Milk Fed - Melissa Broder Page 0,15

for me. While I’d been busy with the Slurpee machine, he must have been inspecting the shelves, his glasses falling down his nose, ruminating on the question: What’s something Rachel would really like?

Suddenly, his Dad eyes had spotted it: Variety Pack. With his Dad hand, he reached out and touched it. Variety Pack! Maybe he’d even whispered out loud, “The Variety Pack—yes, she might really enjoy that.”

“Variety Pack, Variety Pack,” I said, as I stood in the kitchen, eating and crying.

The words were beautiful to me. Also devastating.

“Rachel, am I on speaker? Can you hear me?” asked my father.

“Sorry,” I said.

Water was dripping from my hair onto the screen, and I knew it would fuck up my swiping for days.

“Please talk to her,” he said. “As a favor to me. For my sake.”

“I can’t,” I said. “No more hardware store.”

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

I looked at my wet face in the mirror. Was my face getting more annoying? My neck looked like it had somehow gotten thicker.

“This isn’t easy for me either,” I said.

“So then—”

“But listen. Just because something feels bad doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

“Huh,” said my father. “Who said that? Benjamin Franklin?”

CHAPTER 14

A great miracle occurred. Adiv returned.

“Shalom!” I called out when I saw him behind the counter.

“Shalom,” he said, looking confused.

Never, I was sure, had any customer been so happy to see Adiv back at it. This was my burning bush, my Noah and the Ark and the dove. I was to be captain of my dessert realm again: no more peer-pressured extras or yogurt in conversation.

I wondered how his experience in Israel had been, what his views were. But a food-service interaction seemed an inopportune time to say, Hey, any thoughts on a two-state solution?

“I’ll have the cheesecake,” I said, omitting any discourse on land disputes.

Then Miriam emerged from the back.

“Hey, Rachel!” she said, signaling that she’d handle me.

“Oh, hi,” I said.

“Be useful and go unbox the pretzel cones,” she said to Adiv.

Adiv complied. I watched her grab a 16-ounce cup and pull the lever on the machine.

The yogurt began its ascent, swirling upward until it overtook the brim, entering the unsafe space above it. But then it transcended that realm, soaring to a new, unthinkable altitude before reaching a summit that was miles above where she began. Even for Miriam’s style, the serving was absurd.

“I want to give you a free topping,” she said. “Because you didn’t like your last yogurt.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I don’t want one.”

“Come on,” she said. “There has to be something you like. What about sprinkles? I’m just going to put sprinkles on it, just a little.”

“Rainbow,” I said instinctively, then thought, Fuck.

I watched her spooning on the sprinkles and noticed, for the first time, that she had lovely fingernails: smooth and egg-shaped, trimmed neatly. She wasn’t a biter like me, a compulsive habit that began in childhood as something of a snack. Now I painted my nails red as a deterrent, but I only ended up biting off the polish too—spitting flakes of crimson.

When she handed me the yogurt, every inch of that mammoth peak was covered in rainbow sprinkles. It was gorgeous, seamless, as though the yogurt were a rainbow itself: no separation between dessert and topping. Its beauty made me think for a moment that it should have always been this way.

I stared at the sculptural masterpiece in my hand. I wanted to kiss it, to make out with it, to touch it with my tongue and lips and explore what those tiny textures felt like. Simply holding the cup, I was rocketed back to sprinkles past. I remembered that they were actually made of tiny bits of dried frosting, and the way you could dissolve them in your mouth, suck until they softened back to frosting once again, completing one of life’s great cycles of transformation.

“See?” said Miriam. “Everybody loves a topping.”

I smiled at her and felt weak. Then, as though compelled by an otherworldly force, I brought that majestic mountain to my mouth, licked it, and took a bite.

“Mmmmmmm,” I said with my mouth full. “Thanks.”

I closed my eyes. The sprinkles were so delicious, melting there on my tongue, that my throat began to call out for them.

What would be the harm? What would be the harm? said my throat. What would be so bad about just swallowing?

Of course, I knew what the harm would be. Sprinkles were loaded with sugar, and there was no way of knowing how many of them were packed into any given mouthful.