Jen collapsed into the red leather booth with an exaggerated, “Phew!” She shook her hair and droplets of melting snow flew.
“You ever heard of an umbrella?” Kyra asked with a grin, picking up her paisley print one and shaking it at Jen.
Chelsea smiled wanly and raised a hand in welcome. The chain-link watchstrap on her wrist jangled.
“Hey,” Jen said. “How are you?”
“I’m—Why?”
“Well, Ted . . .” Jen’s voice trailed off at the sudden icy-hardness in Chelsea’s eyes and jaw.
“Ted what?”
Jen attempted to look confused. “Ted? What about Ted?”
“Did Ted call you?”
“Why would Ted call me? Don’t be ridiculous! Ted and I don’t talk to each other, you know that.” Jen prayed she wasn’t overdoing it. Come on, Ted. Tag, you’re it. Return my call. “I was just asking a simple question, sheesh. Why the federal case?”
Chelsea scowled and fiddled with the straw in her water. “Do you guys need to eat or can we just hit the mall?”
Jen and Kyra exchanged a look.
“Well, I can’t speak for Jen, but I’m famished. I’ve been looking forward to one of Mo’s infamous bacon-mushroom-cheese burgers for two days.”
“Me too. I’m hungry, that is. It’s been a long time since lunch,” Jen explained and then felt annoyed. She was starting to feel embarrassed about her eating again. It was stupid.
“Well, order then. I’ve got a lot of shopping to do!” Chelsea motioned at the menus.
Jen ignored Chelsea’s rudeness and Kyra did one better, saying cheerily, “Me too, Chels. We’ll eat quick. Now what are you having? I know you must be starved. It’s Thursday.”
Thursdays, Jen suddenly remembered, Ted took the girls out for pizza and a movie. Chelsea always raved that it was her self-care night, facial, footbath—no cooking. Kyra was dead-on. There was no way Chelsea had already eaten.
To Chelsea’s credit, she realized her friends remembered and didn’t lie. “Okay, okay . . . so I wasn’t going to eat. Sue me. I’d like to lose a pound or two before Christmas comes and totally sabotages my diet.”
Jen frowned. Chelsea being on a diet was as healthy as a fish taking a break from water.
Kyra appeared empathetic. “Why don’t you have the Mexican burger? I love them here—low fat and vegan, taste great. Or how about the vegetarian chili? Lots of protein, low carb.” Chelsea acquiesced and ordered a chili.
Jen decided to have the bacon-mushroom-cheeseburger too. Her belly flipped in excitement and her mouth watered. It was ridiculous. Did other people’s bodies respond to the idea of food this way?
“So what’s new with everyone?” Jen asked, halfway through their meal, trying to get conversation started again.
Chelsea shrugged. She and Jen looked at Kyra, who also shrugged.
“Come on, guys, we’re supposed to be the oldest friends in the world, but sometimes . . .”
“Sometimes what?” Kyra stole a fry from Jen’s plate and swirled it in the gravy.
Jen was quiet a moment. Chelsea pushed her bowl away. At least she’d eaten most of it.
“Sometimes?” Chelsea reiterated.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Jen wished she hadn’t opened her big mouth. Why couldn’t she just let it be? Who wanted to wreck what they did have over a bit of silliness? Not her. But Kyra and Chelsea wouldn’t let it drop.
“It’s just that lately our visits kind of feel like work,” Jen finally blurted. “We used to count down days, stay out later than planned, arrange another date before we’d hardly gotten a word in. We couldn’t stop talking. I don’t know. . . . Maybe we get together nowadays because of what was, not because of what is. Do you know what I’m saying?”
Chelsea scratched the back of her neck, smoothed her hair and looked blasé.
Kyra put her fry down on the edge of her plate, uneaten. “No, I don’t know what you’re saying. You two are my best friends. I love you guys. I’ve just been preoccupied, that’s all. And I’ve wanted to call you more than I did the last few months, but I figured you’d be busy with work and your family. Plus, you’re always doing stuff with Lana.”
I am?
Chelsea shrugged. “Maybe Jen’s right.”
“Jen is not right. Not this time. You just want to slip away without anyone calling you on not eating again!” Kyra was shaking.
There was a sharp intake of breath. Jen realized it was hers. Chelsea seemed unperturbed. She folded her napkin. “What are you insinuating, Kyra?”
“I’m not insinuating anything. I’m flat out stating that if you’re not careful, you’re going to end up in the hospital again. You’re doing exactly what you did when you were a teenager. You’re too thin. You exercise too much. You don’t eat—”
“Like you don’t exercise at least every other day and watch the calories you consume.”
“I like to be in shape, yes. I keep track of the food I eat to make sure I eat enough. It’s a totally different thing.”
“Right.” Chelsea’s voice could’ve scratched glass.
“You guys!” Jen’s throat was hot and sore. She blinked. “This wasn’t what I wanted. I was just trying to see if you were still into meeting monthly or what. I didn’t want to find out we all hate each other.”
Both Kyra and Chelsea stared at Jen.
“We don’t hate each other,” they said at the same time.
“So how come this is the third visit in a row that’s ended in a fight? We’re acting like my parents. They have nothing in common, so they bicker just to have something to say to each other. Otherwise it would be nada, nothing, no words, zip.”
“Wait!” Kyra said. “You said you didn’t want to find out we ‘all’ hate each other. Does that mean you hate us?”
“Yeah.” Chelsea swiveled in her seat and glared at Jen. “What exactly did you mean by that?”
“Not that I hated you! Not that at all. I don’t know what I meant. I didn’t mean anything.”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“Okay,” Chelsea said. “We’ve established that we don’t hate each other. That’s a good thing.”
“Considering we’re best friends,” Kyra added.
Chelsea grimaced. “Maybe there’s a grain of truth in Jen’s observation. We haven’t been talking much.”
Jen was so glad that Chelsea had eaten, she could’ve kissed her. If only people knew the power of blood sugar! She was almost her old self again.
“I guess, if I’m honest, it’s probably not your guys’ fault at all. It’s probably just me. I’ve been feeling a bit disconnected lately,” Jen said.
The table was silent and awkward again.
“No,” Kyra finally broke the quiet. “I haven’t been telling you guys anything real about my life for months either. You two always know exactly where you’re going and what you want. You make a plan. You make it happen. I’m an idiot. I can’t burden you with another pathetic breakup story. I’m supposed to be a grown-up.’”
“Oh, come on,” Jen said. “The only romance in my life is vicarious. I need the details. All the details.” She grinned, then remembered Greg—and the nightmare with Jay. She had stuff to fess up too.
“You’ll find the right man for you eventually,” Chelsea added.
“I don’t know. I have my doubts when I look at you: the perfect wife, perfect mom with a perfect husband, perfect kids. You’re living the dream.”
Chelsea looked about as pleased as a wet cat.
“What? What’d I say?” Kyra exclaimed, shocked by Chelsea’s expression.
“I am not perfect.” Chelsea enunciated every word and spoke them as if they stood on their own. “I am a person, not just some role—wife, mom, daughter. Not everything in my life is perfect. I don’t need to be glad every minute of the day, and once in my life, just once, I’d like to be allowed to be shitty. To be grouchy. To be a fucking bitch, thank you very fucking much—to not be perfect.”
“Well, you got your wish about the bitch part at least,” Jen said dryly, realizing too late that she’d spoken out loud. Crap.
There was a brief pause. Then Chelsea started to laugh. “I should’ve known you of all people would know what to say,” Chelsea said, sounding almost hysterical. “You really don’t hate me?”
“Of course not. Look, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but if you’re worried that for some reason you can’t be your superwoman self and that we won’t be able to handle it, don’t be.”
Jen looked at Kyra, hoping they were on the same page, not angry with Chelsea but concerned instead. To her relief, Kyra was nodding, a little stunned by the outburst, but not fuming or anything.
“And if you feel pressured by the need to be perfect, well, here’s your news flash of the week,” Jen took a big breath. “You’ve never been perfect. Not even close.”
Chelsea’s eyes widened with surprise that verged on hurt.
Jen hurried on, knitting her eyebrows together and shaking her head in mock sadness. “No, all the way back in grade two, you wore one of my boots home by accident. Then in grade three, you forgot your lunch and ate my favorite cookies. In grade eight, you had a crush on the boy I loved—of course he liked you better than me. In grade nine, you decided that you wanted to be more serious, so you wore plaid pants and white button-up blouses. On you they looked great. My mom was so impressed she made me get some and wear them. I looked like a gray whale beached on Scotland. That was extremely cruel, not perfect at all.”
“And you once told me the wrong answer to an essay question, on purpose!” Kyra chimed in. “And you didn’t apologize. You said maybe it would help me learn to study. You actually like Brussels sprouts and spinach. . . . There is such a thing as being so good that it’s no longer perfect, it’s nauseating.”
“And you yelled at me twice.”
“And you’ve yelled at me way more than twice.”
“And—”
“Okay, okay, I get your point,” Chelsea said.
“No, I’m not sure you do,” Jen said. “That we could only come up with silly things is awful. You really do seem practically perfect. No wonder you feel mental around us, if you feel pressured to keep up some false front.” Jen took a deep breath before continuing, “All these years, I just thought you were nauseatingly perfect naturally. You never even appeared to struggle.”
“What she said,” Kyra said.
Chelsea shook her head. Her eyes were overly bright. “I’m just a little, well . . . maybe sometimes . . .”
“Do you want ice cream?” Jen asked. “It always helps me when I’m floundering.”
Chelsea laughed, but actually nodded. “Maybe just a little bit. The not eating thing isn’t really helping me.”
Jen couldn’t believe Chelsea had admitted that out loud. She was wondering how to best broach the subject, now that Chelsea herself had brought it up, when a waitress appeared.
Kyra quickly ordered three house special sundaes, and Jen opened her mouth to ask Chelsea about her eating but the moment was lost. Chelsea changed the subject.
“So, yeah, sorry about that. The last six months have been bad for me. But what about you guys? We can’t just talk about me. What have you been up to?” Chelsea’s mask was carefully back in place. She was concerned, solicitous Chelsea super-friend again.
How could she have been so blind? Jen berated herself. She’d been Chelsea’s friend forever, but until this year she’d never questioned whether Chelsea really was the carefree, ideal woman she presented.
Jen took a large mouthful of Rocky Road without really tasting it, and something else occurred to her. Perhaps she and Kyra weren’t entirely to blame, weren’t totally terrible friends. Chelsea went out of her way to put her best self forward, starting when? As soon as they got close to some sort of real communication, Chelsea maneuvered away, running and hiding behind her widest-eyed, friendliest gaze and casual questions.
Why hadn’t Jen noticed any of this before? Was she so enamored with the idea of Chelsea, of wanting to be her, that she didn’t even really see her? Funny how she’d always thought it was just being fat that made a person disappear.
Kyra patted her arm, and Jen realized she’d been asked a question.
“What? Sorry—”
“We know. We know. You were off in la-la land. I swear you’re worse than when we were kids. Where do you drift off to all the time anyway?”
“I was just thinking about weight.” That wasn’t totally a lie.
“What are you worrying about? You’re as slim as anybody now,” Kyra said, but she studied Jen critically, and Jen could almost read her mind. She answered the question before Kyra could ask.
“Yes, I’m gaining weight again. Twenty pounds already.” She tried to say it casually.
Kyra just nodded. “I thought something about you was a little different, since you brought it up. I thought you were glowing. I was going to ask you if you had a new guy in your life?”
“No, the passion dancing in my eyes is my newly resurrected love affair with food. No, seriously, ignore my gut, which is probably sticking out because I’m so full now.” Jen was lying about feeling full, but felt she should feel full so she said it anyway. “I’m going to the washroom. Watch me leave, and when I come back, tell me if you can notice I’m fatter again.”
When she returned, both Kyra and Chelsea were watching her. “So?” she asked.
Kyra shook her head. Chelsea nodded hers.
“Well,” Jen demanded. “Which is it?”
“Now you’ve said it, I can kind of see it, but I don’t think it looks like twenty pounds—and I don’t think you need to worry at all. You look great. You don’t have it in you to be a bone rack,” said Kyra.
“You’re heavier,” Chelsea stated. In her newly adopted, completely devoid of tact manner, Jen thought.
“But,” she relented, “you can stop the damage. Kyra’s right. It doesn’t affect your looks yet.”
They had always been thin. They couldn’t know what it was like. Every comment, no matter how kindly meant, felt like a slam.
You’re being too sensitive, Jen reprimanded herself, and knew it was true. Besides she had asked them their opinion.
“Well,” she announced, forcing cheer. “I think it’s just my annual hibernation mode. I’ll snap out of it, no worries.”
Kyra and Chelsea nodded encouragingly, and before they could flounder for words or endure any more excruciating silences, Kyra said, “Let’s shop!”
They paid their bills and headed into the cinnamon-scented, white-light-sprinkled mall.
After a few shops, they stopped at Cleopatra’s Closet, lured in by signs announcing “indecent sale prices.” As they picked through bins of skimpy undies and fur-trimmed “Mrs. Claus” bras, laughing out loud at some of the more outlandish panties—underwear should not be simultaneously made of velour and vinyl, they all agreed—Jen realized she was still feeling insecure.
“I know I’m probably being annoying, but seriously, do you think I look okay? I worked so hard—I may not have it in me to be a bone rack, but I don’t want to go back to being a coat rack.”
Kyra looked at her sharply. “I meant that as a compliment, not a failing. You know that, right?”
Jen checked a size tag on a pink push-up bra that was only $9.99 and nodded. “I guess.”
“Your weight issues are your own, Jen. Chelsea and I don’t even see your body unless you point it out. But until you’re happy in your own skin, you’ll misconstrue anything anyone says to you.” She waved a purple g-string for emphasis.
Jen bit her lip. “I know it’s stupid, but it’s hard to change my head.”
Chelsea, holding a polar fleece pyjama set, had been standing silently beside Kyra’s growing stack of barely there choices. She pulled Jen into a hug. “It really is, Jen. But you’re doing great. You’re trying. That’s the main thing.”
Kyra put her arms around both of them and squeezed. “Don’t leave me out!”
“The staff here is going to think we’re nuts,” Jen said, laughing and pulling out of the huddle.
“Well, they’d be right.”
A cheerful salesgirl rang up their orders. “You’re good friends, hey?” she asked.
“The best,” Kyra affirmed. Chelsea nodded, and Jen smiled. She recognized the deep truth of the words. Who else could you be completely neurotic around, but old, old friends?
Later though, recalling the night’s conversation as she pulled things out of their bags to look at them, Jen remembered something her mother had said long ago.
“Don’t be too attached, Jen. People change. They grow. Sometimes bad things happen. I don’t want you to be hurt.”
Jen wound the tiny music box she’d bought for her mom, and watched the little carousel turn to the tinkling melody of the old children’s song, “Animal Fair.” You were wrong, Mom, she thought. Wrong.