Autobiography of a Fat Bride

  “I watched QVC,” she answered. “I bought three things.”

  Then she just sat there, looking at me.

  Our food was delivered to the table.

  My mother poked at her salad with a fork.

  “How’s your husband who does the thing with the ice?” she said, taking a forkful of lunch. “Pass the salt.”

  “See? This is pal talk,” I replied, slurping off my spoon. “This is good. Well, it finally happened. I had to ban him from making ice cubes. He only fills up the tray halfway with water, which doesn’t really make ice cubes, it makes ice disks. Not only is it impossible for me to get my fingernail positioned correctly to lift up the disk, but it takes half a tray to fill up a glass. Would you pass the salt?”

  “And you wonder why you have a broken finger. Why didn’t we go to the Camelback Inn?” my mother asked. “This place is awful. Pass the salt. “

  “Look,” I said, holding it up. “It’s all deformed and useless. It doesn’t even look like a finger anymore. It’s like a claw. Pass the salt.”

  “You get a real kick out of doing that, don’t you?” my mother said, shaking her fork at me. “That’s a sin, you know, sin you wear like it’s a fur coat! Did you make an appointment for the gynecologist yet? Pass the salt.”

  “Well,” I said quietly, “I have been having that . . . not-so-fresh feeling. . . .”

  “I’m eating, for Christ’s sake!” she said as she shot me a look. “No porno talk when I have food in my mouth, all right? That’s disgusting.”

  “How’s your blood pressure?” I replied. “I see a vein in your neck that’s pulsing out the rhythm to ‘La Vida Loca.’ ”

  “How are you doing with the smoking?” she volleyed back at me as she pushed her plate away. “And don’t tell me that you quit, because your head smells like a big round ashtray!”

  “It’s not me, Mom,” I started, taking a big breath. “It’s sitting in all of those AA meetings. Did you go to the gynecologist yet? Or are there no more eggs in the henhouse?”

  “Get that picture out of your head!” she hissed as the waiter took our dishes. “You should be more worried about the fact that you haven’t been to the dentist in two years! I’m amazed that you don’t spit out little bullets of teeth when you talk. Your mouth is as clean as your house. Filthy!”

  “I only have one good hand!” I protested, holding up my bandaged digit. “I can barely wipe myself!”

  “Excuse me,” the waiter butted in quietly. “Do you have another card, because,” and then he whispered this part, “this one’s been . . . ‘used up.’ ”

  “I should start my own hot line, like Jackie Stallone,” my mother said wryly as she dug for her Visa. “I told you I had a vision.”

  “Read my mind now, Mom,” I said.

  She looked at me.

  “I’m wearing flip-flops,” she warned. “I can have them off faster than you can say, ‘Mommy, don’t hit me!’ ”

  “Mo—” I started.

  “Lay off the salt,” she said, looking at me closely as she put her shoe back on. “It’s not a vitamin, you know. Your face is all puffed up like a water balloon.”

  “I learned it by watching you, okay!” I replied. “Do you think maybe we could get some diuretics on QVC?”

  “You can get God on QVC,” my mother said. “Come over. I’ll even put it on my credit card. Quit rubbing your arm. I didn’t hit you that hard.”

  It Only Says That on the Box

  Okay, this is the deal,” I said to Nana after we had each secured a grocery cart at her favorite food store. “You do what you need to, I’ll do what I need to, and we’ll meet back here at this spot in half an hour, you got that?”

  Nana nodded.

  “You sure you don’t need me to stay with you?” I asked.

  “Nah, I’m fine,” Nana answered. “I took a Pepcid before we left the house.”

  “So you’re fine now?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I said, I took a Pepcid,” she answered. “What’s so hard to understand?”

  “You know, you take Pepcid every time something is a little wrong with you,” I said. “You use it like it’s some sort of snake oil. You have a headache, you take a Pepcid. You have a stomachache, you take a Pepcid. You even made me give it to you when you broke your arm! It’s really only for heartburn, you know.”

  “It just says that on the box,” Nana replied. “It’s like they say Windex is only for glass, but you can clean a stove with it, too, you know.”

  “Just so you know, if you take more than four Pepcids, we have to call poison control and get your stomach pumped,” I relayed. “It says that on the box, too. And the same goes for Windex.”

  “Don’t aggravate me or I’ll have to take another one,” Nana said. “I’ll see you in half an hour.”

  As she pushed off toward the produce aisle, I turned and went the opposite way. Because I had shopping of my own to do, I figured we could get the job done twice as fast if we each did our own thing. Besides, I figured Nana would be fine on her own in a grocery store; after all, her father had owned a grocery store and so had her husband, my Pop Pop. It should be second nature to her, or at least like being in her own environment.

  I had already learned the hard way that it was best if Nana and I split up during our shopping adventure. That enlightenment was bestowed upon me during the last, panicked days of 1999, when the Y2K bug threatened to turn us all back into Ma and Pa Ingalls, reading books by firelight and churning I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter by hand.

  I had been trying to get Nana to stock up on food for months, but she responded with flailing hands and the phrase, “If I lived through the Big War, I’ll be fine this time, too. Besides, how could I even catch the Y2K bug? I feel fine and I’ve never even touched a computer!”

  Never mind that Nana spent the entire duration of the Big War in her apartment in Brooklyn with a grocery downstairs that delivered, but once she heard that Kathie Lee Gifford bought an extra can of pork ‘n’ beans, Nana was ready to build a bunker and asked me to take her shopping for provisions.

  Who else qualified for such a duty to make sure Nana didn’t starve to death? Surely not my mother, who balked at the idea that the possibility of a Y2K disaster could even remotely hinder twenty-four-hour broadcasts of QVC, let alone shut down every single Chinese restaurant within a three-mile radius of her home, and certainly not my sisters, who planned on sucking off my parents and their “stockpile” (six cans of tomato paste my mother bought before she retired from being “Your, Your Sisters’, and Your Father’s Slave” in 1998).

  The mere thought of my family starving to death in the fresh months of 2000 was so horrifying I didn’t even want to envision it, let alone be a part of it. I had nonperishable supplies for my husband, because much like a bear, I had been getting ready for that thing for a while. There was enough stored fat in my thighs to sustain me for two months each, and I had calculated that I could last through an entire winter season off my ass alone, which had gotten so large it had begun to touch the base of my neck.

  In my opinion, it was survival of the fattest.

  The rest of my family, however, had not taken such precautions. I had briefly imagined a scenario in which my sister with the perfect nails struggles with the manual can opener, trying to dig into a feast contained in the last Mighty Dog can. After decades of tragic attempts, she will finally be able to fit into the size-two purple Gloria Vanderbilt jeans she bought in the eighth grade, and she screams when the can slips and then she holds up the carnage.

  “My last nail!” she cries in fright, sadly studying the half-moon-shaped chip.

  “You gonna eat that?” my mother says wearily as she staggers into the kitchen. “I could make a nice stock out of that nail.”

  I loved my Nana too much to let her suffer in that kind of House of Horrors and eat body-part soup.

  So one Sunday in December, I got ready to teach Nana how to survive on her own as I drove her to the supe
rmarket.

  “Now we’re just going to get you some staples,” I assured her. “Just in case.”

  “What do I need staples for?” she asked. “I have Scotch tape. I thought we were going to get food. Kathie Lee said to get food.”

  “Okay,” I said patiently. “We’ll get some of that, too.”

  I got a cart at the store and directed Nana to the canned goods.

  “Did you see the cover of that magazine?” she gasped as we walked by the checkout aisles. “ ‘Kathie Lee Catches Hubby with Hooker!’ Oh, what a lie!! I watch that show every day, and if it was true, Kathie Lee would have said something!”

  “Look!” I exclaimed. “This is great! Tuna is on sale, four cans for a dollar! Let’s get you ten!”

  “Oh,” Nana said quietly, shaking her head. “I don’t care too much for that. It tastes so . . . fishy.”

  “Okay,” I said softly. “How about chicken?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, that kind is all chunks,” Nana replied. “I can’t make a cutlet out of that. Why don’t I get some nice boneless breasts from the butcher?”

  “You won’t be able to cook it,” I tried to explain. “Kathie Lee didn’t mention that? We need to buy you everything already cooked in cans. Like these vegetables. How about some green beans?”

  “That is disgusting!” Nana exclaimed. “You want me to eat like an animal? I’ll tell you who eats cold green beans. Animals, that’s who!”

  “Okay,” I sighed, looking up and down the aisle. “What about some applesauce?”

  “Yeah, all right,” she said, not sounding thrilled. “I can eat that. But only if it’s on sale.”

  “Why, look, it is!” I lied. “Now how about some crackers? You can put the canned chicken on it.”

  “Nah,” Nana said, shaking her head. “I like toast better. Make a nice little sandwich.”

  “Nana,” I said calmly, “there’s no toast in the New World.”

  “What am I, a prisoner of war that I can’t have toast?” Nana said excitedly. “Crackers get stuck in my teeth! I hate crackers! They make my mouth pasty! Give me the toast and I’ll buy the tuna! I think that’s fair!”

  “How are you going to make toast if there’s no electricity?” I asked her, throwing the saltines in the cart. “If you can’t use the toaster? There is no toast in the New World, Nana! There are CRACKERS!”

  “You know what?” Nana said. “I don’t want to live in a world without toast. I have it every morning with my coffee and Regis and Kathie Lee. A little coffee, a little toast, a little joy. Your mother is right! You’re just all excited about this thing because you get to be Little Prairie Girl in Her House!”

  “Little House on the Prairie, Nana,” I snapped. “And if people were smart, they’d be watching reruns right about now, paying strict attention to how Ma cooked over an open flame!”

  “You’re living in a fantasy land,” Nana continued, her four-foot-ten-inch frame turning red. “Because petticoats and sun bonnets are never coming back!”

  “They said the same thing about corduroy and halter tops,” I said as I turned down the drink aisle. “But on the way home I’ll take you to Charlotte Russe to prove how easily history forgets. How many gallons of water do you want?”

  “I told you I drink COFFEE!” she shot back.

  “Okay, I guess we’re done, then,” I replied, looking into the cart. “You have enough here to last you through lunch on January first.”

  “No, no, no,” Nana said. “I’m not done yet. Reach up there and get me six loaves of bread. I’ll be prepared, all right. If I go home and start toasting now, I’ll have enough to last me until next New Year’s!”

  So you see, after the Y2K shopping lesson, I figured it was wise to let Nana do her own thing in the grocery store, even if she did get a little lost and especially since the millennium experience left me with an anger I couldn’t readily explain toward browned bread. And that’s exactly what I was doing as I scanned the aisles for something to pick up for dinner on our most recent visit to the supermarket when I spotted Nana at the end of one of them, looking as if she was closely studying several packages of batteries.

  I had already perused the frozen food section, the produce department, and the butcher counter and had moved on to the chip aisle, where I realized that nachos would certainly be classified under “hot meals” in any reputable cookbook and tossed a couple of bags in the cart. As I was about to secure a log of processed cheese food, I passed the battery aisle and saw Nana still standing there.

  “Do you need help, Nana?” I called.

  “Well, I don’t know,” she replied. “See, I thought my clock broke but your mother said I just needed a battery.”

  “Well, what kind do you need?”

  “This kind,” she said as she pulled a Baggie with a AAA battery in it from the cuff of her blouse sleeve. “This is the old, broken battery from the clock. Now, see, this one looks similar, but it’s not the right kind. I’ve looked through every battery here and none of them are the right kind.”

  “I’m sure they must have a triple-A battery somewhere,” I replied, then noticed that she did indeed have a new pack of AAA batteries in her hand. “Like those. The ones you have in your hand are the right kind.”

  Nana smiled wryly at me. “That’s what they want you to think!” she said as she pointed a finger at me. “See, you fell for it! If you were me, they would have already stolen your money and you’d be stuck with the wrong batteries!”

  “Who?” I tried to argue. “Who is ‘they’?”

  Nana looked at me like I had just full-on cut the cheese.

  “ ‘They,’ ” she informed me, “is them! Them! You know . . . the people!”

  “What people?” I said, shaking my head.

  “THE PEOPLE!!!! Who do you think? The battery people!” she cried. “But they can’t fool me! They don’t expect you to bring your old battery with you, but I did. I can tell that these batteries are all wrong because my battery is the brand with a cross at one end and a line at the other. These batteries aren’t even clock batteries, because they only have the cross! These are bum batteries!”

  Quickly determining the pros and cons of an impromptu lecture about positive and negative charges and their role in the life of a AAA Duracel, I decided to take the easier route instead.

  “Oh,” I said to Nana, taking the batteries from her hand. “Why didn’t you say they were the Cross and Line kind of batteries? Well, no wonder you can’t find them. You can only buy them at the Cross and Line Clock Battery Store, but luckily, there’s one right by my house. I’ll bring you some tomorrow.”

  “Thank God, because this whole thing was giving me a headache,” Nana said, shaking her head. “I may need to take another Pepcid.”

  “You are basically a flophouse and a pimp away from Pepcid rehab, you know that?” I informed Nana. “But I’m not ready to go yet. I still need to get some things.”

  “Oh, so do I,” she replied. “The batteries were the first thing on my list.”

  I headed over to pick up some chocolate chip Eggo waffles for another piping-hot dinner and then realized that spray cheese in a can must have been hot at some point to make it so . . . sprayable, and as I turned down that aisle, that’s when I saw it.

  My Nana, my four-ten Nana, attempting to scale a wall of baked beans like Spiderman. Now, true, Nana was only about a quarter of an inch off the ground as she stood on the bottom shelf in a brazen attempt to grab a tin of clams three feet above her, but I really didn’t see that. What I saw was my mother’s open palm coming in straight toward my head with the words, “What the hell kind of idiot are you that you let Nana climb all over Safeway like a baboon? She can barely reach the conveyor belt at the checkout stand, let alone a tin of clams on the top shelf! And YOU KNOW HOW SHE LOVES LINGUINE AND CLAM SAUCE! She loves it more than toast!”

  “NANA!” I shouted as I ran toward her. “What are you doing?”

  “Oh, it’s all right, I??
?m wearing my Easy Spirit shoes with the two-inch heels,” Nana said as she turned to look at me. “Looks like a pump but feels like a sneaker. I thought I could reach the clams up there in them.”

  “Nana,” I said sternly, “even with your tall shoes on, you’re still a head shorter than the Lollipop Kids. To get to the top shelf, you don’t need high heels, you’d need a jet pack.”

  I put the clams in Nana’s basket, which was miraculously full considering it had been only eight minutes since I’d left her at the battery display, and despite the fact that I was convinced she had spent most of that time facing off to a can of pork ‘n’ beans.

  “You’ve been busy,” I said, motioning to Nana’s cart. “You are one fast shopper!”

  “I was basically born in a grocery store,” Nana reminded me. “What can I say, except I think I pulled something when I jumped down from that shelf. Let’s go home. I wish I had taken another Pepcid.”

  “Well, I’m not letting you out of my sight this time,” I said, following Nana to a checkout stand. “I’m going to get a Sunday paper. Do you want one?”

  “Goodness, no!” Nana said as she threw up her arms. “I just got rid of all the old papers that were piled up! You know your Pop Pop, he saved every bit of junk he ever set his eyes on! You wouldn’t believe what I found in that stack of papers, papers that said, ‘Japanese Bomb Pearl Harbor,’ ‘President Kennedy Shot,’ ‘Man Walks on Moon’! You know? That’s not news! I already knew all of that! ‘Nixon Resigns’! Who doesn’t know that? I don’t know who he thought was going to read all of those newspapers unless he met a caveman! You know, I threw out my back when I took all of those newspapers to the alley! I had to take TWO Pepcids!”

  Stunned, I just looked at her as she began to load her groceries onto the conveyor belt. “You threw away ‘Japanese Bomb Pearl Harbor’ and ‘Man Walks on Moon’?” I asked slowly.

  “Yeah,” Nana said. “You mean you didn’t know that? It’s true, I saw it. It was more like bouncing on the moon.”

  I was still shaking my head as I began to help Nana put the groceries on the conveyor belt, when I spied a bright pink box.