Lois Metzger - A Trick of the Light

Mike: “What? Why?”

Amber: “To make it look like you’re eating during the day. That way, if they’re watching you, you can get away with eating less at night.”

Mike thinks of the homeless guy, who needs to beg to eat, and the fact that Amber’s telling Mike to buy food and purposely throw it away.

Mike: “Isn’t that a waste?”

Amber: “It’s the price to pay for privacy.”

Exactly.

Amber: “Buy heavy, filling foods that are easy to make. Nothing diet or low fat. Macaroni and cheese, casseroles, creamy soups, Hungry-Man dinners. After school prepare the food and even put a plate in the sink with food scraped off. Be sure to take a fork with some food on it and smooth your lips over it, giving it that ‘after eating’ look. This girl I know, she forgot the fork, and her mom caught her.”

Mike thinks it’s a good thing he made money this summer, even if he’s going to spend it on food he won’t eat.

Amber: “At dinner, between the five bites, put food in a napkin on your lap. Throw that in the garbage when you’re done. If your mom starts looking in the garbage—”

Mike: “That’s gross. She wouldn’t do that.”

Amber: “Don’t be so sure. Anyway, you can put food in a Ziploc freezer bag, the kind with the zipper, and throw the food away once you get outside. Too bad you don’t have a dog. I know this girl—her dog would eat all her food for her. Except her dad got suspicious when he saw the dog sitting there every night at dinner, right at her feet. What about your dad? Is he giving you a hard time, too?”

Mike hasn’t even told Tamio.

It’s none of Tamio’s business.

He thinks, Why should I tell Amber?

Why shouldn’t you? Amber is a real friend.

Mike (with a sigh): “My dad moved out. He got a girlfriend. She’s practically young enough to—”

Amber: “You’re so lucky! One less pair of eyes on you at home.”

Mike pushes the shepherd’s pie around on his plate and puts piles along the edges. It looks like a clock face. He eats bites at two, six, eight, and ten o’clock (skipping the bites at twelve and four because of the one he ate before he called Amber). In between, he puts food in a napkin on his lap.

Mike: “That was really good.”

Mom (disappointed): “You used to have more helpings. Except for the peas, of course, which you picked out one by one—”

Mike: “I’ll have more later. I like it cold.” More lies. Easy as pie, so to speak.

His mom does the dishes and laundry that night for the first time in forever, and even cleans up after Mighty Joe Young too. Mike wonders why she’s doing better, then goes to his room and does fifty crunches and the thirty push-ups. He stands before the mirror. He looks at himself closely, studying every inch, every pore. He used to think he was crazy for doing this, but now he wonders, If I am crazy, do I even care?

He doesn’t.

Later that night Mike’s stomach feels like a cliff that drops off into empty space. He is too hungry. He goes to the kitchen and opens the freezer. He sees rocky road ice cream. He grabs a spoon and digs out a huge scoop—

If you eat that, you’ll get sick.

He thinks, Ice cream can’t make me sick. He takes a bite. It’s cool and smooth on his tongue, the way it slides down his throat … and then he feels it. Dizziness, cramping. He looks at the label. One-quarter cup has 17 grams of fat and 260 calories! He puts the rest of the spoonful into the sink and turns on the hot water full blast. He watches the ice cream melt down into bubbles.

Get rid of the rest of it.

He spoons the entire pint into the sink. He has to pick out the nuts from the drain. It takes a while for all the bubbles to dissolve.

In the refrigerator he sees some low-fat rice pudding he picked up with Amber. Rice pudding has always been a favorite of Mike’s. He thinks about a place in Belle Heights called Luncheonette; it offers a dozen flavors of rice pudding; Mike and his parents used to order three different kinds and share—

Just finish up here and get some sleep.

Mike eats a cup of rice pudding and goes to bed.

The next day at lunch he tells Amber, “Thanks for the advice. It’s really helping me.”

Amber grins. Mike thinks her teeth look kind of filmy, that she should brush better. He’s much too critical. Her teeth look fine.

Amber: “I wouldn’t do this for some girl, you know.”

Mike: “What?”

Amber: “You’re not some girl who just wants to be skinnier than me.”

Mike: “Um… yeah. So I got through dinner, but I got incredibly hungry later so I had one of those cups of rice pudding.”

Amber: “Only half a cup, right?”

Mike: “No. The whole thing.”

Amber: “You don’t mean an entire cup, do you?”

Mike: “Yeah, that’s what I just said.”

Amber (quietly, like a doctor delivering bad news): “You had four grams of fat and four hundred and forty calories.”

Mike: “No way. I read the label, like you told me. One serving has two grams of fat and two hundred and twenty calories.”

Amber: “But each cup is two servings.”

Mike: “What? Those cups are so…”

Amber: “Even so.”

Mike: “No way.” But this is the kind of thing Amber knows. Mike feels awful.

Amber (sadly): “I told you to be careful. When you get really hungry, try FireBalls.”

When Mike gets home, his mom is cooking dinner again. Meat loaf this time. He cuts back to four bites, to make up for the rice pudding.

Mike goes to the mirror. He feels better. He can see muscle and taut skin. He thinks about his body, the structure of it, how each part is splendidly connected to the next; it is a work of art, like sculpture; it possesses power and energy.

Your mind is soaring!

IT’S THE HEIGHT OF AUTUMN AND MIKE IS HAPPY.

He’s never felt like this before, not in such a pure, undiluted form. Bursts of absolute joy fill his chest. He sees his boring old neighborhood in a whole new way. The slanting light makes everything pop as if it exists in more than three dimensions, a kind of super diorama—front lawn, sidewalk, street, bus, trees, sky, universe, beyond-the-universe. Tamio once told him that when he first put contacts in, he could see the veins in leaves. Mike thinks this is way better than that. When he looks at trees, he can see their life force, how mighty and solid they are. Colors are incredible. The awning over a fruit stand isn’t simply green, it is glowing-green, green-on-fire. After a run in the park, Mike stops and stares at some flowers. The bright yellows and oranges look otherworldly, as if he has just landed in some distant galaxy and this is the plant life. He wonders, What are those flowers?

An old lady stands next to Mike. She has short white curly hair and so does the poodle she has with her.

Old Lady: “Don’t you just love chrysanthemums?”

The universe is truly on your wavelength these days. You were wondering what the flowers were, and now somebody has told you.

Mike feels like he’s living in an alternate reality, a reality he never knew he wanted. Here, things go right; here, everything feels new and mind-expanding; here, everything is in its right place.

Old Lady: “You know, you should rest, young man; you’re bright red.”

Mike gets mad. What is she, he thinks, my mother? He leaves without a word. He goes back to running even though he has finished his run. Amber told him he’d be able to run faster without all that dead weight holding him back. He runs until he can’t run anymore.

But always finish the lap.

He runs. His legs cramp and there’s a sharp pain in his chest. He can barely breathe.