going on?”
“I never told her I was exclusive with her either,” he said, looking angry. “And it’s none of your business anyway. I haven’t slept with you, Victoria. I don’t owe you anything, except pleasant company when we go out, and a nice evening.”
“Is that how it works? Those aren’t the rules I play by. If I’d been seeing someone else, sexually or not, I would have told you. I would have felt I owed you that, just so you don’t get confused or hurt. I had a right to know, Jack. Just as a human being and someone you supposedly cared about, I deserved that. This wasn’t just about dinner. We were trying it out as a relationship. And I guess you’re doing the same with her. And who else is there? Do you have slots open during the week too? It sounds like you’ve been a pretty busy guy, and not an honest one. It was a shitty thing to do, Jack, and you know it.” There were tears in her eyes when she said it.
“Yeah, whatever,” he said, nasty with her for the first time, and he looked cold now. He didn’t like being called on the carpet, or being accountable for his behavior. He wanted to do whatever he wanted, no matter who got hurt, as long as it wasn’t him. He wasn’t the man she’d thought him, not by a long shot. Lamb chops hadn’t been a problem, but his integrity was. He had none. The fact that she never asked was no excuse for him leading her on. “I don’t owe you any explanations,” he said, standing and looking down at her unkindly. “This is dating, that’s all it is, and if you don’t like the heat, get out of the kitchen. Or in this case, I will. Thanks for the wine,” he said, strode to the door, and slammed it behind him. That was it. Two months with a guy she liked and had believed in, and he had cheated on her, lied, and had no regret whatsoever. He didn’t give a damn about her. That much was evident. Victoria sat in her chair shaking after he left, but proud of herself for having confronted him. It had been ugly and painful, and she told herself that she was better off finding it out now, but she felt like someone had died when she walked back into her bedroom, lay down on the bed, and sobbed into her pillows. She hated what he had done, but worse yet, she felt terrible about herself. All she could think as she remembered the look in his eyes before he left was that if she had been worthy, he would have loved her. And he didn’t.
Chapter 14
Victoria still felt shattered over the disappointment with Jack Bailey when she left for L.A. for Thanksgiving. It was good to see Gracie, and share the holiday with her family, but she was feeling terrible about herself. Gracie could see it, and was sad for her. She could tell how upset she was by what she was eating. All her parents noticed was that she had gained weight, and Victoria went back to New York on Saturday. She couldn’t take it any longer.
She called Dr. Watson on Monday morning after Thanksgiving and went in to see her. They had been talking about Jack for the past several weeks. No matter how Victoria turned it around, she still felt somehow to blame, and that if she were truly lovable and worthy of being loved, Jack would have behaved differently.
“It’s not about who you are,” her psychiatrist said kindly, again, “it’s about who he is. His lack of integrity, his dishonesty. This wasn’t your failure, it was his.” Victoria knew it intellectually, but she couldn’t get it emotionally. For her, it always went back to whether she was lovable or not. And if her parents hadn’t loved her, who would? And the same principles applied to them. Their failure to love her as she was spoke volumes about who they were, but it still made her feel terrible about herself. And she tried to fill the void with gallons of ice cream when she went home to L.A. over Christmas. She was still depressed and couldn’t seem to turn it around. Her parents knew nothing about the relationship with Jack.
She had never shared it with them, and she knew that if she had, they would only have found a way to blame her when it failed. Of course he couldn’t love her if she was too fat, and the other woman in his life was probably thin. And in some part of her psyche, Victoria believed that too. She had never had the courage to ask John what the other woman looked like. She believed her parents’ subliminal and overt messages. Men only loved girls who looked like Gracie. And no man wanted an intelligent woman. She didn’t look like Gracie, and she was a bright girl. So who would want her? She was still seriously depressed when she went back to New York on New Year’s Eve. She spent midnight on the plane and when the captain announced Happy New Year at midnight, Victoria pulled a blanket over her head and cried.
It had been agony seeing Jack at school between Thanksgiving and Christmas. She never ate lunch in the teachers’ lounge anymore. She stayed in her classroom, or went for walks outside, along the East River. It was a serious reminder of why it wasn’t smart to get romantically involved with someone at work. Picking up the pieces later was a mess. And there were whispers among teachers and students that they had been dating and she had gotten dumped. It was humiliating beyond belief. Victoria did all she could to disappear, although it was Jack who should have been ashamed. And she heard just before Christmas that he was dating the French teacher who had been chasing him since the first day of school. She felt sorry for her, since she assumed he was still seeing the woman at John’s school, and not being any more honest with the French teacher than he had been with her. Or maybe the French teacher was smarter and knew the right questions to ask, like “Are we exclusive?” Or maybe he would have lied. In any case, it wasn’t Victoria’s problem anymore. Jack Bailey was no longer in her life. It was a dream that had almost happened, and had fallen apart before it did. More than anything, for Victoria, it was a loss of hope. Helen and Carla tried to comfort her as gently as they could, but she avoided them too. She didn’t want to discuss it with anyone, in school or out. She didn’t talk to John and Harlan about it either now. It was done. But they could see how badly it had impacted her.
She was grateful for the distraction when she went on a college tour with Gracie in January, over a long weekend. They went to visit three schools in the East, but Gracie was determined to stay on the West Coast. She was a California girl, but they both enjoyed the trip anyway. It was a wonderful chance to be together. And Gracie didn’t say anything when Victoria ate a huge steak and baked potato with sour cream, followed by a hot fudge sundae for dessert when they went out to dinner. She knew how sad she was over Jack. And Victoria was well aware herself that even her baggiest pants had gotten tight since Thanksgiving. She knew she had to do something about it, but she wasn’t ready to yet. She wasn’t ready to give up what her shrink called “the bottle under the bed,” which in her case was fattening foods. In the long run, the result of eating them only made her feel worse, like an alcoholic, but they offered comfort for a minute.
One of the highlights of Gracie’s visit to her sister was spending a day with Victoria at school. She sat in on her classes, and she had fun talking to the other students. And it gave her students further insight into Victoria to meet her younger sister. Gracie was a big hit in the classroom, spoke up easily, and was the instant focus of all the boys, who wanted her e-mail, and to know if she was on Facebook, which she was. She handed her e-mail address out like candy, and they grabbed it. Victoria was relieved that Gracie left before she turned her classes upside down. She was more beautiful than ever at nearly eighteen, which suddenly made Victoria feel old as well as huge. It depressed her to think that she would be turning twenty-five in a few months. A quarter of a century. And what did she have to show for it? All she could focus on was that she had no man in her life and was still battling her weight. She had a job and a sister she loved and nothing else. She had no boyfriend, and had never had a serious one, and her social life consisted of Harlan and John. It didn’t seem like enough at her age. And Dr. Watson broadsided her the next time they met, when Victoria told her about the college tour she’d taken with Gracie and how much fun it was for her.
“I want to raise a question for you to think about,” her psychiatrist said quietly. Victoria had come to rely on her in the past year and a half and value what she said. “Do you think it’s possible that you keep the weight on so you don’t have to compete with your beautiful younger sister? You take yourself out of the running, by hiding behind your own body. Maybe you’re afraid that if you lost the weight, you still couldn’t compete, or don’t want to.”
Victoria brushed off what she said and summarily dismissed it. “I don’t have to compete, nor should I, with a seventeen-year-old girl. She’s a kid. I’m an adult.”
“You’re both women, in a family where your parents pitted you against each other, and told you that you weren’t good enough, and she was, from the day she was born. That’s a heavy weight for both of you, and more so for you. So you withdrew from the competition.” It was an interesting point that Victoria didn’t want to hear.
“I was big before she was born,” Victoria insisted.
“Big compared to your sister. Don’t confuse the issue. But being overweight is different.” The psychiatrist was suggesting that it was a protective covering she wore, a camouflage suit that kept people from seeing her as a woman, even though she was a pretty girl. But not as beautiful as Gracie. So she checked out of the competition
