“I’m sorry I’m half dressed,” Marie said. I kept scanning her body. It was 7:30 in the morning; her eyelids were glittery. I couldn’t stop staring at the Y2K chain hanging off her miniskirt. I couldn’t stop staring at her legs, which looked too small even for her body. They filled me with jealousy. I didn’t see how she had any fat to pinch in the mirror when she was full of self-loathing.
“He’s a big baby,” she’d told me over the phone. He didn’t look that big to me. I watched as she picked him up. She looked like she was in pain. I worried she might drop him. Drop the baby I was here about. I was here to be asked questions about being someone else who could hold the baby.
She’d told me over the phone that she was a pharmacist, that she worked with Hepatitis patients. I had a hard time imagining her taking care of anyone. Her husband, Patrick, was a lawyer and dressed the part, navy slacks and a button down. He said they were running late for the airport. I had the thought that she called him daddy even when the baby wasn’t around.
They were leaving for a four-day trip to visit her parents in Fort Lauderdale at 11:00. It made me anxious just thinking about having someone over during the pre-airport scramble, but they seemed okay.
Two giant suitcases were splayed open on the floor, clothes spilling out everywhere. Marie set Sam down on the baby milestone blanket, which was spread out across the living room carpet. Marie took her photoshoot of the baby while Patrick showed me around the house. An expensive piece of real estate, made cheap looking by their tacky Marshall’s decor. All glitter and fake diamonds; fifty different shades of grey. Once we’d seen the whole place, Patrick brought me back to the kitchen where Marie had stripped Sam down to his diaper. “Do you want to hold him while I get his breakfast ready?”
She put him in my arms and he squirmed for a minute before settling comfortably into the crook of my elbow. They watched me hold him. Thank you for being good for me, I was tempted to whisper into his little pink seashell of an ear.
When they were satisfied, Marie said her goodbye. “It was so nice to meet you. Say bye, Sammy sweetie!” I looked back at her in her miniskirt bent over his high chair. I wanted to feed her the way she fed the baby. I pictured Patrick ushering her out of the house to the airport. The two of them squabbling over Sam’s carseat and flight times and hotel rooms.
Patrick shook my hand at the door. “It was great meeting you. We’ll definitely be in touch,” he said.
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At home, I searched her name on Instagram, scrolling through six different Marie Johnsons until I landed on her profile. I clicked and scrolled her feed. She had 200 followers, but she charted her baby obsessively, as if for an audience of thousands. His growing body. His every meal.
Every breakfast, lunch and dinner were meticulously documented, each square captioned with the day’s creation: superfood pumpkin risotto, fatty bananas (bananas and butter), avocado tomato mash, yummy liver and beets, creamy spinach and pear, soupy rice porridge, breast milk oatmeal, silky tofu, creamy vegetable soup, soft chicken and rice, cauliflower and cheese bake, cool lentil stew. In each frame, Sam was in the same spot, naked except for his diaper in his high chair, Marie’s child-sized hand holding out a full plate of food in front of him.
Later, Patrick called and offered me the job. I tried my best to be polite, coming up with reasons I couldn’t make it work. They couldn’t pay me enough. The commute was too far. I was relieved to hang up the phone.
At dinnertime, though, I found myself opening Instagram, pulling up her profile. Butternut squash soup, parmesan polenta, and blueberry compote. Then, again, the next morning at breakfast. Soft scrambled eggs, blended cottage cheese, and strawberry puree. Always three dishes, posted at 8:00 am, 12:00 pm and 5:00 pm. Even on vacation.
It was a compulsion. I needed to know what she was feeding the baby for every meal. Her neuroticism became my own. With each post, she gave me permission to eat. For once in my life, I wasn’t totally disgusted with myself for needing food, a need which usually felt to me vulgar and filled me with self-hate. The baby’s need to eat was a simple biological fact, one I could mimic. Eat, eat, Marie seemed to be compelling me through the screen, even as it was obvious she was ignoring her own advice.
I bought myself a blender. Started hyperfixating on smoothie recipes. Soups. Rice pudding and apple sauce and mashed potatoes. Foods so liquefied they barely counted. I followed Marie’s mommy meal plan. She made the food of it all feel clinical, somehow. Not so indulgent. Not so crass. After a couple weeks of this, I stepped on the scale and was up two pounds. For the first time in my life, I didn’t even care. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I’d hardly even chewed. It proved I could deny myself solids without depriving myself.
Over those same weeks, they must’ve found a nanny willing to take that assignment because Marie’s small hand was replaced with another at lunchtime. Meanwhile, I got another job. This family had three kids. They kept me busy. Still, when I had a moment, three times a day, I would pull up Marie’s feed and check on her and Sam, reassured by the consistency. If he was fed, I could be too.
Then, suddenly one day, she missed lunch. Then dinner, then breakfast the next day. I refreshed her feed obsessively, missing the one constant in my days. I went hungry. I dropped the two pounds. Then three. Four. I googled “Marie Johnson, obituary” every day, but nothing ever showed up. Maybe she was in the psych hospital. Or maybe her weight had dipped so dangerously low, she’d landed in the regular hospital. I just had a feeling that whatever was behind her absence, it was nothing good. Still though, I tried every day to will her back to her page. I navigated to her profile without any conscious thought, finding myself there constantly. Refresh. Refresh. Refresh.
