Hope and Other Luxuries: A Mother's Life With a Daughter's Anorexia

by Clare B. Dunkle

My car wasn’t a luxury model, but I didn’t feel deprived. I had discovered the Hyundai Elantra during months of premove research. Earlier models had had an iffy reputation, but the last two models had been winners, safer and more reliable than most small cars. Consumers hadn’t noticed this yet, so the Elantra was still a well-kept secret. It was thousands of dollars below the other used cars in its class.

  I’d arranged to buy an inexpensive used Elantra for Elena to use as her college car. We’d gone straight from the airport to pick it up. It was tawny tan, like a desert cat, and the minute I got into it, I was in love. It was graceful and modest, simple but not cheap—everything I needed, and even a few things I wanted, without feeling the least bit hedonistic.

  So I had bought another Elantra for myself—a white one this time. Joe could have his beautiful, powerful BMW. I loved neat, orderly, thrifty things.

  The movers left a couple of hours later, and Joe and I spent an obsessively busy afternoon trying to locate and unpack enough of our possessions to allow us to resume normal life. Then, the next morning, Joe and his BMW left for work while I cracked open the towers of cardboard boxes, and Tor and Simon, terribly excited, pounced and hid amid welters of white packing paper.

  My phone rang again. This time, it was Elena.

  “Hey, Mom, guess what! There was a dorm mixer last night, and Meghan and I went—you remember Meghan, the one from the orientation with the dad who made a fortune selling unpainted furniture.”

  “Yep,” I said. I did remember Meghan. Thanks to Elena’s stories, I was already getting to know her new college friends.

  “So, there was a raffle,” Elena continued, “and we won! A full-day pass for four to that big amusement park. We’re going today.”

  “Fantastic!” I held the phone with my shoulder while I unwrapped a vase with both hands. “So, who are you thinking of going with?”

  “We’re thinking those two cute guys in the apartment next door.”

  “I thought three cute guys lived there.”

  “Yeah, but Harley is a douche. Did you know, he saw us taking the trash out of our apartment, so he put a bag of his trash on our doorstep. Like we’re going to haul his trash for him! His bedroom is next to mine, and the walls are so thin, I could hear him on the phone, calling up prostitutes in Austin. Then he came over and wanted to go on a date. Ha!”

  “Coed dorms are supposed to help you learn about the opposite sex,” I observed. “With walls like that, you’ll learn more than you ever wanted to know.”

  “You’ve got that right,” she said. “I already have!”

  Our relationship had improved the second Elena had moved into the dorms. It wasn’t just that we were apart now. Elena was happier with me because she was happier with life. Elena had always had a sense of boundless curiosity, and now that she was on the campus of a large university, she was learning dozens of interesting new things every day. And when she learned them, she wanted to share them. That’s when my phone rang: “Guess what!”

  I could never guess. Elena might be about to tell me about an eighteenth-century poem she’d found or an odd bit of trivia about spiders. She might be about to share some sizzling-hot celebrity gossip or a gruesome medical fact. Whatever it was, she could hold me spellbound. Day after day, she brought me the chance to learn new things effortlessly, without even having to look them up.

  Over the next several weeks, I finished unpacking and settled into being the opposite of a helicopter mom. Valerie was doing well in Georgia, and Elena was doing well at school. Even though some of Elena’s classes had hundreds of students in them, all her professors knew her and loved her.

  “The secret,” she told me, “is to sit in the front row and ask tons of questions.”

  Indeed it is, I thought.

  Joe’s new Air Force job took him to Asia and the Pacific on regular multiweek trips. To me, it sounded horribly stressful, but Joe seemed to be thriving. He Skyped me from the hotel one day that fall. “Did you see the photos?” he asked. “The ones from the orchid garden? You can’t believe the colors!” Then he paused, trying to find in his tidy engineer’s brain the words to describe that kind of extravagant beauty.

  But he didn’t need to find them. I could hear the awe in his voice.

  On a cool day in November, Joe was away on one of his trips. Once again, my cats lounged beside the big brown armchair while I typed on my laptop, black words against white. But I wasn’t seeing black and white. Martin and Chip, his computerized German shepherd, were standing in a parking lot full of derelict cars.

  What does a parking lot look like, I wondered, when it hasn’t been used for fifty years?

  Not like a parking lot anymore. The rust-colored cars weren’t on asphalt. Weeds had sprouted and sprung up. No, not weeds, summer wild-flowers. The cars were almost buried in big dense groups of yellow Maximilian sunflowers.

  I smiled. I remembered playing in Maximilian sunflowers when I was little. I started to type.

  Chip cavorted through the yellow flowers, then pounced. Seconds later, he came prancing up with a stick. He sidled into Martin, knocking him off balance, and whipped his bushy tail back and forth. Yellow petals went flying like confetti.

  Then Martin looked up and saw the ruined skyscrapers of the abandoned downtown ahead of them. When he saw them, I could see them, too.

  About a mile away, a cluster of thin buildings reached improbable heights, as if some giant hand had come down from the sky and pulled them toward the heavens. Some were faced with polished stone, still stylish and dignified. Others were faced with panels of mirrored glass. These had shattered and left dark squares here and there, so that their sides looked like surreal chessboards. Flocks of birds swooped in and out and gave their solid lines the illusion of movement.

  I thought about that for a quiet minute—that ruined city.

  The phone rang, and my view resolved once again into two unconscious cats and my green backyard. But I didn’t wince as I answered it. My life contained plenty of peace nowadays.

  “Hey, Mamacita!” said Valerie’s voice. “I’ve got something to ask you. Do you think Clint and I are too comfortable?”

  “Hello, honey,” I said. “I guess I don’t know. What do you mean by ‘too comfortable’? Comfortable sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but we’ve been dating for almost two years,” Valerie said. “That whole time, we haven’t gone out with anybody else. We don’t even argue. It’s like we’re an old married couple already. Don’t you think we’re too young to be that settled?”

  My black sheep daughter, too settled. That idea felt so good that, mentally, I took off my shoes and ran barefoot through it. Valerie, settled and comfortable, like part of an old married couple. Yellow petals whirled into the air around me.

  Ruins, yes. The ruins of old structures, old habits, and old ways of being. But from the ruins, new flowers were springing up. Life and growth were all around.

  “I don’t know about being too young to be settled,” I said aloud. “Isn’t dating just a way of finding the person you love? If you’ve already found the person you love, why change?”

  “I just think maybe we’ll regret it later,” Valerie said. “You know, making up our minds so soon.” So I set aside the laptop and its flower-filled ruins and spent a while listening to her talk out the pros and cons. I’m a lot like Valerie that way. I like to talk out my plans and decisions, too.

  Several hours later, Valerie called me again. Her voice was excited and purposeful. “I’ve broken up with Clint,” she said. “He’s pretty upset, but I think it’s best for both of us. He really doesn’t get the whole too-young thing, but I just don’t want us to feel sorry about it later. And hey, we can always get back together again if that’s what we decide we want.”

  “Sure,” I said. “It’s your decision. It’s not as if there’s a right or a wrong here.”

  Over the course of the next day, I didn’t have time to feel lonely for Joe, who was now in
Japan. I didn’t even have time to play in the sunflowers with Martin. Valerie called me every couple of hours, and she agonized for hours. Not only was she missing Clint, but she was also starting to rethink her decision.

  “I hope I did the right thing,” she said. “No, I know I did the right thing. It’s best. It’s best for both of us. Right?”

  “You and Clint are the only ones who can decide that,” I said. “This is about what you want for your life.”

  “Well, I just want us to be sure.”

  The next morning, as I was putting down food for the cats, Valerie called me again. This time, she was in tears.

  “Roll over, Simon,” I said. “Hold on, honey. Simon! Roll over. Over. Good kitty! Valerie, you’ll have to say that again. I can barely understand you.”

  “I said he’s flirting!” Valerie cried. “He’s flirting with another girl! He doesn’t love me!”

  “Tor, roll over . . . That’s my good kitty! But, honey, aren’t you two broken up?”

  “Yes, but I wouldn’t flirt with another guy. I care too much!”

  “But . . . Okay, let me get this straight,” I said as I stepped over the cats to rinse out their water bowl. “You broke up so you’d be able to flirt with other people, right? You didn’t want to make up your mind too soon. It was your decision. And you broke Clint’s heart, didn’t you?”

  “Apparently not!” Valerie exclaimed with stormy bitterness. “If he really had his heart broken, he’d be too upset to flirt!”

  There was a lull, filled only by the sounds of sharp teeth crunching dry food pellets, while I pondered the highly personal etiquette of the breakup. As I was considering and rejecting different comments, I heard someone else speak in the background of the phone call. Valerie moved the phone away and raised her voice to respond.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Is that Clint?”

  “Yes.”

  I sat down to watch the cats finish their meal.

  “Okay, I don’t get this,” I said. “If you’re broken up, what’s Clint doing there?”

  “I have to get to work, Momma.” Valerie’s tone of voice implied that this should be perfectly obvious. “You know Clint drives me to work.”

  “But”—and I found myself waving a hand in the air, even though she couldn’t see it—“Valerie, you just broke up with him!”

  “But how else would I get to work?” Valerie asked, a little indignant. “Clint knows I don’t have another ride in.”

  “In all fairness,” I said, “I don’t think a lot of guys who’d had their hearts broken would care how you got to work.”

  “That would be mean,” Valerie declared. “Got to go now. Love you, Mom.” And she hung up to continue her argument.

  Meanwhile, I was thinking, I like this guy!

  An hour later, Valerie called back, over the moon with happiness. She and Clint had gotten back together.

  While I was washing the dishes, the phone rang again. I expected it to be Valerie, but it was Elena this time. “Guess what!” she said. “I’ve got a job! I’m working at the mall. It’s only five minutes from campus. Meghan and I were walking through the mall together, and this guy came up to us and said, ‘We’re looking for people like you. If you want work, you’ve got a job.’ I thought he was some kind of creeper, but it turned out that he works for a local clothing store. They’ve already accepted my application, and I already worked my first day.”

  “That’s great, hon!” I said. “I hope you have a good time working there.”

  “A big part of the job seems to be spraying everything with their ‘signature scent,’” Elena said. “After about ten minutes of spritzing jeans, my hand cramped up.”

  “I’d hate that!” I said. “I don’t want to buy clothes drenched in cheap perfume.”

  “Technically, it’s not cheap,” she pointed out. “And no offense, Mom, but I don’t exactly think you’re our target shopper.”

  “Maybe I’ll surprise you,” I said. “Did Meghan get a job, too?”

  “Meghan already has a job. She waits tables.”

  “She seems like a good friend,” I said. “Fun things always seem to happen when you’re around her. She’s such a bright girl—really funny, too.”

  Elena grew unexpectedly somber.

  “It’s really sad,” she said. “Meghan has this great mom—sweet, great sense of humor—I know you two would bond. But when she’s around, Meghan clams up. They don’t talk like we do.”

  Like we do. Once again, I ran barefoot through that idea, back and forth, while yellow flowers bloomed.

  As an early Christmas present to all of us, Joe and I flew Valerie and Clint out to visit for a couple of days. Valerie was her old self again, with that easy laugh and laid-back temperament that had won friends on two continents. It was almost impossible to picture her as the haunted, depressed girl who had burned and cut herself. Clint was earnest and even-tempered, with a dry sense of humor that fit in perfectly with our family.

  The four of us drove to a Chinese buffet. Valerie was playing songs off her playlist when a Sum 41 song came on.

  “Oh, hey,” Clint said mildly, “I used to listen to these guys a lot back in my ‘angry young man’ phase.”

  “Um . . . Clint?” Joe said, grinning. “You’re not even old enough to order a beer. When did you squeeze in that ‘angry young man’ phase?”

  Throughout the weekend they stayed with us, Elena was absent from our lives. But on the morning of their last day in Texas, she called.

  “Put Valerie on the phone,” she said.

  A few minutes later, Elena walked through the door, and within five minutes, she and Valerie were chatting away on the back porch, just as if they’d never been apart.

  It was a sight that brought tears to my eyes.

  As winter gave way to spring, I felt comfortable enough with our new life to start doing some things for myself. Joe and I were empty nesters now. It was time to embrace that change. So I began taking piano lessons from a dear friend whom I’d known for years. It was interesting work for me because it was entirely nonverbal—it was about sounds, but it wasn’t about words. But that didn’t stop me from trying to use words to describe it.

  “Okay,” I said to myself as I practiced, “I need to hit that hop in the middle, where the song goes from slow to bright. More rabbit—I need more rabbit.”

  I also started jogging in the neighborhood to try to lose the extra weight I’d put on cooking for Elena. But that didn’t result in a subtraction. It resulted in an addition.

  I was jogging a few blocks from home one morning when I saw a small dirty-brown dog sitting on a front porch. She appeared to be part terrier and part bird’s nest. I always greet animals when I’m out and about, including (sometimes) very large bugs—the kind of bugs that seem to demand respect. So I greeted the little dog:

  “Hi, baby.”

  She raced across the yard to me and threw herself down at my feet, hiding her face in her little paws. Help me! she said without saying a word.

  I took a closer look at this small terrier-nest cross. She was horribly underweight, and her face was covered with scabs. So I took her home with me, just until her owners come home from work, I thought. And I’ll give her a bath, too. She’s filthy.

  Four hours later, I was still soaping her with medicated shampoos. The little thing was crawling with the largest fleas I’d ever seen, and she was anemic from blood loss. But, even though the treatments stung and hurt, the sweet little thing didn’t object. She danced around me while I dried her off, thrilled to have the attention.

  Okay, that’s it! I thought angrily. Those morons aren’t getting her back! Not, apparently, that they wanted her back—I watched for days, but no signs went up around the neighborhood. So I kept her, and I named her Genny, after the stray dog in the Madeline books.

  Love and care took Genny from being a skinny, scrawny, ratty-looking dog to being a round, plump, ratty-looking dog. She was already old when she
found me, and the closest I ever came to discovering her “breed” was a warning picture on a Norfolk terrier website: If you purchase your Norfolk off the Internet, you could end up with a dog that looks like THIS! When Genny was at rest, she looked like a blond wig that had accidentally gone through the washer, and when she was in motion, she looked like a chicken nugget on sticks. But she danced and played and bounded around me as I worked. She still had the heart of a puppy.

  One day, Elena came over to do laundry. Genny bounced up to greet her while I made myself a cup of tea and prepared for the exciting and highly enjoyable ride that is a catch-up conversation with Elena. What would it be today? Multiple-personality disorders? A foreign movie plot? Japanese host club boys? Just lately, she had been telling me all about porphyria and vampires.

  “What’s new?” I asked with interest.

  Elena was measuring out laundry soap. “So, I went to see somebody,” she said.

  “You mean a doctor?” I asked with a flutter of worry.

  Elena was starting to get sick a lot. She was overdoing it at school again—involved in too many activities. Just recently, she had had another sore throat she couldn’t shake.

  “I mean a shrink,” Elena said.

  When we had returned to Texas, I had encouraged Elena to see Dr. Harris again. But she hadn’t wanted to, and in the first flush of excitement over college, she hadn’t seemed as if she needed to, either. She had started out the fall semester taking better care of herself than I’d seen her do in a year. Her college friends ate, so she did, too.

  At first.

  But now, I assessed her over my teacup. She was starting to look nervous and jumpy, the way she had looked during her senior year of high school. And now she was going to see a psychiatrist on her own.

  This could be good—or it could be very bad. I waited to see which it was.

  “The counselor on campus thought it would be a good idea for me to see somebody after my blackout last October,” Elena said. “She thought I should go see an eating disorder specialist, you know, to make sure I’m over that whole thing—since I had trouble with it when I was in high school.”