They had everything: strawberries in syrup, cookie dough balls, and tiny white chocolate nonpareils in a rainbow of pastel shades. They had hot fudge, warm caramel, and a butterscotch sauce that hardened at the moment of impact. They had a diet version of the hot fudge that made me consider, What if? What if I just had a drizzle? But the nebulous calorie count of a drizzle posed too many variables. I feared that if I tried the sauce once, I’d never eat my yogurt without it again. I didn’t trust myself to taste the fudge and let go.
Thankfully, the Orthodox boy didn’t say, “No topping?” the way the Subway sandwich artist always said, “No sauce?” I watched him closely as he pumped the yogurt, inspecting to make sure that he didn’t go over the top (that airspace was calorically uncountable). When he reached the top, I called out, “Stop!”
He stopped right away, brought the cup to the register, and pleasantly issued the total for the yuh-gort. Other than in his politeness, he showed no recognition that I was a regular customer. I was thankful for that.
I consumed the first three-quarters of the cup at the back corner table inside Yo!Good facing two walls. I was always cold, but I preferred to eat inside the chilly yogurt parlor than outside at the sunny tables, because they were popular. I had a specific style and rhythm with which I liked to eat the yogurt, and I didn’t want anyone watching me. First, I licked around the sides of the cup to get the melty parts. Then, I put spoonful after spoonful of the cooler stuff in my mouth and squeegeed it back and forth between my teeth to liquify it.
For the final quarter of the yogurt, I abandoned my method and headed outside with what remained in the cup. Those last five minutes in the sun felt like Eden, the end of Eden really, because the freezing office awaited. They kept it so deeply air-conditioned that I wore a puffer jacket at my desk. But in those last few moments of warmth, I communed with the dregs of the yogurt and imagined the sun was penetrating me—creating a force field that could live internally and heat me throughout the rest of the day. Then I reentered the office and puffered-up again.
The afternoon was mostly spent obsessing about my forthcoming snack: a chocolate chunk protein bar that contained 180 calories. On good days, I could delay the bar—a beacon of sweetness and hope to look forward to—until I left the office at 6 for the gym. On bad days, I opened the wrapper at my desk “just to sniff it,” and gobbled it up.
I was so enamored of that protein bar: its candy bar taste, the creaminess and powers of satiety it packed into its body. I’d recently been devastated when, in studying the wrapper, I discovered there had been a sneaky increase of 20 calories. When did this happen? How long had I been in the dark? Was there a change in recipe, or had they willfully been misleading everyone all along? It seemed a public apology was in order. Now I was in the process of healing: learning to trust the protein bar again.
I delayed the protein bar consumption by having “afternoon teatime” in the office kitchen. I liked drinking tea with Ana, the office manager, a busty woman in her midfifties who dressed in exquisite, low-cut silk blouses tucked into high-waisted pants that showed off her slender middle. Most women Ana’s age who worked in the entertainment industry were Botoxed within an inch of their lives. But Ana’s enhancements were elegant—subtle fillers, gentle relaxers—allowing for fine lines around her pretty mouth and big brown eyes, but no deep creases or folds: a feigned realness, rather than an outright fake.
“Shhhh,” said Ana, quieting me so we could hear Ofer on his phone down the hall. “Listen, it’s the sound of movies getting stupider.”
“I know. Is there anything worse than entertainment?”
Ana’s ex-husband produced a hit trilogy of vampire movies in the early 2000s: Night’s Sundry, Enigma’s Descent, and Wicked Shroud. During the postproduction of Enigma’s Descent, he’d left her and their nine-year-old son for a special-effects makeup artist. Now, Ana saw it as an insult that she had to work in the industry for a living. She only remained in Los Angeles because her son and his girlfriend lived in Highland Park.
“I’m older than you, so I get to hate everything more,” she said. “Wait, tell me you aren’t drinking the house Lipton. Please, take my Harney & Sons, I beg of you.”
I was pleased that Ana wanted to give me the good stuff. I actually loved Lipton, plus one teaspoon of creamer and four Splenda, like a “milkshake.” But I craved any nurturing I could get from her. It wasn’t so much that she was kind to me. She just hated everyone else more. We had become an “us” because our coworkers were such a “them.” Still, I really liked being an “us.” I wondered if she talked shit behind my back the way she did about everyone else.
“At least you don’t eat the slop they leave around here,” said Ana. “The other assistants are playing it a little too fast and loose with the pastries. That Kayla, especially, is looking one cheese Danish over the line.”
I hoped I was far, far under the line. People said that Ana and I resembled each other. She looked more like me than my own mother did. We both had an abundance of coarse, wavy brown hair, olive skin that tanned easily in the sun, and dark brown eyes. My mother had fine black hair, gray eyes, and skin so fair it was translucent. But in their equation of thinness with goodness, my mother and Ana were so like-minded. My mother persuaded me to stay thin by insulting me. Ana did it by insulting everyone but me. This absence of rejection felt like an embrace.
CHAPTER 4
My therapist in Los Angeles, Dr. Rana Mahjoub, wore sensible clogs and said insight-adjacent things like “put on your oxygen mask before helping others,” but I didn’t entirely respect her because she accepted my insurance. How good could she be if she was willing to deal with Blue Shield? I couldn’t help but see our sessions as disposable soap samples handed out for free at a mall.
Dr. Mahjoub’s office was filled with elephants: elephant lithographs, elephant statuary, elephant carvings. I wondered whether she genuinely loved elephants and had collected them over the years, or if Pier 1 was having a sale and she thought, Yes, thematically cohesive decor fosters ego integration in patients, and purchased them all at once.
I’d entered therapy hoping to alleviate the suffering related to both my food issues and my mother, but without having to make any actual life changes in either area. I’d hoped that Dr. Mahjoub and I could pursue a subconscious, hypnotherapeutic modality, like learning to go comatose while still appearing alive. But Dr. Mahjoub wanted me to take real action.
“I suggest that you take a communication detox from your mother,” she said.
“Sure,” I said. “No problem.”
“I suggest ninety days of no contact.”
“Ninety days! No contact?”
“That’s right.”
“Like, not even an emoji?”
“Try,” she said.
I laughed, as they say, out loud.
“She’d never let me go more than four days without talking.”
“She won’t let you?”
“I guess she can’t force me to talk. But the guilt would be excruciating.”
“Setting boundaries doesn’t always feel good,” said Dr. Mahjoub. “Just because it feels bad doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”