She sighs, as she wakes, thinking that she is still alive.
Last evening, Harry changed his approach. He did not like to ask his clients about their past. To him, everything is will and following small simple steps. But since she kept giving in to the temptation of eating, and nothing was changing, he also gave in and asked her about the history of her weight and about her family.
When she was 13, Marla’s parents divorced. Mark, her older brother by five years, took care of her. They kept in touch with their dad, Gregory, while their mother, Jasmine, disappeared with a South American younger man.
Marla was a model at 16. Slim, sexy, with intense big brown eyes, and slightly asymmetrical eyebrows, few men could resist her, or women. She had been on the front cover of several magazines and already made quite a fortune by the time she was 18. People were attracted to her and she enjoyed the attention. She had been on dates with more people than she could remember.
At 20, she mentored the newest girl, Cath, who was starting at 16 as she had. Marla saw in Cath her competition and her ruin, but also what she used to dream. She knew the lifestyle would soon swallow her alive and there was nothing to be done, except help her get the best possible memories and pretend that all would be wonderful, a Cinderella type experience.
At 22, she and Cath had a fling. She shared Cath and did drugs with Mark when things got tough with his wife, Sam, who was seeing Gregory secretly.
At 25, Marla was bored. Alcohol, drugs, food, sex had taken a toll on her spirit. Her eyes were dull; she looked absent. She had started to gain weight.
At 30, she weighed 250 pounds, give or take.
Mark calls her every day. Sam left him. June, his newest sweetheart, is clean. He wants to try and be clean with her. June could no longer keep Hank’s stories straight and left him. The way she puts it: “He is a successful gambler as long as he isn’t drinking, whether he lies about it or not, which he is.”
Marla felt numb as she was throwing up these memories to Harry. It was as though all of this happened to someone else.
Now, not wanting to wake up, the memories hit her by their stark darkness. She feels nauseous. Suicide is on her mind but a part of her has not completely given up. She did not want to remember the past. She liked Harry until last night. Now she feels lonelier than ever. Even in her stardom days as a model, she was lonely. She escaped it by partying, by thinking she belonged to that world. Reality had finally caught up with how she’d been feeling all along.
She gets up and, despite the urge to hide, she wants to buy food. She puts on make up and dresses up. She knows how to go through the pretense of glamour. She remembers how to look sexy, how to turn on her spark, but she also knows it is a game. When she started playing that game at 13, she thought it was being herself.
At the mall, she recognizes Harry. He holds hand with a woman less than half his age. Her heart stops, a moment, in her chest, as though time needs to reorganize all that makes sense in the world. When her heart starts again, Harry and Cath are gone.
So much for dressing up and getting out in the world! She thinks. Is this all life is about?
That question had been in her for a long time. It keeps her from doing herself in.
The first time she was introduced to cocaine, there was also heroin in the mix, and perhaps ecstasy too, her body was used sexually all night long by everyone at the party. She was too out of it to resist anything. She was watching it all happen. She could hear laughing and words. People thought of her as incredibly beautiful. They could not get enough of her. But no one connected with her, with her. Who is this ‘her’ she wanted people to relate to, if it isn’t her body? This question comes as another revelation, a door to another world she had not noticed before. Another reason to remain alive.
She prepares a snack as usual when she gets home. And she calls Mark.
“Guess what?” She starts, when he picks up.
“What?”
“Guess who I saw Harry with today?”
“Mom?”
“That would be the day! Try younger. Much much younger!”
“I don’t know …”
“Cath!”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I can’t do therapy with him anymore, you know. But I got thinking. What do you see in me? Not in my body. I mean: what do you see in me?”
“Ever since you were little I admired you. It is not just how beautiful you always were, it is how easy beauty is for you. You know?”
“No. Go on!”
“As you grew up, you started selling your beauty and people bought it, used it, and spoiled it.”
“Wow! That hits hard. I never thought that beauty was easy for me. I knew I could use it to get what I wanted from people. I wonder if I can get it back. I wonder if I can get a second chance at it.”
“What would you do this time?”
“I would value it!”
“Oh! Marlina! I have tears thinking about it. I love you so much!”
“I know Mark. That’s why I call you. You’re the only one. You love me when I do not love myself. It’s thanks to you I am alive today.”
“Marlina …” he says lovingly.
“Thanks Mark! Thank you for being in my life! I want to try something and I’ll call you after that.”
“Nothing irreversible?”
‘No. I only want to talk about it if it works. Don’t call. Let me call you.”
“Call if you need me.”
“I will! I need to know I have the strength. I need to love myself like I deserve it.”
They hang up. Her snack is still there, untouched. She throws it out.
She goes to her living room and puts on Beethoven’s Allegretto movement from his 7th symphony. It is usually done in 7:30 minutes or less. She always felt it was too fast for her sensitivity. The slowest version she found is 9:30 minutes by Carlo Maria with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She plays this version as loud as she can without creating distortions and lies on the floor in front of the speakers. She feels it vibrating her skin, gently entering her being, moving within her, in soft waves, caressing her, as it crescendos from minute 1:59 for over a minute, penetrating her into her bones, the intensity pressing within, until the music rises again at 7:10, only to slow down again as she sighs. When she hears the soft repeated notes at 9:06, she melts, leaving her suspended in time.
She plays it over and over until she gives in to her tears.
When it is getting dark out, she wants to eat, eat anything. She doesn’t. Her body is shaking and sweating. She wants to scream her loneliness, her anger, her pain. She sits head in her hands, on the floor, against the wall, in the hallway between the living room and the kitchen. She has cramps in her stomach. She resists moving, eating, watching TV. Fighting the impulses and the pain, she covers her ears with both hands and starts humming to herself. Softly. It soothes her cravings.
She hums louder and louder until she starts singing. She sings anything she can remember. It does not matter what. The soothing matters. She is surprised she remembers so many songs. When she runs out of songs, she makes them up.
When the early peach colored light from dawn peeks in through her living room window, she is exhausted. She goes to bed. She sleeps for two days. When she wakes up, she recalls being six or seven and hiding her voice from everyone and from herself because she was scared of singing in public. She found the road to glamour instead. Until she got bored.
After a week of taking singing lessons, the compulsion to eat is gone. Her teacher’s interest in her voice lessens her fear to sing in public. She is able to let herself be filled with a silent joy at the sound of her own voice, the way she does listening to Beethoven’s Allegretto movement of his 7th symphony. She is ready to call Mark.