Tipping the Scales

Tipping the Scales, Chapter 06

"It's crème brulee. Your favorite," Melanie said.

Odelia's bed, its frame having collapsed under her rising weight, had been replaced by a King-sized mattress laid flat upon the floor of her room. She sat on it, her back resting on pillows piled up against the wall, wishing she had the willpower necessary to refuse the casserole dish of crème brulee that Melanie was holding out to her. Its skin of caramelized sugar shone tantalizingly in the light of the reading lamp beside her mattress and her fingers curled of their own volition around the soup spoon Melanie pressed into her hand.

Never had it entered her mind that someday she might experience Melanie waiting on her instead of the other way around. And even more astonishing, that she would resent her sister-in-law for doing it.

"I can't," she began, but Melanie shushed her.

"What? Aren't you hungry?" she asked, all innocence. As if she didn't know that Odelia was always hungry. As if she didn't know that Odelia was getting fatter and fatter and fatter, always fatter, or that it terrified her.

Pushing her hair behind her ear with a manicured nail, Melanie frowned at the TV, which Odelia had tuned to a commercial-free movie network. "What are you watching?"

"It's about a dance-hall girl," she began and realized she was talking around a mouthful of the custard she didn't want to eat. God, but it was wonderful. And oh, how she hated Melanie for giving it to her.

"Couldn't you bring me things like apples and carrots instead of—"

"They're showing cameras on Shop-NBC. Are you sure you wouldn't rather watch that?"

"Yes!" Odelia snapped. "For God's sake, there are enough presents stacked under the tree for ten Christmases. Can't I even take a break long enough to watch a movie in peace?"

"You like lasagna, don't you? I picked up a value pack of family sized frozen Mrs. Stouffer's today. Why don't I run off and pop one in the oven for you?" She turned to leave, but not before dropping a catalog on the mattress.

Odelia stubbornly refused to look in its direction. She could not, however, find the willpower to set the dish of crème brulee aside. Her stomach had become a yawning pit, her hunger a continuous source of maddening irritation. Whenever she wasn't actually eating, the only thought she could hold in her head for longer than a few seconds was that she was hungry.

Despite having spent most of her life feeling powerless, the ferocity of this drive still managed to stun and humiliate her. She couldn't say that she had lost control of herself, since she'd never had much of any to begin with. The sensation was more like having spent her life on an interminable car trip to somewhere she had never wanted to go, only to have the level stretch of interstate under the car's tires swoop down and away without warning, turning into a roller coaster track.

"How are you doing? Comfy?" Jackson brushed the door with his knuckles, in the sort of courtesy pseudo-knock a friend might use to herald his arrival into one's inner sanctum, as if he knew he was always welcome, seeing as they were such bestest-ever buddies and all. "Anything you need me to ah... take away..." his eyes scanned the room hopefully, "or maybe bring you, or do for you...?"

She regarded him sourly. Then her eyes narrowed and a grin twitched at the corners of her mouth. "Well, seeing as you're determined to see to my every need," she said, flexing her ankles, "I'd love a foot massage."

Something twitched in Jackson's left eyelid as he stared at the toes protruding from the end of Odelia's toga.

The togas, fashioned from bed sheets, were Melanie's idea. If she outgrew them the way she had her muumuus, Melanie had brightly explained, another sheet could always be added to the design. The idea was a less than welcome one, but Odelia was forced to admit its practicality.