In Dieta

It’s a consensus during morning giri that Cinzia must begin her new academic year with fresh resolutions, the first of which must be to lose every single etto she has gained during ten years of eating pasta in bell’Italia. There are still those, like Daniela, who remember the thin woman within the inflated version, the one who lived before having tasted not only pasta and pizza, but Crème fraiche du Normandie: tarts, crepes, cod in sorrel sauce, Lindt dark chocolate with nougat and orange peel. Poor unsuspecting woman who spent her noon-days under the awning of that smoky café in Vimoutiers, swirling yet another french-fry in the sorrel flecked sauce, wondering how ever could Americans consider ketchup a worthy condiment. And if the french-fries run out before the crème fraiche du Normandie, goodness please—what is the purpose of a baguette if not for soaking up every trace of sauce so one can behold the pattern of the Limoges. Have I even mentioned Anny’s specialty, the jambon and lentils floating ever so delicately in a secret sauce, the secret having something to do with shallots filtered through a sieve—and whatever it was that gave the cream its pinkish tint? Daniela’s eyes widened—I believe it was horror—when they first lit on me after these indulgences, despite my confidence that the trendy linen pants I wore concealed what I’d rationalized was visible only to my conscience. “Ciccione,” she said, even about poor Desiree who admittedly got her share of Cesar Francese (the same Cesar they sell in the states done in Mousses and Tourraines) Little Desiree chubby? Here is a woman whose eyes are trained to register a tenth of a kilo on a dog—of course she could find the excess flesh on me.

She couldn’t outright give me a set of scales for my birthday—she had to make it seem that I’d be doing her a favor to take the scales off her hands. She didn’t need an apparatus so huge for her small feet and small bathroom; she claimed it didn’t fit in the place she’d had in mind for it. She was going to take it back to the store anyway, but she almost hated to do so, it was so accurate and so easy to read, the digital numbers beaming up so large and so red the moment one planted one’s feet on the surface—and then the number would fix and be available as a reminder throughout the day. The secret to weight loss was indeed scales, she had discovered in her many years of successfully fighting to stay slim. One weighed oneself every morning and on the morning the digital numbers went up rather than down, well, the solution was simple: one simply did not eat until the numbers started going down again.

There is nothing like a support group for losing weight, but mine is a fascist regime. Once upon a time I enjoyed cappuccino and cornetto every morning with Daniela and the dogs at Bar Portella. Now, Orieta, Assunta, Merisa, flank Daniela and the squadra of dogs and calculate how many giri it will take for me to burn off the drop of lemon in my tea. They teach me things I never wanted to know about menopause. They’ve enlisted Marianna, the new barista, a svelte, hipless twenty-year old with a navel ring and toothy smile to never put so much as a zucchero packet on the saucer of my tea cup. One slice of lemon, one red-enveloped bag of Twining’s English Breakfast tea—never mind my diddling the bag in the pot extends the coffee hour. My health, my appearance, my capacity to climb Monteluco is a worthy cause, they all concur. Plus I have become their autumn project—they can spend the autumn season feeding Desiree crumbs from their cornetti whilest watching me shrink, watching my astonishing forebearance and fortitude.

“Sei dimagritta!” Orieta exclaimed this morning—already they say I am less gonfiata, less swollen, my stomach suddenly flat.

Where oh where has this surge in will power come from? I’ve lost weight before—after pregnancies, one summer when I was living alone in Rome and walking hours back and forth to work, the summer of 2005 when I made myself join a swim team. I know how to lose weight, but always in the past, the motive has seemed sheer vanity—a need to look better and, in looking better, feel better about myself. But now, weight loss has become a public statement of group mind over my matter. I am not simply my own problem. I can already hear the cultural echoes of “If Cinzia can do it, hell anyone can.” How can one fail the earnest efforts of others—the cornetto withholders, the tea-enthusiasts, the man with the Jack Lalane cleft in his chin who has always pinched my tit, but now says “sei sempre piu bella”—making an hour glass shape with his hands as he passes me on the walk. How dare I disappoint or bore or risk being other than the miracle they see in the making, in their making. Even Desiree looks back at me over her shoulder, eyes narrowing in on something.