A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [13]
5
AT SEVEN, WHEN I TIPTOED up the stairs to see why my father hadn’t answered my announcements of breakfast, I found that he wasn’t there. The bed had been slept on, rather than in, and my father had gone out in shoes—his boots by the back door were the reason I thought he was still in bed. Beside the barn, the truck was cold to the touch, and I was just going over to see if he’d dropped in on Rose and Caroline when a big maroon Pontiac pulled into the yard. My father got out of the passenger side, and Marv Carson got out of the driver’s side. Marv looked groggy but willing, already decked out in suit and tie. He scurried eagerly in my father’s footsteps as they came toward the porch. My father said, “Ginny, Marv’ll be eating. Marv, go wash up, now.” Marv looked around as he stepped through the door, for a sink, I suppose. I said, “I’m sure you’re clean enough to eat, Marv. Go on and sit down.”
I set out sausage, fried eggs, hash brown potatoes, cornflakes, English muffins and toast, coffee and orange juice. My father pulled out his usual chair and sat down, then shoveled the food onto his plate with his usual appetite. I was trying to judge whether he was wearing the same clothes he’d had on the day before, when he glanced at me and said irritably, “You had anything to eat? What are you looking at?”
“I ate with Ty, Daddy.”
“Well, then, sit down or go out. You’re making me nervous standing there.”
I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down.
He said to Marv, “Something the matter with the food?”
“It’s delicious.”
“Then why are you eating it that funny way?”
Marv turned pink, but smiled bravely. “People don’t know that it’s not what you eat, but the order you eat it in that counts.”
“Counts for what?”
“Digestibility, efficient use of nutrients, toxin shedding.”
“You’re not fat.”
Indeed he wasn’t. He said, “Actually, I don’t even think about fat any more. I was obsessed with that for years, but that’s very low-level body awareness. Thinking about fat and calories is actually a symptom of the problem, not a way to find a solution.”
“What’s the solution?”
“My main effort now is to be aware of toxins and try to shed them as regularly as possible. I urinate twelve to twenty times a day, now. I sweat freely. I keep a careful eye on my bowel movements.” He said this utterly without embarrassment. “Knowing that organizes everything. For example, when I used to think about exercise as aerobic conditioning or muscle strengthening, I found it very difficult to motivate myself to do it. Now I think of it as a way to move fluids, to cleanse cells and bathe them afresh, and I want to exercise. If I don’t exercise, I can feel myself getting a little crazy from the toxins in my brain.”
I said, “How so?”
“Oh, you know. Negative thoughts. Worries about things at the bank. Failure of hope. That kind of thing. I used to have that all the time. I can spot someone in the toxic overload stage a mile away.”
I said, “What are the toxic foods?”
“Oh, Ginny, goodness me, everything is toxic. That’s the point. You can’t avoid toxins. Thinking you can is just another symptom of the toxic overload stage. For years I was nuts about eating just the right things. Beef never touched my lips, or chocolate, or coffee. It got worse and worse. I was cutting out something every month, desperately looking for just the right combination of foods. I was crazy. I was getting thinner, but then you store the toxins in your muscles and organs and it’s actually worse.”
“When was that?” I said. “I had no idea.” Daddy had stopped staring at Marv and started eating, which was a relief.
“No one did.” He finished his eggs and began