Deep Down True

by Juliette Fay

  At lunchtime Dana popped her head into Tony’s office. “I’ll try to be back by one,” she said, feeling suddenly so tired she was unsure if her legs would carry her all the way to the parking lot.

  Tony nodded, watching her intently, inviting further explanation. It was that same look he’d given her over lunch at Keeney’s that day, and its intimacy unnerved her. But all he said was, “Take as long as you need.” She retreated before the last word was out of his mouth.

  On the drive home, she called Kenneth and told him what had happened, to which his irritable response was, “Why did you let them make the brownies in the first place?”

  “What am I supposed to do—outlaw baking?” she yelled back. Her phone beeped, indicating another caller. “I have to go,” she said, and switched calls. “Hello?”

  “Hi, this is Bethany Sweet!” said a high, perky voice. “Is this Mrs. Stellgarten?”

  How old is she? Dana thought desperately. A teenage therapist is not what we need right now! She was tempted to hang up, but instead she sighed and said, “This is she.”

  “Great!” chirped Bethany. “So glad I caught you! Is this a good time?”

  No, it’s a positively awful time, Dana thought, pulling in to her driveway. But it’s as good as any.

  Over the next ten minutes, Bethany Sweet asked a series of questions, from “What’s Morgan like?” to “Is there anything particularly stressful going on right now?” to “How often do you suspect she’s purging?” It was hard to take her seriously with her high, sing-song voice, but she seemed professional enough, and she made sure to mention her eight years of experience as a child and family therapist. She had a cancellation on Thursday; would that fit Morgan’s schedule?

  Yes, it would. And though Dana still had doubts, it seemed as if she’d been thrown a lifeline, thread-slender though it might be, and she let herself take a deep breath for the first time all day. As she turned to open the car door, Polly’s face, pinched in an apprehensive smile, bobbed into view on the other side of the glass.

  There was the briefest moment when all Dana wanted to do was step out of the car and into the possessive embrace of Polly’s friendship. If there was ever a time when she needed the compact solidity of Polly, her intractable certainty and loud, intemperate love, it was now. But that worried smile, staining her features like an ill-considered tattoo, served to remind Dana of Polly’s crime.

  Dana got out of the car. “I can’t talk to you now,” she said as she strode toward the house.

  “Let’s go for a walk.” The tension in Polly’s voice made it sound like a question.

  Dana started up the steps to the porch. “Morgan’s waiting for me.”

  “Dana,” called Polly, and then more insistently, “Dana!”

  She stopped and turned to face her neighbor. “What.”

  Stance wide, arms taut at her sides, Polly’s pixielike body was braced for an assault. “How is she?”

  Dana could see now that Polly knew. Nora must have called her to vent about the morning’s altercation and spilled the beans about repeating what Polly had said. Dana had never wanted to slap someone so much in her life. “She’s just been thrown to the sharks by her best friend,” she said tightly. “She’s heartbroken.”

  Polly’s chest registered a quick intake of air. “Can I . . . Would you let me talk to her? Maybe I can—”

  Dana could feel fireworks going off in her major arteries, tiny explosions that burned the back of her throat, making her words come out in a violent hiss. “Are you joking? You betrayed her! I told you something in strictest confidence, and you blabbed about it—to someone in your book group, for godsake! Maybe the whole group for all I know—maybe the whole damn town!” Dana came down the steps, her finger shooting out in front of her. “She’s miserable and mortified, and no, you cannot see her, and no, I will not take a walk with you. So you just go home!”

  She went back up the steps into the house and closed the door behind her. Her legs went loose and quivery as her purse flopped to the floor. That’s the second friend I’ve lost, she thought, and the day’s not even half over.

  She never did go back to work. Text messages were crisscrossing Cotters Rock like hungry locusts looking for their next rumor-laden meal. Those that flew Morgan’s way were generally along the lines of Y DID U LIE ABOUT KIMMI?

  Darby counseled, MAYBE U SHUD STAY HOME SICK TOMORO.

  Devynne got straight to the point: U HAV NO FRIENDS NOW LOSR.

  Morgan was wild with shame and worry and was only able to calm herself late in the afternoon by working on her “Timber Wolf: Predator or Prey?” report. Dana called Tony to say there was a bit of an emergency and she wasn’t going to be able to finish out the day.

  “No problem,” he said. He didn’t ask the nature of the emergency.

  Going to bed that night should have been a relief. Contrary to Dana’s every expectation, Morgan fell asleep almost as soon as she lay down, the receding tide of adrenaline that had crashed over her all day sapping her last sliver of resistance. Dana worried momentarily that Morgan had slipped into a shame-induced coma.

  It was Dana who couldn’t sleep, knowing as she did how bad tomorrow would be. It was tempting to let Morgan stay home, let the locusts gnaw at the juicy tidbit of scandal for a day in hopes that they’d be bored of it by Thursday. That’s what her own mother had done after her father was gone: she’d let Dana and Connie stay home. And Dana had stayed, curled under her ballerina comforter, with David Cassidy setting his interminably sultry eyes on her from the poster tacked to her ceiling. She lay there spinning stories in her head that might account for her father’s actions, wanting so desperately for some happier—or at least less drastically tragic—explanation to be revealed. She almost made herself believe that someday there might be. Almost.

  The next day she had dressed so carefully in her best corduroy gauchos and Qiana shirt, working the hair dryer till it burned her scalp as she curled her hair into unwiltable Farrah Fawcett wings. Maybe the entire seventh grade wouldn’t avoid her if she looked normal—better than average but not noticeably different.

  It hadn’t worked. Even her best friends hadn’t known what to do, letting her sit with them at lunch but never actually speaking to her. She would’ve given anything to crawl back home and into that poster, into the tan, soulful arms of David Cassidy.

  Connie declined their mother’s offer of temporary sanctuary and went to school. “It’s third grade,” she’d said. “They probably won’t even know.” When Dana grilled her that afternoon, the only one who said anything was “Patsy McCarthy, who seriously thinks she’s gonna be a saint someday,” Connie had sneered. “Like that’s a real job.”

  Better for Morgan to get it over with, Dana decided, lying tense in her bed. Better not to seem weak or culpable. But the thought of sending her fragile daughter into battle the next day, armed with nothing more than her mother’s belief in her—which amounted to zero in the primitive world of preteen girls—made Dana’s muscles twitch with sympathy pain. Unable to keep her eyes closed for more than a minute, she flung the covers off, went downstairs to the kitchen, poured a tall glass of sugar-free lemonade, and ripped open a bag of potatoes.

  It was a bigger pile than she’d ever made before, and it glimmered on the plate, Yukon-gold nuggets sprinkled with oil as if by benediction. Each mouthful was a seductive distraction from her worries, and it wasn’t until she was pressing the back of the fork onto the last crispy brown remnants that she noticed how heavy and overloaded her stomach felt, as if she’d eaten ball bearings in Pennzoil instead of home fries. No longer distracting, this new sensation amplified her anxiety.

  This is bingeing, came the horrifying thought. I do it, too. Dana let the fork clatter to the plate and swatted it across the kitchen table so it slid to the very edge. Finally she cried the spine-wrenching sobs that had threatened to burst loose all day.

  After the tears subsided, she laid her head on the table, her cheek pressed aga
inst the hard, cool wood. Her thoughts slowed, and she felt a blankness come over her that verged on relief but was also mildly frightening. She wondered if she knew anything anymore, or whether everything she’d previously believed had merely been lies she’d told herself so she could feel normal—her children’s happiness, Polly’s loyalty, Kenneth’s love, her own self-control. All gone.

  A strange thought came to her then, a willingness—a need, even—to know what was real and to understand how what had been true before had changed into what was true now. She’d always been more comfortable dealing in surface realities, she realized, a strategy that had served to protect her from the bleaker aspects of her life. But that wasn’t working anymore. It was time to dig down to the deeper truths.

  For instance, she’d always been an attentive mother, but did that make her a truly good mother? Am I giving Morgan what she needs? she wondered. Do I really understand her? She certainly didn’t understand this need Morgan had to violently force food from her body. It made no sense to Dana, and yet she wanted desperately to understand it. How could something so disgusting possibly feel good?

  She went to the basement, far away from the sleeping children, and into the little half bath by the boiler room. She knelt down in front of the old, rust-stained toilet, lifted the seat, and stared into the bowl. She touched the back of her throat with her finger and immediately gagged, stomach lurching, tongue rising up reflexively to repel the invasion. It felt awful, but she jammed her finger back again and again, each time her abdominal muscles seizing like an overheated engine. Finally some fluid came up and shot into the bowl.

  Okay, enough. I’ve done it. But her gag reflex had been tripped by the rising liquid, and masticated potatoes erupted from her mouth in uncontrollable bursts, plopping into the toilet water and splashing up into her face. The smell, like something that had once been a vegetable but now resembled rancid cheese, assaulted her nostrils. She clutched the spattered rim of the bowl to keep the spasms from propelling her farther toward the water. Stop! My God, stop!

  Eventually the clenching in her stomach subsided, and she sucked in air, letting her hair drip into the mess below her. She clawed blindly for the roll of toilet paper and yanked off a long ribbon to wipe her face. Exhausted, she rose slowly and went to the sink to wash herself.

  I still don’t understand this, she thought. But at least now I know what it is.

  Though she’d given her teeth a punishing brushing before going back to bed that night, the taste in Dana’s mouth when she woke up was like a thick sauce that had curdled. Through the fog that veiled her sleep-deprived brain, she struggled to recall the cleansing tea she’d had with Dermott McPherson. Was that only five days ago? Lemons, she remembered, and she dragged herself downstairs.

  “We’re making French toast!” Grady called as she entered the kitchen. “Look, Mom, look at this. Watch me, I can do it now!” He picked an egg out of the box, raised his hand high, and sent it smashing down onto the lip of the bowl. The egg exploded, shells flying, shiny whites slithering down onto the counter. “Dang,” he muttered.

  “Easy, G,” said Alder admiringly. “What are you, Iron Man or something?” As she reached for the paper towels, she said to Dana, “I think Morgan’s in bed.”

  Dana found Morgan fully dressed, covers pulled up to her chin. “I can’t do it,” she said. And though Dana tried to convince her that it might be even harder tomorrow, Morgan wouldn’t budge. “I just can’t.” And she rolled over to face the wall.

  Dana saw Grady and Alder off to school. There were no lemons in the house, so she made herself some scalding black tea, which burned going down but helped to clear the curdled hollandaise taste in her throat. Her Wednesday List, a running tab of all the household tasks she planned to accomplish on Wednesday mornings before going to work at noon, stared back at her from its place on the fridge, held captive by a plastic BLESS THIS MESS! magnet.

  The phone rang. “It’s me,” said Kenneth. “I moved a meeting so I can come this afternoon while you’re at work.”

  “Thanks,” said Dana. “I left at lunch yesterday and never went back, so I should try to be there for the whole shift today.”

  “I don’t think it’s good to leave them unsupervised,” he said stiffly.

  “Kenneth, if you think for one minute—”

  “Wait,” he cut her off. “I didn’t mean to sound . . . I’m just telling you that I’ll be there.”

  The call-waiting tone beeped. “Fine,” she said. “I have to go. Someone’s beeping in.”

  “I think we should try not to fight,” he announced.

  “Agreed. I have to go.” She hit the “flash” button on the phone.

  “Hey there, gorgeous girl.”

  Who the . . . ? thought Dana for the briefest second. Then she remembered. “Hi, Jack.”

  “So the heck with Hebron Diner today. I say let’s do it up and go to the Sheraton!”

  Oh, for Pete’s sake! thought Dana. Like I have time for daytime sex.

  “For breakfast,” he added quickly. “Not to get a room or anything . . . Unless you want to . . .”

  She closed her eyes, willing herself not to snap at him. “That is such a nice idea, Jack, but I’ve got a bunch of stuff going on here, and I’m afraid I can’t do breakfast at all. Morgan’s home from school—she’s, uh . . . she’s not feeling well—and I have about a million things to do.”

  “Oh.” Disappointment wafted through the phone line.

  “But we’ll see each other this weekend,” she said, guilt squeezing at her. “Oh, wait. I’ve got the kids this weekend . . . Let’s shoot for next Wednesday, okay?”

  “Next Wednesday?” His tone was like Grady’s, incredulous that it would be two weeks until he saw Kenneth again.

  “I wish things weren’t so complicated. But it’s beyond my control—you can see that, right?” He didn’t answer immediately, and the guilt pinched harder. “Jack, I would really like to have breakfast with you. Honestly. I wish we could just book a room and spend the whole day together.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely.”

  And he seemed satisfied, she thought. At least there’s one person who doesn’t think I’m failing miserably.

  The Wednesday List remained a prisoner to its magnet on the fridge, and absolutely nothing got done. Dana sat at the kitchen table in her pajamas drinking hot tea, feeling anxious and angry by turns. What she really needed was someone to talk to, but there was no one to confide in without fear of judgment, or feeding the rumor mill, or both.

  There was one person, though, who would certainly judge her but who would be far more disgusted with all the other characters in this horrible drama, who would happily voice the fury that Dana could barely find words for. She reached for the phone. “Connie, it’s me.”

  “Christ, it’s about time. So much for keeping me up to date on my kid.”

  Dana smiled despite herself. Not calling Connie was the least of the mistakes she’d made. “I’m thinking of taking up smoking,” she said.

  “Wicked,” said Connie. “Marlboro Lights, I hope.”

  “What do you want to hear about first—Alder or my disaster of a life?”

  “Tough one,” said Connie. “Alder being the child of my womb, your disastrous life sounding like an episode of Desperate Cupcakers.”

  Dana clamped down hard on her molars. “You’re my sister, for godsake. Can you please not act like a rabid bobcat for one stinking phone call?”

  There was a brief silence on the other end of the line—the only time Dana could ever remember her chronic smart-ass of a sister apparently nonplussed.

  “Well,” Connie said finally. “I suppose I could give it the ol’ Peyton Place try. What’s up?”

  Dana told her everything, starting with Morgan’s purging.

  “Poor kid,” said Connie. “She turned the gun on herself.”

  “My God, what’s that supposed to mean!”

  “Hey,” said Connie.
“We’re all armed—even you. All I’m saying is, it’s not always easy to keep the safety lock on. Especially for young girls.”

  Dana recounted finding Morgan and Kimmi in the bathroom, Kimmi’s lie, and Nora’s reaction.

  “Holy shit!” yelled Connie. “She’s a fucking rottweiler with a Prada bag! You should seriously kick her ass!” Her curse-strewn indignation was a balm to Dana’s wounds.

  About Polly’s defection all Connie said was, “Wow, I didn’t see that one coming.”

  “Me either,” said Dana, feeling her chest tighten. “She’s my closest friend.”

  “I always kinda liked Polly, but that’s a hell of a screwup.” Connie asked about Grady, and Dana told her about his trouble with friends and his desperate bids for Kenneth’s attention. “Fucking Ken,” muttered Connie. “Guy’s a total numbnuts.”

  “I know you never liked him, but—”

  “Of course I never liked him. Jesus, Day, could you have picked a less imaginative guy?”

  Day, thought Dana. She hasn’t called me that in years. “Oh, imagination. I didn’t realize that was your big beef with him,” she teased.

  “Biggest, maybe, but certainly not only.”

  “Well, my list has grown some, too. I met his girlfriend—complete bimbo. That’s what he left me for, a hairdo in a puffy coat.” It felt good to snarl about Tina. But it also made Tina more real. Dana blew an aggravated sigh. “I think they’re getting serious.”

  “Bound to happen,” said Connie. “He finally sank to his rightful level.”

  A companionable silence fell between them. After a moment Connie said, “Okay, can we talk about my kid now, or did you have any other assholes to tell me about?”

  Dana hesitated.

  “Christ,” said Connie. “How bad is it?”

  “Well . . . it was bad, but I think she’s doing better now. Connie, you have to promise you won’t flip out. She’s handling it, but she has to heal at her own pace.” When Dana finished recounting Ethan’s cruel abuse of Alder’s friendship, Connie let out a string of expletives that was almost poetic in its lush, descriptive imagery.