150 Pounds Part 17
Placing her hand on her stomach as New Yorkers buzzed by her left and right, she realized either she had to eat something or else she would faint right here on this bench, so Alexis walked inside and ordered a whole wheat bagel with nonfat cream cheese, lox, and a large coffee. Then, she took a deep breath and changed her order with the waitress with amazing green eyes and a nose ring, to leave off the lox (uncooked fish) and change the large coffee to a small (too much caffeine, there were so many pregnancy rules!), and that was when Alexis let out a quiet gasp of surprise because she realized she was keeping the baby.
When posing for family pictures her mother always demanded, "Alexis, put one leg in front of the other! Now put one hand on your hip! There, now you look pretty." It was making the best of her pudgy, adolescent body, and couldn't she look at her pregnancy as a situation to make the best of? She wasn't quite sure yet how she would financially support the baby as a single mother and with Billy's medical bills streaming in, but that was why she was driving up to Connecticut today.
Since she had decided to keep "the littlest monster," as Billy referred to the baby (because he was convinced it was a Lady Gaga fan already), she'd begun speaking in her mind to it. Sometimes thinking about Noah and their fight made her feel overwhelmed, so she would try and think of other things like Billy getting better, or turning thirty. Her conversations with the littlest monster were shy; two strangers getting to know one another.
She took a lot of baths in their tiny tub, which Vanya scrubbed clean and into which she had put several b.u.mpy octopus decals, so Alexis wouldn't slip. Her b.u.mp was tiny and hard, like a watermelon. It felt strange, like she was an actress and the baby was strapped to her body for a role. She had tiny purple lines on her hips which she put oil on every night. At first they had horrified her, but she'd grown used to them. Every day felt like a lesson in humility; it took her much longer to walk to the gym, which she went to only once a week now.
Alexis would stand in front of the mirror and run her hands over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which were still small but decidedly rounder, like puffed-up versions of themselves. She liked bathing at night, slapping the water with the flats of her palms, which made her feel oddly happy. She couldn't talk to it out loud, it felt too strange, so she would have private conversations with the baby in her head. h.e.l.lo, she would think. I'm your mother. Um ... it's nice to meet you. I hope you are comfortable in there. I hope you will like me.
At first, no matter how often Billy told her she looked fab, she still didn't believe him. She felt like everyone was staring at her on the street, thinking how fat she was. But as the weeks went on, after she heard the baby's heartbeat, felt it turn over (just once while she was folding laundry!), she stopped resenting the changes it was making on her body and secretly began feeling a tiny bit proud of her growing belly. Just a little. She found herself sticking her b.u.mp out farther than necessary while in line buying a newspaper, and catching the eye of another pregnant girl at the gym, putting her hand on her belly and rolling her eyes, earning a smile back from the other mother-to-be, as if, yes, she was going through the uncomfortable yet thrilling experience, too.
Billy also helped: "You're Posh Spice, baby. You're Heidi Klum with one of Seal's baby seals. You're Skinny Chick: the maternity version."
He had grown slightly obsessed with Heidi Klum and Seal's little family, hanging up large, colorful photographs of their three children around the apartment. "Stella will look just like their kids!" he'd say, clapping his hands together and smiling. Though she had yet to find out the gender, Billy had already decided it was a girl and named her Stella. "Stella is the queen bee of the cla.s.sroom. Stella is the popular chick in high school," he would say, as if it were obvious.
The baby was the only topic that made Billy smile these days. He'd already had three rounds of chemotherapy that made his jet-black hair fall out.
Recently she found him in the shower, crouched and sobbing. At first she thought it was a cat meowing, the sound was so high-pitched and thin. "Oh, Billy!" she'd cried, opening the gla.s.s door and squatting next to him, fully clothed. The water rained down upon her face like a river current, blurring her vision. She felt her dress start to soak and tried to hold his frail body. Clumps of black hair were spread around the shower basin, looking like large black spiders.
"I was going to shave my head, to beat the cancer to it," he'd said, his voice low and wobbly against her neck. "Just last night I made a mental note to ask you to buy me a new razor, so I could do it today. But it just started f.u.c.king falling out."
She hadn't known what to say. All she could do was hold him. She was then three months pregnant, and felt like her whole world was caving in. Billy was getting sicker, and she missed Noah. Every week like clockwork a check would arrive. It was just a little at first, fifty or a hundred dollars. But as the lines for Off the River Ale House started stretching all the way around the block, the amounts greatly increased. Each one came with a note, pleading for her to take his calls. He'd continued to accompany Billy on half of his chemotherapy appointments. In fact, Noah and Alexis had arranged a schedule via e-mail, so that Billy never had to go alone.
"I feel like I'm the child of a joint-custody arrangement," Billy said sarcastically to Alexis one night, as they sat on the couch with each other's feet on their laps, watching Heathers. "Love those crazy b.i.t.c.hes," he'd say, when she popped in the DVD.
After the first vomiting incident when she'd gotten the pregnancy test, Alexis had been virtually symptom-free. Well, symptom-free if you didn't include the weight gain, which had come on fast and furious.
"It's that little baby Seal in there, one-quarter Rastafarian," Billy would say. "He's easygoing, mon. No throwing up. No sore feet. No problems."
Alexis rolled her eyes as she watched Julia Roberts insult Cameron Diaz with: "Creme brulee can never be Jell-O. You could never be Jell-O."
"Billy, just because Noah is half black doesn't mean he's Rastafarian. He's from Colorado."
He adjusted his scarf. Since losing his hair, he started wearing vintage Armani scarves tied on the side of his head like a pirate.
"Whatever you say. One love, baby. One love."
Alexis laughed, despite the fact that they were talking about Noah and talk of Noah always made her feel sad. Sad and very, very confused. Each time she opened an envelope with a check inside, accompanied by one of his stupid Post-its and boyishly messy handwriting, she felt a deep sense of confusion. She might have made a mistake, refusing to see him, turning him away. He'd been the only guy who had ever really gotten her. He made her laugh. He could cook. He loved her best friend. And he oozed s.e.x appeal. What more could a woman ask for?
She was upset to the point of grinding her teeth at night. The sound was so loud she bought a mouth guard at Sports Authority, like some kind of ice-hockey player. She knew the root cause of the teeth-grinding was Noah, but she seemed unable to fix it. She'd always been stubborn; she just had to get used to the idea of being a single mom. How could she be with someone who kept pestering her to drop everything she stood for? Noah was relentless in the brief time they'd dated, hiding her scale so she couldn't find it; causing her to have to cancel workout sessions because she was lying around in bed with him into the late afternoon; cooking huge, fattening meals as he tried out different recipes for his restaurant ... the man was clearly too different from her for it to work. Plus, even though he was working around the clock to set up the restaurant, he had a lazy, laid-back side that she didn't care for. He considered rock-climbing exercise, or walking uptown to Rollerblade in Central Park to be fun. Alexis had a very strict workout routine she'd stuck to for years, and Noah kept trying to get her out of her comfort zone. She had to admit she'd slightly enjoyed these new activities, especially when he'd taught her to yell out, "On belay!" and cupped her on the b.u.t.t as she ascended the rock wall at Chelsea Piers, but she had a lot on her plate right now with Billy's illness, and she really shouldn't have been wasting time zigzagging around the city with Noah. One night in his apartment he actually got her to try smoking pot. Pot! Like those ridiculous skateboarders she'd so loathed in high school. And the awful part was she'd liked it! They'd watched When Harry Met Sally and giggled uncontrollably. Apparently, he would "partake in smoking the kind bud from time to time." Lying in his bed, with Oliver's warm body at her feet, smoke curling up to the ceiling, she'd felt really, truly happy. She'd relaxed. And she realized now what a mistake that was. Her columns had been slipping, the writing not as sharp. She'd been living like a child with Noah, and it was time to grow up. She'd gotten herself pregnant, for G.o.d's sake. Never before in her life had she acted so irresponsibly.
Billy would not leave her alone about making up with Noah. However, it was too late to repair things. Getting his friends back together was the only thing that gave Billy any of his old feistiness back; he was able to yell and coddle and charm and give Alexis the silent treatment as he made the case for why Noah was the guy for her. She let him badger her because it put a flush back into his cheeks.
It had been three months since the Bathroom Incident, as she thought of it. She ran her hand over her belly (it was so hard!), back and forth as she drove. Noah's restaurant had blown up into a colossal-sized success. She'd even heard rumors that TLC was courting him to do a cooking show. He didn't need Alexis Allbright and all the baggage that came with her in his life.
The lines outside the brewpub grew as summer strongly resisted fall's approach and the blacktop streets of Manhattan cooked like tar soup. The temperatures roared into the eighties. From her window she watched Noah arrive at the restaurant every morning. She was sleeping later these days, but she still set her alarm to see him pull up in his junky Subaru and hop out, Oliver leaping from the backseat and following Noah inside. He didn't know she could see him. Billy caught her watching him one day. "You really should talk to the guy, you know," he said.
The weekly checks from Noah couldn't have come at a better time. They were really hurting for money. Advertis.e.m.e.nts on Skinny Chick had slowed to a snail's pace. As Billy's medical bills, well ...
The bills were what forced her back here today, right now, driving past hedges and BMWs, nannies and tennis courts, and everything else she hated most in the world that made up the town of Greenwich. Noah's checks had saved her from being thrown out of the apartment, but they were still swimming in debt. Those white envelopes with the plastic windows showing up every day in her mail made her fearful for their future.
Familiar sights swam into her vision as Alexis turned onto the street where she and Mark had grown up. Her street was named Happy Lane, which she found ironic, given the dispositions of her parents. She was wearing a black cotton maternity dress Vanya had brought home last week from Old Navy. "Of course it's black," Billy whispered when Alexis opened it. But she'd been touched.
"Thank you," she'd said to her roommate the next morning, pa.s.sing her in the hallway.
"Well, I noticed you hadn't bought any maternity clothes," Vanya had answered shyly.
It was true. The idea of shopping for pants with a pouch or an Empire waist dress freaked her out, even though her little belly ball clearly hung out of her tank top at the gym, which was how Sarah had been the first person outside of home to point out her pregnancy. She was down to the last hook on her very expensive and very useless La Perla bra, and had felt shocked when she found her feet no longer fit in some of her favorite high heels.
"Holy s.h.i.t!" Sarah said one day, eight months pregnant herself, her stomach sticking out like a shelf from her sculpted and toned body. "Alexis, you're knocked up!"
They were sitting on the mat, Alexis about to begin a series of military sit-ups. A woman sitting on a blue exercise ball nearby glanced at Alexis with surprise.
Tears immediately sprang to Alexis's eyes.
Seeing her friend distraught, Sarah grabbed Alexis by the arm and escorted her to the little office at the back of the gym the personal trainers shared. It was empty at the moment, and they sat down in black leather chairs facing one another.
"Alexis, honey, you can't do sit-ups when you're preggo. It's bad for the baby."
"This baby!" Alexis said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. Staring at the glistening trail of snot, she couldn't believe how pathetic she'd become. "It is so demanding! I've gotten so ... so fat! Sarah, I weigh a hundred and forty-five pounds, for G.o.d's sake! I'm a total heifer!"
Sarah hid her smile. "I'd noticed you gaining weight, but Alexis, you still look really great. Look on the bright side-now you have b.o.o.bs! I just thought maybe you were eating differently. And besides, I don't see you as often anymore. I know you must be going through a lot with your friend so sick." She put her hand on Alexis's shoulder and squeezed.
It was true. Alexis had cut down on her private training sessions with Sarah in order to save money for Billy's medical expenses. She hadn't told him about it, and on former gym days she hid it by taking the bus to McNally Jackson Books and whittling away time curled up in a chair reading.
"Honey, it can't be that bad. The father ... did he do bad by you? He, left?" Her pretty Latin skin flushed. "He didn't hurt you, did he? Because Aldo keeps a shotgun in the spare room, and I am not afraid to use it." Her voice turned to a whisper. "Did he hit you, Mama?"
Alexis was startled. "Oh, my G.o.d, Sarah! Nothing like that. No, we had a fight."
Sarah's eyes widened.
"No! A, um ... verbal fight." She swiped her nose with the back of her hand again. She felt pathetic. "I got mad because he called Skinny Chick crazy, but I think he just meant ... I think he just meant I was too hard on myself."
Once the words were out it was like the earth shifted underneath her feet, the clouds parted, and Alexis was able to view just how ridiculous she'd been when it came to Noah. No, he hadn't smacked her around. He hadn't walked out on her when he found out she was pregnant. In fact, it was the opposite: she'd refused to see him.
So yesterday, around the time she realized she and Billy were fifty thousand dollars in debt, she'd called and left Noah a message.
"Hi, Noah, it's me." Then, realizing he had probably moved on and could be dating someone new, and therefore not know who "me" was, she swallowed and took a deep breath. "It's Alexis. I want to talk. So, um, call me. If you want."
She'd checked her phone every five minutes since, but the screen had remained frustratingly blank.
Billy had two more weeks of this latest round of chemotherapy before Aldo would run tests to see if the cancer had finally run back to whatever h.e.l.l it had sprung from. Billy had no idea of the extent of the costs (he thought insurance covered everything), as Alexis had intercepted the mail and hidden the bills in her pillowcase. He'd already lost his sarcastic smile, and his hair. She didn't want him to lose his soul as well.
So she was going home. Wasn't there an expression that you can never go home again? Yet here she was, turning into her parents' circular cobblestone driveway and gazing up at their ugly McMansion.
It hadn't changed much in three years. Still the same sandy brick color with turrets everywhere, a manicured lawn that her father paid Mexican immigrants to care for, and a six-car garage that held three cars: her father's Jaguar, which he drove to his firm in town, a Mercedes her mother hadn't driven since she got her third DUI a year ago, and a beloved, beat-up Volvo that Mark had restored that golden summer he joined the Marines. It was ironic: a six-car garage for a fractured family in which only one person drove.
She pulled the car up to the front door, opting to leave it there as a visitor and not pull it into the garage. Her hands were restless birds in her lap. She wasn't planning on staying long, and she didn't like leaving Billy for more than a few hours, even though there were days when he would grow angry and shout for her to get out of the house and stop hovering over him. He seemed calmer when Noah took him to chemo; Alexis felt awkward and stilted in the waiting room, where several other cancer patients and their families also sat in tan leather chairs. When she closed her eyes the green tiles on the walls of the room were imprinted behind her lids, the smell of rubbing alcohol lingering in her nostrils.
"I know this freaks you out," Billy would say dryly. "Just go outside and grab lunch or something." Shamefaced, she'd retreat to the little diner around the corner with the words of the menu blurring under her tears.
She wished she were stronger, like Noah, who was a legend in the treatment center for bringing the staff his special beer every week. "He cracks me the f.u.c.k up," Billy would say after Noah dropped him off at the apartment after chemo. Alexis wanted to crack Billy the f.u.c.k up, but instead the place made her nauseous; she wanted to blame the pregnancy, but she knew it was more than that. Seeing Billy with no hair and an IV in his skinny arm depressed her.
Her mother answered the door, which was surprising. Alexis searched her memory and couldn't remember a single time her mother answered the door. It had usually been done by their maid.
"What happened to Elsa?" Alexis asked as she was drawn in for a big wet kiss on the cheek. She's switched brands of vodka, Alexis thought immediately. Her poison had always been Stoli, but this smelled ... drier. Less sweet. The scent of alcohol was intense; ever since she got pregnant it was like she had Spider-Man sense. The smell of beer being brewed at Off the River Ale House drifting up into her window made her wistful. It was as if a part of Noah were extending itself, reaching up to her, caressing her each day. She thought about the message she'd left him, and squeezed the cell phone through her purse. He still hadn't called back. What did she expect? She'd given him the silent treatment for three months and lost her chance with him. He only sent money in case she'd kept their child, she guessed. She felt overwhelmingly tired.
Her mother waved a manicured hand around in the air. She'd been a real beauty once; her nickname in college had been "Steel Magnolia," since Bunny Allbright (formerly known as Bunny Montague) had been born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. She had modeled to pay her way through college. Upon graduating, she landed the Cadillac of husbands at a polo match Alexis's father was playing in. He'd been captain of a national team that traveled throughout the country, and Bunny went with her girlfriends to watch the game.
Alexis never saw her parents' marriage as any great love story, but once, when she was ten and Mark thirteen, she learned that her father had once felt differently. It was during a Christmas Eve party, and Alexis and Mark were given the jobs of greeting guests at the door and bringing their coats and capes upstairs to be carefully placed in the master bedroom. Her arms laden with fur and leather, camel hair and silk, Alexis overheard the tail end of a conversation between her dad and one of the lawyers in his firm, a young up-and-comer named Steve Rubin, who'd recently become engaged to a woman he'd seen in a crowd at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
"I met Bunny in a similar way," she'd heard her father say, followed by the deep inhalation as he took a puff of his cigar. It was a smell that still made her nostalgic-when her father had smoked cigars everything had been good at home. He'd quit with no explanation after Mark died.
Alexis paused in the doorway, her arms heavy.
"How's that, Mr. Allbright?"
"Please, call me John. Saw her at a polo match, back when I played. Down in Nashville." He said the name of the town in a faux-southern drawl, which both men laughed at. Listening, Alexis frowned.
"She was a beauty. I'll tell you what, Steve. Saw her in the stands, wearing this ridiculous hat, must have been a mile wide. In it were little plastic birds of different colors. She had curly blond hair down her back, and big blue eyes. A tiny nose, and long swan neck. The longest legs this side of the Mississippi. I took one look at her and thought, I'm going to marry that woman."
"And you did, sir."
"Sure enough. But first I had to ask her daddy's permission, they do it very formally in the South, and wasn't he a hard-nosed p.r.i.c.k..."
Their voices trailed off as they walked into another room, and Alexis scurried up the stairs, nearly b.u.mping into Mark, who was on his way down. He'd winked at her; Mark was always up to some form of mischief himself, and encouraged that trait in others.
It was the tone in her father's voice when he'd called her mother a "beauty." She'd almost never seen them touch or act affectionate with one another, and things had grown worse (so much worse) when Mark died, but this was proof that once they'd been in love. Her mother had been so beautiful that she'd caught herself a husband just by wearing a big hat, her straw-blond hair softly blowing in the warm breeze on a hazy southern afternoon.
But now Bunny was speaking, her voice so crisp and clear anyone other than Alexis wouldn't know she'd been drinking steadily since rising from bed that morning: "I fired Elsa yesterday. She was hiding my medicine from me. Can you imagine that? Paying someone, and they are hiding your belongings."
Her blue eyes were wide and still startlingly beautiful, like looking into the Mediterranean and seeing clear through to the bottom, but Alexis could see the broken capillaries around her irises.
Alexis strode past her mother, setting her purse down on a bench in the hallway, which was white marble and cold like a mausoleum. The place needed carpets to warm the floor. Drapes to lend the large windows charm. Her mother's decorating style was bleak.
Her heart raced just entering the front hallway, seeing the familiar yet alien surroundings.
"Mom, Elsa was probably trying to help. And how could you fire her? I've known her my whole life."
"Well, you haven't exactly been around here making decisions lately, dearie. It's just me alone here running this household." She sighed dramatically, putting a hand up to her forehead.
Alexis sighed. She'd have to speak to her father about sending Elsa severance.
"How are you doing with the pills?" she asked her mother blandly.
Bunny let out air in a raspberry and laughed. "Alexis! You always had such an imagination. What pills?"
In addition to drinking, her mother popped a mixture of antidepressants and muscle relaxers like they were M&M's.
Alexis tried talking to her father about it a week after the funeral.
He'd been in his study, a manly cave at the back of the house Bunny once paid a decorator a hundred grand to furnish. The walls were a dark green topped with a banner of eagles and American flags. The desk was the size of a pool table. Two leather armchairs framed the front. After knocking to speak to her father, Alexis sank into one of them and leaned forward, putting her hands on her knee. The room had intimidated her since she was a child; she and Mark were restricted from entering. Once, while playing hide-and-seek, Mark hid under the desk and it had taken Alexis two hours to find him; she simply couldn't believe he'd had the nerve to choose the spot.
One silver-framed photograph sat on her father's desk, taken in the eighties, with his arm thrown around Ronald Reagan, who came to Greenwich for a charity golf tournament her father's law firm hosted annually. Mark's All-American football trophy stood to the right of the photograph.
Her father had worked the afternoon of the funeral. It was how he coped with things. Alexis knew this, and wished she could talk to him about it. I understand you! she'd say. I get it. I know you throw yourself into work because it's the only way you can deal with Mark being ... Mark being not here anymore. I'm the same way.
But instead, there she had been, twenty-three and tongue-tied. He'd looked up after a few minutes, surprised she was there, and blinked a few times as though he'd forgotten he had a daughter.
"Yes, Alexis?" He removed his tortoise-sh.e.l.l gla.s.ses. Behind them, his eyes looked tired.
"I wanted to talk to you about Mom."
It was hard to get the words out. If she wasn't talking to her father about the law, he seemed uninterested in holding a conversation with her. She relished the tidbits of information she learned at the firm where her father had helped her gain an internship. "Dad, today I a.s.sisted in court!" Or, "I helped write a brief!" And they'd sit in his study and discuss her day. It was the only time in her life she had his full attention. He wasn't a cruel man; at least he hadn't been then. His own parents hadn't spoken much to him, they thought children should be seen and not heard; thus, he saw his children as separate ent.i.ties from himself, who would maneuver through life independently.
"What about your mother?" he'd said, frowning at the distraction from his work.
It came out in a rush of garbled speech. "She's drinking too much. And why does she need to take Xanax?" She rushed ahead. "Also, she hasn't been going to her tennis lessons. I heard her on the phone canceling with the club."
Silence filled the room.
Her father sighed. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. "Alexis, your mother is a grown woman who just lost her only son. It's not up to me to tell her how to live her life."
Alexis balled up her hands into fists. "I think she's depressed."
He swept all the papers off his desk in one quick move. "Of course she's depressed!" he bellowed.
Alexis watched the white doc.u.ments fall like snow. She swallowed. "I just thought that maybe if you talked to her-"
"Alexis, I'm only going to say this once. Right now you need to be studying for your LSATs. Not skulking around the house following your mother's every move. She'll come around when she is ready. She'll ... shake this thing once she's done mourning him." He was unable to say Mark's name.
Over the next few months, she'd watched Bunny slowly get worse. At first she preferred to not get out of bed until noon, and had Elsa leave a tray of food outside her door. Alexis would hear the door open and slam shut minutes later, a bagel with one bite taken, eggs barely touched. The gritty sound her shaker made as she mixed her first drink of the day would echo through the large house, the noise reverberating in the high ceilings. Even to this day, when Alexis visited Billy at work and someone fixed a c.o.c.ktail, she'd cringe.
"You know what pills," she said to her mother now. "And what are you drinking these days, Mom, still a vodka tonic with a few Xanax thrown in as chasers?" The house had a morbid hush, like a funeral parlor entryway.
Bunny wore a pretty blue silk robe. Did she even get dressed anymore? She gathered the front sections together, trying on a mask of righteousness. The blue veins in her hands stood out against her pearly white skin. "You don't set foot in this house or call your mother for three years and now you've just come to insult me?"
Alexis sighed, walking into the kitchen, which had a ten-thousand-dollar fancy hooded stove that looked as though it hadn't been used since whenever Elsa left, and poured herself a gla.s.s of orange juice from the fridge.
"You're hurting yourself, Mom. Did you get the brochures I sent you?"
Alexis mailed her mother Alcoholics Anonymous pamphlets a few months ago. She had to attend a meeting at a church on the Lower East Side, and she'd felt embarra.s.sed the entire time. She'd seen a sign on the subway that read DOES A LOVED ONE SUFFER FROM ALCOHOL ABUSE?
Bunny sniffed. She dug her big toe, painted fire hydrant red, against one of the kitchen tiles like a child. "Enough about me. I want to hear about your life, now." Her eyes filled with tears. "I miss you so much."
Alexis's heart turned over. She let her mother tentatively touch her arm, and then make small, rubbing circles. She felt a fluttering in the bottom of her stomach, and thought briefly, I just felt the baby move.
She turned toward Bunny. "Well, I didn't exactly feel welcome here, you know. Dad told me when I quit the law firm to leave and never come back."