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A Weighty Marriage
Jiggling the frying pan and flipping the pancake Peter Mendes felt like a chef. He threw open the window and a shaft of sun streamed in. The air tasted of wet leaves. In the living room the baritone voice of the opera singer boomed.
Wrapping a white sleeping gown around her, his wife shuffled into the kitchen. She wore the silver-coloured rimmed glasses she had bought recently. Secretary's glasses, Peter had called them.
He nodded to a heaped plate. "Pancakes?"
She crinkled her nose, and shook her head in early morning daze. In the mornings she had the reckless and cuddly gait of a schoolgirl.
"Now," he said. "I wouldn't have made them if I knew you wanted none."
"Can't you fit them all in?"
"Is that a string of sarcasm I hear in your voice," he said. He flipped the pancake again, smiling in childish pride. "I thought you loved pancakes on lazy Sunday mornings. Remember when you told me your grandma hooked you on pancakes when you were a toddler?"
"I haven't cooked pancakes for over a month."
"Exactly," Peter interrupted, lifting his hands like an impassioned speaker. "So I thought I would make some myself."
"I mean I went off pancakes - I am on a diet." She paused, and her statement dangled in mid-air between them like a piece of stale meat. "These days when I see a plate so full I try to imagine how its dimensions would fit in my stomach."
Peter stared at her, up and down: now he knew why he had felt the night before that something was out of place, as if he had forgotten something. He had arrived late from his three-week-trip to France and slipped into bed without switching the light. Now the morning revealed a new figure before him. The flab his wife had carried around her waist no longer rolled over her sleeping gown belt, her jowls had shrunk, her cheekbones lifted, her chin jutted. She looked taller in her clean-cut frame.
She said, "While you ate your heart out I did a spring cleaning - with my eating habits. A cup of herbal tea makes wonders in freshening the body and the mind."
Was that a sneer twisting her mouth? Did she eye his bulging stomach? He stopped munching the piece of pancake, balking in self-consciousness, disgusted at the way his jowls wobbled when he talked and the bag of skin under his chin that gave him a round and dazed face.
Peter fell silent and she strode back into the bedroom. Lowering himself on the edge of the sofa, Peter flipped the TV channels with dejected vengeance. He contemplated the stomach sprawled before him as if it belonged to someone else. The rolls of fat folded on each other, thick as baguettes. Then he wolfed the pancakes, not in hunger, but in greed and revenge.
When they had met 2 years earlier Peter knew he would take her as his wife. He had been 29, and strands of his hair were graying. And he wanted a child; a child would be his project. When Peter thought of a child he thought of a limb, that he would grow a limb, an extension of himself. He had met her at a friend's party, and the next day he called his friend at work and asked him what he thought of her. She suits you, his friend said.
"Her looks?"
There was a pause and then his friend said her looks would "suffice for me." So there and then Peter decided Anita Woodrow would be his wife. That day, during lunch-break, he bought a bottle of Glenfiddich; with his colleagues they toasted his project and family-to-be.
The next time they met he contemplated her: her matted hair, her eyes wide as if permanently surprised, her breasts sagging, her small bottom, and her high heels that gave her a stilted gait. Six dates later he kissed her, and she responded. Then he drew back. The courtship had to run its course. In every successive date he imagined himself a bird feeding her a morsel of food, proving his qualities as a husband and a father.
When they kissed and hugged - as he dropped her home at the end of a date - she shuddered in his embrace, as if cowering. He trembled too, in sexual arousal, but sex was off the agenda. Sex would give them a false sense of love and attachment, deceiving and corrupting the mind. Many couples mistake their sexual ecstasy for love, so for Peter the test of their love would be their patience and dedication.
One hundred and ninety-two days after they had met Peter and Anita Woodrow formed their union.
His wife moved into his apartment. Their evenings became a pattern: they entertained each other with food, and sipped rum and liquor in each other's arms, and then sometimes made love. On most nights Peter cooked, the frying pan overflowing, awash with melted cheese and cream, glistening with bacon.
"Peter, you really ought to cook a little less," his wife complained often. "It's sinful to stuff ourselves with so much food."
"I under-calculate the ingredients, dear. It takes time to get used to cooking for two. Before we married I used to put something together in the microwave. Shouldn't you be grateful I am feeding us so well?" Then he would smile in childish smugness.
For Peter this was a time of bingeing: his lovemaking whetted his appetite for the good life, and he developed a taste for fine liquors and took to smoking a pipe and listening to opera classics. Making love proved a tussle. His wife squeaked like a rabbit, and at other times giggled; to muffle the sounds that escaped her mouth Peter would put on one of his opera CDs.
Three months into their marriage Peter caught his wife observing her sideways profile in the mirror, frowning. "Never have I been so fat," she said. "Peter, we are both growing fat."
He was not the one to look into mirrors and worry about his figure, yet making love had become an uphill trudge, and the food they stuffed themselves with on the evenings' blunted their craving for each other. When he lowered himself into her they heaved, rolling and pitching like a ship in a storm, and he had to clutch to the mattress to steady himself. Every few seconds he slipped out of her. After a few minutes he slumped, too tired to go on, so in making love he had to focus all his mental energy into it. That way he could come in a few minutes. Then he would work on her with his finger.
I would rather masturbate, he thought often, though he immediately dismissed the thought as a bad omen. He could trace this thought to an incident a few weeks into his marriage. He had been watching a TV quiz show presented by a woman whose bust seemed as if made of wax, so perfect in its shape and lilt. He fumbled himself and before thinking about his actions he spurted his feverish arousal. As he wiped clean the sofa with a kitchen paper towel he felt a sting of guilt: by masturbating for another woman he had corrupted his marriage. And now, in urgent finality, he thought about his project.
For several months they put their mind into conception. Nothing happened, and one night, after several tests had affirmed their fertility, they lay in bed in frustrated helplessness.
"What's wrong with us?" he said.
"You're the doctor."
"A colleague suggested that perhaps it's your obesity," he said.
"Look who's talking."
In his mind's eye he peered at them as if a fly on the ceiling. The two people that lay in bed were padded in a layer of fat. Their bodies rolled like dough. Their eyes were half-closed, their breathing a faint wheeze, their mouths hinged open - two people that were growing weary and old before their time.
Now, on this Sunday morning, Peter felt he could eat another plateful of pancakes, like a drunk who wakes with a hangover and hits the bottle again. As his wife stepped into the living room Peter sat up erect and riffled through the paper. She wore her hair in a ponytail; make-up glazed her face. A purple-red dress huddled her newly acquired curves.
He blurted, "You look cheap with make-up."
"But I like it, a little touch here and there."
"Don't sneer at me," he said. "Going out?"
"To a friend's place."
Twiddling his pipe, he eyed her as she washed the cup with the baroque design ripples on it; the one he had bought her in Prague. He filled his pipe with tobacco, removed his glasses and stood up, self-conscious in his pear profile. He puffed his pipe with the air of a sulking scholar. He said, "May I ask whose friend's place?"
"Don't be resentful," she said. "You can trust me."
"I am not resentful."
"I'll be gone only the morning. I thought a peaceful morning to read the Times should suits you fine."
She flitted past him, fresh as a bird at dawn, fluffing her feathers as she hopped away from the nest. He realized, in helpless exasperation, how little he knew his wife. Her life before they met, when she lived in the city, was a mystery. And now, in her new reincarnation - dabbled with make-up, slimmed down, flitting like a bird - she seemed a stranger.
The next day it was in this sense of urgency and loss that Peter nursed a thought to tear the train ticket and miss the seminar on the misuse of antibiotics. But his pride did not allow him. Besides, the seminar offered 3 days of rehabilitation and reflection. He vowed to return home brimming with convictions, to set his marriage straight and mend his figure.
He decreed himself a diet, and throughout the first morning of the seminar he thought of ways to avoid food. But the more he thought about food the more he craved it. For the mid-morning break he couldn't resist a toast and a croissant and a coffee with 4 teaspoons of sugars. For lunch he puffed his pipe to blunt the hunger pangs, but when the aroma of roasted duck wafted from the dining room he threw his hands up and shambled in and ate the whole meal, including the creamed caramel for dessert. Then, at dinner, how could he resist the lasagna followed by spare ribs?
That night he called his wife. No answer. He called again and again late into the night; no answer still.
The next day he ate more than on the first. Whenever he urged himself to skip tea or lunch the opposite happened - he gobbled the food as if it was his last meal. He called his wife again, and when no one answered he dialed the number of Jack Frost, his neighbor and handyman.
"No, siree, I haven't heard a sound upstairs," Jack said.
"If you see her tell her to be home tomorrow evening."
"Now you know that I don't like to poke my business into my neighbor's lives," Jack said. "Is something the matter?"
"Just tell her."
"You sound a bit perky, if you ask me," Jack said. "When I saw your wife last she was dressed to kill, as they say."
"Very funny," Peter said. "Now, I'm very busy. Were I clear Jack?"
"I was just saying, your wife is dressing to kill these days."
Cursing under his breath, Peter slammed down the phone. All he wanted is treat his wife to dinner when he returned, and then perhaps they could go to the cinema. The times called for a fresh courtship. But when he arrived home Peter walked into a hollow silence. He switched on the TV so the gabble of voices would keep him company. He smoked his pipe and poured a glass of whiskey. Sipping and puffing and pacing. Sipping and puffing and pacing.
When his wife came in he said, "How about going out for dinner? And there is a comedy at the cinema you would love."
"I'm tired Peter," she said. "Maybe tomorrow."
"I am working tomorrow night, darling." He took her hand in his. "You look nice in those glasses."
"Are you drunk?"
"No."
"Yes you are, your mouth stinks with whiskey." She drew away from him. "Peter, why are you drinking?"
"To warm up." He took two steps towards her. She bobbed her head from side to side, as if to dodge him.
"Can I make a tea?" she said.
"Give me a hug." They hugged and he pressed her to him in a vice-grip. Never would he let her go. "Let me take you to bed darling."
She made her herbal tea and stood cupping the mug in both hands, sipping the steaming tea with a slurping sound. Her whiff of perfume made him groggy and reckless. Her poise was erect, not slouching as usual.
He said, "I cannot help notice that our marriage is becoming a bit monochromatic. Maybe we should work on our project. You see, I was thinking about it on the way here - for a marriage to move forward, not to get stuck, there has to be a project, to keep the momentum going. It's like political theory - for a society not to degenerate into civil war there has to be continuous development. Get my point?"
She crossed her hands. "I hope this is not another of your pulpit theories on life?"
His voice came out as a whispered plea. "I am talking about a child."
Putting her mug on the table, he tugged her to the bedroom, into bed, and fumbled with her buttons and then with her bra. A button broke loose and she groaned; and he uttered a faint "Damn you." He kissed her and then sucked her nipples - but she lay there, her eyes wide open, her body stiff. He lifted his head like a vulture pausing before he tore into his meal, standing on all fours, straddling her body. A laugh trickled his throat, but when it escaped him it sounded like a growl.
"What's wrong?" he said.
Her voice was broken. "I fell in love with someone else."
He scrambled off her, scampering to the edge of the bed. "Who?"
"That hardly matters." She stared at the ceiling and tears glazed her eyes.
When he looked at her now he saw a stranger, and in his nakedness he basked in awkward soreness, as if the morning after a one-night stand he never meant to have. Her voice grated, no longer the drawl he knew. Her naked body was firm, the tiny hair on her chest erect. She looked sexy and Peter wanted to make love to this woman before him. He made a mental count: they had not had sex for about 3 months. Now he would never have her again.
Peter unraveled Anita Woodrow after she moved in with her new lover. A friend of Anita's he had met told him that Anita is a men's woman. Her marriage was a phase. At any one time she sought a lover who mirrored the kind of emotional and personal state she was in; when she met Peter she wanted someone who would give her stability. Now she had moved on and wanted something vain; she flaunted her new man like an expensive coat.
Good fucking riddance, Peter muttered one day in rebellious pride, and after he said it he knew he had put her behind him.
Alone at home Peter felt restless in the evenings. Even reading seemed a drag. He started joining his younger colleagues at the pub after work, guzzling whiskey neat. His fridge was empty, and he had no mind for cooking; that was a drag too. So he picked scraps of food at the canteen at work, or takeaways on the way home, or pub food. On weekends he started playing rugby with old friends. He substituted his pipe for Cuban cigars.
In the span of 2 months he lost weight without dieting. It just happened, his appetite had shrunk, and eating felt a waste of time. Never before in his life had his stomach been so flat. His face became lean, more symmetrical, and his jawbones and cheekbones now stretched through the skin.
At a friend's party 3 months after his wife left, Peter met an old friend, Tara Cox. Her turquoise eyes entranced him, with their pool of blackness in the middle, small as a pin's head, like a raft bobbing in the Caribbean Sea. They chatted and laughed and danced, and when the last guests straggled home, Peter and Tara strode to his car. They drove to a Chinese takeaway, and as he ate noodles with soy chicken and afterwards drove home he observed the night unfold with uncanny irony - he had also met Anita at a party, gone to the same takeaway for a boozy snack, eaten the same dish, and probably also said the same things. It seemed that life is a loop rather than a straight voyage.
Later at home, as the first light came through the windows, Peter was whistling and having a shower. Tara sat on the toilet seat, naked and observing him. "You look damn good," she said, "slimmed down and all. I can't believe you're the same person I saw six months ago."
He arched his eyebrows and whistled louder the opera tune.
"You're quite handsome, you know," she said.
Peter felt more than handsome. He was cultured and educated, well read and well off, a good cook; he had an envious job and charm with women. Oh yes, he had lost his wife, yet he had learned something worth more than Anita: who needs a wife when he, too, could be a women's man?
© Victor Paul Borg
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