Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,10

into the bathroom to confront myself in the mirror, & then back to my dining room table, & then to bed, to bed.

• • •

I spent all of Saturday stewing in my worries, speculating about Charlene’s intentions in sending me the picture of her son. I ate a great deal. I wondered if I should call her on the telephone. I didn’t.

I ruminated for a while on my size. There is a game I play in which I attempt to justify my weight. I’m six feet and three inches tall, so sometimes I tell myself that I’m burly or a big guy. Both conjure images of health and fun. A woodsman, a football player, a Newport News commercial, for heaven’s sake. Some football players weigh close to four hundred pounds. But football players also have arms that are huge, huge, & legs that are like tree trunks.

But I carry most of my weight in my gut, & no part of me has ever been firm. Since the age of ten, I’ve been fleshy & great, with soft arms and legs, dimpled knees, fingers that look like sausages. At this point my gut has expanded to the point of grotesquerie. My gut hangs down between my legs when I sit down. I pull my pants above it & that is the other difference. Acceptably fat men wear their pants below their guts. I knew I was unacceptably fat the day I bought pants big enough to accommodate my girth someplace above my navel, pants manufactured for men like me. Obese men. I try to deny it, to catch myself looking normal at certain angles in my front window. But for the little one over my bathroom sink, I do not keep mirrors. I do not like walking past them & catching accidental glimpses of myself. When I need to see myself I use the three-paneled window, facing Fifth Street, that serves this purpose after the sun sets. Dark on the outside, light on the inside: Arthur Opp at his window, turning and turning as if he is upright on some invisible rotisserie. (The neighbors probably think I am very strange!) I do this for a reason: it is so that I can keep track of my size, so that I don’t wake up one day unable to walk.

After several hours of this sort of self-pitying reflection I had decided that, in the end, it would be very bad to see Charlene Turner again. I had thoroughly convinced myself that I should not be seen by anyone.

But then everything changed, for then my telephone rang again. & this time I knew it would be her.

“Arthur Opp,” I said.

“Can you believe it,” said Charlene.

I was wary of her. I said no I could not.

“He’s in high school, can you believe it?”

Once more I said no.

“Isn’t he something,” said Charlene.

This went on for a while until finally I felt I could safely assume that she hadn’t sent me a picture of her son out of a desire to silence me or because she wished for me to stop sending her letters. I was quite relieved.

But for the second time I heard something in her voice that was deeper & slower than it should have been, & this made me concerned. Then again I have spent so long recalling Charlene Turner at twenty that I suppose it was unfair of me to expect her to sound just the same.

Such a long silence ensued that finally I felt I had nothing to lose by asking her whatever I pleased. I felt I had permission to & a right to. So I asked her why she had never told me about him & she let out a very long sigh.

& then she told me a story. Many years ago, she said, but not too long after the last time we saw each other, she married a man named Keller with whom she was not in love. She had not wanted to tell me. (I became dizzy thinking up reasons why.) She continued to write to me as if nothing had happened. Soon she had a son, but—because of her prior omission—could not find a natural way to tell me about him. So she never did, and so on: she & her husband divorced. She didn’t tell me. She was left with his name—she is Charlene Turner Keller now. She never told me. She raised her son alone. She didn’t tell me. “You’d love him,” she said firmly,