Revenge of the Paste Eaters Read online

  Oddly enough, I have only vague memories of my father’s mother when I was a child. Not all of them are pleasant. She tended to be a little sharp with kids. With me, anyway. She made excellent oatmeal-raisin cookies, which she froze for emergencies such as visits from grandchildren. Frankly, it would have suited me better if she had thawed them before she gave them to me. She was a large woman, particularly when I lived closer to the floor, and being younger, she moved faster and less predictably than my other grandmother. I always felt a little like the cat around her.

  My grandfather suffered a heart attack when I was still quite young and his life after that was one of slow, steady decline. Eventually they gave up farming and sold off the cows because he could no longer help and my grandmother could not run the farm and look after him at the same time. She told me that when I was very young, my grandfather used to play cards with me and we had splendid times together, that at least for a while I was the apple of his eye. I have no memory of that. I remember a man who almost never talked, and who, when he did talk, talked slowly, often incorporating agonizingly long periods of silence and reflection into his conversation that were almost impossible for a six- or eight-year-old to sit through. By the time I was ten I would have milked cows with my bare hands to get out of having to talk to my grandfather. And I was terrified of cows.

  He died when I was fifteen. I remember his funeral because I kept waiting for some overpowering sense of grief to take hold of me (I was fifteen: emotions were pointless unless they were overpowering), yet none did. I remember his funeral because my father, the cornerstone of stoic Gary Cooper/John Wayne-ish Manhood upon which our family unit was built, burst into tears and was so overcome with grief that had my mother not been there to catch him, he would have fallen on the ground. I had never seen my father cry. I had never seen a tear roll down his cheek before, and there he was, disintegrating before my very eyes.

  I was neither a particularly astute nor sensitive child at fifteen: in fact, almost everything that I remember happening when I was fifteen was about me. I suppose there were other people in the world—there are enough of them now—but like twelve, thirteen, fourteen, sixteen, and seventeen, it was a difficult year and I had my hands full of my own concerns. I must have found some way to quiz my mother about my father’s behavior at the funeral (my father and I found just living in the same house challenging enough, forget complex emotional interactions). She said that my father and his father had never talked to each other while they were both alive, and now they never would. I found that very poignant. I probably wandered off into the gravel pit and wrote a story in my head about it. I was not foolhardy enough to try to talk to my own father.

  I went on about my life. I noted that my grandmother, who had suffered from a bad heart when I was a child and who frequently spent most of each winter in bed on the living room couch, appeared to recover shortly after my grandfather died of his. (She always suffered from depression in the winter: she learned to cope with it more effectively when it was identified as seasonal affective disorder.) I went on to college, got my degree, and eventually came home.

  My adventures in college had not all been a roaring success. In high school I had teetered on the edge of the black pit of depression, but initially the excitement of going away to school, of confronting new and challenging ideas, pulled me away. I suspected my hometown of being excessively conservative and conformist and I was anxious to embrace the diverse and eclectic world of the university: it did not occur to me that I could put my fundamental definition of “normal” at risk. I began to lose my internal sense of balance. Three-quarters of the way through my college career, I fell into a black hole. There were days in my last year of school when I could not bring myself to leave my dorm room. When I should have been planning my bright new career as a college graduate, I was struggling to survive the day. I graduated and I came home again shaken and scared and depressed, with no idea what to do with my life. Something was wrong but I did not have the tools or the skills to identify or deal with it. And I was too tired. I got an apartment, got a cat, got a job in a local factory. For a long time I worked nights.

  About the only person who was around, awake, and able to socialize when I got off work in the morning was my grandmother. I would go over to her house and we would have breakfast together and talk about houseplants, gardening, ceramics, and my desire to write the Great American Novel. She told me she also had written a book once, but I never saw it. I tried: I could never get her to show it to me. We went on gradually to talk of other things. My mother. Her mother. As I struggled with the thoughtseed that I too easily enjoyed women and had to work too hard to like men, my grandmother chatted on happily about her own theory that many women probably should have been lesbians. She had any number of women friends who would have been much better off if they had walked away from their marriages and pursued their affections for their friends. It was fine with her. It was also a secret she kept like a thousand other secrets because—while she would entertain any manner of idea while talking to a stray and possibly lost grandchild—she had very strict and unforgiving standards for her job as the grande dame of the family.

  Long accustomed to storing “good” feelings here and “bad” feelings there, I found no real conflict with the notion that she led a double life. I can remember telling my sisters, “You don’t really know her—you have to sit down and talk to her when no one else is around because she’s a completely different person then,” but neither of my sisters appreciate complexity for complexity’s sake. She had offended the UnWee in ways that will not be resolved in this lifetime, and the Wee One and my grandmother together in one room put some very strong, outspoken opinions at odds with each other too often for comfort.

  I loved her. She was there for me during a time in my life when I did not have a great deal left to extend to a hostile audience and I had a pathetic shortage of friends. She taught me to understand and cherish the bonds that older and younger women can share when they are willing.

  She also played me.

  It is a virtue that has fallen out of favor within my lifetime: at one time women prided themselves on their ability to manipulate the people around them. They “ruled from behind,” and their skills at getting the men in their lives—anyone in their lives—to do the things they wanted done without their having to ask . . . these skills had value. They were skills to be practiced, like a geisha practices the sweeps of her fan.

  I was leaving my grandmother’s house one day and she followed me out onto the back porch and said wistfully, “I wish your father would do something about these steps.”

  I had not yet met the man. He had always been around, but he only liked children under the age of two and over the age of twenty-two and I had been his flesh and blood, too old to cherish and too young to talk to for far too long. I remember thinking, Well darn that man. “What is it you want him to do?” I asked, resolved that I could negotiate a peaceful settlement.

  She wanted a railing on the steps. She had lost her balance and almost fallen, and with her bad knee the steps had become a treacherous obstacle for her.

  I hunted up my father and I said, “Why won’t you put a railing on Gramma’s back steps for her?”

  He looked at me as if I had slapped him in the face, and he said—as he always says when he’s confused—“What?”

  I capitulated. “Gramma needs a railing on her back steps,” I said, “she needs something to hang on to because her knee isn’t very stable anymore.”

  And my father scowled and he said, “I wish she would just ask me,” and he stalked off. To find tubing to build his railing out of, as it turned out, because all she had to do was express the slightest desire for something and it was custom built for her by the end of the day . . .

  “You never asked him,” I accused her. “You used me to get him to do something and you made me look like an idiot because you never asked him to do it in the first place.”

  “He does so much for
me,” she suffered. “I hate to be a bother to him.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” I dismissed—because I knew by then that she found some odd vicarious pleasure in my bad language. “You’d be less of a ‘bother’ to him if you just asked him for what you want instead of using me or anybody who walks past your web to ask him for you.”

  She studied me for a long silence, measuring her options. Eventually she smiled. “But,” she said, pleased with herself, “you did it.”

  When I was a kid she always tried to get me to call her “Gramma Lucille.” I never did, because for some reason I could never remember “Lucille” (I couldn’t remember the right word for “pickle” at the same age, and every time I asked for one someone would give me an olive). She told me that when she died she wasn’t going to go to heaven, she was going to go sit on her headstone and watch the rest of us. I would hope that heaven offers more challenging options than that, but whenever I drive past her headstone, I always wave and murmur, “Gramma Lucille.”

  fatso

  my friend annie and i were having lunch and we fell into a discussion of people of size. She told me she had gone to the fair with a friend of hers who is a young man of substance, and while he was standing in the midway, thinking about his elephant ear, someone walked past him, said, “You don’t need to eat that,” and kept on walking away. Gone before he could register what had been said, much less formulate a stunning retort.

  And that person was probably right: he did not need to eat that elephant ear. Given what they are made of, the question then becomes: Who does need to eat an elephant ear? And to what benefit? Are elephant ears inherently better for thin people than for fat ones? Do we suppose that that one particular elephant ear will somehow alter the course of this man’s life in some way that all of the elephant ears before it, or all of the elephant ears to follow, might not? And last but not least, what qualifies any of us for the mission of telling other people what they should or should not eat?

  I have probably spent most of my life listening to other people tell me that as a middle-class white person, I have no idea what it is like to be discriminated against. I have never experienced the look that tells me I am not welcome, I have never been treated rudely on a bus, I have never been reminded to keep my place, I have never been laughed at, ridiculed, threatened, snubbed, not waited on, or received well-meaning service I would just as soon have done without. I have never had to choose which streets I will walk down and which streets I will avoid. I have never been told that my needs cannot be met in this store. I have never experienced that lack of social status that can debilitate the soul.

  My feelings were not hurt when I was twelve years old and the shoe salesman measured my feet and said he had no women’s shoes large enough for me, but perhaps I could wear the boxes.

  I have never been called crude names, like “fatso” or “lardbucket” or “fatass.” My nickname on the school bus was never “Bismarck,” as in the famous battleship. No one ever assumed I was totally inept in all sports except those that involved hitting things because—and everyone knows—the more weight you can put behind it, the farther you can kick or bat or just bully the ball.

  I have never picked up a magazine with the photograph of a naked woman of substance on the cover, to read, in the following issue, thirty letters to the editor addressing sizism, including the one that said, “She should be ashamed of herself. She should go on a diet immediately and demonstrate some self-control. She is going to develop diabetes, arthritis, hypertension, and stroke, she will die an ugly death at an early age and she will take down the entire American health system with her.” And that would, of course, be the only letter I remember. I would not need some other calm voice to say, “You don’t know that—and you don’t know that the same fate would not befall a thin woman.”

  No one has ever assumed I am lazy, undisciplined, prone to self-pity, and emotionally unstable purely based on my size. No one has ever told me all I need is a little self-discipline and I too could be thin, pretty—a knockout, probably, because I have a “pretty face”—probably very popular because I have a “good personality.” My mother never told me boys would never pay any attention to me because I’m fat.

  I have never assumed an admirer would never pay any attention to me because I’m fat. I have never mishandled a sexual situation because I have been trained to think of myself as asexual. Unattractive. Repugnant.

  Total strangers have never walked up to me in the street and started to tell me about weight loss programs their second cousin in Tulsa tried with incredible results, nor would they ever do so with the manner and demeanor of someone doing me a nearly unparalleled favor. I have never walked across a parking lot to have a herd of young men break into song about loving women with big butts. When I walk down the street or ride my bicycle, no one has ever hung out the car window to yell crude insults. When I walk into the houses of friends I have never been directed to the “safe” chairs as if I just woke up this morning this size and am incapable of gauging for myself what will or will not hold me.

  I have never internalized any of this nonexistent presumption of who I am or what I feel. I would never discriminate against another woman of substance. I would never look at a heavy person and think, “self-pitying, undisciplined tub of lard.” I would never admit that while I admire beautiful bodies, I rarely give the inhabitants the same attention and respect I would a soul mate because I do not expect they would ever become a soul mate. I would never tell you that I was probably thirty years old before I realized you really can be too small or too thin, or that the condition causes real emotional pain.

  I have never skipped a high school reunion until I “lose a few pounds.” I have never hesitated to reconnect with an old friend. I will appear anywhere in a bathing suit. If my pants split, I assume—and I assume everyone assumes—it was caused by poor materials.

  I have always understood why attractive women are offended when men whistle at them.

  I have never felt self-conscious standing next to my male friend who is five foot ten and weighs 145 pounds.

  I am not angry about any of this.

  the enchantment factor

  for my birthday my Beloved gave me a Dremel.

  I have wanted a Dremel for a long time. And indeed, as I have shared the news of my Beloved’s gift, my friends have responded “(slight sigh) I’ve always wanted one of those,” or “What’s a Dremel?” I have no idea what a Dremel is. It’s a power tool. According to the box, it’s a “rotary tool.” It is not necessary to know what a Dremel is to want one. It is small. It is neat. It runs on electricity (although there is a rechargeable Dremel with its own battery pack). It comes with a lively assortment of bits and brushes and little felt things that look important and practical. A Dremel is an instrument: it is the sort of handy, pragmatic little tool that one eyes and murmurs reverently, “That would be good for something.”

  My father has a Dremel. My father has two separate buildings filled with tools. I suspect that—had he so desired—he could have lived a full and complete life Dremel-free, his routers and drills and buffers filling in those spaces that the missing Dremel left, but I believe—and there is a note of bitterness here—that he has not one Dremel but two. I first fell in love with the whole idea of a Dremel when I found one nesting in a small plastic box, its bits and brushes lined up cozily next to it, in one of his two tool buildings. (“Shed” does not properly describe my father’s tool storage units. One of his “sheds” is the leftover part of a house.) I said, “What does this do, Dad?” The answer, as I recall, was vague. Several years later we were clearing out his mother’s house after she went into a nursing home and I found her Dremel, which, he maintained, he had purchased for her and therefore now owned by default. He already had one, but it seemed inappropriate to covet my grandmother’s rotary tool while we were unraveling her life.

  My grandmother requested a Dremel to use to build furniture for her dollhouse. Since her dollhouse was furnished
, I can only assume she did use it.

  I have never seen my father use either one of his Dremels. Once, perhaps. He may have used it to cut out the inner lining of a plastic case I bought for a quarter. The inner plastic lining was molded to hold something, but the something had been sold long before I came along, and I did not have, nor could I even identify, the something that was no longer there. I wanted to use the case for something else. So he Dremeled out the inside. It looked like work to me.

  My Beloved has a Dremel, although it appears to have run off to live with one of her friends and has been reluctant to return home. My Beloved used her Dremel once, to her recollection: she drilled a hole in her big toenail with it. Intentionally. This is not high on my list of potential Dremel uses.

  A day or so after I received my Dremel I reported to my dentist to have my teeth cleaned, and as the dental assistant fired up her handheld tool I thought to myself, “I could do this at home—all I really need is a packet of that peppermint-flavored sand she uses . . .”

  I will probably do that right after I drill a hole in my big toenail.

  Dremels are exceptionally handy for sawing off the ends of bolts that stick out and get in the way. Should I ever be pestered by an obstreperous bolt end, I am now prepared.

  The Dremel company appears not to be wholly ignorant of the enchantment factor that endears their rotary tool to potential buyers. Packed inside the Dremel box are three pieces of literature: a small Dremel manual, explaining carefully in three languages that Dremels should not be used in the bathtub or to sever their own cords, and carefully—almost painfully—clarifying the differences between a Dremel and an electric drill; a smaller book of all of the delightful accessories and attachments the proud new owner can now purchase for their Dremel; and a third book—by far the thickest of the three—entitled “175+ Uses for a Rotary Tool.” This presumes that the average Dremel owner purchased their rotary tool in an anticipation of some as yet unidentified need, and it is the responsibility of the manufacturer to clarify what that need might be, thus tidily eliminating the possibility of buyer’s remorse.