CHAPTER THIRTY-5
"Swim time! Everybody go get your bags!"
Bea introduced every new activity with exclamation points. If she were an actress, the directors would constantly be reminding her to stop overacting. But Diana was never sure that Bea was acting. It wasn't a job requirement to seem more enthused than the children. Maybe she really was excited for swim time. Although, Diana couldn't see how, considering that in order to get those cute little kiddies out to the two tiny baby pools (that couldn't possibly hold all of them and, therefore, provoked many arguments) and Mr. Smiles Run-Through Sprinkler (which often broke and could only be fixed by turning off the hose and fiddling around with Mr. Smiles' head while the children grew impatient and shoved each other around to pass the time), she and Bea first had to goop up their hands with all different varieties of sun block and lather them onto the skin of each child, which was like working on a messy and smelly assembly line that talked back to you. Still, taking orders and You're not doing it right!s from a handful of cute little kids five days a week was a pure indulgence compared to taking orders and You're not doing it right's from Mick and a horde of hungry truckers every night.
As the children scrambled to form their two sun block lines, Diana was reminded of the hilarious dance routine she'd tried at Mo's Gym on Wednesday afternoon. Mo's was different than the place she'd been going with her mother. It was fun and laid-back. And the women there weren't toothpick zombies sweating off their last ounces of body fat. They were regular women, like Diana—some chunky, some average, some thin but trying to tone up middle-age sag, all dressed in T-shirts and sweatpants or some other variation of non-threatening workout wear, none sporting spandex thongs over hot pants, and none making her feel like an oversized blueberry that didn't belong. Of course, she had to keep the whole thing a secret from her mother, who'd probably pull every muscle in her body piling on the guilt for Diana's not asking her to join, not that she would have. Moses J. Aaron, simply referred to as "Mo" by all who knew him, was way too progressive and improvisational for her mother. The other night, he had led them in an incredibly silly, yet exhaustingly aerobic line dance to "You Should Be Dancing" by the Bee Gees before pulling out his guitar and guiding them through a cool-down to his own rendition of Kermit the Frog's "Rainbow Connection." Mrs. Christopher just wouldn't have belonged. But Diana really felt good about herself when she was there. The two hours she'd spent at Mo's so far that week had probably been the only two hours she'd spent not nursing her heart over TJ. And in spite of the fact that everything had gone wrong where he was concerned and that six days of refusing to wallow and give up had done nothing to ease her humiliation, she was still able to rejoice in her dedication to her diet. It would have been easy to go another week without exercise and to drown each day's pain in chocolate banana muffins, cheese curls and strawberry shortcake. But then TJ and Michele would have won completely—by not only hurting and humiliating her beyond any foreseeable repair and driving her dizzy with self-analysis, but also by making her fat. And that was one satisfaction she just wouldn't give them. It was bad enough being the woman who had been publicly rejected at the bar without becoming the fat woman who let it eat her up so much that she devoured the world's food supply in some sort of twisted pie-eating contest with the rejection. If anything, the incident had given her even more incentive to pursue her weight loss goals. For if she were to get thin enough, like 130 pounds thin enough, she'd be too proud of her body to let her mortification over what had happened prevent her from showing it off. And if TJ were to just happen to see her and lose control of his pool stick in front of Michele, so be it. Thinness was the best revenge.
But payback fantasies like this would not have been enough to keep her going without the constant support of Mrs. Bartle. When she'd left Diana's apartment after the butt-hole promise on the couch, she'd told her that some people were afraid to ask for help while others pretended to want help when they really didn't to avoid hurting someone else's feelings. "So, Diana, do not be afraid to ask me for help—call on me every night if you need me," she had said. "But when you stop needing me, give an old fool a hint, will you?" So far, with the exception of Sunday when she'd passed out at seven o'clock, exhausted from the crying fit of the night before, there hadn't been a single night that week that Diana hadn't taken Mrs. Bartle up on her offer.
On Monday, she'd rediscovered the joy of childhood card games like War and Go Fish, which, according to Mrs. Bartle, were classic remedies for the blues. She'd had a surprisingly pleasant time but hadn't the heart or guts to admit to her friend that she saw TJ's face on every Jack and King.
On Tuesday, they'd watched Cinderella. Mrs. Bartle didn't think Diana was ready for flesh romance films so soon after her upset, but she did think it was important for her to realize that love was supposed to feel good, and that since she'd been feeling so terrible, TJ couldn't have possibly been her prince. Although a smart point, it was entirely lost on Diana, who was too busy wondering how it was that a man could merely dance with a woman and become obsessed with her shoe, while TJ could have SEX with a woman and remain obsessed with his pool stick. But afterward, she did confess to Mrs. Bartle that if she had a pair of glass slippers and a prince to put them on her feet, she'd never want to run away from herself again, no matter what cards life dealt her. So at least the movie had prompted some meaningful, non-TJ dialogue—even if it was all rooted in fairy tale wishes.
On Wednesday, operating under the theory that learning something new was truly the best way of forgetting something old—namely a problem beginning in T and ending in J—Mrs. Bartle had taught Diana how to knit. Or, more precisely, how to try. For all she'd ended up with was a sorry-looking, washcloth-size mass of misshapen yarn in place of what should have been a blanket to drape over the foot of her bed. Unfortunately, unlike cards and Cinderella, this activity had occupied enough of her mind's energy to keep her focused and obsession-free, and she'd gotten quite enthusiastic over her very first attempt at handmade decor. However, she'd been too overwhelmed with visions of how cute the little-blanket-to-be was going to look in her bedroom to notice that her novice hands had something else in mind. But Mrs. Bartle had come to her immediate rescue, insisting that it would be her greatest pleasure if Diana would let her finish the blanket over the next couple of days so that she could present it to her later as a gift. And as Diana resolved that having something beautiful would be more fulfilling at her hour of need than making something ugly, the value of art began to outweigh the value of creation, and she told Mrs. Bartle that the pleasure would be hers.
On Thursday, they'd met at Diana's place for a pajama party. Mrs. Bartle had arrived in her paisley polyester sleep set with an eager smile, triumphantly declaring, "It's Sunday night!" The words had frightened Diana at first, for she'd always considered her friend to be light-years farther away from senility than she was. But here was the constantly clearheaded sage revealing she'd drastically lost track of the days of the week. But then, Diana saw Mrs. Bartle taking ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream and cherries out of the brown paper bag she'd brought—and her fear tripled. The presence of such no-no delectables could only mean one thing: she was about to get fat again. She could feel the seams of her size fourteens busting until Mrs. Bartle allowed her to deflate a little with the news that Sundae Night Thursday would consist of fat-free frozen yogurt, sugar-free chocolate sauce and reduced-calorie whipped cream, and that each cherry was only ten calories apiece. The 185-calorie, essentially fatless treat was so refreshing it made Diana's palate curtsey with gratitude. And to her enormous relief, she was satisfied after just one. This was the night that Diana realized the critical importance of indulging in luscious desserts even on the road to thinness. Mrs. Bartle explained that incorporating such treats into the diet was key to permanent weight loss, for the knowledge that sundaes were permitted now and then would prevent the frustrated overdosing on whole gallons of ice cream that could potentially occur if the treat were forbidden entirely. It was then and there that Diana promised that, no matter what was going on in her life, she would always honor Sundae Night Thursday and keep it holy.
"You're not doing it right!" a little voice shrieked, pulling Diana away from her reflections on how well she'd handled the week and delivering her back into camp counselor mode. She was on her third sun block customer, a chubby girl named Ellen who always insisted that the cream not be rubbed in all the way, believing that if she couldn't see it, she would get burned.
"Sorry, sweetie," Diana apologized.
"I need more!"
"You don't need more." Diana could see that Miss Bea was almost finished with her line, and she hated feeling like she was too incompetent to keep up.
"I need MORE!" Ellen continued to protest, crossing her arms in front of her chest and refusing to move out of the way. Diana could feel Miss Bea watching her. She needed to remain patient.
"All right, Ellen, one more little squirt," she conceded, dabbing a bit more sun block onto the pesky brat's right arm and guiding her out of the line.
"You're NOT doing it right!" Ellen whined, resisting Diana's efforts to move her. "You need to put more on my other arm, too!"
"Fine," Diana snapped, resentfully obeying the request.
"Hey, Miss Diana," the next child said as Ellen finally left the line. It was Randy, a guilty-looking little boy who had never been officially charged with committing any actual crimes but, nevertheless, had a creepy demeanor about him, like he'd always just finished killing someone.
"Yes, Randy?" she asked, opening his bottle of sun block.
Randy smiled mischievously, as if he was about to confess to some hideous deed and laugh wickedly at her terror. "Your butt is fat."
Diana could hear the other children giggling, even Nicholas, her favorite. She wanted to crawl out of camp—backward, so no one could make fun of the view—and fall asleep under a parked car. Children were supposed to be kinder than the rest of the world. They were supposed to be innocent and untainted by the body-obsessed mania of popular culture. They weren't supposed to know a nice ass from a fat one, and if they did, they weren't supposed to broadcast it and make the ass's bearer want to go hibernate under a Toyota. She didn't have a clue as to how to handle this, at least not a clue that didn't involve reaching out her hands and clawing Randy's face off or fleeing the scene and disappearing off the face of the universe, or both. Maybe she could reverse the situation, and become the last laugher instead of the last laughee, by cracking some witty insult against Randy that the children would understand but that wouldn't get her fired.
"Hey, Randy," she began, her head spinning with the lack of available possibilities with which she could complete the statement. "Um . . ."
"Hey, Miss Diana!" called Jodi, the little girl at the back of the line that never went anywhere without her sidekick, Beanie, a doll whose naked rear end, exposed by the simple pull of a Velcro flap, was a constant source of amusement for the other children.
"Yes? What is it, Jodi?" Diana asked sweetly. Translation: Please, please, please say something—anything—to make these mini demons stop laughing at me!
"Miss Diana Fat Butt!" Jodi sang out, swinging a bare-assed Beanie in the air as she beamed at her clever use of words.
"That's not nice, Jodi," Bea reprimanded. "You and Randy should tell Miss Diana that you're sorry. Remember what I told all of you about Bea's Bumblebees?"
"We don't sting!" the campers shouted in unison, like robots.
"That's right!" Bea chirped proudly. "We're nice bees. And what do nice bees say when they've hurt somebody's feelings?"
"Sorry!" the chorus replied, with absolutely no sincerity whatsoever.
"That's right!" Bea gushed again, as if the realization that her Bumblebees weren't total imbeciles, and could actually answer questions they'd already been fed the answers to, were enough to give her an orgasm. But even worse than this overdone display of enthusiasm was the fact that now Diana was not just the camp counselor with the fat butt that the children had laughed at, but the camp counselor with the fat butt that had to be rescued from their ridicule by a frighteningly cheerful wackadoodle whose idea of humor was attempting bad puns on her own name. "Diana," Bea said quietly, leaning over for a little counselor's conference, "I'm about to buzz off to the little bee's room. Could you watch the children until I get back and then we'll go outside?" Diana nodded, wondering why in the world the woman insisted on maintaining the corny lingo when the children weren't even listening.
As soon as Bea was gone, Alex Rosenfeld shifted into penis-butt gear.
"Penis-butt! Penis-butt!"
"Miss Diana?" Nicholas said shyly as he handed her his sun block.
"Yes?" Diana asked, watching smug, malicious Randy trot off to the toy box and wishing she hadn't had any part in protecting his skin from the harmful rays of the sun.
"Penis-butt! Penis-butt!"
"I don't think your butt is fat," Nicholas said apologetically.
"Penis-butt! Penis-butt!"
"Thank you, Nicholas," Diana said, smiling gratefully at this one saving grace in the demeaning plight of her big-ass existence.
"Penis-butt! Penis-butt!"
"Hey, Miss Diana," Randy said, running up to her from behind with a plastic yellow truck. "You don't have a fat butt . . . You have a fat butt-head!" He laughed, moving his face closer to hers the way little kids do when trying to command adult attention.
"Penis-butt-HEAD!" Alex suddenly called out, causing everyone to turn and stare at him in amazement over the variation.
"That's not funny, Randy," Diana reproached, no longer concerned with preserving her popularity and not letting the children see her sweat.
"You're not funny," he smart-alecked back to her as she finished with Nicholas and began lathering up her last in line.
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!"
"Don't talk to me like that, Randy," Diana warned nervously. She wasn't used to standing up for herself, not even to four-year-old brats. And as much as she knew that she was letting Randy intimidate her by not looking him in the eye when she was chiding him, she found it tremendously hard to make that kind of contact, like if she did, he'd be able to see—and laugh at—the world of insecurity she was trying to conceal in her supposed concentration on SPF 40-ing Jodi's fair arms.
"Yeah, don't talk to her like that, Randy," a boy named Felix chimed in.
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!"
"Shut up, Felix! You were named after a cat," Randy taunted.
"Both of you, cool it," Diana said, finishing up with Jodi's sun block and rising to her feet.
"I see Miss Diana's fat butt!" Randy teased, falling into a fit of convulsive laughter that gave him an excuse to bump into Felix, who fell immediately to the ground. Felix then pushed Randy, who pulled Felix's hair, at which final straw, Felix pinched Randy's leg until he fell to the ground as well.
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!" And that was really getting annoying.
"Alex! Please stop saying that!" she begged, raising her voice a little as she bent down to break Felix and Randy apart.
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!"
Felix had started to cry, giving Randy even more fuel for combat. "Crybaby! Crybaby! Felix is a crybaby!" he shouted, hiding behind Diana and grabbing on to each of her outer thighs as he poked his head in and out of Felix's view in a Now-you-see-me, now-you-don't (because-I'm-hiding-behind-a-great-fat-ass) kind of way.
Felix ran over to Diana and buried his face in her stomach. "Miss Diana, make him stop!" he pleaded.
"Randy, stop that," Diana said, turning around to the devil on her back, who suddenly swung himself around to the front of her, knocking Felix to the floor once again.
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!"
"Randy, you apologize to Felix right now!" she yelled, too frustrated to realize it was probably the first time she'd ever actually yelled at anyone.
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!"
"He started it!" Randy protested.
The other children had grown restless waiting to go swimming and had begun to run around the room, bumping into chairs and each other—with the exception of Alex, of course, who stood still amidst the disorder and continued his mantra, uninterrupted.
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!"
Diana bent over to help Felix to his feet.
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!"
"Alex, quiet!" she shouted. Normally, she could tolerate this bizarre child's "harmless" chant, but at this moment, it simply quadrupled the chaos. Felix, done crying now, must have taken a swing at Randy while Diana was looking at Alex, for the loud clapping sound that turned her attention back in their direction was followed by Randy crying and grabbing his own face as he kicked violently at Felix's shin.
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!"
"Now, Randy, what is going on?" Diana demanded.
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!"
"He hit me!" Randy whined, reaching down to slug Felix, who was seated on the floor, holding his distressed leg. But Diana grabbed his arm mid-swing. "Let go of me!" he yelled, wriggling his little arm around in her grip.
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!"
"I'll let go of you if you apologize to Felix and promise to go sit in the corner until Miss Bea gets back."
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!"
"No!" Randy shouted. 'I'm not sorry! I hate him! Let go of me!"
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!"
"No, Randy. First tell Felix you're sorry." Diana really didn't know how to handle this, fearing that the second she let go of Randy, he would attack Felix.
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!"
Suddenly, there was a bang. And a loud wailing sound erupted from the other side of the room. Diana turned to see who the victim was, loosening her grip on Randy's arm. It was Debra—beautiful, Miss Toddler America Debra. She had fallen into an easel, which now lay entangled with her on the floor. This was beginning to feel like a bad dream.
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!" And she really wanted Alex to go bury his face in the soil of some other continent where she wouldn't have to hear that ridiculously irritating chant for the rest of her days.
"I hate you!" Randy yelled, sinking his teeth into Diana's hand and setting his arm free. His bite stung like a thousand bees and everything became blurry for a few moments. She wanted to hurt him—the little shit had broken the skin and her hand was actually bleeding. But she couldn't even go take care of herself until Bea got back.
"That's it, Randy!" Diana threatened. Although, she wasn't exactly sure what she threatened him with. How could she threaten a demonic four-year-old who obviously feared nothing?
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!"
Debra continued to cry in the background. Diana knew she needed to go to her.
"Fat butt! Fat butt!" Randy taunted, laughing, as Diana turned to help Debra.
"Randy!" she yelled, spiraling back around. She had finally lost her temper.
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!"
Debra's cry was now a high-pitched moan, haunting in its desperation.
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!"
"Alex! Please!" Diana shouted. She knew she had lost control. Her biggest concern was Debra, but she just couldn't seem to make it over there amongst all the distractions.
"Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head!"
And then, suddenly, she snapped. "OH, WOULD YOU JUST SHUT YOUR BIG, FAT MOUTH, YOU LITTLE FREAK?"
As soon as she'd said the words, she couldn't believe they had actually sprung from her own mouth. The entire room was silent. Debra had stopped crying. The children had stopped clamoring. And Randy and Felix had stopped fighting. Bea had even gotten back from the bathroom just in time to hear Diana's outburst, and she stood in the doorway, gaping at her like she'd just pulled a gun on the poor boy. The silence blared for a miniature eternity until it was finally replaced by a sound worlds more awful. It was the slow and steadily rising howl of a little boy who had just been scarred for life in front of his playgroup. Alex Rosenfeld's perverse incantation had finally worn itself out, only to be replaced by a sound that would be even harder to get out of the head. For he cried as violently and gasped as desperately as if he'd just seen his entire family ripped to shreds by wolves. It was a noise that would burn forever in Diana's brain, and she felt horrible. All she could do was stand there, frozen, waiting for the cops to arrest her for verbal violence.
"I think you ought to go see Arlene," Bea said softly, with a look of frighteningly uncharacteristic sternness, as she put her arms around Alex and attempted to comfort him.
Arlene was Happy Start's camp director and nursery school principal, the one who had interviewed Diana for the job, the one who had hired her, and, undoubtedly, the one who would now fire her. As Diana walked out of the room, she saw Nicholas staring at her with heartbreakingly innocent eyes, and she realized that he, and all of the other children, would forever remember her as a monstrous villain that had revealed her true identity when she'd exploded on the strange kid in front of the entire room, teaching them all that it wasn't okay to be different. It was at that moment that she decided to skip the stop into Arlene's office—she knew she was never coming back. And so she simply went straight to her car, with intentions to drive it as far away from Happy Start as she could get on a quarter tank of gas. But once she was inside its doors, and sheltered from the eyes and cries of the children, Diana realized that it wasn't how far she could escape physically that was important, but rather how far she could remove her mind from dwelling on something she knew she could never change. And since she only knew of one remedy for escaping her own mind, she headed straight for the bar, leaving Happy Start behind forever as she traveled on toward what she hoped would at least be a Happy Hour.
Figuring she'd be safe from TJ and his friends on a Friday before sunset, Diana had come to Scott's to try her hand at hard liquor, which she'd decided would be the best way to dull her shock. She had just sampled her first-ever whisky sour, which tasted like a sweat sock soaked in arsenic and, therefore, had to be ingested in extremely spaced-out baby sips. Still, she felt sophisticated sipping cocktails in the broad daylight with a bunch of businessy types at the end of a tough workweek. It was completely different from the sexually charged, beer-guzzling atmosphere of a Saturday night. Hopefully, the relaxed, TJ-free environment would really enable her to concentrate on cultivating a nice buzz, which, at the rate she 'was nursing her whisky sour, might take a while. But she had no place to be. She'd already decided to skip Mo's for one afternoon and had even called Mrs. Bartle to say she wouldn't be around that night for her usual help session.
"Is that a hint?" Mrs. Bartle had joked, reminding Diana of her request to be clued in when her support services were no longer necessary. Diana didn't have the heart to tell her friend that, unfortunately, it wasn't a hint at all, that despite the card games, fairy tale, knitting lesson and low-calorie sundae, she was still in as much, if not more, trouble, for just when she believed she could still handle life, even with a broken heart, she had managed to screw hers up even further. And she'd screwed it up by doing something that even Mrs. Bartle wouldn't be able to find sympathy for. How could Diana make her empathize with being fired because she'd been so brutally honest to a child that she'd made him cry? It was one thing to make Diana feel justified in being heartbroken, but how would this sweet and gentle woman—this woman who'd probably never hurt anyone's feelings in her entire life—possibly rationalize her calling a four-year-old boy a freak in front of a roomful of children, especially when all of these children, except for the freak in question, already knew? This was definitely something she'd have to handle on her own, without running to Mrs. Bartle for comfort.
Still, she would definitely need her tomorrow night, for it would be her first Scott's-free Saturday night since adopting her new lease on life. She hadn't spent a single Saturday night at home since before the tumor blimp, but at this point, she needed to make herself scarce for a while. Her plan was to wait twenty-six pounds before allowing TJ to see her again, at which time she would refuse to give him the time of day—even if he begged for it. She ended up answering "maybe" to Mrs. Bartle's Is-that-a-hint-that-you-no-longer-need-me question, figuring that it was as close to the truth as she could get without revealing what had just happened and how she actually planned to deal with it—which was by getting so drunk that she'd be able to wander home in a fog and fall fast asleep without thinking about the unemployed mess she'd just made of her life. Mrs. Bartle had seemed to understand the "maybe," following it with a "Perhaps I'll see you tomorrow night, then" and a few sentences about Barry coming into town and the three of them possibly having dinner.
"Tell him to fix your air conditioner, and I'll be there," Diana had joked, unsure of how sincere her attempt at lightheartedness sounded and of how she would feel facing Barry as a woman who not only dreamt of azaleas, tumor blimps and fathers resurrecting out of the clouds, but also abused children in real life.
She didn't get it. She had always prided herself on being great with kids. Even when she was 178 pounds and working at Blue Horizon without having had sex in fifteen years, one of the very few positive truths with which she could credit herself was that she would make an incredible mom some day. How in the world could she say that now? Why had she allowed herself to lose it like that with Alex? Penis-butt-head! Penis-butt-head! So what? He was only four. If only Randy hadn't antagonized her like that; if only he hadn't made her so aggressive. But she really didn't harbor any guilt where he was concerned. If anything, she thought she had been too tolerant with Randy. Then again, what was normal? How would a normal person, who didn't make such tremendous mistakes, have handled a child attacking another child and then biting the hand that restrained him? Maybe she wasn't supposed to know the answer. Maybe her explosion in front of the kids and her permanent leave of absence from Happy Start was God's way of sparing her from obsessing over the "fat butt" comments that had ignited the whole disaster. For although Diana never thought that matters of her weight could ever seem trivial—not even when she believed she was at death's door—trivial is exactly what worrying about the motivating factors and ultimate truth value in Randy's original "fat butt" remark seemed now. Perhaps in fighting with four-year-olds and flipping out on socially underdeveloped outcasts, she had matured.
"I'll take a vodka tonic," a female voice spoke over her shoulder. Vodka tonic. Diana would have to remember that for her next one. It had a classy ring to it, and anything had to taste better than what she was drinking now. "Well, look who it is!" The saccharine-coated tone made Diana turn around, and staring her in the face were a pair of beautiful and exotic dark brown eyes belonging to a face she would never forget. It was Michele. "How are you?" she squealed with exaggerated, cheerleader enthusiasm. Her hair was wrapped up in a thick bun, and she was wearing one of those tailored, career-woman suits, the kind with the short skirts that always look so much sexier on actresses portraying executives than they do on real women who actually are executives. But of course, Michele bore a striking resemblance to the pretend variety. Next to her, Diana, dressed in a pair of khaki shorts, a T-shirt and sneakers, suddenly felt like the farm girl who moved to Beverly Hills from the sticks and wore a hand-me-down church dress to the prom. Her outfit was poor and boring, just like she was. "Diane, right?" Michele continued, overly friendly.
"Diana." She wished Michele would just get to the point and tell her off already, but at the same time, she was completely mesmerized by her and wanted not only to memorize what made her so gorgeous so that she could attempt to copy it, but also to be seen associating with a woman who, in high school, would have been the girl that everybody worshiped. Diana had a feeling such was true in Michele's post-graduate life as well, for even though she felt this vixen was about to tear her to shreds, she couldn't help but feel it was her place to sit there and take it, for to do otherwise would be overstepping her bounds where such superiority was concerned.
"Diana," Michele corrected herself, flashing the whitest smile the world had ever seen as she ushered forth the two women standing behind her. "I'd like you to meet my two best friends, Stephanie and Holly."
"Hi," Diana said quietly, briefly considering that, perhaps, Michele was being nice for real, but quickly coming to her senses—and realizing her naive capacity for underestimating the cruelty of others—when she saw the daggers shooting out of these women's eyes. Both were dressed exactly like Michele, just in different colors, but neither looked nearly as good. All three of them seemed as if they worked somewhere important, like at an advertising agency or one of those mysterious corporations from a nighttime soap opera, the kind that supposedly control all the big business in the state but never actually specify what it is they do.
"Stephanie and Holly are going to be bridesmaids at my wedding," Michele said. Diana stared at her blankly. She suddenly knew exactly where this was going, and she didn't have the energy to come up with the words to pretend she didn't. "You know, my wedding on the 21st of October . . .when I marry TJ." Michele batted her eyelashes at the sound of his name, as if Diana wouldn't have understood whom she meant without the emphasis. Either Stephanie or Holly, depending on which was which, had walked around to the other side of Diana's chair, leaning her elbows on the bar so that their shoulders were practically touching, while the other bridesmaid-to-be stood by Michele, glaring at Diana like she could actually hear her wondering how awful it must be to live in the shadow of someone so much better looking without ever having a mind of one's own. "Oh, silly me!" Michele laughed, taking a sip of her drink. "I forgot to mention," she began, looking from one friend to the other, and then straight into Diana's eyes, "Diana is the whore who slept with my fiancé."
Diana had been hurt many times in her life, and by many people. She'd heard "fat ass" behind her back a million times from strangers—mainly impatient customers at the diner and sexually frustrated teenage boys yelling out of car windows—and she'd imagined far worse things coming from the mouths of people who actually knew her when she wasn't around to hear them, but never had any words, real or imagined, burned as bitterly as these. Never had anyone looked her directly in the face and said something to make her feel as dirty, immoral, and disgusting as Michele just had. She could feel the water springing to her eyes.
"Aw," Michele cooed, maliciously sarcastic. "Are we going to cry?" Despite Diana's efforts at restraint, the tears began to stream down her face faster than she could wipe them away. "Oh, you poor thing! Stephanie, Holly, look! She cries real tears!" she exclaimed, like a little girl in a doll commercial. "She drinks, she blinks, she sleeps with other people's fiancés, she definitely eats . . . ah," Michele sighed, as if overwhelmed by awe. "And she even cries!"
"Mommy! Mommy! Can I take her home?" chirped the clone next to Michele, and they all laughed.
"But he wasn't your fiancé when I . . . when . . ." Diana fumbled for the right words. She had never been so afraid to speak in her entire life, but she felt like she had no choice. If she got up to leave, they'd probably just beat her into staying for more torment. And no one would even try to stop them because Michele was so beautiful. "You guys were broken up . . . I didn't even know—"
"Shut up!" Michele interrupted loudly, moving her face even closer to Diana's. "Shut up. Don't you tell me what we were or what you knew. You don't know a fucking thing about TJ and me. And neither one of us gives a damn about you or what you think you knew. You don't know shit," she finished, pulling away again. It was in this moment, as Michele retreated back into her own space, that Diana suddenly remembered what TJ's friend had told her—that she hadn't been the first woman that Michele had said "mine" to—and, out of nowhere, even though she was crying, and even though she felt terrified, she found the voice to challenge her.
"Do you treat all the women your fiancé sleeps with this way? Or just the ones you feel threatened by?" She couldn't believe she'd said it, but the look on Michele's face made it worth the risk. She looked like she'd just walked in on TJ and Diana having sex, like maybe she was about to go cry herself. But after a little while, her expression began to change, slowly revealing the harshest resentment Diana had ever seen. It was an expression she had trouble believing she'd caused, an expression she was still in the midst of being intrigued by when Michele suddenly reached out and slapped her clear across the jawline. It was a smack heard throughout the entire bar, and there wasn't a single head in the room that didn't turn to see where it had come from.
The bartender rushed over to them. "Is everything okay here, ladies?" Michele had not yet taken her eyes off of Diana, and Stephanie and Holly were now both at her side, each of them holding on to her and telling her it would be all right. Even in her numbness, Diana still recognized the criminally unfair irony of the fact that if TJ were there, he'd be leading Michele's comfort pack. "Well, if none of you are gonna answer me, I'm gonna have to ask all of you to leave," the bartender continued.
"I'll go," Diana volunteered, reaching into her pocket and leaving a couple of dollars on the bar. Her face was throbbing as she stood up and began walking away, and, although the shock had stopped her tears, she was trembling and knew she had to get out into the open air before she fainted.
"Here, keep it!" Michele called out from behind her, shoving the money against Diana's back and letting it fall to the floor. "TJ says two dollars is all you're worth!" But Diana just took a deep breath and kept right on going.
"Now, you behave yourself, little girl, or you're out, too," she heard the bartender say jokingly. It was almost flirtatious. How was it that Michele had openly assaulted her but was able to stick around for what would probably be a few drinks on the house to make her pretty face smile again, while Diana was the one leaving with her tail between her legs like a piece of trash? She could feel every Happy Hour eye staring at her, half in pity and half in relief that it wasn't them taking that shameful, beaten down walk to the door. It was her largest public defeat to date. And it would be her last. For she was never going to leave her apartment building again.
The tears returned once she was safe from view, but the air outside was so unmercifully hot that it wasn't any easier to breathe. Maybe she didn't deserve to. Maybe she'd been a fool all along for thinking she had changed for the better. What was better about her life now? Only one thing: she was thinner. Big deal. She'd still been called fat twice in one day, once by a four-year-old demon-creep and once by the almighty Michele whose "She definitely eats" definitely counted as "You're fat." At least when she weighed 178, she'd never been fired or slugged in the face. She was ready to give up. Whatever "giving up" meant. What was left to give? She'd already lost so much—her job, TJ, her dignity. All she had left to forfeit was weighing less. But at the moment, the idea of finding food to binge on so that she could finish herself off just seemed nauseating, not to mention exhausting.
She didn't even wait for the air-conditioning in her car to take effect before speeding off toward home. The thick, stuffy heat in there made the thick, stuffy heat outside seem like a walk-in-freezer, but enduring it was preferable to waiting in the parking lot where, at any moment, Michele and her entourage could come out and liquidate her. She didn't really want to go home, but home was the only spot she knew she could hide. She wasn't about to be seen in another public place, not even a convenience store, looking the way that she felt.
It was beyond comprehension that she'd gone through an entire childhood and adolescence without ever once being hit only to be smacked across the face so hard it echoed at age thirty-two in a bar—and during Happy Hour, no less, which hardly seemed like a natural brawl time. It was the kind of thing that made her want to run to Mommy and sob her guts out while telling the story of how the barroom bully attacked her. That is, if "Mommy" weren't her own mother, who hadn't been present for a sob story since Diana was four and a neighbor's dog chased her down a hill and made her fall and rip her stockings. And even then, her mother had made her feel like she deserved it by saying that Russell the Saint Bernard was the sweetest dog on the block and had only wanted to play with her, and that those were very expensive stockings she'd ripped, and now she'd have nothing to cover her legs with when she wore her turquoise-and-navy dress, for only "loose" women wore dresses without hosiery, and the younger she learned that the better, so perhaps her run-in with Russell had been a blessing in disguise, for it had given her a lesson on class. If her mother couldn't make her feel better then, there was no way she'd be able to make her feel better now.
The only person, besides her father, that could ever make her feel better lived in the direction of home anyway. Mrs. Bartle had made her see the light so many times before. Maybe she could help Diana glue her life back together again this one last time. For after this, it was no more mistakes. No more delusions that she could be something she was not. No more goals. No more crushes. No more fantasies. The only thing she would try to keep up with was losing weight, but not because she wanted to attract some guy who would just end up hurting her and not because she harbored any secret wishes of becoming one of the world's Micheles. She'd do it because the thinner one becomes, the less of a target she is. Hell, she could've obliterated the entire scene at Happy Start that had rendered her essentially fired and reduced at least a fraction of Michele's insults by weighing 130 or less. Less was always better.
She would definitely resume classes at Mo's next week. Maybe she'd even become anorexic or bulimic for a little while. Diana tried to imagine herself being discovered facedown in a pool of blood on the bathroom floor—her size eights hanging loosely around her jutting hip bones—and being rushed to the hospital where her mother would be beside herself with guilt and Why? Why?'s as she looked on in horror at what her years of criticism and locking the refrigerator doors had done to her only child. This was one fantasy Diana would allow, however, because illusions of self-destruction could only make her real life seem better. And they were truly harmless illusions, for even though she had no will to keep going, her will to die or severely screw up her health was even weaker. She didn't have the strength to be suicidal.
An ambulance forced Diana to the side of the road as she turned onto Elizabeth Court. She watched its swirling lights disappear behind the giant maples that lined the street, and as the sound of the siren grew fainter in the distance, she realized that if she ever were to do anything to herself, as model-thin as it might make her, it would be that sound—the sound of speeding sirens—that would deliver her to the glorious reception of guilt and apologies she'd envisioned from her mother. Not a very glamorous way to hitch a ride to I'm sorry. Besides, what if her mother-come-find-me fantasy didn't go according to plan and poor old Mrs. Bartle were the one to find her on the bathroom floor in a size-eight pool of blood instead? What then? Yes, her mother would be sorry, but probably not as sorry as if she had found her herself, and Mrs. Bartle—sweet, loving, makes-everything-okay Mrs. Bartle—would be the one forever stuck with the horrifying visual that was really intended for Mommy. And that would just be all wrong. Just the inkling of possibility—as minuscule as it was, for her death wish days had pretty much flown away on the tumor blimp—made her feel guilty.
Diana knew Mrs. Bartle would be hurt beyond comprehension if she were to ever deliberately harm herself. And, although it was an emotion Diana had never seen in her, she also had a feeling that her friend would be angry—and with more than just cause. For it was always Mrs. Bartle who had provided her with the encouragement to have courage in the face of all things adversarial, the insight to understand what had passed, and the foresight to see tomorrow. How could she even consider devaluing the wealth that woman had given her by fantasizing about throwing it all away?
Diana pulled away from the curb. As she proceeded down the road, she pictured herself telling her best friend everything about her day, including not just her own feel-sorry-for-me collapse into victimhood but also her brief, but life-altering stint at victimization, not just the part that would summon a friendly, cry-on-me shoulder, but also the part that might warrant a cold one. She was no longer worried about the potential harshness of her friend's response to what she had done to the little boy who cried penis-butt. If Mrs. Bartle were going to be unsympathetic, she'd be unsympathetic for a very good reason. And if she were going to be understanding, then perhaps she'd prove that Diana had been too hard on herself. Either way, she would be honest. Diana could always count on her for that. And through her honesty, Diana would finally gain some perspective on the chain of events that had spiraled so out of control, she'd turned into an unemployed monster that fought in bars. Maybe Mrs. Bartle would tell her that's exactly what she was—a monster. Maybe she'd say the smack that woke the world was exactly what Diana deserved and that it probably hurt her far less than she'd hurt the poor, little four-year-old she'd bruised irreparably with her words. But it didn't seem very likely that Mrs. Bartle would say either. And those being the worst imaginable ramifications of her telling her friend the entire truth about her bad day, she knew it wouldn't be such a rotten, miserable night—or such a rotten, miserable life—after all. All she needed to do was go home and tell Mrs. Bartle everything that had happened, and then everything would be okay.
Red flashes of dizzying light bounced off of her sun-soaked windshield as she turned onto Starry Lane and drove past the flaming marigold island that housed the Glen Vali Suites sign. The ambulance, the one that had passed her on Elizabeth Court, had come here—to her apartment complex.
Seeing an ambulance parked outside of a building, without its siren blaring, was always more disturbing to Diana than seeing the ones that sped deafeningly past traffic on the street. It becomes more real, more permanent, when the "where" is known, that crucial component of the who-what-where trinity that governs curious rubberneckers, concerned citizens, and anyone with a human pulse during times of tragedy. Diana pulled into her parking spot and said a silent prayer for Louie Spaghetti.
Louie was the nice-as-could-be embodiment of jolly obesity that lived in the building next to hers. He reminded everyone of an Italian Santa Claus, so, naturally, all the tenants adored him. His real last name began with an "S" and was, perhaps, too complicated for even him to pronounce, for he introduced himself to everyone he met as "You can just call me Louie Spaghetti." Diana had heard it said, out of what some might call neighborly concern, but she preferred to think of as ignorant fat-bashing, that Louie was a walking heart attack. He'd had three close calls in the past year and a half, but they'd all been false alarms. Still, an ambulance at Glen Vali Suites generally meant that Louie Spaghetti was in trouble.
Staring with pity at Building B, Diana realized how downright stupid she'd been for letting some dumb kids and a mental prima donna make her envision her own blood as a pool for drowning in. It was the first time she'd truly understood the absurdity of letting other people dictate whether or not she had a right to enjoy her life and live it without self-loathing and self-destructive scenarios giving encore performances in her head. Allowing herself to get caught up in these I-am-a-public-failure-who-must-be-punished modes was neither fashionably masochistic—like five-foot-ten-inch runway models starving themselves below the 120s to fit a prototype—nor was it the slightest bit permissible, even in light of her recent devastations. Thinking of Louie Spaghetti and the possibility that, unlike his three lucky strike-outs, this might be the real hit, made Diana feel like the biggest jerk on earth—for not only taking her own health for granted, but for seeing it as expendable, like it was a piece of sacrificial trash that could be thrown away to make her mother and the likes of TJ and Michele pity her.
Crossing her fingers for Louie as she bit anxiously on her bottom lip, Diana got out of the car. But as she neared the entrance to her apartment, she realized that it couldn't be Louie Spaghetti that was in trouble, for it was the doors of her own building that had been propped open by the paramedics. Although at first a little relieved, a fear was growing in the pit of Diana's stomach—which one of her neighbors was in trouble? Was it someone she'd passed a million times on the stairs? Someone she'd held the door for? Someone she could have been nicer to? She needed to go get the scoop from Mrs. Bartle who, for a little old lady that kept out of other people's business, sure seemed to know what was going on before everybody else usually did. Diana attempted to squeeze past the paramedics, but the man in the doorway stopped her.
"Excuse me, ma'am. We've got medical personnel coming through. If you would just step aside, please."
"Sure," Diana complied softly, noticing that a small crowd had assembled around the ambulance. Feeling typically antisocial, but nevertheless unsure of where to go, she found herself drifting into the gathering of rubberneckers, concerned citizens and human hearts that waited beneath the revolving light for answers.
"Yeah, I heard she called 911 but was dead before they could ask for her emergency," said one man that Diana only vaguely recognized. The others hardly looked familiar at all. She wondered if any of them knew who she was, and pretty much hoped that they didn't. For although not being recognized would prove an undeniable testament to her unfortunate lack of popularity, she'd rather be unpopular than identified and, heaven forbid, spoken to. She was in no mood.
"She was such a nice lady," said another man, who was supported by a light chorus of agreement.
"Never bothered a single soul," one woman reflected sadly, sighing into the crowd.
"Now, who was it again?" asked a twenty-something girl, squinting at the doors as the paramedics emerged carrying a stretcher. The sheet was pulled all the way up, covering the face of whoever lay on top of it.
"It was that old lady," the first man answered. "Down in room 101. Bartle. Everyone just called her Mrs. Bartle. They say it was a heat stroke."
A skin-numbing chill spread over Diana's arms and legs, gripping them violently and threatening to shatter her bones. She couldn't see anything but the bleeding red light swimming around on the blinding white sheet that hid the body. Words whirred around her like broken sounds. And people were just blotches of dull color, with nothing fitting together to make any kind of sense, like random streaks on the canvas of the most poorly attempted impressionist painting the world had ever seen. A blob of flesh reached out toward her face. It was probably a hand. Or an arm of some sort—or someone—a person, a dull blotch of senseless color, wanting to help. But Diana couldn't be helped, not by this free-floating mass trying to grab at her. And so she swung at it. But she only hit air. Hot, steamy, cold, clammy, mean, malicious, murderous, unforgiving air. And she ran.
She ran either very fast or very slow, depending on the speed of the broken sounds and blotchy streaks around her, which she was unsure of. But she knew that at whatever pace the world was going, she was going opposite. And after a minute, second, hour or year, she smashed into a metal box that seemed to crack every bone in her ribs. But she only knew this because she heard the collision and the suffering cry from within. She couldn't feel a single thing.
The jingle jangles in her hand let her inside of the box, turning it into a warm and familiar furnace where she could scream. So she did. She screamed so loud, it rattled the windows. But nothing happened. So she cried, forcefully enough to split her body down the middle. And she felt even less.
Diana spun the wheel, which was hot but not evil, and the dull blotches of color in that Vali of the Glens disappeared, or they became what they were before, which Diana knew nothing about because it really didn't matter. Nothing was everything and everything was nothing at all. In a hot metal box that moved by a wheel.
Voices began to fill the blankness in her brain, voices joined by faces and eyes, lots of eyes, as she sailed along with the bright, meaningless colors of red, yellow and green. She'd heard some of them before, these voices—she'd seen their eyes. But she didn't know why they'd be saying what they were or why she was being watched and followed. Watched, followed, chased and hunted. Hunted down at lightning speed by the hauntingly familiar and the creepily unknown. Her foot was heavy on the pedal. So heavy it made her fly, faster and faster away from the song of the eyes. And the voices said: Daddy's getting tired from all these stories . . .and . . . You're gonna have a real hard time finding a man with that thing on your finger. It looks like an engagement ring! They said: Stick with us, Diana, and we'll have you looking as good as your mother in no time!. . . Well, Diana has been gaining weight pretty steadily since I've known her . . . There are no flowers more magical or more powerful than azaleas . . . I'd have to say that the best thing to do would be to schedule an immediate biopsy . . . It's like my mother used to tell me, if you're going to let snakes roam around in your garden, at least be sure they're wearing their raincoats . . . Call meT J instead. The only person who ever calls me Travis is my grandmother . . .And then you found out it wasn't cancer . . . Mine . . . Miss Diana Fat Butt!. . . And then I found out it wasn't cancer . . .! don't know about that, Mrs. Bartle. You've got a lot of life in you yet . . .Mrs. Bartle, I got the job! . . .I think you ought to go see Arlene . . . Bird's blood! Bird's blood! Bird's Blood!. . . Here, keep it! TJ says two dollars is all you're worth! . . .It's Sundae Night!. . . Oh, would you just shut your big, fat mouth, you little freak?. . . Mine . . . Now that they're engaged, we all really think they're through playing games . . .azaleas . . . She definitely eats . . . And then I found out it wasn't cancer . . . Bartle. Everyone just called her Mrs. Bartle . . .My air conditioner broke. But it's supposed to be a cool night, so I thought just having the windows open would be fine . . . She was such a nice lady. . . Oh, silly me! I forgot to mention, Diana is the whore who slept with my fiancé. . . Bird's blood! Bird's blood! Bird's Blood!. . . Mrs. Bartle has passed away. . .
At 6:18 p.m., on Friday, July 11th, Diana Nicole Christopher crashed her 1994 Chevy Nova through the front window of Davey's Café on the corner of Erin Avenue and Shamrock Street in Baltimore. She was rushed to Cedar Groves Medical Center where she was treated for minor external abrasions and a fractured rib. She now lies in stabilized condition in the hospital's Psychiatric Ward, pending a mental evaluation. No motive has been determined.