The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: Stories

by Elizabeth Berg Narrated by Elizabeth Berg

Overview

Exhilarating short stories of women breaking free from convention

Every now and then, right in the middle of an ordinary day, a woman rebels, kicks up her heels, and commits a small act of liberation.

What would you do, if you were going to break out and away? Go AWOL from Weight Watchers and spend an entire day eating every single thing you want-and then some? Start a dating service for people over fifty to reclaim the razzle-dazzle in your life-or your marriage? Seek comfort in the face of aging, look for love in the midst of loss, find friendship in the most surprising of places?

Imagine that the people in these wonderful stories-who do all of these things and more-are asking you: What would you do, if nobody was looking?

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

In this collection of mostly uplifting stories, Berg (Dream When You're Feeling Blue) explores the everyday challenges that women face. Whether teenaged or octogenarian, Berg's heroines brave the emotional landmines underlying domestic scenes (from holiday dinner parties to visiting family), navigate the slippery slope of constant dieting and address the process of aging. The title story features an unnamed, insouciant narrator who flees from a Weight Watchers meeting and allows herself to indulge her most fattening food cravings. In "Full Count," an introspective army brat begins to decipher what she looks like to others. The wistful and nostalgic "Rain" features a woman reminiscing about a good friend who dropped his successful corporate life to live closer to nature. Berg's men are surprisingly supportive and well behaved; it is often the women in these stories who manipulate and mistreat their partners. The protagonist of "Truth or Dare," for example, struggles to accept that her ex-husband moved on after she left him. Berg has a knack for sentimental but authentic stories about women who find affirmation in true-to-life situations, and if her endings are slightly predictable, it's in a good way, like comfort food that never disappoints. (Apr.)

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Library Journal

This is a collection of short stories celebrating characters who have the courage to change something in their lives. An undercurrent of food is a common thread, whether it's donuts, a dinner party, or apple pie. New York Times best-selling author Berg (Dream When You're Feeling Blue) uses her insight into human nature from her years as a nurse and a waitress to focus on the everyday challenges people face and how these are opportunities for courage and humanity to emerge. The author's narration is pleasant and at times wistful and nostalgic, providing a supportive atmosphere for the sometimes predictable story endings. Recommended. [Berg's Talk Before Sleep was short-listed for the ABBY award in 1996; Open House was an Oprah Book Club selection in 2000.-Ed.]
—Denise A. Garofalo

Kirkus Reviews

A jewel-like collection of short stories from Berg (Dream When You're Feeling Blue, 2007, etc.). Berg is skilled at depicting the subtle interplay among women, their friends, spouses and families. This collection focuses on quiet, intensely personal discoveries, many of which center on weight or food. In the title story, an unsuccessful dieter rebels against Weight Watchers for a daylong spree. Her activities include licking and eating donuts: "It was sexual in a way, but more yeasty and better." The epistolary "How to Make an Apple Pie," a sensual tale in its own right, concerns an aged correspondent writing to her young friend. More often the pieces are bittersweet, the liberation coming through pain. In "The Only One of Millions Just Like Him," a couple rediscover joy while mourning their aged dog, and in "Returns and Exchanges," the middle-aged protagonist comes to appreciate her husband when a long-lost love resurfaces-and fails to recognize her. Some of these stories chart hurtful revelations, as when a young girl realizes she is neither pretty nor her grandfather's favorite ("Full Count") or when (in "Rain") a woman contemplates paths not taken as a possible lover dies. Berg's writing is so gentle, her people so real, that even these sad stories generate warmth. Tales that highlight the bright sparks in everyday experience. Agent: Suzanne Gluck/William Morris Agency

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172163180
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	04/15/2008
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

the day i ate  whatever i wanted

I began at Dunkin’ Donuts. I hadn’t gone there since I started Weight Watchers a year ago because I had to lose weight; my doctor made me go. I could have switched doctors, but who needs it with all the forms you have to fill out if you switch. You just wish there were a central headquarters with all your information that you write out once so that everyone who needs anything could tap into it.

Weight Watchers is a good organization, I mean it does actually work if you do the program and they try really hard to make you like you, which, as you may know, is a problem a lot of fat people have, they have low self-esteem. Skinny people look at fat people with disgust and have visions of them stretched out on fuchsia-colored silk sofas snarfing down Cool Ranch Doritos and Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, but it isn’t like that. What it is, is eating and eating with your shoulders hunched and your head down to scratch that itch that won’t get scratched, and you have so much shame when you gobble things down you hardly even taste them. You start with I want and you end with I want, only now you have even more weight added to what is already too much and don’t think we don’t know it all, all, all the time.

But anyway, I went to my Weight Watchers meeting one day, and in addition to the usual annoying emaciated people who have no business there, there were two new members who absolutely blew my mind. Both of them on this same day. One was an old woman on oxygen with a walker taking about a thousand hours to get to the scales, and she was not to my eye fat at all. The other was a blindwoman. Here is my question: When that blind woman looks into her mirror, what does she see? And anyway, she, too, had no visible blubber. I mean, I just walked out. I said to myself, No. Today, on account of those two women, on behalf of those two women, I am going to eat anything I want from now until midnight. And I drove right over to Dunkin’ Donuts. You may be thinking, Why did she go to Dunkin’ Donuts if she could have anything she wanted? Why didn’t she go to Cinnabon? Well, because I actually like Dunkin’ Donuts way more than Cinnabon. Cinnabon is just a whore, you know, no subtlety. I like almost all the donuts at Dunkin’ Donuts and I really like the coffee though I usually just get regular coffee, milk, no sugar. But today I got coffee, heavy cream. “Anything else?” the counter person asked. She was Hispanic, about thirty years old, beautiful long black hair tied back in a ponytail under her Dunkin’ Donuts hat and a really big caboose, what can you do, you’d have to be a weird person not to gain a lot of weight if you worked at D.D. Once when I was on a road trip I stopped at this great country kitchen place and every single person who worked there was really fat, I mean really fat. With good skin. And it was a happy place; everybody seemed to get along really well, they were just smiling, holding their little pads and pencils and I had one of those why don’t I move here moments, like where I saw myself sitting in a chair by a window in my little yellow house, lilac trees outside and nothing hurting inside. Like, content at last, which I always think I’ll be if I move, but which I know is a wrong assumption even though a lot of us have it, just ask any real estate agent. But anyway, the counter woman (her name tag said sigrid, but I think maybe she just borrowed that name tag, it was put on with no care at all, for one thing, just hanging there perpendicularly). Anyway, Sigrid’s fat looked good, truly, every now and then you see a person who wears fat well, it is that tight fat and just really looks kind of delicious and also their attitude is just great, like in your face: I’m fat, so fucking what, get over your sanctimonious self. It’s usually the tight fat people who are like that, maybe it’s a gene. Anyway, after Sigrid said, “Anything else?” I said, “Oh yes, I want some donuts.” I cannot tell you how swell that felt.

“How many donuts?” Sigrid asked and I said I didn’t know, I would know when the little voice stopped. “Pardon?” she said, and I said, “Just get a big box, please, but maybe we won’t quite fill it.” So she got out a big Dunkin’ Donuts box and I just started salivating, like that experiment dog. Sigrid grabbed one of those tissue squares that I think we all take pleasure in using, and she raised her eyebrows and I said, “Okay. A bow tie, a chocolate-frosted cake, a Key lime, a powdered cake, a Boston Kreme, a lemon bark, a maple-frosted, a coffee roll, a maple-frosted coffee roll, a cranberry muffin, a bagel and cream cheese and butter, too, on the bagel, and a plain Dunkin’ donut.” And then before she tallied it up I handed her a fifty and said just keep the change and walked out. My back was feeling kind of hypervisible, like I was walking away really cool from a crime scene where I’d been the criminal. My heart was racing and my mood level had shot way, way up.

I got in my car and I opened the coffee and had a deep whiff and a taste. Actually, I guess I have begun to prefer milk in my coffee because the cream tasted whoa. Next I opened the lid on the box and had a good whiff of the donuts. And then I looked around and there was no one so I ran my tongue along every single surface of every single donut. Man. It was sexual in a way, but more yeasty and better. Then I sucked the filling out of the Boston Kreme mixed with a little chocolate frosting. I dipped the powdered cake in the coffee and had one bite; ditto the chocolate-frosted. I went on in this manner until I would say about a third of the donuts were gone. And then I am sorry to say I threw the rest away. I would like to say I ate tidily and cut off where bite marks were and gave the rest to a homeless person along with a couple of finskis, but I did not. I threw them in the garbage, where maybe later they were found by a homeless person anyway or at least by pigeons, who, depending on where they live, can actually have it pretty good. Though sudden violent death is always a problem for them. But probably they have no attachments, which helps.

I was pretty full, so I went for a walk in a park to make room for lunch. It was a nice day and there were joggers, with their determined, miserable faces, and lovers lying in the grass thinking it would last forever. There were lots of dogs and one was a bulldog puppy, which, please, has cornered the market on cuteness. The owner was this very thin woman who looked sort of bitchy, which, think about it, most very thin women do—even when they smile, it’s like grimacing. Fat people are often miserable, too, but at least they look jolly even though it’s really mostly them apologizing, like, “Sorry, sorry, sorry I’m taking up so much room,” “Sorry I’m offending your idea of bodily aesthetics,” “Sorry I’m clogging my arteries and giving the thumbs-up to diabetes.” And spilling over airline seats, which, come on, even for skinny people those seats are ridiculous. Metal girdles.

Lunch was a problem, like do I sit down or continue to fast-food it. Because I really do appreciate good food, but fast food is what I always want. Drive past a White Castle? See myself opening one of the little burgers with the onions all square. Go past KFC? See the big bucket, lift off the lid, see the one corner of one breast just loaded with coating that you pull off and pop into your mouth. Wendy’s? Regular with cheese, just a plain regular with cheese and it is good. The buns are still good at Wendy’s, they’re not those weary things other places give you that are like bread out of an old person’s bread box who never throws anything away and it was cheap bread and not good in the first place. Generic.

Hot dogs? Well. I live in Chicago, where we know what hot dogs are and how they should be served. I know someone who used to fly from Boston to San Francisco once a month on business and she always stopped in Chicago so she could get a red hot. She said she told people she needed a walk but really she needed a red hot. She ate them in the first-class cabin and all the people used to get pissed off at her. She said they got pissed off because the onions stunk the place up, but I think they got pissed off because they didn’t have the foresight to bring a red hot on board themselves. A flight attendant can put all the French words in the world after “beef” and it still tastes like airline food, which tastes like jet fuel smells.

They don’t have red hots in the airport all over the place like they used to. If you come to O’Hare and you have a bit of a layover, get in a cab and tell them Superdawg at Milwaukee and Nagle, it’s only about ten minutes away. Get the regular hot dog, but you might also want to try the Whoopercheesie or Whoopskidawg. There is only one Superdawg and it was started by a guy and his wife, they fell in love in high school and now they’re probably in their eighties. You can see her working the booth, she sits there in her black nylon windbreaker and you shout your order into the little metal box by where you park. Everybody gets their own speaker and their own menu, which has humorous descriptions of the food.

Portillo’s hot dogs are also good, and their tamales, oh my. You eat them with a plastic spoon, which adds to the flavor, as does the light orange grease stain on the wrapper. But the Portillo’s are not as close to the airport, you might not have time. Although if you said to anyone who knew Chicago, “I missed my flight because I had to go to Portillo’s,” they would say, “Oh, I know, did you get a tamale?” If you’re debating, which should I go to?, pick Superdawg, because they are not a chain. Always pick the thing that is not a chain, is one way to try to save the world.

I decided I’d go for lunch to this café I know where the butter is real and the syrup is real and the waitresses do not in any way judge what you order. I got there at 12:30 and got a table in a good booth because it was across from where Ivy was sitting. Ivy is a regular in her nineties, and she wears a little old lady dress and a sweater and sneakers and a white baseball hat turned frontways. Long gray hair tied back in a skinny ponytail. She orders a little something and then falls asleep before it comes and then after about half an hour her home health aide comes to wake her up and take her back home.

I ordered a bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate malted, and I loaded up the fries with salt and made a neat pile of catsup. I had whipped cream on the malt and I ate some by itself and then mixed the rest in. When the waitress asked, “Will there be anything else?” I almost ordered two over easy with hash browns because I just wanted one bite of the potatoes mixed with yolk, but no, that would have been too much wastefulness in one day.

But. Because this was a day purposefully given over to gluttony and greed, I walked over to a bookstore, where I looked at cookbooks. You may think, Right, she looked at dessert books, but that’s where you would be wrong. Because guess what? Vegetarian. And some Mediterranean and Indian. And okay, then I found this one? The cake doctor? Which so made me in the mood for a piece of cake, not a fancy one, just a yellow cake with chocolate frosting. And vanilla ice cream, vanilla enough to be a bit yellow in color. So I went and got that at another café, but I could only fit in half.

By now I was feeling the shame but also defiance. Like here, I’m carrying the banner for all of you who cut off a little piece wanting a big one, who spend a good third of your waking hours feeling bad about your desires, who infect those with whom you work and live with your judgments and pronouncements, you on the program who tally points all day long, every day, let’s see, 7 for breakfast, I’m going to need only 3 or 4 for lunch, what the hell can I have for so little, oh, I know, broth and a salad with very little dressing. And broth is good! Yes! So chickeny! That’s what we tell ourselves, we who cannot eat air without gaining, we who eat the asparagus longing for the potatoes au gratin, for the fettuccine Alfredo, for the pecan pie. And if you’re one of those who doesn’t, stop right here, you are not invited to the rest of this story.

In the afternoon, I rented two movies. Big Night and Tortilla Soup. Which made me starving again even though I wasn’t. How many people went running out for Italian food after Big Night? Hands? I think movies like those are very beautiful, because in addition to food as art, you get love of the family variety and more. I returned the movies, stopped at the very famous Petersen’s ice cream parlor for a turtle sundae, extra caramel sauce, and made out my grocery list on a napkin. When I paid at the cashier, I got a bag of Cheetos because there was one of those chip racks and every time I see a chip rack I want some chips. I love Cheetos so much it kind of makes my butt hurt. Every time I fly, I buy a bag of Cheetos (not the puffy kind, eww) because you never know, and if I go down, I’m going to at least have had a bag of Cheetos...

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