Hunger Point

by Jillian Medoff

  “It’s nice that you let him cut hair,” I tell Sarah in the elevator. “It must get boring to just sit around, anticipating your next meal.” I should know, I want to tell her. I do it every day myself.

  “It is nice for him. He’s there on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, when the regular barber is off. People stop by to kibbitz with him, keep him company. He was so happy when Grandpa moved in. They immediately became buddies. There are more women than men here and most of the men are very confused. When you do get a man who’s able to feed himself and hold a conversation, the women swarm around him like moths.”

  “Kind of like college.”

  She laughs. “Kind of like anyplace.” She smooths her skirt. The elevator dings and we get off. “Freddie takes good care of Grandpa Max. They do everything together: they eat together, watch television, play cards.”

  I’m suddenly desperate to call Abby. This is the worst fight we’ve ever had. I bet she hates me, though. And I don’t blame her. “How do they play cards?” I ask, trying to focus on something else. “My grandfather can’t see.”

  “Freddie tells him which cards to play.”

  “No wonder he owes Freddie $15.”

  I glance down the hallway. People are everywhere. I hear a television and music from other parts of the hall, and as we stop in front of my grandfather’s room, a phone rings next door and someone picks it up, laughing. “This is so different from what I expected.”

  “Getting old doesn’t have to be a death sentence, Frannie. Most of these people come from wealthy families, but can’t take care of themselves anymore.”

  “My grandfather is very lucky to be here.” I wonder what will happen when my parents get to that point. Whenever I imagine them old, they look exactly the same except they’re shorter. I suddenly see my mother wrapped in a bathrobe, shuffling to the dining room. Her face is wrinkled, her hands liver-spotted. “Frannie, I hate this place. Frannie, don’t leave me here.” Her voice is shrill and quivering. “Frannie? Where are you?” I swallow hard and look around. I see walkers, a wheelchair, bedpans. I have to go. I’m running out of time. The heat starts, lifting me, my heart palpitates. My parents have nothing. I’ve been so stupid. They’re going to die. I reach for the wall. They’re going to die and I’ll be all alone. Oh God, Shelly. How could you leave me? You were supposed to be here. I can’t do this myself.

  “Frannie?” Sarah is touching my arm. “Are you okay?”

  I take a deep breath as she calls to my grandfather. “Maxwell! You have a visitor.” He’s facing the television, which is blaring the theme for Wheel of Fortune. I can see the top of his head over the chair. She nudges me into the room, tells me to call if we need anything, and walks down the hall to the reception desk.

  I suddenly feel timid. “Hi, Grandpa.” I kiss his head. “Guess who’s here?”

  “Frannie? Is that my girl? Sit down.” He starts to get up, but I tell him to stay where he is. I pull a chair over and sit Indian-style next to him. We both stare at the set while we talk. “Look at that idiot,” he says. “Pick a vowel. A-E-I-O-U. Stupid jerk. I thought you forgot all about me. I don’t like to watch the shows with anyone but you.”

  “How could I forget about you? You’re my best friend.” My eyes mist.

  He chuckles. “You hungry? The food here is very superb. I like the breakfasts. I don’t eat the lunches but I have to pay for them. I keep telling your Aunt Lillian to stop paying, but it’s a package, she tells me. Today is Tuesday so they have the Sloppy Joes. You like the…the whatchamacall…the Joes?”

  “Nah. I’m not really hungry right now. Maybe later. I can’t stay that long today, but I can come by tomorrow if you’d like.”

  He shakes his head. “Busy busy busy. Just like your mommy. She’s an executive. Does she drive the same car? That’s a big car, boy. Why should she drive such a big car?”

  “I ask myself the same thing all the time.” I can’t believe how good he sounds. He was so depressed before coming here. Either this place works, or he’s on a very impressive drug. If so, I wonder if he can get me some.

  “Your dad gave me a watch.” He extends his arm to show me. I lean over and listen. He pats my head. “It doesn’t tick, kiddo. What kind of car does he drive? A Ford?”

  “A Mercedes.”

  “That’s German. I wouldn’t drive German for all the tea in China.”

  I notice that other than the hospital beds, the dresser and chairs, even the lamps look like they’re from a regular living room. I don’t recognize anything. Aunt Lillian sold all of my grandparents’ furniture. Everything in the room must be Freddie’s.

  Charts hang from the foot of his bed. I try to envision the room without the curtain that separates my grandfather’s side from Freddie’s, and for a split second, I imagine I am back in the intensive care unit where Shelly died. I suddenly have that feeling of reduction; I feel taller and stronger and louder than everything around me. I spy a vase of flowers. I don’t remember flowers in Shelly’s room, but there must have been. I don’t know why I can’t remember. Of course there were flowers. Or maybe there were flowers in her room at St. Mary’s. I remember her pointing to a bouquet. “Lonny sent me those,” she said proudly. I wonder if she was in love with Lonny, if they flirted madly and once, late in the evening when all the other lawyers went home, he kissed her. Shelly never once told me she was in love. Did she die without ever being in love?

  “You want the Joes?” As my grandfather hunches to get closer to the TV, his nose almost touches the screen. For some reason, this makes my heart ache. “They say they’re delicious, but I don’t eat lunch. I try to tell them I don’t want the lunch, but they don’t care. It’s a package, they tell me. Then I feel badly because I badger people.” He turns to me. “I don’t mean to, you know.”

  “I know, Grandpa.” My throat burns with tears. “I miss you being at home. From now on, I’ll come here and watch the shows with you.” I can’t believe I haven’t been here yet. I’ve been a selfish, selfish, selfish girl. “I’ll come every day.” I promise I won’t let you down, Grandpa. I’m silently crying, and I want to say more, but can’t. “Do you like it here?” I finally choke out.

  “I’ve been better. I like my new watch. I can almost see the numbers. I wish I didn’t have to pay for the lunches. But the watch was very nice. Your father’s a nice man. It’s a shame.” He’s quiet and I wonder if he’s fallen asleep. I lean over but his eyes are open.

  I walk over to Freddie’s dresser and look at the pictures of his family. In one of them, there’s a guy wearing a cap and gown. He has nice features: piercing blue eyes, wavy black hair, a strong jaw. But it’s his smile that really gets me. His smile is cocky, but engaging, as if he knows something I don’t, but if I leaned close, he’d tell me all his secrets. “Who is this?” I show the picture to my grandfather.

  “Freddie’s grandson. You should meet him. He’s single and eligible and Jewish. Frannie,” he says longingly, “why aren’t you married, my favorite Frannie? It’s such a pity. You’re a very beautiful girl.” He zones in on the TV again.

  I start to say something sarcastic about marriage, but instead I change the subject. “Freddie seems very nice,” I say.

  “He’s a Mister Know-It-All. But I’ll tell you, Frannie. His people are rich as, as, as…rich people. He can eat lunch or not eat lunch, they don’t care.” I glance at Freddie’s bed. There’s a Backstreet Boys sleeping bag at the foot. “I got nothin’ bad to say about Freddie ’cept he’s a cheat in cards. He thinks I don’t know what he’s doin’, but I do.” He rearranges himself in his seat, which seems to take a lot of energy. I ask him if he wants to sit on a pillow, but he says no. “And the women kvetch all day long. Your Grandma wasn’t anything like that.”

  “No,” I say slowly, thinking of my grandmother and her glasses that were so dirty, you couldn’t see her eyes. Afraid I’m going to bawl again, I tell my grandfather that I have to go, but I promise, cross my heart, I’ll be back t
omorrow.

  “I hope so, Frannie. I miss you so much. Like I miss Grandma.”

  “Me too, Grandpa,” I whisper.

  I let Freddie trim my hair before I leave. I can’t help myself. He covers me with a sheet and introduces me to the men and women who ooh and aah. I give him a $15 tip. Not so much because he tells me ten times that my grandfather, the chazzer, owes it, but because I’m feeling unusually generous. In the lobby, I stop by Sarah’s office. “Hi,” I say. “Thanks.”

  “For what, honey?” She looks up from her desk.

  “I don’t know,” I stutter. “For taking care of my grandfather. I…uh…I’ll be coming by a lot now, and I was hoping there were things I could do, you know, volunteer work, I don’t know, answer phones, whatever.”

  She sits down. “We could always use help in the cafeteria. Unfortunately, though, I can’t afford to pay you.”

  “I don’t need the money.” I linger in her office, wishing I didn’t have to go home. Sarah looks up at me and we smile at each other. I feel a glimmer of hope; it’s as if for one fleeting moment, I could learn how to live again.

  As soon as I get home, in what feels like the most impulsive thing I’ve ever done, I call Chubby. When she calls me back, I tell her that I want to come in and see her. “I’m not committing myself to anything,” I say. “I just have some questions I need answered.”

  Two days later, I sit in her waiting room, flipping through Entertainment Weekly. I look at the models in the ads, marveling at their long, firm legs and narrow hips. I hunch over. My legs feel swollen, like tree trunks covered in cellulite. I think about Abby. “I don’t know if I believe in God,” she told me once. “I mean, we all have cellulite, right? What kind of god would do that to people?” I wonder what she’s doing right now, if she’s thinking about me. As Chubby opens her office door and beckons me in, I feel like the loneliest person alive.

  Chubby looks up as I sit in the seat directly across from her. “That’s where Shelly used to sit,” she says softly.

  “Is that supposed to mean something?” I snap. “Because if it does, I’d appreciate it if you said what it is without any psychobabble bullshit where I have to guess what you’re really saying.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” she tells me. “It’s just the truth.” She leans forward. “So how can I help you? You said you had questions?”

  “Look, uh, Marilyn. In terms of people I respect, you’re not at the top of my hit parade, if you know what I mean, but I do have questions about my sister.” She sits patiently, which pisses me off. “Aren’t you going to say anything?” I bark.

  “I was waiting for you to ask me questions.”

  I glare at her. Then I blurt out, “Doesn’t it bother you that I think you’re responsible for what happened to Shelly? I mean, how can you just sit there and take it without defending yourself?”

  She’s quiet a long time. She scratches something on a pad of paper and shifts in her seat. “Frannie, in my profession, you do the best you can with the information you’re given. But sometimes we make…I make mistakes in judgment. I don’t blame you for being angry at me. I’ve been angry at myself.” She holds my gaze. I’m the one who looks away first. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I should have done differently, why I didn’t catch her in time, how she managed to slip away.”

  “She slipped away because no one was watching her.”

  “That’s not true, Frannie. We were watching her. That’s what makes it so difficult for me. I was watching every move she made. I didn’t think…” Chubby looks down at her hands and I am struck by how badly she feels.

  “Look,” I tell her, shifting awkwardly. “I didn’t come here to be mean to you.”

  “You don’t have to protect me, Frannie. I do have a certain amount of responsibility, and right now, I’m in the process of finding ways to deal with it.” She smiles. “Therapists are people, you know. We have the same guilt and anger that our patients do.”

  As I think about that, I wonder what it was like when Shelly was here, the things she talked about. “Did Shelly cry a lot when she was here?” I ask.

  “Sometimes. Sometimes not.”

  “That wasn’t a very specific answer.”

  “You didn’t ask a specific question.”

  We sit in a silence that makes me edgy. Say something, I scream at her. Just talk already. Finally, I blurt, “She’s in my head all the time. There are so many things that I want to know about her. Like if she was better, if she was getting out, why did she do it?”

  “Sometimes patients are most vulnerable when they’re preparing to leave the hospital, or the first few weeks after they’re home. In the hospital, they work very hard to deal with their problems, and sometimes they have high expectations for returning to their normal routines. There’s often a ‘now what’ feeling, which can be troubling for some patients who are just starting to recover.”

  “So she wasn’t really better? I mean, it was all an act?”

  “I believed Shelly believed she was better. But Frannie, St. Mary’s isn’t designed to ‘cure’ an eating disorder. It’s a place where patients can live without starving or bingeing. It’s a first step. I do believe that people can recover from anorexia and bulimia, but sometimes it takes a long time to live without engaging in self-destructive behavior.”

  “But what was she thinking? I mean, she had all these plans. Why did she pick that particular night? Why? I mean, even if she had the ‘now what’ feeling, she could have just stayed in the hospital. I don’t understand why she had to…” Frustrated, I trail off.

  “Shelly left you with a lot of gaps, didn’t she?” I nod. “Frannie, I’m afraid there isn’t any one answer. Her anorexia, her depression, and ultimately her suicide were the product of a lot of factors. Depression is an elusive, insidious disease. It manifests itself differently from person to person. Anorexia is a symptom, but again, the reasons differ from person to person. For some, it has to do with control over the self, or denial of the self. For others, it’s about rage and self-destruction. But regardless of the reasons, it’s always a battle. And the battle is a very fierce one. As a psychiatrist, I grapple all the time with the whys.”

  “I bet if Shelly had gone to graduate school, she would have figured it out.”

  Chubby smiles. “I bet she would have,” she says softly. “But if you’re looking for answers about her, what you can do—what I try to do in my practice—is not look at her symptoms, but find out who she is. Shelly, the woman.” She pauses. “And to do that, you have to go backwards.”

  I remember Bryan Thompson telling me the same thing. “But what do I do? Talk to my family? Yeah, right. Thanks for the advice.” I start to get up.

  “I don’t mean just about her. Look at your own life, your own history, and the role Shelly played in it. Examine how your paths crossed and where they diverged. Then try to see your life from her vantage point.”

  “And how do I do that? Just sit and think about it?”

  “You can always talk to me.” She checks her watch. “Frannie, our time’s not up yet. Why don’t we talk about you for a while?”

  “What about me?” I ask. I stare at her for a long time. “Well, Marilyn. I think our work is done for now. But thanks for meeting me.” This was a waste of fucking time, I tell myself. She’s just trying to hook me in, so that I’ll come every week and give her all my money so she can decorate her fucking office, which, the more I look at it, doesn’t look so tasteful after all. It just looks dreary. Before I go, though, I hand her the Entertainment Weekly. “I was going to swipe this,” I tell her sheepishly. “But I felt guilty.”

  She takes the magazine. “You know, one thing I can tell you about Shelly. She used to steal my magazines all the time.” She laughs sadly. “But she never thought I knew.”

  When I get home, I look around for my father. I hear him on the phone in his office. I really want to talk to him about Shelly, so I stand in the hall outside h
is door and wait for him to hang up. While I’m waiting, I rummage through the closet. I spy my mother’s coat, an ankle-length faux fur. I wrap myself in the long coat and breathe in her perfumy smell. I walk into the kitchen and from the wallet in my backpack, I take out the picture of my mother when she was first married to my father. I study it for a long time. She looks so happy in the picture, she looks young and free. I wonder if my father was laughing with her when he took the picture, if he also felt free.

  He finally hangs up and I walk into his office. “Do you remember this picture?” I ask.

  “Why are you wearing your mother’s coat?” I shrug and thrust the picture at him. He looks at it and smiles. “Jesus, that was a long time ago. We were in Italy, when I was in the service. Where did you find it?”

  “In a box. Let me ask you something. Do you think I look like Mommy?”

  “When you’re upset, you wrinkle your face like she does.”

  “Aunt Lillian told me I have Mommy’s smile.”

  “I haven’t seen your mother smile in a long time.” He bends over his desk as if to dismiss me.

  “When this was taken, did you ever think you’d have kids like me and Shelly?”

  “I don’t remember. It was a long time ago. Please, Frannie, I have a lot to do here.”

  “But I just wanted to ask—” My father cuts me off. “Frannie, I’m busy. I really can’t talk to you right now, okay? Maybe later.”

  I leave him in his office and go upstairs to my room. I get hot in the coat, but don’t take it off. I imagine my mother dropping her father off at the Jewish Home. “Bye, Daddy,” I bet she said. I bet she also promised to visit all the time. And now he just sits by himself, watching Wheel of Fortune. But she’s all alone, too. I pick up the phone and call her. “I went to see Chubby,” I tell her. “And Grandpa. His place is really nice.”

  “I’m proud of you for seeing Marilyn. Was she helpful?”

  “Not really, but seeing Grandpa was. I really missed him.”

  “And he missed you. He kept asking for you.” She’s polite with me, as if purposely watching herself to make sure she doesn’t say anything wrong. Realizing this makes me sad and ashamed.