chapter 9

After Kevin had left the room and closed the door, the tears started rolling down Nancy’s cheeks and she cried herself to sleep. In the middle of the night, she woke up to use the bathroom. As she turned on the light, she saw her reflection in the mirror. Even though she had gained almost sixty pounds in less than a year, she was struck by the fact that her body really didn’t look bad. It was true that she looked much fuller, but the difference was almost subtle. Her belly stuck out more, but this was balanced by her now ample ass. Her hips were more distinct and her torso seemed to be competing for space around her waist. Her breasts were rounder and less pert but still very familiar. She felt disappointed that the changes in her body that had driven her husband from their bed lacked real girth and density. She got her dictionary and as she sat on the toilet, she looked up the word “diet:” “A regimen of eating and drinking prescribed to effect changes in health or appearance.”

After she got back into bed, Nancy started to run the numbers again. She calculated that her body needed somewhere between 12 and 15 calories a day to maintain its weight. At more than 175 lbs., she needed to consume approximately 2400 calories a day. To double her weight, she only needed to double her calories to 4800 per day. Nancy now knew from experience that, with a little effort, this was quite easy to accomplish. She continued with her calculations: in the first weeks, at 4800 calories per day, she could gain between 4 and 5 pounds a week. Of course each new pound gained would then need 12 to 15 calories per day for maintenance. Her weight gain would slow as she gained weight.

When she figured out that just to get from 299 to 300 lbs. would take almost a week at 4800 calories, Nancy started to worry. Then she realized that, if she needed to, all she had to do to maintain momentum was add a few hundred calories with an extra doughnut or two every day. This calmed her thoughts and she drifted off to sleep. After all, she likes doughnuts.

The morning after the party, Kevin got ready for work and slipped out without disturbing his wife. Nancy farted loudly which woke her up. She was so bloated that her body ached and even her eyelids felt like they might burst. Her stomach hurt and, for a moment, she had to fight off a wave of nausea. With a minor struggle, she was able to roll herself out of her nest of pillows. She sat on the edge of the bed for a moment to steady herself. Stumbling into the bathroom, she sat down on the toilet and peed. Her guts were full to the point of discomfort and she farted some more but she couldn’t accomplish much else. She was constipated from the rich and fried food at the buffet.

She looked at her face in the mirror. Her eyes were puffy and her cheeks flushed. She almost looked as if she had been slapped around. Getting ready for work today was going to take extra effort. Opening her medicine cabinet, she took a double dose of her diuretic and several laxative tablets. She also swallowed four aspirin for her headache followed by three cups of cold water. She could feel the water flowing into her system. She thought, "It's unfair to feel both bloated and dehydrated at the same time." She couldn't tell if she was more hungover from the food, the wine, or her troubled sleep.

As soon as the water hit her stomach with the combination of pills, she could barely turn around fast enough to lose it all into the toilet. Nancy brushed her teeth to get the taste out of her mouth. Wrapping herself in her deep green, oversized terrycloth bathrobe, Nancy picked up her bottles of pills for a second try and headed off to the kitchen to fix herself some tea to settle her system. As full as she felt, she realized that her stomach was empty and not prepared for a full assault of pharmaceuticals.

"Where is my loving, caring, faithful husband," she thought as she walked past the empty guest room. Looking at the clock on the kitchen wall she saw that it was 8:00. No doubt he had left for work early to avoid having to talk with her or look at her this morning. She agreed that she was not a pretty sight but was just as glad to not have to listen to him telling her how she was a pig fucking up his personal image.

Nancy put the water on to boil and noticed that the two doughnuts she had expected to find from the night before were missing. Looking for the doughnut box, she found Kevin's note stuck on the refrigerator door. "After you've had a chance to get yourself together, call me at the office." Nancy took the top off of the garbage and found the box that Kevin had thrown out the night before. Leaving the box in the garbage, she filched the last two doughnuts which she figured to have after her tea.

Nancy needed some time to herself. She called her secretary and left a message on her voice mail. "I won't be in this morning, Melanie. Tell Charlie to watch our position on National Gypsum. I'll give you a call around noon to update you on my progress." Melanie and Charley would know what to do. They were loyal to Nancy and could empathize with her. After all, Melanie had suffered a tragic marriage, too.

She made her way back into her bedroom. Standing in front of the full length mirror on the back of the door, Nancy dropped the bathrobe and shimmied out of the football jersey that she had once been able to lose herself in but which was now form-fitting encasing her ocean of a belly. The first thing she noticed, as she looked at her self in the mirror, was that she filled it. To see her entire body at once, she had to step back against the bed. She tried to assess her image objectively. Staring at the woman in the mirror, it was difficult for Nancy to reconcile this reflection as really being her. She touched her hands to her face to confirm that she was one and the same with this behemoth. For the first time in a long time, she took the time to study the changes that her campaign had raged on her body.

She was bloated almost beyond recognition. While she could still see herself in her eyes, everything else seemed obscure. Her face had disappeared in the explosion of her cheeks and the rim of flesh that could be called her chin. Letting her eyes follow the shape of her body, she searched for a familiar form. What she found was a body without a figure. Her torso with its wide pendulous belly dominated. Studying how the tubular roll of fat where her waist had once been now disappeared into the large bulges at her sides, she wondered whether, anatomically, these could still be called her hips. Was there some other name for these additional body parts? What was the rounded band of fat that circled her body between her arm pits and the crease formed by the thick hump of fat sitting over her ass called? “Back fat” didn’t seem to do it justice.

Reaching her hands under her belly, she lifted this large, soft, globular sphere and let in drop. It bounced and wobbled for a moment before coming to rest. Taking a breath, Nancy could still feel the effects of the previous night’s gorge: when she had almost eaten herself to oblivion; when she had continued eating even after her digestive organs had begun to protest with violent pain; when she had continued to eat until her arms would no longer respond in exhaustion; when she had stumbled into her bed and past out disappointed because there was still more food for her to consume, but she just couldn’t fit it in. She twisted slowly from side to side and watched the inert mass that encased her body develop its own momentum.

She turned to view herself in profile and noticed that her body was almost as wide from front to back as it was from side to side, although the horizontal bands of fat viewed from the front had a more diagonal orientation when viewed from the side. Nancy ran her hands over her body and noticed that, instead of being fluffy or malleable, her body felt solid and had great density: as if every cell was filled to capacity. She had to admit that this really was her and that there really was a lot of her.

She thought about the previous night’s eating escapade and tried to do the numbers. Was it possible that she could have eaten between 10,000 and 15,000 calories? It was difficult to accurately assess what kind of assault she had imposed on her system. She started to do the math. At 10,000 calories a day, she could support more than 700 lbs of flesh. But, could her body support this much weight? Could her attitude? Was it even possible to be that big without help?