by Jessica Pine
“I don’t know,” I said. I hadn’t felt so useless since the night they called and told us about Bryan. I didn’t know anything and she didn’t look like she was in any shape to give me the Cliff Notes version.
“My best friend is in the hospital. In the ICU,” she said. “In New York. And I didn’t even realize.” She kicked the side of the abandoned car. She kicked it again and again, until she was screaming and I had to hold her still.
“I’m so fucking stupid,” she said, through clenched teeth. “Holy shit. What the hell is wrong with me? You don’t eat New York pizza and hotdogs and ice cream and still stay a size four. All those baby cups of frozen yoghurt...what was she eating when I wasn’t there?”
I didn’t understand yet, so I just said, “Do you want to go to New York?”
She looked at me like I was a lunatic. “I can’t,” she said. “I’ve only just come back – I’m all out of cash. And she’s all alone there. Her parents can’t fly any faster.”
“Listen to me,” I said. “I’ve got the money.”
She shook her head. “Clayton, you have a hole in your floor.”
“I know that. On reflection, maybe I should have paid the professionals to fix it, but it doesn’t matter right now. Come on. Let’s go get your stuff.”
She was on autopilot, which was just as well. I drove her back to the house and she kind of drifted around her bedroom and bathroom, picking up the things she needed and dumping them on her bed, where I picked them up and put them in a holdall.
We were almost done when her Aunt poked her head around the door. “Lacie, what are you doing now?” she said.
“New York,” said Lacie, grabbing a pair of Converse.
“What? Why? Honey, we have perfectly good clinics here.”
“We don’t need a clinic,” I said. “We’re having this baby.”
Those particular words fell out of my mouth right at the moment her Dad appeared in the bedroom doorway. He looked at me and looked at Lacie and said “Okay – does someone want to fill me in here?”
“I’m pregnant,” said Lacie. “And this is not the way you were supposed to find out.”
He stood there and stared at me. I think this was the moment where I was supposed to say something dumb and noble like ‘I’m going to take care of her’, but nothing sprung to mind. “New York?” said Gus, turning to his daughter. “But you just got back.” I could forgive the poor guy for fixating on the small thing – the big thing was, after all, kind of big.
Chapter Eleven
Lacie
Courtney looked like a busted marionette, tubes and wires and things all tangled round her sad, skinny limbs. She'd never looked that thin to me until now; now that I knew her condition was life threatening. In my blissful ignorance I'd thought she looked perfect, like she could have stepped out of the pages of Vogue. How sick that the picture of beauty we were all taught to aspire to was that of a woman on the brink of death.
"My ribs are killing me," she croaked, as I fed her ice-chips.
"They're broken," I said. "Some enormous Swede gave you CPR - probably saved your life."
"Oh," she said, in a blurry kind of voice. "He's nice."
"He's pretty cute. He wants to know if he can bring you flowers."
"Flowers are good. CPR is better." She blinked slowly at me. "I thought you went back to Vermont?"
"It was a short stay. I was trying to text you and then this nurse called me from your phone." I wanted to ask her why she hadn't talked to me, but I knew why. Besides, there was no use blaming her for something she couldn't help. It's not her, said Niamh - the kind Irish nurse who had called me - it's the disease. Eating disorders take over. They devour you. They make you obsessive and turn you into masters of the art of pretending everything is okay, and that it's perfectly normal to live on half a plain chicken breast and a tiny scoop of yoghurt. And nobody knows. Not you, probably not even her parents.
"Where's my purse?" she said. "My keys are in there. Take my keys. You're staying at my place - I insist."
"Thank you," I said. "You and your perfect manners."
She shook her head against the pillow. Her hair was an unCourtneyish dirty blonde shade. "It's nothing," she said. "Where's my Mom?"
I squeezed her fingers. "She's coming, honey. She's on her way."
"You'll wake me when she gets here?"
"I will. I promise."
She nodded and closed her eyes. She'd been drifting in and out all evening. Despite everything the nurse had told me I still wanted to shake her, ask her why the hell she hadn’t told me she was so sick.
Clayton was snoozing in a plastic chair in the hallway, his jacket bunched in a roll under his neck, his mouth wide open and his snores echoing off the shiny floor. “Sorry,” he said. “Dozed off.” I sat down beside him and he held my wrist, like he was taking my pulse. “You should be resting,” he said. “In your condition.”
“Don’t start that. I’m fine.”
“Shouldn’t you see a doctor?”
Now I thought about it I realized I probably should. I’d need scans, tests. “When we get back,” I said. “Is it worth mentioning that I hate hospitals?”
Courtney’s mom, Angie, arrived a few hours later. I was fuzzy around the edges by then and she told me to take the keys and get some sleep. I remember dozing in the back of a cab and Clayton prodding me awake to ask me if we were in the right neighborhood.
I woke up the next morning in Courtney’s guest bedroom. Her apartment was weird and empty without her. I went into the kitchen and found Angie staring into the fridge.
“There’s fucking nothing in here,” she said. “Nothing but cooking spray and Stevia.”
She was still wearing the clothes she’d been wearing at the hospital – t-shirt, jacket and jeans. Her heels clicked on the kitchen floor and I saw she was wearing cowboy boots. I’d only met her a couple of times before and as far as I knew she was never one to wear make-up. Her long, coarse dark hair was caught in a clumsy knot at the nape of her neck, which combined with the length of her face reminded me of Virginia Woolf. But when she took off her glasses to rub her tired eyes I saw that they were blue-green – slanted. The same as Courtney’s.
“You’re so good to come,” she said. “The worst thing was thinking about her being all alone.”
“I know. I was the same.”
She gave me a polite thank you hug. “It’s okay,” she said. “Joel got in a couple of hours after me – he was up in Washington pitching a new app. He’s with her now.”
“Is she gonna be all right?” I asked.
Angie shrugged. “We’ll see.”
“It’s insane,” I said. “I was here for nearly two weeks. She was fine. She was eating.”
“She was purging,” said Angie, her hand on my shoulder. “You mustn’t blame yourself. She’s done this before. If she has to put on a show for visitors she goes harder on herself when she leaves. Three hundred calories a day and eight hour workouts.”
“She never told me,” I said, feeling stupid and helpless. “I’m such an idiot. I never even guessed.”
“It’s not your fault,” said Angie. “It’s the disease.”
“Yes. The nurse told me.”
“She was doing okay in college. We thought she’d left the worst of it behind her, but here we are again.” She shook her head and sighed. “I never wanted her to go into modeling – such a toxic environment for someone with food issues.”
College. Wow. How sick had she been before college? She’d never let on, and I was so mad at her for never telling me. But I knew. I knew exactly why she’d never said a word.
“Listen, I’ll grab some groceries,” I said. “Let me know what you want...”
“God, no. Please. Let me take care of that. I can’t thank you enough for coming out here again.”
“It’s weird. I’m back and forth like a crazy person.” Doubly weird being talked to like I was an adult who knew what the hell she was doing. I t
hought of the mess we’d left behind us in Vermont. I wondered if my Dad had managed to close his mouth yet.
I went back into the guest bedroom, where Clayton was still in bed.
“Black,” I said, handing him his coffee. “Obviously there’s no cream and I have no idea how you feel about Stevia.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Is that like Splenda? My Mom has that.” He sipped and shuddered. “Oh yeah. That’ll straighten your spine out.”
I flipped open the Venetian blind. The sunlight beamed in on him, slanting across his jaw and lighting up the threads of copper in his two-day beard. I liked the dent in his chin; I hoped our baby would have it too.
“How’s she doing?” he said.
“I don’t know. Very sick. Sicker than I ever knew.”
“You didn’t know she had...issues?”
I shook my head and climbed onto the bed beside him. “No. She never told me.”
“Huh.”
“Huh?”
“No, nothing,” he said. “Seems we have that much in common – a taste for secretive friends.”
“We do.” I warmed my hands on my coffee cup. Everyone knows your damage. Wasn’t that what Steve had said? That had settled under my skull and bounced around in my head all day yesterday.
We went out to find something to eat. I was hungry and fantasizing about insane breakfasts – waffles piled high with blueberries, cream and syrup, bacon, sausage and eggs, like I could eat for her, like I could help. But when we sat down my stomach rolled over at the smell of cooking bacon and my hormones had the last word. Clayton ate chocolate chip pancakes while I nibbled on a slice of dry toast.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “You’re quiet.”
“Queasy is all.” I had this weird feeling like all of this was happening to someone else, the feeling I’d never been able to quite shake after my mother’s death. It was all so...dramatic. So big. I was too small for such trauma, but there it was, following me around again.
I leaned back against the shiny red plastic of the booth seat. My gut did another slow roll and my head felt like a lead balloon. A waitress stood poised with a coffee pot, and it was all I could do to nod.
Clayton glanced up, concern written all over his face. I managed to say, “I need some air,” and then went flying out of the door with the kind of speed you can only muster when you know you’re going to puke. I was still dry heaving into the gutter when he came rushing out after me. I could hear a voice behind me – the New York voice of a guy sitting behind a cardboard sign. “Ah, Jesus, lady – what do you wanna go and do that for? Fuckin’ junkies.”
There were dots and lines at the edges of my vision. I thought of that stupid painting at the exhibition – just a vanishing point and a big bunch of lines. I was too small as it was. Insane to think that inside me was the beginning of another person, no bigger than a bean. Someone else, another speck under an enormous sky, a microdot upon a microdot on an infinite universe. A whole huge, tiny life.
The cold air cleared my head a little. “I’m not a junkie,” I said, turning to the homeless guy. “I’m having a baby.”
He raised his grizzled eyebrows. “Yeah,” he said. “Good luck with that.”
“I know,” I said. “We’re all very small.”
Clayton rubbed my back. “You okay?” He took a bill out of his wallet and handed it to the guy with the sign.
“It’s the little things that count,” said the homeless guy. “Little pieces of fuckin’ paper. Thanks, man.” He gathered up his bundles and shuffled off.
I took in another deep breath, but it was full of fumes. The people on the streets overwhelmed me. “This is really not good,” I said.
“How long does it last?” said Clayton. “The morning sickness, I mean.”
“Oh, only for the first four months.” I had to laugh. I could barely speak four words without turning sick again.
“Why don’t we go back to the hospital? Maybe they can give you something.”
“I don’t want anything. Just some ginger ale. And some fresh air.”
He screwed up his nose. “Yeah. One of those is going to be easier than the other – just so you know.”
He tried anyway. We took the subway to Central Park and I almost felt normal again, once I had trees over my head and could see at least ten different shades of green.
“I don’t think I’m cut out for city living,” I said.
“That’s kind of a relief,” he said. “Because I’m sure as hell not.”
I laughed weakly. My lips felt rubbery and my face was hot. “It’s funny – the last time I was here I kept thinking about you.”
“Yeah?”
“Mmm-hm. I went to this stupid ‘art’ exhibition. It was such a pile of pretentious crap. I couldn’t stop thinking about what you’d say about it. And Aunt Cassandra – weirdly enough.”
“Your aunt is pretty unforgettable,” he said.
“I hear she called you an asshole too.”
“That she did.”
“She’ll do that,” I said. “Everything’s very simple in her world. You can stay pregnant or get an abortion. You can be straight or you can be gay. You can get your shit together or be an asshole. Simple.”
“I have to ask,” he said. “Do you think I’m an asshole?”
“No. No more than anyone else.”
“And what about you?” he asked, in a neutral, strangely psychiatric tone.
“Me?” I said. “Yeah. For what it’s worth, I do feel like kind of an asshole right now. I was here with her for nearly two weeks and I didn’t notice a goddamn thing.”
“It’s not your f...”
I held up a hand. “I know, Clay. I know. Everyone keeps explaining it to me, and then I feel like an even bigger asshole for making her problems all about me.”
“I think you’re allowed to feel hurt,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulders. “You think you know someone and then...”
“True. But I get it.”
“Get what?”
“Get why she kept it to herself all those years,” I said. “It was actually something Steve said – when you and Trey had gone out to smoke. He was saying about small towns, how ‘everyone knows your damage’. His exact words. Everyone knows your damage. She was probably just sick of being Eating Disorder Girl. That’s why she never told anyone. Do you know how weightless I felt when I first went off to college? Nobody knew I was that girl whose brother had cancer. It was the most liberating feeling. Nobody was looking at me with that mixture of pity and horror – like they’re sorry for you, but they quietly wish you’d go the fuck away because you remind them that the things they fear the most can happen to real people. People like you. People like them.”
Clayton sighed. The year was rolling on – for the first time his breath made a little cloud in the air. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. I know the look. You see it a lot in military families. After Bryan was....well...”
I don’t know what set me off this time, thinking of Courtney, or of poor Bryan, or the simple fact that Clayton understood. The tears came pouring out all the same.
“It’s not so bad,” he said, wiping my eyes. “You’ve seen him – he’s doing great. Probably gonna try out for Rio in 2016.”
I sniffed and snorted and snuffled like a troll. I’d never been a pretty crier and lately it was like there was nothing under the surface but tears. Now I was crying because Bryan was such a total fucking huge hero and I was just that girl whose brother had cancer, whose mother had killed herself. And it had all been so long ago and I was still crying about it – like an idiot and a failure.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish I was brave.”
Clayton stared at me for a moment and then laughed – one of those beautiful, thoughtless laughs that burst out of him like sunlight. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he said.
“Don’t laugh at me, you douchebag,” I said, even as his laughter caught up with me. Holy shit – was it going to be like this
for the whole time? My emotions were like a weathervane.
“I’ll laugh at you if I want to,” he said. “Were you even there? In the Fuzzy Duck?”
“Oh, that,” I said, blowing my nose. “That wasn’t bravery. That was English Lit 101.”
“I beg to differ.”
I finished the ginger ale I was drinking, and dropped the cup in the trash.
“Does that help?” he asked, handing me another tissue.
I nodded. “Yeah. I feel almost human again. Like I could cope.”
“You want to go back to the apartment?”
“Not right now. Just let me clear my head some more.”
We sat for a while in silence and watched dog walkers and joggers, watched European nannies ferrying the babies of the rich around in their five thousand dollar strollers.
“You know I’ll probably never afford one of those, right?” he said, jogging my thigh with his.
“Which? A Bugaboo stroller or a Russian nanny?”
“Both.”
I shook my head. “Well. We’re young. There’s time. The New York Times bestseller list awaits.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Wow. You’re serious?”
“I’m knocked up. Time to get serious. Anyway, like Cassandra says – how hard can it be?”
Clayton rubbed my upper arm through my jacket. “Okay,” he said. “Don’t hit me...”
“Oh well, now you know I probably will.”
“...I know. I’m sorry. But you know your aunt?”
“Yes.”
“Are those all her own boobs?”
I hit him anyway.
Epilogue
Two Years Later
Clayton
There comes a point in your life when you realize you are officially too old to sleep on couches. For me it came when I rolled off Steve’s couch and found that not only was my back all kinds of fucked but my neck was stuck in the weird position it had been forced into my the arm of the sofa.
I tried to crack it back, but a bolt of pain shot down into my shoulder and made my posture look even weirder.
So I shuffled into the kitchen and the first thing Steve said was “Let me guess – you need a brain for your master?”
