Sara Grant

Narrating

            Okay.  First let me start off by saying this is not my story.  I mean it is my story.  I wrote it, but it’s not a story about me.  I’m not the main character.  Her actions and thoughts have never been mine.  I didn’t plagiarize or anything, but this is not a piece of life writing disguised as fiction. 
            Furthermore the people in my story are fictional.  I admit I have robbed bits and pieces from everyone I’ve ever met, including conversations, memories and character descriptions.  But the mom is not my mom.  And my ex-husband should not think that I’ve based the male character on him.  Trust me.
            So, to summarize, this is fiction or as close as I can come to writing it.
            The starting gun signalled a beginning and an ending for Kate — the beginning of the 13.1-mile Indianapolis 500 Mini-Marathon and the pinnacle of a year of dieting and exercise.  She only intended to change one thing.  She didn’t know that you can’t change just one thing — just like you can’t eat one McDonald’s French fry. 
            Kate had arrived as requested 30 minutes prior to race time.  Her feet were well greased with Vaseline.  After two, 10-mile practice runs, she’d narrowed the contents of her waist pouch to a precise list of items:  one tube of Burt’s Beeswax Lip Balm; two packs of GU Energy Gel — Orange Burst and Tri Berry flavored; a clean, white handkerchief for wiping sweat and nose blowing, if necessary; four Advil headache tablets, an extra battery for her MP3 player, and a water bottle full of orange-flavored Propel fitness water. 
            The race started two minutes ago, but Kate was still inching toward the start line, elbow to elbow with a 20-year-old who said he shaved all his body hair to improve his speed and a 61-year-old whose stated pace was 36 seconds better than Kate’s.  As she stepped on the mesh mat that activated the computer chip fastened to her shoelaces, she started the timer on her sports watch.  Even with Eye of the Tiger blasting over the loud speakers, she could still hear the echo of electronic beeps as other runners did the same. 
            She was running now, well, more like a bounce and a shuffle.  Runners found their pace and the pack spread.  The city street became an ocean of bobbing heads.  The runners somehow floated together and glided forward.  Kate almost couldn’t believe she was there in the sea of 25,000 runners. 
            Her transformation started with a simple wish.  She wanted to change the slim, black numbers on her trendy chrome and glass bathroom scale from 255 to 155.  That’s not completely true.  At first, all she planned to do was change her relationship with food.  That would have been difficult enough.  She couldn’t imagine losing 100 pounds.  That was impossible.  Food was Kate’s drug of choice.  If she was depressed, the white chocolate gingersnap from Einstein’s Bagels made her believe life was worth living.  Corn chips, salsa and a bowl of con queso sauce from Don Pablos bolstered her faith in a higher being.  To celebrate, there was always Fish Food from Ben & Jerry’s. 
            By the time she arrived at work every day, she had planned her daily menu.  A salad for lunch left room for a three-course dinner.  Ordering lunch took poise and creativity.  Could she have extra dressing on the side?  Would the waitress mind adding a few more blue cheese crumbles?  The salad didn’t come with croutons, but a few garlic ones sprinkled on top would be nice.  She’d count the minutes until her afternoon snack.  Maybe she’d sneak away for 30 minutes and grab a chocolate-covered Krispy Kreme donut with sprinkles.  No use going all that way for just one, right?  At buffets and parties, she’d plan her attack.  She didn’t want to appear greedy, but she did want another helping of sweet and sour meatballs.  Food was her reward for hard work and her consolation for a bad day.  
            Sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to point out to the readers who don’t know me, have never seen me, I am not, nor have I ever been overweight.  I mean what kind of person obsesses this much about food? 
            She’d lost and gained hundreds of pounds over the last 33 years.  After trying approximately 64 different diets, she actually told herself she was happy, that she liked herself just as she was.  She made a salary twice her age in thousands.  She owned a two-story home with two and a half baths.  She was happily married for 10 years to her college sweetheart.  Her friends and family loved her – for the most part.  Yet she didn’t own a full-length mirror. 
            A few weeks after she’d moderated her caloric intake, she decided to implement an exercise program.  Every morning without fail, she walked.  It didn’t matter if she was on vacation, if she had guests, if her flight was leaving at 6 a.m., she’d walk.  “Something’s better than nothing,” she said, when her husband explained that two, 15-minute walks a day wouldn’t accomplish anything.  He was wrong.  Fifteen minutes slowly increased to an hour.  Instead of worrying about when and what she’d consume, she decided to obsess about exercise.
            Every morning for six months as she walked she said to herself, “Kate likes exercise.  She likes to walk.”  She repeated versions of these phrases over and over and over in her head.  It became a forced mantra at first hissed through clenched teeth and then hummed under the music from her MP3. 
            On race morning, her husband got up early to make her a big breakfast.  She never ate before running.  She actually never ate breakfast anymore.  When she sat down at the kitchen table, she couldn’t help but glance at the clock on the microwave.  She had a timeline for race day.  Placating her husband was not on the day’s agenda.  The plate seemed to ooze, melted butter pooling on the toast and drips of bacon grease swirling with the bright yellow egg yoke.  “I can’t, Honey.  I’m sorry,” she said pushing the plate to the center of the table.  “I really appreciate the thought, but I . . .” 
            “Too nervous.  I understand,” he finished her sentence and then finished the contents of her plate.  He handed her a Hallmark card, kissed her and headed off to work.  The card included Snoopy wishing her luck and her husband promising to take her to dinner to celebrate at St. Elmos Steakhouse, his favorite restaurant.
            Maybe I should cut this part about the husband.  This didn’t happen to me, but something similar happened to a friend.  Death by a thousand paper cuts is how she explained the disintegration of her marriage.  Do you think he’ll recognize himself? 
            In the first mile, waves of people passed her.  She tried not to notice.  She ran a consistent 10-minute mile, not a shabby time for a self-proclaimed exercise hater.  But on the race application, she had fudged a little on her expected finishing time, which put her among faster runners.  Other runners seemed to push her, not physically, of course, but their momentum nudged Kate to run faster and faster. 
            She could see the big red square with a huge number one painted on it.  The sign was mounted on a ladder and a yellow-shirted volunteer called out times.  Kate tried not to listen to the volunteer’s countdown.  The volunteer kept the official race clock, which was 2 minutes and 36 seconds before Kate crossed the start line.  It should be easy to do the math, but Kate knew after a few more miles, even minimal mental skills would be out of the question.  It was as if her mind had to focus all its power on simply keeping her legs moving, her lungs breathing and her heart pumping.  Kate looked at her watch as she passed the one-mile sign: 9:28.  She was running too fast.  She tried to slow down, but then her movement felt too slow.  She closed her eyes for a second and took a breath.  “Run your race,” she told herself.  “Save your energy.”
            The second mile wasn’t any easier.  Her legs never seemed to find the rhythm.  They were like hard rubber balls bouncing off the pavement.  Her arms wouldn’t swing in synchronization.  About mile three, her legs, arms and mind finally began to move effortlessly together. 
Some transitions in her new life hadn’t been as smooth.  When Kate first went on the diet, her best friend Susan was supportive.  Hell, starting and failing diets and exercise programs were practically the foundation of their friendship.  They met in college at a Weight Watchers meeting.  They’d go out for coffee and eventually pie afterwards.  Susan saw the grapefruit diet in Cosmo.  Kate created the C diet – cauliflower, cottage cheese, and cabbage.  They’d joined the YMCA, tried step classes and had a psychologically damaging experience with water aerobics.  They thought that the double humiliation of wearing a swimsuit and exercising would provide the motivation needed to stay on their current bubble gum diet.  How wrong they were.  The only women in their class were retired.  These women either looked better than they did in their matching swim skirts or were still overweight, which depressed Kate and Susan to think they could still be fighting their battle with fried food in 40 years.  Kate and Susan both gained 10 pounds.
            Susan joined Kate in her new healthy living scheme for a while, but eventually the low-fat Snack Wells went stale, and Oreos again filled the cookie jar.  Susan stopped inviting Kate to dinner.  Kate knew the warped dieting code of ethics among friends, and she knew Susan.  She was breaking the cardinal rule by losing while Susan was gaining.  Susan would think Kate was judging her when she ordered the platter of nachos and Kate ordered the salad.  To pass on dessert was a slap in the face.  They tried to go to movies, but naturally Susan didn’t want to eat the tub of buttered popcorn in front of Kate.  A few times they met for a walk, but Susan knew Kate ran at least 5 miles a day, six days a week.  Susan felt patronized with every step.
            Okay, something similar happened to me.  But my writing coach says, “Truth is a poor excuse for bad prose” so I changed my reality a little.  My best friend from college and I broke up.  Ours was the worst kind of ending — awkward silence.  I never figured out how one minute two people can have everything in common and the next they can’t even make small talk.  I’d make plans, and she’d find ways to break them.  She stopped returning my calls, so I eventually stopped calling.  She said I changed.  I said she didn’t.
            At mile four, Kate was gearing up for a Gatorade break.  Kate loved Gatorade.  It was a rite of passage.  Sports drinks were for athletes.  When she was a size 24, she believed sirens would erupt if she tried to buy Gatorade at the grocery store.  Wailing.  Red lights swirling.  “Step away from the Gatorade.”  A red-vested store clerk would pry the bottle from her sweaty palms and drag her to the soda aisle.  “Here’s where you belong.”  She imagined his condescending glare as she reached for the Diet Coke.  Now she flaunted her Gatorade six-pack at the check out line.
            She weaved between two twenty-somethings with matching T-shirts and blond ponytails and grabbed a Dixie cup full of neon yellow Gatorade.  She remembered the first time she tried to drink and run.  She snatched a cup from the first water station at the Polar Bear Run and tried to drink it as if she was grabbing a quick glass over her kitchen sink.  It tumbled like a bucket of bricks down her throat clogging her airway and making her double over coughing.  Now she knew the trick: 1) pinch the cup, 2) hold the fluid in your mouth, and 3) swallow slowly. 
            The best part of any race was throwing the cup — an act of guilt-free, environmental defiance.  Crushing the cup and tossing it on the street gave her a macho rush and an extra burst to propel her to the next mile marker.
            Little victories accumulated into bigger ones.  Once her scales registered 200, she verbalized a goal: lose 100 pounds.  Her morning walks turned into runs.  The rest of her life filled the gaps between training.  She scouted out the best specialty running stores.  She invested in special breathable shirts and shorts.  Water bottles, energy drinks, special socks, you name it.  She wanted to look the part.  Her parents joked that they didn’t recognize her anymore — this woman who ran five miles on Christmas morning and passed on the family’s traditional sausage, biscuits and gravy brunch. 
            Between mile 5 and 9, Kate could do anything.  Her whole body buzzed with life and possibility.  If you’d ask her to fly or run for president, she’d think both were equally possible.  Her world collapsed and expanded to fit her body.  Being suspended in that zone was better than all the Ding Dongs at Wal-mart. 
            She fumbled in her waist pouch for her five-mile rations.  Like the berry punch Fla*Vor*Ice pops when she was a kid, she sucked every drop of the Tri Berry GU from its foil packet.  She chased down the paste with an Advil.  She knew the agony of the final miles, and she’d learned to “make hay while the sunshines,” as her dad always said. 
            Kate tried to enjoy the moment.  She’d never been very good at that.  Her life was a blur of “to do” lists, plans, timelines, action items, discussion points, and deadlines.  Checking off one item only meant that the next one was probably overdue.  She raced from one project to the next.  Even time with family and friends had diminished into tasks to accomplished:  Call parents.  Check.  Have lunch with college-friend.  Check.  Spend time with nieces.  Check.  Her goals for 2002 included:  Maintain relationships with family and friends.  After a dinner party, she’d feel relieved that she’d met her monthly quota. 
            Okay.  Here I need to interject that – in case my mom is reading this – this is not me.  I enjoy spending time with you.  Who doesn’t love listening to Sinatra on vinyl?  I’m happy to drive you to your doctor’s appointments and the pharmacy.  I agree that leaving an hour early gives us more time to talk.  And, you’re right, learning bridge has helped me think more strategically at work.  Our time together is so much more than a check box.  Sorry.  Back to being in the moment.
            Running changed that.  You couldn’t run for more than 30 minutes and only think of the finish line.  Kate tried that.  It was like the constant “Are we there yet?” she’d whined from the back seat of the two-tone brown station wagon on the family’s trip from Indiana to Wyoming.  She accrued three hours and 47 minutes of “quiet time” for this behavior.  When running, she learned to switch her thoughts like TV stations.  Even though she’d start on the all whine, all negative channel, she’d slowly mold her thoughts in a more positive direction. 
            Kate tried to focus forward.  But as she revelled in her runner’s high, she had to stifle the urge to give her best beauty-pageant-queen wave to the race spectators.  Little kids held signs:  “Go, Mom, Go!”  Husbands watched the race through video cameras.  Bag pipes, cheerleaders, jazz bands, quartets, cloggers, and rock bands offered entertainment to runners.  Near mile-marker 7 she saw a sign with her name.  “Kate, you can do it!”  Scribbled under the slogan was row after row of stick figures.  Kate had drawn the same audience on a poster she made for Elizabeth when she was up for homecoming queen.  Kate couldn’t even draw a heart so the stick people were created out of artistic desperation.  Those stick figures had become their signature.  Her sister gave her the thumbs up as she passed.  She could hear her hoarse voice echoing the words on the sign. 
            Again, a bit of literary enhancement.  My sister’s name is Nancy.  This is where writing can be cathartic.  Nancy didn’t even think about coming to see me race.  She’s too busy.  She was the first born and thinks she comes first.  She’s this high-powered whatever with three brilliant children and a minister for a husband.  So she’s got the edge with the parents and with God apparently. 
            When people started noticing her weight loss, she was flattered and embarrassed.  As her dress size shrunk, she hated to admit that she had lost 75 pounds.  They’d do a subtle combination of geometry and algebra to figure out her original weight –  if rounded up – would be closer to 300.  She imagined that they were both impressed with her current willpower but also wondered how she let herself get that fat.  It was a good question.  Kate didn’t have a good answer.  She liked to say she was big boned or blame her metabolism or glands, but the truth was there was no one reason.  She liked food and each year she just added a few pounds.  Clothes got tight so she bought the next size.  Gaining and losing weight, like running a race, was a slow and methodical process. 
            People also asked why.  Why was this time different?  She wanted to say something pithy, such as “I finally got my head healthy.”  The truth was she worked in the public relations industry for 10 years.  Perception is reality.  Her image didn’t reflect the product.  Dieting and exercise changed her packaging.  The new and improved Kate.  Nearly 60 percent fat free!
            It didn’t hurt that she sprained her ankle the year before.  She fell off a sidewalk — no joke.  The weight of her own body nearly broke a bone.  That opens your eyes, I’ll tell you. 
            About mile 10, Kate hit the wall.  Suddenly she was aware of every cell in her body — the tangy, salty smell of sweat and the pin pricks of blisters forming around her heels and the elastic in her shorts and bra.  She was tired.  Tired from months of training and pushing her limits.  This is where Kate’s music strategy kicked in. 
            Whether Kate selected the songs intentionally, unconsciously or carelessly, her music selection revealed more than a passion for Rick Springfield.  Had her husband bothered to listen, he could have been spared the surprise a few months later.  The music list on her MP3 evolved into a soundtrack of liberation — selections from Pink’s M!ssundaztood, Sisters are Doin’ it for Themselves by the Eurhythmics to Bon Jovi’s It’s My Life.  Like some pop culture brainwashing, Kate listened to her kickass playlist mile after mile as she trained and as she ran on race day. 
            By mile 11, she felt like she was running in water.  She had no sense of time or speed — minutes and inches pasted with a Doppler Effect.  Pace, time and pain flowed in and out of her.  She’d joked with friends that she’d either run across the finish line or the paramedics would drag her dead carcass off the track.  She laughed when she said it, but deep, deep down she knew she was serious. 
            Her friends said she changed. Maybe she did.  She was always friendly.  Now they called her a flirt.  Maybe she did flirt.  She knew she liked the way the guys in the office treated her when she wore her red dress.  People touched her more.  She never realized how much she missed it.  Sure her husband touched her more but so did strangers.  The waitress at The Hard Rock Café playfully grabbed Kate’s arm when she made a joke.  Male friends didn’t mind greeting her with a hug.  When she was overweight, people acted as if fat were contagious. 
            You dream all your life – from the moment Debbie Anderson calls you fatso in the second grade – of being thin.  You never realize that fat becomes your armor — your excuse and your punch line.  Fat becomes more than your size; it’s who you are and how you see the world.
            The last mile was marked with signs every few feet counting down the distance to the finish line.  As she passed the three-quarter mile marker, the muscles in her stomach and chest tightened.  All the months of dieting and training.  All the years of struggle.  The weight of how far she’d already come seemed to bear down on her and lift her up at the same time.  Her breathing increased to a pant.  She sucked air in but couldn’t manage to blow it out.  She couldn’t remember how to breathe.  The long deep gasp that usually precedes a sob exploded from her belly.  She could see the finish line. 
            “Calm down.  Don’t lose it now,” she said to herself. 
            She made herself breath in and out and in and out.  She couldn’t feel her legs, but she could feel the jolt with each footfall.  “Don’t think about it.  Just run.”
            She wanted to sacrifice everything; she wanted to cross the finish line empty.  The last half mile she channelled every ounce of energy in her body into her legs.  Her legs pumped.  She would have sworn she was running 60 miles an hour.  The world’s spin slowed as she sped up. 
As she watched her blue, silver, and white Sauconies make contact with the finish line, she checked the race clock:  2:11:11 – only 11 seconds past her ideal time.  Mentally she wanted to jump up and down, but physically she wanted to curl into a fetal position. 
            When she crossed that line, her narration changed.  “If I can do that, I can do anything!”  And anything became divorce, dating, yoga, a 30K race, a new job, a new city and a halter top. 
            Recently, a new acquaintance declared, “People can’t change.”  I laughed and said, “You just never know.”
            I apologize.  To my best friend who was a six-phone call and 10-emails a day kind of friend and now has relegated herself to the Christmas card list.  To my ex-husband, I didn’t mean to change the rules or want something else.  I didn’t know.  To my employer, I gave you plenty of notice before I moved to London to start my master’s in creative writing, but I still feel guilty.  And, most of all, to Kraft, Keebler, and Jays Foods, whose stocks plummeted after I completely gave up Velveeta cheese, Nutter Butter cookies, Mesquite Krunchers potato chips, and the White Cheddar Cheez-it.  Your loss is my gain or something like that.

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Biography

Sara Grant is an author, freelance writer and public relations consultant. Her publication credits include stories in Spider, U.S. Kids, and Pockets children’s magazines. She also wrote on assignment for Indianapolis Monthly and the Children’s Writers’ and Illustrators’ Market. She lives, works and studies in London.

murray_in_london@hotmail.com