“He’s doing so well,” Lana said. “We all are.”
“He’s a robot,” Gloria said. “My vibrant, spirited boy is gone.”
“Mom,” Becca said. “He is loved and healthy: alcohol- and drug-free for the first time in decades. He’s bonding with Abby and Byron. He’s making huge strides.”
“It hasn’t been decades. He was drug-free when he was still living with me,” Gloria said. “He didn’t need medication. I managed him myself.”
“He was self-medicating: drinking and smoking pot as early as high school,” Lana said. “Maybe even before that. It started in his teens.”
“Don’t you go blaming me for his drinking,” Gloria said.
“Nobody’s blaming anyone,” Becca said. “Let’s focus on the positive. On how well he’s doing.”
“He’s so different. Like a different person,” Gloria said.
“He is different,” Lana said. “He’s a grown man, earning his own living, caring for himself. He’s sober.”
“He’s all wrong,” Gloria said.
“You’re all wrong,” Lana said. Becca tried to stop her but she kept going. “You have no idea what he needs. What makes him feel safe and happy. How Asperger’s even works. You just dumped him in one school after another and left him to fend for himself. Left all of us to fend for ourselves. You didn’t manage him. You ignored him.”
“I loved and cared for all of my children. All four of them. I still do.”
“Of course you do, Mom,” Becca said.
“Just none quite as much as Stephen,” Lana said.
They were quiet after that. Abby came in and looked from Matt to the three women on the patio through the closed sliding glass door.
“They’re arguing about me,” Matt said. “Lana thinks I’m better and Mom thinks I’m worse.”
“What do you think?” Abby asked. She got a mango and sliced it into long thin pieces and ate them one by one.
“I think I like my new life,” Matt said.
“I do, too,” Abby said.
Matt opened the sliding glass door and looked at his mom and sisters. “I’m happy, Mom,” he said. “You don’t need to worry about me. It started when I was thirteen. The drinking and pot. And then I didn’t know how to be without it. But now I do.”
Gloria looked at him and didn’t say anything. Jack came along with his coffee and nudged past Matt.
“Got room for an old fart out here?” Jack asked. He sat down and put his hand on Gloria’s shoulder. She turned away. Matt didn’t like the feeling. He wanted there to be something else, anything else, going on.
“What happened to those tadpoles?” he asked his parents. “The ones we caught and kept in the aquarium.”
“Tadpoles?” Jack asked. “We’re talking tadpoles now? What tadpoles?”
“They turned into frogs. I remember watching their legs grow. I was three or four. We caught them at the park, in the pond. Did we set them free? Did they die?”
Gloria and Jack looked at each other.
“Tell him,” Lana said. “If you remember. He can take it.”
Jack sighed and rubbed his big face. “One died, I’m afraid. I didn’t want you to see it. Get upset. I set the rest free without you. I’m sorry about that.”
Matt nodded. He felt better knowing. “I thought maybe they all died. So only one did? And the rest were okay?”
Jack nodded. “I saw them swim off myself.”
“I bet the one that died was sick or something. I bet it would’ve died even in the wild. They might’ve all died in the wild. Of course, either way they’re all dead now.”
“See?” Lana said, smiling.
Gloria clucked her tongue and Jack burst out laughing. It was so loud Matt backed up, just inside the open sliding glass door.
“Are you okay, Mattie?” Gloria asked him. “Are you upset?”
“He’s fine, Mom,” Lana said. “That’s what I’m telling you. No acting out. No episodes.”
“I’m not upset. But I’m still hungry,” Matt said. “I think I want another English muffin. And I want to go to Lake Jesup. They have hawks, eagles, ospreys, egrets, ibis, great blue herons, even alligators. I really want to see an alligator.”
“Me, too,” Abby said behind Matt.
“Abby wants to see an alligator,” Matt said.
“Well, hot damn, let’s go see an alligator, then,” Jack said. He clapped his hands together and rubbed them, then rested a hand on Gloria’s shoulder. She shook her head. Gloria stayed home when they went to Lake Jesup. And they did see alligators. Yellow-green reptile eyes peeking up out of the swampy water, and the ridges of their bumpy backs and long tails. They were just as fascinating as tadpoles. Matt couldn’t wait to tell Susan about it.
31
* * *
Abby
Abby was all ready to head to the pool, but first she fetched the bag with Gabe’s blue shirt inside. She opened it just enough to bury her face in it for a good long sniff.
“Do I want to know?” Byron asked behind her. He was wearing his swim trunks and had his goggles dangling from his hand.
“Nope,” Abby said, laughing. She resealed the bag, fetched the oversized sun hat her grandma Gloria had loaned her, and followed Byron out.
She talked to Gabe every day, and they texted, sent pictures to each other, and emailed, but it still wasn’t enough. She wanted to feel his warmth next to her. They were just getting started before having to spend a whole week apart. Who knew what could happen in a week? What if he forgot about her?
They’d exchanged shirts, straight off their bodies. Put on clean ones and stowed the worn ones in sealed freezer bags. Gabe’s shirt smelled of lavender and his boyish scent. Abby had no idea what hers smelled like. She couldn’t smell it, but Gabe said he could. He said she smelled like summer breezes and grassy fields.
“Maybe if you sleep in my shirt it’ll make you dream of me,” he said.
“I always dream of you,” she told him. Sometimes they were anxious dreams, where she couldn’t find him in a crowd, or spotted him through a window kissing Caitlin, but she also had lots of good dreams, about snuggling up to him, his warm tan arms wrapped around her, his breath on her hair.
Abby didn’t sleep in Gabe’s shirt, because then it would smell like her instead of him. She just kept it in the bag and sniffed it a hundred times a day.
Abby settled on the deck chair with her book while Byron swam laps. The pool in her grandparents’ retirement villa was nice, a great big oval with a rock waterfall on one end, and it was empty most of the time. Probably because the air was a thousand degrees in the middle of the day. Abby had borrowed her grandma’s mister to take the edge off the heat. As it coated her in a fine, cooling spray, she filled out a postcard for Gabe. She sent him one every day. This one had a picture of the space shuttle. The whole family had gone to the Kennedy Space Center, because that’s what Matt wanted to do. He was cool like that. He wanted to do fun stuff and not just sit around talking all day like Gloria or watching TV like Jack. They’d also gone to Lake Jesup and spotted some real live wild alligators. She had a postcard from there to send tomorrow.
Abby finished the postcard, gave up on the romance novel, and leaned back and closed her eyes. It was ridiculously hot, but at least out here it was peaceful. The condo was air-conditioned, but the air in there was tense. There was something going on between her mom and grandma, and Abby didn’t want to be a part of it. For some reason Gloria was mad about Matt, that he was calm and happy and not all freaked out about things like the dead tadpole.
That night, on the phone with Jenny for their weekly appointment, shut into the guest room for the only privacy in the entire condo, Abby talked about it.
“And how are you dealing with the stressful environment?” Jenny asked.
“I’m getting nice and tan,” Abby said.
“So you don’t need to scream it out?”
Abby laughed and Jenny laughed with her. Was it strange t
o miss your therapist as much as your boyfriend?
“Are you running?”
“Nope,” Abby said. “Too hot. I’m being a lazy beach bum. Pool bum. I read, lounge in the sun, I write in my journal, then I cool off by floating in the pool. I don’t even swim laps. I’m a manatee.”
“Why would you say manatee?” Jenny asked.
“Oh,” Abby said. “That wasn’t a fat comment. I just meant . . . they’re peaceful and happy just being in the water, you know? At least they look happy in the pictures.”
“So you’re happy?”
“Yeah, mostly. It’s different here. And I miss everyone back home. But it’s just one week, right?”
It was nice to talk to Jenny, to keep their regular appointment, but doing it on the phone wasn’t the same as sitting in Jenny’s office. Abby missed the orange pillow that had been the object of her anger those first few sessions. Just sitting on Jenny’s love seat every week reminded Abby of how far she’d come, how strong she really was. Abby worried that being thousands of miles away might undo some of the work she’d done on herself. She worried that just being around her bulimic grandmother might make it all come back.
“I don’t think she’s doing it anymore. My grandma. Throwing up.”
“You’ve been watching her?”
“It’s a small place. We’re all on top of each other. She doesn’t eat a whole lot, but she never disappears into the bathroom after meals. And it never smells like throw-up in there.”
“You were thinking you might want to talk to her about her eating disorder. Do you think you still will?”
“I don’t know. She talks all the time, but she doesn’t seem that easy to talk to, you know?”
“Sometimes people need help opening up. Maybe you need to make the first move. But only if you feel it might help. If it’s better not to think about it, then don’t think about it.”
As if Abby were able to turn off her thoughts about food. She thought about it all the time: how often she ate, how much she ate, how much she hated food in general. She wished there were a pill she could take that would give her the exact vitamins and protein she needed each day, so she’d never have to eat again, but she didn’t want to tell Jenny that. Sometimes she still had trouble swallowing the food in her mouth, all chewed up and disgusting, like it was someone else’s chewed food that Abby was expected to choke down. She still thought of food more as calories than nutrients. But she was doing her best.
The next day Abby ended up alone in the kitchen with Gloria. Abby had just come in from the pool and was drinking ice water to cool off. Gloria was drinking hot coffee, which seemed bizarre on such a horribly hot and humid afternoon. Abby thought about bringing up the family tradition of eating disorders, but didn’t know how. Then Gloria kind of did it for her.
“Are you supposed to be eating?” Gloria asked her. “I can’t keep up with all of the rules for each of you.”
Abby laughed but Gloria didn’t seem to be kidding. “Yeah, I guess I should have some lunch. Do we still have mango and strawberries?”
“I’m pretty sure your mother wouldn’t consider fruit lunch,” Gloria said.
Abby wondered why Gloria blamed Lana for everything, but it wasn’t the sort of question she could ask. “Is there cottage cheese? I could put fruit on that,” Abby said.
“Oh, that sounds good,” Gloria said. “I’ll join you.”
They sliced fruit side by side, and sat down across from each other.
“So you know about my eating issues?” Abby asked.
“Your mom mentioned you were getting help. I guess that’s what everyone does these days. It was different in my time. We toughed things out on our own. None of that paying people to listen to you whine.”
It seemed hopeless, but Abby didn’t want to give up on her grandma. “I don’t whine to my therapist,” Abby said. “But the first few sessions she had me scream out all of my feelings at a pillow.” Abby laughed, speared a strawberry. It was delicious. The cottage cheese she had to will herself to eat, but the fruit went down without much effort. “Maybe that’s more your kind of therapy?”
Gloria smiled. “Is that some new-age therapy technique?” she asked. “Screaming?”
Abby shrugged. “It helped. I think when we carry everything around inside, not just our own stuff but everyone else’s, it gets too heavy, you know? It was a way of dumping all of that. She says we let go of the negative stuff and then fill the empty space inside ourselves up with positive things.”
Gloria sipped her coffee. She hadn’t touched her food. “Sounds like something Becca would say.”
“Are you not hungry?” Abby asked.
“I’m never hungry. It’s like my taste buds don’t work right anymore. Nothing tastes good.”
“I know the feeling.”
Gloria took a bite of food, studying Abby’s face. “Don’t let them make you feel like there’s something wrong with you,” she said. “You’re a beautiful, strong girl. Don’t let anyone take that from you.”
Abby smiled. She opened up her locket and showed it to Gloria, the teenage pictures of both of them, side by side. “Mom says I look just like you at the same age.”
Gloria leaned forward and touched the necklace. Her hands were cold against Abby’s skin. “There’s definitely a resemblance.” She shook her head. “But I was a timid thing at your age. There were so many boundaries for girls then. You have no such limitations. You can do anything.”
Abby liked the sound of that. She wondered if that had something to do with Gloria’s bulimia. That feeling of being trapped.
“So when exactly did your eating issues start?” Abby asked. “My age?”
“What eating issues?” Gloria asked.
“Oh. Um. I . . .” Abby had stepped in it now. She wasn’t sure how to back out of it. But Jenny had told her she might have to make the first move. “Your bulimia.”
Gloria flinched like she’d been slapped. “My what? Whatever made you think that I have an eating disorder?”
“Oh. I don’t. Not now. I mean, I haven’t seen anything. It’s just that my mom mentioned that when she was a kid you—”
Gloria clucked and shook her head in disgust. “Your mom meddles too much in things that don’t concern her,” Gloria said. She rose from the table and put her bowl of food in the fridge. “I’m going to go lie down.”
Abby had trouble finishing her own lunch after that. She ate the fruit, but that was the best she could do. She couldn’t touch the cottage cheese. She set the bowl in the fridge next to Gloria’s.
Abby ducked into the bathroom to change out of her swimsuit. She tried not to look at the mirror. She knew better. She just wanted to see her tan lines. The mirror was above the sink and Abby could only see her upper body in it. Unless she stood on the ledge of the tub. And that was her mistake. She not only saw her tan lines, she saw the fullness of her butt, the doughy spread of her thighs. The cellulite. It was back. She squeezed her flesh here and there, saw the dimples emerge, puckering her skin.
Abby eyed the toilet. It was a nasty thought. She hated throwing up. She’d had the stomach flu before, and there was nothing worse. Why would someone want to feel that terrible? She opened the toilet lid and leaned over. Toilets were just as disgusting as throwing up was, although Gloria had done a nice job cleaning hers. Abby stared into the bowl, the clear water, the possibility. She put her finger in her mouth, poked here and there, but nothing happened. She repositioned herself over the toilet, tried two fingers, reached farther back, jabbed until she gagged. Her whole body heaved upward, but no food came up, just the burn of bile in her lower esophagus. The dry heave hit like a punch to her gut. What the hell was she doing? This wasn’t her. Abby emerged from the bathroom sweating, shaking. She felt dizzy and weak, like she needed to lie down, except she couldn’t sit still. She called Jenny, got her voice mail.
“Help,” she said. “I don’t know how to do this.” Abby hung up and waited. She paced the small livin
g room, sat, resumed her old habit of flexing her abs, glutes, thighs, over and over. Byron was at the pool. Lana and Becca were out shopping. Gloria was napping. Matt was holed up in the guest room. Jack was wandering the condo grounds, visiting with various friends, a daily ritual for him. Abby knew she shouldn’t be alone, but who should she call? Her mom? What would that do? She’d probably just blame Gloria, and they were already fighting.
Abby called Celeste from the patio, paced in the stifling wet heat as she listened to the phone ring.
“Hey, Abs,” Celeste said, light as a breeze. “How’s manatee-land?”
Abby sobbed with relief. She wasn’t alone. She wasn’t totally lost.
“Oh, crap,” Celeste said. “Hang on.” She heard the rustling of fabric, muffled voices, the click of a door being shut. “Food, Gabe, or family?”
“Food,” Abby hiccupped. “I don’t know what happened. I was fine. And then . . .” Abby was crying too hard to finish.
“Yeah, okay,” Celeste said. “Those setbacks are no joke. But here’s the thing. You’re stronger than this thing. You have no idea how strong you are. But I do. Okay? We’ll get you back on track. What happened? Step by step.”
“I went to the pool. I had lunch. I tried talking to my grandma. It was fine until I mentioned my mom. Then she just shut down.”
“Some people don’t want help,” Celeste said. “Be glad you’re in therapy, or that’d be you in sixty years.”
Abby laughed. Celeste always knew what to say.
“And then I went to change in the bathroom. And the mirror was right there. So I got curious. You know, about how tan I’m getting.”
“Uh-oh,” Celeste said. “Is there a scale in that bathroom?”
“No. No scale. Just this little mirror that I can hardly see myself in. But I got up on the tub to see my back, and then I saw my thighs . . .” Abby started crying again.
“Yeah. I’ve been there. What you saw? That’s the hardest part. That reprogramming. You and I have this skewed idea about what our own body looks like. We see other bodies and they look normal enough: skin covering muscles and bones. And we envy them, like they have something we don’t. We see our own flesh and it’s like a container of Crisco. But it’s all wrong. We’re looking in a funhouse mirror at ourselves. Seeing stuff that isn’t even there.”
The Art of Adapting Page 31
