Mary Gaitskill - Two Girls, Fat and Thin

Of the three strangers, only Knight’s voice was full and buoyant; it reminded me of the easeful support a body of water, miles deep and full of ferocity, can give a human relaxed enough to trust it.

I sat among these diverse energies feeling them clashing against and complementing each other while my mind resolutely held its beam of light on the business at hand. It was beginning to be difficult to go on when Granite called for a break. There was a moment of silence during which Granite lit another cigarette, and then Wilma H. and Wilson B. rose and paced to the windows. Granite asked if anyone was hungry. I was, but when everyone said they weren’t, I was too embarrassed to say so. Granite sat near Knight on the couch, and they talked. I was surprised to see a girlish quality come into her face as they spoke; she even slid her feet out of her shoes and flirtily tucked her legs up against her body in my mother’s habitual way.

“How’re you doing, champ?” Bradley spoke kindly, leaning towards me with an elbow on his knee.

I cringed a little at “champ.” “Okay I think.”

“Are you able to keep up with the discussion?”

“Pretty much.” It amazed me that he was adopting such a comradely attitude and that I took to it so naturally.

“Ah! Dorothy!” Granite got to her feet and into her shoes and joined us on the couch, very close to me. Once again I noticed the dull grainy texture of her skin, the multitude of tiny lines; then I made myself widen my focus to take in the fullness of her face. “You are doing well?” Her eyes were gentle but serious.

“I think so. Would you like to look?”

“Yes, I would.” She took my notebook from my hand! I was reminded of the gravity of my position as I watched her eyes rapidly traverse my pages. Her jaw twitched passionately. Bradley and Knight began to chat.

“Pretty good for your first time,” said Granite turning to me. “But you are wasting time with asides and extra words. Then you have to waste time crossing out, see?” She pointed to a nasty knot of ink. “Listen as if you were a reporter and wanted to find the main points of this discussion.” She emphasized the last six words with a measured up-and-down movement of her hand, fingers bunched together, hooklike. “Also don’t worry about the handwriting. I don’t need to read it, you are the one who will type it out. Understand?”

“Yes but I. I don’t know if I’m capable of deciding which are the important points.”

“Dorothy!” Her eyes blazed! “That is a weak statement and unworthy of you!” Her severity pinned me through the eyeballs, and we sat staring at each other, she discharging bolt after bolt of sharp indignation. I felt my pores dilate helplessly to receive her until the tissue beneath my facial skin seemed composed of her indignation. Then abruptly she softened. “I know I can trust your judgment. Can you trust mine?”

“Of course!”

“Good.” She spoke this word with wonderful finality. “Carry on.” These last two words she said with a certain childishness, almost as if she’d heard them recently on TV and had been waiting for a chance to say them, but I didn’t mind. The meeting resumed and so did I, my pen flying with renewed vigor. Hours passed. The ashtrays were gradually loaded with pale gray refuse. Wilma’s face became soft and ivory with sleepiness, the men took off their jackets and rolled up their sleeves, and still Granite paced and talked. I thought of malteds and potato chips, jelly beans and roast beef sandwiches dripping gravy. I pressed on.

It was one thirty when the meeting ended and I was released into a yellow cab dispatched especially for me. Bradley actually stepped out of his conversation with the still-pacing Granite and offered to go down in the elevator and wait for it with me under the awning of the apartment.

“No, Bradley, it’s all right, finish your discussion.” Knight was suddenly behind me, manning the buttons of his coat. “I’ll take the young lady down, I’m ready to go.”

It seemed as though Wilma jerked her head in surprise, but that only added to the pleasure of the whirring fluorescent descent, during which I could not once raise my eyes. I looked at the buttons on my cheap red corduroy jacket and at Knight’s shoes, his wonderful sharp-toed gray suede shoes.

He said, “I remember you from the lecture.”

I said, “Yes.”

“I was very moved by your response.”

I gestured with a hand. “I couldn’t help it,” I murmured at my buttons.

“Yes I know. That’s what made it so moving.”

I looked up in surprise. The door burst open. We proceeded through the lobby out into the damp night where the taxi awaited. He opened the door of the car for me, and I got in, looking at him for the first time. According to his face he did this sort of thing all the time. “See you tomorrow, Dorothy.”

“Goodnight,” I gasped. I was sealed into the cab in a state of shock, staring at the smiling jiggling hula girl on the dashboard and glad to be sitting down. I thought of my former high school companions sitting around their lunch table in their pink and chartreuse skirts, the occasional triangle of pantie, their “Luv” pendants, their stupid dates and proms. Which of them would ever have what I had now?

I rode home obsessively noting the tatty little buildings of Philadelphia, the romance of neon, fluorescence and electricity, even the traffic lights swaying heavily on their wires, the hydrants, the jumbled angles, the splayed newspapers flapping against public benches. I wanted to remember every detail of this night and reconstruct it in miniature, a tiny world into which I could repair at any time.

Beau and I went to the meeting the next night and the next. They followed the same pattern; Granite would prowl the room in her cape, expounding, while the others constructed rhetorical arguments for her to refute or expand upon. I picked out the main points rather timidly the second night and then, emboldened by Granite’s approval, more cavalierly the third. Now comfortable with what I was doing, I had, to my delight, more time to observe and digest what was going on.

My first observation was the tension between Bradley and Granite. I noticed first that he was the only one of the group from whom she would accept contradiction. Further, when he spoke, her composure fell from her in delicate shudders, leaving her gentle, soft-mouthed, eyes bright and wide. And when she spoke to him, he seemed subtly to expand, to emanate heat, to release some muscles and tense others, as if her voice simultaneously stroked and tickled the length of his body.

Second was that Wilma and Wilson did not radiate any of the energy the others had. Wilson in particular seemed to sit in a patch of personal cold, his thin limbs held stiffly, his comments merely affirmations or repetitions of what Granite had said. To my surprise, Granite didn’t seem to mind or even to notice; she treated his contributions as seriously as she did Knight’s. Even more puzzling, when Wilma sallied forth, Granite barely acknowledged her or sometimes even scolded her unfairly, it seemed to me. Wilma’s pointy brittle face would remain impassive, perhaps tighten a little more, but she never argued.

The philosophy itself was wonderful. Most of it was an elucidation of the points I had already understood from The Bulwark and The Gods Disdained , but on the third night, a topic was introduced that I hadn’t yet encountered: the ultra-real, the apparently patternless structure of the universe that seems random and chaotic (causing some people to despair and turn to religion or nihilistic philosophy) but was in fact a super-rational pattern too intricate to be discerned and comprehended by us right away.

The meetings lasted until one or two o’clock in the morning, and I returned to my bed so stimulated it was hard for me to sleep right away. I was thus sleeping only about four hours a night and skipping my dinner (I considered the sandwich Bradley ordered from work a snack). The happy result was that, for the first time in my life, I was losing weight. The waist-bands of my skirts were sliding towards my hips, and my only pair of pants fit loosely. My appearance hadn’t noticeably changed, but I nonetheless rejoiced.