For most of her life, Stacy had dealt with people quoting Fountains of Wayne at her—it was one of the necessary bullets that you had to dodge when your name was Stacy, and your mom did in fact have it going on.
For most of her life, she would have agreed after some pressing. Stella Stanford had always been a popular peeping choice for the neighborhood kids growing up. Even when she went through her funk as a recent widow, no one would have ever denied that she was able to make heads turn. She had always had a tight body with defined, prominent curves, and a gorgeous face that had more or less made her the whole package to plenty of admirers in their neighborhood. A full twenty years older than her daughter, and they were constantly being mistaken for sisters—and not just by horny single dads. Both were shapely, had the same shade of youthful brown hair, and a set of come-hither blue bedroom eyes that had gotten them plenty of attention over the years. As hard as it was for her to see her mom as a sexual being, it was no wonder she went through so many admirers once she’d gotten the nerve up to date again after her husband passed.
But after Stewart and Stella came out to Stacy, confessing their mutual and intense desire to see her mother gain weight, it became increasingly obvious to their still-befuddled teenaged daughter that those days were numbered.
They had celebrated that night with ice cream—the first step towards millions of calories that had her up a respectable fifty pounds by the time her senior year had come to a close. Stacy’s mom and Stewart had spent the whole night drinking wine and taking turns spooning mighty heaps of rocky road past her lips, which after the fifth verse of “a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips” lead Stacy to storm abashedly upstairs while things between them got handsy.
Ever since, things had slowly changed in the house. Mostly it had been the food—the subtle changes that Stewart and Stella were making to whatever had been kept stocked in the house were just so that Stella hadn’t even noticed she’d been putting half and half in her cereal for a week until she looked at the carton. Her mother and step-father were replacing nights out with friends with nights out in restaurants, and sometimes just staying in all together. They would spend nights cuddled up on the couch, with him popping chocolates into her awaiting mouth… it was a little sickening, honestly.
But the hard work had paid off—Stella Stanford-Sterns had managed to get pretty chubby in just a year’s time.
There were plenty of people at the graduation ceremony that had mistaken her for pregnant. The way that she was carrying her newfound pounds, Stella had born a big belly that there was simply no disguising. With her round cheeks and double chin, plenty of other parents had mistaken her for being in her second trimester with an especially heavy baby. To which she would gleefully reply with:
“Oh noooo…” a little belly rub, sometimes a pat, “Just putting on a little comfort weight.”
And it was super awkward for everybody else, but not nearly as awkward for her teenaged daughter.
Stacy’s mom hadn’t let up about the fact that she wanted to get fat for almost a year. It had been lingering in the back of every seemingly normal conversation that she’d have with her mother, ever since that night in the living room. She would constantly brush her stomach with one hand, or sit idly with an open palm resting on her chubby belly as it slowly took up more and more of her lap. Even Stewart wasn’t one to dissuade the pregnancy rumors—he was happy to stroke his wife’s bulging tummy as it mushroomed over her biggest pair of fat pants…
Times like this, it was all Stacy could do to say “at least they’re happy.”
This was around the time that her mother’s double chin had really started to come in, which really solidified her status as “fat” in Stacy’s high school mind. It wasn’t the Buddha belly, or the fact that she’d split her pants at least once a month. Back when she was young and naïve, the double chin had been the height of a “fat qualifier”.
If only she would have known how much more there was of her mother to come.
The thought of a double chin making someone fat would have made her head spin.
“Honey—I want you to say goodbye to your mother.” Stella had told her daughter after a particularly long hug on what had been her move-in day Freshman year, “Because the next time you see me, you’re not going to recognize me.”
And Stacy hadn’t believed her at the time—but she was right.
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