Like Mother, Like Daughters (5)

A month later, Claire was happily settled in at her new, temporary office job. She’d gotten into a habit of calling Veronica on her way home from work multiple times a week.

Veronica was more than a little irritated at how often she heard Claire munching during their conversations, including the one they were having right at that moment. “Aren’t you heading home for dinner right now?”

“Yeah, why?” Crunch.

“Just surprised you’re eating when you know Mom’s gonna have dinner waiting for you.” Veronica declined to say the rest of what she was thinking: that the meal would inevitably be heavy, and their mother would heap Claire’s plate high at least twice.

“It’s jus’ a little snack,” Claire demurred through a full mouth.

They chatted a few minutes more before saying goodbye.

Veronica, for her part, was mostly grateful to be back in her own home, following her own routine. Her time visiting family had been pleasant enough, but the additional poundage she’d had to work off over the last several weeks made the visit feel less than worth it. The season was still going, and taking a couple weeks off made training and practices absolutely brutal. Between getting back to regular, intense conditioning and also having so little money in the bank that she was mostly living off cheap protein powder mixed with water and a daily multivitamin, it didn’t take her long to get back to her fighting weight.

That didn’t stop things from feeling off, though. She couldn’t say exactly what it was. Maybe it had been the reminder that some people, like her parents, lived comfortable lives and didn’t have to worry about how they were going to feed themselves and pay for utilities. Mostly it felt like her body was unfamiliar to her. Trying on her old dress from high school and realizing how much her body had changed without her even realizing was disorienting.

The best cure for that kind of discomfort was usually going as hard as she could during practice, but her heart wasn’t in it. It didn’t help that the coach had ragged on her harder than usual, even threatening to bench her for the next game if she didn’t get it together. That amped up her anxiety to astronomical levels. She was about to run out her one-year contract, and she knew if she didn’t improve, there wouldn’t be another contract coming.

The real fuck of it all was, that kind of didn’t even sound bad to her! She felt like she was losing it. This was only her first year on a pro team – something she’d dreamt of since she was a child – and she wasn’t even sure if she wanted it now. People had warned her it was tough – hard work for shit pay. If you were going to play, it was for the love of the game. That was why, now that she was off the phone with Claire, she was lying on her bed, scrolling through ads for part-time jobs on her phone. She tended to do this when she was feeling anxious, and hearing Claire talk about how “fun” the office was as she shoveled food into her face had made her feel plenty anxious. She rolled herself into a blanket burrito, wishing she could calm down. Her stomach growled. Her evening shake had left her wanting. The edge of hunger only made her feel worse. She tapped her phone and opened up a food delivery app she could never afford to use, scrolling through menu after menu as her stomach rumbled hungrily.

She spent the next week in the same funk. Every practice felt like a slog. And then another week passed, and then a month. Even games felt sort of miserable. She felt like a liability, always doing just the wrong thing.

She tried dealing with it her usual way: discipline, extra workouts, extra practice. She would catch up with her sisters. Minnie could rarely spare the time, always headed off to some odd job or going to see some obscure local band or about to go out on a date. And Claire… Claire felt like some horrible portent of all three Emple sisters’ futures.

Veronica had been certain that getting Claire out of the house for most of the day, away from their mother’s persistent overfeeding and the ample free time that inevitably led to constant grazing. She had been, to put it mildly, very wrong. Every selfie Claire posted seemed to indicate that the little belly she’d grown her freshman year wasn’t going anywhere. She’d started posting pictures of the ridiculous lunches they had at the office, too. She would caption the photos with things like “Gotta enjoy it all before I go back to cafeteria food 😋” as if she’d spent nine months on campus reluctantly eating gruel and not gorging on every fattening thing in sight. It was clear (to Veronica, at least) that her baby sister was only going to get plumper as time went on.

Veronica felt disappointed in herself for not being able to stop it from happening. She’d always been the one who could corral both herself and her sisters into being better. Forever an overachiever. Always chasing something greater.

But looking at her two younger siblings made her wonder – had any of that even been worth it? What did all her discipline and hard work really amount to, at the end of the day? For all that she was disgusted by Claire and a little perplexed at Minnie’s lifestyle, both of her younger sisters seemed happy enough. Meanwhile, she’d been busting her ass since she was six to be the best at kicking a ball and she felt miserable. And hungry. It had to be the anxiety, but she was starving all the time. No matter how much water she chugged between protein shake “meals” she felt hollow. There was a fast food joint right near the bus stop she used every time she headed home, and the smell of frying onion rings and and burgers lanced through her, reminding her she couldn’t even have the small luxury of a few fries to boost her mood.

Questions about whether her hard work had paid off or not pervaded her entire attitude. When she mixed herself yet another protein shake for dinner – a stevia-tinged vanilla, her least favorite flavor, because it had been on sale – she found herself asking, Who is this for? When her coach ragged on her and told her she wouldn’t be playing in the next game, she found herself thinking, So? Her career was grinding to a halt, and the only thought she could muster was, Good.

This was foreign to her. She’d always been the best, and worked hard to be the best! Now, the thought of being “the best” felt ridiculous. It wasn’t even a lack of confidence – Veronica knew she could have it if she wanted it. It was the pursuit of it that smacked of pointlessness to her.

She started considering other options. What did she want to do? What would she like to do? In truth, she didn’t really know. She knew what she didn’t want to do, and that felt like something. It felt a little strange to give up a dream she’d been chasing most of her life. At the same time, it was freeing.

Her biggest problem was that she had no idea what she wanted to do next. But that just meant there were a world of opportunities available to her, right? Something like that. She started applying for jobs. Anything that wouldn’t require her to bust her ass too hard, anything that paid better than what she was making. When the coach told her she wouldn’t be asked back for another season, she shook her hand and smiled, and gave her a completely genuine, “Thank you.”

It felt like a new beginning. Uncertain and unstable and scary, sure. But she had so much to gain! She could put her drive into something that actually benefited her instead of chasing after sports stardom. Goodbye, being on a Wheaties box, hello being able to afford to buy Wheaties!

Speaking of being able to afford food, Veronica decided to celebrate the news by actually getting some of the food that had been tempting her every day for so long. She stopped inside the burger joint and got herself a big order of onion rings, a fat order of fries, and two huge triple-patty burgers, along with a real shake – strawberry, the best flavor. The bag was greasy by the time she got home. She set it down on the coffee table in front of her couch and tore the bag open, the smell of fat-fried goodness suffusing the entire room. She let out a sigh and took a deep breath in, savoring it for a moment. After that, it was a free-for-all. A huge, nearly jaw-unhinging bite of burger, a shoveled-in mouthful of fries and onion rings, a chug of shake, again and again until she’d demolished it all.

It had been so long since she’d eaten anything real and about as long since she’d felt full. In that moment, she could almost understand Claire’s constant munching. Her stomach was a churning, pleasant bloat weighing her down. This wasn’t something she could do often, at least not if she wanted to keep her figure, but as she ran a hand over her rounded belly, she got why Claire had (unconsciously or not) decided she had other priorities.