Big Girl (2010) (4 page)

Her father asked her about school that night, and she reported on her classes, and mentioned the clubs again. He thought her choices were all good, particularly Latin, although he thought the ski club would be fun and a good way to meet boys. Her mother thought Latin sounded too brainy and she should join something more sociable, in order to make friends. They were both aware that Victoria had had very few friends in middle school. But in high school she could meet people, and by junior year she'd be driving and wouldn't need them to chauffeur her at all. They could hardly wait, and Victoria liked the idea too. She didn't want her father making sarcastic remarks about her to her friends, as he did whenever he gave them a ride somewhere, even if he thought his comments were funny. She never did.

She signed up for the three clubs that interested her the next day, but none of the sports teams. She decided to fulfill her athletic requirement with just Phys Ed, although she could have taken ballet too, which would have been her worst nightmare come true, leaping across the gym in a leotard and a tutu. She shuddered at the thought when the assistant PE teacher suggested it to her.

It took her a while, but in time Victoria made friends. She dropped out of the film club eventually because she didn't like the movies they picked to watch. She went on one of the ski club trips to Bear Valley, but the kids that went were stuck-up and never talked to her. She signed up for the travel club instead. And she loved the Latin club, although it was all girls, and she took Latin all of freshman year. She met people, but it wasn't easy making friends in high school either. A lot of the girls seemed to be in airtight little groups and looked like beauty queens, and that wasn't her style. The academic girls were as shy as she was and hard to meet. Connie proved to be a good friend for two years until she got a scholarship to Duke, and left when she graduated. But by then, Victoria was comfortable at the school. She heard from Jake at Cait once in a while too, but they never got together again. They always said they would and never did.

She had her first date during sophomore year when a boy from her Spanish class invited her to the junior prom, which was a big deal. Connie said he was a great guy, and he was until he got drunk in the bathroom with some other boys and got kicked out of the prom, and she had to call her father for a ride home.

She got her first car the summer before junior year, and had taken driver's ed the year before, and had her learner's permit so she was all set. From then on, she drove herself to school. It was an old Honda her father had bought for her, and she was excited about it.

It wasn't something she talked about to anyone, but by junior year her body had gotten bigger than it was before. She had gained ten pounds over the summer. She had a summer job at an ice cream store, and ate ice cream on all her breaks. Her mother was upset about it and said it was the wrong job for her. It was too much temptation for Victoria, as proved by the weight she gained.

"You look more like your great-grandmother every day" was all her father said, but it made the point. She brought home ice cream cakes shaped like clowns for Gracie every day. She loved them and no matter how many she ate, she never gained a pound. She was nine by then, and Victoria was sixteen.

But the main benefit of her summer job was that she earned enough money for a trip to New York with the travel club during Christmas break, and it changed her life. She had never been to such an exciting city and liked it much better than L.A. They stayed at a Marriott hotel near Times Square, and they walked for miles. They went to the theater, opera, and ballet, rode the subway, went to the top of the Empire State Building, visited the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the United Nations, and Victoria had never had so much fun in her life. They even had a snowstorm while she was there, and when she got back to L.A., she was dazed. New York was the best place she'd ever been, and she wanted to live there one day. She said she might even go to college there if she could get into New York University or Barnard, which might be a stretch despite her grades. But she floated on the experience for months.

She met her first serious high school boyfriend right after New Year's. Mike was in the travel club too, but had missed the trip. He was planning to go to London, Athens, and Rome with the club during the summer. Her parents wouldn't let her go--they said she was too young, although she'd be turning seventeen. Mike was a senior, and his parents were divorced, so his father had signed the permission slip. Victoria thought he was very grown up and worldly and fell madly in love. For the first time in her life, he made her feel pretty. He said he loved her looks. He was going to Southern Methodist University in the fall, and they spent a lot of time together, although her parents didn't approve. They thought he wasn't smart enough for her. Victoria didn't care. He liked her, and he made her happy. They spent a lot of time making out in his car, but she wouldn't go all the way. She was too scared to take that leap. She said she wasn't ready. And in April he dropped her for a girl who would. He took the new girl to senior prom, and Victoria sat home nursing a broken heart. He was the only boy who'd asked her out all year.

She never had many dates or a lot of friends. And she spent the summer on the South Beach Diet. She was diligent about it and lost seven pounds. But as soon as she got off the diet, she gained it back plus three more pounds. She wanted to lose the weight for senior year, and her PE teacher had told her she was fifteen pounds overweight. She lost five pounds at the beginning of senior year, by eating smaller portions and fewer calories, and promised herself she'd lose more before graduation. And she would have if she hadn't gotten mono in November, had to stay home for three weeks, and ate ice cream because it made her throat feel better. The fates had conspired against her. She was the only girl in her class who gained eight pounds while she had mono. Her size was a battle she couldn't seem to win. But she was determined to beat it this time, and swam every day during Christmas vacation and for a month after. And she jogged around the track every morning before school. Her mother was proud of her when she lost ten pounds.

She was determined to lose the other eight pounds, until her father looked at her one morning and asked her when she was going to start working out to lose some weight. He hadn't even noticed the ten pounds she had lost. And after that she gave up swimming and jogging and went back to eating ice cream after school and potato chips at lunch, and bigger portions, which satisfied her. What difference did it make? No one noticed it, and no one asked her out. Her father offered to take her to his gym, and she said she had too much work at school, which was true.

She was working hard to keep up her grades, and had applied to seven schools: New York University, Barnard, Boston University, Northwestern, George Washington in Washington, D.C., the University of New Hampshire, and Trinity. Everything she had applied to was either in the Midwest or the East. She had applied to no schools in California, and her parents were upset about it. She wasn't sure why, but she knew she had to leave. She had felt different for too long, and although she knew she would miss them, and especially Gracie, she wanted a new life. This was her chance, and she was going to grab it while she could. She was tired of competing and going to school with girls who looked like starlets and models and hoped to be that one day. Her father had wanted her to apply to USC and UCLA, and she refused. She knew it would just be more of the same. She wanted to go to school with real people, who weren't obsessed with how they looked. She wanted to go to college with people who cared about what they thought, like her.

She didn't get into either of her first-choice schools in New York, nor Boston University, which she would have liked, nor GW. Her choices in the end were Northwestern, New Hampshire, or Trinity. She liked Trinity a lot but wanted a bigger school, and there was good skiing in New Hampshire, but she chose Northwestern, which felt right to her. The greatest thing it had going for it was that it was far away, and it was a great school. Her parents said they were proud of her, although they were distressed that she was leaving California and couldn't understand why she would. They had no concept of how out of place and unwelcome they had made her feel for so long. Gracie was like their only child, and she felt like the family stray dog. She didn't even look like them, and she couldn't take it anymore. Maybe she'd come back to Los Angeles after school, but for now she knew she had to get away.

She was one of the top three students in her class, and had been asked to give a speech after the valedictorian, which stunned the audience with the seriousness and value of what she said. She talked about how different she had felt all her life, how out of step, and how hard she had tried to conform. She said she had never been an athlete, nor wanted to be. She wasn't "cool," she wasn't popular, she didn't wear the same clothes as all the other girls during freshman year. She didn't wear makeup till sophomore year, and still didn't wear it every day. She had loved Latin class even though it made everyone think she was a geek. She went down the list of all the things that had made her different, without saying that she felt even more out of place in her own home.

And then she thanked the school for helping her to be who she was, and find her way. She said that now they were all going out into a world where they would
all
be different, where no one would fit in, where they had to be themselves to succeed, and follow their own paths. She wished her classmates luck on their journey to find themselves, and herself as well, and she said that once they all found themselves, discovered who they were, and became who they were meant to be, she hoped they'd meet again one day. "And until then, my friends," she said, as tears rolled down her classmates' and their parents' cheeks, "Godspeed." It made a lot of her fellow students wish they had known her better. The speech impressed her parents too with its eloquence. And it brought home the realization that she was leaving soon, and it softened both of them as they congratulated her on the speech. Christine realized that she was losing her, and she might never live at home again. Her father was suddenly very quiet too when they met up with her after the ceremony and they had all tossed their caps into the air, after saving the tassels to put away with their diplomas. Her father clapped Victoria lightly on the back.

"Great speech," he complimented her. "It'll make all the weirdos in your class feel good," he added sincerely as she looked at him with wide-open eyes. Sometimes she wondered if he was just stupid, or maybe mean. He never failed to miss the point. She could see that now.

"Yeah, like me, Dad," she said quietly. "I'm one of them. The weirdos and the freaks. My point was that it's okay to be different, and from now on we'd better be, if we're going to make something of ourselves. It's the one thing I learned in school. Different is okay."

"Not too different, I hope," he said, looking nervous. Jim Dawson had conformed all his life, and he cared a lot about what people thought of him. He had never had an original thought in his life. He was a company man through and through. And he didn't agree with Victoria's philosophy, although he admired the speech and how well she had delivered it. He could see in her ability when she did it that she had inherited something from him. He was known for his excellent speeches too. But Jim never liked to stand out or be different. That had never been okay with him. Victoria was well aware of it, which was why she had never in her entire life felt at ease with them, and she felt even less so now, because she was different from her parents in so many ways. And it was why she was starting the most important adventure of her life, and leaving home to do it. She was willing to push herself out of her comfort zone if it meant finding herself at last, and the place where she belonged. All she knew now was that it wasn't here, with them. No matter how hard she had tried, she just wasn't like them.

She realized too that Gracie was growing up as one of them, and she did fit in. Perfectly. She and her parents were like clones. Victoria hoped that one day her younger sister would spread her wings and fly. And for now, Victoria had to do it. She could hardly wait, even if it terrified her at times. She was scared to death of leaving home, but excited too. The girl they had said looked like Queen Victoria all her life was taking off. She smiled as she left her school for the last time, and whispered to herself, "Watch out, world! Here I come!"

Chapter 4

Victoria's summer at home before she started college was bittersweet in many ways. Her parents were nicer to her than they had been in years, although her father introduced her to a business associate as his tester cake. But he also said he was proud of her, more than once, which surprised Victoria, since she never really thought he was. And her mother seemed sad to see her go, although she never openly said it to Victoria. It made Victoria feel as though they had all missed the boat. Her childhood and high school years were over, and she wondered why they had wasted so much time and concentrated on all the wrong things: her looks, her friends or lack of them, her weight was their main focus, along with her resemblance to her great-grandmother, whom no one knew or cared about, just because their noses were the same. Why did they care so much about the wrong things? Why hadn't they been closer to her, more loving, given her more support? And now there was no time left to build the bridge between them that should have existed all along and never had. They were strangers to each other, and she couldn't imagine it being any different later on. She was leaving home, and might never live with them again.

She still wanted to move to New York after college, it was her dream. She would come home for holidays, see them on Christmas and Thanksgiving and when they visited her, if they did, and there was no time left to put in the bank the love they should have been saving all along. She thought they loved her, they were her parents, and she had lived with them for eighteen years, but her father had made fun of her all her life, and her mother had been disappointed that she wasn't prettier, complained that she was too smart, and told her men didn't like smart women. Her whole childhood with them had been a curse. And now that she was leaving, they said they were going to miss her. But when they said it, she couldn't help wondering why they hadn't paid more attention to her while she was there. It was already too late. Did they really love her? She was never sure. They loved Gracie. But what about her?

And the one she hated most to leave was Gracie, the little angel in her life, who had dropped from the skies when she was seven and loved her unconditionally ever since, just as Victoria loved her. She couldn't bear to leave her and not see her every day, but she knew she had no choice. Gracie was eleven now, and had already come to understand how different Victoria was from the rest of them, and how mean their father was at times. She hated it when he said things to Victoria that hurt, or made fun of her, or pointed out how much she didn't look like them. In Gracie's eyes, Victoria was beautiful, and she didn't care how fat or thin she was. Gracie thought she was the prettiest girl in the world and she loved her more than anyone.

Victoria dreaded leaving her, and cherished every day they spent together. She took her out for lunch, to the beach, had picnics with her, took her to Disneyland, and spent as much time with her as she could. They were lying on the beach one afternoon in Malibu, next to each other, looking up at the sun, when Gracie turned to her and asked a question that Victoria had asked herself as a child too.

"Do you think maybe you were adopted and they never told you?" Gracie asked her with an innocent look as her older sister smiled. She was wearing a loose T-shirt over her bathing suit, as she always did, to conceal what was beneath it.

"I used to think I was when I was a kid," Victoria admitted, "because I look so different from them. But I don't think I am. I guess I'm just some weird throwback to another generation, like Dad's grandmother or whoever. I think I'm their kid, even though we don't have much in common." She didn't look like Gracie either, but they were soul mates and had been for all of Grace's short life, and they both knew it. Victoria just hoped Gracie didn't grow up to be like them. She didn't see how she could, but they had a powerful influence on her, and once Victoria was gone, they would hold on to her even more tightly, and mold her to their own images.

"I'm glad you're my sister," Gracie said sadly. "I wish you weren't going away to college, and that you had stayed here."

"I do too, when I think about leaving you. But I'll come home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and you can come to visit me."

"It won't be the same," Gracie said as a tear sneaked down her cheek, and they both knew it was true.

The whole family looked like they were in mourning when Victoria packed her bags for college. And the night before she left, her father took them all out to dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and they had a good time together. There were no jokes that night at anyone's expense. And the next day, all three of them took her to the airport, and the moment they got out of the car, Gracie burst into tears and threw her arms around Victoria's waist.

Her father checked in her luggage, while the two girls stood crying on the sidewalk, and Christine looked at her daughter unhappily.

"I wish you wouldn't go," she said softly. She would have liked to try again if she had the chance. She could feel Victoria slipping through her fingers forever. She had never really thought about what this day would feel like. The pain of it took her by surprise now.

"I'll be home soon," Victoria said, and hugged her, still crying, and then she hugged her little sister again. "I'll call you tonight," she promised her, "as soon as I get to my room." Gracie nodded and couldn't stop crying, and even her father's eyes were damp when he said goodbye to her in a choked voice.

"Take care of yourself. Call if you need anything. And if you hate it, you can always transfer to a school out here." He hoped she would. It was as though her leaving California for college were a rejection of him. They had wanted her to stay in L.A., or close to it, which wasn't what Victoria wanted or needed.

After kissing them all again, Victoria went through security, and waved for as long as she could see them. They didn't leave the airport until she had disappeared from sight. The last she saw of her family was Gracie leaving the airport, walking between her parents. They all looked the same, with their dark hair and slim bodies. Her mother was holding Gracie's hand, and Victoria could see that her sister was still crying.

She boarded the flight to Chicago, thinking about all of them, and as the plane took off, she looked out the window at the city she was fleeing, to find the tools she needed for a new life somewhere else. She didn't know where that would be, but the one thing she did know was that it couldn't be here, or with them.

Victoria's years in college were exactly what she hoped they would be. The school was even better than she had dreamed or expected. It was big and sprawling, and the classes she took and did well at were her ticket to freedom. She wanted to acquire the skills she needed to have a job and a life someplace other than L.A. She missed Gracie, and sometimes even her parents, but when she thought of living with her parents, every fiber of her being told her that she could never live with them again. And she loved her frequent visits to Chicago and discovering everything she could about the city. It was lively and sophisticated, and she thoroughly enjoyed it, despite the brutally cold weather.

She went home for Thanksgiving freshman year, and saw instantly that Grace had grown taller, and prettier, if that was even possible. Her mother had finally relented and let her do a commercial for Gap Kids. Grace's photograph was suddenly everywhere, and she could have had a career as a model, but her father wanted a better life for her. And he swore that he'd never let a child of his go to college so far from home again. He told Grace that she'd have to go to UCLA, Pepperdine, Pomona, Scripps, Pitzer, or USC. He was not going to let her leave L.A. In his own way, he genuinely missed Victoria. He didn't have much to say when she called, except that he hoped she'd come home soon, and then he passed the phone to her mother, who asked what she was doing and if she'd lost any weight. It was the question Victoria hated most because she hadn't. And then she dieted frantically for two weeks before she went home.

And when she got back to L.A. for Christmas vacation, her mother noticed that she had lost a little weight. She had been working out at the gym at school, but she admitted that she hadn't had any dates. She was working too hard at school to even care. She told them she had decided to get a teaching degree, and her father instantly disapproved. It gave them a new topic to disagree on, and distracted them from her weight and lack of dates.

"You'll never make decent money as a teacher. You should major in communications, and work in advertising or PR. I can get you a job." She knew he meant well, but it wasn't what she wanted to do. She liked the idea of teaching, and working with kids. She changed the subject and they talked about how cold it was in the Midwest--she hadn't even been able to imagine it until she was there. It had been well below zero for the whole week before she came home. And she was enjoying going to hockey games. She wasn't crazy about her roommate, but she was determined to make the best of it. And she had met some people in her dorm. But mostly, she was trying to get accustomed to the school, and to being away from home. She said she missed decent food, and this time no one commented when she took three helpings of pot roast. And she was happy taking time off from going to the gym while she was home. She appreciated the weather in L.A. as she never had before.

Her father gave her a new computer for Christmas, and her mother gave her a down coat. Gracie had made her a montage of photographs of them, starting when she was born, on a bulletin board to hang up in her dorm room. And when she left after Christmas, Victoria wasn't sure if she was coming home for spring break. She said she might travel somewhere with friends. In fact, she wanted to go to New York and try to line up a summer job, but she didn't mention it to them. Her father said that if she didn't come home in March, they would come to see her after that, and take her to Chicago for the weekend. And it was even harder leaving Gracie that time. The two sisters genuinely missed each other, and her parents said they missed her too.

Second semester of freshman year was hard for Victoria too. The midwestern winter was dreary and cold, she was lonely, she hadn't met many people, she had no close friends yet, and she caught a bad case of flu in January. When she did, she lost the thread of going to the gym again and started living on fast food. By the end of second semester, she had gained the dreaded freshman fifteen, and none of the clothes she had brought with her fit anymore. She felt huge, and was twenty-five pounds overweight. She had no choice but to start working out again, and she swam every day. She managed to lose ten pounds of the extra weight fairly quickly, with a purging diet, and some pills one of her dorm mates had given her that made her desperately sick. But she could get into her clothes again, and she was thinking about going to Weight Watchers to lose the other fifteen, but she always had an excuse not to. She was busy, it was cold, she had a paper due. It was a constant battle with her weight. And even without her mother hounding her, and her father making fun of her, she was unhappy about her size, and she didn't have a date all year.

She went to New York as she hoped to over spring break, and managed to get a job as a receptionist at a law firm for the summer. The pay was decent, and she could hardly wait. She didn't tell her family about it till May, and Gracie called her sobbing on the phone. She had just turned twelve, and Victoria nineteen.

"I want you to come home! I don't want you to go to New York."

"I'm coming home in August before I go back to school," she promised, but Gracie was sad that she wasn't coming home till then. She had just done another ad, for a national campaign. Her parents were putting the money away in trust for her, and she liked the modeling and thought it was fun. But she missed her sister. Life at home wasn't nearly as much fun without her.

They had also met Victoria in Chicago, as they'd promised, for a long weekend in April, and it had snowed. It had been a seemingly endless winter, and when Victoria finally finished her exams, she was excited to fly out of Chicago on Memorial Day weekend. She was starting work in New York the day after Memorial Day.

She had bought some skirts and blouses and summer dresses that were appropriate for her job at the law firm. And she had gotten her weight back in control again by not eating any desserts or bread or pasta. It was a low-carb diet that seemed to be working. It was heading in the right direction at least, and she hadn't eaten ice cream in a month. Her mother would have been proud of her. It had also occurred to her that while her mother complained about what she ate, she had always kept a hefty supply of ice cream in the freezer. And she had served all the fattening things Victoria liked to eat. She had always put temptation in Victoria's way. At least now she could only blame herself for what she ate, Victoria told herself. And she was trying to be diligent and sensible about it, without going on any crazy diets, or borrowing someone else's pills. She hadn't had time to go to Weight Watchers yet, but she had promised herself that she would walk to work every day in New York. She was going to be working on Park Avenue and East 53rd Street, and staying at a small residential hotel in Gramercy Park, which was a thirty-block hike to work, a mile and a half. Three miles if she walked both ways.

Victoria liked her summer job. The people at the law firm were nice to her. She was competent, responsible, and efficient. Mostly, she answered the phones, handed envelopes to messengers, or accepted them for the lawyers in the firm. She directed clients to attorneys' offices, took messages, and greeted people at the front desk. It was an easy but busy job, and most days she wound up staying late. And by the time she left, in the torrid summer heat, she was too tired to walk home, so she took the subway back to Gramercy Park. But she managed to walk to work on the days she wasn't late, at least some of the time. When it took longer than she'd planned to get dressed or do her hair, she'd have to take the subway to work, so she wouldn't be late.