Emily dances naked most mornings. It isn’t part of her regular exercise program but lately she has been thinking about formalizing the practice.

It happens, when it happens, after her shower after her half hour on her stationary bike. She’s wearing her hooded robe and her slipper-socks. Her dark hair looks black because it is still wet. She presses the play symbol on her computer keyboard. There’s always a dancable disk in the drive. Her hips move before she’s aware of it, and the rapturing rhythm rivers from there upward into the center of her torso and downward through her thighs. Emily commences her personal mix of dance/stretch/centering and soon she’s too warm for her clothes. She tries to keep the rhythm as she toes the heel of one slipper then another, pulling each dancing foot out while her other foot pins the wool to the floor. That usually takes an extra beat or two but she doesn’t break time. Unzipping the robe and shrugging out of it is easier. Then she’s unencumbered. Moving freely. Dancing in her small windowed study, surrounded by the sight of her shaded garden, amid the morning-white atmosphere of her coastal town. I know how she feels. I am Emily.

I and she. I and I. The Rastafarians use the term to describe oneself and the significant other. First person plus second or third equals I-and-I instead of we. Me-and-me instead of us? Me me me me me… music.

Emily wanted to make an I-and-I of herself and Jack. Jack wants we. Emily has so far concluded that she can only make I-and-I of her and herself.

She rolls her hips to the music. She stretches as if she would mill her bones or snap her ligaments. I couldn’t dance this deeply when I was younger. I hopped around on the surface of the music, my feet flying with the agility of a songleader. Popped and pepped with no idea of a groove. Emily bumps. Pow. Emily grinds.

The front door opens. It’s downstairs on the other side of the small house, but it rumbles when it moves, and the rumble vibrates throughout the place. Emily feels it and wonders who can be arriving. The kids left for school an hour ago and Jack isn’t due until after noon. She reduces the volume on her computer keyboard but she can’t hear anything. She pulls on her robe and reluctantly leaves her study.

It’s Carmen. It shouldn’t be but it is. Emily’s baby sister is supposed to be at the spa for another three days, but I can see her blue Honda outside as I pass the stairway window, and from the noises coming out of the kitchen, Carmen is helping herself to breakfast. Her too-round body is revealed, butt bulbing as she bends into the refrigerator, when Emily pushes through the swinging door. She turns around with a carton of milk in one hand and a box of butter in the other. “Hi Em,” she states.

“How come you’re back so soon?”

“I couldn’t take it.” Carmen sets the milk on the table. She ignores the pull-strip on one end of the butter box, with its parallel bracket-shaped cuts; inserting two fingertips at the other end she pops the glue and opens the flap. She starts to tip the box but pauses before the cubes slide out. “This is a pound,” she marvels. “It doesn’t sound like anything when you have a hundred to lose, but when you hold it on your palm like this, it’s something. Shit…” She sinks to a seat, still balancing the butter box on her hand, talking to it. Her auburn hair is beautiful, as always. Her teardrop face looks thick with emotion.

“Shit,” she repeats. Carmen inhales deeply, looks up from the butter, and continues. “The place was too damn strict. No butter or cream on the premises. Fences all around. Daily public weighings. Acting like a one or two pound loss was something. If they’d had some butter around, they might have showed us just how much a pound is. It might have seemed like more of an achievement. And maybe they could have taught us how to use butter and not get in trouble, you know? It’s hard to believe I can never use it and you can. I don’t believe it.”

“You can use it again.” Emily speaks the words quietly. I’ve had a lot of practice speaking quietly, with Mom all my life, with Carmen all hers. With the kids, with the husbands, even with Jack. Speaking unquietly doesn’t work. Speaking rarely works. But quiet is more effective than its opposite. Emily continues. “The Crannel Program just wasn’t the right one for you. And you don’t have to lose a hundred… just enough so you aren’t threatening your health. You look fine.”

The last sentence is a lie, but I-and-I don’t feel dishonest. Carmen was a chubby baby and a plump teen but she slimmed down as a young woman. She started growing sideways about a year after she married Wayne, and she gained 20 pounds with each pregnancy. The enlargement has been slow but steady: now age 45, five foot two inch Carmen weighs about 230.

She has beautiful blue eyes and naturally curly hair. Her cute nose doesn’t reveal its deviated septum. The extra fat on her face makes her far less wrinkled than thin women her age, but it also gives her chipmunk cheeks and forces her earlobes sideways. She has silky skin. Her breasts and butt are gargantuan. Her heart and kidneys are struggling in a crowd of fat. The doctors have told her the weight is literally starting to kill her; if she doesn’t get smaller through diet, exercise, and the pills they prescribe, they’re going to send her in for a gastric bypass.