The F Word

  Over and over and over again.

  I can’t keep it in anymore. I want to scream it and scream it and scream it. I’m exhausted. I know I’m not the only woman who’s fucking exhausted. We work tirelessly only to be told that the things at which we excel are unimportant. Running a home and having a career, all the while keeping effortlessly slim. Being cheerleaders and therapists to men who assure us that, unlike women, they need neither. How can I help? What can I do? What more can I give you? Will this be enough? Am I valuable now? Will I ever do enough for you to tell me I’m important?

  Why do I care so much? Why do I believe you when you tell me I’m crazy and emotional? Why do I let you dictate what is meaningful?

  Why do I keep asking the monkeys if it smells inside the monkey-house?

  I’m tired of lying and as Cher’s “Believe” kicks in and Barb asks us to “high kick like you mean it,” I play out a scenario where I finally say it all. Hop out of this pool, grab Barb’s microphone headset, and shout, “I used to be fat and my husband has been cheating on me throughout our marriage because I never thought I deserved more than the scraps of my teenage fantasy.”

  Or how about this: “Being fat infected me and just like consumption, I shall tragically die from it even though I look perfect on the outside.” Ridiculous. High kick. High kick. Now scissor your arms! Scissor your arms! “Attention, ladies! I am a big fat fraud! Gaze at me, your fraudulent overlord, for I have sold you a lie!”

  Now Barb’s instructing us to run in place, as she counts down from ten. Feel the burn, she tells us. Barb growls the word “burn” in a way that’s just suggestive enough to make everyone uncomfortable.

  As the balls of my feet grind into the bottom of the pool, I come up with more public confessions I can blurt out: I hold in my farts even in REM sleep! I’ve never loved a picture taken of me! I hate kale! Eighty percent of the time I don’t mean it when I say, “I’m sorry!” The pool becomes choppy and rough as each woman becomes her own personal washing machine.

  “Sunday Funday? More like Sunday Bunday!” Barb says with a cackle.

  As the group transitions into wind sprints to Bob Seger’s “Against the Wind,” I float into the deeper waters and idly wonder how long it would take to just say it all. Unleash my secrets. Would it take an hour? Two? Days? What would that even feel like? I’d probably feel great, until I came out of my fugue state to see the women staring at me with that sickening combination of pity and glee. I careen into a woman straddling a pool noodle.

  “Watch yourself, hon,” the woman says, steadying me with a firm hand.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say, dog-paddling away from her.

  I catch Mom’s eye. She raises her eyebrows as if to ask, what is wrong with you? I shake my head and it’s right then that she sees it: Something is wrong. A tilt of the head. A narrowed eye. And I just landed myself on her to-do list.

  While we warm down, I come to the conclusion that all of my fears were pretty spot-on. My successes and freedoms as the New Olivia Morten were so fragile that they’ve been torn down in less than two weeks simply because of … wait. This is all Ben Dunn’s fault. My blood rises. The water splashes around me. If I hadn’t run into him in that coffeehouse, would any of this have happened? Would I—

  “Olivia, we’re warming down,” Barb barks through her microphone. I look up and Barb’s slowly sweeping her arms over her head. Apparently, I was being a bit too intense. Oh, god. It’s starting again. Barb better watch out, or else I’ll kick a pool noodle over the fence. Mom and Joyce Chen look over at me. I follow Barb and slowly sweep my arms over my head. Barb continues, “Good. Easy. Fluid. Be water.”

  I force myself to keep sweeping my arms over my head as I set my sights on Ben Dunn. He did this. Yes. This is all his fault. Ben Dunn. This is … uh … him. Then there he is. I actually sigh as he walks through my mind. His face is now so easy for me to conjure. The sound of his voice. That crackling laugh of his that seems to crumble into itself. Little snippets of memories play and replay like those dumb (read: brilliant) cat gifs from the Internet. Ben throwing his head back and laughing. Slow motion as he throws a football. The way his reddish-blond hair comes to a swirled point at the nape of his neck. Barb’s voice cuts through my own personal Ben Dunn highlight reel. She’s telling us to inhale.

  I breathe in and pull out my favorite memory: the nanosecond right before Ben kissed me. Battling my own disbelief and, at the same time, fearing I would erupt into maniacal joyous giggling right up until the warmth of his lips on mine grounded me to a point so deep within myself that the kiss felt rooted beneath our feet. The look on his face was so focused. On me. I let out a nervous laugh and realize I actually laughed in the pool in real life. Barb beams at me. Olivia gets it, she thinks to herself. Olivia gets the joy of Swimtastics.

  “Aaaaaand exhale.” I try to remember where my hands were when he kissed me. The brush of stubble. The way he looked at me. The way he felt. The way I felt. Inhaaaaaaale. And exhale. I always wanted him to see me. Really see me. And after all the years of anguish and yearning and pain and invisibility, I wish I could go back and tell the teenage me that it was going to be so worth it.

  No. Shit. Wait. Me fantasizing about Ben Dunn isn’t the point. Me blaming Ben Dunn is. I shut down the highlight reel and as it flickers to a stop, I lean into the anger. And I inconveniently hit a wall. Because, of course, my theory falls apart immediately. Ben Dunn didn’t make my husband cheat on me, nor did he make me keep quiet about it.

  No. All Ben Dunn did was wake up the Fat Me. I’ve done the rest.

  Focusing back on Barb, I stand on my tiptoes and take a deep breath in. Aaaaand exhale. And another.

  “Job well done, ladies! I’ll see everyone next Sunday!” chirps Barb, a fist in the air as the final chords of Carly Simon’s “Coming Around Again” waft over the pool deck. We all clap and thank her.

  I swim over to the side of the pool with the ladies and walk up the steps like a normal person, instead of pulling myself up at the wall. Back in high school, I’d see the swimmers pull themselves out of the pool shimmering and perfect. Effortless. I tried it once and all I remember about my exit was this desperate, frothy-mouthed, almost evolutionary crawl out of the pool as if it were primordial sludge. When Mom and I started doing Swimtastics, I made it a point to always pull myself out of the pool, some kind of gotcha callback to the old days. At the stairs, now out from under the watchful eye of Barb, the women talk and laugh with abandon. Catching up with one another, swapping recipes, asking after children and husbands. Of course, in the past I missed all of this because I was too busy swanning around, waiting for everyone to notice how fluidly I had just leapt out of the pool.

  “Your suit is all jumbled, button,” Mom says, flipping the strap of my suit back in place. A little pat and she’s back to talking with Mrs. Stanhope about Thanksgiving. Apparently, Mrs. Stanhope’s son has committed the unpardonable sin of suggesting that they try a different stuffing recipe. As you can imagine, it’s wreaked havoc. Mrs. Stanhope can’t figure out what she did in his upbringing that was so terribly wrong. Mom waves it off. As if he has a say. They laugh.

  I wonder how many of these moments I’ve missed in the pursuit of righting some past humiliation. Abandoning connection and community to serve some solitary obsession. For someone who’s tried her darndest to erase her past, I sure do spend an inordinate amount of my time and energy back there.

  I wrap a towel around my waist and follow the other women into the changing room. Mom is lying in wait. I know she is. I can feel her eyes on me as always. But, I cannot keep one thought in my head. I’m all over the place. The threat churning just below this manic energy terrifies me. What happens when I stop cracking jokes? What happens when I can’t pin this on someone else? What happens when Mom asks me what’s wrong? Do I yell “Everything!” and then blow away like ash? I want to go back to the way things were. But, I hit another wall.

  “Thank you,” I say to the woman ho
lding the door of the changing room open for me. She smiles and I hold the door open for the woman behind me. The changing room is now overrun with little kids and their moms getting ready for swim lessons. Little potbellies and colorful swimsuits zoom and shoot around like comets.

  Amid the pandemonium, I find my locker and sit down on the bench in front of it. I just need a moment before I head into the showers. I rearrange my towel and twist my hair around so it stops dripping down my back like some kind of torture. I need to find something that’s been real over the last ten years. Something has to have been real.

  The memories flip and flicker like an animated movie. Each memory used to be a flawless drawing of a single frame, colored inside the lines and perfect from every angle. But now, it feels like someone is going through all of those memories frame by frame and drawing in a new layer. Altering them forever. Fat Me has been very busy vandalizing each of these moments with the hard truth. Now that she’s up, she thinks it’s time I see what was actually happening, and not the fantasy I’ve been building this whole time.

  As the women chatter and get undressed around me, I force myself to find a memory that remains somewhat intact and free of Fat Me’s graffiti.

  My wedding day. The way my wedding dress felt as it zipped up easily. Seeing myself in the mirror. The disbelief that this was actually me. Walking down that aisle. Everyone standing as I entered. Oohing and ahhing at how beautiful I looked. Taking pictures. Waving. Trying to get my attention. I couldn’t stop smiling. I wanted that moment to go on forever. Basking in being seen. Seeing Adam at the end. Someone had chosen me. And he was beautiful. He was everything I wanted.

  I remember the look on my mom’s face as she watched me walk down the aisle. Love. Overcome with it. Unconditional. Her appearance was altered by it. And now in the glare of whatever this new hellish clarity is, I finally compare Mom’s look with Adam’s. Of course, I had never seen it before. Never allowed myself to. I’d always thought Adam’s look as I’d walked down the aisle to marry him was one of love. But now I’m not so sure. Did I even demand that of him? He just needed to be someone who chose me and someone everyone at the wedding would covet. Someone who would make people envy me. I’d never thought to check whether or not he was overcome with love.

  I focus in on him. The memory. His face.

  He genuinely likes me.

  But, love?

  Maybe not.

  One flash frame of Adam’s face and I force myself to look away. I lean forward, absently zipping from one number to the next on my combination lock. I pull the lock. Nothing. Fine. I twist the knob around a few times to clear it. The flash frame of Adam’s face sticks in my mind. I try the sequence of three numbers again. Is that the look of someone watching the love of his life walk down the aisle toward him?

  No.

  He’s waiting for a lovely friend for brunch. That’s the look. We’re going to the museum together and I’m the platonic work friend that he laughs with during companywide meetings. I see it now. I twist and twist and twist. Denied.

  “Those locks can be super temperamental,” says a woman with nothing on but a towel turban. I avert my eyes and nod. “It’s like they know when you’re in a hurry.” She’s now bending over, towel-drying her hair.

  “Yep.” I’d better get this lock open or I’ll know more about this woman than her gynecologist. I lean forward. Clear the combination lock. Shove the now-ravaged memories of my wedding day out of my head and focus. Seven. Twenty-three. Three.

  Open.

  “There you go,” the woman says, one foot on the bench as she combs out her hair. I nod again, take the shower caddy from my locker, and head into the showers.

  “What took you so long?” Mom asks, still in her bathing suit. Joyce Chen has her suit pulled down around her shoulders and Mrs. Stanhope is, as always, totally nude.

  “I couldn’t get my lock open.” I pull over a plastic chair and set my shower caddy on it. I turn on the shower, and step under the stream and close my eyes.

  Today, the hot water is a balm. I dip my head and let it hit the crown, sending hair down into my eyes, dripping. Turn around and get my neck and the top of my spine. I spin back and step in closer, letting the water rain down on all of me. The droplets bounce and careen off my slick suit. The water feels so good on my skin. I lift my bathing suit straps and let the water hit my shoulders. Pull the suit off my skin and let the water slide under the stretchy material and onto my chest and back. Twisting and contorting so I can feel the hot water on my skin. My shoulders burn from the workout and I grow frustrated with how hard this is. How much work it’s taking just to feel more of something that is good.

  I scan the showers. Mom, Joyce Chen, and Mrs. Stanhope are talking and laughing. It’s just us. I could take down my straps. I glance over my shoulder just as Mrs. Stanhope launches into a story. Now. I’ll do it now. First the left. Then the right. I turn away from the women and let the water massage the indentations on my shoulders left by the tight suit. I look down and see the tracing stretch marks just above my breasts. The little patch of dry skin over my left nipple. Another quick glance around the shower. Joyce Chen is acting out some kind of story. About a horse? Horseback riding?

  I take my shower poof out of my caddy, squirt some shower gel into it, and scrub my shoulders. When I usually do this, I have to go under the straps. This just feels easy. Another glance around the shower. I absently drag the shower poof across my chest. The suds trickle and slide down the front of my suit.

  If I take my suit down to my waist, they’ll for sure see even more stretch marks, and that my boobs are giving in to gravity a little more than I’d like. The scars from the weight-loss surgery are healed over, but there is a weird puckering around the one on the lower left. I could pull the suit down just above that one? I turn toward the wall and pull my suit down to my waist. Immediately the water spills over my breasts and stomach and the heat and warmth of it makes me step in closer. Why this public half-clothed shower feels so much better than the regular showers I take at home, I have no idea. I scrub my body and with no suit in the way, the ease of it stuns me.

  I close my eyes for a brief second feeling it all. The riot of ridicule and scrutiny is nowhere to be found. The prying eyes and stifled giggles are nonexistent. Instead of a foreign and frustrating feeling of exposure and humility, I simply feel eerily normal. Something familiar. Deep down, I know this feeling. I’ve been here before.

  And in an instant, I open my eyes, curl my fingers around the top of my suit, pull it down to the ground, and step all the way out of it.

  The water falls. Everywhere. I wash my body with ease. And as I turn around and face out from the wall, Mom, Joyce Chen, and Mrs. Stanhope quickly go back to their conversation as if they all didn’t screech to a halt, taking note of what just transpired.

  The freedom. The ease. The rightness of it all. It’s shocking how quickly this feels natural to me. I’ve finally come home to my own skin. All those years. All those lost moments. An entire life tangled up in shame. Weighted down in fear.

  I’m exhausted. I can’t do it anymore.

  “So…,” Mom leads.

  “Everything okay?” Joyce Chen asks. She pulls the shampoo out of her shower caddy. Joyce lathers up her hair, while Mom and Mrs. Stanhope let the hot water stream over them. They are patient. They are professionals at the long game.

  “Adam and I had a fight, that’s all,” I say, lathering up.

  “What about?” Mom asks.

  I try to get mad about this conversation happening in the shower, especially today, and in front of other people besides my mom—or at all, really. But, I guess this is what happens when I finally admit that my life isn’t a movie. Heart-to-hearts don’t happen in the adorably falling snow as Frank Sinatra plays in the background. No, big talks happen in the smallest of moments. A moment so small, you think it can’t hold the significance. But, it does. Because the background becomes everything as you replay the conversation. You c
an’t believe you were in the showers of a stupid public pool or in the aisle of a grocery store or just standing in your backyard when everything changed.

  I look from Mom to Mrs. Stanhope to Joyce Chen. Utterly naked. What was the fight about? The other women. But, did it start with the other women or is it about how I’m not good at sex and he had to go elsewhere? Does this all go back to how I never allowed myself to be naked with Adam … literally, and then that became figuratively, too? I hold the shower poof over my stomach. I suddenly feel the urge to put my suit back on.

  Or was it that look on his face as I walked down the aisle? Or does the fight claw back even further, to when I never thought to ask myself if I even loved him? He was perfect. He liked me. And he was my ticket out of Fat Me Land. Can a fight ten years into our marriage really be about how we might have never loved each other?

  “About everything,” I say and just then my legs go out from under me. I hit my right hip on the shower floor and quickly slip and slide, desperately trying to stand back up. “I’m sorry. I must have … slipped. I—” Mom walks over and carefully eases me back up into a standing position.

  “Sweetheart? Are you okay?” Mom asks once I’m on my feet.

  “No,” I say.

  I just stand there. And nod. Over and over. The choking tears are back. Once again, I worry just how out of control and vast this thing is that’s crawling up my throat. I do appreciate that I’ve been stark-ass naked during this entire thing. That Christmas card greeting is writing itself.

  Happy Holidays!

  One of us is a serial cheater and the other is naked crying in public showers.

  Merry, Merry! Adam and Olivia

  “Oh, honey,” Mom says. She wraps her arm around me. I feel so stupid and I try to shrug it off. I’ve said too much. I should have just … what? Kept lying? No. I can’t do that anymore.

  “I am exhausted,” I say. Out loud. I brace myself. The last time I said those three words, Adam reacted as though they were a declaration of war.