The Great Christmas Breakup (2 page)

H
e was tall
too
, a
bout six two
, which suited me. I liked tall men, because I was vertically challenged and could never reach the top shelves in shops without help.

Then I noticed
that the lovely man
was shopping for
dresses.
That
meant one
of two things
:
he was a cross
dresser
(the
more
likely option in my neighborhood)
; or he had a girlfriend.

‘So, is it a teapot cover
?’
he asked again.

I looked at what he was pointing
at. A knitted beret. In purple.

Must be
shopping for a girlfriend.
No self-respecting cross dresser would wear
that!

Still, g
irlf
riend or not, I had discovered the first
flaw.

Bad
taste.

My partner Lolly
had made the
purple
beret as a joke. We’d taken bets on who would buy it – I
said demented granny; she went for
no-idea boyfriend buying a Christmas gift for the girlfriend.

It seemed Lolly was right.

‘It’s a hat,
’
I said.

He smiled, and with the exception of one tooth on his top row that stood out a little from the others, the effect was dazzling.

‘I need to b
uy something for my
mum. She’s a little crazy, so I thin
k she’d like it. Is it a one of
?’

Ah. His mother.

‘You think people would manufacture these
in great quantities
?’

‘They manufacture bombs and those trousers with room for a football in the crotch, don’t t
hey?’

As he spoke he looked me up and down. I w
as petite and pretty reasonable
looking – people said I reminded them of a cross between the brunette lead from
Gossip Girl
and the
chick at the local McDonald’s
who was generally considered ‘hot’ amongst my
housemates.

My eyes, a d
ull brown, were helped along b
y enormous lashes that
never needed mascara and
the look was completed by
mountain
s
of long, curly auburn hair.
I managed, with great effort and self-sacrifice, to keep my weight to about 52 kilos.

I laughed, and because I hadn’t laughed in ab
out a year, I did something
I never, ever had done before.

I asked a guy out on a date.

52
kilos! Ha
h.
Melancholy
memory? Deluded longings
, more like. Had I ever really been that slim? Now, I was trying to ease on size 16s
,
while telling myself I had to get the dryer serviced because it was shrinking my jeans.

Definitely deluded.

Some people eat when they are depressed.

Some people eat when they are happy.

I don’t seem to eat
much
either way
and
still
pile on the weight.

Once, even though we couldn’t afford
it, I went to a doctor to make sure
I didn’t have a thyr
oid problem or some other condition to account
for the weight gain.

‘Donuts,’ the doct
or told me. ‘That’s the probable
cause.’
The words were accompanied by a solemn, accusing glare.

After which
he charged me a week’s worth of groceries for the sage advice.

‘Never go to a doctor,’ Lolly told me, when I complained. ‘Look it up on Google.’

It was okay
for her – Lolly had trouble putting weight
on
.

‘What if it’
s something serious?’

Telling me as gently as possible that serious things made you
lose
weight
,
not gain it, Lolly suggested jogging, or stomach crunches.

‘I’ve barely got time to
put a pair of t
rainers on, let alone run about the park
in them.’

‘Well, forget it then. If Carson doesn’t mind, why should you?’

Good question. I suppose because I didn’t feel
like myself
anymore
; h
adn’t felt
like
myself since I’d crawled into size 14 territory.

Carson
continually
told me
my weight didn’t matter, but then I’d see him eying some size 8
on her way to work
.

And t
he look in his eyes was
unmistakable
.

L
onging.

- Cue conversation that very morning:

‘It’s not the weight, Scar,
it’s your attitude. Mom is
okay, this is all you.’

‘How, exactly, Mr
IAmSoFuckingCleverBecauseIWentToHarvard, is your mother telling me her
‘
son could do so much better than an oompa loompa
’
related to my attitude?’

‘Let’s see?’ Raising
his index finger to his lip as if pretending to ponder a ser
ious and important subject, Carson said,
‘Maybe because you said you wouldn’t take the kids to visit
unless Cecily
cooked what you wanted?’

‘The last time they deep-
fried
the entire meal, inclu
ding some leftover sushi rolls I
’d got on sale from
Flindes
.
It’s not me I worry about – I don’t eat when I go there in case I catch something – it’s the kids. Jessie is already showing signs of being a bit meaty.’

‘Can you hear yourself? If our kids are fat, that is down to you, Scarlet. My side of the family is slim, or haven’t you noticed?’

‘Well doing hard drugs
and the occasional stretch in prison
does
tend to
hel
p keep the weight off,’ I snapped
.

Carson shook his head. ‘I can’t talk to you anymore.’

A
nd slamming the door behind him – which
he never does because the frame is wobbly and he has no aptitude for home m
aintenance – my
dear, darling husband exited
,
stage centre
.

A few moments later, the door let out a pitiful creak,
and fell
out
wards
into the communal
hallway.

As I sat, thin
king about my pathetic
existence and listening to
the
grammatically challenged rap
penetrating the ceiling
from Hammertro’s apartment above me, I wondered
whether
I
should do more to help myself.

A
nd our marriage?

Carson m
ay
be twat and a mummy’s boy, but he was the father of my children, and I did love him once.

Didn’t I?

Sighing, I
flipped over a few more pages of
the calendar. But when I got to ‘
Marriage is the dreams we have when we are awake’
,
I
gave up
, put the calendar on my bedside table
and pulled out a foot circulation device I’d been given by
Cecily
two years previously.

It wasn’t something a decent shop would sell – clearly, from the label and the finish
it was a copy of a
better quality original.

I should give the damn
thing back to her.

Hmm.
Sod it
, I would.

My mother-in-law resolutely
hated everything I gave
her, so what the skinny cra
ck mare would
have to
say about her own gift should be priceless.

Let’s see her try to ridicule
her own gift.

Taking out some leftover paper and ribbon from the bottom of the re
-
gifting box, I began
my bitter task.

Tape. I needed tape. Standing, I walked into the hall, to be confronted by my neighbor peering through the open doorway.

‘Yo, Mrs T, you moving? You getting’ evicted?’

Hammertro, the closest thing I had to a fri
end in the building in Brooklyn
where we li
ved, followed me into the
kitchen diner.

His look was fashioned on
members of his ‘crew’, and included numerous items of ‘bling’, and the latest designer gear.

A
s
far as I knew, he was its only white member, and
he looked up to
his mates with a profound and worrying sense of hero worship
.
Strangely, the carefully styled
light brown
afro worked,
thanks to his clear-skinned
face and light grey eyes,
although he really couldn’t pull off the
trousers that hung near
his knees.

‘No, the door fell off it
s hinges. And my husband is a bloody bastard.’

‘You English are so polite. I be tellin’ him
he is a cheating mo-fo if I was
you.’

‘I don’t think he
is
cheating, Hammertro.
He’s j
ust an arsehole.’

Carson had been distant lately, but he’d been working every hour at that stupid school. There was no time for cheating.

Hamertro came further into the room.
‘I like that word,
arse
.
’ He tried it out a few times, trying to wrap his tongue around the ‘r’. ‘Much more punchy than ass, ain’t
it?’

I wou
nd tape untidily around the gif
t, but it got stuck in my ridiculous
needs-a-cut-but-can’t-afford-it hair and I had to begin the whole process again.

Hammertro came over and ogled
the blue and white box with it
s fake
medical crest. ‘Cool, a circu
-
boosta. My
mom got one fr
om my
uncle
and loved it.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Hah?’ Hammertro looked confused. Despite the language and
the
gun carrying and
the
continuous
arrests for making threats with menace, the twenty-something
wasn’t deep down nasty.

Unlike my in-laws.

Plus,
he had
a positive attitude, w
hich was m
ore than could be said for me at that point in time.

‘You sure she wasn’t just lying?’
I asked.

‘No, she’s a bit ch
ubby, like you, a
nd couldn’t walk it off because her feet hurt. That,’ he pointed at the half-wrapped device, ‘helped and
she lost two stone. Two fuckin’
stone.
Lost some of that
arse
!
’

‘Really?
’

This in
formation simply served
to annoy me further
.
Cecily
was always having a dig at my weight.
No doubt a bunch of her old
moonshine
cronies
had
told her it was a
weight-
loss wonder machine.
So she’d rushed out
and nicked one for me.

‘You wanna
help?’

Hammertro was eyeing the fridge and as much as I liked him, I couldn’t afford to feed us all pr
operly, let alone
a
rap artist
in rude health.

The
amount of exercise Hammertro did was incredible. If the
noise from
his flat
above
was any indication,
he either spent a good five hours a day working out
in a gym upstairs; or
he had some sort of sexual addition.