The ride is easy. Jerry said it would be; he indicated it would be like the calm before the storm of tackling tomorrow’s pass. The group had energy after dinner. Gregory joined the guides for a nostalgic tour of card games. Julie asked for the next chapter of Susan’s diet history, so they lingered over green tea.

“My second slim phase started about a decade later. That’s when I finally broke up with my crazy college lover and rediscovered fun with my old friend Jack. We rode bikes together. We walked. We backpacked and camped. We’d been an on-and-off couple in high school and we reignited. In time we married and used our bicycles to commute to first jobs. In more time we got pregnant and had Gregory. My body was toned to optimum fitness about three years into our ten; I could bicycle up anything I could walk, and I ate anything I wanted. I had taken up smoking when I was with my starving-poet college lover and I didn’t give up tobacco when I gave up sorry Fred, but cigarettes didn’t slow down my exercise, and smoking had no noticeable effect on me then.

“I stopped moving as much and started munching more as I became dissatisfied. Couple counseling led to individual therapy, where I guess I learned the cause of my disorder, but understanding didn’t bring remedy. Okay: so food is a metaphor for like everything. And little girls do tend to be overprotected in our culture. I was the youngest and only daughter in a tight family of four kids, and my parents and brothers hemmed me in on all sides. I’m convinced that exerting control over food is a natural response to that. But knowing isn’t healing. I was unable to revisit my pre-verbal self to counteract anything that had been done then.

“Being fat again didn’t stop me from being married again. I met Larry four months after Jack left, and I married him as soon as the divorce was final. He seemed stronger than Jack had turned out to be. He acted like he’d be a good father figure for Gregory. And the sex was good. He declared his love with flattering certainty; talk about compelling… I even lost a little weight in the beginning, but I soon resumed a steady upward roll. We degenerated and hassled each other, and after eight years I started understanding it was over. That’s when Larry took up cigarettes again. He had been a heavy smoker in college and graduate school but he had given it up, cold turkey and proud of that, a dozen years before we married. It was like he made a final grasp at intimacy by taking up my nicotine addiction. That didn’t work either.”

Julie speaks. “Twice divorced, huh? I’ve only tried it once, but I have a friend who’s looking for husband #5 now. It didn’t work for me.”

“Me either. Both of my exes are remarried and apparently happy. I think I have to conclude that I was the problem.”

“Oh, it’s always more complicated than that.”

“True. And kind. Thanks.”

“Do go on.”

“I now believe that Larry was a step down from Jack. Not that I should have stayed with Jack: no, I’m best left alone. But Larry wasn’t stronger; with both, I mistook silence for strength. And Larry was more of an alcoholic.”

“You had one (or two) too? I knew my Matt was moody when I met him, and I concluded he was depressive by the time I married him, but I had no idea he was alcoholic till our second anniversary,” Julie comments. “I mean, he was high-functioning and a good driver and I’d been raised to think drunks passed out in the gutter. You know?”

Susan nods so emphatically she almost tosses her curly hair. “I wouldn’t even use the term “alcoholic” with regard to Jack except that he took up drinking for several years after I left him. That didn’t directly affect me, except for the few times he became redundantly abusive in a late-night phone call. But Jack’s drinking affected Gregory; as I found out when Jack hit him in front of me, Jack’s depression and anger mixed with red wine and whiskey to exacerbate his temper problem. Greg had been hit, hard and often, and yelled at too much. I made threats then and stopped Jack from hitting, and Jack’s remarriage seems to have reduced his drinking, but damage was done.

“Larry on the other hand drank when he was happy, drank when he was sad, drank when anxious, calm, tired or wired, drank gin when he said he drank tonic, drank vodka when he said he drank water, drank boring white wine with coffee, and then drank some more. I’ll admit that his drinking enhanced the brief affair we had before he moved in, but afterwards it only made him stupid and sentimental. I didn’t care then if he quit drinking or not; I just didn’t want him around me after he’d had more than two. I see now that I was behaving in classic co-dependent fashion; I wanted him to stop but I was worried that stopping would change him, us. In time, Larry chose his drinking over me. He chose his drinking over his relationships with his first and third wives, too, with his children, and with his sinking business. Looking back now, I see that he grabbed me as he rounded age 40 (he already had the red roadster), flamed with sexual and creative passion for a year, and then began a long slow slide. He’d be in big trouble if it weren’t for the moat of old assets he has from his prosperous 30s and the ballast of some family money.

“As bad as it had been for Gregory, with Jack’s fists and Larry’s neglect, the end of my second marriage was good for both of us. I focused on Greg and found him a good therapist; the road was rough but it was a road. And I embarked upon a journey toward health. I discovered aerobics and began cardiovascular training combined with some weight work, and within a year I was as fit as I’d ever been. I faced my nicotine addiction; at the end of that summer I stopped smoking.

“Well, it was like my metabolism ground to a halt. I started gaining weight immediately, and I was not eating more. Between the frustration of that initial weight gain, and the depression that came with quitting, I was thrown completely off course.”