— I wouldn’t say it that way.
We reached the Halfway House again.
— How could someone be a fat slave? Did he work in the master’s house?
— No, she said. He worked in the field. They think it was a glandular problem.
Inside, the reception area was a mix of purple and cream. The carpet, the chairs, the walls were these two swirled hues. It was like standing inside a bruised sky. Heaven as a lounge.
At the back of the room there was a narrow door and a wide one. A lacquered wood desk with a receptionist behind it; the receptionist was the lady who walked over to greet my mother with a robust hug.
— And this is my son.
— You’re halfway there, the receptionist said to me in a quiet voice, cleared her throat then said louder, You’re halfway there.
I don’t know how my mother found the clothes hooks on the wall. They were part of the misted background, indiscernible as each water particle in a cloud. Mom’s long brown coat floated nearby as she offered to take mine.
— I’ll wear it a little longer.
Mom didn’t fight me. She wore a thin white sweater with silver sparkles on the shoulders as epaulets. Her boots must have been part of the outfit sale at Rainbow Shop because they had sparkles too, on the three-inch heels. My mother was beautiful despite her general tackiness.
There was a buzzing noise because the receptionist was pressing a button, though I couldn’t see where it would be on her desk. My mother walked to the narrow door and pointed to the other one. I didn’t want to go, but it was the only one I’d fit through. The big door was four feet wide, of gray steel, heavier than terror.
— You go right in there, said the woman at the desk.
— You’ll be happy. Mom cried.
The room was in a gloom worse than the Bronx Zoo’s World of Darkness. I could see only because light came through a pane of one-way glass in the wall to my left. We could see out, but the people on the other side didn’t have to look in.
There was space for twenty normal-sized people, but ten of us filled the room to capacity. I thought there were nine big ladies with me but as my eyes adjusted I realized there were only five. The rest were men like me, curvaceous.
A high-pitched groan played in the room. When I shut the metal door the notes bounced around, above and beneath me. Eventually I recognized it as whale song. I suppose it was meant to be soothing, but did it have to be so loud? I thought the damn mammals were floating inside this tiny room.
I pushed past hefty legs, but there wasn’t much room so people had to stand or shift in their seats. This is when I realized that wasn’t whale music cooing from ceiling to floor, but nine poor metal chairs groaning. When I settled in I added a tenth.
For ventilation there was only a grill the size of a steel wool pad in the ceiling; every person was sweating over his clothes. I undid my tie then the top two buttons of my shirt.
Our freight-entrance door was locked from outside.
We faced the glass.
There were two rooms, ours and the other. Where this one was cramped, in shadows, theirs had floor space and an enormous skylight. A column of sun came down as one thick finger of an approving god.
My mother was with him.
I walked right to the large pane and pressed my face against it. Envy was the climate in our room.
Lorraine’s friend Ahmed Abdel was a Japanese man who’d converted to Islam while incarcerated. He was supported by black and Latino college students; also white celebrities. I thought of his romantically gaunt figure from his pamphlet photograph as I mashed myself against the one-way mirror. Each day that it became clearer she wasn’t going to call me I read that nattering tract because it was all I had. Pathetically, yes, I thought that if I got into his struggle, joined that righteous rigamarole, I’d find my way back to her as an attractively conscientious man. I looked at his photo ten times a day, jealous that it stirred the blood of spoon-eyed revolutionaries like Lorraine. Envy.
— You’re hurting our eyes with that glow-in-the-dark suit so sit down!
— Who said that? I asked.
Nothing’s uglier than unattractive dieters. Even if they lose the weight their faces are still half-Wookie. The grim little pudge who’d yelled at me pointed toward the back of the room. When I returned to my seat it made the whimper of a humpback whale again.
— Oh shut up, I told it.
In the other room seven trim women and men were doing routine tasks while we watched them. Opening letters. A pair danced in a friendly way. One tall man climbed a seven-foot ladder and then came back down. After thirty seconds he went up again.
My mother sat on a wooden footstool lacing up her sneakers. When the right and left foot were done she pulled both strings out to start again.
— See, they don’t need food every minute of the day.
To my right the outline of a man’s large head shifted as he spoke to me. My eyes had adjusted enough to see the mound of his face, but not the features.
— Thanks, I said, because I’d been confused as to what the hell we were doing.
His stomach was even bigger than mine. That was comforting. He wasn’t actually short, but because his thighs were so thick his feet didn’t touch the ground while sitting. When he introduced himself I repeated the name three times because I couldn’t believe it.
— Ledric?
— Ledric.
— Ledric!
— Yes! he yelled at last. Ledric Mayo, he said.
I thought of a war chest of jokes, but before submitting the first one the beetle-faced man who’d mocked my bright green suit yelled, — I can’t concentrate with that jibber-jabber going on back there!
This was an isolation tank, not a meeting room.
— How long does it take to get on that other side? I asked.
— You’ve got some time, Ledric said.
Yeah.
After an hour the seven fetching men and women over there had gone through so many different tasks I forgot my own name. Besides those lacing boots and climbing a ladder there were others filling out credit card applications. They’d actually fill in the name, address, home-phone-number business and press the completed paper against the glass. There weren’t any subliminal messages playing. It was a hard sell with a soft touch.
For sixty minutes.
Without any other stimulus.
One hundred twenty minutes and my big pink walnut of a brain kept wandering no matter how much I agreed with their weight loss training. I marveled as the others in the room nodded like they were learning something new; as if it had never occurred to them that they could play catch without hot dogs in their mouths.
When my family came to get me from Cornell I tried to act like I was fine. After we’d packed my essential books and clothes I took them for a tour of the campus. For ten seconds I pretended that they were wrong, I was still going to school and doing fine. They would have humored me if I’d wished, but being patronized is worse than straight failing. I showed them Olin Library, where I could have studied. Potential classrooms in Uris Hall. They were happy to see such tidy facilities.
I was an English major before leaving school. One of those squishy guys who make up a third of any college campus. Weasels in glasses. I took my family past Day Hall to the Arts and Sciences quad; even inside Goldwin Smith because it was left open on the weekends. Up to the second floor; the English Department’s locked wooden doors; we posed for twenty pictures in front of them. That evening I rented two movies, Camera Furio and Chilly Grave. I thought they’d want to see how I passed my free time in Ithaca, but horror films were too depressing considering their mood. I enjoyed the pictures when they slept.