Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress by Susan Jane Gilman

Author:Susan Jane Gilman [GILMAN, SUSAN JANE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780446510585
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

How Clever Are We?

DID YOU KNOW it’s possible to survive nuclear fallout by eating miso soup for breakfast?

Neither did I. But the year I went away to college, my mother discovered macrobiotic cooking, whose devotees seemed to believe you could cure everything from radiation poisoning to excessive ear wax by avoiding dairy products.

A number of my friends found that once they headed off to college, their parents developed irritating hobbies, too. There was some excessive indoor gardening, some criminal needlepoint, even a recreational interest in prescription pharmaceuticals. More often than not, these hobbies also entailed taking a long, meaningful drive to Sears, then converting my friends’ bedrooms into useful sewing rooms and dens, replacing their canopy beds and prized beer can collections with modular furniture, wicker baskets, La-Z-Boy recliners.

The first Christmas I arrived home from college, I found a pyramid of Plexiglas containers in our kitchen stocked with dried grains, fermented soybeans, and organic yeast. At first I thought it was a collection of specimen jars, or perhaps a decorative handicraft made by some mentally retarded child using dried peas and pinto beans. But no. Apparently, I was looking at our dinner.

My brother, who’d been waiting up for me, could barely contain himself.

“Oh, wait’ll you see this,” he squealed as I walked, stunned, through the kitchen. “She’s really done it this time. Open the fridge. Open the cabinets. Guess what we’re eating for breakfast tomorrow? Did you say ‘miso soup and buckwheat groats’? Mm. Yum. Why, how ever did you guess? Miso soup and buckwheat groats is exactly right. Here at Chez Gilman, we now eat miso and buckwheat groats for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

“Explain, please,” I said, eyeing a landslide of dried seaweed packages cascading off the top of the refrigerator.

“Macrobiotic,” he practically sang. “That’s right. This time, Mom’s gone macrobiotic. Or as I like to say, ‘macroneurotic.’ Soy paste. Boiled kelp. Tofu pudding. Endless discussions about how you can use bean sprouts to cure hepatitis. But wait,” he cried. “It gets better. Check out the living room.”

Our living room—once groaning with bookshelves, overstuffed furniture, and milk crates full of yellowing magazines—was completely empty, except for a pile of gray foam mats piled neatly in one corner.

“John,” I said slowly. “John. Where’s the sofa?”

“Oh, that little thing? That’s in your room. All the living room furniture is now in your room. To go with our new, healthy, macrobiotic lifestyle, Mom’s turned the apartment into a Japanese exercise studio. Yup. That’s right. Twice a week at 4:00 P.M. we get to see seven fat ladies groaning on the floor. By the way,” he said, “good luck finding your bed. I think it’s underneath the bookcase.”

“Augh. I so do not want to go home for Spring Break,” I moaned to my friend Henry the next semester. It was the end of midterms, and Henry and I were in the student lounge pounding away on dueling electric typewriters in what had become a kamikaze-like attempt to complete all the papers we’d smartly put off writing until the last possible minute.

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