That night there’s an email from Rhiannon.
A,
Today was awkward, but I think that’s because it feels like a very awkward time. It isn’t about you, and it isn’t about love. It’s about everything crashing together at once. I think you know what I mean.
Let’s try again. But I don’t think it can be at school. I think that’s too much for me. Let’s meet after. Somewhere with no traces of the rest of my life. Only us.
I’m having a hard time imagining how, but I want these pieces to fit.
Love,
R
Day 6024
No alarm wakes me the next day. Instead, I awake to find a mother—someone’s mother, my mother—sitting at the edge of my bed, watching me. She is sorry to wake me, I can see, but that sorrow is a minor part of a much larger sadness. She touches my leg lightly.
“It’s time to wake up,” she says quietly, as if she wants the transition from sleep to waking to be the easiest it can be. “I’ve hung your clothes on the door of the closet. We’ll be leaving in about forty-five minutes. Your father is … very upset. We all are. But he’s taking this particularly hard, so just … give him room, okay?”
While she’s talking to me, I don’t really have the focus to figure out who I am or what’s going on. But after she leaves and I see the dark suit hanging on the closet door, I piece it all together.
My grandfather has died, and I’m about to go to my first funeral.
I tell my mother I forgot to tell friends to cover me for homework, and get on the computer to let Rhiannon know that it’s not likely I’ll be able to see her today. From what I can tell, the service is at least two hours away. At least we won’t be spending the night.
My father has stayed in my parents’ bedroom for most of the morning, but as I’m hitting send on my message to Rhiannon, he emerges. He doesn’t just look upset—he looks newly blind. There is such loss in his eyes, and it permeates every other part of his body. A tie hangs feebly from his neck, barely knotted.
“Marc,” he says to me. “Marc.” This is my name, and coming from his lips right now it sounds like both an incantation and a cry of disbelief. I have no idea how to react.
Marc’s mother sweeps in.
“Oh, honey,” she says, wrapping her arms around her husband for a second, then pulling back to straighten his tie. She turns to me and asks me if I’m ready to go.
I clear the history, turn off the computer, and tell her I just need to put on my shoes.
The car ride to the funeral is largely silent. The news plays on the radio, but after the third loop, I don’t think any of us are listening. Instead, I imagine that Marc’s mother and father are doing the same thing that I’m doing—accessing memories of Marc’s grandfather.
Most of the memories I find are wordless. Silent, strong stretches of sitting together in fishing boats, waiting for a pull on the line. The sight of him sitting at the head of the Thanksgiving table, carving the turkey like it was his birthright to do so. When I was younger, he took me to the zoo—all I can remember is the authority in his voice as he told me about the lions and the bears. I don’t remember the lions or the bears themselves, just the sense of them that he created.
There’s my grandmother’s death, before I really knew what death meant. She is the ghost in the background of all of these memories, but I am sure she is much more prominent in my parents’ thoughts. My own thoughts now turn to the last few months, the sight of my grandfather’s diminishment, the awkwardness between us as I grew taller than him and he seemed to shrink into himself, into age. His death was still a surprise—we knew it was coming, but not that particular day. My mother was the one to answer the phone. I didn’t have to hear her words to know something was wrong. She drove to my father’s office to tell him. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it.
It is my father who looks diminished now. As if when someone close to us dies, we momentarily trade places with them, in the moment right before. And as we get over it, we’re really living their life in reverse, from death to life, from sickness to health.
The fish in all the nearby lakes and rivers will be safe today, because it seems like every fisherman in the state of Maryland is here at the funeral. There are few suits to be seen, and fewer ties. My extended family is here, too—crying cousins, tearful aunts, stoic uncles. My father seems to be taking it the hardest, and he is the magnet for everyone else’s condolences. My mother and I stand at his side, and get nods and pats on the shoulder.
I feel like a complete imposter. I am observing, trying to record as much as I can for Marc’s memories, because I know he is going to want to have been here, is going to want to remember this.
I am not prepared for the open casket, to have Marc’s grandfather right there in front of me when we walk into the chapel. We are in the front row, and I can’t take my eyes off of it. This is what a body looks like with nothing inside. If I could step out of Marc for a moment—if he did not come back in—this is what he would look like. It’s very different from sleeping, no matter how much the undertaker has tried to make it look like sleeping.
Marc’s grandfather grew up in this town, and has been a member of this congregation for his whole life. There’s a lot to be said, and a lot of emotion in the saying of it. Even the preacher seems moved—so used to saying the words, but not for someone who he’s cared about. Marc’s father gets up to speak, and his body seems at war with his sentences—every time he tries to release one, his breath stops, his shoulders seize. Marc’s mother goes up and stands next to him. It looks like he’s going to ask her to read his words for him, but then he decides against it. Instead, he puts away the speech. He talks. He unspools the memories, and sometimes they have knots in them, and sometimes they are frayed, but they are the things he thinks of when he thinks about his father. Around him, the congregation laughs and cries and nods in recognition.
Tears are welling up in my eyes, streaming down my face. At first I don’t understand it, because I don’t really know the man they’re talking about—I don’t know any of the people in this room. I am not a part of this … and that is why I’m crying. Because I am not a part of this, and will never be a part of something like this. I’ve known this for a while, but you can know something for years without it really hitting you. Now it’s hitting me. I will never have a family to grieve for me. I will never have people feel about me the way they feel about Marc’s grandfather. I will not leave the trail of memories that he’s left. No one will ever have known me or what I’ve done. If I die, there will be no body to mark me, no funeral to attend, no burial. If I die, there will be nobody but Rhiannon who will ever know I’ve been here.
I cry because I am so jealous of Marc’s grandfather, because I am jealous of anyone who can make other people care so much.
Even after my father’s done speaking, I am sobbing. When my parents return to the pew, they sit on either side of me, comforting me.
I cry for a little while longer, knowing full well that Marc will remember these as tears for his grandfather, that he will never remember I’ve been here at all.
Such a strange ritual, to send the body into the ground. I am there as they lower him. I am there as we say our prayers. I take my place in the line as the dirt is shoveled onto the coffin.
He will never again have this many people thinking of him at a single time. Even though I never knew him, I wish he were here to see it.
We go back to his house afterward. Soon enough there will be sorting and dispersing, but now it’s the museum backdrop for the exhibition of grief. Stories are told—sometimes the same exact story in different rooms. I don’t know many of the people here, but that’s not a failure of accessing. There were simply more people in Marc’s grandfather’s life than his grandson could comprehend.
After the food and the stories and the consolation, there’s the drinking, and after the drinking, there’s the ride home. Marc’s mother has stayed sober the whole time, so she’s behind the whe
el as we make our way back in the darkness. I can’t tell if Marc’s father is asleep or lost in thought.
“It’s been a long day,” Marc’s mother murmurs. Then we listen to the news wrap around itself, repeat at half-hour intervals until we are finally home.
I try to pretend this is my life. I try to pretend these are my parents. But it all feels hollow, because I know better.
Day 6025
The next morning it’s hard to raise my head from the pillow, hard to raise my arms from my sides, hard to raise my body from the bed.
This is because I must weigh at least three hundred pounds.
I have been heavy before, but I don’t think I’ve ever been this heavy. It’s as if sacks of meat have been tied to my limbs, to my torso. It takes so much more effort to do anything. Because this is not muscular heaviness. I am not a linebacker. No, I’m fat. Flabby, unwieldy fat.
When I finally take a look around and take a look inside, I’m not very excited about what I see. Finn Taylor has retreated from most of the world; his size comes from negligence and laziness, a carelessness that would be pathological if it had any meticulousness to it. While I’m sure if I access deep enough I will find some well of humanity, all I can see on the surface is the emotional equivalent of a burp.
I trudge to the shower, pick a ball of lint the size of a cat’s paw out of Finn’s belly button. I have to push hard to get anything done. There must have come a time when it became too exhausting to do anything, and Finn just gave in to it.
Within five minutes of getting out of the shower, I’m sweating.
I don’t want Rhiannon to see me like this. But I have to see Rhiannon—I can’t cancel on her for a second day in a row, not when things feel so precarious between us.
I warn her. I say in my email that I am huge today. But I still want to see her after school. I’m close to the Clover Bookstore today, so I propose that as a meeting place.
I pray that she’ll come.
There’s nothing in Finn’s memory that leads me to believe that he’d be upset about missing school, but I go anyway. I’ll let him save his absences for when he’s actually conscious of them.
Because of the size of this body, I must concentrate much harder than I usually do. Even the small things—my foot on the gas pedal, the amount of space I have to leave around me in the halls—require major adjustment.
And there are the looks I get—such undisguised disgust. Not just from other students. From teachers. From strangers. The judgment flows freely. It’s possible that they’re reacting to the thing that Finn has allowed himself to become. But there’s also something more primal, something more defensive in their disgust. I am what they fear becoming.
I’ve worn black today, because I’ve heard so often that it’s supposed to be slimming. But instead I am this sphere of darkness submarining through the halls.
The only respite is lunch, where Finn has his two best friends, Ralph and Dylan. They’ve been best friends since third grade. They make fun of Finn’s size, but it’s clear they don’t really care. If he were thin, they’d make fun of him for that, too.
I feel I can relax around them.
I go home after school to take another shower and change. As I’m drying myself off, I wonder if I could plant a traumatic memory in Finn’s brain, something so shocking that he’d stop eating so much. Then I’m horrified at myself for even thinking such a thing. I remind myself that it’s not my business to tell Finn what to do.
I’ve put on Finn’s best clothes—an XXXL button-down and some size 46 jeans—to meet up with Rhiannon. I even try a tie, but it looks ridiculous, ski-sloping off my stomach.
The chairs are wobbly underneath me at the bookstore’s café. I decide to walk the aisles instead, but they’re too narrow, and I keep knocking things off the shelves. In the end, I wait for her out front.
She spots me right away; it’s not like she can miss me. The recognition’s in her eyes, but it’s not a particularly happy one.
“Hey,” I say.
“Yeah, hey.”
We just stand there.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Just taking you all in, I guess.”
“Don’t look at the package. Look at what’s inside.”
“That’s easy for you to say. I never change, do I?”
Yes and no, I think. Her body’s the same. But a lot of the time, I feel like I’m meeting a slightly different Rhiannon. As if each mood presents a variation.
“Let’s go,” I say.
“Where to?”
“Well, we’ve been to the ocean and to the mountain and to the woods. So I thought this time we’d try … dinner and a movie.”
This gets a smile.
“That sounds suspiciously like a date,” she says.
“I’ll even buy you flowers if you’d like.”
“Go ahead,” she dares. “Buy me flowers.”
Rhiannon is the only girl in the movie theater with a dozen roses on the seat next to her. She is also the only girl whose companion is spilling over his chair and into hers. I try to make it less awkward by draping my arm around her. But then I’m conscious of my sweat, of how my fleshy arm must feel against the back of her neck. I’m also conscious of my breathing, which wheezes a little if I exhale too much. After the previews are over, I move over a seat. But then I move my hand to the seat in between us, and she takes it. We last like that for at least ten minutes, until she pretends she has an itch, and doesn’t return her hand to mine.
I’ve chosen a nice place for dinner, but that doesn’t guarantee that it will be a nice dinner.
She keeps staring at me—staring at Finn.
“What is it?” I finally ask.
“It’s just that … I can’t see you inside. Usually I can. Some glimmer of you in the eyes. But not tonight.”
In some way, this is flattering. But the way she says it, it’s also disheartening.
“I promise I’m in here.”
“I know. But I can’t help it. I just don’t feel anything. When I see you like this, I don’t. I can’t.”
“That’s okay. The reason you’re not seeing it is because he’s so unlike me. You’re not feeling it because I’m not like this. So in a way, it’s consistent.”
“I guess,” she says, spearing some asparagus.
She doesn’t sound convinced. And I feel I’ve already lost if we’ve gotten to the convincing stage.
It doesn’t feel like a date. It doesn’t feel like friendship. It feels like something that fell off the tightrope but hasn’t yet hit the net.
Our cars are still at the bookstore, so we head back there. Instead of cradling her roses, she dangles them at her side, as if at any moment she might need to use them as a bat.
“What’s going on?” I ask her.
“Just an off night, I guess.” She holds the roses up to her nose, smells them. “We’re allowed to have off nights, right? Especially considering …”
“Yeah. Especially considering.”
If I were in a different body, this would be the time I would lean down and kiss her. If I were in a different body, that kiss could transform the night from off to on. If I were in a different body, she would see me inside. She would see what she wanted to see.
But now it’s awkward.
She holds the roses to my nose. I breathe in the perfume.
“Thanks for the flowers,” she says.
That is our goodbye.
Day 6026
I feel guilty about how relieved I am to be a normal size the next morning. I feel guilty because I realize that while before I didn’t care what other people thought, or how other people saw me, now I am conscious of it, now I am judging alongside them, now I am seeing myself through Rhiannon’s eyes. I guess this is making me more like everyone else, but I feel something is being lost, too.
Lisa Marshall looks a lot like Rhiannon’s friend Rebecca—dark straight hair, a scattering of freckles, blue eyes. She is not someone you’d g
o out of your way to notice if you saw her on the street, but you’d definitely notice her if she was sitting next to you in class.
Rhiannon won’t mind me today, I think. Then I feel guilty for thinking it.
There’s an email from her waiting in my inbox. It starts like this:
I really want to see you today.
And I think, That’s good. But then it continues.
We need to talk.
And I don’t know what to think anymore
The day becomes a waiting game, a countdown, even if I’m not sure what I’m counting down toward. The clock brings me closer. My fears pound louder.
Lisa’s friends don’t get much out of her today.
Rhiannon’s told me to meet her at a park by her school. Since I’m a girl today, I’m guessing that’s safe neutral ground. No one from town is going to see the two of us and assume something R-rated. They already think male metalheads are her type.