Stephan Clark - Sweetness #9

“And what about Red Dye No. 40?” I said.

“We should get rid of that too.”

“And then what? Who’s to say there’s not something else we don’t even know about? That there’s not another father out there talking to his daughter this very minute about some other food additive we’ve never once stopped to question? Where does the purge end?”

I told her about the Delaney Clause, saying that when it was passed, outlawing any food additive that caused cancer, we had only been able to see the disease in parts per million. “This was in the sixties,” I said, “and now we can see cancer in parts per billion — even parts per trillion. And do you know what we discovered? Even broccoli causes cancer. But should we stop eating it? No. The threat is very, very small.”

I tried to reason with her. I spoke of war-time England and how scientists there had determined that a diet of green leafy vegetables, fresh milk, and whole-grain bread would give you all the nutrients you’d ever need. “But Churchill never made this the focus of his rationing program, not even during the worst of the Blitz. He knew what you and I know: that the inhabitants of an advanced country won’t tolerate such bland fare day after day. We need the savory and the sweet,” I said, “even if it means risking a night of German bombing to get it. So either we go back to living a life not far removed from the hunter-gatherers or we do what your mother says we do and accept a little risk. You ask me, it’s a simple choice. Right? Priscilla,” I said. “Will you look at me?”

And though she did, it wasn’t with the nod and the look of understanding that I had hoped to see. Wiping at the cream beneath her eyes, she said, “So if there’s nothing we can do, why did you tell us anything in the first place?” And then, “To make yourself feel better?” And then, “To let yourself off the hook?”

I sat there a moment longer, allowing her to look at me as if I were Public Enemy No. 1; then I rose from the bed and turned for the door. “Lights out,” I said. “I mean it.”

A COUPLE OF MORNINGS LATER, the rumble of a moving truck sent us hurrying into the dining room, through the window of which we were able to observe the arrival of our new neighbor. He was a white man of about forty years who must have been at least one hundred pounds overweight, and as he stepped out of a massive SUV, he held in the cup of his hands a tiny potted bonsai tree. While the movers opened up the rear of the truck, the fat man unlocked his front door and took that tree inside.

I didn’t see him again until the following evening, when I spied him through our bedroom window after coming in from work. He stood in his backyard, wearing what looked like a pair of white silk pajamas, as he moved through one slow pose after another, practicing tai chi.

Betty came up behind me as I was undoing my tie, saying she’d spoken to him out on the driveway that morning.

“You’ll never guess what he does for a living.”

I looked at her. She was drinking a glass of cranberry juice and sparkling water. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her drink a diet cola.

“He’s a life coach and nutrition expert,” she said.

“You’ve got to be joking. He must weigh three hundred pounds.”

She gave me a sidelong look and asked what that had to do with anything. “Can Joe Torre hit a hundred-mile-per-hour fastball? It’s not what you can do that’s important but what you know.” She continued by telling me he guaranteed his customers would lose no less than 15 percent of their body weight in no more than a year. “And that’s a money-back guarantee,” she said. “You don’t have to buy a bunch of fancy food, either, or attend a whole slew of classes or follow-up sessions. You just meet with him that one time and you’re set.”

“How much?” I asked.

She wouldn’t answer at first. As she moved into the walk-in closet, she said he required his clients to sign a non-disclosure form and promise not to enter into a competing business. “He must’ve really figured something out,” she said.

“How much, Betty?”

She began to undress, stepping out of her black pants.

“Ten thousand dollars,” she said.

I snorted. “To have a fat man tell you what to eat? You can’t be serious.”

“That’s very offensive, David. His name is Neal.”

“Well, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend Neal, but the thought of giving him ten thousand dollars — I hope you’re not considering this.”

As she unbuttoned her blouse, she looked down at her body, as if imagining which parts of it would melt away after she knew our neighbor’s secret. “It is a lot of money,” she acknowledged, but when she looked up, her face said something else. I’d seen that expression before, back when she’d decided to give herself over to the Scarsdale Diet or the Jane Fonda Workout. It was the look you see at Lourdes or down at the drunk tank whenever the alcoholic is swearing off the sauce for good. The look of a new believer.

She stepped over to me, reaching for my belt.

“What are you doing?”

She smiled. “Maybe I’d look like a sorority girl again.”

“You know I don’t need that.”

“There’s got to be something you need.”

She pulled down my zipper.

“The kids,” I said.

“Priscilla’s at the bookstore,” she whispered, “and E won’t hear a thing. He’s off slaying dragons. Don’t you want to?”

She touched me. I threw my eyes out to the far wall, where I found her “before” and “after” pictures staring back at me. I looked down at her. She looked up at me. And the expression on my face — it was as if she’d asked me to name the capital of South Dakota.

She let go of me, knowing I didn’t want to. “If it’s not Jezebel,” she said, “it must be me.”

“Betty.”

Usually she was quick to change, but this evening, after grabbing the pants of her tracksuit, she turned to face me wearing only her underwear and bra. The elastic bands of her underthings cut into her flesh, making her appear like one of those stone fertility figures that archaeologists dig up in the field.

“I want to,” I said. “Just give me a moment.”

I went out to the en suite bathroom, and reached into the drawer on my side for the Viagra I’d left there. By the time Betty was stepping up behind me, now wearing the bottoms of her tracksuit, I was pushing a blue pill through its foil backing.

“Is that what I think it is?” she said.

I leaned in beneath the faucet and swallowed the pill down with a quick drink of water.

“We just have to wait thirty minutes,” I told her.

She reached for the package of pills I’d set down on the counter. “How long have you had these?”

“Just a few days.” I tried to bring her into my arms, but she turned away from me, going back into the walk-in. I followed, telling her that Dr. White had given them to me.

“And you didn’t say anything?” She reached for her tracksuit top now and zipped it up. “What happened to your new policy of total transparency?”

Later, I’d think it unfair that she had expected me to tell her. I’d been given the pills before initiating that policy, so if anything my silence on them should have been grandfathered in. At the moment, though, I only managed to release a pained little gasp in my defense.

“Where does it end?” she said. “How many secrets do you have?” She bumped out past me and crossed to our window, moving more for the sake of motion than purpose. “Should I look for track marks up your arm, or maybe take a flashlight into the garage and search for a box filled with Swedish movies?”