by Diana Clarke
I nod.
“So, Lily’s dating an asshole, huh?” Mim has her pinkie finger hooked around mine, and I stare at the little lock.
“She’s obsessed with him,” I say. “I’ve never seen her like this.”
She shakes her head. “God, I was such a bitch to her at school.”
I say nothing.
“Ouch,” says Mim. “I’m sorry, babe. I really am. I know I’ve been awful. But I’m different now. Trying to be. I’ve changed. I’m changing. Eating disorders are the real bitches. They take over. They change you.”
I say more nothing.
“So, what’re you doing about Lily? The guy? The diet? The abuse?”
My breath quickens as Mim lists the responsibilities I’ve taken on. At all the work I have left to do. Life is a burden!
“I told his wife,” I say. “But now he’s just officially with Lily. I don’t know what else to do.”
“We have to help her,” says Mim.
“You just talked about how we couldn’t help anyone. About how we can only help ourselves.”
“That’s to get better,” says Mim. “Sounds to me like Lily doesn’t even know she has a problem. You can’t get better until you know you have a problem. Everyone knows that.”
I nod.
“So, we help,” says Mim. “We get Lily to see the light about this Phil guy, and we get this whole fucking diet thing shut down.”
“Lara Bax’s YourWeigh Holistic Health Program?”
“Jesus. Who is this Lara Bax bitch?”
“She’s actually not that bad,” I say. “I mean, she isn’t as bad as she seems. She’s this social media celebrity, and her whole self-love thing is a farce. But she’s actually kind of a nice person? I think she genuinely wants to help.”
“Well, she’s not fucking helping Lily, is she?”
There is a loud beep. The bag is empty. I am full. I wish Mim would leave so I could go into the bathroom and make myself vomit. Reject everything they made me consume. No. Get out of my head! I tell the urges. This brain is mine!
“Listen,” says Mim. “I’ll help you with Lily. On one condition.”
I look up at her.
“You have to recover.”
Part Three
35
They release me two days later, feeling better, more myself, a single self, with an impressive arsenal of painkillers, a cast on my arm, a sling, and a wheelchair that I don’t really need. The hospital lets me take a bunch of CalSips, but I still don’t have any clothes because I am too afraid of Lily’s anger to go over and collect my things. Mim takes me to her house, which she shares with her grandmother, Grace Green, of Absolute Abs fame.
“She’s kind of crazy,” Mim warns me, tapping her steering wheel along to a song I have never heard, but immediately like given Mim’s fondness for it. “But I love her,” she says. “And I think you’ll like her. It’s tough to say. She’s one of those love-her-or-hate-her types.”
Mim keeps talking, and I realize she’s nervous. I lean over and kiss her cheek, hoping to calm her, but she glances at me, laughs an uneasy laugh, and taps her steering wheel a little harder, a little out of time. I’ve never seen her nervous before. Old Mim seemed incapable of any emotion but for bitter snark.
Grace Green’s cottage is like something out of a storybook. A perfect place on the sea. White and fenced, moated by rose gardens. Mim pulls into the driveway and sits back in her seat. “I just haven’t ever brought anyone home to her before. Anyone from, you know, like, those days. She doesn’t know about the, well, you know, our, ah, little club. I mean,” she says.
“You don’t have to tell her about that. You can just tell her about us.”
“Us? I guess. You mean just, like, tell her you’re a friend? Which you are. It’s not like we’re . . . It’s just . . . I don’t know.”
I inhale, count, exhale. Then I ease myself out of the car.
“Jemima Gates, where have you been?” Grace Green still looks like her ’90s self. Her hair chopped into a pixie cut that matches Mim’s new style, her smile wide, her body athletic. She’s wearing an all-white suit. “And who is this poor beaten-up soul?”
“This is Rose,” says Mim, pushing me forward. “Rose, this is Grace.”
I hold out my good hand to shake but Grace pulls me into a hug. Her arms are strong, and I feel that if she squeezed just a little tighter, my bones might shatter in her grip. I hiss when she presses against my ribs. She leaps back, apologizing.
“It’s okay,” I assure her. “They’re just bruised. And it’s so nice to meet you, Mrs. Green,” I say. “Or Ms.? Um, my mum did your workout pretty religiously. She never made it thirty days, though.”
Grace smirks. “No one ever did,” she says. “That was the trick of it. After day one, you’re in too much pain to do a second day. And if you manage two days in a row, no way can you do a third. That, girls”—she smiles—“is called business.”
I laugh. Mim is too busy watching, glancing between Grace and me and Grace again, to have caught the joke.
“And good god, call me Grace,” she says. “Call me Grace. Jemima does.”
“Thank you for having me at your home, Grace,” I say. “I won’t overstay my welcome.”
“No, you won’t,” says Grace. “That would be impossible, given that your welcome is infinite.”
I duck my head and whisper a thanks as Grace leads us into the cottage. White wooden floors and white-painted walls. The rafters hang low, and the windows are huge. The space inside is bright, but not in the sterile, clinical way that the facility had been bright, not in the way that forces a wince, that makes one feel weaker than they are. This brightness feels illuminating. Like a blank page. The start of something.
“You have a beautiful home,” I say.
“This old thing?” Grace says, smiling. “What can I get you girls for lunch?” she says. Then, “Trick question. I’ve already got bread in the oven. Freshly baked. I’m making French rolls. Ham and cheese on fresh baguette.”
I swallow. “I’ve got these.” I hold up my bag of CalSips.
Grace hums and nods. “Ah,” she says. “You’re one of those. Jemima was, too, but we soon fixed her, didn’t we, Jemmy?”
“Jemmy,” I repeat.
“Shut up,” Jemima says to me. “Don’t you start calling me that.”
“Jemmy will show you where to put your things. And why are you still wearing that awful hospital gown? Get changed. Jemima, give Rose something to wear.”
The guest bedroom is nautical themed. The duvet is striped blue and white, and a large wooden anchor hangs on one wall. Seashells decorate most surfaces, and a little sailor teddy bear sits between the pillows.
“This is you,” says Mim, setting my bags on the floor. I look at her. Her pixie cut makes her face look younger. Her eyes wider. She has a splatter of freckles sprinkling her nose and a crescent-shaped scar beneath her eyebrow like a shadow. She is so human in a way she hadn’t been back before the facility, when she was more of an idea than a person, a character. Almost animated. If I had forced old Mim into this seaside cottage, she would have stood out like a terrible blemish, all dressed in black, eyeliner so heavy it looked like a villain’s mask, frame so thin she could snap at any moment. I wonder if I look like a blemish here, too.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“For what?” She snorts.
“I think you might be saving my life,” I say, and then descend into my humiliated redness. “Sorry,” I say. “That was so stupid.”
Mim looks away, clears her throat. “I’ll just go get you some, ah, something to wear.”
She leaves the room, giving me time to return to my natural hue, and I sit on the foot of the bed. The mattress dips under my weight. I sigh, rub my temples in slow, small circles. If only, I think, now and usually, I could twist off an ear like loosening a bolt. Swing my face back on its hinges. I could rewire my brain myself.
When Mim returns, sees me sitting
there, fantasizing my self-surgery, she stops in the door, cocks her head. Then she waves as if I hadn’t seen her in a long time, a swooping, over-the-head wave, like a father wanting to be found in a crowd. I smile, wave back.
She holds out a pair of white underwear and a dress. I frown at the outfit choice. “My pants wouldn’t stay up on you,” Mim explains. “It’s a T-shirt dress,” she says. “It’s meant to be baggy, and it definitely will be on you.”
I nod and take it from her. She doesn’t leave, doesn’t avert her eyes. So, I stand, lift the hospital gown, one-handed, watching her all the while. My ribs protest partway, and, when I gasp, she takes the hem of the gown and gentles it over my head. When I step out of my old underwear, she clears her throat, but lets her eyes wander down my neck, chest, stomach, and then settle between my legs.
Her gaze isn’t that of a doctor or a nurse, inspecting my weight. It isn’t Lily’s terrified stare of unrecognition. It isn’t women in public whose eyes glare with some putrid potion of pity and jealousy and wonderment. Mim’s eyes are wanting and bare. To feel wanted.
I step closer to her, and then I am wrapped in her arms. “I have to apologize to you,” she whispers into my hair. I shake my head. My nudity presses against her jeans. She steps into me until I have to step away. She holds my body as she lowers me onto the bed and then lowers herself until she is hovering above me.
We stay that way, her body above mine, and I feel safe there, beneath her. As if she were the lid to my container.
“You’re like my lid,” I say.
“What?” she says.
“Lid,” I say.
“I don’t get it.”
“Sorry.” I blink to break the eye contact. “Nothing.”
Mim smirks her signature smirk and climbs off me. “I love that blush,” she says.
I shrug.
“Rose,” she says. “I owe you an apology.”
I say nothing.
“That diet, back in school. I was an idiot. I can’t believe I, I just can’t help but think that, I’m just . . .” She wipes at her eyes and turns to me, tears glaze her cheeks, she sniffs. “I’m as bad as this Lara Bax person. I’m worse. I am so, so sorry, Rose.”
I laugh and tuck my hand into hers, her fingers weave between mine. “As if this could all be your fault.” She looks at me, trusting, and I lift her arm, flip it, and kiss the soft underside of her wrist. “Ego much?” I say.
She dries her eyes on her arm, the one not stamped with my kiss. “I mean it, Rose. I’ve been wanting to say this for a long time. The things I did, the way I was, I was so unhappy. And I was confused. I was having these feelings for girls, for you, and I was afraid, and I know none of this is an excuse. I just, I couldn’t control myself, so instead I controlled you, you girls, all of you, it’s terrible. Looking back, I just . . . The point is, Rose, that even if I can explain why I acted the way I did, even if there were reasons for it, it doesn’t change the fact that it hurt you. It doesn’t make it hurt you less.”
“Understanding it makes it hurt less.” She looks at me, unblinking. “I forgive you.”
“You shouldn’t. You should hate me.”
“But I love you.”
“But I hurt you.”
“But you loved me.”
“I still love you.”
We look at each other, puffed from the emotional duel. We wouldn’t reach the conversation’s conclusion today, but I’d think back on this moment many times throughout my life. I’d think back to here, lying on this bed with Mim, trying to understand what had happened between us, what was happening between us. When I was older, wrinkles reaching like fingers from the corners of my eyes, the skin around my mouth parenthesized with the echoes of smiles past, I would wake one morning, early, and, before my eyes coaxed themselves into opening for the day, I’d roll onto my side and see Mim there, still asleep and peaceful, and I’d feel happy. I’d feel, not heavy, but full. And I’d imagine, the way we do, all of the ways in which my life might not be this exact life. All the ways in which things might’ve gone even just slightly differently, had I not kissed that soccer player at the pool during Sister Missed-Her, had I not given that banana a blow job in the cafeteria, had Lily not met Phil, had I never called Mim from the facility, had I not fallen at Lara Bax’s house, had I not fought with Lily at the hospital . . . All these years in the future, I’d feel so grateful that, despite so many mistakes, my life seemed to be the best possible outcome of itself. I’d feel grateful for forgiveness, that harm does not necessarily beget grudge, or hate, or resentment. Sometimes we hurt the ones we love the most. Forgiveness, that magical elixir, can turn any stewing emotion into love—add two drops to the brew and see what can become!
But, for now, many years before that morning, that morning when I would kiss my wife’s eyelids awake, for now I only tuck my head into the crook of her neck and smell her, salty from the sea air and her own sweat, and I feel so at home here, with my body beside hers.
“Did you just smell me?” She snorts a laugh. “Come on, little one,” she says, standing, and pulling me with her. “Time for lunch.”
I ache my way to my feet, her hand in mine all the while. I would still go anywhere for Mim. Even to lunch.
36
I sip my CalSip as Mim and Grace eat crusty baguette rolls filled with slices of ham and sharp cheddar. I watch Mim eat, tear the bread with her teeth, carnivorous, chew, swallow, all while talking to Grace, seemingly unaffected by the calories she’s consuming.
“You know,” says Grace, pointing at my drink and breaking my Mim gaze, “those things aren’t food.”
“I know,” I say, sipping. “They’re awful.”
“So why keep drinking them?”
“They’re safe,” I say. “They’re what I know.”
Grace nods. “Safe is often boring,” she says. “And sometimes what you know isn’t what’s best for you.”
I sip. Swallow.
“For dinner, I’m making grilled fish, spinach, and baby potatoes. A light meal. Will you try some?”
I sigh. Talking about dinner at lunch. The thought of three meals a day makes my stomach tilt. Imagine being an eater! The food would be nonstop. Eating until you have to eat again.
“If you’re just going to keep drinking those things, you might as well have stayed in the hospital,” says Grace. “Drinking those is not recovering. You can’t recover from an eating disorder unless you eat.”
My expression must shut down, the way I know it does when people try to preach recovery to me. Healthy people do it all the time. Doctors. Lily. Even my parents back before they gave up. Mim must see the change because she sets a soft hand on my shoulder. “Grace was sick, too,” she says. “Orthorexia and excessive exercising.”
“Why do you think I started Absolute Abs?” says Grace. “I was obsessed. I was only eating organic vegetables. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I ate so many tomatoes I’m surprised I didn’t turn into one.” She finishes her sandwich and wipes her mouth with a napkin. “And I was doing six workouts a day. One before every meal, and another one after. I was obsessed with sweating out double the calories I ate, like I thought it would cut me in half or something.” She chuckles and shakes her head, as if the memory were almost fond. “I don’t know where I found the energy.”
“How’d you recover?” I say.
“I had an accident. I was running, on my twentieth mile of the day, and I’d probably eaten a handful of snap peas, maybe a couple of grapes. I was running on fumes.” She closed her eyes. “I ran in front of a car. The driver braked, but he couldn’t stop in time. He hit me. I rolled over his windshield. Broken hip, ribs, collarbones, both arms, a leg. I was in the hospital for weeks, and my eating was monitored, which probably helped, but beyond that, I was kind of shocked back to life, I think. I couldn’t believe I had survived. I couldn’t believe how my body was healing itself, so resilient. I hadn’t been respecting myself, my body, any of it. And I promised myself that once my bod
y was better, I would be, too.”
I nodded. I understood. “I don’t think I really know what orthorexia is,” I say.
“Oh.” Grace smiles. “Of course you don’t. Us orthos are way down the bottom of the ED food chain. You anorectics take the cake.” She snorts at the irony of the expression. Mim-like in her laugh that gets caught somewhere in her sinuses. “It goes anorectics, bulimics, like our Jemmy here was, then bingers, then restrictors, then maybe orthorexics, picas, and, below them, even, are the overeaters.”
“Orthorexics are pretty common,” says Mim. “Those Instagram diets. Eating clean and everything. None of it is normal, babe.”
“I don’t think that’s an eating disorder,” I say. “That’s more like a lifestyle.”
Mim snorts her inherited snort. “Said just like an Insta-dieter. There’s a difference between eating healthy and the kind of green smoothie diets those girls are on. They’re all disordered eaters. I don’t think there’s one girl left in the world who isn’t fucked up about food. Sorry, Grace. I meant messed up. How are we meant to be normal about eating when we’re taught to count calories before we learn long division? None of it is normal.”
I sniff. “You said pica?” I turn to Grace. “What’s pica?”
“Eating the inedible,” Mim jumps in while Grace picks at a fallen piece of cheese on her plate. “Like what your sister is doing with those zero-calorie things. If they don’t have calories, I’m pretty sure they’re not food. Actually, I’ve been thinking about this. Like, if we can make a case, if we can accuse Lara Bax of encouraging, instigating, even, disordered eating, then she’ll be shut down for sure.”
