Eating White

Eating White

           Mary Ellen Brock knew what was real and what wasn’t. Love was real. Her passion for putting oil on canvas: real. Two-year-old Ben’s croupy cough was real and almost-six Jessie’s nighttime terrors were real, no matter that her monsters weren’t. And—sigh, oh sigh—Bill Brock’s lack of desire for Mary Ellen Brock was undeniably real.

She tried to deny it because he tried to deny it and because some facts are tough to face. But there it was. Even perfumed (lightly), creamed, and decked out in peek-a-boo lace, Mary Ellen didn’t stir Bill: a fact. He still adored her and cherished their nightly cuddles, but that was that and no more. Mary Ellen lusted for Bill even when he was eating soft-boiled eggs.

Mary Ellen confided in her sister, Janet, who asked with undisguised glee: “Is Bill playing around? And don’t get all pious, M. E., and tell me he isn’t the type because everyone’s the type if the right person comes along.”

“First of all, he isn’t the type.” Why had she chosen Janet to hear her sad story? “Second, he’s either at work or at home. That guy just loves hanging out with the kids and me. He even comes home for lunch unless Howard makes him take out a client.” Bill was a midlevel architect whose firm designed restaurants for malls, more than a few of which commissioned paintings from Mary Ellen.  “You know the terrible thing? When he tells Howard he’s going home for lunch, Howard winks and leers because men who go home for lunch don’t go home for lunch. But Bill sits at the kitchen table eating tuna sandwiches and looking utterly fulfilled.”

“Well, of course with the kids around–” Janet began.

                      “Now you sound just like him.” Mary Ellen gave Janet at a look. “But at 1 p.m. of a Tuesday, Jessie’s at school and Ben is in his crib. Nothing wakes that boy out of his nap except getting to the end of it. Nothing. Not the smoke detector going off, not the Farraguts’ dogs all barking at once, not Amazon leaning on the doorbell, not even the time Tommy Strauss whacked a ball through our dining room window. You think twenty minutes of married sex is going to wake him? But that’s what Bill says whenever I get a gleam in my eye. ‘I’m dying to honey, but I’m afraid we’ll wake the kids.’ Pleased don’t suggest that we take a second honeymoon.” Mary Ellen glared at Janet. “Bill says we can’t spend a night on our own until Ben outgrows the croup and Jessie’s monsters go to college.”

“I know it’s illegal to say but what are sisters for? Maybe you should go on a diet.”          

Mary Ellen didn’t feel fat. Then again, it had been a while since Aunt Ida had clucked that she needed a malted milk. She looked herself over in front of the bathroom mirror. No denying it: two pregnancies, sweet as they were, had left her rounder. Bill was too gallant to say she needed to shape up, but he still fit into his wedding suit while she had outgrown her wedding dress. Janet was right.

Which diet would do it for her? She noodled weight loss online, and one approach was more AWOL from reality than the next. Not to mention expensive, time-consuming, family unfriendly, and tedious. She’d do it the old-fashioned way. She’d find a book. 

On the Saturday after her tete-a-tete with Janet, while Bill and the kids snuggled on the couch and watched cartoons, she drove into town. She would go to Lit & Latte, sip a cup of their excellent light roast Salvadoran—forgoing the velvet whole milk froth, and browse the self-improvement shelf.  She parked, as she often did, in the small, shaded lot next to Umberbrag Shoe Repair, a pleasant four block amble from L & L. Traded air kisses with ancient Mr. Umber, who was shining a pair of penny loafers while keeping an eye on the lot. 

           M.E. scuttled the gravel beneath her sneakers—she and Jessie both loved that sound—and turned onto Main Street’s smooth wide sidewalk, which she and Jessie both found boring. She would have turned, that is, except that the world as she knew it no longer existed.

           Umberbrag’s address was 234b Main Street. Although the entrance faced the parking lot, the shop’s longer side had always and forever fronted Main. A sign with an arrow directed customers around the corner. Now, without a by-your-leave, a two-story narrow red brick building rose between the shoe repair shop and Main Street.

           This place that couldn’t exist (but clearly existed) had a dusty glass window heaped high with hardcover books in covers the glossy white of perfectly whisked meringue. An artless sign made with stick-on gold foil letters identified the place as The Hungry Reader. Smaller silver foil letters advertised Words to Fulfill Every Appetite.

           Mary Ellen mustered up a bunch of courage and touched the dusty glass. Cool and solid.

           It was an intolerable middle moment for a woman who knew what was real and what wasn’t. She calmed herself by grasping for logic. Maybe a popup? Well, sure! This out of nowhere shop was part of the latest marketing trend, what else could it be? No weirder than the gelato sellers sprouting like mushrooms all over.

           And hadn’t her friends been saying for years that their community of readers—a dozen book clubs at least! —deserved more bookshops? Unless you counted the big box store at the soulless mall, L & L was it. Really, what could make more sense than this bookshop that made no sense?

Mary Ellen looked more closely at the window display. All copies of the same book, Color Yourself Slim. The words blazed across the slick whiteness, shades of red and orange as nuanced and assertive as the dabs on a Winsor-Newton chart. She opened the door and went inside.

A very thin man in a black turtleneck sweater waved from behind his desk. “Welcome.”

“Okay if I look at one of the books in the window? I don’t want to mess up your display.”

“Please.”

“I paint,” she said. “The cover calls to me.”

“If you paint, you’ll understand the book,” the man said. “Make yourself comfortable.”   

She settled into an armchair.  She started to read.

I will never forget the day that Jane M. first walked into my office. The June sun was streaming in through the open windows, but Jane was wearing an ankle-length coat, a wide-brimmed hat, and a pair of rubber galoshes.

“Wouldn’t you like to take off your coat?” I asked politely, as she gingerly lowered her bulk onto the sturdy sofa across from my desk. 

Jane violently shook her head. “Please don’t make me undress,” she begged in a pathetic whisper. “I can’t let anyone see this mountain of fat. Not even you, Dr. White.”

When I finally persuaded her to exchange her suffocating “disguise” for a hospital gown, she tipped my scales at a staggering 381 pounds.

Jane M. today weighs 119. At 5’6” she’s a model’s size two.

Mary Ellen impatiently skimmed half a dozen inspirational stories to get to the meat (or would it be the salad?) of the book. And there it was.

WHY MY DIET WORKS WHERE ALL OTHERS FAIL. Other diets, whether they restrict you to three small servings a day of cottage cheese and lettuce or promise you unlimited ice cream on your low-calorie gelatin, have one failing in common: they totally ignore the COLOR VALUES on your plate.

“Color values?” you ask.

Yes, that’s right. COLOR VALUES. Plant the phrase firmly in your mind because it’s the key to the NEW SLIM YOU I’m addressing. Your good common sense must have made you wonder skeptically why one popular diet book states that a medium white grapefruit 4 and ¾ inches in diameter has fewer calories and carbohydrates than a medium pink grapefruit 4 and ¾ inches in diameter. I will satisfy your entirely reasonable curiosity right now. THERE IS A COLOR VALUE DIFFERENTIAL OF 20 POINTS between white and pink.

Calories don’t count and carbohydrates don’t either. It’s the CHROMATIC TOTAL on your plate that matters.

Mary Ellen was breathless with excitement. Dr. White was telling her something revolutionary, yet she felt she was coming home to an eternal truth.

You know from the many diet books you’ve bought that everything you eat and drink has not only an ABSOLUTE food value but a RELATIVE food value. Thus, the large juicy sirloin steak that is permitted for dinner on a low-carbohydrate diet is strictly forbidden on a low-calorie diet.

COLOR VALUES work the SAME SCIENTIFIC WAY, as Jane M. and countless other PERMANENTLY SLIM patients can testify. The BAKED WHITE POTATO that is worth 120 points on a maxi-color diet is a workable 40 points on a midi-color diet, a low 10 points on a mini-color diet, and swoops to an effective zero points on a monochromatic diet.

“Doctor! Doctor!” I can hear you clamoring. “Are you telling me that I can eat ice cream and butter and still lose weight?”

YOU CAN EAT UNLIMITED BAKED POTATOES ON A MONOCHROMATIC DIET AND LOSE 10 POUNDS A WEEK, WITH THE SIMPLE PROVISO THAT YOU DON’T EAT THE SKIN AND THE BUTTER IS WHITE, NOT YELLOW.

The rest of the book was filled with charts, but Mary Ellen didn’t need them. She was an artist. She understood what colors were worth. Of course, red meat was more fattening than green vegetables; consider how the reds of the Dutch Masters sated the eye while the greens of Cezanne sparked an appetite for more. Of course, blueberries were instant disaster on a diet; consider the weightiness of the blues.

She went up to the thin man at the cash register—one of Dr. White’s successes, maybe, but she didn’t dare ask—and paid for the book.  She drove to Blanche’s White Star Market and loaded up on pales. Bill and the kids could wolf down her marinara sauce that night: She would savor her linguini with white clam sauce. And wouldn’t Bill swoon next Saturday night when she unveiled her bones and hollows.

The diet worked perfectly. (Of course it did. It was real) When she weighed herself first thing Friday, Mary Ellen was down nine pounds. But by mid-morning her new jeans started chafing, and at noon the zipper popped.

She flipped frantically through the pages of Dr. White’s book, trying to figure out where she’d gone wrong. She hadn’t. Grapefruit juice (white) and cream of rice for breakfast, a glass of milk and endive (green tips trimmed off) for a snack: She should have felt the pounds continuing to melt away. She put on a pair of old jeans and told herself to stay calm. She took Ben to the park and tried to enjoy the sun. Did sketches for a client of Bill’s. Scallops and white mushrooms for lunch—half a small plateful. Ben lay down for his famous impervious nap, and it was a good thing. When the zipper on her old jeans burst, Mary Ellen started to shriek.

She had to talk to Dr. White! But how? She looked at the book and realized it wasn’t like other books. There was no blurb about the author, not even a first name; no publisher’s imprimatur. She called Trudy Farragut, told her it was an emergency, and Trudy came over to stay with Ben. Dressed in maternity jeans and a raincoat, Mary Ellen drove to town.

There was a heavyset man behind the cash register at The Hungry Reader, and Mary Ellen felt embarrassed about her mission. Oh, well. She showed the man her copy of Color Yourself Slim. “I must, must talk to Dr. White. It’s desperately urgent.”

The man nodded sadly. “Yes. I remember selling you the book.”

 “You do?” The floor beneath her feet felt more like custard than knotty pine, but she was Mary Ellen Brock and she knew what was real. “Wasn’t the man behind the desk, um–”

“Skinny,” said the man who wasn’t.

She shook her head. Impossible.

“Whoever you are, I have to talk to Dr. White.” In the voice that had been known to make her loved ones quake.

The man seemed about to weep. He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his swollen nose. “I am Dr. White, and I know why you are here. This came in the morning mail.”

He picked up an official-looking envelope and took out a single sheet of paper embossed with an impressive seal.

From: The Lost and Found Bureau

To: Regional Diet Doctors

Please be advised that, due to lack of storage space, we are returning all lost weight to previous owners. We sincerely regret any inconvenience this may cause.

Mary Ellen slapped the letter down on the desk. “A hoax,” she said flatly. “Things like this don’t happen.”

 “Except when they do,” said Dr. White. “You’re not so badly off, though. You dieted after your pregnancies; you dieted when you got my book.  Doesn’t add up to so much. Myself, I must have gained and lost a thousand pounds all told before I discovered COLOR VALUES and became PERMANENTLY THIN.”

 “You mean–”

 “I’m afraid so,” he said, as his chair groaned and splintered beneath his swelling bulk.