CHAPTER TWO
Thursday, May 29th
1:09 p.m.
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
"I always get the shitty ones," Diana complained, squeezing her fortune cookie into a fistful of crumbs and blowing them onto her plate like ashes.
"That's why you can't find a decent job," Mrs. Christopher said, assuming that look of motherly concern that always pissed Diana off.
"Why, Mom? Because Ping's Palace only serves me the stupid clichés?"
"No, because you think sayings like 'Today is the first day of the rest of your life' are worthless."
"And they're not?"
"Diana, grab your purse," Mrs. Christopher said with a disapproving frown as she slid her chair out from the table. "And tuck your shirt in next time we go out to lunch."
"I can't," Diana said, standing up. "My jeans are unbuttoned."
"Diana," her mother began once they were outside, and far enough away from the judgmental ears of anyone who might spurn her for having an overweight daughter, "I've offered you money to buy yourself clothes that fit you. No daughter of mine needs to walk around without decent clothes to wear. Now I've told you. Being heavy does not have to make you unattractive. You have a pretty face." Mrs. Christopher reached out to touch Diana's cheek, but the pretty face pulled away, tired of the conversation—it was always the same. "So, until you lose weight," Mrs. Christopher continued, reciting the same old lines from a script that hadn't changed in twenty years, "it's all in how you present yourself—in how you walk, in how you dress." She reached into her wallet. "Here's a fifty. Now, stand up straight."
Diana put the money away, catching her new cubic zirconia ring on the less-than-spacious jean pocket that stretched tightly across her hip.
"Oh, dear, Diana, why?" her mother begged, adopting her signature expression of confusion. Diana recognized the look immediately—that unique blend of horror and hurt that could shame any overweight and irreversibly insecure thirty-something daughter into feeling guilty and hopelessly idiotic without a single clue as to what for.
"Because I thought it was pretty?" Diana often answered her mother in the form of a question so that if her answer were wrong, which it usually was, she wouldn't appear as presumptuous about life as she would if she'd answered with assurance.
"Honey, you should be spending your tip money on clothes you can breathe in, not jewelry that you don't need. Besides, you're gonna have a real hard time finding a man with that thing on your finger. It looks like an engagement ring! If you have to wear it, at least wear it on your right hand."
Diana suspected that her mother was mocking her—by acting like there was any chance in hell that the men would be lining up for her if she weren't wearing this "engagement" ring. Besides, she couldn't wear it on her right hand. She'd ordered it from the home shopping channel, and the only finger it fit on when it came to her door was the one typically reserved for engagement rings and wedding bands. But she wasn't about to tell her mother that one of her ring fingers was fatter than the other. She just wanted to make it home without any further attacks on her dignity.
"Thanks for lunch, Mom. We'll do it again next week, okay?" A week was the general length of recovery time she required after lunch with her mother. It was practically doctor's orders.
"You've got it," Mrs. Christopher agreed, sliding into her shiny new black Volvo and starting it up. "And remember," she said, grasping the door handle,"today is the first day of the rest of your life." Diana rolled her eyes. "I mean it, Diana. Find a job that makes you happy." Diana hated the way her mother said the word "happy," probably because her voice robbed it of meaning. "Maybe you'll have some good news for me by this time next Thursday."
"Bye, Mom," Diana said, forcing a mini smile. "And thanks for the clothes money. I'll pay you back when I can."
"You can pay me back by losing some of that weight so you don't keep breaking my heart and my wallet every time we go to lunch." Mrs. Christopher laughed, stopping only after she noticed that Diana wasn't even faking mild amusement. "Oh, I'm only kidding, sweetie. Relax! And listen," she continued, closing her car door as she pressed the automatic window button, "say hi to that nice old lady upstairs for me, will you? What's her name again?"
"Mrs. Bartle. And it's downstairs," Diana corrected her, for what seemed like the millionth time.
"Uh-huh," Mrs. Christopher said, smiling. But Diana knew the correction was about as important to her as the atomic weight of plutonium. "Take care, dear." And as her mother drove away, with the sun glinting off of her newest status symbol, Diana opened the door of her nine-year-old Chevy and, with her freshly revised mental list of loserhood, wondered when she would stop being a disappointment to the only real family she had left.
"I mean, how did she know I wasn't engaged? I could have a man in my life without her knowing about it." Diana wished her words were true. The having a man part would be better, of course, but a life free from her mother's meddling wasn't a bad wish either, since neither were very likely to happen.
"Oh, child, you're too young to be worried about all that! You'll meet someone." Mrs. Bartle was always so reassuring. And the best part about her was that she was honest and really believed what she said—that a thirty-two-year-old, overweight waitress at a truck-stop diner, who hated her body more than she hated her work, and who ate stale strawberry shortcake on her coffee break because free desserts were the only real benefits her job entitled her to, was actually young and likely to marry.
"Mrs. Bartle, how did you meet your husband?" Diana asked.
Mrs. Bartle looked pleasantly surprised. "Are you sure, dear? I don't want to bore you with my old-lady rambling down memory lane. Surely your life is too busy for that." Translation: I know you are lonely, and I shouldn't rub your nose in my happy memories of true love.
"It's only two o'clock, and my shift doesn't start for eight more hours," Diana said. "I've got tons of time. So go ahead, indulge me with your reminiscing. Maybe it'll give me something to hope for." Diana leaned forward, setting her elbows down on Mrs. Bartle's yellow-and-blue gingham tablecloth as she looked into her friend's dancing blue eyes. Mrs. Bartle's eyes always danced when she was thinking of Henry.
"Well, it was the summer of 1928, and I was eighteen years old," Mrs. Bartle began. "It was a really hot day, so I went over to JP's Drugstore to get a soda—people did that back then. And standing behind the counter was the handsomest young man I had ever seen, dressed all in white. Of course, he had to be." She smiled. "That was his uniform—white slacks, a crisp white buttoned-up shirt, and one of those cute little white hats that all the soda fountain boys used to wear. Well, there was another fellow working with him, and I later found out they flipped a quarter to see which one of them would wait on me." Mrs. Bartle raised her eyebrows at Diana, like she couldn't quite believe it herself.
"You must've been so pretty," Diana said dreamily, trying to imagine finding true love across the counter at Blue Horizon Diner. But, unfortunately, she knew that most of her customers would rather save their quarters for her tip than as a way to compete for her attention. They did that in other ways—like with the rude comments they made about her weight behind her back.
"Oh, I was nothing compared to some of the girls who pined for Henry," Mrs. Bartle answered modestly. "You see, even though he waited on me that day, we were both too shy to do any real talking, but still, I was smitten. So I made a point of going back there every afternoon, except for Tuesdays when I had my piano lesson. And soon I saw I wasn't alone, but that, in fact, I shared the counter with several of his admirers. I never thought he'd choose me. My mother wouldn't allow me to wear makeup, you know, and I always felt so plain next to the others. Some of them were quite glamorous."
"Well, why did you keep going back?" Diana asked. "I mean, if you didn't think you stood a chance?"
"Well, I had to go after what I wanted, dear," Mrs. Bartle explained, as if the answer were obvious.
"Oh," Diana said, embarrassed that she wouldn't have done the same thing. "I guess I never wanted anything that badly." She knew this was a lie. She wanted some things very badly, especially love. But she would never risk humiliation to pursue something she'd most likely fail at anyway. It was humiliating enough to tote fifty extra pounds around a bunch of hungry men who blamed cold coffee on the size of their server's ass. Diana realized that Mrs. Bartle must have been thin and that her mother probably wouldn't let her wear makeup because she was afraid the boys would try to take advantage of a girl who was already so pretty without it. She knew it was ridiculous to be jealous of her ninety-three-year-old friend's eighteen-year-old self, but it was impossible for her not to be. She was jealous of anyone who'd ever possessed thinness and beauty. It didn't matter when.
"But then, finally," Mrs. Bartle continued excitedly, "after weeks of smiles and sodas, Henry asked me out for a hamburger."
"And?" Diana asked, leaning in for the steamy details.
"And six months later, we got married." Mrs. Bartle sat back in her chair and raised her happy eyes upward, as if her and Henry's most wonderful moment could be seen playing itself out on the ceiling.
That was one bad thing about old people: they always skipped over the good parts.