"Be nice to him. . . ."

`That’s what Cathy whispered to me when she first introduced her husband Luke to the family. At age thirty-six, Cathy had never dated a lot, and when she met Luke at the bank where they both worked, she fell hard. We accepted Luke because Cathy was madly in love with him. But I guess no man would have been good enough for my sister. Though he worked hard for years at the job my father got him at the Los Angeles County Sanitation District, Luke was as helpless at home as one of the babies Cathy cared for. Other than the money he needed for cigarettes and gas, Luke signed over his paycheck and the managing of the household to my sister. "Cathy did everything for him," laughs Lynn, Cathy’s former boss and one of her closest friends. "Luke did not even know how to make toast."

A petite, flush-faced man with prematurely white hair, Luke was just a few years older than Cathy and had been married three times before. He had a number of children from other relationships; some he was in contact with, others he was not. People assumed because Luke is white, their interracial marriage put Cathy under extra pressure to be thin and conform to a Eurocentric precept of beauty. No one from the outside looking in ever really knows what goes on in a marriage. I can say however that neither I nor friends and family ever remember hearing Luke make fun of her weight. "Cathy was heavy when the two of them met," says Theresa, our sister, "and he loved Cathy for who she was. Cathy’s weight issues were inside her own head."

In fact the only times when Cathy was not worried about her weight was when she was planning her weddings--all three of them to Luke. Decked out in sweeping size 26 gowns, with yards of lace trailing behind, Cathy turned into a stunning bride during each of her "re-commitment" ceremonies. The thrice-repeated matrimonies were Cathy’s time to be queen for a day with all her fans (i.e., friends and family) on hand to feed her fantasy of a happily-ever-after marriage to Luke, her skinny prince in a rented tux. "I just loved being married," Cathy laughed.

However, not long before she died, Luke and Cathy temporarily separated and Luke moved in with another woman. While they were apart, Cathy’s spur-of-the-moment celebrations were fewer, the ring in my sister’s laugh a bit dimmer. She was consumed with dreaming up ways to get Luke back home. He eventually did return. But in hindsight I think Cathy’s rush to surgery, shortly after their reconciliation, was a kind of matrimonial insurance in case her husband decided to go missing in action again. Cathy was hoping for a brand new body and a marriage reborn.

Hungry for More by Robyn McGee Seal Press All Rights Reserved 2005