150 Pounds Part 14
At last, Greta came into the kitchen, where Shoshana was just throwing out the last of the many sponges she'd used along the counters and cupboards. "Come, honey, let's have us a gla.s.s of wine," she said. So the two women walked back over the black ink hills to Joe's house, polished off a bottle of wine before the fireplace, watched the two dogs wrestle and bark at P-Hen, and chatted about the past.
Later, Shoshana walked back from the mansion and her eyes widened when she saw the farmhouse. It glowed, the full yellow moon behind it lighting it as if with a thousand bulbs. She breathed in the sweet air, watched the apple trees sway as the wind picked up. She let herself into the house (the key turned easily this time!), and climbed into her father's old bed fully dressed. Tomorrow she would wake, check Fat and Fabulous, then finish cleaning when her mother and sister arrived. After that she'd come up with a plan to tackle the vines and weeds that grew among the apple trees.
Just before sleep's tide pulled her in, Shoshana lay there, looking at the peaked ceiling and listening to Sinatra's soft snores, thinking this might just be it, this home, the fate she always knew she was searching for, that craving for a special destiny that had never subsided deep within her. Yes, this house, these hills, these beautiful trees ... might just be part of a little something called fate.
Suddenly, without preamble or fuss, Alexis and Noah were inseparable. How strange it felt, to glide so effortlessly from being a single ent.i.ty on this planet to existing as one half of a couple. From food shopping for what Billy called her "single girl salad" to planning meals with another person in mind, Alexis felt she was going through a metamorphosis. She'd existed solely inside her own head, walking around Manhattan, answering her own thoughts. Her days used to revolve around her six tiny meals, her workouts, her blog. Now Noah took up so much s.p.a.ce inside her it was like wearing a second skin.
It was Billy who changed her, of course. It wasn't falling in love with Noah, though the ways he made her feel certainly were the reasons behind pushing her daily workouts to afternoons so she could help him set up his resturant across the street in the old fur store they'd danced in months ago. She'd also stopped weighing both herself and her food at his insistence.
No, it was Billy and his diagnosis of cancer that set the course of the new Alexis, as spring bled into summer and the flocks of tourists in all their suitcase-dragging glory roamed the streets. The bicyclists came out of the woodwork, block parties lit the nights with color and fire, pedestrians were dripped on by air-conditioners humming along in high-rise apartments, and Alexis's life turned over on its belly and was suddenly, and most completely, changed forever.
Alexis got Billy squeezed in to a doctor's appointment right away, and Billy came home the afternoon of his meeting with Aldo (Alexis had a hard time calling him Dr. Martinez, since she saw him frequently at the gym wearing dorky, navy blue knee-high socks to play racquetball) looking distracted. Noah had long since gone home to care for Oliver, and Alexis was staring at the m.u.f.fins on the counter as she tidied up the apartment, rebandaged her finger, and reminded herself of the ice-cream bars the night before. Fatness was a slippery slope. For all she knew, ice cream was a gateway ... snack.
Vanya had showered and dressed in a black velvet cape over black jeans and gotten on her broomstick ... well, not really. But she'd walked off to whatever job she worked at during the night. But not before talking to Alexis for the first time since she'd handed her a rent deposit in all silver dollars gathered together in a sparkly purple scarf that had littered pixie dust all over the floor when she opened it. Her voice was surprisingly feminine and little-girlish.
"Nice guy," she'd said, putting her hand high in the air to indicate she was talking about the very tall man who had the softest, most plump lips Alexis had ever kissed.
"Er, yes. Seems like it. Thanks," Alexis answered, hesitant to say anything else. Princess Pinkerton leaped onto her desk in a blur of gray fur and she shooed him off.
"He looks a little like Cernunnos."
"Who's that?"
"The horned G.o.d."
Alexis stared.
Vanya wasn't kidding.
"But he doesn't have horns," Alexis said, not really knowing whether to ask for more info.
Vanya drew her cape (wasn't she roasting?) around her in a huff. "It was meant to be a compliment. Cernunnos is the G.o.d of fertility. Wiccans, my people, worship him." And with that, she seemed to levitate down the hallway, until Alexis heard the front door slam. She rushed to the window to watch if Vanya actually flew away, knowing she was being silly, but Vanya simply turned left and disappeared into the crowd pushing and shoving their way home after a long and grueling day at work.
Out of the ma.s.s she saw a familiar lone figure, slight and stooped, and her breath caught in her throat as Billy walked home from the subway, the brown leather purse he sometimes carried ("My murse!") held away from his body. He walked stooped like someone much older. His head was down as though he were watching the sidewalk retreat behind his feet, his shoulders turned in like wings. She couldn't read the expression on his face from the distance of the window but something about his demeanor was different. It was as if someone had sucked out all the pizzazz, all the confident Billyness.
She hardly ever saw him alone, he usually insisted on at least Alexis plus a boyfriend or two to go everywhere with him, grocery shopping or manicures or a museum opening or to the movies ... but for his meeting with Aldo he'd insisted she not come. She followed his slow shuffle up the street, and had the door to their apartment flung open before he could get out his key.
He'd arranged his expression to hide what came off him in waves, fear. But Alexis knew fear immediately; it was an emotion she was familiar with because it had painted the walls in her house after Mark was killed in Iraq. Her parents feared they'd never get over it, feared their own searing emotions, feared Alexis, their child who was still alive ... It had been the catalyst to end their marriage, because although her parents still were legally married, in the months after the funeral Alexis almost never saw them speak to one another. Her father slept in the guest room, or in a hotel near his office. Fear was the secret ingredient sprinkled in with the vodka tonics her mother drank by the truckload each day. Having this knowledge, being able to sniff it out in people, was a skill Alexis learned from her father, who had a near-perfect success rate in the courtroom. Though she'd stepped off the path on her way to becoming a lawyer, this skill made Alexis win every argument. And now her Billy, the person she loved most in the world, was pretending nothing was wrong. Yet she knew something was definitely wrong. Everything about his posture read: scared. Whatever it was, it was bad.
"So?" she asked, trying to keep her tone neutral.
He was startled, lost in thought and not expecting Alexis to be waiting for him. He put down his bag and flopped onto the couch, placing his feet on the coffee table and draping his left arm over his eyes. His black hair shone under the lights.
"Ugh. Turn the light off," he said.
She rushed over and did so. He said nothing, so she followed his lead and sat back down next to him gingerly, hoping she was giving off a supportive vibe.
She listened to him breathe.
After a few minutes, a dark eye peered at her from beneath his blue cashmere Ralph Lauren sweater. "Where'd beefcake go?"
She smiled. "You mean Noah?"
"Yeah, Noah. I like him. I like him for you."
"But we don't like anybody," she said, putting her arm around him, the side of her forehead against his. She settled down onto the couch, tucking her feet underneath her.
"True," Billy said. He was eyeing the beer m.u.f.fins, and after a moment got up to put three on a plate before sitting back down. Alexis rested her hand on his skinny thigh. He stuffed a large piece in his mouth.
After a couple moments of chewing, he returned to the conversation. "But the man is something."
It was true. She had to admit, Noah certainly was something.
"Did he slip you the salami?" Billy asked, eating another beer m.u.f.fin.
"Of course," she said. Alexis was no prude. She always told Billy about the guys she slept with. Sometimes with full details of s.e.xual capability. They swapped stories and techniques. They were that close.
"And?" He wiggled his eyebrows at her.
She turned toward him. "And nothing. I don't know. I actually might keep it to myself." She glanced at him anxiously.
Billy was moody. He was known to turn in an instant from relaxed to b.i.t.c.hy. He was notorious for his stubbornness; once, he'd dumped a boyfriend over an argument while on a date at the Museum of Natural History. Wanting to wander off on his own, he'd asked the guy, a lawyer, to meet him at the Tyrannosaurus bones. After showing up at the designated time and not seeing him, Billy waited nearly two hours before locating his date on the third floor, wandering, confused. "There are Tyrannosaurus bones up here as well," he'd related to Billy.
"Everyone knows that one is made out of a mold, the real bones are in the lobby!" Billy had exclaimed. "How am I supposed to date such an airhead?"
Alexis had pointed out that it was an innocent mistake to make, she wasn't sure she knew which bones were real, but Billy had moved on.
To her surprise, now on the couch, he nodded, seeming to make up his mind about something. "That's how you know."
"Know what?"
"That he's The One. Because you don't want to ruin it by talking about it."
c.r.a.p, he was right.
"Just tell me one thing," Billy said, rising to place yet another m.u.f.fin on his plate.
"Hmmm?" She took the bandage off her finger and peered at her st.i.tches, which itched.
"Did he have a big one?"
"Huge."
They grinned at each other.
It was only later, much further into the night, after they'd split a bottle of wine and gotten Chinese takeout (from that shady place on Broadway they loved that always seemed to have stray cats hanging around), that he told her what had happened.
Dr. Martinez had sat in his office, listening closely to Billy explain his symptoms. He'd then furrowed his brow and examined Billy.
"That was when I first knew something was up, when he frowned like that," Billy said. "He didn't seem like a frowny kind of guy."
He'd then been brought to another sterile steel and tile room, where Dr. Martinez had taken a painful yet quick biopsy of the lump underneath his arm, now on a slide in transport to a lab. Did Billy feel swollen anywhere else? No, he'd responded. They'd have the lab results in a day or two.
Just to be sure, the doctor had felt around Billy's throat and groin, asking, "Are you sure you haven't had any other lumps? Does it hurt when you swallow?"
"That's when I really knew I was screwed," Billy said matter-of-factly now, putting his plate on the coffee table and resting his head back on Alexis's shoulder. She reached up and cupped his cheek awkwardly and they sat like that for a long time. Eventually the cat jumped between them and settled in for petting, her soft fur a white spray on Alexis's leg.
Two days later, Billy was called back in and this time let Alexis tag along. When told he had stage two Hodgkin's lymphoma, Billy had turned and said, "He's kidding, right? Korean people don't get Hodgkin's lymphoma." Alexis had immediately burst out crying, and then had the peculiar experience of being comforted by Dr. Martinez and Billy, as though she were the one with cancer. Billy had held a tissue up to her nose and ordered, "Blow, b.i.t.c.h."
She'd been emotional a lot since that appointment, so unlike her. Since her botched cooking cla.s.s and meeting Noah, they had spent every day together. She'd gone to see the new Angelina Jolie flick with him just last week after Billy literally threw her out of the apartment because she'd been hovering over him, making sure he took his zillion pills and rested, and she'd cried during the movie. When sleeping over at Noah's Brooklyn apartment last week, she'd been struck with an odd and overwhelming love for his large, stinky dog Oliver, and even let the dog curl up next to her in the bed, letting go of the hatred for large pooches she'd harbored since childhood when a neighbor's German shepherd had eaten her Malibu Barbie. She'd petted him deep into the night, and had shed large, fat tears into his fur.
Somehow, Alexis had gone from not shedding one tear when Mark had died to crying nearly every day since Billy's diagnosis. She cried while lifting weights with Sarah at Soho Gym. She cried in Off the River Ale House when she knocked down a wall with a hammer while wearing a pair of four-inch pink Max Azria stilettos. She cried while she read the Post's Page Six out loud to Billy during chemotherapy, where he now went three times a week.
Billy's grandmother Nana Kay visited him only once, as she was quite elderly and feeble now, though she still wore her bright red lipstick when she came to visit. Alexis called her weekly with updates on Billy's spirits. She spoke very little English, but Alexis made the effort anyway, as she was the only person from Billy's family he had a relationship with.
Nana Kay had stood over Billy where he lay on the couch and spoken to him in rapid Korean, between bouts of yelling. After a little while she hobbled away on her cane. Alexis ran after her to be sure she had money for cab fare.
"What was she yelling at you about?" Alexis asked after she returned, fascinated.
"She said I'm not eating enough," Billy muttered, staring blankly out the window. It was something they would have laughed about before (Alexis thought of everything as before and after Billy got sick), but Nana Kay's famous temper didn't seem funny now.
Alexis had secretly called Billy's parents and told them he was sick; had he found out he would have been furious, as they had disowned him when he came out of the closet. Surely, with him so sick they would relent, she thought.
"Call me if he needs money," his mother had said quietly. "Otherwise, do leave us alone." They lived in Philadelphia, easily close enough to drive up.
"He doesn't need money," Alexis had responded, fury a red-hot fire burning in her heart. "And shame on you. You have an amazing son and you're too stubborn to have a relationship with him when he needs you most."
The dial tone in her ear told her everything she needed to know.
And then, on an ordinary Tuesday morning, Alexis really cried when she went against Noah's wishes, stepped on a scale, and read with growing shock that she'd gained fifteen pounds. She cried at H&M when she had to buy a pair of size-four pants that looked suspiciously like mom jeans to Alexis, although they were just plain gray slacks, and still several sizes smaller than what the average woman in America wore. She had a moment of almost psychic connection with that fat girl Shoshana from Oprah, wondering what she would think of her, crying over buying size-four pants. She wouldn't understand, Alexis thought cattily as she handed over her debit card at the register. Shoshana probably surpa.s.sed a size four sometime around kindergarten.
Something was clearly up, and one day, after editing an article about refreshingly low-fat, cooling summer soups like cuc.u.mber or carrot, Alexis found herself sitting at her writing desk, deep in thought. Something was different and it was right on the tip of her tongue. It was a balmy Monday morning at the end of June, and she'd set up a fan on her desk, having decided they couldn't afford the electricity bill for air-conditioning this summer. Noah was across the street at his restaurant talking with the contractor, who would help install the kitchen equipment and countertops bought from a restaurant on the Lower East Side that went out of business; she could see his tall body and spring of curls from her window as he walked around. The sign, which read OFF THE RIVER ALE HOUSE in a strong Kelly-green, had just arrived that morning and hung in the window, which made everything feel more official and lent the day a certain fast-paced excitement.
Billy napped on the couch, as he often did these days. His boss at the bar loved him so much he had guaranteed Billy his job back after he beat the cancer, and Alexis was glad they'd both decided last year to pay the extra money and get health insurance, because it helped cover Billy's chemotherapy and checkups. Still, as things were, they were going to have to figure something out financially; he still had about two thousand a month in medical bills, even with insurance. They'd elected for the least expensive plan (which sadly came with the least amount of coverage), thinking that, at twenty-six years old, what could possibly happen?
Not a day went by that Alexis didn't think about how to pay Billy's bills.
Alexis sighed. It was her and Billy against the world, as it had been since college. If things got really bad she'd go to her parents, but after quitting law school and refusing her inheritance, she was reluctant to do so. Still ... she would if it meant helping Billy. She'd do anything for him.
She heard Vanya rustling around in the kitchen cupboards and began mentally making a grocery list for when she went out later to do errands and hit the gym. Billy was craving cold things lately, which soothed him, so ... Popsicles. Ice cream. Milk.
The sound of footsteps in the hallway, and then Vanya appeared. Her dark hair framed her face and Alexis saw ... could it be?... light brown streaks tastefully woven with the black. Had she gotten highlights?
"Oh! Sorry to bother you while you're working," she said.
"No problem," Alexis said.
She was much less scared of Vanya now. Noah talked to her often, and discovered she worked in some hilarious vampire bar on the Lower East Side where the drinks had names like Vampire's Kiss, Whiskey of the d.a.m.ned, Coffin and c.o.ke, and, of course ... b.l.o.o.d.y Mary.
"She's just your typical goth chick," Noah said. "Why were you and Billy so afraid of her? She's nice."
Billy had asked Alexis not to mention the cancer, so she hadn't, but she was pretty sure Vanya knew; it's hard to hide a secret that large in such a small apartment. Alexis had found some strange powder in the bathroom one day, and thought it might be c.o.ke. (Billy had been known to snort a line or two when they first moved in together, but the idea that he might be doing so now made her angry.) "Were you doing c.o.ke in the bathroom?" she asked him one day, while he watched an episode of Mad Men.
"I wish!" he said without looking up.
She summoned up the nerve to ask Vanya about the substance, and was subsequently told it was something called "unicorn horn powder," which, apparently, was for healing. She was making it into a tea for Billy. So yes, Vanya knew. She was touched Vanya was trying to help him, in her own weird way.
Alexis chatted with her more and more lately, finding it easier to discover subjects in common with her when Noah was there. Billy called it the "Noah effect." People came into contact with Noah, and became instantly friendlier and more outgoing. She smiled, remembering Billy coining that phrase as the three of them sat in the cafeteria of the hospital after a particularly brutal chemo session. Billy hadn't eaten anything, claiming he just wanted to keep them company while they ate, which of course made Alexis so upset she had quietly gone to the bathroom and thrown up the pea soup she'd been so recently hungry for. Her stomach was in knots. Billy claimed the only thing he had an appet.i.te for lately was Noah's cooking, and Noah continued to cook at their apartment, using their s.h.i.tty 1970s yellow stove, claiming Billy was helping him get the ingredients for his chili or wings or Cajun chicken sandwich just right while he waited for the construction to be finished. Alexis suspected he was just cooking for Billy to try and heal him, like Vanya.
"Do you by chance have a tampon or pad? Just got my period," Vanya said now, in a shy, quiet voice.
Suddenly Alexis looked up from her papers and stared out the window, feeling startled. A nervous humming sounded in her ears. Something clicked, the thing that had been living in the back of her mind, vibrating in her nervous system these past few weeks. When was the last time she'd bought tampons? Or had a period, for that matter? It had been way over twenty-eight days ago. All the crying, the time she threw up the soup, the upset stomach, moving to a size four, her b.o.o.bs being sore when Noah touched them, that could only mean one thing ...
"Oh, my G.o.d!" Alexis screamed.
Vanya jumped back into the hallway, which Alexis would have found ironic two months ago, when she'd been the one terrified of this slight, sweet girl.
"Oh, my G.o.d!" She rushed past Vanya and grabbed her purse. Pushing past her, Alexis suddenly turned. "Wait. Did you get highlights?"
"Er ... yeah." Vanya blushed and touched her hair. "Noah and Billy thought it might make me look less ... freaky."
"Oh. Well, they look good."
She pa.s.sed a sleepy Billy on the couch, grabbed her purse, and ran down the stairs to the bodega on the corner. She raced past the packaged nuts, the Lotto tickets, and cartons of cigarettes and cat food, until she found a dusty pink pregnancy test and plunked a twenty-dollar bill down on the counter. "Keep the change!" she screamed, the bells on the door clanging as it slammed shut behind her.
She streaked past Off the River Ale House just as Noah was shaking hands with the contractor on the sidewalk.
"Alexis?" he called out.
"No time!" she yelled, running like a marathoner across the street, dodging an MTA bus and two cabs, and finally getting out her keys before dropping them twice, her hands were shaking so hard.
Racing upstairs, she flung open the bathroom door, bit the plastic packaging open with her teeth, yanked down her pants, and peed on the stick.
"What's going on in there?" Billy asked, knocking on the door. "Is this some kind of new workout?" His voice sounded weak.
"No ... just go away, Billy!" she said, a sob catching in her throat.
She knew he was still standing on the other side of the door, she could hear his breathing, but she didn't care.
Carefully, slowly, she placed it on the sink and stared, her new H&M pants around her ankles. When the first red line swam into vision she finally exhaled, until a smaller, fainter line met the first in a very unholy cross. She put her hand over her mouth to try and contain the alien and strange sound emitting from her throat. Then she bent over the sink and vomited. She had nothing in her stomach other than the eggs and bacon Noah had cooked for everyone this morning, and it came up, sweet and hot, burning her throat. Her eyes felt as though they'd pop out of her head when the feeling rushed over her and she vomited once more, making sad-sounding whimpers as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
Alexis ran her slim hand over her flat stomach, feeling the familiar rush of pride over the thinness she'd worked so hard to achieve all her life. She may have slipped a little with eating high-calorie food as of late, but she'd still managed most of her workouts. Oh, it was all Noah's fault! This! The weight gain! Everything! She flipped the lid down and stood on the toilet in front of the large bathroom mirror and turned sideways, imagining herself pregnant, cheeks round, a stomach that stuck out like a shelf, bloated feet in slippers instead of her usual heels. The girl that was reflected back at her looked terrified. I must be in shock, she realized dazedly.
Noah picked that moment to come bursting into the apartment.
"Where is she?" he asked Billy.
"In here," he said. She could hear whispering, Billy and Noah discussing her.