didn’t touch the pie. Finally he looked over, but not at me. “You bastard,” he said to Fletcher.