The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman by Mamen Sánchez Page A

suffered, did badly at school, and got into trouble. The house fell apart, the rent became too much to pay, and Asunción had to look for somewhere else. She lost control. She withered.
    Until one Sunday, the sixth of May, at ten in the morning, those two problematic teenagers had the bright idea of spending their money on a set of automatic digital, solar-powered scales to give to their mother, who hadn’t gotten out of bed in six months. Said inanimate object became a tiresome conscience that stared at her with its plastic eyes from the bathroom floor. “Weigh yourself,” it taunted her, “weighyourself and you’ll see how being abandoned, on top of everything else, makes you fat.”
    So when she plucked up enough courage to lug her spare tires onto the contraption and confirmed her suspicions that she was closer to 150 pounds than the 130 she’d weighed all her life, and she confronted the disheveled, aging woman who stared back at her from the mirror, she finally decided to take control of the situation. Stupid scales, stupid mirror.
    She rewrote her CV, explaining that she had been out of work for the last fifteen years due to family circumstances beyond her control, and went to get a reference from her old boss, whom she found looking as worn out as she felt but still sitting at the same desk in the same office as fifteen years ago, when Asunción became pregnant for the second time and they said goodbye with tears in their eyes.
    â€œThere’s an Englishman who’s getting a team together for a literary magazine. You might be interested. It pays next to nothing.”
    She dyed her hair, painted her nails, went along to Mr. Bestman’s casting, and passed the exam with flying colors. She had spent fifteen years totally dedicated to literature; she’d never studied it formally, she admitted, but she was a voracious reader. As hooked on books as she was on sweets. A real bottomless pit for authors and genres. She didn’t mind if it was García Lorca or Ezra Pound, the Brontë sisters or the Brothers Grimm. “It all goes down the same way, Mr. Bestman. Ask me what you like, because I’ve got it all covered.”
    So she got the job as staff writer for Librarte and returned to the land of the living twenty pounds heavier. She slowly became less afraid, left her insecurities behind her, regained her hope, and banished her insomnia. The only thing that remained, to herdismay, was that cruel, accusing, tenacious, and cellulitic excess weight that there was no way of shifting, however many fad diets she went on and however much soy milk she drank.
    â€œLook, Asunción,” the doctor had said. “It’s down to your metabolism. It’ll pass, don’t worry, it’s a result of menopause. You’ll also notice hot flashes, loss of libido, high pulse rate, vaginal dryness, incontinence, irritability, joint pain, digestive problems, and changes to your body odor, among other things.”
    â€œWhat am I going to smell of?” asked Asunción, terrified, contemplating her own Kafkaesque transformation from woman into cockroach.
    But faced with such an awful diagnosis, Asunción, who had become a veritable Joan of Arc in her battle against her recent emotional ebb, decided to fight tooth and nail against the extra weight.
    She didn’t manage it. She lost the battle. She wept inconsolably. Her mascara ran. She looked at herself again in the mirror, a weeping monstrosity with hair like a mop, and shouted, “That’s enough!” She reminded herself of the old nanny she and her brothers had as children, who came from Málaga and used to scream just as forcefully whenever they pushed her too far.
    She lifted the scales above her head and threw them against the bathroom mirror. Bloody scales, bloody mirror.
    That day she was cured, definitively. She became a happy plump woman who, thanks to menopause, smelled of motorcycle oil