Holding Out for a Zero

by Wardell, Heather

  Nico’s sad face floats before my eyes. If he works with an eating disorders therapist, he probably knows enough about that stuff to know I’m not quite right. I’m not sick like he implied, of course, but I’m not quite healthy either. If I’d eaten his cookie, if I hadn’t yelled at him and run off, would we be sitting together somewhere right now? Would he have his strong arm around me?

  Anger rushes through me, pushing away his image. No way. Guy like that for sure has a wife, or at least a girlfriend. Someone who’s all gushy and emotional and free and happy.

  I don’t want to be that. I have to be in control.

  A voice in my head, which sounds a bit like Nico’s, says one word.

  “Why?”

  My mind goes as blank as the white paper bag.

  I stand, blankly, until the fridge begins dinging because it’s been open too long.

  I shut the door and return to the couch, where I wrap a blanket around me against the chill the fridge’s cold air gave me. My body begins to warm but my mind is still frozen.

  My reason for being on this diet in the first place is gone: no matter how small I get, Gloria will still be dead. And my career-related reason is gone too. But I haven’t quit the diet. So…

  Okay, sure, I can see still being on it might not be healthy. But… an eating disorder? I may be thinner than I’ve ever been before, but I can eat. Of course I can. Choosing not to doesn’t mean I have a problem. In fact, it probably means I don’t, because I’m not obsessed with food.

  So Nico’s an idiot, and I’m fine.

  I get up and throw the sandwich from the fridge into the garbage, since it’s already a day old and is no doubt getting gross, and as I turn to go back to the couch I spot the container of tea on the counter. And the calorie information on its side.

  Ten calories per cup.

  I stare at it. I didn’t know. I took in those calories and didn’t even realize it. This, Andrea’s sugar syrup… how many other times have I been this wrong about what I was taking in?

  I dump the last few swallows of tea from my mug down the sink, and immediately feel better. When I keep my life steady and solid, everything feels better. I can rely on myself. Other people might come and go, usually go, but I’m here and I always will be.

  True, my dieting didn’t save Gloria, but it might just save me.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I lie in bed the next morning staring at Remy’s library painting, which I put where I could see it when I woke like he’d tried to do with Gloria. I miss him, but I’ve now run out on him twice and punched him once too, so we probably aren’t going to be friends any more.

  Friends. I never had many, but I’d at least had some before I got really committed to my career a few years back. Then I ended up with only Mara, and now I don’t have anyone.

  Who cares, I tell myself as I haul my exhausted body out of bed. I’m better off on my own. Other people will leave me. I can only trust myself.

  My phone rings, and I glance at it then sigh when I see it’s Mom. “Hi,” I say, trying to sound glad to talk to her.

  “We need to go through… through Gloria’s things,” she says, and I can hear the tears she’s trying to hold back. “This is the only weekend your dad and I have time in the next while, so if you do too I guess maybe the three of us…”

  I can’t do it with them, can’t watch them devastated over Gloria and know they wouldn’t have been anywhere near as devastated if it had been me. Plus, I think with a shivery shock, what if Gloria kept sketches of her painting, that horrible painting, with her other stuff? If they see it they’ll know, and I don’t know yet whether they should. “Why don’t I do it? She might have… well, there could be stuff she wouldn’t have wanted her parents to see.”

  Mom sniffs. “That’s true, actually.” A fake cheeriness oozing from her voice, she says, “Grandma once decided to put away my laundry for me and she found some lingerie we’d both have rathered she didn’t see.”

  Ordinarily I’d shudder at the idea of my mom wearing sexy stuff for Dad, but I don’t have the strength. “Okay, so I’ll do it.”

  “Are you sure? Don’t just throw it all away, okay?”

  That hurts, that she thinks I’d simply discard everything Gloria cared about, but I try to hide it. “I won’t, promise. Just the things we don’t need to hang onto. And then later you can go through the good stuff and see what you want.”

  “We could come over tomorrow at six, if you think you’ll be done sorting by then.”

  I’d meant ‘later’ in a far more abstract sense, not tomorrow, but it might be easier to wrap it all up this weekend so I agree then get off the phone and begin calling around until I find myself a cargo van to rent for the day.

  I take the subway to pick up the van in Brooklyn then drive, carefully since I haven’t even driven a car in months never mind a van, to the storage locker. Everything fits into the van with room to spare, and as I go back to my place I feel sad about that. Gloria had always seemed so large and dramatic, and in the end everything she left behind hardly takes up any space at all.

  Except for that awful painting. It’s taking up no end of space in my heart and mind.

  I need five trips to get everything up to my apartment using the service elevator I should have booked but didn’t, and then I spend an hour returning the van and getting myself back home, and the whole time I think about the painting.

  Give it to my parents? Keep it myself? Tell Remy to burn it after all?

  I don’t think I can do that, but I also can’t imagine letting my parents see it and can’t imagine keeping it a secret either. No option seems right, and all have the possibility of becoming a disaster in a way I can’t anticipate.

  Fortunately, I don’t find anything about the painting as I sort the contents of Gloria’s boxes that day and the next. I do find a half-empty box of condoms and a few sex toys, which I tuck deep into a ‘throw away’ bag as I send up a silent apology to her for having seen them.

  The rest of her stuff isn’t that personal, but all of it was hers and I don’t enjoy digging through it and making judgements on whether it’s worth keeping or donating or whether it should simply be thrown away. Finding a blue dress with three missing buttons, which are undoubtedly the ones Remy and I found in her button bag, again makes me wish I could see him, but I know if I do he’ll just want to know what made me run off and I can’t face that.

  Though the whole thing hurts, I get through it by reminding myself over and over of how strong I am for not eating and how I can therefore handle this.

  On Sunday, I finish sorting everything with only enough time left for a long hot shower before my parents arrive. They show up right on time, carrying pizza slices from the place down the street from me.

  “Aw, thanks,” I say, hoping I sound happy instead of horrified, “but I’m not hungry.”

  Mom’s eyes skim over me. “Really? But you love their pizza.”

  “I know,” I say, glad I’m wearing a sweatshirt and now-baggy jeans so she can’t get a good look at me. “Had a huge lunch, though. You guys can eat, of course.”

  I fetch them plates, and sit on the couch watching while they each eat two slices. The remaining two, the ones for me, lurk on my coffee table and seem to be singing to me, beckoning like sirens luring me to my doom.

  “Not even one?” Mom says when they’ve finished eating and I haven’t so much as reached for a slice.

  I shake my head. “I’m fine. Really.”

  “Valerie, just come and eat like a normal person,” Dad says, wiping grease off his chin. “You’re upsetting your—”

  “Mike!”

  Dad blinks. “What?”

  She stares at him with that “what on earth is wrong with you?” look wives seem to be so good at giving their husbands.

  “What?” Dad says again. “I was just saying—”

  “Well, don’t.” She turns to me. “Ignore him. But…” She twists her napkin between her hands. “
You know you don’t need to lose any more weight, right? You know you can eat?”

  “Of course I can,” I say. “And I do. I’m just not. Right now.”

  She doesn’t look happy, but she lets it go. I show them the things I’d designated as potential keepers from Gloria’s stuff, and Mom picks up a silver necklace with a pendant that looks like a paint palette.

  “I wonder why she had this,” she says, clasping it around her neck then brushing a tear from her eye. “She didn’t paint, did she?”

  If I admit that she did, I might have to show them what she did, and then their image of her will be forever changed. I shrug, unable to speak.

  “Well,” Mom says, touching the pendant where it lies against her chest, “it’s pretty anyhow.”

  We finish going through everything, and they insist on taking away the discards so I won’t have to be bothered. I thank them, although with no job and nothing else to do I’d been counting on that task to get me out of the apartment some time this week.

  At the door, Dad squeezes my shoulder and Mom pulls me into an awkward hug. Unusually, though, she holds on, and even pulls me closer, rather than quickly releasing me.

  “You looked so healthy before…” Her voice is a rough whisper, her words falling over themselves like she didn’t plan to say them. “I can’t lose another child.”

  I bury my face in her shoulder, guilt and misery and confusion overwhelming me. “I’m so sorry about Anthony,” I mumble, hot painful tears rising. “And Gloria. I didn’t mean to—”

  She squeezes me so tightly I couldn’t talk even if the emotion hadn’t been stopping me. “Gloria wasn’t your fault, at all. And Anthony… we forgave you for that ages—”

  The shock of hearing her say they forgave me slaps the tears away. They did blame me, then. Like I’d blamed myself.

  If I tell, right now, that Gloria dropped the balloon, what will happen? Will they believe me? Accuse me of smearing my dead sister’s name to clear my own? Cry, get angry, run away, never speak to me again?

  I don’t know, and I can’t handle doing something that could go so many different ways, so I take a deep breath to pull myself together and do the only thing that seems like it can’t go wrong. I ease myself back from her and say, “Thank you for coming, and for taking her stuff away. I appreciate it.”

  Mom reaches for me again, her face pale. “Honey, I didn’t mean to say—”

  I shake my head and take a step away. “It’s fine. I know. It really is.”

  She still looks horrified but she reaches out again and gives my shoulder a squeeze and says, “Okay. But you… you know what I meant, right?”

  I nod. I sure do.

  “Are we taking the extra pizza?” Dad says, clearly confused about what’s happened between us.

  “No, it’s in the fridge,” Mom says firmly. “So Valerie can have it later when she wants it.”

  “Thanks,” I manage, and I must sound halfways normal because she nods and they leave.

  I wait until I’m sure they’re gone then rip the pizza up and flush it down the toilet. I could have just thrown it out, but shredding it, getting its delicious sauce and toppings all over my fingers and then disposing of it all without so much as a nibble or lick, calms me somehow.

  Once the toilet is clear, I wash my hands again and again until I’m sure there isn’t even a bit remaining for me to accidentally eat when chewing a fingernail, then go out to the couch and curl up in a ball under my blanket.

  They did blame me. No wonder our relationship has always been distant. They took care of me because they had to, but there’s a reserve between us I’d never sensed between them and Gloria.

  Gloria, who’d deserved the reserve.

  Should I have told them? I don’t know.

  I pull the blanket up to my chin. Why did she have to say that? Just that one sentence, not even a whole sentence, and everything’s changed.

  My phone, on the coffee table in front of me, rings. Sure it’s Mom calling to apologize some more, I pick it up and say, “Hi again.”

  “Hi,” comes a deep and definitely non-Mom voice. “Is this Valerie?”

  I sit up straight. “It is.”

  “Valerie, it’s Nico.”

  When I don’t speak, because I have no idea what to say, he goes on with, “Friday, on Staten Island?”

  “Oh, I remember,” I say, amused despite everything that he’d think I’ve forgotten. “It’s not every day I spill people’s coffee on them. I guess you’re calling about the dry cleaning?”

  “No,” he says, and somehow even that one syllable sounds nervous. “I’m calling because I didn’t tell you why I was there that day. And I should.”

  “Why?” I clear my throat. “I mean, okay. If it matters to you.” It doesn’t much matter to me, but his voice is even better over the phone and he’s a distraction from everything else so I don’t want him to go.

  “It does. I was there to see my brother.” A pause. “My brother Remy.”

  I’m on my feet before I know it, shocked, and then fall back onto the couch as I nearly faint.

  “Valerie?”

  “Gimme a sec,” I mumble.

  After a few deep breaths I’m calm enough to say, “How did you figure out I know Remy? And did he tell you why I was running away?”

  “Well, with coffee all over my shirt I had to tell him something,” Nico says, “and when I described you he said he thought he knew who you were. Your name clinched it, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” I echo, unable to think of anything more intelligent.

  “And,” he says, “as for why you were running, he told me about your sister’s passing, which I’m so sorry about, and that her painting upset you. He didn’t say anything further. I don’t actually think he knows why it upset you like that.”

  “No,” I say slowly, “he doesn’t.”

  We sit in silence for a few moments. I have no idea what to say, and I still don’t know why he called.

  “Anyhow,” he says eventually, “I’m wondering what you’re doing for lunch tomorrow.”

  I blink. “Why?” Before he can speak, I realize what he means. “Oh, so I can give you the money? Yeah, that’s fine. Where should I meet you?”

  He clears his throat. “That’s not it, actually. I was hoping you’d have lunch with me. No charge for the dry cleaning if you do,” he says, and I can hear a smile in his voice. Nervousness, but also a smile.

  “Why?” I say again, more bluntly this time. “So you can harass me for not eating?”

  “No,” he says softly. “And I promise I won’t. Eat as much or as… eat whatever you want. But I would like to see you. Does tomorrow work for you?”

  I picture him, those crinkles by his eyes and the way his mouth pulls into a half smile, and though something about meeting him terrifies me I say, “Yes. Yes, it does.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Everything about meeting him terrifies me when I’m nearly at the restaurant he suggested by email barely five minutes after we got off the phone yesterday. I’ve never been to Brash, but I know it’s one of those hugely stylish New York restaurants filled with actors, athletes, and bone-thin models, and I always feel out of place in those. Of course.

  I feel out of place in the subway too, since it’s so hot out that everyone else is wearing short sleeves or sleeveless tops but I’ve got a long-sleeved cotton sweater on over my long skirt because I’m cold all the time and because I don’t want Nico to see my body and judge me for it.

  And since the restaurant is only a block or two from Union Square, I come up out of the subway at the same spot where I was standing when I first heard about Gloria’s assault. It feels like a million years ago, but it’s all too fresh and real when I walk past it, and then past the coffee shop where I bought the bagel I took to the hospital.

  I’m shaking, both from the weirdness of the situation and from the walk to the restaurant, by the time I reach Brash, and seeing Nico standing outside o
nly makes me shake more. He wears a pale purple shirt and darker tie with a black suit, and I’ve seen advertisements on Times Square billboards with less attractive men.

  Actually, that’s not true. Objectively, he’s good-looking but not a supermodel. But the way his eyes warm when he sees me and the smile he gives me make him hotter than every Calvin Klein underwear model combined could ever be.

  “Valerie,” he says, holding out his hand. “Thanks for coming.”

  I shake hands with him, though it feels weird not to hug him.

  Maybe he feels the same way, because he lays his other hand on my shoulder and gives it a squeeze.

  Or, I realize with horror, maybe he’s measuring me through my sweater to see how bony I am so he can tell his partner about the new eating-disorder client he’s found.

  I pull back, hating the thought, and he releases me and says, “I’m glad you’re here. Shall we?”

  I nod, because running away on the crowded sidewalk won’t turn out well, and he opens the door for me.

  Inside the place is indeed as self-consciously fancy as I’d anticipated, all polished stone and carefully roughened wood, and as I try and fail to remember when I’d last set out with the express purpose of eating a full meal Nico says to the skinny woman with the model good looks at the reception desk, “Nico Hendrickson, for two.”

  She smiles at him, ignoring me as I’d have expected her to do, and checks a book before her. “For the buffet, yes?”

  Nico nods, and she murmurs, “Follow me,” and leads us to a spot not far from three huge rustic wood tables which I can almost hear groaning from the weight of all the food they hold.

  Once we’re seated Nico says, “I hope this is all right. They’ve only recently started doing a lunch buffet here, and I’ve wanted to try it, and plus it lets us eat as much as we want.”