My husband says he’ll wait for the coffee while I run to the restroom. I eat less these days, so I constantly need to go. In seconds, I spot the key attached to a long metal spoon the baristas use to stir beans. I’m relieved to find it, because it means the café’s restroom isn’t occupied and I don’t like having to ask.
I unlock the door, worried that some strange man will be on the other side peeing. But the door opens and no one is inside. Even better, the bathroom appears clean.
After I’m done and washing my hands, I forget myself for a moment and raise my head. I’ve been avoiding mirrors for years. The mirror is large, and far more than my face is reflected back. In fact, I can see my body below the waist, including the disappointing flesh surrounding my hips.
The reflection stuns me. It’s not the one I’ve grown accustomed to seeing, the one I’ve pretended didn’t exist. The mirror gives back to me a picture I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen and I find my usual low-level gloom lifting. It’s because the woman looking back at me, dressed in a pair of loose-fitting faded jeans and a black hooded sweater, is thin.
The thinnest I ever recall getting was in college. I was so thin, no matter what dress or pair of pants I tried on in a shop, I looked like a fashion model or an actress. It’s been over thirty years and I can still remember the outfits I wore. My favorite was a pair of white pants with a short-sleeved red knit dress that fit as if I were a hanger. I even dared to wear the dress with a belt.
I’d gotten this thin by not eating. It didn’t seem all that hard, drinking diet chocolate malt shakes that had a slightly chalky flavor in place of burgers, and playing tennis or jumping rope and running in place every chance I got. The pleasure I missed from food was outweighed by the ecstasy of slipping on size three pants and staring at my reflection in the mirror, as if I was a movie star who’d just stepped out the door of her limo.
All the girls on my floor in Anderson Hall wanted to be as thin as me but some had a harder time. My best friend Alice Weiss would be good for a few weeks but then she’d raid the vending machines downstairs. Some nights I’d catch her sitting at one of the basement lounge tables littered with crushed Coke cups and napkins, shoving enough chocolate in her mouth to make herself sick. One spring break when I went home with Alice to her parents’ mansion in Great Neck, New York, I watched as she freed a gallon tub of chocolate mint chip ice cream from the packed freezer. Then, using a tablespoon, Alice shoveled green ice cream from the tub into her mouth, enough for at least ten, double-scoop waffle cones.