Photo credit: ndanger
This all began when Richard left, when Helga
forced herself into an empty bed and
grazed a melancholy hand across the
dent where Richard’s sleeping body would heave
and gasp startling snores at three in the morning.
There were other things too. There were the looks
she received from neighbors that said “It happens
to the best of us,” and the others that
read “Poor thing will never get it right, find
somebody else, get herself together,”
etcetera, etcetera. It was those daunting
voices Helga imagined slipping out of her
neighbors’ mouths when they made lunch dates
without her. It was voices like these that changed
what Helga was.
It was necessary, a metamorphosis,
a lifestyle change, the development of
self-control that would keep Helga from making
a permanent safe room out of her refrigerator.
But Helga’s change wasn’t change at all. She
continued to take mini-vacations
to the fridge. Her kitchen was a halfway
home for the confused and abused, for those
who needed to bake a wall of lasagna,
or a fortress of bunt cake. Helga’s obsession
was defined by degrees: Hostess cupcake
for an energy boost, family size
bag of Doritos after taking a
two minute walk around her living room,
double stuffed Oreos when it rained. She
would only break out the big guns for emergencies:
dead dog, broken ankle (the result of
decorating her ridiculously
tall Christmas tree), flat tire, flat tire again,
her favorite soap opera going
on permanent hiatus. For these situations
she didn’t think, she acted. Turkeys would
roast in the oven, bathing in garlicy
juices; pie crusts would cling to pie pans, dough
curling over the edges; homemade ice
cream shivered in the freezer, counting on
the occasional gap between door and
fridge for warmth. These days were the
hardest to bear.
Still, Helga had no use for change, she only
smoothed over the situation with compliments
and false good feelings as if icing a
cake to hide its imperfections. She bought
new clothes, accoutrement for her brand new
figure. At first, she attempted to try
on clothing two sizes smaller than she
was, like the flower print pants that enfolded
her legs like sausage casings. Sometimes she
succeeded like the time she squeezed into
that Nicole Miller tube top. She had a
full two minutes of victory until
she realized the top would not budge and she
had to cut herself out of it with the
hot pink Swiss Army knife Richard bought her
last Christmas. It was embarrassing stuffing
scraps of a perfectly good tube top into
her hand bag and even more embarrassing
being chased by store security.
Helga was not two sizes smaller.
It was like this for a period of time.
Weeks went by where Helga would sit by the
Window and close her eyes tight praying that
Richard’s car would make an appearance. No
Amount of baked apple tarts or seared salmon
steaks filled the void where Richard used to exist.
Helga went to bed every night, her
ritual always the same. She took a
long, hot shower and sang every song
she could remember from Les Miserables
and by the time she finished she had become
a five-foot-four blotchy lobster struggling
to make the ends of her bath towel meet. Next,
she’d slather on lotion, careful to cover
each crease and fold while congratulating
herself on maintaining such an excellent
weight. Smooth and a bit sticky, Helga would
tug on the blue flannel night gown that Richard
had said brought out her eyes.
Then Sunday happened. Helga didn’t mean
to stop by the Marmont Motel. In fact,
she had meant to drive southbound, not northbound,
but her two wrists, the one that had inconveniently
grown around her “Polex” wrist watch and the
other that lay naked against the steering
wheel, jerked to the left and she found herself
at the place where Richard had resided
for the last month. She got out of the car
as if she had a purpose, as if she
was there to visit an old friend. For a
moment Helga almost believed that Richard
was inside one of those cracker jack boxes,
perched on the corner of the bed with legs
crossed and a bottle of Don Perignon
in hand. But Richard wasn’t in his room
at all. He was actually leaning
over the railing and looking, looking
right at Helga. Helga went into fight
or flight mode and thought of sixth grade biology
when she learned her body was in control,
her mind merely a passenger along
for the ride. Her body failed her this one
and only time, so instead of breaking
out into a manic run, she found her
eyes on Richard’s face. Richard squinted at
Helga like she was there but wasn’t, as
if he was trying to make out a spot
on his shirt to see if it was an ink
stain or an insect. He drew hard on his
cigarette and flicked it over the railing.
He turned and left Helga there, knee deep in
a puddle of what was.
Sunday night was not like all the other nights.
Instead of sneaking down the stairs for a
late night snack, Helga subconsciously closed
the kitchen in her mind. As she lie in
her empty bed and felt her body spread
from end to end she realized, once again,
the immensity of her size. Right before
she closed her heavy lids, Helga stretched the
fingers of her corpulent hand and waved
goodbye to the Richard sized depression
beneath her.
© 2010-2013 Ericka Clay. All Rights Reserved.
