Toby

The main reason my mom is so fat is because she still misses my father so much. He died when I was a little baby, just keeled right over during supper one night. His face landed smack in the middle of the plate—that’s how I picture it, anyway. Mom doesn’t remember what they were having, probably something like tuna casserole.

Splat.

It’s not funny. That was my father.

Anyway, she still misses him a lot—there’s pictures all over the house—and the way she tries to cheer herself up is by eating a lot of cake and candy, but she just ends up even sadder because of how fat she keeps getting, so she eats more cake and candy to try and cheer herself up, and so on.

Day after day, year after year.

She’s never told me how much she weighs, she says that’s personal. But you know what I was thinking? Seriously? We could set up a tent in the backyard and make a little money, you know? Get some fliers out: twenty-five cents to step inside and guess the Fat Lady’s weight and win yourself a prize, a blueberry pie or a ham or something. Which sounds like a terrible way to treat your own mother, I know, but she’d get her share. We’d go right down the middle.

I finally went ahead and asked her about it one day last week, if she’d be interested. I explained the whole thing very carefully.

She just kept staring at me. “Is that your idea of funny?”

I told her, “No way. I wouldn’t joke about something like this.”

She stared at me even harder. “You want to put me...in the circus?”

“Not the circus, Mom. Just in the yard, the backyard, that’s all.”

She opened her mouth like she was going to say something, but then she turned around and hurried off to her room—boom, boom, boom—and closed the door and locked it.

I went over and listened. She was boo-hooing away in there. It sounded muffled, like her face was in the pillow.

Poor thing.

I told her through the door, I said, “Mom, I’m really sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

She went on crying.

“I just thought it might be a way for us to make a little extra money, that’s all. I mean, it’s not like you would even have to do anything, you know? All you’d have to do—”

“Toby, stop.”

I gave up. What’s the use? She’ll never be happy.