The Last Chance

by Rona Jaffe

  “Where did you read that crap?”

  “Jill, don’t you even feel hungry?”

  “I eat.”

  “You can fool them, but you can’t fool me. You don’t eat.”

  “All right, I’m not hungry.”

  “If you get any thinner they’ll have to put you in the hospital and force-feed you,” Stacey said.

  “I’d just throw up,” Jill said calmly. “You know I throw up if I ever have to eat something I don’t want to.”

  “Then they’ll put you on I.V. They’ll stick needles in your veins. Aren’t you a little bit concerned about that?”

  “Nope,” Jill said cheerfully.

  “I looked up your symptoms in a medical book at the public library,” Stacey said. “You have adolescent anorexia nervosa. They can’t cure it. Only you can cure it. Either that or you die.”

  “Well, we’ll worry about that later,” Jill said. “Why don’t you go out and play doctor with some nice little boy?”

  “They’ll put you in Payne Whitney,” Stacey said. “They’ll have you committed. They’ll put you in the psycho ward.”

  “Do you mind getting out of my room? I have to study for a French test.”

  Stacey stood there, sturdy and adamant, her hands thrust into the pockets of her faded jeans, but her eyes were scared. “I don’t want you to die, Jill. You’re the only sister I’ve got.”

  “Be a good girl and make me a milkshake, Stace. With the raw milk and one fertilized egg, and no sugar. Okay? You can bring it in and I’ll drink it while I’m studying.”

  Stacey came back in a little while with the foamy milkshake. “I’ll just wait here while you drink it,” she said suspiciously.

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “No.”

  “Well, help yourself to a chair.” Stacey set the milkshake on the table beside Jill and sat down, waiting. Jill read her French book and every few minutes she took a little sip. She couldn’t drink it faster, but if she waited too long it would get into her body. She finished the whole milkshake and forced a smile. “Okay? Now take the glass away and wash it, please.”

  The minute she heard Stacey go into the kitchen Jill bolted for her bathroom and threw up. She was getting quite good at it, she could almost throw up at will. She flushed the toilet, brushed her teeth, and came out of the bathroom feeling her old healthy self again. Stacey was standing in the doorway.

  “I knew you’d do that,” Stacey said.

  “I didn’t do anything. You’re crazy.”

  “Who is it you hate so much?” Stacey asked, and she looked as if she was going to cry. “Is it Mom? Is it yourself? Is it me?”

  “I don’t hate you, baby. You’re the only sister I’ve got.”

  “Then who is it? Answer me!”

  “I would if I knew,” Jill said.

  “Well, I know.”

  “Then you tell me,” Jill said lightly.

  “I can’t,” Stacey said. “First place, you wouldn’t listen. Second place, you’re supposed to find out for yourself. Third place, I’m not a doctor. And fourth place, I’m only thirteen years old and I don’t know how to handle this.”

  “We have to have a talk, you and I,” Ellen said to Hank. She saw the look of caution cross his face, first fear and then the bland mask she was so used to. He had to know about all those phone calls from her last ex-lover, and now he was afraid she was going to say something about them. He would never really know her. As for the calls, she would have to put a stop to them somehow. None of her other former lovers had ever been so recklessly indiscreet as Jim. Poor Hank. Maybe he was afraid she was going to say something about the terrible state his finances were in. About the ever more frantic calls from his office. That spring was here and nothing had changed. He should know her better than that. She had put her paychecks into their joint checking account without a word and let him handle all the bills as usual. But lately she couldn’t even ask him to sit down and have a talk with her without seeing that look on his face.

  “All right,” Hank said.

  “It’s about Jill. You’ve noticed how skinny she’s gotten.”

  “I thought all the kids wanted to look like that.”

  “Hank, she’s emaciated! None of the other kids look like that. Jill’s starving herself, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “Tell her to eat,” Hank said.

  “Don’t you think I have? I’ve nagged her, ordered her, tried to cajole her, even offered her a car next year if she got up to a hundred pounds. A hundred pounds is not too much to ask. She just kept wiggling out of the discussions. It’s as if all Jill’s life and energy have gone into this kind of secret thing she has.”

  “Should I talk to her?”

  “If you think it would help.”

  “Maybe she’s sick,” Hank said. “Did you take her to the doctor for a checkup?”

  “She went five months ago, he yelled at her and told her to eat, she promised to try, and then she lost six more pounds. She’ll say anything to please what she thinks of as the enemy.”

  “Well, what did the doctor say to you?” Hank asked.

  “He said if she doesn’t grow out of it she ought to go to a psychiatrist.”

  Hank looked aghast. “We don’t have the money, Ellen.”

  “Maybe she could go to a clinic.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this before?” he said. He seemed angry.

  Ellen shrugged. “I don’t think she needs a psychiatrist. I thought I could handle it myself. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”

  “I’ll talk to her tomorrow,” Hank said.

  “Why can’t you talk to her tonight?”

  “Because I don’t know what I’m going to say yet. You just sprang all this on me.”

  “You have eyes. You could have noticed.”

  “I guess I did notice, but I have more pressing problems, in case you forgot, Ellen. I have worries about my business.”

  “I know that.”

  “Girls … I leave girls to their mother.”

  “Terrific,” Ellen said. “Just terrific. Another one of those archaic ideas you got from your father.”

  Hank chose to ignore that. “Maybe Jill’s scared of boys,” he said thoughtfully. “She never dates. I never see any boys around here. Maybe she’s just at the age where girls are afraid to turn into women.”

  “She’s nearly sixteen,” Ellen said. “In case you don’t know, that is a woman. Jill’s a beautiful girl—why wouldn’t she want to grow up and date? It’s the ugly ones who are afraid.”

  “Well, maybe we just don’t know her very well,” Hank said. “I sort of don’t know her. Kids keep a lot of things inside them. Everybody does. We all have little private problems.”

  “Maybe she’ll confide in you. God knows, she’s being suddenly very difficult with me.”

  The next evening, after Ellen prodded him, Hank went in to Jill’s room and had a ten-minute talk with her. “Well?” Ellen said.

  “She says she doesn’t have any problems.”

  “And …?”

  “And she said she eats organic food at the health-food bar near her school and she isn’t hungry when she comes home. She said the only reason she looks thinner is she’s growing.”

  “She’s not growing,” Ellen said savagely.

  He looked at his hands, large and white, blond hair on the backs, powerful hands, now so powerless. “I asked her about a psychiatrist and she said we can’t afford it. She’s right.”

  “Did she want to go?”

  “No. She said it was silly.”

  “Did you talk to her about boys?” Ellen asked.

  “Me?” Hank sounded horrified.

  “It was your idea.”

  “But you’re her mother. You talk to her about boys.”

  “You were a boy once. Why can’t you do it?”

  Hank looked at her as if he wanted to hit her. Ellen had never seen such rage on his face in all the years she had be
en married to him. “Because I can’t do it,” he said. He sounded as if he were choking. She was suddenly, for the first time in her life, afraid to pursue the discussion further with him for fear he would lose control and do her some violence. She had never thought Hank had it in him. She wondered if this dark flame had always been waiting in him or if it was the result of all the strain he’d been under. No matter what it was, she wouldn’t want him to start on her with those big hands. She gave him a conciliatory smile and got up and left the room.

  They did not discuss Jill again. Ellen thought of calling their family doctor and asking him if he knew any psychiatrists who would take Jill for a reduced fee, and then changed her mind. She couldn’t debase herself in front of the doctor, admit she couldn’t handle her own daughter. Maybe Jill just needed to meet a nice boy. If Jill became interested in someone and he told her he thought she should gain a little weight, maybe she’d do it for him. When she had been Jill’s age all she thought of was making herself attractive for boys. There were boys in Jill’s school. All she needed was one.

  When the phone rang Ellen at first didn’t want to bother answering it. Then she thought it might be important, so she did.

  “Can you talk?” It was Jim Vector, already in her past, still clutching onto the present as if he had a share in it.

  “I think you have the wrong number,” Ellen said.

  “When can we talk?” he whispered. He sounded hoarse. “I have to talk to you.”

  “Please don’t call here any more,” Ellen said.

  “You won’t talk to me in your office. I have to talk to you.”

  “No, Jill dear, it’s just a wrong number,” Ellen sang out, and hung up.

  She felt as if everything were closing in on her. They all wanted more of her than she could give. She was so nervous she thought she might burst out of her skin, and smiled wryly at the thought of bits of herself scattered all over her already messy kitchen. Where’s your mother? Oh, she fell apart—everybody wanted a little piece of her and it was the only way she could manage it. Ellen clutched her arms around her body to still the trembling. She needed to get away again, the only way she knew how, the only way that worked. She needed someone new.

  She felt the same way the next morning and was distracted at the office, and when lunchtime came she decided to go to the delicatessen in the neighborhood and buy something to take back to her desk. She’d let the work pile up all morning and had made mistakes, gazing off into the distance, hardly aware that her fists and teeth were clenched until she felt her nails digging into her palms and realized her jaws hurt too. Maybe she ought to buy some tranquilizers. She’d eat a sandwich and finish what she had left undone before she ruined the whole afternoon too.

  The delicatessen was crowded, and Ellen was going to leave without buying anything when she saw Kerry Fowler. He was wearing a turtleneck sweater and jeans and he looked gorgeous. She had never realized before how beautiful he really was.

  “Well, hi,” he said with a big grin. “Are you going or coming?”

  “I don’t know,” Ellen said. She smiled back at him. “I didn’t have anybody to eat lunch with so I thought I’d buy a sandwich, but it looks as if the whole world had the same idea.”

  “I live around the corner,” he said, gesturing with a hand that had a filled paper bag in it. “I finished a chapter just now so I thought I’d take a break.” So that was where he kept his own apartment.

  “How is it going, the book?”

  “Today was good.”

  “You should celebrate,” Ellen said. “It’s not every day a person can say something good happened.”

  “You sound down.”

  “I just have too much work. I’d like to forget it all for an hour.”

  “Well, listen,” Kerry said, “I have enough here for two, and nobody should have to eat lunch alone. Why don’t we go to the museum and eat in the sculpture garden?”

  “It’s too cold,” Ellen said. “I’d like to get a bottle of wine and go someplace warm and quiet.”

  He looked at her and she was aware of those catlike eyes. He seemed able to look right through her. Did he do that to everyone? If he could see through her he’d invite her to his apartment “around the corner.” He was Margot’s. She shouldn’t be doing this. She hadn’t done it.

  “If you don’t mind a mess, we could go to my place,” Kerry said. “There’s even a liquor store on the way.”

  “Terrific,” Ellen said lightly. “If you play your cards right I’ll pay for the wine.”

  Ellen was astonished at the perfection of Kerry’s small apartment. It was immaculate, even the stacked pages beside the typewriter, and as carefully thought out as if a professional architect lived there. It was in a brownstone that was more like a semi-tenement than a town house, but he had scraped the old walls down to the brick, built cabinets, lowered the ceiling so he could hide lights behind it under smoked glass, and he even had plants. His apartment obviously meant a lot to him. No wonder he didn’t want to give it up when he went to live with Margot. It was personal, a work of art.

  “I can’t get over your apartment,” Ellen said in awe.

  “I’m thinking of getting rid of it,” he said.

  “And live with Margot?”

  “No, of course not. I mean get another apartment. This one only interested me when I was restoring it. It was like a hobby. But now that it’s finished I’m bored with it.”

  “I think you’re in the wrong profession,” she said. “You could be an interior designer.”

  “It’s just a hobby. I have a lot of hobbies. Would you like to see my drawings?”

  She smiled, thinking about the old etchings joke, and then she realized that of course he was too young to know anything about that. She was almost too young. He took a large scrapbook down from one of the shelves and opened it on the coffee table. His drawings were in pen and ink. Some were of mechanical contraptions and others were of anatomy—arms, legs, torsos, necks, and a few sketches of a man’s face.

  “They remind me of the sketches of Leonardo da Vinci,” Ellen said. “Did you study art?”

  “No,” Kerry said. “The model for all the anatomy was me.”

  “The face did look familiar,” Ellen said.

  “Well, the rest would too if you knew me better.” He smiled. “Shall we have lunch?”

  He put away the scrapbook and put place mats and plates on the coffee table. Then he unloaded the paper bag: cold cuts, fresh bread, coleslaw, pickles. Ellen had bought the wine already chilled, so she opened it and found two glasses in his tiny kitchen. Even his dishes and glasses were perfect.

  “That’s going to be too much food,” she said.

  “It’ll keep.” He sat on the floor beside the low table and she did too. His rug was very soft. He sipped at his wine and looked at her with those eyes that knew everything.

  She sipped at her wine too, and neither of them made a motion to take any of the food. Ellen hated the smell of garlic pickles and couldn’t figure out why he’d gotten them until she remembered that of course he’d bought all this food before he ran into her. The garlic pickles on the table in front of them made the lunch seem somehow very innocent. She wasn’t going to do anything Margot could hate her for. Nobody was going to be hurt. But her heart was pounding wildly.

  Kerry reached over and snapped on his hi-fi, a contraption with reels of tape and all sorts of things Ellen didn’t understand. Soft music came from the walls. The sort of thing Jill played. But here it sounded completely different. She tried to think of something appropriate to say to show her knowledge, but he seemed so relaxed that it didn’t seem necessary. For the first time in her life Ellen found herself on the battleground of the adversary. She was not going to be able to win him with the wit and wisdom of Ellen Rennie. This boy was a generation away from all that. He saw directly into her need and was neither frightened nor thrilled by it. He absorbed it into his being the way he absorbed the music and the wine, and he wait
ed, looking at her, until her hand began to shake and she had to put the wineglass on the table.

  He moved to her with the same ease with which he had snapped on the hi-fi and kissed her, lowering her to the rug. His lips were soft and sensual and he kissed her for a long time, slowly, and Ellen remembered those hours in those cars twenty years ago and was filled with unbearable excitement. His hands moved over her, taking off her clothes, touching her, taking off his clothes, kissing her the entire time, while the music never stopped, and she came under his hand the way she had so many years ago with hands she’d forgotten, and then she came under his mouth, and then he entered her and she came again and again until she thought she would die of it. How did he know what she liked?

  They lay there on the rug afterward and he kept tracing the line of her body with his finger like a sculptor or a painter. Ellen wondered if she was going to end up in his sketchbook. He had a lovely body, much nicer than hers. She ran her fingers over it and he immediately began making love to her again. She had no intention of going back to the office this afternoon.

  At half past six Ellen took a shower in Kerry’s plant-filled bathroom, being careful not to let her hair get wet, and prepared herself to go home. When she came out of the bathroom he had cleaned up the living room, put away the uneaten food, and washed the glasses and plates. It was as if she had never existed. She supposed he had to go meet Margot for dinner. She was surprised at the force of the jealousy that hit her just when she should have been feeling the most guilty. She had gone to bed with Margot’s lover, not just once—which might have been rationalized as an accident—but over and over for hours. What good would it do to say that she had been driven to this by pressures in her unfortunate life? She could have chosen a dozen other men, not Margot’s man. Still, Ellen felt more resentment than guilt, because she had the feeling that Kerry didn’t care about her. He liked her enough, he’d enjoyed this afternoon as much as she had, but she didn’t mean much to him. He wasn’t in love with her the way all the other men always were. She felt enraged and in pain, a pain that was very like love.

  He had found the way to get to her again. He had been unerring about her from the moment they met today. He had read her sexuality and her need, and he had fulfilled them, and now he read the secret of her insecurity and had chosen not to help her, and so she felt as if he had conquered her. He’s a horrible person, Ellen thought. He’s going to hurt me, break my heart. I don’t want any part of him. She wanted to cry. He had no right to take control. The control had to be hers, because she had the most to lose, the husband, the family, while he had nothing but Margot, whom he obviously didn’t care much about anyway. He was utterly free, he could take her or leave her.