Bearded Women (20 page)

Iris buys a four-pound head of cabbage, shreds and cooks it tender-crisp in a tiny bit of butter, adds a sprinkling of dill and fennel seed, and eats it all in ten minutes. The last cup is most difficult. She burps tiny cabbage burps all afternoon but feels happy. The next day she drinks seven cups of water, eats another head of cabbage after lunch, and makes cocoa-scented soap with grated chocolate and instant coffee for colour. She buys ingredients for stir-fry and two more heads of cabbage.

“Why so much cabbage,” Flynn asks when he peers in the fridge.

“I wanted cabbage soup or some stuffed cabbage rolls,” she says. Iris uses a lot of vegetables and a little chicken in the stir-fry, gives herself an extra-large helping.

“Your appetite’s back.” Flynn smiles. “You ate so little at lunch, I was worried.”

“Oh,” she said. “I’m fine. I’ve started jogging in the morning.”

When she met Flynn, Iris liked the idea of insurance agents, people who wanted to protect others from disaster. She liked that he was the traditional sort who always paid for dinner, opened doors, bought little gifts for her. He liked that she was an artist and told her that his mother did watercolours. When he brought some to show her, Iris thought the paintings were a little dumb, just flowers. She liked abstract work, pictures not meant to represent things but emotions, the intangible. Iris nodded and smiled at his mother’s paintings because he was supportive of her own art, happy to sell insurance while she worked with pastels and booked herself in art fairs. Yet Flynn was not broken as Iris when her art didn’t sell. She knew they were not depending on it for income, but she thought she would do okay, could help a little financially.

Even though Flynn wanted children, Iris wavered on the idea of motherhood. She did not tell him, figured when it happened she would adjust to it, be happy. Everyone said you felt differently when the child was yours. And Iris liked the idea of babies, of being able to produce a life like a tiny masterpiece.

After training for two weeks Iris can drink eleven cups of water, eat six pounds of cabbage in eight and a half minutes, and she jogs three miles a day. She has lost three pounds. Denise said she wasn’t supposed to train with food, just cabbage and water because they were low-calorie. Iris buys two boxes of donuts anyway, arranges them on a platter on the kitchen table because she wants to try it once. She sets her digital egg timer for six minutes, hopes she won’t need that much.

The first five donuts are easy, Iris rips them in half and stuffs her cheeks, swallowing larger portions than she should, not chewing thoroughly. She feels the food slide down behind her breastbone like she’s eating golf balls. Her fingers squish donut pieces flat, she tucks them between her lips, cannot spit them out though she feels sick. At five minutes forty seconds she shoves in the last donut piece and swallows her mouth empty. The timer beeps triumphantly. Iris is pleased. It is a matter of endurance, one-mindedness. All afternoon she walks a sugary cloud of pride, even with her stomach ache.

When Flynn comes home she is making meatloaf for his dinner and a spinach salad for herself since she isn’t hungry. He sees the donut boxes in the garbage can, asks why so many. Iris says she had the ladies over for morning coffee.

“Where are all the dirty cups?” he says, a hand on her waist.

“I washed them already,” she says, wiping her fingers on a towel.

“Did you throw up the donuts?” he says.

“No,” Iris says, “that’s against the rules.” She realises her mistake, covers her mouth.

“Why do you want to do this?” he says.

“Because I can,” she says.

“You’ll get sick,” says Flynn, slapping his palm against her hip. “This is unhealthy. It can’t be good if we want to have children. I don’t want you to do this.”

“Training like this every now and then won’t hurt,” she says. “I have to practise.”

His lips purse pink as grapefruit. She kisses him and starts making her salad. Flynn says very little for the rest of the evening, even when she tells him two gift shops have increased their orders for soap. Iris is playful from the sugar, drags him to bed early and wraps her legs around his waist, her muscles already stronger because of jogging. It is rare for Iris to take initiative in lovemaking, but she feels herself glow. As they pulse against each other she thinks of how she overcame the creeping weariness of food that came with the twentieth donut, the twenty-first. A beautiful pink pleasure runs through her. She wants him to feel that, too. Flynn wheezes into climax and lies panting for a full four minutes afterward. Iris thinks it is the best sex they’ve had in their eight-year relationship, smiles to herself as she imagines the remnants of donut stickiness on her fingers. She licks her lips and can almost understand why, in competition, some people stretch their stomachs until they bleed.

When Iris finds Denise’s picture off the fridge and in the kitchen trash she grimaces, wipes it off, and tapes it inside her medicine cabinet where she keeps makeup and perfumes. She secrets cabbage cores in the garbage can, covers them with old newspaper. She doesn’t tell Flynn about her first competition in Cleveland, two months after she starts training. Instead she says she is going to market her soaps to new stores.

“I’m glad you’re putting energy into expanding the business,” he says, then turns back to the evening paper. Iris stands beside him for a moment, waiting to see if he’ll say more. He doesn’t. She goes to the laundry room and cuts bars of patchouli soap to take to Cleveland.

Iris arrives at the pizzeria a half-hour before competition begins. The goal is to eat a large plain cheese pie fast as you are able. Proceeds from the ten-dollar entry fee go to local food banks. She wears a pink sweatsuit with the sleeves pushed up, taps her foot while watching large men and a few slim ones take their place at the long table. Fifteen contestants in all. She is in the middle, glances up and down the row of males. They wrinkle their noses collectively at her and smirk. The officiator and owner of the pizzeria, a man with calm brown whiskers and a pillow gut, reads the rules of competition, how the winner’s mouth has to be clear of food for the time to be official. A grand line of servers emerges from the kitchen. Each wears a red shirt, a white waist apron, and bears a large cheese pizza. They place the pies in front of the contestants with a singular thud, the pizzas still sizzling from the oven when the officiator blows the whistle. The contestants start tearing crusts, stuffing their mouths, chewing with the wrath of gladiators.

Iris rolls her first slice like a taco but the cheese still burns the roof of her mouth as she swallows in gulps that hurt going down. She tears pieces off the next slice, crams her mouth, sandwiches the third and fourth slices together and rips into them at the same time. Iris sweats with the heat of the pizza and starts to feel nauseous from the grease, but is only half done. Chew and chew and chew. She thinks of triathletes, how the body must go numb, into a rhythm, pushing and not pushing because it just needs to win, to finish. She ignores protests from her stomach on the seventh slice, forcing hunks of pizza into her gaping mouth that seems to grow wider with every bite.

On her last piece Iris hears a winner being declared, but ten seconds later, her final swallow, she is ready to burst and realises she has no way of alerting the judge. She waves her arms, a mad flash like flagging down a plane, looking for someone to grab. The pizzeria owner runs to Iris faster than she expected, has her open her mouth while he peers inside. He claps his hand on her shoulder, says, Five minutes five seconds, second place.

Iris is so excited she fears it will come up. She thinks no, no, it can’t, pushes the pizza down with a sip of cola, two swallows then three. A painful moment of uncertainty. Her stomach sags, convinced. Iris has never eaten an entire pizza before, hadn’t realised it would be like this, such uncomfortable pleasure, but all of her training worked. It is satisfying, her head and stomach both full in a way almost sickening. The other contestants gaze at her queasily.

She accepts her hundred-dollar bill and smiles for the photographer. Her picture will be in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a paper Flynn doesn’t read. In the bathroom she changes into a white blouse and navy skirt, stops at a drugstore for antacids before driving to the gift shops. Two of five agree to sell her soap on a consignment basis. Iris is home by six, in time to make dinner. Flynn gives her a little hug, squints at her plate of steamed broccoli.

For two days she is full but still forces herself to drink water, eat cabbage.

“Are you okay?” Flynn says at breakfast, his concerned fingers grazing her hand.

“Yes,” she says. Iris jogs six miles after he leaves, drinks a gallon of water, and manages to nibble at some lemon chicken at lunch to prove to him that she is fine.

Iris researches food that can be used in soap making, which ones can be added for colour, scent, texture, and therapeutic value—poppy seeds, cloves, mint, powdered tea, paprika, cornmeal, orange peel, cucumber, strawberry, red cabbage, ground coffee, and honey. She experiments, mixes, sniffs, calls her new product line Soaps Gourmet. The gift shops love them. Iris buys more trays in which to pour liquid soap, rims the living room and dining room with bookshelves where she can let the trays of soap cure. She orders more business cards, a Nature’s Suds return address stamp, and feels a little less dependent. Yet the way Flynn says that’s great when she talks about the business makes it clear he has the real job, and she has a hobby.

But now there is her training, her eating. Iris isn’t sure what to make of this odd talent. When she jogs in the morning the breeze is like a breath on her shoulders. When she drinks her gallon of water, eats her four pounds of cabbage, she knows she is improving. The tiny digital egg timer numbers blink her happiness. Iris had pictured herself as a wife, part-time businesswoman, and eventual mother, but now she has something besides that, another piece. It has shifted her plans. She can decide not to have children. She can keep expanding her business. If she trains hard enough, someday she will be able to eat forty cupcakes at one sitting. But worry pricks the back of her mind. This is not quite fair to Flynn. Not what he bargained for. These thoughts do not prevent her from sneaking cabbage.

When Iris loses her period again she does not tell Flynn. After four weeks she takes a pregnancy test. Negative. The gynaecologist asks if she has started exercising more, gone on a special diet. Iris quietly explains the water and cabbage and running, surprised she is almost embarrassed. She has lost a few pounds, but not too much. The gynaecologist says this is common in marathon runners. Women eating low fat, low calorie diets and training intensively can lose their periods. She suggests a bit more food, a bit less exercise, and things should be fine.

On the drive home, pride courses through Iris’s arms and legs. She is training like a marathon runner. In truth she does not miss her period. That night she swivels naked in front of the full-length bathroom mirror. Even though her hips have slimmed she isn’t too thin, just athletic.

Iris takes weekend eating jaunts—cheesecake in Chicago, Jell-O in Cincinnati, corn dogs in Indianapolis. Always she brings soap and finds a couple gift shops willing to sell Nature’s Suds.

“I miss you,” says Flynn as they lay together in bed. “You’ve been preoccupied lately.”

“The business is going well,” she says. “Don’t you want it to?”

“I don’t want you to get in over your head,” he says.

Iris closes her eyes and grimaces. She is tired but happy, makes two batches of soap each day, is selling in fifteen stores, and has been in seven competitions over the past three months. But she knows Flynn likes security, stability, wants her around the house. When the marriage began, that was where Iris figured she would be. She feels slightly neglectful, turns to Flynn and smoothes her hand across his thigh, eases his jockey shorts down to his knees. He has been folding his own laundry and swept the house from top to bottom. She wants to reward him, pacify him, even if she isn’t in the mood.

Flynn moans softly as Iris thinks about the flier she picked up at the competition in Chicago—an almond banket eating contest in Holland, Michigan, for the Tulip Time Festival. Holland is reasonably close, five hours’ drive. Iris tucked the flier in her desk drawer where Flynn wouldn’t look. As he pants she smiles at him, imagining the thrill of that victory even though she isn’t sure what an almond banket is.

The day before the contest, Iris tells Flynn she is going on a two-day soap tour to get her business established in Michigan.

“When will you stop expanding?” he says. “Isn’t your distribution wide enough?”

“Just a few more stores,” she says. Iris leaves at eight in the morning for shops in Ann Arbor, Lansing, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids where she stays overnight. In her hotel room she drinks a pitcher of water in two minutes, forty seconds.

Holland is a quaint city, rather pretty but overflowing with Dutch kitsch. Wooden shoes. Windmills. Tulips on everything—plates and socks and pocketknives and matchbooks and beer steins and commemorative spoons. Iris wanders past the clogging demonstrations, the blue-skirted women, and lets her stomach growl until the contest at two in the afternoon. She pays the entry fee and ascends the stairs to the platform stage, eyes the almond bankets, each a foot long and a couple inches wide, golden puff pastry logs with marzipan in the centre. About twenty people are seated at the long table, mostly men but a scattering of women. Iris thinks she recognizes a couple faces from the pizza and cheesecake contests. She sits next to a cheery middle-aged lady who’s wearing a T-shirt with a tulip embroidered on the pocket.

“I just love banket,” says the lady, cracking her knuckles. “It’s a deal to get two for eight dollars.”

“I’ve never tried it,” Iris says and smiles. The lady is sweet but not a competitor.

“Lot of big guys here,” says the lady, nodding.

“Yup,” Iris agrees. And she knows she can take them all.

The whistle blows, the crowd starts yelling, Iris grabs the first banket and bites in. Crisp, not as easy as cheesecake but not as difficult as pizza. She holds the pastry in one hand and breaks off pieces with the other, stuffs her mouth and imagines Denise in the audience cheering her on. The last half of the last banket is trying—her mouth poked by crisp pastry, Iris thinks she can taste blood beneath the butter and almond paste. She feels the usual sick rise in her stomach, pushes the urge down. Control. Iris keeps eating, filling herself until she stuffs the last banket corner in her mouth, glances side to side. Everyone else has at least half a banket to go, and the lady sitting beside her is three quarters done with her first banket. She throws it on her plate and hugs Iris’s shoulders tightly.