The Appetites of Girls (36 page)

But I told her, if she did not mind, there was someone else I might like to invite—an artist who’d twice brought his work to the gallery and who, just the other day, had stopped in to see me, asking me to lunch, though at the time I’d refused.

•   •   •

M
arco’s friend owned a restaurant downtown, he told me after he got over the surprise of my phone call. “Carmine’s. It’s pub fare mostly—burgers and melted cheese sandwiches, chicken fingers, though I think they have some salads. Of course, we can always go somewhere else. You’ll probably want to run a full marathon to work off his meal!” Marco laughed. “It won’t be the health stuff you sell at the gallery!”

“Thanks for the warning, but it’s okay!” I told him, something in me, as I laughed, breaking free, sailing upward. “Yes, Carmine’s will be fine.”

At long last, I discovered what had been missing from the sketches I’d worked on these many months. What had kept the parts disjointed was not some inadequacy of technique. Rather, in trying to make everything perfect, I had been afraid to risk and so had created nothing that satisfied. So I returned to the drawings, this time using bolder lines, freer strokes. And with these changes, the sketches came to life, becoming what I must have always, somehow, known they should be but had to dare to make true.

(Francesca’s Story)

•
1994
•

A
month before my twenty-fourth birthday, I returned to New York, to a one-bedroom off Central Park West. What I had been offered, through a friend of my parents, was an editorial position at
Real
, a new magazine that encouraged a realistic portrayal of women. The models, though attractive, were average-sized, many of them big-boned, even plump. The focus was on healthy attitudes, self-acceptance. Articles included autobiographical pieces by prominent female figures—politicians, social activists, artists—as well as by recovering anorexics and bulimics. Each issue featured suggestions for preparing foods you loved. The words “skinny” and “diet” were strictly taboo. “Our goal is to empower women,” Myra Jones, the editor in chief, reminded the staff during our frequent meetings. And when she smacked her palms on the arms of her chair for emphasis, a shiver shot through me as I thought of the important work we were doing, this strong, new voice of which I was a part.

After graduation I had spent two years in Europe teaching English to Parisian schoolchildren. For a time, this had felt like an adventure. I lived in Paris’s fourth arrondissement in a flat with two Florentine women. But I had sensed the criticisms of the mothers and nannies who retrieved my students at the end of each afternoon, always smiling, greeting me politely, but taking in every inch from my neck to my ankles behind their lightly shaded glasses. And, eventually, I’d had my fill of their silent judgments, the narrow-mindedness of a people in a country of scrawny-assed women.

I believed with Myra that, at
Real
, external appearances mattered little, were, in fact, practically insignificant. No one on the staff took notice of colleagues’ lunches, the number of sugar cookies or glazed doughnuts snatched from the afternoon snack tray. Each morning when I dressed, I chose whatever struck my fancy, confident that if the cut of my pants, the lines of my skirt accentuated my widest parts, I would receive no disapproving stares. If I gained a pound or two, it would go unnoticed. Even the few men on the staff had refreshing attitudes. Here we were all professionals: we were independent and equal, appreciative of one another for our talents, our beliefs. In any other setting, I would have bristled when Carlos, a member of
Real
’s creative team as well as one of its photographers, bent close, studying my features, the dark curls of his hair almost falling over mine. I would have told him just exactly what he could do with his
goddamned
camera when he asked in his lilting, slightly Spanish accent whether I would agree to a shoot, whether I knew what a very photogenic face I had. But this place was different. So when he invited me to pull at my blouse, revealing my shoulders, to “be sexy, Francesca. Don’t be afraid to be sexy,” I saw there was nothing lewd in his smile, no lascivious expression in his eyes. For him, I knew, this was serious work; it was art.

I had a photographer’s eye, good instincts, Carlos said, and he began to ask me to critique the shots he planned to submit for each upcoming issue. He brought his lunch to my desk, double portions so that I could
share. When we had finished, he would disappear to the bakery on the first floor of our building and return with a slice of fruit pie or a square of frosted cake and two forks. I ate unself-consciously in his presence; I was comfortable with him. So when he confessed he needed a roommate to split the cost of his Greenwich Village apartment, that he hoped I would give this some consideration, I could see no reason not to. Adamant that I would no longer rely on my parents’ supplements, my own rent payments had been a stretch of late. And the thought that they would cringe at this living arrangement only made it more appealing.

•   •   •

C
arlos’s apartment was a loft with windows that reached nearly from floor to ceiling. The kitchen, dining, and living areas were spacious, all flowing into one another. The walls were hung with large-scale black-and-white photos of women, many of which I recognized from old copies of
Real
. In one corner, beside two sofas, stood an easel displaying an unfinished canvas of bold, abstract shapes. Down a narrow hall were two bedrooms—a smaller one, which Carlos had taken, and a larger one, which he had generously cleared for me.

As I soon learned, Carlos loved to cook. The lunches we’d been splitting over the past several weeks, he admitted, had been his own creations. And now that he would no longer be eating the majority of his dinners alone, he said, he was inspired to prepare his favorite dishes. So as soon as we returned home from work, he would turn on a recording of some famous Spanish vocalist or guitarist and begin a slow-cooking stew or casserole—paella or poached fish and potatoes, scallops in tomato sauce. As in Spain, where Carlos had spent the first sixteen years of his life, we ate late and emptied glasses of sherry or sangria while pots bubbled on the stove, roasting pans simmered in the oven. We talked for hours, amazed by our common frustrations with society, our shared understanding of the traps people fell into, the things they did out of
weakness. How many couples we could both name—we counted them on our fingers—who had married in blind imitation of their parents. How many women, upon reaching a certain age, attached themselves to the nearest man who offered stability. It was pitiful—these decisions that came from fear, from insecurity, the very things we at
Real
were hoping to counter.

“There should be more women like you,” Carlos would say as he spooned potatoes with paprika sauce onto my plate.

I would laugh dismissively, fanning my hand before my face, shooing away his comments.

“No, no, Francesca, I am serious. You are strong. You don’t care about the meaningless opinions of others. Such an admirable quality, for a woman especially, I think.”

He admired, too, my sense of adventure, as I did his. Life was not meant to be met on one’s ass, hands cupped passively in one’s lap awaiting whatever dropped into them. No! One was meant to march purposefully into life, we agreed, shaping it as one went. We were drawn to what energized us. We both loved the crackling charge of New York, and I loved Carlos’s descriptions of it: its currents pulsed deep into the ground, skyward through its towers, he said, and outward in all possible directions from its broadest avenues to its remotest alleys. He guessed that I, as he, pulled energy from nature, too. Was he right? Because he needed it, craved it from time to time. He’d welcome my company if I ever wished to hike with him. He went many Saturdays and Sundays. And he could see I might like it.

“Sure, why not,” I told him. “Sounds like fun.” I’d bought hiking boots two years earlier in France, planning to spend some of my holidays trekking the countryside of Provence. But these had turned, instead, into driving tours through Burgundy and seaside visits to Nice and Saint-Tropez—Natalia and Mona, who’d shared my flat, averse to any exercise more strenuous than strolls through dress shops or food markets.

The first morning I joined him Carlos smiled as I pulled my hair into
an elastic, looping my ponytail through the opening at the back of my Brown University baseball cap. “Easy as the breeze,” he’d winked. “Why must some women torture themselves before the mirror for hours, fussing over every lash, every pore? It can be maddening!” And I’d wondered for a moment about the women Carlos had dated, women, I imagined, who reapplied lipstick before gym workouts, who, before evenings out, kept Carlos waiting as they considered the complete contents of their wardrobes.

“Are you sure you haven’t done this before? You’re a natural,” he told me an hour or so into our hike. We were a morning’s drive northwest of the city, navigating a section of the Appalachian Trail Carlos had tackled a few years before. I’d surprised him, he admitted, how well I’d negotiated the steep paths, slick in spots from thawing ice, crossed by streambeds of wet, loosened rocks.

“Guess I’m just a sucker for a challenge,” I laughed, adjusting the brim of my cap.

As we continued our climb, I could feel Carlos watching from his position two steps behind me, so I did not admit to the contracting in my legs or that this gradually turned to a smoldering. But I was able to tolerate it and even manage a smile when we returned to our starting point, where Carlos squeezed my shoulders with enthusiasm and approval.

On another trip, I impressed him further, hardly groaning when I lost my footing on a skin of decaying leaves, landing on a stone sharp enough to slice my jeans and leave a small gash across my kneecap. “I’m really sorry, Francesca.” Carlos swabbed the cut with peroxide, patched it with a bandage from the first aid kit in his backpack. “Should we head back? I should have warned you this trail can be treacherous in places.”

But when I insisted on forging ahead, he smiled as if he’d suspected I would choose to continue.

“How are you feeling?” he asked some time later.

“Great!” I called over my shoulder, though my knee still throbbed like a bitch in heat.

•   •   •

C
arlos had no shortage of compliments. He respected so many things about me, he said, not the least of which was my appetite, my clear love of food. God, if he counted the girlfriends who’d refused to admit hunger, who were afraid to finish a meal! . . . And I imagined a whole parade of them, skinny as paper dolls in dresses small as swatches. I wondered if one of them had been Petra, who’d left two messages on our phone since I’d moved in. “But
you
don’t worry about conforming;
you
do what you enjoy,” Carlos said. “There’s something so sensuous about a woman who admits her pleasures, don’t you agree?” We ate gazpacho and garlic soup, prawns and empanadas, fried custard squares and flan until even my roomier clothes grew too tight and I needed to make after-work visits to the retail shops in the neighborhood for looser dresses and blouses and skirts.

People who ate daintily, dabbing at every trickle of juice or crumb, were not truly experiencing their food, Carlos insisted. When my lips turned dark from gravy or glistened with basil oil, he was happy, he said, because he knew I was eating with passion. Then, sometimes, he would startle me by rising suddenly to his feet. “Beauty! Beauty!” He would dive for his camera and snap photos as I licked a drip of red wine from the edge of my glass or sucked the pulp from a crab leg.

It was one such evening that, after pushing his camera aside, he pulled me to him, his hands unfastening the hair clip at the base of my neck, the ties of my dress. In the dark of his room, stretched out on his duvet, he propped himself up on one elbow before drawing me close and whispered, “This is okay, isn’t it, Francesca? We are both adults, yes?” And from this I understood that he sought pleasure, not obligation.

“Yes, yes, of course.” I tilted my head back and laughed, showing him that I, too, was independent, free from the need for emotional attachments.

Later, on nights like this, Carlos would close his eyes, arms thrown
back over his head as we lay side by side, and hum snatches of melodies from the Francisco Tárrega or Andrés Segovia CDs we had listened to earlier in the evening. Afterward, when I stood to return to my own room, he would grab strands of my hair and murmur, “Francesca, you’re amazing.” And I knew it was my ability to enjoy him as he had me, without further entanglements, that he was praising.

Other nights, when Carlos filled our bathroom with the scent of cologne and dressed in his most tailored pants and the silky shirts that rippled over his arms and chest as he moved, the ones he saved for evenings out, I asked no questions. I merely waved a hand, hoping to seem casual as he walked to the door. This was our unspoken arrangement. If I had been the one leaving, I knew he would do the same.

After he had gone, I would search the fridge for leftovers or turn to the stack of takeout menus we left at the center of our coffee table, then press the Play button on the living room stereo and listen to whatever recording Carlos had left in from the night before. Sometimes I flipped through the pages of my address book and directories from high school and from Brown, marking the names of women I knew who might take an interest in
Real
. I sent the most recent issue to all former BREMUSA members. For Opal and Setsu and Ruth, I included the gift of a year’s subscription, though I was not sure what they would think of the publication. I hadn’t mentioned it when we’d spoken just a week before, as we always did at the beginning of each month. And I’d hesitated before sending Ruth’s, not sure how she’d interpret it.
Let’s get together soon
, I wrote on a note taped to her magazine’s front cover.
Let me know if this is of any interest
. After our junior year, Ruth and I had rarely spoken of BREMUSA, and never of our day on Moon Beach, my accusations. “I’m not one to make formal apologies,” I told her during the week we had packed our belongings for the last time, our final week at college and as suitemates. “It’s okay. That was long ago,” she had said, her arms full of packing tape, folded lavender sheets and pillowcases. She had understood my meaning. At the end of the previous spring, after Brian had left for Ontario, Ruth
hadn’t cried as I’d thought she would. But for some time she’d spent most of her waking hours behind her closed door, suddenly interested only in her studies. This was temporary, though, I’d thought then, nothing she couldn’t get over, with a little determination, in a matter of days. But as I sealed her copy of
Real
in its padded envelope, I wondered if her struggle had lasted longer than I had at first assumed.

•   •   •

I
n February, overnight, snow blanketed the city, a deep layer like some giant feather mattress. Cushions of snow capped street lamps, filled the square beds along the sidewalks where trees were planted, lined fences and windowsills, drifted up along the brick walls of buildings, the doors of half-buried cars, stuck in small clots to tree trunks. Carlos was out of town in the Carolinas until Monday. “Just a weekend with a couple of old college friends,” he’d explained as he filled his leather travel bag with slacks and shirts, his shaving kit, a change of shoes. Petra had left a message again, but I’d heard Carlos delete it before bothering to listen to it in its entirety. It meant nothing, silly to think she had anything to do with his weekend away.