The Art of Starving

by Sam J. Miller

  “Thanks for the pastry, Mrs. Murat!”

  She smiled, bowed her head slightly. When the door had shut behind her, Tariq said: “After World War Two, the rise of the labor movement had made manufacturing and other industries too expensive for American corporations to continue making the same obscene profits.”

  “Fascinating,” I said, and set the cookie down as discreetly as I could and scooted my beanbag chair alongside his. Slid my hand under his shirt, watched him flinch from my cold fingers. He giggled, a boyish sound from a body that was so close to being a man’s. He shifted, straightened out, spooned his body behind mine. Kissed the back of my neck.

  His heat melted me. His touch triggered terrifying things. I wanted him so bad it physically frightened me. The wanting was different, now, from when I lay alone in my room in the dark and mentally superimposed his head over scraps of dirty movies.

  Was this how girls felt all the time? Torn between fear and desire? Wanting, but afraid to show it, because they weren’t supposed to want?

  This was beautiful. This moment was perfect.

  But what if we could stand in the sun, walk through the halls, hold hands? The knowledge that Tariq and I were together made me stronger. But if everybody knew it—if everyone saw me like that—

  “Hey,” I said, and poked him in the pectoral.

  “Hey yourself.”

  I poked again.

  “What’s up?”

  “I don’t like keeping this secret,” I said. “Keeping us secret.”

  “Me either,” he said.

  “Then let’s not.”

  Tariq sighed. “Where’s this coming from?”

  “Take it from someone who knows. Coming out is never as bad as you think it’s going to be.”

  “Just because it wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be for you, doesn’t mean it won’t be worse than I think it’s going to be for me.”

  “But you won’t be doing it alone,” I said. “And you know I’ll murder anyone who so much as looks at you cross-eyed.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, but there was a pause before ridiculous, like maybe he’d been going for stupid.

  I turned around, scooted down to rest my head against his chest, looked up at the sharp stubbled mountain range of his chin, the smooth sheer slope of his neck.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know. It’s a process. You’re not there.”

  “I’m sorry, too.”

  We lay like that. Everything was perfect, as long as I focused on the moment. The room. But I couldn’t go ten seconds without my mind starting to wander out of the room or worry about the future or stress out about the past.

  And then—as clearly as if it had happened again—I heard the crash from the night before. My mother, falling. In the morning there’d been no evidence, but I knew what had happened. My mom was drinking, and I couldn’t find a thing to do about it.

  Why couldn’t I stay in the moment? Why couldn’t my mind remain there, cuddling with my beautiful secret boyfriend? I wanted to choose happiness. I really did.

  “You didn’t eat your cookie,” he said, pointing to where it lay on the floor, looking sad.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll take it with me.”

  He frowned, upset with me. Something was wrong, and he could see it. My heart hurt harder. My head spun.

  “We should get you home pretty soon. My dad’ll be back.”

  “So?” I said. “I want to meet him.”

  “You two would probably get along great, actually,” Tariq said, laughing. “He’s cool with everyone. Everyone but me.”

  I shut my eyes, focused on my abilities, and tried to imagine him, this template of what Tariq might become, this ogre whose expectations were a weight threatening to break Tariq’s back—

  And then, as my head spun faster, as the black stars bloomed and swelled all around me, I saw him. Not as he was, but as he appeared to Tariq. A towering monster with massive forearms, all muscle and rage. I saw him lock Tariq out on the back deck no matter how cold or how hot it was, and watch through a window while his son practiced with the soccer ball, banging on the glass if Tariq stopped for a second.

  No wonder he could bounce the ball so well, I thought, could spin it on his fingers or on his face. That gorgeous graceful motion ceased to be beautiful and became sad, the tricks of a trained dog.

  “Are you crying?” Tariq asked.

  I jerked my head away. It broke the spell. “No, just tired,” I said.

  We were quiet for a while.

  “What do you think my sister’s doing now?” I whispered.

  “Conquering the world,” he said.

  “Kicking someone’s ass,” I said.

  He kissed my forehead. His lips were very warm and I was very cold. “Don’t worry about her,” he said. “Your sister’s strong.”

  I shut my eyes, and I could smell her. Maya, just out of reach. I could hear her voice. A strummed acoustic guitar; waves crashing; a seagull shrieking.

  I’m so sorry, I thought, reaching out, certain that if I just pushed a little harder I could push my arm through the fabric of space and find her, wherever she was, and seize hold of her, and pull her back to me, and hug her, and everything would be fine—

  “You okay?” Tariq said. “You sort of . . . went away. For a second. I was talking, and it was like you weren’t even here.”

  “Sorry,” I said, still reaching, still aching for her. In my mind, I went to the beach. The dream place where I last saw her.

  “What’ve you got there?” Tariq asked, tapping my hand, which hovered in the air holding tight to something.

  I opened my folded hand to find a fistful of sand.

  “What the hell?” he said, laughing. “Where’d you get that? Have you been carrying it around with you?”

  “Sort of,” I said, shivering now, so badly the sand began to spill out onto the beanbag between us.

  Tariq touched the sand with two fingers, and pulled them back fast. “It’s freezing cold. How can that be?”

  I said nothing, because what I would have said was Ha-ha, no big deal, I just opened up a tiny wormhole and grabbed it off a frozen beach somewhere near Providence, that’s all.

  RULE #37

  Your phone offers dozens of apps that are supposed to help you recover from an eating disorder. Most are probably used for the opposite of that. My calorie counter has come in super handy as I obsessively track each and every thing I eat, the better to constantly whittle down my diet to nothing.

  DAY: 28, CONTINUED . . .

  Mom was at work when I got home. I went right to my room, did not touch the tsampa my stomach was shrieking for, and opened my window. Stuck my head out.

  I could smell the winter air, feel the wind on me. I tried to unweave the thin garment of scent, separate out every strand of smell that I detected. I found jet fuel from miles above me; the lingering smell of a thousand family dinners; a dumpster full of unwanted popcorn behind the movie theater. Cigarettes. Deer poop. But the night was so cold that few scents survived. Molecules stopped moving. Stinks settled. The air told me little.

  He was out there, somewhere. My father. The real villain. The one who stole my sister away.

  I would know his smell when I found it.

  I buried my nose deep in The Dharma Bums. I sucked in, searching for him. I found myself, I found Tariq. I even found my mother. And something else, the faintest scrap, something mostly dead, a salty smell that might maybe possibly have been him.

  I stayed up late. I woke up super early. When she walked in the door at 7 a.m. I was already in the kitchen, coffee percolating for her.

  “Jesus, Matt, isn’t this a sight for sore eyes,” she said, easing her weight into her chair. “Why are you up so early?”

  “Don’t know,” I said. “Woke up with a lot of energy.”

  I did not say, Manic bursts of intense energy are a symptom of many eating disorders. Because, still, that’s not my issue.

&n
bsp; “You’re smiling more than usual,” I said. “I know it’s not because you think my coffee will be any good.”

  “No,” she said, shaking out her hair with both hands. “I had a good talk with my supervisor.”

  “Oh yeah?” I asked, wondering what new twist Bastien’s father might have added to the equation. “You think there’s hope for the plant?”

  “For the plant, not so much,” she said. “He kept saying, ‘We’ll see how things shake out,’ but I can tell when he’s lying. Or when he’s only telling me the tip of the truth.” My mom took the mug I offered her, already complete with precisely as much cream as she likes. She pressed both hands against it and lowered her face to breathe in the coffee steam. When she raised her head, she seemed strengthened. “But he’s helping me out in a major way. I’m being promoted to ‘transition supervisor,’ which involves helping coordinate all the moving pieces as they scale back operations. Complicated stuff, looking at inventory and transfer and personnel . . . but it’s a management position, so not only will the money be better, it’ll mean I’ll get training and experience that could help me get a better job if the plant does close.”

  “That’s amazing, Mom!”

  “Thanks, honey,” she said and sipped my coffee. “You’re getting better at this. Still needs to be stronger, though.”

  “You always say that.”

  I sat down beside her. We drank our coffee, and she didn’t say a word about how I shunned the creamer. I should say something, I thought. About the scotch bottle. About her falling down. But if I wasn’t ready for that conversation, she probably wasn’t either.

  “Do you have anything of his?” I asked. “My father? Anything other than those books?”

  “I do,” she said, and if my question hurt her she hid it well. “A baseball cap, I think. Do you want it?”

  “Yes.” I said. Why have you never mentioned this before?

  She sipped her coffee. “I’ll see if I can find it.”

  “When do you start the new position?” I asked, to shift her mind back to something happier.

  “Next week,” she said. “I’m floored, honestly. I never thought he thought much of me. So for him to pick me for this . . .”

  “You deserve it, clearly,” I said, and wondered whether I had anything to do with it. Whether being Bastien’s friend, even his fake friend, had helped this happen. Mom always talked about how there were no women in management, and the guys who ran the plant treated girls like secretaries no matter how hard they worked. People as powerful as Bastien’s dad could afford to make big decisions based solely on who their son was friends with.

  A whisper in my mind, I wouldn’t be Bastien’s friend without my powers.

  “Makes me feel guilty, in a way,” Mom said. “To be getting a promotion even as other people are getting screwed. And to get a leg up on the competition if the plant does close, and I’m up against a couple hundred of my coworkers for a handful of jobs. But I can’t take a stand here. Being principled doesn’t do us a lot of good when we’re living out of a car.”

  “Amen to that,” I said and clinked my mug against hers.

  It was a raw, living thing, my mother’s love for this town. As much as I hated the place, I could still appreciate how much it meant to her. Eyes shut, silently starving, I could see and smell so much more about it now.

  Wherever Mom came from, whatever town and family had created her, she never talked about it. And now I thought I knew why. Abusive or repressive or just plain boring, she ran away from it as soon as she could. Mom had the courage to escape from everything that wanted to keep her locked up tight in a box of things she did not want to be. To build a life for herself on her own terms. Some day, could I?

  RULE #38

  Mind and body both crave worldly things, but these attachments tie us down. Slow us up.

  DAY: 29

  TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 400

  “You don’t look so good.”

  I opened my eyes. Tariq stood before me, hair still wet from showering. I sat on the fender of his truck. “Nice to see you, too,” I said.

  “I wasn’t making a fashion judgment,” he said. “You look unhealthy. Were you asleep?”

  “No,” I said, and didn’t offer an alternate explanation, because it would have gone something like this: I was trying to meditate my way back to the Spirit World beach where I met what might have been my sister or might have been a figment of my imagination. “And anyway you’d look rough, too, if you’d been shivering in the cold waiting for your closeted secret boyfriend to finish up being Mr. Soccer Star Man.”

  “No one told you to wait out in the cold,” he said, and unlocked the doors. “Why are you mad at me?”

  “I’m not,” I said and got in. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. You’re right—I’m not feeling so hot.” The shouts of post-practice locker room boasts echoed on his skin. His gym clothes were in his bag, on the seat between us, rank with the sweet scent of him. My powers were in full force. “I’m sorry.”

  Irritability is another symptom of eating disorders.

  “You want to do this some other time?”

  “No,” I said sharply, then smiled. “I need this. We need this. Right?”

  “Yeah,” he said and smiled back.

  A date. A real live date. Like couples do.

  Our destination? A diner, three towns to the south. Where no one would know us.

  Tariq put the truck in drive. Once we were out of the parking lot, he took his right hand off the wheel and fumbled for my left one.

  Hunger was a river, a surging primal force that had breached its banks and flooded me, making me into one long yelp of pain in which my stomach was merely the deepest spot. The sun was close to setting, and when I looked up I saw a sky full of black stars swelling and throbbing and bursting.

  I rolled down the window and gulped cold air, tried that swallowing-the-energy-of-the-universe thing again. It didn’t do much for my pain. When I shut my eyes, the black stars didn’t go away.

  “Tell me about your day,” I managed to croak.

  “Practice was ridiculous,” he said, clearly relieved, and launched into a story.

  That’s how we made it all the way to the thruway and south to Exit 20. He spoke, I nodded, attempted to make sounds like I was listening, like I wasn’t trying to keep a lid on the jerks and spasms my belly pains brought on.

  “We should have picked a more romantic spot,” he said after we’d parked and walked into the busy diner, all clean chrome and dirty linoleum, where four glass coffeepots bubbled and steamed on the counter.

  “Baby steps,” I said.

  Every seat at the counter was occupied. All men, mostly middle-aged, frowning at their food. The oldest-looking one turned and watched us for what seemed like maybe a little too long.

  A waitress showed us to a table.

  “Y’all believe it’s dark so early?” she asked. A short, spry, aging thing.

  “Crazy, right?” Tariq said.

  “Solstice is close. After that, the days’ll start getting longer again. I’m a Wiccan, so I pay attention to things like that.”

  “Two coffees,” Tariq said.

  “I asked for a table, not your life story,” I muttered in her direction after she’d walked away.

  Tariq frowned. “You sure you’re feeling okay?”

  I was sure I wasn’t feeling okay. And coming had been a mistake. The place was full of food. Dead animals glistened and oozed on the plates of the people around us. Starches and fats shined in the fluorescent light. Butter and salt covered everything.

  “It’s okay,” he said, leaning forward, putting one warm hand on my knee. “I’m scared, too.”

  I was scared. I hadn’t realized it until he said so. But of what? These men, or the contents of the plates in front of them? Men didn’t just up and murder gay boys in diners. Did they?

  I took Tariq’s hands.

  “You’re freezing,” he said. We were silent a mome
nt. Then Tariq said, “Matt. Please talk to me.”

  I had to throw him off the trail of Matt is slowly killing himself in exchange for superpowers. “I want to find my dad,” I said, because Tariq knew something was up, and because maybe, just maybe, talking about it might help.

  “What do you know about him?” he asked.

  “Not much. Mom never talks about him.”

  “What do you think happened after Maya connected with him?”

  “I don’t know. How should I?”

  Unfazed by my assholery, Tariq said, “I’m asking what you think. You don’t have a theory?”

  I think they went back to his mansion or lavish Madison Avenue apartment, and she’s living the good life while Mom and I are miserable.

  I think he kidnapped her.

  I think he murdered her.

  I think he told her lies and turned her against us.

  I think she’s never coming home.

  “I don’t think it was a cheerful family reunion,” I said. “Maya’s more the angry punishment type. She didn’t say anything to you about it?”

  “Just that she had to make things right with her father. Why do you think it had to be something bad?”

  “Because she abandoned us,” I said before thinking could talk me out of it.

  Tariq nodded. We sat in silence and chewed on that for a while. Then food appeared in front of me. Where had it come from? Oh, right. Tariq. He had ordered. Time had passed. I looked at him, watched the healthy thoughtless way he put food into himself. His hair askew from the knit hat he’d been wearing.

  “You ordered me chicken soup?”

  “You said that was fine,” he said around a mouthful of pizza fries. “Anyway don’t they call it Jewish penicillin? The miracle cure of every Jewish family? You look like you’re in need of a miracle.”

  “How do you know a thing like that?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Seinfeld reruns? One of my dad’s Jewish friends? I don’t know.”

  “That’s racist,” I said, aiming a soup spoon at him. How did the spoon get in my hand?

  “Whatever, Jew.”

  “Whatever, Muslim.”