Sputterpub's Blog

“Good grief, she’s huge,” came as expected, before the door even shut. “She must weigh a hundred pounds more than she did when I saw her last.” Sheila’s mother came around the bed and sat in the large depression Gwen left in the seat of the brown chair.

“Come on, Mom. I still weigh over 300, and Gwen’s no bigger than me. Those words don’t help anyone.”

“Well, but you’re going to get better now. As soon as you’re out of here, we can go back to Dr. Miller, and start shaping you up.”

“You mean shaping me down. And it’s not happening.”

“Now honey. Don’t be impatient with me. Maybe Gwen can go with you this time. She doesn’t need her parents’ permission now. We can work out a way to help her pay for it.”

“Mom, Gwen does okay. I mean, she’s not wealthy or anything, but she can afford what she needs. So can I. We’re not going back to Dr. Miller.”

“We shouldn’t talk about this right now. I can see that you’re tired.” Sheila’s mother tried to adjust the pillow for her. She pulled the sheet-wrapped blanket higher on Sheila’s chest. “You rest now, honey, and we’ll talk more tomorrow. I’ll come by right after work.”

Her mother left but Sheila didn’t rest. She used that night to cry. The last surgical drain had been removed that day, and for the first time since her birthday, when she awoke to excruciating pain and her medical crisis commenced, Sheila knew that she would live. Up till then she’d been busy paying attention to the progress of her condition, contending with the pain and with her mother. But that night, she knew she’d live and leave the hospital.

She tried to think about what she wanted to do. She got nowhere. She thought instead about what she didn’t want to do. She didn’t want to go to her parents’ home. She wouldn’t return to her old condo. She may not get any smaller, but she didn’t want to gain back to her old weight. She wanted to be able to move around.

She slept some. She watched a hospital video about prostate procedures. She thought some more. Tears continued to leak from the outer corners of her eyes.

She was upright and fresh when Gwen showed up at 12:30. The nurse had gotten her out of bed that morning and she’d walked for almost ten minutes, pushing her IV rig ahead of her as she shuffled down the corridor in her slippers. She noticed chart racks on the walls beside room doors, and a courtyard outside the windows. She imagined walking outdoors.

Gwen brought flowers and real estate ads.

“Hi, Gwen,” Sheila almost sang. “Want to diet?”

“Hi yourself. And ‘no.’ But I want to look for a place with privacy, a pool, some open space. I’ve thought about it and want to use a chunk of my winnings for a down payment. I can carry the mortgage on my salary, and I can save the rest of my windfall.” She arranged the flowers in a green vase and set them on the windowsill. “I could use a housemate and investor.”

“You’re on. Thank Mom for making me realize what I don’t want.”

“You thank Mom. I’d rather look at real estate ads.” Gwen moved back around the bed to her chair and unfolded the newspaper. Several sections slipped to the floor, but she left them there as she read. “Here’s a two bedroom, two bath, with a pool, a couple of miles out of town. Look: the price is right.” She passed the section to Sheila.

“We’d need a car to get around.”

“I can swing that and still have money to save. We can buy bicycles too. When the weather’s good, we can get around on them. Maybe. For now we’ll use a car.”

“For now, we’ll use our feet. Let’s take a walk.” Sheila grabbed the triangle above the bed and began the long process of moving her legs off the side.

“Now?”

“Why not? It’s a beginning.”

Gwen rose to help her. Together they got Sheila off the bed and began their first post-operative, post-lottery walk. Together again, the same and ever different, the two young women started down the long corridor.

Gwen was late the next evening. Sheila expected to see her restored friend by six, and was hard-wondering by 6:20. She told herself she was sure Gwen would come. She thumbed the button on the patient-administered analgesia machine, giving herself a bolus of morphine as her internal pain signaled the need. Gwen wasn’t rubbernecking, she thought as she tried to shift her position on the hospital bed. Sheila was certain that theirs was a real renewal. But she couldn’t imagine what was delaying her friend.

It was nearly seven when the door opened inward and Gwen appeared behind it. She looked pale. She walked halfway to the bed, stopped, met Sheila’s eyes, and uttered, “I won the lottery.”

Sheila could tell she wasn’t referring to a Scratcher.

“No, no: it’s not like I’m going to have hundreds of thousands a year for decades. I don’t think I have to worry about the press beating a path to my door.” Gwen came the rest of the way into the room and sat down. “But I just won $100,000.”

“Oh, Gwennie. That’s wonderful!” Sheila’s response was automatic and genuine. “I didn’t even know you played. What will you do with it?”

“There won’t be that much ‘it,’ after I pay the taxes. Can I?” Gwen indicated her desire for water by inclining her head and moving her left hand toward Sheila’s glass. Sheila nodded and murmured “help yourself,” as Gwen continued. “I’m not going to quit my job. I have some interesting projects going now; I don’t even think I’ll take time off. It could be most of a condo…”

“Or use some of it for a down payment, and invest the rest? I’m going to move, you know. They had to wreck my condo a little to get me out. Between that and other things, I don’t want to go back there. I’m putting it on the market.”

Gwen had been wondering. “What do you think about us going in on a place? Together we could get a house. Maybe a pool. Alone we’re pretty much limited.”

“I think it’s a great idea. I hate the condo scene; it isn’t private enough. And I like the idea of spending time with you again.”

At that the door opened, pushed this time by Sheila’s mother. She breezed into the room talking about her day at work, and it wasn’t until she was at Sheila’s bedside that she noticed Gwen occupying the chair. She spent a second and a half recognizing.

“Is that Gwen?” she then asked. “How are you, dear? You look wonderful. You haven’t aged a bit since I saw you last, but I don’t expect you’ll age poorly.” She fluttered about Sheila making nurse-like noises while Gwen hosted sour thoughts. At 26, Gwen wasn’t worried about aging, poorly or otherwise, and knew the comment was a cheap dig at her size.

If Gwen hated anyone, it was Sheila’s mother. She blamed her for damaging Sheila, and she blamed her for the breakup of their friendship. If Sheila’s mother hadn’t thought losing weight so important, she wouldn’t have sent Sheila to the doctor who put her on that barbaric liquid diet where of course she lost, but where she never stood a chance against regaining. It was that weight loss that created the distance between Sheila and Gwen, which came at such a crucial and determinative time. And she didn’t have proof of it, but she thought it was the weight loss that set the stage for the growth of the cyst. Now here she was again, cooing and planning to take Sheila back into her home and onto her agenda.

“I have to go now,” Gwen said as she stood. She saw the look of dismay on Sheila’s face and added, “Tomorrow’s a holiday for county employees. I’ll come by in the early afternoon.”

Sheila looked for a moment as if she’d protest, but the friends’ eyes met over the processed curls of Sheila’s attendant mother, and they mutely agreed. Gwen left.

Word about Sheila’s operation got around fast. Phenomenal medical stories do. “Did you hear about Sheila Ehrman?” one old classmate asked another in the aisles of Safeway. “You remember her: the fat blonde who hung around with Gwen Strybulski? Ginny was working in the ER when they brought Sheila in for what turned out to be removal of an ovarian cyst. Dig this: the thing was over two hundred pounds! Can you believe it?”

“Whoa! What a way to lose weight” came the response.

“It’s a gross way to do anything. I hear she’s huge afterward anyway.”

“Is she still in the hospital? Should we visit her?”

“You wish. I don’t think that would be too cool – not after eight years of silence. I doubt she sees anyone other than her mom.”

In fact, Sheila’s obese father left the house to visit her. It was a cumbersome trip, and Sheila’s mother tried to avoid the attendant inconvenience by telling him that Sheila would be coming back home to recuperate and he’d see plenty of her there. But Sheila wasn’t due to be released immediately, and her father felt a strange rare urge to see her. His hug was awkward but wonderful.

The other surprise visitor was Gwen. The eight year gap didn’t stop her, and Sheila’s private room saw a sweet reunion between the former best and only friends. After the first ice-breaking teary afternoon, Sheila and Gwen got down.

“Okay, you’ve got to give me some details about this operation,” Gwen began. She sat heavily in the armchair by Sheila’s bed, ran her fingers back through her glossy brown hair, and settled her crossed arms above her bosom. “How could the surgery take 18 hours?”

Sheila pushed the button that raised the head of her bed. She pulled on the suspended triangle to lift her upper body, and settled back after Gwen adjusted the pillow behind her neck. “From what I’m learning, 18 hours is nothing. The remarkable fact about my operation is the size of the cyst, but even that isn’t a record breaker.”

“Get out of here! You told me the thing weighed 257 pounds.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t tell you about Gertrude Levandowski’s; at 308 pounds, her cyst gets the prize.”

Gwen goggled. Her brows lifted into semi-circles as she rounded her hazel eyes.

“I don’t have all the details, but apparently Mrs. Levandowski weighed 616 before her surgery. She was from Burnips, Michigan, and the operation was performed in Chicago. Get this: her surgery spanned 96 hours! That was back in 1951.”

Gwen’s face grew pensive as she cast her eyes down for a moment. “How do they remove a cyst of that size? In pieces?”

Sheila reached for her glass of water. Gwen leaned forward and helped. “This is really gross,” Sheila said after a sip, “but most of a cyst is the fluid with which it’s filled. There usually has to be a lot of pumping.”

They made gagging motions. Then they giggled like girls. The nurse came in to check Sheila’s blood pressure and other vital signs. Sheila and Gwen composed themselves during the interruption. They were calm when they continued the conversation after the nurse left.

“Eighteen hours is an incredibly long time,” Gwen commented, “but I guess I’ve heard about longer operations. Seriously, though, how can any surgery take 96 hours? I mean, just imagine: twice 48 hours! Four complete days … I don’t care how big the body is: what can they possibly do for four days?”

“I had the same question. I asked some nurses and doctors around here, and I’m starting to understand the answer.” Sheila explained that they didn’t have the cautery equipment and micro-devices in 1951 that are available now. They removed 308 pounds of a 616-pound person, and that meant a lot of excision. Each time they cut through a blood supply, they had to suction, close, pack and stabilize the area. They wouldn’t have been working every minute of the 96 hours, but the patient would remain in the operating room and the procedures would continue for that period of time. “They didn’t remove as much of me,” she concluded. “I’m still 56% as large as I was. But they cut through enough that it took 18 hours to do the job even now, in 1996, with all their miracle machinery.”

“You lost 44% of you, in less than one day. That’s awesome.”

“I must admit, I’m looking forward to experiencing it. They haven’t let me out of bed yet. And the trauma from the surgery has me retaining fluid; they say I’ll drop weight fast when I ‘ambulate.’ I still need to lose over a hundred pounds.”

“Who doesn’t? Now that we’re speaking to each other again, we can try diets together. No, I don’t mean it. That never worked.” Gwen looked at her watch as if she were about to stand.

“The doctors have recommended some sort of counseling for me. I think my insurance will pay for it. Maybe you can come too? It can’t be worse than diet tricks.”

Gwen’s job at the county probation office paid enough for rent, food, and commute but not much more. She wasn’t sure she could swing it. “Do you think they’d let us go together?”

“Come on, Gwennie. We’re both 26, and I’m ‘in crisis.’ Sure they’ll let us. I don’t know how they’d stop us.” The voice came over the PA system, announcing the end of visiting hours till ten next morning. “Promise to come back tomorrow.”

“I will. After work.” Gwen brushed a kiss on Sheila’s brow, picked up her purse, and lumbered out of the room. Her brown hair looked shining and lovely, bouncing around her shoulders. Her back looked as monstrous as a manatee’s.

They both had Johns. Jeanie’s had been such a close friend in college that he stood up with her, her man of honor, when she married Keith. They’d been what is now called “friends with benefits” then, and they saw no reason not to continue after she and then he married others, until kids and other dependents crowded each out of the other’s life, and they quietly tapered off to never.

It was different with Meg. She met her John through after-work drinks with me. She was drinking with me because home evenings had become stale for her; Meg said she loved Bill but she was bored with the same routines, meals, conversations. A little transition time with friends and vodka became a better routine, and the conversations, usually with males who looked at her with obvious admiration, were much more stimulating than what she experienced in the comfort of her home. But I know she talked to Bill about it. He knew where she was and even that she was flirting. They didn’t have an open marriage exactly, but it got to where they both understood that it would be okay, if it happened, not great but acceptable, provided it was no one he knew and she didn’t bring it home.

John was just one of the guys Meg met, but something clicked immediately. It was strange; their relationship was utterly selfish and sexual, but she reported that they conversed first and often about their kids! But they had some good times, cold drinks, humorous stories, rampant rolls. They each made the other feel sexy and it sounds like they shared active senses of humor coupled with digestive and dermatological ailments. They were a successful extramarital pair for a year.

And she had to tell. Meg never seriously considered spending her life with John, but the relationship with him changed her. She started to amass his memories. She collected his stories and refined on him her own. They developed private jokes. Of course. Her husband Bill was supposed to be her best friend, yet Meg realized she couldn’t let him in on any of the expressions that came out of her hours with John. She was like the priest who sneaked off to golf on a Sunday and then couldn’t tell anyone about his hole-in-one.

Maybe that was the rub. Hidden intimacy with John frayed her future with her spouse. It took awhile but she ended up with neither.

Jeanie stayed with Keith. Keith never learned about her John. Keith never learned about her secrets. Keith never learned about her.

It’s obvious now that Jeanie was faking it. Not just her marriage: she didn’t express any of her disagreements, and she let the world take her silence as acquiescence. She was like an embezzler of mainstream approval, and the more she did it the deeper she went and so the more she did it the deeper she went…

The fact is, an embezzler almost always stays too long at the job.

Jeanie and Meg have digressed. In 1975 they stood alike in marriage and early parenthood and much attitude. We three spent a lot of time together then and agreed about many things, even though I was single and childless. Since then Meg has dispersed her spouse and launched her kids, and learned to love living single. We’ve stayed close. My perspective has widened like I’m a lone climber on top of a mountain, gazing all around at the choreography of connection, taking it in and mostly loving it. As happy a spinster as I’ve been, I’m now maybe receptive to the idea of marriage, although I suspect that boat has sailed. But Jeanie has held all close, and now she’s like one of those robot vacuums, motoring blindly about until she bumps into something and then randomly changing direction, except it’s as if she gets burned whenever she bumps, flinching deeper every time, twisting more inward, ever slowing like she’s turning into a hump-backed pillar of carbon.

I sometimes think Jeanie hasn’t really had a life. And even if she has, she faced it backwards.

Jeanie raised her kids ass-backwards. She managed to produce a hesitant mousy male and a daughter who’s always spoiling for a confrontation.

She’d like to blame it on Keith’s genes but it’s environmental. And even though Keith was around more than most fathers, everyone knows it was Jeanie.

She was like a woman on a mission not to let her kids mature. She did and did and did for them, to the point of encouraging the telephone calls from them even in their 20s, about sibling spats, shopping she could do, or whether their sandwiches needed mayo on both slices of bread.

Jeanie acts passive and Keith is a bully, and Jeanie built a home life so isolated that the kids really didn’t know any other personalities. It was no surprise that they each chose the opposite-sex parent as a model.

But this isn’t about those kids; Peter and Stephanie will have to find their own ways even though they’re sadly ill-equipped. Peter at 25 hasn’t finished college and is on his second year of disability for an upper back injury that has always sounded suspicious. Stephanie is three years older, with a bachelor’s degree in sociology, obese, employed as a retail clerk, daily sore in foot and mind. They appear to be close to each other but they are seldom in the same room. Although they grew up in the one house and regularly participated in school and church activities, neither has any friends.

No: this is about Jeanie.

She is now 62 years old. She’s a petite woman who always had bad posture and table manners, so now she has a dowager’s hump and often a bit of food stuck between her teeth or smeared across her tongue. Her once-cute features seem smushed together in a visage rapidly wrinkling. She deformed her small feet by wearing three-inch heels the first decade of her career; it looked great then but was not worth the sight now of bent toes and bunions in fully adjustable sandals.

Didn’t she used to have style? Maybe never. Maybe she was just cute. Thirty years ago there was an eagerness about her, a little obnoxious with bird-like perkiness but bounding forward, meeting her future. There was an aura about her of self-determination; she seemed to be on a path. Thirty years ago we thought she spoke for herself.

If so, she changed. Somewhere along that line she surrendered her soul to her marriage, and for her that meant supporting her husband no matter what. She was long lost five years ago, when she went away for three days to meditate on goals for the rest of her life, and her only conclusion was she wanted Keith to be happy.

She spoke for herself back in 1975. She was a completely submissive spouse by 2000. That’s a quarter century to review. Something happened in there, and if we can find it and defeat it, maybe we can rescue the child-raisers from soul-icide, and thereby redeem our future.

Because let’s face it. There’s more than just theory here. If Jeanie’s decisions had only affected her and maybe Keith, we wouldn’t be considering them. But here are Stephanie and Peter, loose on the world. True: Jeanie made them so dysfunctional they’re less likely to reproduce. But they’re both in prime reproductive years, probably fertile, Peter does booze and coke, and Steph is so lonely she’ll do anyone who reaches for her, so there is a chance Jeanie’s offspring will have the opportunity to damage babies of their own.

Keith doesn’t work and doesn’t come from wealth, so it sure can’t be money. In fact, both their families were blue collar, but Jeanie’s parents had property which she now owns.

Keith was besotted by his daughter and still adores Steph so much that no man she meets will ever match up. He was just as lopsidedly demanding of Peter. He was physically present more than many fathers, but that didn’t make him a good one. Jeanie was consistently critical of him to us, but she never disagreed with him in front of the kids. I can’t believe she kept him for being a good dad.

She always said Keith was intelligent but I never saw any spark in him. Then again, Jeanie often reported having a great time at some social function where I witnessed her standing silently hunched near a wall, diluted highball in her small hand, conversing with no one. Could she really find Keith intelligent? Interesting? I think not. No one is, after years of cohabitation. And Keith would have to be less than most.

That leaves sex. I’ll go there. We all used to talk about it, especially during the years we worked together, and she acted like it was frequent enough (twice a week) and good enough (no toys but lots of positions, just about everything but anal, sometimes a good movie…). But that was when we were in our 30s, still young enough to be libidinous and yet old enough to say enough that we never took our pants off without getting an orgasm for it. In fact, back then neither Meg nor Jeanie was completely faithful to her spouse, a characteristic that may have ultimately led to Meg’s divorce and to Jeanie’s continuation.