One Hundred Seventy-Seven

“One Hundred Seventy-Seven”
A Short Story

         My name is Maxine Holstein.

         I’m a hair stylist, and a part-time movie store clerk.

         Once I had been a model.

         My story begins, really begins, with the day I became pregnant, because on that day, my whole life changed. I had been young and thin and single until then.

         I’m not anymore.

         My gut reaction at the time, if you must know, was horror. Sure, it sounds terrible to say, but could you blame me? I was eighteen then, just out of high school, and well on my way to a good modeling career. I was already posing in ads for all the local department stores. It was just a matter of time before I made the big time, I figured. I was five-eleven and an even one hundred and twenty pounds.

         I was perfect.

         Of course, I didn’t know this at the time. No, back then, I still thought I needed to lose just another three pounds, another four pounds. Lettuce and lowfat cottage cheese were my breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then. Sure, I knew I was attractive – that’s what all the photographers told me – but in my mind, I was never ideal. That’s what I wanted to be. It was the only way to get to the top, after all.

         Well, Jim made me feel ideal. He was a football player, and a quarterback at that. A three-year starter at State – a dream come true. We met at a nightclub downtown, right after one of my modeling shoots. He and I were both underage at the time, but the club didn’t care – they let us in, anyway. We used to get in everywhere back then.

         At the club, Jim bought me one drink after another. I didn’t dare refuse. And the more I drank, the more I laughed – and the bluer his eyes became, the brighter his smile. He had already been handsome when I was sober, but, my God, by the end of the night, he was irresistible.

         So I slept with him.

         I woke up the next morning, hating myself: he was gone. True, I vaguely remembered him kissing me goodbye, saying he’d call, but even in my hung-over stupor I knew he wouldn’t. A guy like that and a girl like me? No way. I felt stupid, irresponsible, like I wasn’t in control of myself. I cried constantly. I had finally met Mr. Right, I thought, and I blew it by sleeping with him on the first date – the first date! What was I thinking?

         He called me the following evening.

         I was thrilled, and apparently, so was he. We were made for each other, we thought – we had so much in common. The next few weeks, Jim and I did everything together, and everything was great. I went to one of his games and he went to one of my modeling shoots. It seemed that we took a genuine interest in each other. This was like nothing from high school, I thought. No, this was true love – I could be convinced of nothing else. By the third week, I was already making plans for our wedding. I had even picked out his tuxedo.

         But, as happy I was, everything quickly came to a halt one day. Not because of anything he did, mind you – no, this kind of thing was more about me, in a manner of speaking. I was late, if you know what I mean. Yeah, that kind of late. I was so head over heels in love with Jim that I hadn’t even thought about my cycle at all until then, but glancing at the calendar one morning, I realized that I was a week overdue.

         A week late, I thought. It was at that moment that the wave of panic hit me, practically wiping me out: I’m only eighteen – I can’t get pregnant! And then, after time had passed, somehow, that very same thought also managed to comfort me. Yeah, that’s right, I repeated – I’m only eighteen; I can’t get pregnant. After all, babies were something that happened to other people. But, surely, I was too smart for that. Oh sure, I might’ve forgotten to use protection once or twice in this case, but it didn’t really matter, though: I’d still be forgiven for it, right? Yeah, the law of averages had to be on my side. It’s not like I did this sort of thing all the time, after all.

         So I decided to wait, to give it some time.

         And I did. Still nothing. I began to panic again– it had been almost two weeks now: this wasn’t good. Even so, I was still in denial about it, and I continued to keep it from Jim. That was the last thing I needed right now, after all – for him to find out. Besides, what if it all was a false alarm? I’d be scaring him away over nothing, and I couldn’t accept that as a possibility. After all, I reasoned, it’s not like this was the first time I’d ever been late – it had happened once or twice before. And sure, with all of the modeling assignments and the pressure that came with them, I’d been under a lot of stress recently, anyway. All of the magazines did say that anxiety could cause this sort of thing to happen sometimes, right? Yeah, maybe I was just late. Yeah, maybe that’s all it was. Yeah.

         Nope.

         Pregnant, the doctor told me, and the word seemed to leave her mouth and echo throughout her office, bouncing off the walls, the door, the paper towel dispenser, even against the sink in the corner. “Pregnant,” she repeated, in reaction to my silence, to my obviously blank stare.

         It didn’t matter. I still didn’t believe it.

         No, not even at the front desk, when I was making my co-payment. In fact, the reality of it all didn’t finally come crashing down upon me whatsoever until after I left her office, until I was seated in my car. And when it did, I couldn’t react – I couldn’t do anything. I was paralyzed. I just sat in my car, resting my chin upon the steering wheel, staring. I’m horrible, I thought; I’m a disgrace. And not just personally, but professionally: my modeling career would be gone now, before it had ever really started.
         
         And so too would Jim.

         With that thought, I became a mess, and my crying was uncontrollable. Tears poured down the steering column and onto my skirt. Forget about driving, I thought – there’s no way I’ll ever be able to see the road through all of this. I stepped out of the car, took a deep breath…

         And instantly fainted.

         
         While unconscious, I had a dream: I was standing on the grounds of a farm, and I was outside in the sun, holding a copper pail. The air was sticky and thick, and animals were on every side of me, oinking and bleating and clucking. They smelled of manure, which the day’s heat only intensified. I ignored them – their sight, their sound, their stench – and walked into a barn. Inside there were cows. I could hear them mooing.

         Walking up to one of the cows, I felt myself kneeling beside it. Oh God, I thought with revulsion, an onlooker to my own dream, I’m going to milk a cow – gross! Slowly, almost sadly, I thought, I set the pail underneath the cow and began to rhythmically stroke its udder until milk came spewing forth. It soon filled the pail.

         It didn’t stop, though – the milk just kept on pouring right out. Soon, a white puddle spread clear across the hay-strewn floor to the point that it completely surrounded me. Then, suddenly, the barn door closed. The room was dark now. I could feel the milk begin to rise.

         It was up to my knees.

         My God, I thought, I’m going to drown in cow milk! And there seemed to be nothing that I could do to prevent this. Soon, the milk was up to my hips, its volume steadily increasing, its warmth suffusing through my legs. It was just a matter of time now before it reached my head, I thought, and even then, if I tried to swim, the barn’s roof was only a few feet above me. Eventually, there’d be no room left to breathe.

         By this point, the other cows in the barn had already started mooing frantically, and even in the darkness, I could make out one nearby pitifully struggling to stay afloat with an awkward front-leg kicking motion. But, strangely enough, the cow that I had been milking – the one that was causing this whole catastrophe – seemed completely unperturbed – in fact, it appeared to actually be growing! Indeed, as the milk level in the barn continued to rise, the cow’s height seemed to increase accordingly, as if in response. And even as the liquid reached the neckline of my overalls, the cow still loomed above me, as if mocking me as its perpetual dairy maiden – a dairy maiden who would soon be dead, I thought, horrified.

         Even so, the milk continued to rise, and soon there was only a foot or so of air remaining beneath the barn’s roof. By now, I was fully treading milk, desperately scrambling for an exit, some means of escape. And it was at that moment, at last, that the cow that I had been milking, no longer having any room to ascend, became eye-level with me. I stared into its face, and it was horrifying. I gasped at what I saw.

         It was me.

         And I woke up.


         That dream took place over a decade ago. It's been years since I thought of it, actually, but yesterday morning something happened, something so strange, so bizarre that it seemed like nothing I’d ever experienced. Nothing at all.

         Nothing. Except for that dream.

         Now, before I tell you about what happened yesterday, let me first tell you a little something about what’s happened to me, what’s happened to Jim since then, the time of that dream ten years ago. When I came to, I ended up, obviously, still being pregnant. Eventually, that pregnancy resulted in Jim, Jr., or J.J., as we like to call him now. J.J. happens to be at his grandparents’ house now – he stays there for a couple weeks every summer.

         And Jim and I, despite what I feared at the time, ended up getting married, after all. I was so excited when he asked me, so thrilled when he proposed. So what if we have a baby on the way, he told me. I can still be a pro quarterback and you can still be a famous model. Besides, he said, I always wanted to have kids someday, anyway. We’ll just have them sooner rather than later, is all.

          “We’ll?” I asked.

          “We’ll,” he said.

         And soon we were hitched.

         It was nice – it was all that I dreamed. I, the aspiring young model; Jim, the aspiring young quarterback. He even made All-America his senior year. He was sure to be drafted in the first round, maybe even the top ten.

         But then, in the Cotton Bowl, the last game of his college career, Jim had “The Fall,” as it came to be known in these parts. Nobody had even touched him before it happened – he simply tripped upon the cord of a headset while running out of bounds. After losing his balance, he landed awkwardly on his side, tearing his right shoulder to pieces. The whole nation saw it on TV – it was pitiful.

         The injury was a fluke, the doctors told him – one in a million. But that one was enough to cost us our million. Instead of the multi-million dollar contract Jim would’ve signed as a first-round NFL pick, he was now nothing more than an ex-jock with a lot of bitter daydreams of what could have been.

         Oh sure, he tried to rehabilitate it, spent several years, in fact – but he still couldn’t throw a ball half as hard as he used to. One scout even went so far as to laugh at him during an informal tryout, which caused Jim to slug him (resulting in Jim’s first stint in court).

         Now, he’s a farmer – or tries to be, anyway. It’s not like we grow enough crops to really make a profit out of it. But Jim always says that if his daddy could do it, then so the hell can he. He’s very stubborn about this – he won’t give it up, no matter how bad it gets or how little he sells.

         Which is why I work two jobs, of course. Neither of which pays really well.

         Not that I’d expect to make much money in this town, anyway – working in the heart of Hicksville like I do. After Jim tore up his shoulder, he didn’t want to have anything to do with the big city anymore – mainly because it didn’t want to have anything to do with him. As far as the big city was concerned, Jim was a has-been now. Sure, he was a great college player once, and he could’ve been really good in the pros, too. Oh well…

         So, feeling useless, Jim wanted to go back to where he grew up, to the place where he was still a hero to the local folk. I was so in love with him that I followed; back to where he was, back to where we are.

         Now.

         Needless to say, no one can be a supermodel in this backwoods town. You can’t even be a mini-model. In fact, the closest things we have to models here are in the hobby shop just up the street, and even those are second-rate.

         Not that I could’ve ever been a model again, anyway, even if I’d wanted to. Nobody in his right mind would’ve ever hired me. Certainly not after the health problems began.

         You see, when I was pregnant (and I don’t understand it completely, not even now), my hormones got all out of whack and something bad happened to my thyroid gland, permanently. As a result, I now weigh one hundred seventy-seven pounds. That’s right: one hundred seventy-seven. It doesn’t matter how much dieting I do – I just can’t seem to get below that number.

         Sure, all the other ladies in the salon say that I look great at this weight – that I carry it really well since I’m so tall. Not that this means anything to me, of course.

         They’re all still skinnier than I am.          

         I’ve tried every diet I can think of to lose the weight: Weight Watchers, Atkins, South Beach, and anything else I can scrounge up in the bookstore or the magazine rack that might possibly work.

         But I just can’t do it. One hundred seventy-seven. That’s my limit. I can’t get below it.

         And, as if to pour salt on the wound, stupid me had to go ahead and take on Jim’s last name when we were married. Holstein. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. When you’re used to being a hundred-twenty pounds, the idea of having a last name like Holstein doesn’t phase you in the least.

         Now it sure as hell does.

         To make matters worse, Jim even bought a Holstein cow for the farm last year, welcoming it as “one of the family.” God, I hate when he makes jokes like that. He knows how sensitive I am about my weight. I also think he hates himself a bit for what he’s turned into, and he just takes it out on me. When I met him, he was a chiseled six-foot-four, two hundred twenty-five pounds. Not an ounce of fat on his frame. Now he’s a solid (and soft) three hundred-plus, and that’s only what he’ll admit to. I think he’s just as ashamed about his looks as I am.

         So there you have it: Fat, fat, fat… it’s all I ever think about. I’m obsessed with it: how to lose it, how to get rid of it. I just want to be thin again, to be young again. I know that Jim does, too.

         And all of this makes me wonder again about yesterday morning. Oh yes, back to yesterday morning.

         Well, every morning, I always wake up before Jim does. Which is odd, seeing as how he’s supposedly a farmer and all. It sure explains a hell of a lot.

         Anyway, as much as the bastard annoys me sometimes, I still say goodbye to him every morning before I leave. This morning was no different. Except that this morning, instead of his usual inaudible grunt, he answered me very clearly, very succinctly. This morning, he answered:

         Moo.

         I couldn’t believe it! My first reaction was to smack him, and that’s exactly what I did. How dare he make fun of my weight! Mooing at me? A lot of nerve he had, the big tub of lard! And I told him as much.

         An at-first pained, and then angry, look came over his face at that moment. He raised his voice to rebuke me. But then, again, it came out:

         Moo.
         
         “Why, you son-of-a-bitch!” I screamed, and I clocked him again upside the head, hard. But this time, instead of anger, instead of retribution, a look of confusion appeared upon Jim’s face – a look of fear.

         For as much of an idiot as he can be sometimes, and for as much as he gets on my last nerve (almost constantly), if nothing else, I can definitely say that I do know Jim well. And I could now determine, as plain as the sun on a clear spring day, that he was completely scared out of his wits.

         And it worried me – I didn’t want to see him like this. “Hey, Jim,” I said softly. “What is it? What’s the matter?” So, instead of smacking him again, this time I stroked his forearm with gentle, concerned pats.
         
         He opened his mouth again, and the sound that left it was pathetic:

         Moo.

         Hearing him repeat this, my first instinct was to smack him again, but I could see at once that there was no trace of humor or cruelty whatsoever in his eyes. He wasn’t joking at all; he was terrified. In fact, all the color had drawn from his face and he was sweating profusely.

         “Um, Jim,” I said. “I think we need to get you to a doctor. You don’t look so good.”

         He nodded gravely, trying to agree. But all that came out was:

         Moo.

         ***

         It’s a day later now. In case you’re curious, the doctor had a simple enough explanation for what occurred. He shrugged his shoulders and said that Jim’d been working too hard – that was all there was to it. He prescribed him some tranquilizers, and said to come back in a week if we had any more problems.

         Well, that was yesterday.

         Today I’m the one taking tranquilizers.

         You see, on this morning when I was ready to leave for work, I again followed my usual routine and patted Jim on the hip – more affectionately than usual – to say goodbye. This time, he didn’t even grunt, though. Normally, such a silence wouldn’t have phased me at all, but after yesterday’s strange events, I was naturally a bit more concerned than usual. I leaned in close to Jim, to see if everything was all right.

         As always, he was lying on his side, turned away from me. This was our usual sleeping arrangement: he on his left side, me on my right side, facing away from one another. It had been this way for years. As a result, I never got to see Jim’s face when I woke up, but I was intimately aware of what the back of his head looked like.

         And honestly, I have to admit that there were days I’d have preferred to see the back of his head, anyway. It sometimes beat the alternative.

         But not on this day. No, on this day, I was scared. I wanted to see Jim’s face now, wanted to make sure he was okay. I laid my hand upon his shoulder and gently rolled him over.

         And seeing him, I shrieked.

         It startled him awake. I could see his bulk quivering as he struggled to sit up in bed. He must’ve known something was terribly amiss.

         Regardless, I quickly backpedaled in horror, stumbling over a pair of shoes, nearly losing my balance.

         His worried eyes followed me across the room, and again, groggily, it came out:

         Moo.

         He didn’t seem to understand why I was screaming – why I was still screaming. His eyebrows upturned into matching arches. And he said it again, this time in a more inquisitive tone:

         Moo?

         By this point in time, my back was flush against the farthest wall, so terrified was I by what was before me. Jim, observing my horror, responded in kind. He stood up abruptly, and inquired again, more urgently:

         Moo! Moo!

         I simply shook my head and ran out of the house, never ceasing to shriek. I fled out into the crop fields, finally growing hoarse from my screams.

         I could see Jim follow me outside, his enormous figure rumbling through our front porch. I was quiet now, albeit hyperventilating. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was, but it was somewhere out amidst the corn. I was on my knees, hunched over, desperately trying to catch my breath.
         
         Moo? I could hear Jim call from the porch. Moo?

         It was obvious that he couldn’t see me; he didn’t know where I was. And as heartless as it may sound, as terrified as he might have been, I knew that this was good. It would at least give me some time to think.

         But what could I think? How could I respond to this? After all, I had just awakened this morning to find that Jim, my husband of ten years, the father of my son…

         Possessed the head of a cow!

         
         Briefly, Jim made a half-hearted attempt to find me, but he was apparently so overwhelmed by my horrified reaction that he collapsed upon our porch in a fit of heaving bovine sobs. It was heartbreaking to watch. Fearing for his well-being, I finally gathered up enough courage to face him again. Cow’s head or not, he was still my husband, I reasoned, although I never recalled this sort of thing being anywhere in my wedding vows.

         It took me some time to become acclimated to him like this. Understandably, it would take anyone some time. But finally, after a great deal of hyperventilating on my part, I came to the conclusion that this was still Jim, and he was still my husband, even if he now had the head of a cow. But there was one more important question that we needed to answer, and at this very moment, it seemed to be of dire urgency:

         Now what?

         Yes, this was the big question to be answered now, and I hadn’t the foggiest notion of how to do so. True, Jim was more than willing to offer his opinions on the matter, but I was still unfortunately unable to decipher the many varied nuances and tones of his moo. In a particularly dark moment of humor that frankly surprised even me, I rationalized to him, “Oh well, we were never particularly good at communicating, anyhow.” To which he seemed to nod in agreement.

         We pondered this problem for what seemed like hours, finally coming to the conclusion that it was best to just take a wait-and-see approach with everything. God only knew what the people in this town would do, after all, if they were to witness a cow’s head on a man’s body. This place was the virtual capital of the N.R.A. if ever one existed; it even seemed that people’s pets owned a piece of their own. Jim and I therefore agreed that it was best he not be seen in public for a while. I, meanwhile, would attempt to go about my daily routine with as little deviation as possible.

         It was difficult to do.

         ***

         Another week has gone by now, and circumstances have managed to become even more bizarre than they were before. For, as each day of the previous week has passed, Jim has awakened to find a new part of his body replaced by a corresponding one from that of a cow. It’s true: I now go to bed at night with a full-grown three hundred-plus-pound heifer. And I mean heifer – he definitely appears to be lacking certain things to be considered a bull, if you know what I mean.

         Still, strangely enough, a certain sweetness, a certain sentimentality, has reentered our relationship that hasn’t existed in years. You see, every night now, before we go to bed, Jim and I nuzzle. He licks me softly on the cheek and lovingly moos into my ear. We even sleep facing one another again. And it all reminds me of how Jim used to be such a romantic when we met, how he swept me off my feet so many years ago. True, he (or she, as the case may be) is now a cow, but it’s almost as if we’ve regained something that we had somehow lost a long, long time ago. It feels like we’re really in love again.

         And then, another realization – a much more powerful one – rears its head, and I again break down into hysterical tears. Yes! But I’m in love with a cow! How can this be?

         And with that, more of these thoughts, more of the ramifications that accompany such a realization as this hit me all at once. And what about J.J.? He’ll be back in three days! What will we do?

         All the while, Jim watches me, staring sympathetically with his huge brown bovine eyes. He licks me softly again. This time, I turn away.

          “I have to go to the bathroom,” I say, abruptly. I arise from bed and walk out of the bedroom.

         And there I stand, gazing into the medicine cabinet, contemplating the woman that I have become. Old, fat, and married – literally – to a cow. For some reason, in this moment of despondence, I glance down at the scale, the source of so much of my misery during the past ten years. I can’t explain why, but I just have to step upon it now. I simply need to know.

         So I do.

         As always, the needle on the scale jerks back and forth and descends upon a number. But this time, unlike all the others, I can’t believe the one it registers. No – it can’t be true. "One hundred seventy-six" is what the scale reads. One hundred seventy-six. One hundred seventy-six.

         I have lost weight!

         In my excitement, I turn to run to the bedroom, to share this wonderful news with Jim. Instead, I am startled to find him standing directly beside me. I almost fall backwards, so surprised I am by his appearance here.

         He seems to want something. I’m not sure what, though. The bell around his neck ringing softly, Jim looks down insistently at the scale, and motions towards it with one of his front legs.

          “What? What is it, Jim?” I ask. “Is there something you want with this scale?”

         He nods, nudging me gently.

         I still don’t comprehend. “What? What is it, love?”

         He sighs, and pushes me aside.

         Mooove over, he says. In one violent motion, Jim pounds his fur-covered hoof down upon the scale.

         It breaks.