The Fat And The Thin Of It Read online

Jackie. “Did you really mean what you said?”

  “About ‘Mother of the Year’?”

  “No, twat!” Jill nudged her. “I mean all that stuff about me thinking you weren’t worth anything because of your size.”

  “You mean because I’m fat?” Jackie looked at Jill, who tutted dismissingly and looked away. “You can say it, you know. I know I’m fat and you know I’m fat. It’s just a wee bit obvious.” She rested her head back on the floor and stared at the cracked ceiling. “You shouldn’t treat the issue of my weight like the elephant in the room, Jill. I find that insulting sometimes.”

  “Insulting?” Jill looked back at her friend. “You find it insulting that I try not to hurt your feelings?”

  Jackie sighed. “I find it insulting that you think my feelings would be hurt, as if I consider myself with a problem for being fat.”

  Jill pulled back as if she’d been slapped. Jill, in fact, considered that she and Jackie had more in common than Jackie actually realised. Jill never used the word ‘fat’ with Jackie because it was a word she feared for herself more than for her friend.

  “Really?”

  Jackie nodded, staring ahead of her.

  “You know what I feel?” Jill asked in a quiet voice.

  Jackie shook her head.

  “I feel that you should know me better than that.”

  Jackie shrugged. “Maybe we don’t know each other as well as we thought, then.”

  Jill frowned. “No, maybe we don’t. Pretty sad after over forty years, isn’t it?”

  Jackie gave a small nod. Her eyes watered and Jill brushed her tangled hair off her face. “Your body – to me – isn’t what you’re all about, love. You make up for that one problem with an awful lot of...”

  “Ah, so you do think being fat is a problem!” Jackie pointed an accusing finger at her.

  Jill sighed with frustration. If the woman would just let her finish her sentence then she could get across how she felt. “Look, being fat would be a problem if it was me who was fat, because the only thing I have going for me is my figure.” She shrugged. “You’re right when you say my body is the only thing I care about, because it’s the only thing everyone else cares about.”

  Jackie studied Jill. “So you don’t think you have anything else other than your body?”

  Jill bit her lip and looked away. “It’s the only thing anyone’s ever complimented me on, so what am I supposed to think? That’s the long and the short of it.”

  “Or the fat and the thin of it.” Jackie said with a smile, but Jill wasn’t smiling. She was in deep thought and didn’t look as if she’d heard what Jackie thought was a pretty good quip.

  “Do you remember when we went to that school reunion a couple of years ago?” Jill asked, staring at the floor. Jackie nodded. “Did anyone say anything about how clever you’d been to stay a size eighteen all these years?”

  “No,” Jackie replied seriously. “Because I’ve actually managed to balloon to a size twenty-two. You’re not staying on the ball, woman.”

  Jill tutted and lifted Jackie’s jumper. She tugged at the waist of her skirt until she found the label about an inch down the side seam. “It’s faded, and I haven’t got my glasses, but...” she squinted and drew back a bit to focus. “It says it’s a sixteen to eighteen.”

  Jackie yanked Jill’s hand away and tugged her jumper down. “I bought it in the market, and you know their sizes are pretty ambiguous.” She huffed.

  “Ooh,” Jill raised her eyebrows. “Big word for a big lady, but quite right. I remember buying a skinny-rib jumper down the market which said it was an L and was mortified.”

  “Well, the S was for a four foot Asian ten-year-old and the M was for her four foot three mother.” Jackie’s voice had a sarcastic tone to it. “So you’re the same size as a four foot six Asian grandmother. Big deal.”

  Jill rolled her eyes. “You can diet when you put your mind to it! You got down to a twelve for your wedding.” Jill pointed out.

  “Oh yes!” Jackie snapped her fingers exaggeratedly. “For all of ten minutes; how could I have forgotten?”

  Jill ignored her irony and tried to get back to the conversation. “Well, everyone thought my biggest achievement was staying a size eight for thirty-odd years.”

  Jackie frowned. “Well, it is an achievement.”

  Jill turned to her. “Really? So everything else in my life has been a huge bloody waste of time? Thanks very bloody much!” she prodded Jackie harshly in the shoulder, as she seemed hell bent on digging at her at every opportunity. “What about you? You’re still the same size you left school at, be it twenty-two or eighteen or whatever it is. Did anyone claim that was an achievement?”

  “No, because everyone treated my weight as they’d always done; as the bloody elephant in the room, because I’m the elephant no-one pays attention to.”

  Jill rolled her eyes. “You’re not getting my point, woman. Look,” she sat up and crossed her legs to look at Jackie. “I’m getting old, and keeping to this weight is bloody hard, but I feel that if I let myself get fat, then I’d lose me!” she dug her fingers into her chest, where she realised that one of her lapels was hanging loose. She grabbed it and ripped it off completely. “Can’t you understand that? No-one would value me as the person that I am, because to a lot of people, looking like this from the neck down is all that I’m about. There’s nothing else, apparently!” she gave a short cynical laugh and tossed the lapel over her shoulder.

  She looked Jackie in the face. “And it seems you think the same, or you wouldn’t have said all you did, and that hurts because I thought you knew me better than that.” Her voice threatened to crack, so she bit her lip and fell silent.

  Jackie considered her next words. “Well, it certainly seems that one of your main priorities is keeping slim. You do watch what you eat and you are an exercise freak; you have to admit that.”

  “Yes, I do admit that! But you’re not seeing my point!” Jill was getting frustrated. “I have to do all that, because if I didn’t I’d disappear!”

  She squared up to Jackie. She was tired of having her buttons pushed, so she decided to push a few of Jackie’s. “Why are you incapable of losing weight or at least keeping to a decent diet?” Jackie was about to answer, but Jill held up her hand. “Let me finish. My impression is that you feel that if you did lose weight and kept it off, then you would lose you as well.”

  Jackie scoffed. “That’s absurd.”

  “Is it? Aren’t you hiding behind the weight as an excuse for not succeeding in a way you would have liked? Isn’t your weight your comfort blanket? Doesn’t it make you feel just a tiny bit safe around people because they do treat you like the elephant in the room?” Jackie didn’t answer and looked away, so she pressed another button.

  “You know the conclusion I’ve come to?” she didn’t wait for Jackie to answer. “You’re afraid to lose weight, because then you couldn’t look in the mirror and blame all your woes on what’s reflected back. Your body’s to blame, not you, and the deeper the depression the bigger you have to be so the blame can be bigger, too.”

  Jackie had a wide-eyed gaze fixed on Jill. She looked like a cornered animal that would bolt or attack at any minute, but Jill pressed on. “Aren’t you thinking that if you were slimmer, maybe Bob wouldn’t have dumped you?”

  “No, I’m not!” Jackie said just a little too quickly.

  “Well, funnily enough, neither am I.” Jill retorted just as quickly. “I think it’s because you’ve always been the acquiescent and placating one in the marriage.” She dug a nail gently into her temple. “Big words there for a skinny lady, but you know what I mean. You never complained, never made demands on Bob, never made your half of the union a meaningful one, so he took you very much for granted and he,” Jill jerked a thumb into nothing. “Felt it was alright and acceptable to treat you like shit, because you treated yourself like shit.”

  Jackie now looked as if she would attack rather than bolt, and
Jill held up her hands. “Sorry, my darling, but that’s what I think.” Jackie didn’t answer or attack and she decided she’d pushed enough buttons but continued with her lecture.

  “And, do you want to know a secret? The other day Terry accused me of castrating him because I was always shoving in his face that I was the main bread-winner, and he admitted that he’d allowed me to make my career the most important thing in my life, and that’s when I realised!” she snapped her fingers. “When he said he’d allowed me, I thought he’d meant it in a chauvinistic sense, but although he might have, after consideration I thought that if he’d just said once, ‘I don’t like you spending so much time away from home’ or ‘Penny needs you more than the office’ or ‘I need you more than the office’, then I probably would have seen his point. If he’d asserted himself a little more, then I just might have valued him and my home life a little more.”

  Jackie still wasn’t speaking, and Jill wasn’t even sure she was listening, but she was on a roll so she continued. “Terry gave me too much freedom and power over our relationship, and you did the same to Bob. I felt it was acceptable to spend more time at the office than at home because he didn’t state otherwise. When I told him what had happened at Catwalk, he cared as much about me losing my job as he did about the fact that I had one, which was pretty well nothing, and it was then he voiced his feelings. And, it was then I realised I’d been blessed