Mom nodded. “Yes. I met with your nutritionist. I got everything, I think.” I wondered what Sally thought of Mom, if she’d had the urge to map out Mom’s meals, too.
I grabbed a glass, filled it with water, and leaned against the counter. “Can I help?”
They exchanged glances. Dad cleared his throat and said, “You just relax and let us enjoy you.” He reached over and, hugging me tight, murmured into my hair, “I love you, kiddo.”
I blushed. “Thanks, Dad.” I felt guilty that I’d lied to him about my afternoon snack. But there was nothing I could do about it now. Besides, it was almost time for dinner. Too late for a snack anyway.
In the dining room Mom set the table with our fanciest placemats, candles, and red and yellow tulips. It looked festive and lovely and had obviously been set with the expectation that we’d be celebrating. But I couldn’t. My stomach was in knots.
When dinner came out, I picked a single spear of broccoli from the bowl in the middle of the table. Then I grabbed my knife, cut off a piece of chicken breast, and placed it on my plate. Then I took a dollop of rice. Both parents stared at my plate, perplexed, like I’d failed a test I’d studied for all night long.
I didn’t blame them. Even to me, my plate looked pathetic. Empty. No one spoke as Mom and Dad helped themselves. Mom took more than she usually would.
In a voice just a little bit too perky, she said, “I saw Shay’s mom, Carol, at the supermarket. She got a new car. A convertible! It’s lovely. Brian, wouldn’t it be nice to have a convertible?”
Dad gripped his fork a little tighter. “Sure, Karen, right after we buy ourselves that summer house on the Cape.”
“I was just making conversation. I’m not saying we have to get one. I’m just saying that a convertible would be fun to have someday.”
“And so practical.” Dad sounded defensive.
“Brian, I was just making a comment,” Mom replied, hurt.
I took a bite of broccoli. “Is something wrong?” I asked.
“Everything’s fine!” Mom leaned over, gave my arm a reassuring squeeze, and sat up straight.
We went back to eating in silence. Well, Mom and Dad ate. I moved the food around on my plate.
Dad put his fork down and exchanged a concerned glance with Mom, whose eyes kept flitting between him and me like she didn’t know whose side to take.
I managed three bites. Mom and Dad followed every single one from my plate to my mouth. The pressure was too much. “May I be excused?” I stood up so fast I knocked my chair over. “Sorry!” I said, and bolted upstairs without waiting for an answer.
They followed me. “Let us in!” Mom said through my closed door. She sounded scared. I wished I’d managed a few more bites.
“Elizabeth, open this door.” Now she sounded pissed. “We are not leaving.”
“We’ll stay until morning, if that’s what we have to do,” Dad chimed in.
I stood on the other side of the door and said, “I’m really tired, guys. We were up late last night saying goodbye.” Another lie.
They went quiet.
“The chicken was really good, Mom,” I said. “Sally said I could take it easy on my meals the first day at home.” Lie number three. “She said you could call and ask her about it if you want.” Aaaaand there was lie number four.
And yet I kept going. “I’ll eat everything tomorrow.” I didn’t know yet if that was a lie. “Don’t worry,” I said in the perkiest voice I could whip together. “Tomorrow is a new day.”
They didn’t respond. I could hear them whispering.
“We need to call right now.” Dad sounded stern. “I know she’s lying. I just know it. They would never let her skip.”
“Let’s give her a chance,” Mom said, her voice soothing. “Being home is a big adjustment.”
“Okay, but I don’t like it. I hope we aren’t making a mistake.” Then they went downstairs, the wooden steps complaining the entire way.
Sometime after midnight I slipped out of bed, pulled on my comfy fleece slipper socks, and crept down to the kitchen, where a manila folder of printed-out menus lay on the 1980s-era beige tiled counter. With the hum of the fridge behind me, I flipped through the pages and pages of calories meant for me. They sped by in the form of lists organized by day and then by meal: yogurt, chicken, granola, cheese, fruits, vegetables, cereal, milk, bread, pita, cold cuts.
It seemed so easy, like it was ridiculous not to do it. I dug through the junk drawer next to the stove where we kept a bottle of Wite-Out. All I had to do was apply tiny white dabs here and there and voilà! More manageable menus. And I wouldn’t white everything out; I’d just trim the calories a bit.
Now, I’d used Wite-Out before. I knew it sucked. But it was like Rational Me disappeared and this stupid, impulsive person took over. Or, more precisely, my eating disorder took over. Maybe this act was her last gasp. I don’t know. But whatever it was, the one thing it definitely wasn’t? Smart.
The first meal, tomorrow’s breakfast, seemed easy enough. I whited out where I’d written one scrambled egg, leaving me with one Yoplait yogurt (any flavor), one banana, and 8 ounces of low-fat milk. Much better.
And then I noticed a little bit of Wite-Out on the black line printed beneath the letters.
Cursing under my breath, I went back to our junk drawer and dug out a skinny Sharpie to fix it. I carefully drew in the line. But instead of writing over the Wite-Out, it went right through the blob and made a weird gray line.
I should have stopped right there. But instead I kept going like I was obsessed or something, blobbing and cursing and scratching my way through the next six days, whiting out one item from each meal.
And then I heard Dad padding across the living room in his slippers he’d had since, like, 1992.
I shuffled the papers together and bumped into a kitchen chair, which scraped on the floor.
“Hello?” Dad called, his steps coming closer.
“Um … it’s just me,” I replied, frantically gathering up the still-wet papers.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Dad looked groggy.
“Yeah, sorry. Did I wake you?” I tried to look calm. I leaned back against the counter like I was just hanging out. In the kitchen. At midnight.
“No, I’ve been having trouble sleeping,” he said. “I often come down for a late-night snack these days.” He smiled and patted his belly, which had gotten soft since I’d been gone.
Great. I’d made Dad fat. The irony didn’t escape me. “I’m sorry, Dad, about tonight. I’ll do better tomorrow. I promise.” It scared me how easily the lying came.
“Okay. Just remember, your mom and I are on your side.”
“I know.” I wanted him to leave, but he walked over to me and he held out his arms and I gave him a quick and efficient pat. I could practically feel the papers drying all stuck together in that horrible pile.
“You want anything?” He opened the fridge.
“No, I’m okay.”
He nodded. “You know, I think I’ll pass as well. Can I walk you upstairs?” He turned around, and I noticed little patches of gray around his temples and dark circles under his eyes. He slumped now, too, even when he was standing. He hadn’t looked like this six months ago. It reminded me of how presidents are elected looking one way and, four years later, they look like they’ve aged a couple decades.
“Thanks, Dad, but I’ll be up in a minute. I was just looking at a magazine.”
“What one?” he asked, his voice suddenly sharp.
“Huh?”
“What magazine?” He studied my face. He knew I was lying.
“Uh, well, I don’t know what happened to it. It was just here.” I scanned the kitchen. There had to be a magazine somewhere.
It didn’t matter, because he didn’t buy it. “Elizabeth, you have a chance here. An opportunity to get better. Don’t screw it up.”
I nodded.
“We want to trust you, but if we can’t, things will change arou
nd here. You know what I’m saying?”
I pictured Mom and Dad monitoring my every bite, forbidding me to close my bedroom door, be alone in the house, or take a walk. I shuddered. No. That couldn’t happen.
“You can trust me, Dad,” I said. And I wanted that to be true. But even more importantly, I wanted to trust myself.
“I hope so.” He reached over and placed his hand on my cheek, like he had when I was little. It felt warm and solid and made me feel even worse for lying.
“Well, good night, then. Don’t stay up too late.” After one last glance around the room, he left, the door swinging behind him.
As soon as Dad was gone I tried to scrape away the blobs and dabs of Wite-Out, but all I succeeded in doing was making even more of a mess, including a tiny hole in one of the papers, which I ended up trying to fix with more Wite-Out. In the end, completely defeated, I shuffled the scarred papers back into a neat pile and trudged upstairs, praying that tomorrow a miracle would happen, that somehow I’d wake up, and the Wite-Out would just be a bad dream.
43
The first thing I smelled the next morning was coffee. Real coffee. Someone was grinding beans. I jumped out of bed, pulled on an old pair of cross-country sweats, and headed downstairs. I was literally salivating. It smelled like heaven. I couldn’t wait to have a steaming, hot cup of real coffee, not instant decaf, in my hand.
It wasn’t until I’d swung around the large, wobbly newel post at the base of the stairs that I remembered. The menus. Shit.
I heard the rattle of the dishwasher closing and for a moment fooled myself into thinking that maybe everything was fine. But when I walked into the kitchen, Mom was standing at the counter, one hand on a bottle of dishwasher liquid, the other flipping through the unruly stack of paper.
My body clenched up. I tried to inch my way out of the room without her seeing or hearing me.
“Elizabeth.” Mom’s voice was quiet. She turned around, and for a second I knew what Mom would look like when she got old. “Why would you do this?” And then, louder, “I don’t understand.”
She’d set the table for one with a white lacy place mat I’d never seen before and a bowl from the pink-flowered fancy china set we only used at Thanksgiving and Christmas. She’d filled it with my yogurt and on a matching plate had arranged banana slices to look like a flower, with one raspberry in the middle. She’d poured my required glass of milk in our finest crystal and even stuck in a paper umbrella, like the kind you get at a beach resort.
“Don’t understand what?”
“Your menus. What happened to your menus?”
“I don’t know. Did something happen?”
Mom looked at me for a long second.
“Don’t lie to me.”
I crossed my arms and glowered at the wall behind her like this whole thing was her fault.
“Explain yourself.”
I didn’t say a word.
“Explain yourself,” she said again. “Now.”
It isn’t what you think, I wanted to say, but deep in my heart I knew it was exactly what she thought. She stared at me for a few seconds more, then dropped the wad of paper in disgust and left the room.
I was going back to Wallingfield for sure.
Back in my room I locked my door, pulled on my earbuds, and put on the J-Curve mix. I closed my eyes and pretended I was anywhere but here. The music was loud but not loud enough to keep me from hearing Mom’s knock. I ignored it. She texted me a bit after that. Come out and talk to me.
I’m sorry, I typed. I made a mistake.
I wondered if I’d get my same room when they sent me back.
I’d read once about how sometimes people who are released from prison commit crimes just to go back to jail. Did I want to go back, too? I pushed my pillow against my face as hard as I could. For the first time in weeks, it smelled like home.
An hour or so later, there was a knock on my door. “Elizabeth,” Dad said through the wood, “open this door right now.”
When I opened it, Dad was standing there, holding a tray with my breakfast on it. He looked even more tired than he had the night before. “You have a two-thirty phone call with Mary.” He put the tray on my desk and sat down on the corner of my bed. I could smell a hint of his cologne. I’d always loved that smell. It made me feel safe.
“Elizabeth,” he said, voice tight. “What the hell were you thinking?”
I stared at my hands and didn’t answer. I don’t know what I was thinking, I wanted to say.
“Answer me. Why did you do that? We just spent thousands of dollars to try to get you well. And then you do this? What are we supposed to think right now?”
“I thought health insurance paid” was the only lame answer I could come up with.
“Health insurance covered two weeks; we had to pay the rest out of pocket.”
I’d heard Wallingfield cost a thousand dollars a day. I’d been at Wallingfield for forty days. Forty minus fourteen was twenty-six, which meant … Holy crap. Twenty-six thousand dollars! That’s why he was so mad at dinner when Mom mentioned the convertible.
“Dad, we can’t afford that. What are we going to do?”
“Well, you got a scholarship, for one thing. That knocked the price down a little.”
A scholarship? Ha. “I always thought it was weird that Wallingfield called them that,” I said.
“I know, right? Terrible name for it.” A trace of a smile appeared on Dad’s face.
I remembered on my first day, when Willa had talked about Wallingfield scholarships, how she’d had a tantrum in the dining room. How scared I’d been.
He collected my tray and brought it to me. “Eat,” he said. I noticed that they’d added the scrambled egg I’d erased last night. I picked up the spoon and took a careful bite of yogurt.
With my mouth full I said, “Dad, I wish you’d told me how much it cost. I would have come home.”
“I didn’t tell you so you would feel guilty. I just—I want you to know that we are seriously invested, with every part of us—whether it be money or our hearts—and we will do anything to get you better.” He paused. “Your treatment is worth it, Elizabeth. Anorexia kills people, and if Wallingfield can help you recover, it’ll be the best money we’ve ever spent. Hands down. But it’s on you now.”
Why did getting better have to suck so much? Usually, if you were getting better from a disease, you felt better, right?
“Dad, I want to be done with this. But it is so hard. So. Hard.” I speared a banana slice and slowly put it in my mouth.
He just listened.
“I liked going into a store and having everything be too big, and I liked feeling my ribs, my hip bones, the muscles in my thighs, my Achilles tendons, and my wrist bones. I don’t want to not feel them. And I loved that my stomach was flat. It made me feel special. I like my bones, Dad.”
Once I started, I couldn’t stop.
“Do you know what type of control it takes to not eat? To sit down with a stomach so empty it makes you dizzy and foggy and think about food every single second of the day and still skip breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert? Every day? Do you? It is so hard. But it’s amazing to know that no matter what your body tells you to do, you can control it.” It was like I was describing an elite athlete, an endurance runner or triathlete pushing through normal physical limits, not someone slowly starving herself.
Dad looked horrified.
“Elizabeth, I wish I could understand better. But what I know is that people beat this all the time.”
“But what if I don’t want to beat it?” There. The words were out there.
He took my hand. “Listen to me very carefully. We are not going to let this disease steal you from us.”
“I know, and a part of me does want to get well. I promise.”
He nodded.
I so wanted to believe what I said next. “Okay, Dad. I’ll try. I promise I’ll try. For you guys.”
Dad stood. “You know, Elizabeth, i
n the end, you can say you’ll try for us all you want, but it won’t mean anything unless you start trying for yourself.”
He stayed with me until I ate every single bit of food on my tray.
At snack time I came down to the kitchen and ate my granola bar and yogurt like a good girl even though I was still full. I ate my lunch, too—a can of Progresso lentil soup, two slices of bread with butter, a cup of green beans with 1 teaspoon of butter, a cup of strawberries sprinkled with ¼ cup of granola, and 8 ounces of milk. I finished in an hour. Mom and Dad were super cheery, saying, “Great job on that one!” after almost every bite, or “Well, there you go! Almost done now!”
Honestly, it was a little ridiculous. I felt like a seven-year-old at a soccer game, being praised just for running in the direction of the ball.
At 2:30 on the dot, Mary called on my cell phone. I took it in my bedroom. She said I wasn’t going back to Wallingfield. Yet. “However, if you decide you have no choice but to relapse,” she said, “you will.”
“I know. I don’t want to.” What I didn’t say was that I still wanted to be thin. I still wanted to fit into the jeans and skirts in my closet. In my heart I knew that to get better I had to dump them all, but a part of me couldn’t bear it. I had worked so hard for those clothes. Fitting into them had been my biggest achievement.
“So what am I supposed to do now?”
“Well, I know this is going to sound anticlimactic, but I think you are just going to have to trust that with time, things will change. The urges won’t be as strong. And it can help to create a distraction tool kit for when you start to feel like you might give in. Do you remember when we talked about it?”
“Yes.” Mary and I had worked on it at our last meeting together. A distraction tool kit is a list of things you can do when the anorexia voice in your head gets loud, like watch a funny movie, call a friend, go to the mall, listen to music, or do yoga. “But what if all that stuff doesn’t help?”
“Well, then you can call us. We have counselors on duty all the time.”
“Okay.” I wasn’t convinced.
“Elizabeth, what it comes down to is this. Wanting to get better, while important, isn’t enough. You have to work to get better. This isn’t a disease where you take medicine and then wait. You have to choose. Your recovery is one hundred percent up to you.”
What I Lost Page 22
