by Diana Clarke
“And,” I say, “and I loved your stories. You’re really, really good. You’re a good writer, Lil.”
A light laugh. “No one was ever meant to see that book. I only printed them for myself.”
“They’re amazing,” I say, meaning it.
“Writing,” says Lily, “really helped me. When you were going through all you were going through. It helped me get everything out.” I can hear her tears, and I want to kiss her cheeks, wet with her very own seawater.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t talk to me,” I say. “I wish I’d been there for you.”
“It’s not your fault.”
I inhale, count, exhale. “The stories,” I say, “are all sort of related.” I can hear her holding her breath. “They’re not, you know, I mean, nonfiction, or, I guess, autobiographical, are they?”
“Which parts?” says Lily, and the tears surge up my throat like some chemical reaction.
“Oh god, Lil,” I say.
“It’s okay,” says Lily. “It’s okay. I really am okay.”
“No,” I say. “It’s not.”
“It’s not,” says Lily. “But I am.”
I swallow sad soapsuds and say, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. You didn’t tell me any of it. You know I would have listened. You know I would have been there for you.”
I hear the rustle of Lily shaking her head. “You were dying, Rose,” says Lily.
“But you were—”
“Raped. Yeah. I was. But you were dying.”
“Raped,” I say in an exhale, wanting to expel the word, wanting to blow it as far away from me as I could, out to sea, out to be beaten up by those ferocious waves. It sounds wrong coming from her, like she made the word up just now. The worst part is that I don’t feel surprised. I knew Lily was going through something, back when she was in college, when she started seeing terrible men, and then terrible Tony who had squeezed her bicep like a fruit into juice. When she started eating with even more gusto than before, consuming anything, everything that she came across. I never asked. I never wanted to know. “I missed out on everything,” I say.
“That seems like not the right thing to say here, baby sister.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I think I knew, or, I mean, I didn’t know, but subconsciously I think I knew something, you know?”
She says nothing.
“You were pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“Lily, I just—”
“I know,” she whispers.
“I felt it,” I say, remembering. “That night I called, and you were crying? I called because of the pain. I’m so sorry.”
“I know,” she whispers. She swallows her tears in a gulp.
“But you were always telling me all of this other stuff and—”
“The light stuff. The trivial stuff. To get your mind off the hurt, Rosie. You were always going through something bigger. I just wanted to help you.”
“Lil,” I say.
“I just want you to be happy.”
“Someone told me that you shouldn’t rely on others for your own happiness. You should make yourself happy.”
Lily snorts.
“Is that funny?” I say.
“No,” says Lily. “Just difficult. It’s hard to make yourself happy. It’s hard to make yourself happy if you’re, you know, not.”
“You’re not happy, are you?”
“No.”
“Because of Phil?”
“I love Phil.”
“Are you not happy because of me?”
“Not everything is about you.” She laughs.
I laugh, too. But there is no joy in the sound. It’s a diet laugh. A bad sugar-free substitute.
“I’m sorry,” I say, when the laugh becomes a trailing ellipsis.
“I know,” she says. “I know you are. But I’m okay. I meant it when I said the writing helped me. It’s like a different language. It’s like a way of communicating myself to myself. When something is too hard to understand, the writing sort of has a way of, I don’t know, understanding it for me. That doesn’t even make sense.” She sniffs. “You’re a really great artist, Rose,” she says. “That painting. I hope art can help you, too.”
“Thanks,” I whisper. “And I know what you mean. It’s like that with art. With painting, I mean. I understand.”
Silence. The phone has a breath of its battery left, which means it’s time, and I inhale until I’m so full of air it hurts. “I’m with Jemima Gates, Lil. Mim and me, I think we’re, well . . . I think—”
“I know.”
“Okay.”
“You’re happy,” she says. “With her. I can taste it.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I really am.”
“How can you be with her after everything she did? How can you forgive all of that?”
“You forgive me, don’t you?”
We go back to breathing together for the last seconds of Mim’s phone’s battery. When the call severs, the silence sounds like a peaceful death.
43
Grace and I cook dinner as we wait for Mim to get home from her YourWeigh meeting. I hate knowing she’s there, with those hypnotized women, all dieting their way to self-acceptance. I imagine her buying into the scheme, getting caught up in the mania, the cult mentality. It’s so easy to follow the people around you.
“Why is she so late?” I say as I chop carrots. “Do you think she’s okay?”
“Be calm,” says Grace. “She’s fine.”
“I am calm.”
Grace points her fork to my face. “Your forehead says otherwise,” she says. “You wear your emotions up there.” She drops her fork to tap the skin between my eyebrows.
“She’s taking a long time,” I say, making sure to keep my expression even. “Just saying.”
I go to the window and look out at the night, the moon, the slim crescent of a fingernail chewed from its root. It reminds me of Sarah. I miss her. I hope she’s eating. She deserves so much more than the tiny existence of a starved mind. She could think thoughts so much more interesting than hunger. This, I realize, is how Lily has felt for so many years now. About me. My heart feels flat, an old soccer ball left in the yard to deflate. It’s so much easier to wish well for someone else than to be well oneself. I go back to the kitchen and eat a halved carrot. Close my eyes and swallow. Every bite, a tiny war.
“You’re doing well,” says Grace, gesturing to my chewing mandible.
I nod.
“It’s going to be hard for a really long time,” she says. “Eating is.”
I nod.
“But it’s going to get better. Easier. You’re going to be okay, you know.”
I nod. I know she’s right. Just like every illness, recovery is a process, not a fix. But unlike every other illness, in which the body fights against the world, diseases, bugs, parasites, the enemy here is my own mind. To recover from anorexia is to beat one’s own brain.
“It is worth it,” says Grace. And I think she would give Lara Bax a run for her money at the whole mind-reading thing. “I promise.” She sets her fingers over mine, and hers, swollen-knuckled and wrinkled, are warm against my eternal cold. I can’t wait to feel warmth again. “You’re going to have such a wonderful life,” she says. “Such a full life. Once you let yourself start living it.”
The front door opens and closes, and I turn to see Mim standing, hair wet from the rain, T-shirt darkened and damp, in the foyer. She wrings out her hair like a washcloth and then shimmies her whole body as if to shake herself dry.
“Brr!” she says with an exaggerated shiver. Then, “Ooh, what’re you two talking about?” She points to my hands, still clasped with Grace’s. “Secrets? I hope it’s about me.”
Grace starts piling the vegetarian stir-fry onto plates.
“Hi.” She hangs her bag and walks into the kitchen, smiling, flushed, beautiful. “I missed you two today,” she says, kissing me on the cheek, then Grace
on the forehead, then taking a seat at the breakfast bar and pinching a piece of tofu from the pan, dropping it into her mouth, chewing. Even now, after weeks of living with her, I am in awe of how her relationship with food has changed since the last time I knew her. Sometimes, of course, she is still wary, still afraid, but most of the time she is casual around anything edible, treating meals like old friends.
Mim stabs a piece of carrot and airplanes it toward my mouth. She is giddy with the progress, and I, too, am dizzy, the good kind. I open my lips and let her feed me. Then she hops off her stool to set the table.
There are 821 million chronically undernourished people in the world, 98 percent of whom live in developing countries. These people do not choose to starve themselves. These people are starving. People are starving.
There is nothing redeeming about playing the victim.
We’re halfway through dinner when Mim’s phone rings. She looks at it. Frowns. Then holds it up for me to see. Lily’s name is printed across the screen. I take the phone and press to answer the call.
“Lil?” I say.
“Hi,” says a familiar voice. But it isn’t Lily. “It’s Lara. Lara Bax. Is this Rose?”
“Why are you calling from Lily’s phone?”
“Rose, breathe,” Lara Bax says. “Listen, I’m at Riverside Hospital. Your sister is hurt.”
“What?”
“I think you should come down here and I’ll explain.”
“You’ll explain now.”
“I went over there, to her place, to drop off Phil’s things. The door was open. I, well, she was just lying there. Lying on the floor. She’s not dead.”
“What?”
“I think Phil must’ve—”
I end the call before she finishes the sentence.
“We have to go,” I tell the table, and Mim and Grace stand at once. Lily needs me.
44
In 2001, when the first World Trade Center tower was hit, everyone who was in the second one was instructed to stay inside. As if one would be targeted and not the other. As if one of the twin towers would fall without the other.
When Lily wakes, I’m at her bedside. We all are. Lara, Mim, Grace, and me. The doctors have come and gone. Lily is concussed. One side of her face is a dark purple, as if she’s just partially in the shadows. We’re all watching her breathe, the slow rise and fall of her rib cage. Life is just this. This slow rise, slow fall, and over again.
She looks just like me, lying there, thin as a string.
“Lily?” I say. My voice is the rough draft of one.
“Rose,” says Lily, her voice frail, fatigued. “Jemima? Lara?” She frowns up at me, young and afraid. “What happened?”
“Phil,” I tell her.
“Phil?”
“Lara brought you in.”
“I need to call him. He’ll be so angry.”
“Don’t you think he’d be here if he wanted to be?”
Lily blinks, and her tears are fat. I use my thumbs as windshield wipers, dry her face, and kiss her forehead.
“How are you feeling, Lil? Are you thirsty?” I lift a glass of water from the nightstand. But she shakes her head.
“Hungry.”
“Do you want some soup?” I take a bowl of yellow liquid from the nightstand. One the nurse had delivered while Lily slept. “It’s chicken, I think.”
Lily nods and tries to sit up. Mim rushes over to lift her head, and Grace tucks a third pillow behind her back. I stir the soup gently, the soft clinking of metal on porcelain, then I ladle the liquid, blow on its surface, watch it ripple like a lake disrupted.
“Ready?” I ask.
She nods and I inch the soup toward her waiting mouth.
She parts her lips, takes a mouthful, and swallows. Watching her consume something feels so good, so good I can almost taste the meal for myself.
She finishes the whole bowl, and I set the empty dish on the nightstand. “I was so worried about you, Lil,” I say.
“I was so worried about you,” she echoes.
Something I have learned: to love is to worry about your beloved until you die.
Something else I have learned: to be loved is to have your beloved worry about you until they die.
A phone rings, and it’s Lara’s. We watch her examine the caller’s name and then hesitate over whether to pick up.
“Answer it,” says Lily, who, for now, is god, so Lara presses to accept the call.
We hear only the rumble of thunder, a masculine yelling, and Lara winces, grimaces, at the volume. She puts the call on speakerphone.
“Are you fucking serious, Lara? You deleted our Instagram? Because of that one fucking death? It was just one girl! That’s our entire brand, you stupid goddamn bitch, you fucking crazy motherfucker, do you have any idea what you have done? Do you know how hard I’ve . . .”
He goes on and on.
Lara raises her eyebrows as Phil rambles.
“Is that Phil?” Lily whispers.
Lara nods. “Phil,” she says, calm. Her voice even, amused. “I’m at Riverside Hospital right now. With Lily. I found her on the floor of your apartment this afternoon. She’s got a concussion. What did you do?”
Shouting blears from the phone’s speaker. As if he’s right there, in the phone, caught and furious.
Mim takes the phone from Lara and hangs up. “There,” she says.
“There,” says Lara.
“There,” says Grace.
“There?” Lily asks me.
“There.” I nod.
Lily takes my fingers in hers, lacing us into one. I am in the midst of formulating an apology, when I hear her breath deepen, and she is already asleep.
Twinflowers are otherwise known as Linnaea borealis, and they were named by the same guy who coined the term homo sapiens for humans. His name was Carl Linnaeus, he was a botanist, and the twinflower was his favorite flower among any he’d ever seen. It’s why they’re named after him.
The twinflower grows from a single stem, a long stem, and then it forks into two slightly slimmer stems, with one pink flower growing from each. The two identical flowers hang beside each other, opening and closing together, functioning together. They share resources. Share sunlight. And if one dies, so too does the other.
I used to think that this was a good analogy for twinship, but humans are not flowers. For one, we cannot survive by consuming only sunlight. For two, we feel, we eat, we want, we love, we, human.
1994 (5 years old): When we realized that what we were tasting all the time were each other’s emotions, we played restaurant.
“Feel sad,” I’d demand, and she’d coax tears from her eyes. But it tasted of nothing, her performance of sadness.
“Feel happy,” I’d say, but my mouth was empty.
“I think the feelings have to be real,” said Lily. “I don’t think we can fake it.”
Then my sister pinched her arm, her fingernails carving smiles from skin. She pinched until she bled, until she cried out, until she wept; she hurt herself just to let me taste—
Acknowledgments
Writing this book was a really difficult thing to do, but we can do difficult things, especially when we have people, like my people, to help us out along the way. My people include my incredible agent, Susan Golomb, and her assistant, Mariah Stovall, my cheerleaders from the beginning. Terry Karten, my unparalleled editor, who helped turn this book into the best version of itself. My thesis advisor and true idol, Roxane Gay, who read as I wrote, told it how it was, and supported me every chapter of the way.
Countless thanks to the team at Harper, including Lydia Weaver, for the impeccable eye, Caroline Johnson, for the beautiful cover, and everyone else who believed in this book enough to give it a life.
I want to thank my friends. Noah Baldino, Kelsey Wort, Charlie Peck, and the rest of my Purdue MFA-ers, who saw or heard excerpts of the first manuscript and who were nothing but encouraging. The faculty at Purdue, Brian Leung and Sharon Solw
itz and Don Platt and Kaveh Akbar, have created a safe and supportive space and I’m so thankful for my time in Indiana, writing, reading, being.
My cohort at the University of Utah has been endlessly understanding and compassionate and gentle with me and my writing. Thank you, to my fellow PhD candidates, for being here, letting me be here, for growing alongside me. It’s a beautiful thing, to grow.
I want to thank literary journals, in general. Thank you for loving writing and giving stories their homes. Thank you for the acceptances, the encouragement. Thank you for the rejections, the lessons. You’re underappreciated, every single one of you.
My friends, the ones who have been here all along, who have stuck with me through the good and the not. I’m so lucky to have found my sisters, Sand, Soph, Stace, Moz. I’m so lucky they still want to hang out.
Bret, listen, I know you wanted a dedication, but an acknowledgment is going to have to do. Thank you for you.
My brothers, Nick and Andrew, are pretty good, as far as brothers go, and no one was more excited than they were to see this book in the world. My grandparents, Diane and Sidney, who are the best, and whom I promise to visit more often. My parents, to whom this book is dedicated, Mum and Dad, none of this, none of me, would be here without you. I love you for the world. Thank you.
Lastly, I want to thank you. This book is for anybody whose body is alien to them. Anyone who has ever felt out of place in their own skin. This book is for you, whose body is perfect just the way it is. Your body is a creature and it is yours to care for. It is your beast. Feed it. Love it. Be gentle with your body; be gentle with yourself. This book, first and foremost, is for you. Thank you for holding it in your hands.
About the Author
Diana Clarke is from New Zealand. She is a graduate of the University of Auckland and Purdue University, where she received her MFA. She lives in Salt Lake City, where she is pursuing a PhD in English from the University of Utah. Thin Girls is her first novel.
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