I lean toward Gloria. “Why were you there that night?” I wait for an answer, because I can’t not, then go on. “You should have been at home. You should have had your dinner with whoever Leah is and then gone home. Where you’d be safe. Why didn’t Leah make you go home?”
“What?”
I jump to my feet, startled, and spin around toward the speaker, then fall back into the chair before I pass out. “You scared me.”
The short blonde steps in front of me. “Sorry. But were you talking about me?”
“Are you Leah?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I was. I guess it’s not your fault,” I say, aware I don’t sound sincere and not caring, “but I just wish you’d made sure she got home instead of wandering off to—”
“Wish I made sure! More like you should have. I wasn’t with her, you were.”
I stare at her. “I wasn’t.”
“You were. We had made dinner plans but she cancelled them that afternoon saying she was going out… with…”
My confusion must be clear on my face because she says, “She wasn’t with you?”
I shake my head, carefully. “She said she couldn’t see me because she was seeing you.”
Leah takes the other chair at Gloria’s bedside, and a flash of annoyance hits me because that’s where Remy always sits. Knowing that’s ridiculous, and not caring, I say, “Are you telling me the truth?”
“Of course. Are you?”
“Of course!”
We sit in silence, then she says, “So Gloria lied, then. She was somewhere else. Where? And why wouldn’t she tell us?”
I have no response so I don’t bother saying anything. Eventually Leah sighs. “I guess we’ll never know where she was.”
I turn sharply toward her. Ignoring the sparkles of dizziness dancing before my eyes, I say, “Why not?”
She looks taken aback. “Well, because…” She gestures at Gloria in the bed. “It’s not like she’s coming back, is she? I mean, after all this time you have to think—”
“Shut up! Never say that,” I hiss at her. “Of course she’s going to wake up. She is. Any day now. Unless you screw everything up. If you’re going to talk like that in front of her you need to get out and never come back.”
She stares at me, shock and a rising fury in her eyes, and I know she’s considering hitting me. I almost want her to. Maybe a fight right here will wake Gloria up.
But instead she gets up and stalks out.
After informing the nurse who arrived concerned about how quickly Leah had left that Leah no longer has permission to see Gloria, I sit in silence with my sister. She will wake up. She has to. I’m doing everything I can, and obviously so are the doctors, so she will.
Both because I don’t want to lose her, and because I have to know why she’d lied and where she’d gone, why she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I can’t live with another “because bad things happen sometimes” non-answer. I won’t let that happen.
Chapter Seventeen
When I arrive at work the next day, feeling dopey from having taken a second sleeping pill a little too late last night because I couldn’t drift off, I find a closet full of new clothes and a Jaimi full of terror.
“She has to announce it soon or I’m going to lose my mind,” she says, waving her arms emphatically enough that she flings the tangerine she was holding at me so it bounces off my chest.
“I’m so sorry!” She scoops the fruit off the floor and stands looking horrified. “I didn’t get any on you, did I?”
I look down at my dress. “Nope. And even if you had I could change.”
She shoots a panicked glance at the closet then back at me. “I’m too nervous even to go through those. If I didn’t get past the application stage I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Remember that you weren’t supposed to be applying at all and get over yourself? Knowing she won’t want to hear that, I instead say, “Well, we’ll hear soon, I’m sure. Maybe when she comes up to see the clothes. Which’ll be soon, so we’d better…”
She nods, then says, “Hey, do you want a tangerine?”
I raise my eyebrows. “The one you threw at me? No, thanks.”
She blushes. “Obviously not that one. I brought a bunch of them in today. They’re seriously good.”
I haven’t had anything to eat yet today, and I do like citrus, so I say, “Sure, thanks.”
Jaimi goes off to fetch me a fruit and I go through the closet of sample clothes.
Once again there are no size six items, but this time that doesn’t matter. My hand lingers on an amazing size-zero dress in exactly my favorite shade of hunter green, but though I’d love it I can’t try it on. The dress I have at home is the goal. If I discover myself a size zero anywhere but with that dress this might all not work out and it has to work out.
I eventually manage to move past the green dress and take the newly arrived tangerine and a dress in size two and a suit in four back to my office, and unlike the last time I tried on stuff at work I come strutting out into the common area feeling happier than I have in weeks and almost unbearably proud of myself.
“Oh, Valerie,” Jaimi breathes, checking me out in the sleek cobalt blue dress that skims lightly over my newly thin body. “You look spectacular.”
Since I know the new suit she’s got on is also a two, I’m not surprised that she doesn’t seem jealous. Andrea the receptionist and our other coworkers, though… they compliment me too but I can feel the silent envy beneath their words and I love it. I hadn’t realized before how often I’d felt their disdain when I put on a size six or even a four, or how much I’d hated it, but seeing their jealousy today wipes all that away.
I hear an unmistakable voice say, “Ladies, a moment of your time,” and turn to see Elle standing at the entrance to our area. Her eyes flick over me and I see the corner of her mouth lift but she doesn’t say anything. No matter: I know what she’s thinking and I couldn’t be happier.
Unless Gloria woke up, of course.
Realizing I’d forgotten Gloria for a moment in my pleasure shocks me, and my legs shake as I move to stand with the others before Elle. How could I be so horrible, so selfish?
“We’ve gone through all of the applications for the CFO position,” she says, and I try to focus on her instead of how much I hate myself right now. “Many were excellent, and since we also looked at external candidates it was by no means an easy process to narrow it down to three. However, we can’t have a hundred or even twenty presentations to the board, so three it is.”
She takes a deep breath, and Jaimi beside me sways like she’s going to pass out. I half wish she would. Elle wouldn’t approve of such a lack of poise. I myself am calm.
“We are moving forward,” Elle says slowly, almost as if she’s enjoying playing with us, “with one external candidate, a CFO from another company with excellent experience. And with two internal candidates, to whose behavior and work we will be paying special attention over the two-and-a-half weeks before the presentations.”
She pauses, and my calm vanishes. What if I’m not one of the two? What will I do then? This is my plan and I have to succeed.
“Jaimi,” she says, smiling at my protégée, “congratulations. I look forward to seeing your presentation.”
Jaimi gives a strangled gasp and manages to thank Elle as everyone claps. I clap too, and try to look delighted though I’m shocked. I’d never have expected her to get through to the next level. She’s not anywhere near as good a candidate as I am and yet she’s made it through. I need to make sure everything I do is flawless from now on. Assuming I get through. But I have to.
Once the room goes silent again, Elle waits a few more moments, and I find myself swaying just as Jaimi did. It has to be me. It has to. My empty stomach churns and I hope nobody can hear it making those disgusting noises.
Elle’s eyes sweep over the group, then focus on me. “And Valerie as well.”
When my dream comes true.
My second-biggest dream.
*****
For the rest of Friday, I take in no calories all day, other than whatever was in that tangerine and the artificial sweetener in my three iced coffees. Whenever I think of food, which is often, I make myself focus instead on how close I am to my goal and on the way Elle acknowledged my willpower but called me “almost-perfect” and on how I need to be perfect to make sure Jaimi doesn’t beat me, and all of that helps me not eat.
So does knowing I’m going to try on the dress hanging over my fridge.
I go straight home instead of to the hospital, because I can’t bear to wait another moment, and strip off my dress in the downstairs bathroom then stare at my body in the mirror. Have I reached my goal? Am I now a zero?
I’m scared to check, but I need to know, so I put my new blue dress in the dry-cleaning hamper since I wore it all day then walk in my bra and underwear up the stairs to the kitchen, tugging up my underwear as I go. I bought smaller ones a few days ago but haven’t worn them, for the same reason I didn’t try a zero at work. This dress here, this is the be-all-and-end-all, and I will change nothing else until it fits.
The first time I tried it on, I couldn’t get it over my hips. This time, it slides up easily.
My heart racing, I push my arms through their holes and hoist the dress up and onto my chest. No problem there, but the real trick is the zipper.
I have trouble grasping its annoyingly small pull, and need a brief break when scrabbling my arms around behind my back makes me feel dizzy, but eventually I catch hold and draw it up as far as I can reach. Then I go at it again from the top, and pull hard.
It doesn’t move.
“Damn it,” I mutter, feeling sick and useless. I so want to be there. I need to be there. What else can I do?
I look down at myself to see how over-stretched the fabric has become, and realize it hasn’t.
When I try to pull the zipper back down, it won’t go that way either.
Could it be…
With a little more wrangling, I discover that the zipper is indeed caught on the dress’s lining. I untangle that then pull it up again, and this time it zips right to the top.
I am in.
I am a size zero.
I go to the foyer mirror, laughing and fighting back tears at once, and realize I might actually be smaller than a zero. The dress doesn’t exactly hang loosely but it certainly isn’t clinging to me either.
Staring at myself, I think of a question I hadn’t considered before: what happens now?
I’ve achieved the goal. But unless Gloria woke up in the moments since I put on the dress, which doesn’t seem likely, I haven’t achieved the real goal.
Plus I don’t look that skinny. A lot thinner, sure, and my collarbones are more pronounced, but as I examine myself I can see extra fat on my arms. I’m clearly not doing myself any damage with the diet.
So I decide to keep going.
Chapter Eighteen
I sit on the living room couch in my size zero dress, feeling like I’m in an airport lounge waiting for my flight to be called so my trip can begin, and after a while I realize that what I’m really waiting for is news of Gloria. I reached size zero, so something should be happening.
Shouldn’t it?
Before I can let that thought call into question everything I’ve been doing, I jump off the couch and hurry away to the hospital. I haven’t seen Gloria yet today, so getting over there now is a good plan no matter what else might be going on.
When I walk into her room, I find Remy sitting at her bedside.
With tears pouring down his face.
Terror sweeps me. Did I take too long to lose the weight? “What’s happened?”
He turns to me and the glow in his wet eyes takes away my fear even before he says, “She woke up.”
I rush forward, then have to drop into the chair beside him as dizziness from the sudden movement floods me.
He laughs and throws his arm around my shoulders. “I know, I almost passed out too. But she’s in there. I knew she was but it’s so good to see it. She’s finally getting better.”
Because of me.
It has to be because of me. The timing is too coincidental otherwise.
Such a feeling of pride and safety and joy tears through me that I grin and bounce in my chair then turn to hug him. I did it. I actually did it. Now that it’s worked I realize that part of me never really believed that becoming a size zero would help Gloria, but it did. I gave it everything I had and it worked. We squeeze each other and I say, “Tell me everything. What did she do? What did she say?”
He draws back and blinks at me. “Nothing.”
I stare at him, my happiness wobbling. “But…” Didn’t he say she woke up? “What happened, then?”
“She opened her eyes,” he says, smiling at me then breaking our embrace as he turns to Gloria. “Didn’t you, Glorious? I said we needed some sort of sign that you were okay in there, and you opened your eyes a crack and looked right at me. Didn’t you, you wonderful girl?”
I wait.
He seems to be finished.
“That’s it?” I say eventually. “She opened her eyes? A bit?”
He raises his eyebrows. “That’s a damn good start. The doctors are thrilled. They’ve been keeping her eyes untaped during the day, hoping she’d open them, and apparently it means all sorts of good things, that she can do that.”
Though I’ve read enough about comas to know she wouldn’t come out of it singing and dancing, I somehow expected more than just briefly opened eyes. Still, if the doctors are thrilled…
I turn to my sister. “Gloria, if you’re not too tired,” I say, so I’ll have an excuse to still know my dieting is worthwhile if she doesn’t cooperate a second time, “I’d love to see you open your eyes again.”
For a second, nothing. Then her eyelids flutter partway open.
“Glorious,” Remy whispers, as my heart skips a beat then pounds hard. She responded. She’s in there. I became a size zero and the same day she woke up. The connection is undeniable.
I stare into her eyes, trying desperately to see some sign of her usual sparkle and energy, but before I can find one she slowly moves one of her hands up toward her mouth where the feeding tube is.
“It’s scratchy, isn’t it?” Remy murmurs, his voice full of tears. “On your poor throat. I’m so sorry, honey. But you need it, for now.”
Her hand falls back to her chest and her eyes close.
I consider asking her to open them yet again, but I don’t want to push her too hard. “She’s got so far to go,” I say, an unexpected sadness rushing through me. “So far. I’m scared…”
I can’t finish, but Remy doesn’t need me to. His arm goes around me again and he draws me close, and as I let my head fall onto his shoulder he says, softly but with determination, “She’ll get there. We’ll do everything we can for her, and so will the doctors. If we all do our best, it’ll happen.”
For a moment I don’t think I have the strength to do my best any more, but he squeezes me even tighter and says, “She’s already making such good progress. What we’re all doing is working, and we can keep it going,” and I give my rubber band a small snap to stop myself thinking bad thoughts then make myself lift my head from his shoulder and say, “Yes. We can.”
My diet is making a difference for Gloria. I have to keep it up.
And I can.
I’ve been strong and determined since Anthony died. I will pour all o
f that determination into my diet, and I will succeed. For Gloria.
Chapter Nineteen
On Thursday evening I sit at Gloria’s bedside working on my promotion proposal and enjoying an unusual amount of mental energy. I saved all of my 200 calories for the day until tonight in the hopes that such a rush of food would perk up my brain, and the protein bar I’ve just eaten seems to have done exactly what I wanted. I like my mind feeling this awake, even though eating so much at once feels strange.
Plus, it got my mom off my back. As she and Dad were getting ready to leave after my arrival she ran her eyes over my body in the wonderful hunter green dress that I claimed from the work freebie closet on Monday and said, “You’ve lost so much weight, Valerie! I’ve lost some too, from the stress, but nothing like you. You are eating, right?” I brandished the protein bar at her and said, “Of course. Just about to suck this down,” and she smiled and looked relieved and to my surprise gave me an awkward hug when she left. First one in as long as I can remember.
Remy, who I’ve seen every day since Gloria woke up, is more comfortable giving me affection than my parents are. He and I hug hello and goodbye now, and he even kissed me on the cheek yesterday in excitement after Gloria managed to say, “Rem,” which we both took to be his name. She hasn’t said anything else but she opens her eyes almost every time anyone asks, and her coma score is now 10 instead of the dreadful 7. We still need her to give more of a clear sign that she hasn’t suffered brain damage, but I’m sure she will. Everything is getting better now, thanks to my diet.
“You’re doing great, Gloria,” I say, patting her hand where it still lies curled in on her chest. If she’d stop doing that she’d gain at least another point on her score, but I can’t bring myself to ask her to move her hands in case she can’t. “You’re so smart and strong.”
Holding Out for a Zero Page 10
