by Kaira Rouda
Now what? I thought.
“Now what?” Patrick asked.
“Well, I could call Kathryn and find out what to do.”
“Lame.”
“Sean said nobody says ‘lame’ anymore, remember?”
Patrick chuckled, wrapped an arm around my shoulder, and started leading me over to the couch on the porch. “I guess we could sit out here and enjoy the evening. Draw a little inspiration from the teenagers.”
“Except then we’d be geeky voyeurs or losers or something. Besides, I just got a mosquito bite. How about we leave them out here tonight, and I’ll get some boundaries established tomorrow?” I took Patrick’s hand and led him inside. I glanced over my shoulder, and as far as I could tell, there was indeed what we called making out going on in that hammock. I don’t know what it’s called now, but it looked like fun.
I’m not sure what time Gavin left; I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
Patrick left for work early, and I, too, was up and at ’em.
Google browser loaded, I started researching my new job opportunity. I hadn’t told Patrick about Charlotte’s offer because I wasn’t sure that what I loved to do could be something I could get paid to do. Sure, I’d thought about the interior decorating business angle, but there were almost as many decorators in Grandville as there were real estate agents, lawyers, and doctors. Home staging, however, could be in my future.
And, I could start with a project across the street.
But then I felt guilty; I should be researching anorexia. Not knowing what time a teenager who stayed up late making out in my backyard would wake up, I knew I had to play it safe and research a little more before she caught me.
From all I had read, it seemed that the best treatments were therapy with a specialist in eating disorders, antidepressants (if Melanie was depressed), and eating under the guidance of a nutritionist and doctor. I needed to broach the subject today. I knew Kathryn said they’d tried therapy, but I didn’t know if she’d found an eating disorder specialist. I didn’t know if they’d tried any medications or had simply focused on forcing Melanie to eat. Did that work? Nope. It said right here on my screen that forcing an anorexic to eat could create a problem with bulimia.
Okay. I needed to call my long-lost friend Beth. We had met in sixth grade when both of us were plopped into the “gifted” classes. She and I had shared cans of Tab together and made cootie catchers to predict our futures. In the summer, we rode our bikes to the pool every day, and later, in high school, we got into mild trouble together. We’d had the best sleepovers, crashing in beanbag chairs as we listened to my favorite Air Supply album. Beth was the only one who would let me play “I’m All Out of Love” without cringing.
She’d been my best friend until I’d pulled away. Now, all these years later, I sat practicing in my head what I’d say to her on the phone—for half an hour. I finally dialed Beth’s home phone number and got her answering machine.
“Hi Beth, it’s Kelly Mills—well, now Johnson. Well, Kelly Mills Johnson. Anyway, I know we haven’t talked since our tenth high school reunion, and that was only a quick hello, and phew, that was, well, years ago, but I wondered if we could catch up. I’ve always felt bad about how the group treated you when your parents divorced, and well, about your health, and that I wasn’t there for you. I have a young woman, she’s the daughter of a friend, and she’s staying with me. She’s going through—at least she appears to be going through—what you went through, although I don’t really know what you went through because I let Megan talk me into not being there for you, but I could, she could—the teenager staying with me, that is—use your help. I wondered if you could call me back. And I’m sorry I sound like such a dork, which is so not a cool word according to my twelve-year-old. Okay, gotta go, sorry for rambling.”
I hung up. Not only did I make a fool of myself, I forgot to leave my phone number. My face was flushed and my palms were sweaty.
When I called back to leave my number in a second voice message, however, Beth answered.
“Hello Kelly.”
Oh nuts, I thought, not prepared to speak to the person herself. “Um, hi Beth, how are you?”
“Fine.”
Ouch. Work with me here, I thought, but then realized, nope, it was up to me. “Listen, Beth, I don’t know if you heard my rambling message, but I really am so sorry for abandoning you all those years ago. It was so wrong.”
“Yes, it was. That was a time when I needed my friends the most. And suddenly, you weren’t there.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I know exactly how you feel now, since my parents got divorced too, although that happened while I was in college, so I guess that’s different, and really, I didn’t get anorexia. Unfortunately, I got the freshman fifteen, though, and …” I finally stopped my second round of nerve-induced idiotic rambling. A lot of good my practice did me.
“I appreciate the apology, Kelly. Even though your parents divorced, no two people handle that situation the same, as you know. But you and I did have some great times, you know, in the early years.” There seemed to be a little smile in her voice.
“How about when we both tried our very first cigarettes together? I can’t even recall where or who we got them from, but we tried those Virginia Slims sitting in your Camaro, remember? You instantly threw up and I instantly got addicted, unfortunately. It took me a long time, too long, to quit smoking. And it all started that night, with you.”
Now I had her laughing. “Don’t blame me for that! Remember I called you egghead? That was something I did start,” Beth said.
“Yeah, you were hilarious, buying me egg books, egg cards . . . why was that, by the way?” I asked, realizing I was actually getting mad.
“Well, you have a long, oval face. You know, like an egg. I always thought you’d look good in bangs, incidentally. Do you have those now?”
As of this week, I thought, but said, “Yes, I do, as a matter of fact.”
“We do have so many shared memories,” Beth said. “It’s really nice that you called, and I could try to help. It’s actually what I do now, or rather, what I want to be doing. I have my master’s degree in social work, and I want to specialize in eating disorders. At the hospital where I work, I have to be a jack-of-all-trades, dealing with people with all types of emotional problems, issues, and addictions. But my passion is helping young women with eating disorders.”
Jackpot! “Well, as long as you promise not to call me egghead in front of Melanie, I’d say you two are a perfect match. She’s so skinny, Beth. She reminds me of how you looked during our senior year in high school. I’m so sorry for the pain you went through back them.”
“It’s okay, Kelly. The past is past. I got help and made some great friends in college.”
Probably loyal friends, unlike the one I had been. Also unlike me, Beth had spread her wings, leaving the bubble for Vanderbilt University. I wondered why she came back to Grandville.
“We have too many happy memories to let one bad year and an influential, mean girl ruin that any longer,” she said.
“I miss you, Beth. Thanks for picking up the phone just now rather than ignoring me. Thanks for forgiving me. Can we get together in person sometime soon?”
“The baby and I are free pretty much all day every day. I’m still on maternity leave from the hospital,” she said, and after realizing she’d just given birth, I was even more amazed. I couldn’t wait to meet the baby, and I wouldn’t have to wait long. She agreed to come over for lunch the next day.
Right after I hung up I wrote down this amazing realization. T2C Number Fifteen: Reconnect with old friends. Reconnecting with Beth could lead me to helping a troubled fifteen-year-old and thereby helping said teenager’s mom, another friend. And maybe this was partly the way to help myself out of a funk and on to my new future. A triple whammy! With those happy thoughts and a loose, clench-free jaw, I typed “home staging careers” into my browser.
WEL
L, ACCORDING TO THE WEBSITE OF ONE OF THE SELF-PROCLAIMED experts in the business, home stagers aren’t decorators, interior designers, or fluffers. That was a relief. Instead, stagers focus on the details, on decluttering and depersonalizing homes. The key is to make sure the next owner of the house can see herself living in it without all of the current owner’s stuff getting in the way.
Hmm. This sounded great. Heck, I could depersonalize without fluffing and I could declutter without designing; I’ve been doing that with Patrick’s parents for years.
Of the profoundly messed up family of his origin, we didn’t speak. How Patrick made it out alive and relatively healthy was beyond me. When we’d met, because I was a product of a divorced home, I knew my family was dysfunctional. I’d subsequently learned through the years that intact, miserable families put the capital D in dysfunction.
I still remember when Patrick borrowed my copy of Bradshaw on the Family to “browse through” soon after we married. As he turned the pages, he seemed to become more entranced by the text. I’d fallen asleep, riding the water bed waves—yes, he actually brought one into our marriage. And yes, I got rid of it as soon as I could, donating it to Goodwill in the same load as the orange velour sectional and the poker-playing dog poster that he still denies he had. He did.
In the morning, he’d said, “You know, babe, I think my family might be dysfunctional.” Really? So sweet, so innocent. Since then, we’ve made loads of progress understanding, or trying to, what makes each of us tick. And we’ve both agreed that the less his family knows about ours—the four of us—the better.
Back to my future.
So, according to the Association of Staging Professionals, I would need to take a two-day Accredited Staging Professional Classroom course to become certified. Problem is, they won’t offer a class in my area until December, and that will still be two hundred miles away. My business could be booming by then. I turned my attention to one of the other 1,580,000 Google results. One of the posts told me I could just watch HGTV’s Designed to Sell and pick up tips. Another link led me to believe that perhaps my life experiences to date equaled a PhD in the field. I was an expert at home staging already.
On the next site I found a three-day online course for home-based professionals—that was me, a home-based professional—at the end of which I would have a designation I could show my clients . . . all for $1,795. At the next click, a blog told me why I should never pay to get a designation and that training was a waste of money. Argh.
Another site asked me: “Did you know there are one million real estate agents and decorators who consider themselves staging experts?” No, I didn’t. I gulped and clicked away from that site pronto. On yet another site I discovered the valuable information I was looking for: The going rate for home staging consulting was between $75 and $150 per hour, depending on the region. I learned I should always take before-and-after photos of each project and build a portfolio online and off. That sounded fun, and I already had a great digital camera I used to capture my boys and their lives.
I was snooping around on my seventh staging site when Melanie came into the kitchen. Her brown hair was up, of course, and she was wearing an oversized tee shirt emblazoned with “Ethanol is Corny” and a stylized ear of corn.
“Can I have some coffee?” she asked. She wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t grimacing, so that was a plus.
“Sure, help yourself,” I answered, tamping down the urge to correct her and have her say, “May I have some coffee?” See, I was in tune with my inner teen, I thought, and added as I watched her pour the tar, “Beware, it’s strong. Patrick made it. Let me make you some eggs or something, okay?” Oreo stirred under my feet. He stretched out, making sure Lucky Carp was positioned between his paws. He looked like he was praying to the fish. That just might help me.
“Probably we should talk about my ‘issue,’” she said, making quotation marks in the air.
“Come on over and have a seat,” I answered. Remain calm, I reminded myself. Part of the peculiar characteristics of anorexia, I’d learned, is strong denial that there is a problem. I figured since Mel had been in treatment before, she’d at least realized there was an issue. That was good, right?
“I just don’t understand why my parents aren’t cool, like you and Patrick,” she said. “I mean, they’d never let me just hang out with Gavin.”
So much for the eating disorder. I guess Gavin was the issue we were going to discuss. “So are you and Gavin serious?” I asked after she’d sat down next to me at our round kitchen table. She held the cobalt blue coffee mug in her hands and smiled at me.
“As serious as a fifteen-year-old can be, Aunt Kelly. He’s really nice. And supportive. I don’t know what I would’ve done without him this past year. All in all, it’s been hell.” She took a drink of her coffee.
“What’s hell, honey? School? I know Grandville High School is brutal, clique-filled, and really tough.” Earning the “best school district in the state” designation was accompanied by all the pressures of an elite private school.
“No, school’s fine. I still have straight A’s. It’s home; it’s my mom and dad. They’re the hot mess. And I guess I didn’t know it was getting to me until lately. It did, or it has, or it is . . . I don’t know. I loved volleyball, and now they won’t let me play. Gavin’s my best friend, and my folks don’t like him.”
I sat for a moment, making sure my next words would be supportive. I took a deep breath. “I have a friend who was in almost the same situation as you when she was in high school. Thing is, back then nobody even helped her. Heck, her best friends made fun of her, taunted her, and spread really awful rumors about her just because she was so thin. We didn’t know that much about anorexia, other than Karen Carpenter had died of it. Once you get stuff sorted out, Melanie, you’ll be back on the team. I’ve asked my friend Beth—we called her ‘Bony Beth,’ I’m ashamed to say—to come talk to you. She’s doing great now, she even has a newborn. But years ago, she was just like you.”
“Nobody is just like me, Aunt Kelly. Did your friend’s parents act in front of the world like they were married but then ignore each other at home? Did your friend’s parents forget she was even there most of the time as they pursued their all-important careers? Did your friend’s parents tell her she couldn’t hang out with her best friend, even if he’s a guy? I doubt it. Everybody else has normal parents: a normal mom like you who stays at home and takes care of her kids, and a normal dad who comes home after work. My dad is never there, and my mom doesn’t even know anything about my life. So there’s probably no way you or your friend do, either. But, whatever.”
“Mel, just because they’re parents doesn’t make them perfect. Trust me. You kids don’t come with a manual, so all we can do is our best. And being a stay-at-home-mom does not guarantee you’re normal, or that you do the right things for your kids all the time. I do know your mom loves you deeply, that she wants you to feel better, and that she has tried her best to help you.” My coffee was cold. I got up to fill up my mug with a fresh blast of tar before rejoining the sulking teen at my table. I finally had a game plan, but it all hinged on Mel’s willingness to at least talk to Beth.
“Look, Mel. I know you’re feeling a bit neglected right now, but I hope you know I’m here for you. And I hope you’ll consider talking at least a little bit to Beth. Your mom explained to me that you’ve been to counselors and therapists, specialists, and the like. I think Beth is different. She’s my friend, and well, it couldn’t hurt, you know?”
“Whatever,” she repeated.
She’d agreed, albeit half-heartedly. I popped up and decided it was time for some comfort food, at least for me; food in general would be good for her. I pulled out my favorite skillet, sprayed on a generous coating of Pam, cracked two eggs into it, and then pushed down two slices of wheat bread in the toaster. As the eggs fried, I poured a large glass of orange juice and smiled over at Melanie, encouraging a response.
“Is th
at for me?” she asked, motioning with her arm to encompass the eggs, the toast, the glass of orange juice, and probably, me.
“Yep! Best way to start the day is with a home-cooked breakfast, right?” I said, in my best Kelly Johnson/Martha Stewart voice.
“Maybe if you’re on the farm and you’re going out to plow. I had a health bar in my room and I’m good to go. In fact, I’m going for a jog. I’ll be back in awhile.”
“Sure,” I said, as she scooted past me and out the door. This is going well, I thought sarcastically, as I prepared to eat a home-cooked breakfast. I wasn’t going to plow, but I was going to go to work. As I stood eating, looking out the kitchen window, I watched Melanie stretch her lean body. Then I saw a boy appear in the corner of our yard. It wasn’t Gavin, and I didn’t know him. Melanie’s back was to me, but I could see the boy smiling, flirting with her. Ah, to be young, I thought, and then mentally kicked myself. No way I’d go back to high school again. Would anyone, given the choice?
After I cleaned up my farm breakfast, I called Charlotte and told her I’d do it: I’d stage the Thompsons’ house. She screeched in delight—nails on chalkboard. She told me the key to the house was in the lockbox, gave me the combination, and told me to let myself in. We didn’t have any time to waste.
NOT BEING ACCUSTOMED TO WALKING INTO OTHER PEOPLE’S empty homes alone, I was both excited and nervous as I crossed the street and walked up to the front door. I’d left a note telling Melanie I’d be back by noon. What I didn’t say was that Beth was coming over for lunch. I’d decided to make that a little surprise.
For all the years we’d been neighbors, I’d only been over to Heidi and Bob’s once. I guess they would have said the same. So, turning the key in the lock and walking in felt odd. I had two hours to explore the home and sketch the layout in my notebook. I also had my trusty camera for the “before” shots the websites had told me I needed.
The emptiness was what struck me first—the lifelessness.
