Day 245 Sunday
Denise peeked out the peephole of the door to see who was ringing the doorbell so early in the morning. Stepping back, she looked over at Dale in horror and said, "It is my mother."
"Get dressed and met us on the front porch," Dale said calmly getting up from his chair. He looked over at Victoria and said, "Prepare a tray with coffee, cups, cream, and sugar and bring it to the front porch."
Victoria answered, "Yes, Dale."
Denise ran to her room to get dressed while Dale answered the door. Alice was startled when she saw Dale at the door rather than Denise. She said, "I'm looking for Denise."
Dale stepped out of the house and closed the door behind him. Gesturing to a set of chairs on the porch, he said, "Have a seat. She'll join us out here in a minute."
"Oh. I thought I had the wrong house. I didn't think Denise could afford a house this big on her salary," Alice said still a little overwhelmed by the neighborhood. This was one of those areas where the houses were not visible from the street. She knew that meant big money was involved.
Dale said, "This is my house. Denise lives here while she's in the program."
"Ah, this mysterious program," Alice said.
Dale looked over at the car parked in the driveway and asked, "Where's your husband?"
"He had a little bit too much to drink last night. I left him at the hotel nursing a hangover," Alice answered.
Nodding his head, Dale said, "I always found a blowjob first thing in the morning helped me get over hangovers."
"Excuse me?" Alice said shocked at his blunt language.
"Yes. It seems to stimulate the endorphins and does wonders for headaches. A couple of glasses of water followed by a blowjob and then a shower and I'm set to go for the day," Dale said watching Alice's reaction.
"I've never... ," Alice said stuttering.
"Pity. I'm sure that your husband would enjoy that treatment right about now," Dale said. He gestured to the chair and said, "Please have a seat. Denise will be out in a minute."
Wondering what her daughter had gotten into as a result of associating with such a crude man, Alice sat down on the chair. She said, "If you don't mind me saying it, I find you to be a very rude man."
Dale took a seat and replied, "I don't mind you saying it, but I'm concerned that you believe it. I'm blunt and honest. I realize in today's world of political correctness that can be viewed as rude, but I assure you that it is not."
"Oh," Alice said frowning. She was trying to decide if she had been insulted somehow, but decided not.
Denise stepped out of the house wearing her best work dress. She looked over at her mother and said, "Hello, Mom. I'm kind of surprised to see you here. I thought we were meeting for lunch at noon."
"I wanted to talk to you without your father around," Alice said.
Volunteering data that Alice would have preferred unvoiced, Dale said, "It appears that your father is nursing a hangover and your mother thought it would be better to be here than taking care of him."
"Mom is a little reserved," Denise said.
"Pity," Dale said shaking his head. He wondered at times where people got their sense of propriety.
"I'm here to talk to my daughter, not to you," Alice said.
"That's okay. Victoria will be out with some coffee in a minute. We'll drink our coffee and then I'll leave you two to talk," Dale said.
He had just finished saying that when Victoria stepped out of the front door carrying a tray loaded with the coffee items. She set it down on the little table on the patio and said, "I put a little of the coffee cake on the tray in case you'd like to snack on it."
Alice stared at Victoria open mouthed. Hiding his irritation at her, Dale said, "That was nice of you."
"I'll go back in the house. Just knock on the window if you need anything," Victoria said.
"Thank you," Dale said.
"You're naked," Alice managed to say.
"I know. Why anyone would want to look at me is beyond my understanding," Victoria said walking back into the house. She wished that she could stay there to hear how they explained her to Denise's mother.
"What kind of program is it you are running, Mr. Speers?" Alice asked glaring at the man.
"A very successful program. Every woman who has entered it has reached her target weight and has kept it over the years. Even more significantly, they've all obtained their dreams," Dale answered. He leaned over and picked up the coffee pot. Looking at Alice, he asked, "Coffee?"
"Yes," Alice answered staring at him in disbelief.
Dale poured a cup and asked, "Cream and sugar?"
"Yes to both," Alice answered wondering if she had stepped into an alternate reality.
Dale fixed the coffee and handed it over to Alice. Looking over at Denise, he asked, "Coffee?"
"Yes, please," Denise answered watching the expressions flitting across her mother's face.
As Dale prepared Denise's coffee, he said, "While my methods may appear very unorthodox, I deliver results. From my conversations with Denise, I believe that you have known Susan since she was a young girl. Did you ever think that you would see her like she was yesterday?"
"Not really," Alice answered. She had always believed that the two girls would get married one day, but she had never thought that they would look that good at the time.
"Susan graduated the program a couple of months ago," Dale said. He handed the cup of coffee to Denise and asked, "How many pounds did she lose?"
"She lost forty pounds," Denise answered.
"That's right," Dale said fixing a cup of coffee for himself. He asked, "How many pounds have you lost?"
"I think it is close to thirty two or thirty three. I haven't weighed myself in a couple of weeks," Denise answered.
Alice stared at Denise unable to believe what she was hearing. Ever since Denise had been a young girl, she had weighed herself two and three times a day. Every gain or loss of an ounce was tracked with a sick single minded obsession. She asked, "You don't know how much weight you've lost?"
"Well, the point of the program isn't to lose weight. It is to redefine us as something other than fat women," Denise answered.
Dale sat back and took a sip of his coffee. He said, "Victoria did a good job with the coffee this morning. Her skills in the kitchen are improving. At least she has figured out how to measure the two ingredients for coffee."
Denise took a sip of her coffee and nodded her head. She looked at her mother and said, "I've been in the program for eight months. I'm well on my way to reaching my weight goal. I've got about sixteen more pounds to lose. Last night, I jogged four and a half miles. Can you believe that?"
"Miles?" Alice asked.
"Yes," Denise answered. She reached over and picked up a piece of the coffee cake and took a bite out of it.
Alice looked at the coffee cake and asked, "Aren't you supposed to avoid things like that on your diet? It has to have a lot of calories."
Dale said, "We don't count calories. She eats when her body requires it and eats enough to satisfy the body's needs."
Denise was quiet for a moment and then said, "I haven't felt guilty about eating in months. I hadn't really thought about it."
Dale smiled and said, "That was the day you stopped being a fat woman."
Denise said, "I've got to lose about two pounds a month. That's not too difficult."
"Oh," Alice said finding it hard to believe that Denise was saying it was easy to lose that kind of weight. The entire time Denise was growing up she had watched her daughter try one ridiculous diet after another.
"Try the coffee cake. I made it," Denise said with a smile.
Dale stood and said, "I've finished my coffee. If you ladies will excuse me, I'll leave you to have a private chat."
"Thank you, Dale. I'm sure there's a lot that Mom and I need to catch up on," Denise said with a smile. She hoped she was hiding how nervous she actually felt.
"It has been a pleasure talking with you," Dale said to Alice.
"Same here," Alice said with a polite smile.
"I'll pretend to believe you," Dale said before he returned to the house.
When the door closed behind him, Alice growled, "I hate that man."
"I used to feel that way," Denise said taking a sip of her coffee.
"What is going on here? Yesterday I catch you doing dirty things in the coatroom and today some naked woman is serving us coffee," Alice said.
Feeling nervous, Denise answered, "You caught Larry and I having a romantic interlude. While I'll agree that it probably was not the best time and place, I will argue that it wasn't dirty. He and I are lovers. We were doing what lovers do. I was giving him pleasure."
"But... ," Alice said.
Interrupting her, Denise said, "You should do that for Dad. I'm sure that he'd enjoy it."
"That's disgusting," Alice said.
Denise said, "The first hundred times you do it, you might feel that way. Then one day you'll wake up and see it for what it really is — a very intimate and personal way to give pleasure to a man."
"Don't lecture me about sex, young lady," Alice said.
"I will lecture you about sex. Until I entered the program, I had never had sex with the same man more than one time. I was a lousy fuck. No man in today's world is going to marry a lousy fuck," Denise said leaning towards her mother and pointing a finger at her. She added, "Do you know why I was a lousy fuck? I'll tell you why. I listened to your sex advice growing up. Let me tell you something, it was the worst advice one person could give another."
"Why I never!"
"That's the problem. You never learned to enjoy it. You never learned that it wasn't about duty, but that it was about pleasure," Denise said.
"Sex is private," Alice shouted back.
"Okay. So it is private. That doesn't mean you can't do it for fun!"
"But..."
Denise said, "I never saw you naked when I was a little girl. You wouldn't even change into your bathing suit in front of me. I learned from you to be ashamed of my body. As I got fat, the shame grew larger than my body."
"You've been telling that man that I'm the one responsible for you being fat, haven't you?"
Shaking her head, Denise said, "No. It is interesting, but Dale isn't concerned about why we're fat. He is concerned with breaking bad habits and treating insanity."
"Insanity?" Alice asked.
"Yes, insanity. He told me a couple of weeks ago that I had been insane when I started the program. I didn't believe him at first, but he convinced me that he was right," Denise said.
"I don't believe it," Alice said.
Denise said, "I was paranoid. I felt that everyone was out to get me. I viewed every compliment or nice thing that someone said to me as a setup for an insult. I was always waiting for the next person to hurt me."
"Well, people were mean to you," Alice said.
"I was Narcissistic in a negative way. I spent as much time looking at my body as the worst Narcissist you can imagine. Whereas a positive Narcissist loves his body and being, a negative Narcissist loathes everything about himself. Either extreme is unhealthy," Denise said.
"I know you were worried about your weight," Alice said biting her lower lip.
"I held views that, frankly speaking, were delusional. For a long time I believed that everyone else had it easy while my life was tough. I figured that my little paycheck was smaller than everyone else's paycheck when in fact I made better money than most people. I actually believed that my apartment was the smallest one in the complex when it was the same size as every other one-bedroom apartment there," Denise said.
Alice shook her head at the idea of what Denise was saying to her. It would be easy to convince someone that believed all of that to accept that they were insane. She said, "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence."
Denise shook her head and said, "I was socially retarded. I didn't know how to deal with people on a social level. I couldn't hold conversations with them. I sat back and watched others talk without participating because I didn't know how. You can call it shy, but it wasn't that I was afraid to say something; I didn't know what to say. There's a vast difference between the two."
"You're an educated person. Surely you could talk to people about what you knew," her mother countered.
"I could talk in a business situation about business, but not in a social situation about common topics. All I knew about was being fat," Denise said.
"Oh."
Denise said, "Here's the final thing. I was so inhibited that I was clinically frigid. The only time that I could experience an orgasm was when it snuck up me. I couldn't get wet for sex. I was stone cold frigid."
"I can't say anything about that," her mother said.
"Dale was right. I was insane," Denise said looking at her mother.
"I can't say that I agree with you," her mother said. To admit it would be to admit that she was a bad mother.
"Those five things taken together is what Dale defines as a fat woman. When all five had been demolished, an overweight woman stops being a fat woman. It took Dale five months to cure me. It took him six months to cure Susan. The remainder of the time in the program is spent defining what kind of woman I'll become," Denise said sitting back in her chair.
Her mother sat in her chair sputtering, but saying nothing. Denise smiled and said, "I like what I'm becoming. I've discovered that I can be a kind, caring, considerate, and nice person. I've learned to play golf and to tell the truth, I really enjoy it. I've learned to deal with people on a social level. I can make small talk with the best. I have confidence in myself.
"My dreams are coming true. I have a man in my life that women will envy. He even proposed to me yesterday. I dated six men in my entire life. He's the first one who asked me out the second time. I was even fatter back then, but he didn't care. He liked me. He respects me. He loves me.
"I am saving money for a house. I've gotten ten thousand dollars saved already. In another six months, I'll have almost eighteen thousand dollars for a down payment. Larry has saved even more than that. We're going to get the house we want; not just the only house we can afford.
"I'm dreaming of having kids one day and watching them as they grow up to be healthy and strong. Larry loves the idea of having kids. We both want two kids. We'd prefer a boy and girl, but we'll accept what nature gives us."
"It sounds lovely," her mother said.
"It is lovely and I'm very happy. The only tears I've cried in ages are tears of happiness," Denise said.
"Life isn't that easy."
Denise snorted and said, "Do you think it was easy for me to get all of that? I went through hell. Don't' tell me about easy. Easy was getting fat. Easy was staying poor. Easy was staying lonely. That kind of stuff comes easily."
"I'm worried for you," Alice said.
Denise shook her head and said, "Don't worry about me. You saw Susan yesterday. Soon you'll see me just like that."
"I don't like that man," Alice said.
"You don't have to like him," Denise said. She looked at her mother for a few seconds and said, "Get back to the hotel and take care of Dad."
"He's got a horrible hangover," her mother said.
"Have him drink a couple glasses of water. Then give him a blowjob. After a shower, he'll be set for the day," Denise said wanting to shock her mother. She wondered at times how her father put up with her mother for so many years.
"That's disgusting," her mother said shocked to hear the words coming out of her daughter's mouth.
"It is effective," Denise said. She wondered if her father had a woman on the side. She knew that he always kept a little mad money on the side, but she'd never seen him buy anything with it.
"That man has poisoned your mind with that kind of garbage," her mother said.
Denise shook her head and said, "No. Candy told me that."
"Oh," Alice said thinking about the overly friendly woman from the previous day. The other woman, Michelle, had been just as disturbing in how she looked at the men around her. She shook her head and said, "I don't know what kind of people you've gotten mixed up with, but I don't like it."
"Go back to the hotel and take care of Dad," Denise said knowing that there was no use trying to convince her mother that her life was better than it had ever been.
Alice looked at her daughter for a minute. She asked, "What would I see if I went in the house?"
"You'd probably see Victoria cleaning the house and Dale preparing lunch in the kitchen," Denise answered.
"Why are we out here if you aren't ashamed of what goes on inside the house?"
Denise smiled as she considered all of the answers she could give. Finally, she said, "Consideration for your feelings."
"Why?"
"The rules of the house would require you to strip on stepping through the front door. Dale didn't think you'd be too happy about that," Denise answered.
"He's right about that," Alice said.
"I'm glad you'll admit that he's right about something," Denise said.
At lunch, Denise and her father were left at the table alone while Alice went upstairs to get some pills for her headache. Tom looked over at Denise and said, "Don't be angry at your mother."
"Why do you say that?" Denise asked.
"Your mother is a very reserved person. She doesn't share her feelings very easily. I know she loves me, but she's not very good at showing it or expressing it. She feels things, but hides her feelings very well."
"Oh," Denise said.
"You've always had a kind of love/hate relationship with her because of that. I'm asking that you put the hate part aside. It isn't healthy," her father said.
Denise sat back in her chair and thought about her relationship with her mother. The woman was a master of avoiding intimacy. When Denise had been upset, her mother was the one who suggested going to the ice cream parlor as a diversion. As she had grown older and fatter, she had learned that all she had to do was to fake being upset and they'd go get ice cream. After a while, she didn't have to fake it any more. She said, "I don't hate her. I wish she'd break down that wall around her heart that she's built."
"It is there for a reason," her father said.
"Do you know the reason?"
He shook his head. Seeing that she wanted more of an answer than that, he said, "I suspect a couple of things, but she's never told me. There have been hints about abuse, but I can't even tell you what kind or who did it."
"Oh," Denise said. "Why didn't you tell me that before?"
"You would have used it to hurt her," her father answered in a sad voice.
"Why have you told me now?"
Her father said, "You've changed. You aren't as bitter or angry. You're happy for a change. I've never really seen you happy like this."
"Oh," Denise said. She looked away for a minute and asked, "How do you deal with it?"
"I have my ways," he answered cryptically.
"A mistress?"
"I couldn't afford that," he answered.
"Ah, I understand," Denise said realizing that he was probably visiting prostitutes.
"I thought you would," Tom answered. He looked over in the direction of the restaurant entrance and said, "Your mother wouldn't understand."
"I know."
"I like your young man. I think he's quite the catch," Tom said.
"I think so too. He's real smart and ambitious," Denise said. She was silent for a moment and then added, "He loves me and he's not afraid to say it or show it. He's always gentle and kind. Sometimes he starts spouting poetry or lines from Shakespeare. One day he had a little too much to drink and recited the entire poem, 'The Jabberwocky.' I never laughed so hard in my life. He was standing on the stool in the bar reciting the words of the poem with grand gestures.
"He brings me flowers and chocolates because that is what a young man calling on a young woman is supposed to do. He takes me dancing; not the modern kind of thing where you jump around like an idiot, but the waltz. He's learned the tango and has been teaching it to me. He reads everything and will tell me all about it when he finds something particularly fascinating. It is like he's a kid at times that way. He gets excited about ideas.
"He is convinced that I'm going to become an author and write some great novel. He asks me to tell him stories. I found it nearly impossible at first, but I've gotten into it. He'll say, tell me a story that takes place in the old west. I'll start talking about how Dead Eye Smith faced down Slow Hand Mickey in a duel at sundown. After a while, I really get into it. He acts like a child hearing a tale around the campfire.
"It is funny, but I never saw myself as an author or story teller. Claire told me that she had never met anyone for whom words came so easily. Somehow, everyone just started talking about me writing a novel one day. I've come to like the idea of that."
"Are you going to write one?" Tom asked.
"I just might one of these days. I've got this idea in which an old priest is telling someone, heaven is above and hell is below, I guess that would make purgatory right about here," Denise said.
"I think the church got rid of purgatory," her father said.
"Then I'll make him an old senile priest," Denise said with a smile.
"Where would this story take place?"
"I figure that it should be an old Victorian Home," Denise said.
"Interesting," her father said. He smiled at her and added, "You've become a much more interesting person."