Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat?: True Stories and Confessions Read online

  Six inches in Chester County?

  Wow!

  And it’s sticking?

  To my butt!

  I didn’t even realize I’d gained weight until I had to get dressed for a speaking engagement, which meant I had to unpeel the fleece sweatsuit I’d worn through November, December, and January, and put on clothes that had actual seams.

  Not possible.

  In February, seams are not your friend.

  Turns out, neither are zippers or buttons.

  I guess I was fooled because my fleece sweatsuit is black.

  So slimming.

  In it, I look like a licorice jellybean.

  Delicious.

  Anyway, to stay on point, I was going to wear a wool blazer with my nice jeans, but neither fit at all. Even my boots didn’t fit, because my calves had gotten bigger.

  Here is what fit:

  My gloves.

  Luckily, my fingers retained their girlish figure.

  It was a foregone conclusion that I couldn’t get into my jeans, because I can’t get into my jeans unless the stars align, but I knew I was in trouble when my boots wouldn’t go on.

  And then I couldn’t button my blazer.

  What’s a jellybean to do?

  I changed into a double-breasted jacket and buttoned it on the outer button, so it looked like a maternity wear for the menopausal.

  But after my gig, I got serious and wanted to start a diet, but I didn’t know which one. Also, at the same time, I wanted to stop eating anything unnatural, like fake sugar.

  Plus I’m also vegetarian.

  That means there’s one thing I can eat.

  But I don’t know what it is.

  I had gone on the South Beach Diet before, but that’s kind of meaty, and I’d read a book called Wheatbelly about eating less wheat, but I didn’t think that would help, since I had an EverythingBelly.

  So I tried to cut down on my caloric intake and had a hard-boiled egg for breakfast, a bowl of soup for lunch, and a kale salad for dinner.

  What happened?

  I couldn’t stick to the diet, and after a week, I was eating tons of pasta for dinner, and for dessert, dumping raw sugar in my coffee and practically bathing in salted caramels from Whole Foods.

  Whoever invented putting salt on sweets was an evil genius.

  I gained two pounds.

  And I began craving salty/sweet things at night.

  Like Bradley Cooper.

  Just kidding.

  Kind of.

  I tried to educate myself on nutrition by ordering more books and watching an online video by a Dr. Robert Lustig, called Sugar: The Bitter Truth. And I learned that instead of blaming the snow, I should have been blaming the sugar.

  The video had been viewed 4,359,323 people, which meant I was the 4,359,324th to learn the following:

  Sugar is bad. Don’t eat sugar. Fructose is bad. Don’t eat fruct.

  Ghrelin is the hunger hormone, and fructose does not suppress ghrelin. Nothing suppresses ghrelin except salted caramels.

  Fructose is not glucose even though they rhyme.

  Leptin is a hormone that tells your brain you’re full. I suspect I am fresh out of leptin, and they don’t sell it at Whole Foods.

  And the bitter truth?

  I need something else to blame.

  The sweet truth?

  I have a sweet tooth.

  Still Here, Kitty?

  By Francesca

  For the first two days of my new life as a cat-owner, I did not see my cat. Just take my word for it, I had one, an absentee cat named Mimi, not that she answers to it. I knew she existed because the kitty litter was periodically disturbed, but it could’ve been my dog, Pip, working on a Zen garden.

  I recently repo’d one of our family cats from my mom in order to catch a particularly audacious mouse terrorizing my apartment. But by the time I arrived with my feline assassin, the mouse had already succumbed to the square of Hershey’s I had set upon a wooden trap.

  Death by chocolate.

  So now I have a cat and no mice.

  But you’re already one step ahead of me, aren’t you?

  Very early in the morning, three days after I brought Mimi home, I woke to find her making a little bed on my tummy. I petted her head, pleased that she had finally decided to make friends. After a few minutes, I got up in the dim blue morning light and padded barefoot across the room to the bathroom. Then I hopped back into bed, disappointed that the cat had now disappeared. I put on my glasses to check what time it was. In doing so, a small gray lump on the rug came into focus.

  Another mouse.

  A dead one.

  Smack-dab in the middle of the path to the bathroom, and yet by some miracle, I hadn’t stepped on it.

  Have you ever doubted if there is a God? Well, now you know.

  I woke up my boyfriend. I’m not squeamish, but there was no way I was letting him sleep through this.

  Why do we have boyfriends if not to take care of dead mice?

  “Wow,” he said, peering over at it. “This is a clean kill!”

  “Don’t look at it, honey, it’s sad.”

  His boyish enthusiasm continued. “No blood at all! She must have broken its neck with one bite.”

  Mimi, the hired hit cat. No pleasure, no mistakes.

  My boyfriend scooped the mouse into a trash bag and said he’d take it out.

  “Wait,” I said. “If you’re taking it out, let me clean the litter box.”

  So the mouse was laid to rest, buried beneath the excrement of its killer.

  I guess Mimi and I both are pretty cold.

  But this early success made me cocky. A few days later, I caught sight of the varmint perched atop my dog’s dish in the kitchen. We both froze. Then the mouse darted beneath my oven, a dead end.

  I thought, Where is the frigging cat?

  Only my dog sat nearby. I grabbed him, threw him into my small galley kitchen, and barricaded him inside with a wall of dining chairs. He plopped down right in front of the oven and smiled at me, tail wagging across the floor.

  He was completely unaware that we had a hostage situation—and he was my gunman.

  Every operation needs a dopey-but-loyal thug.

  Angel-faced killer

  With Pip unwittingly guarding the exit, I ran in search of the cat. I looked under the couch, between the bookshelves, behind the curtains. In my closet, I army-crawled over the piles of shoes that lined the floor, I shifted all the hangers in case she had latched onto one like forgotten dry-cleaning.

  No cat.

  I ran back to the kitchen and opened a can of tuna.

  “Meow?” Mimi suddenly materialized behind me.

  But the cat was now too distracted to notice any mouse. I scooped up the cat, threw the tuna in the fridge, and set her down in front of the oven. The mouse was still under there, cowering in the corner. I tried to draw Mimi’s attention to it.

  Have you ever tried directing a cat?

  Then you’re a step ahead of me again.

  I batted a plastic tab from a milk jug around and shot it underneath the oven; Mimi sniffed the air for more tuna.

  I grabbed the cat-dancer toy and made it do a jig before flicking the feathered end under the oven, like fly-fishing for mice; Mimi started cleaning her paws.

  I tried to gently angle Mimi’s face down to be eye level with the mouse; she took to it like a wild mustang to a halter.

  I realized I had only one option left, and it was a gamble. I’d have to scare the mouse out so she would see it. Mimi Bourne could take it from there.

  So I got flat on my belly, once again eye-to-beady-eye with a rodent, and I used the long stick of the cat dancer to reach the mouse.

  Mind you, I would also be scaring it toward my face. But with my finger hooked in Mimi’s collar, I knew she had my back.

  I touched the mouse with the stick, the mouse shot forward, I flew back by sheer force of terror and Mimi …

  Mimi missed
it completely. She was so freaked out by my behavior, she jumped up on the counter, out of the kitchen, and disappeared again.

  So I have a cat and a mouse in my house.

  I just don’t know where.

  Dr. Mother Mary

  By Lisa

  Mother Mary went to the hospital this week, where she was probably the only person admitted wearing a lab coat.

  Physician, heal thyself.

  You may not know that Mother Mary wears a lab coat all the time, though she’s no doctor. She buys them at the Dollar Store and says she likes having all those pockets.

  I’m sure that surgeons feel the same way. But who says you need a medical degree to like pockets?

  Lab coats for everyone!

  By the way, she’s already home from the hospital, so don’t worry.

  I’ll worry enough for both of us.

  We begin the story by telling you that last week, she was fine. In fact, my brother Frank sent me a photo of them both, out to dinner. And yes, she wore her lab coat, because I don’t make anything up.

  I may be the author, but my family does all the writing.

  The day after they sent me the photo, I called Mother Mary to say hi, and she was enjoying a visit with her speech therapist, Dorian. You may remember that she has been having speech problems since her stroke, though she still curses like a champ.

  Mother Mary remains fluent in profanity.

  Thank God the best swearwords are one syllable.

  Anyway, that’s how I know she’s doing fine. If I ask her too many questions about her health, she’ll tell me to go to hell.

  Yay!

  Anyway, Speech Therapist Dorian comes to see her three times a week, and she adores him. She always tells me how nice he is to her, and she always does her homework for him, practicing her vowel sounds from flash cards, just to make him happy.

  Bottom line, Mother Mary has a crush on Speech Therapist Dorian.

  It’s not therapy, it’s dating.

  At least in her mind.

  This is especially so because he’s Chinese, and Mother Mary has a thing for Asian men.

  Don’t ask why, because I have no idea. All I know is that she always adored my father’s old college friend Pete Ong. That was sixty-odd years ago, and it never stopped. He may well have been Japanese or Korean, we’ll never know, but it’s all the same to her.

  Pete Ong, wherever you are, call her.

  It’s a sure thing, if you catch my drift.

  To stay on point, the first time she met Speech Therapist Dorian, she called me afterwards and told me that he was Chinese, which is either his nationality or her code for superhot.

  Plus I’ve seen a photo of Dorian, and he is superhot.

  She may be ninety, but she’s still kicking.

  And she may have cataracts, but she ain’t blind.

  In fact, she’s so crazy about him that she put him on the phone with me when I called her last week. “Hi, Dorian,” I said. “How’s she doing?”

  “Great,” he answered cheerfully. “Also, she wants me to tell you I’m Chinese.”

  I’m not making this up, either.

  This actually happened, I swear.

  Mother Mary forgets I know he’s Chinese, so she had to have him remind me.

  Now there’s an aspect of old age nobody ever tells you about.

  You forget your fetishes.

  Anyway, she was fine until one day, she told my brother Frank that some prune juice she drank “went down the wrong pipe” and now she’s having trouble breathing.

  Thank God, he takes her to the hospital right away, because we both know that although Dr. Mother Mary has a lab coat, she lacks the medical degree.

  Or the plumbing license.

  Anyway, she was admitted for observation and testing, and they found and drained some fluid from around her heart, which is no laughing matter.

  We know she has heart issues, though she has more heart than anyone I’ve ever known.

  So Brother Frank is keeping an anxious eye on her, and God bless the caregivers.

  He’s a great son and brother, and she couldn’t be in better hands. Nor would she want to be.

  Except maybe Dorian’s.

  I’m What’s Cooking

  By Lisa

  This is about food.

  Because I’m on a diet.

  Since I can’t have food, it’s all I think about.

  I’ve been working a lot and I keep the TV on in my office when I work. And everything on TV is about food.

  In other words, it’s TV’s fault I gained a permanent ten pounds.

  Half the shows on TV are cooking shows, and I watch every one of them. Rachael Ray, Anthony Bourdain, Martha Stewart, Lydia Bastianich, Mike Colameco, the Barefoot Contessa, and Nigella Lawson. Then there are cooking shows with multiple chefs, like The Chew. At night there so many chef shows, the chefs have to compete to stay on the shows, and if they lose, they pack their knives and go.

  But not really, because there’s always another show to replace them, with cooking.

  And whether it’s daytime or nighttime, every talk show will have a cooking segment, so you can watch comedians and actresses whip up chicken cacciatore. They serve the audience the food, and everyone munches away while the cooking continues.

  Hungry yet?

  In between the cooking segments are food commercials, whether it’s the latest frozen food or a Seafood Shanty, Olive Garden, McDonald’s, Burger King, Carrabba’s, Outback Steakhouse, or Domino’s Pizza.

  Yes, they deliver.

  To your mouth.

  And hips.

  I know there are channels dedicated to round-the-clock food programming, but what I’m trying to tell you is that all of the channels are food channels. And all the food shows, restaurants, and recipes are trying to solve the problem every mom seems to have every night, which is what to have for dinner.

  Let me tell you how Mother Mary solved that problem.

  She made spaghetti with tomato sauce, or gravy, as everybody knows it should be called. And on the side, she served an iceberg salad dressed with oil and vinegar.

  Do you understand what I’m saying? We had the same thing for dinner, every night of my life.

  I’m not complaining.

  Who doesn’t love spaghetti?

  Plus Mother Mary made the best gravy in the world. She slow-cooked a big pot of it on Sunday and parceled it out all week, over five nights of having spaghetti.

  And iceberg lettuce? Love it. It’s crunchy water.

  Great if you’re hungry. Or thirsty.

  Come Saturday night we ate hoagies, pizza, or cold spaghetti.

  Not kidding.

  And on Sunday we had a big meal that was ravioli, with a side of spaghetti.

  You know how when you’re growing up you think that everything in your house is normal?

  You don’t even realize there is another way until you meet other people and they look at you like you’re crazy?

  I remember the exact moment this happened, with my friend Miriam, who came over for dinner and remarked that both times she had been over my house, we had spaghetti.

  And that’s when I told her that we had spaghetti every night.

  She looked at me like I was crazy.

  Did she laugh? Did she bully me?

  No and no.

  She started coming over my house for dinner, every night.

  You know why?

  Because everybody loves spaghetti.

  I myself could eat spaghetti every night, and probably every day for lunch, and also cold the next morning, for breakfast. It doesn’t make sense to me, even now, that we change what we have for dinner.

  Think about it.

  Most people eat the same thing every day for breakfast—cereal, or maybe eggs.

  So why would you change what you have for dinner, every day?

  It creates a lot of problems, and also TV shows and channels and commercials, and unnecessary food products, and chain re
staurants in strip malls, when we could all just make spaghetti, eat up, and be happy.

  Buon appetito.

  Mother Mary

  By Lisa

  I am very sorry to have to tell you that Mother Mary’s health has taken a dramatic and unexpected turn for the worse, so this won’t be funny.

  Except for the fact that she is at her funniest when times are darkest.

  She’s been newly diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, has moved up North with me, and has entered hospice care at my house. Mercifully, Brother Frank, Daughter Francesca, and family and friends are all around her, and she is resting comfortably. So comfortably, in fact, that the hospice nurses, who are saints on wheels, cannot believe it. One nurse asked Mother Mary if she was having any pain—and she pointed to me.

  So you get the idea.

  She sleeps a lot, but when she is awake, she loves to have visitors. It hurts her throat to talk too much, so she writes on a wipe-off erase board, and you will be happy to know that most of what she writes is unprintable here.

  Not even cancer can trump profanity.

  Whatever she writes is funny and brilliant, and her mind is sharper than it’s ever been. Some friends visited her yesterday, and she remembered the name of a lawyer they both knew some fifty years ago, though they could not, at a fraction of her age.

  Me, I can’t remember where my car keys are.

  Maybe I should tell Mother Mary and she’ll remind me.

  Please don’t think my tone herein is inappropriate. These have always been books about family, the ups and downs, the laughter and the tears, and I think it’s appropriate to have both here, maybe even in the same sentence.

  I would guess if you’re a fan of this series, and especially of Mother Mary, you have a great sense of humor, and The Flying Scottolines have always handled disaster with humor. In fact, catastrophe is our middle name.

  That’s why you pronounce the final E, to make it Italian.

  I also know that many of you have gone through this heartbreaking journey yourselves. If you have, you already know that hospice plunges you into a world different from any other, filled with irony and incongruities.

  You will get a delivery of a shower chair and a commode, which will be the only furniture delivery you don’t get excited about.