Mars Bars while Eleanor Parker, playing a crippled opera singer, groped her mournful way through
Interrupted Melody
. But the one I liked best was
The Red Shoes
, with Moira Shearer as a ballet dancer torn between her career and her husband. I adored her: not only did she have red hair and an entrancing pair of red satin slippers to match, she also had beautiful costumes, and she suffered more than anyone. I munched faster and faster as she became more and more entangled in her dilemma – I wanted those things too, I wanted to dance and be married to a handsome orchestra conductor, both at once – and when she finally threw herself in front of a train I let out a bellowing snort that made people three rows ahead turn around indignantly. Aunt Lou took me to see it four times.
I saw a number of
Adult
pictures long before I was an adult, but no one ever questioned my age. I was quite fat by this time and all fat women look the same, they all look forty-two. Also, fat women are not more noticeable than thin women; they’re less noticeable, because people find them distressing and look away. To the ushers and the ticket sellers I must’ve appeared as a huge featureless blur. IfI’d ever robbed a bank no witness would have been able to describe me accurately.
We would come out of the movie red-eyed, our shoulders still heaving, but with a warm feeling of accomplishment. Then we would go for a soda or two or for a snack at Aunt Lou’s apartment – grilled crab-meat sandwiches with mayonnaise, cold chicken salad. She kept a number of these things in her refrigerator or in cans on her cupboard shelves. Her apartment building was an older one, with dark wood trim and large rooms. The furniture was dark and large, too, frequently dusty and always cluttered: newspapers on the chesterfield, afghan shawls on the floor, odd shoes or stockings under the chairs, dishes in the sink. To me this disorder meant you could do what you liked. I imitated it in my own bedroom, scattering clothes and books and chocolate-bar wrappers over the surfaces so carefully planned by my mother, the dressing table with the sprigged muslin flounce, bedspread to match, rug in harmony. This was the only form of interior decoration I ever did, and the drawback was that sooner or later it had to be cleaned up.
When we’d had our snack Aunt Lou would pour herself a drink, slip off her shoes, settle into one of her podgy chairs, and ask me questions in her rasping voice. She actually seemed interested in what I had to say, and she didn’t laugh when I told her I wanted to be an opera singer.
One of my mother’s ways of dismissing Aunt Lou was to say that she was bitter and frustrated because she didn’t have a husband, but if this was true Aunt Lou kept it well hidden. To me she seemed a lot less bitter and frustrated than my mother, who, now that she’d achieved and furnished her ultimate house, was concentrating more and more of her energy on forcing me to reduce. She really did try everything. When I refused to take the pills or stick to the diets – neatly drawn up by her, with menus for every day of the week listing the number of calories – she sent me to a psychiatrist.
“I like being fat,” I told him, and burst into tears. He sat looking at me with the tips of his fingers together, smiling benevolently but with trace of disgust as I gasped and puffed.
“Don’t you want to get married?” he asked when I had subsided. This started me off afresh, but the next time I saw Aunt Lou I asked her, “Didn’t you want to get married?”
She gave one of her raucous laughs. She was sitting in her overstuffed easy chair, drinking a martini. “Oh, I was married, dear,” she said. “Didn’t I ever tell you?”
I’d always assumed Aunt Lou was an old maid because her last name was the same as my father’s, Delacourt, pronounced
Delacore
. “French nobility, no doubt,” said Aunt Lou. Her great-grandfather had been a farmer, before he decided
Interrupted Melody
. But the one I liked best was
The Red Shoes
, with Moira Shearer as a ballet dancer torn between her career and her husband. I adored her: not only did she have red hair and an entrancing pair of red satin slippers to match, she also had beautiful costumes, and she suffered more than anyone. I munched faster and faster as she became more and more entangled in her dilemma – I wanted those things too, I wanted to dance and be married to a handsome orchestra conductor, both at once – and when she finally threw herself in front of a train I let out a bellowing snort that made people three rows ahead turn around indignantly. Aunt Lou took me to see it four times.
I saw a number of
Adult
pictures long before I was an adult, but no one ever questioned my age. I was quite fat by this time and all fat women look the same, they all look forty-two. Also, fat women are not more noticeable than thin women; they’re less noticeable, because people find them distressing and look away. To the ushers and the ticket sellers I must’ve appeared as a huge featureless blur. IfI’d ever robbed a bank no witness would have been able to describe me accurately.
We would come out of the movie red-eyed, our shoulders still heaving, but with a warm feeling of accomplishment. Then we would go for a soda or two or for a snack at Aunt Lou’s apartment – grilled crab-meat sandwiches with mayonnaise, cold chicken salad. She kept a number of these things in her refrigerator or in cans on her cupboard shelves. Her apartment building was an older one, with dark wood trim and large rooms. The furniture was dark and large, too, frequently dusty and always cluttered: newspapers on the chesterfield, afghan shawls on the floor, odd shoes or stockings under the chairs, dishes in the sink. To me this disorder meant you could do what you liked. I imitated it in my own bedroom, scattering clothes and books and chocolate-bar wrappers over the surfaces so carefully planned by my mother, the dressing table with the sprigged muslin flounce, bedspread to match, rug in harmony. This was the only form of interior decoration I ever did, and the drawback was that sooner or later it had to be cleaned up.
When we’d had our snack Aunt Lou would pour herself a drink, slip off her shoes, settle into one of her podgy chairs, and ask me questions in her rasping voice. She actually seemed interested in what I had to say, and she didn’t laugh when I told her I wanted to be an opera singer.
One of my mother’s ways of dismissing Aunt Lou was to say that she was bitter and frustrated because she didn’t have a husband, but if this was true Aunt Lou kept it well hidden. To me she seemed a lot less bitter and frustrated than my mother, who, now that she’d achieved and furnished her ultimate house, was concentrating more and more of her energy on forcing me to reduce. She really did try everything. When I refused to take the pills or stick to the diets – neatly drawn up by her, with menus for every day of the week listing the number of calories – she sent me to a psychiatrist.
“I like being fat,” I told him, and burst into tears. He sat looking at me with the tips of his fingers together, smiling benevolently but with trace of disgust as I gasped and puffed.
“Don’t you want to get married?” he asked when I had subsided. This started me off afresh, but the next time I saw Aunt Lou I asked her, “Didn’t you want to get married?”
She gave one of her raucous laughs. She was sitting in her overstuffed easy chair, drinking a martini. “Oh, I was married, dear,” she said. “Didn’t I ever tell you?”
I’d always assumed Aunt Lou was an old maid because her last name was the same as my father’s, Delacourt, pronounced
Delacore
. “French nobility, no doubt,” said Aunt Lou. Her great-grandfather had been a farmer, before he decided
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