Roman loves Angela and beer and chocolate cake.
His love for Angela is immoderate. Her name is a sonnet that echoes within him. He adores Angela day and night and, if there were stretches of time that lay somewhere between the day and the night, he would adore her then as well.
Roman’s love for beer and chocolate cake is also sincere and deeply felt. His definition of a perfect evening: six beers, dinner on the couch with Angela, a slab of chocolate cake, and a black-and-white movie, preferably from the 1930s, on television.
One sunny day in the middle of July, Angela breaks up with Roman. She tells him that he is a good man, but he has become too fat for her. It embarrasses her to be seen in his company. Sex with him now feels life-threatening.
Roman’s heart shatters like a light bulb struck by a crowbar. He exiles himself from the company of others. His appetite, including for beer and chocolate cake, disappears. He diminishes. Not one of the few people he still sees believes him when he maintains that his weight loss is not attributable to a pharmaceutical.
“You taking Ozempic?”
“No.”
“Wegovy?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then it’s gotta be the Zepbound.”
“No, really, it’s not.”
“Liar.”
After several such exchanges, Roman finds that it’s easier on him and more rewarding for his inquisitor if he answers “yes” to the first question, whichever medication is mentioned.
Roman’s weight loss also creates a problem with his pants: He now has considerably more belt than waist and, therefore, extra belt.
He tries passing the extra belt through the belt loops of his pants for a second time, but the loops aren’t big enough. They will not accommodate a doubling up of belt. And because his belts are made of a light brown, stretchy material, the last thirteen inches hang limply down the front of his pants. Based upon comments that Roman receives from colleagues and passers-by, at first glance the hanging length of belt tends to resemble an unusually long and proudly displayed penis.
It occurs to Roman that he could simply cut the belts to a reasonable length. But he worries that would make him look like a Depression-era hobo using a length of rope to hold up his trousers.
The problem demands a solution. Unless his pants are held up, they will fall down around his ankles. (Suspenders might work, but Roman knows that suspenders make anyone look ludicrous unless they are an Alabama farmer or a New York lawyer. He is neither.)
He must buy a new belt.
Knowing that he is about to purchase a replacement belt, Roman cuts a foot off the end of one of his existing belts with a pair of kitchen scissors and heads to a nearby clothing store. The men’s department has no other customers.
A young saleswoman approaches him. Her nametag says “Angela.” When Roman sees the name, it occurs to him that he should probably purchase a belt online, like all the other belt customers who aren’t in the store.
“How can I help you?”
“I think I’ll be going.”
“Come on. Something besides the air conditioning brought you in here. Let me help.”
Roman hesitates. Angela is cute. A girl with comedy in her eyes.
“I need a new belt.”
“You sure do. The one you have on makes you look like a bum in a Frank Capra movie.”
It feels like the skin on Roman’s face cracks. His cheeks have grown unaccustomed to accommodating a smile.
“It’s because I cut the end off.”
“With your left hand while suffering from arthritis and wearing a blindfold, apparently. Take it off.”
“My pants will fall down.”
“That should brighten up a dull day.”
“Is this how you usually talk to your customers?”
“Only the good-looking ones.”
Something inside Roman shifts. He experiences, for just a moment before it drifts away, a faint but vaguely familiar feeling. Roman puzzles over it. Then recognizes it. Hunger.
“You’ve lost a bunch of weight.”
“I have.”
Roman waits for the inevitable questioning to begin.
“Good for you. You should be proud of yourself. But it means that you’re going to need a lot more than a new belt.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Take a good look at yourself.”
Roman faces the mirror. He sees a shrunken man. The man’s shirt billows around him. The waistband of his pants folds over on itself in half a dozen places. His socks sag over his shoes. Roman has been so focused on looking ridiculous because his belt was too long that he never noticed that he was looking ridiculous for other reasons as well.
“If you buy only a belt, you might as well go around wearing a barrel. You’re still going to look like a bum.”
The skin on Roman’s face cracks again.
He spends more than three thousand dollars and leaves the store with a new wardrobe and Angela’s telephone number.
At home that evening, Roman celebrates with a six-pack and two slices of chocolate cake, and watches It Happened One Night alone on the couch.
“Becca? Is that you? Wake me? It’s eleven o’clock on a Tuesday morning. Honey, I’m at work. Where are you? You sound a little distant.”
“Maui. We arrived a few days ago.”
“Uh huh. Well, it figures. I’m thinking about whether to eat the other half of my onion bagel and you’re in paradise wondering what time it is in the rest of the world. Okay, this is fair.”
“I need to talk. Do you have a few minutes.”
“What did Alan do now?”
‘Nothing. Nothing. It’s been great here. It’s really lovely.”
“I’ll bet it is.”
“Stop. I need your help. I’ve decided I can’t do this anymore.”
“Again? Again, your leaving Alan? We’re not doing this again. Anyway, I’m not doing it.”
“I mean it’s clear to me, now. I have to break away. It’s only right.”
“Well, at least you didn’t say it.”
“Say what, Abby?”
“That he’s never going to leave…”
“Oh, no. Leave Sheila? No, never. Alan never said he was going to leave Sheila, never even hinted at it. ‘Whether she’s bawling her eyes out or cussing me out, she’s the one that’ll be picking out my last suit,’ he always says.”
“How magnanimous of him.”
“That’s not it. It’s me. I mean what is this all about?”
“Becca, I think it’s pretty clear. By the way, how did he wangle a trip to Maui and keep it from Sheila?”
“Oh, we’re on a work junket. I mean he is. The firm flew out the senior execs. A retreat, you know.”
“Not really, but it must be nice.”
“Well, actually, we had to fly out separately. But I didn’t mind. Fact is, he’s the one who hates to fly. White knuckles, then he pops up as soon as he hits a little turbulence. Poor baby.”
“So, you want to leave because he’s a poor flyer?”
“Abby, you’re not paying attention. It’s me. It’s all this. I’m just not growing, and this is going nowhere.”
“It got you to Maui.”
“Look, this is all very nice. I mean the place is gorgeous. The hotel is on the beach and the halls are open air and they have these long white curtains that drift down from a twenty-foot-high ceiling and waft beautifully in the ocean breezes. I mean it’s delightful. And I mean these people really cater to your every whim. Why the other night at dinner— the restaurant is outdoors, of course, and overlooks the beach and ocean — the chef came out to greet us, all because Alan asked about how the gluten-free dishes were prepared. He’s got that bad allergy, you know.”
“What’s your point here?”
“Oh, yes. Sorry. Well, I can’t do it anymore. I mean it’s not right. I mean it’s not going anywhere and, and I feel bad about Robby.”
“Why do you feel bad about your son? Is he suffering? He’s in school up in Massachusetts, right?”
“Yes. It’s wonderful for him. You know that I could never afford to send him there.”
“I know. So, this is a good thing. No?”
“Well, yes and no. I mean I love that Robby’s there. I mean you should see the student roster. The thing reads like the Mayflower manifest.”
“I’m still waiting for the bad.”
“The bad is that Alan is paying Robby’s first year’s tuition. God, I love him for it. But it’s just not right.”
“In whose world is it not right, Becca?”
“My world. I mean it’s not his kid.”
“Did you twist his arm? Did you have him in a chokehold when you asked for the tuition money?”
“No, he wanted to. Said it wasn’t a big deal.”
“So, when are you going to tell him?”
“Sometime today. But definitely after breakfast. You know, the breakfast’s here are to die for. The staff sets a table on the veranda, very secluded from the other guests, but with a view of the water. And I have to tell you, my omelet has been scrumptious. You know me and breakfast. And it comes with berries. Mmmm, and they warm the berries. You know, on second thought, maybe I won’t say anything until tonight. We’re supposed to go back to Molokini. That’s an island just off the coast where the whales migrate to this time of year. We took a boat ride yesterday — very touristy — and we saw a whale breach the water. It was the coolest thing. So, Alan booked us again for today. Wasn’t that nice of him?”
“Has the sex been as good as the food or the whales?”
“You know the story. The same. It isn’t bad. It’s not like he’s really gross to touch or anything. And he doesn’t screw like an old man. At least not yet. And you know, that’s not everything.”
“Maybe to you.”
“No, I mean I’ve learned a lot. He’s really smart. We even have discussions about art. Two weeks ago, we spent three hours at the Whitney. We saw the Raffensberg exhibit.”
“Rauschenberg.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Rauschenberg. Wasn’t that nice of him to take the time to do that?”
“Isn’t that when he jumped you in the stairwell.”
“You’re always going down that road. He just likes the way I look, and sometimes, well, he can’t help himself, especially when I’m in a bikini. You know, he told me to get a tan. But not a conspicuous one. Nothing dermatologically irresponsible, he said. Isn’t that a nice way to phrase things?”
“Beautiful.”
“Oh, he really means to look out for me. I mean, I know he wants me to look good. You know I shave off half a dozen years when we’re with his friends. I’m still sticking with twenty-nine. Do you think I can still get away with it?”
“Well, you’ve been with him over a year. Don’t you think you might turn that calendar page?”
“I know. I know. This won’t last anyway. I was thinking I could get something else?”
“Do you mean a job?”
“I could go back to modeling. Not the high fashion stuff. No, I mean the commercial jobs. Something like, you know, the attractive mom holding a new vacuum cleaner. Or maybe become a photographer.”
“And send Robby to private school?”
“Maybe. Maybe I’m good around cameras.”
“Becca, honey, that’s not what you’re good at.”
“Well, I don’t care. My mind is made up. Uh, I think he’s getting up. I have to go. Wish me luck.”
“Sure. Go. Have a nice breakfast. And if you’re wondering, I’ve decided to go for it, too.”
“Go for what?”
“The other half of my bagel.”
“Oh.”
“By the way, how does your son like the school? Didn’t he begin classes last week?”
“Oh, Robby, he loves it. He told me he’s really looking forward to the next four years.”
On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Alma and Joel, students at Northeastern University and Boston College, respectively— undergraduate and graduate, respectively — were both aboard Amtrak on their way to Philadelphia and Baltimore, respectively, to spend the holiday with their respective families when three passenger cars derailed on the notoriously perilous curve at Frankford Junction killing two passengers and injuring fifty-one; yet, despite being in the second of the three cars, Alma and Joel suffered only minor scrapes so that he was able to carry injured people out of the overturned car and she to tend to them, a joint effort which made a bond that two years later eventuated in their marrying one another.
Alma’s pregnancy was unplanned, a surprise, and turned out to be difficult, requiring an emergency Caesarian section with complications that meant Alma and Joel’s son would only have a brother if they adopted, which, after many discussions, lengthy advice from their parents, and much wavering, they did.
The boys were of an age, got on well, were loved equally by their parents, lived placidly in their leafy suburb until puberty when, almost overnight, one turned morose, hostile, secretive, alienated, unhygienic, isolated, pierced, impolite, dressing only in black jeans and black shirts so that, though his classmates were terrified, they weren’t surprised when one morning in home room he lifted from his backpack a Kabar hunting knife he’d bought online and started swearing at and trying to slash those of his classmates who didn’t flee at once, and he was still doing this when the School Security Officer Sal Accetta burst in and shot him in the chest, a fatal shot which the marriage of Alma and Joel also did not survive, and which so traumatized Officer Accetta that four months later he was admitted to the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge as a long-term resident, the ferocious cost of which was paid by the affluent suburb’s grudgingly grateful taxpayers augmented by a co-response grant from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Department of Mental Health.
Like Alma and Joel, Officer Accetta and his wife Jeanne had two children and lost one when his daughter Giulia died at the age of three of an untreatable congenital heart defect, a fate her parents had been assured would come inevitably and soon, though the doctors couldn’t say exactly when, so they had time to steel themselves, get ready to face the blow together, also to prepare Guila’s big brother David who, when he had grown up into a kind, intelligent, and imposing six-foot-three law student regularly drove himself and his mother from Boston to Stockbridge and back every weekend to visit his father, in the course of which visits David fell in love with Belinda Doherty, an attractive young nurse who, over time, and after many strolls through the Center’s grounds, reciprocated so that, in due course, they were wed at Saint Mark’s, her family’s church in Pittsfield.
Belinda and David had three children, all robust in body and mind, the oldest named Salvatore after David’s father and who from an early age was obsessed by aviation so that when he enrolled in Boston University he also signed up for Air Force ROTC, served the required four years, re-upped for another four, then left the service to become a pilot with Delta Airlines and was at the controls on a flight from Boston to Los Angeles when his plane lost one engine over Kansas and the landing gear jammed so that he had to pull off a nearly miraculous belly landing at Garden City Regional Airport, saving all aboard, including the beautiful and brilliant classical scholar Ophelia Langhorne whom I met at a professional conference three years later and married last June.
