Perfect Liz

I've lost 20 pounds. While I was in Ohio with my mother and Jay, I was laying on my side in bed and I could see my stomach pooling next to my torso.  I grabbed my doughy little folds and could hold them in both fists.  When I sat on the toilet, my panus (fairly small yet), would hang down slightly, and my thighs were rubbing each other when I walked.  Is this me?  I thought. 
So I've been doing keto, and 20 pounds later, here I am. It was hard. It's hard every day. I have dreams about eating croissants.  I have detailed dreams about pizza.  It's funny--I don't have detailed dreams about sweets.

My stomach is flat--flatter than it ever has been, actually, because the Pilates actually works, although it is really horrible. Don't let anyone tell you anything different. It hurts. Every minute.  None of the affirming mind body love of Yoga.  None of that.  You're perfect as you are.  No you're not!  Our teachers are professional dancers, and they are tough.  The women in the Pilates class are all middle-aged, upper middle class, professional for the most part.  I'm the most marginal denizen in the studio.  Perfect Liz goes on Saturdays.

Who is Perfect Liz.

Who is Perfect Liz.

How do I start with all the ways Perfect Liz and are braided together.

Perfect Liz is the daughter of a local judge, one of the first female judges in Crocket County. Her mother, Joann, went to law school with my mother.  They were in a class of 10 women, and were the second class to which women were admitted.  Every woman in that class ended up divorcing her husband, except my mother.  The men just couldn't handle the change.  Joann married the Dean of the Law School, who became Perfect Liz' stepfather.  My mother flunked out.

She was in the Queen's court, not homecoming queen, but in the room.  She dated the son of my English Teacher.  Marjorie, my emotional mother in adolescence. The reason I am mostly sane.

This son was a terrible person. We all knew it.  But he was popular and really good looking.  He was mean, too.  And smart.  Something was fascinatingly really wrong with him, and in the way of teens, we were too impressed with his self-assurance to call him on it.  He was a monster.  Perfect Liz was his girlfriend through high school, but he had a secret sexual relationship with a very unpopular, fat, miserable girl, the daughter of the City Manager of Paloma all through high school.  He refused to acknowledge her and would only have sex with her.  One time, he took her for a weekend to a cabin "with the boys", his friends from the baseball team, and shared her with them.  She was weirdly proud of her role at the time--and we reviled her for it, after all, she was consenting, right?  Now I am older and I understand how profoundly ill she was, and how debased and abused.  She has never recovered. Of course not.

All through this, Perfect Liz was his girlfriend. 

His reign of terror ended when he attacked a girl from out of town in the girls bathroom at a debate tournament.  He had been accepted at Swarthmore, but my best friend, another oddball like me, took it upon herself to write the admissions board at Swarthmore--and his offer was rescinded.

Perfect Liz went to Princeton.

I went off to Dartmouth. Where I fell apart for awhile.

So did P.L., only she had the sense to get pregnant by one of the scions of the richest families in America.

I simply didn't go to class and hung out in the diner.

So now we're in Pilates together. She's had a lot of botox, now, but she's nice. She's approximately real. She's perfect Liz.  She has a low voice and a way of making everyone feel at ease, in the club, and at the same time honored by her notice.  She's still the popular girl.  And in our Pilates class--when we can't get the teaser, or don't understand the rhythm of squats and lat arches, the teacher will say,  "Ok, everyone look at Liz--Liz...that's perfect."

Our high school reunion was this summer.  I've never asked her about high school.  In my own way, I was very close to the events that happened--I was close to Marjorie.  We weren't close, she and I.  Never had lunch together.

After class, about a week before, she asked me in the parking lot as we were leaving.  "You going to the reunion this weekend?"

"Are you?"

She looked at me.  She has really blue eyes, and an angular, intelligent face.  It's always the surprise--how intelligent her face looks--and then superimposed, the prom queen features--like it's two faces in one.

"I'll go if you go."

"I don't need to do that to myself." I told her. But I think I meant, You don't need to do that to yourself. Who was I?  I was audience.  She was the star of the high school show.  All I did was fool around with the math teacher.  "I have no nostalgia for that period of my life."

She nodded.

Neither of us went, although we probably should have gone out for drinks instead.  Scotch has no carbs.