And every time a boy came for a date, the first thing I did was pick up Marshmallow, kiss him on the nose (right next to that cyst), shove him into my date’s face, and say, “This is my cat, Marshmallow. Isn’t he the cutest?”
Meee-owwwww, Marshmallow would drone, his breath reeking of contempt and cat food.
The boy would look at my overweight, nicotine-stain-looking, tangle-hair-not-licking, lopsided, lethargic, cyst-on-the-face cat and just . . . stare. Every single one of them must have thought: What is this? Some kind of test?
And it was. Sort of. If a boy didn’t like my cat, I didn’t want to date him.
Or that’s what I told myself. I actually ended up dating a boy for two and a half years who did not like my cat. His father was a community leader. My father was a drinker. He was a good-looking charmer. I was the anorexic younger sister of the prettiest girl in school. And I mean rail thin, serious intervention, intensive-therapy anorexic, the kind that pounded her frustrations and insecurities out with long runs and refused to eat more than a mouthful or two. On the outside, I was happy. I loved to laugh (still do). I was gregarious and athletic. I moved easily between social groups and counted almost everyone in the school as a friend. I was the homecoming queen, for goodness’ sake! Who is happier in high school than the homecoming queen?
But on the inside, I was tearing myself apart. Anorexia made me feel like it was the first day of school every day. Do you know that feeling when you can’t sleep, when you are too busy analyzing everything that might happen the next day? When you are obsessed with the need to look exactly right, with the feeling that everyone can read your thoughts and is watching your every move? The sweaty palms. The heart palpitations. The horrible moment when you feel yourself falling on the ice or skidding into a car accident. That moment was my life twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There was no calm, no resolve, just fear. Always. Fear that someone might see that I was not perfect, that I made mistakes.
Everybody thought my boyfriend was perfect. They said he was good for someone like me. You know, someone with a . . . food problem. My mom loved him. My dad loved him. My sister loved him. They were scared for me, I can see that now. They thought I might die from my disorder. They thought he was saving my life. When I tried to break up with him the first time, even my PE teacher pulled me aside and told me I had to stay with him. For my own good.
My boyfriend knew I had to stay with him, too. “You’ll never find anyone as good as me.” That was his favorite thing to say to me.
I don’t think he meant any harm. He was just a kid, dealing with his own problems. But by then, I had summoned the strength to put myself into therapy. My mother scoffed. She thought I was weak, or at least that’s what I thought at the time, when my disease kept telling me everyone thought I was a loser. I found out later she never scoffed; she was proud of me. My father? He lost his job and had to cancel my health insurance because, he said, the treatments were too expensive. Thankfully, my godmother in Texas cashed in her profit sharing from American Airlines; her retirement money paid for my care. And that care told me I didn’t need a boyfriend who said a girl like me should be thankful for a guy like him.
But how does an insecure, anorexic girl cut loose a guy like that? With the help of her cat, of course. Because for two and a half years, I kept telling myself: He doesn’t like Marshmallow. He’s not the one. He doesn’t like Marshmallow. Every time he said, “Don’t pet that stupid cat. We’re going out to eat, in public, and you’ll have cat hair on your sweater,” it hardened my resolve a little bit more. I mean, I’d been petting Marshmallow since I was in the second grade. I never noticed it, but I must have had cat hair on my clothes every day for ten years. I had been, since second grade, a walking ball of Marshmallow. I was covered in him. He was part of who I was. If a boy didn’t like Marshmallow’s hair on my sweater, I told myself, then he didn’t like me. Finally breaking up with my high school boyfriend because of cat hair was the last, most important act of my childhood.
I’ve often wondered why I married my husband. I mean, I love him, I know that. But why him? Steven is one of the quietest men I’ve ever known. He only speaks when he’s spoken to, and then only to relay the appropriate information. Unless he’s talking to me. The two of us talk all the time. We have no secrets; I know everything about my husband, and he knows everything about me. But very few other people know him. Not like I do, anyway. They see him. He’s the big outdoor type, a serious hunter and excellent athlete. They see that side of him, but they don’t know the man. They don’t know that he’s a snuggler, too. They don’t know how he puts his arm around me when I’m upset. They don’t know that he goes everywhere with me. He doesn’t buy me flowers, but that’s fine, because I don’t want that. Don’t buy me gifts, I tell him, just be there for me. I don’t want the jazz. I don’t want the huge house. I don’t want the big rings. I just want a pal I can walk through life with.
They say a girl always wants to marry their father. But does she, really? My dad was a drinker. He was very social. He cheated on my mom. Repeatedly. When I was a kid, she went away with Vicki and a few other friends every few months for a woman’s weekend. Kellie and I used to joke that they were her man-hating weekends, because she’d always fight with my father when she returned.
“I was with people who loved me this weekend,” she’d yell. “I was with people who cared.” I joked; I fought with my sister; but only because I was scared. I never wanted to be torn apart like that.
Steven never drinks. He never goes out with the boys, much less any girls. His parents, as far as I know, have never touched a drop of alcohol. They don’t yell. When he was growing up, they didn’t watch television. Steven and I do watch television (who doesn’t?), but we never fight. We’ve had disagreements, but in fifteen years of marriage, we’ve never had a yelling argument.
Oh my, Kristie, I said to myself, as I thought about my life, you married your cat.
It’s so true. I didn’t realize it until I started thinking about this book, but it’s true. All my life, I was looking for a man like Marshmallow. The other men in my life let me down. They hurt and abandoned me. So I latched on to Marshmallow. Not consciously, of course, not on purpose, but that scraggly runt was my beau ideal. Someone who listened. Someone who talked with me. Someone who was tough and outdoorsy, not soft. Not clingy or needy. Not house-broken. I wanted a man who was comfortable with himself, even if he wasn’t the golden boy. A man who built me up instead of tearing me down. Who was confident enough to let me have my space, but in love with me enough to always be there when I needed him. And someone I loved in the exact same way.