The Art of Starving

by Sam J. Miller

The most likely explanation: I heard a whole lot of stories about a freak pig escape, and my mind filtered all of that through its own sickness and self-importance to produce a crazy story where I had supervillain abilities and used them to liberate a couple thousand pigs and then use them to burn the whole shitty town down, murdered our town with an army of marauding swine, and then summoned my sister up out of thin air, and she talked me into getting help.

  Which would be worse? If it was all made up and I was merely crazy, or if it was true and I had been a monster?

  The monster, definitely. Not because monsters are bad. But because I wasn’t one anymore.

  And I couldn’t ask her. Not yet. Because if it was my damaged mind, I didn’t want her knowing how messed up I had really been.

  “Can’t wait for you to see what a mob scene our stupid little town has become,” Maya said on a Monday morning when she visited me by herself. “Haven’t had this much excitement since that time when you were seven, and an allosaurus went tearing through downtown.”

  “That was a blast,” I said.

  I didn’t ask, Did you really appear beside me on an ice bridge I built to march my Swine Army across the Hudson River? Was any of that real? I couldn’t ask. For lots of reasons.

  “This book is terrible,” Maya said, plucking On the Road from my hands.

  “I love it,” I said, leaning forward to grab it back and feeling a sudden swoon. My old friends, the black stars, bloomed on the walls.

  “Of course you do,” she said, blind to my sudden paleness. “It’s a book about male privilege.”

  “It’s a book about men,” I said. “I’ll give you that much. But they don’t hurt women. They want to get away from the same nineteen fifties Ozzie and Harriet smiley, fake, evil male-dominated society that was oppressing women.”

  “Abortions were illegal back then, you know. The pill hadn’t been invented. They ride around banging chicks, and those chicks get pregnant, and get stuck raising kids these irresponsible men will never help them with. Anyway, you only like the book because everybody knows these two guys were in love with each other, but too scared to ever admit it or do anything about it.”

  “I guess,” I said. I did not say I like it because Dad liked Jack Kerouac or I liked it because Tariq gave it to me or I like it because Tariq likes it.

  “Also?” she said. “Remember that this is the fifties. Jim Crow time. These guys couldn’t have gone driving around having wild adventures all over America if they were black. Lots of businesses wouldn’t serve them, lots of mechanics wouldn’t repair their cars, and they’d risk physical violence if they ended up in a whites-only ‘sundown town.’ So it’s a book about white privilege, too.” She handed me back the book.

  “Maya,” I said. “Why did you choose him over us? Over me?”

  She scooted closer to me. Her body felt tight and warm and strong. “Do you remember when we were little kids, how upset you used to get whenever I asked Mom about Dad?”

  I didn’t.

  “It was because you saw how upset she got. But as I got older, Mom and me started having more conversations about him. Who he was, what he was like, why they weren’t together.”

  “She hardly ever said a word about him with me,” I said.

  “That’s because you used to freak out.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “I do. Anyway, last summer Mom gave me his mother’s old mailing address, told me if I wanted to get in touch with him that was the only way that might work, and for all Mom knew the lady moved or died years ago. But she also told me that before I did that, I needed to know what really happened between them.” Maya looked at me, the hard, shrewd look that reminded me she was ten times stronger than me, and what on earth had I been thinking back when I thought I could save her? “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “If you have to ask me that question, the answer is probably no,” I said. “But yes. I want to know.”

  “He used to beat her. It was a terribly abusive relationship. She loved him, but he was horrible. And it took a long time for her to get up the courage to leave him forever and cut all ties with him.”

  I was a drum. Empty inside. Echoing. Trying hard not to think about the words drumming into me.

  “I know,” she said, and touched my wetted eyes. “That’s how I felt. I wanted to . . . I don’t know what. Tell him off? Kill him? Get revenge? It was dumb, but that’s what I thought.”

  She took my hand and held it. I wondered if she knew how alike we were, in our hunger for justice, in our dangerous drive for revenge. Your sister takes things too far, her bandmate had said, and so, evidently, did I.

  “So I reached out. Sent a letter. Said I wanted to meet. Used my bassist’s house as the mailing address. He wrote back right away. Said he’d always dreamed of getting this letter. Always felt angry that he was robbed of the chance to be a father. Said he wanted to meet. So we set it up. Arranged to meet at a diner on the thruway.

  “I saw him before he saw me,” she said, and grabbed and then released a fistful of my hair. “I recognized him by the bright-red hair, the same as yours. And he was handsome like you, too.”

  “I’m not handsome,” I muttered.

  “Keep telling yourself that lie, kid,” she said. “Whatever makes you feel better. Anyway, I came in the door, and his back was to me. And I remembered what Mom said—about how much she loved him, how he had this weird charisma that kept her coming back even when she knew it was the wrong thing to do, that it was almost like magic—”

  I thought of me controlling pigs with my smell, and wondered if maybe my father wasn’t a little bit of a hunger artist himself. If maybe everyone wasn’t. If maybe a certain amount of supernatural power lived inside us all.

  “And I didn’t want to like this man. Not even a little. I thought, if I sit down and talk to him, even if it’s just to tell him off, I’ll listen to what he has to say. I’ll treat him with respect, because that’s the way I was raised. And what if he casts his spell on me? What if I let go of this anger, this hate? Are we going to just be . . . I don’t know, friends? Buddies? I didn’t want that. I didn’t want him to be in my life at all. But I couldn’t just walk away. Not after what he did to Mom. And got away with.”

  “So what did you do?” I whispered.

  “Had a bit of a nervous breakdown, I guess. I don’t remember my thought process at all. I didn’t think. I just . . . acted. He was sitting at the counter of this greasy-spoon restaurant, near the waitress’s station. A big glass pot of coffee was steaming on a Bunn burner, not three feet away. And I just—I . . .”

  Here, my sister started crying. Really let loose. I put my arms around her. Held her so tight I felt it in my weakened, starved heart.

  “I grabbed it,” she said finally, “the pot of coffee. I snatched it off the burner. And I swung it as hard as I could against his head.”

  More sobbing. I remembered my dream, of the diner, of Maya, of exploding pots and an ocean of scalding hot coffee and an avalanche of broken glass. And her song: “Black Coffee.”

  “The blood—” she said. “The smell . . . the burning. I thought I might have killed him. Blinded him. Disfigured him for life. I ran out the door, across the parking lot, through a little stretch of woods, to a Howard Johnson motel. I called my bassist. She picked me up. Promised not to tell. But I couldn’t go home. I was convinced he’d track me down, come find me, come kill me. Or call the cops, have them come and arrest me for assault. Put me in jail. But Ani was amazing. Knew just what to do. How to keep me safe. She called everybody over, the whole band—didn’t tell them what had happened, but said we had to go to Providence to do some recording. And there I’ve been, ever since.

  “I didn’t choose him over you and Mom,” she said.

  I couldn’t say it. But I had to. So I did. “But you did leave. You left us.”

  She didn’t pause. Didn’t hesitate. Didn’t contemplate diving into one of her patented Maya Ice-You-Out sil
ences. “I did. That wasn’t my intention, but it’s what happened. It was really dumb. And selfish. And the whole time I was there, I kept coming up with rationalizations, ways to explain this that didn’t involve me being a jerk, and I could choose not to see what it was doing to you and Mom. But now I see what a crock of shit all that was.” Without blinking, she said, “Mom talked to Tariq.”

  Time stopped. Stars imploded. Whole continents slid into the sea. I remembered the questions I’d been too afraid to ask when she’d said, It’s no good to be alone. I said, “Whaaa,” and it went on and on while my weak hungry heart wobbled. “Why did . . . Mom . . . talk to him?”

  “She went to curse him out, actually. For breaking your heart.”

  “Oh.”

  “She’s a smart lady. As a general rule she knows lots more than she lets on.”

  “I know,” I whispered, overwhelmed and dizzy and not from faulty autonomic regulation this time, “but I . . . didn’t she . . . how did she . . .”

  “She loves you no matter what. That’s what’s important for you to know.”

  So the conversation I was most afraid of having really didn’t need to happen at all. Okay. That was something.

  Maya got up off the bed, went to the window. Her spiky brown hair had been freshly dyed black. Her every step was full of the confidence that would help her conquer the world. I had questions. So many questions. But there would be time. We were both broken, but we were both getting better. Which maybe everyone is.

  She hummed a melody, lovely and sad, something I recognized from the eight-song solo demo album she’d been working on. My sister had found a way to channel our addictive/obsessive character traits into something positive. To create, instead of destroy. Maybe I could, too. Eventually.

  “Here,” she said, and left a Ziploc bag on my bedside table. “Since you stole mine while I was away. I know you like these. So I made some for you. Probably not as good as Mom’s.”

  I ate that tuna-fish sandwich slowly, savoring the too-thickly-sliced challah and the excessive mayonnaise and the touch of lime, chewing every bite a couple dozen times, and when it was gone I felt way closer to being Better than after a whole mountain of unflavored unsweetened oatmeal.

  RULE #50

  Bad things will happen to you and they won’t be your fault. Life is a miserable shit-show for lots of very good people. Lots of very evil people have it easy in life. When bad things happen, it doesn’t help to blame yourself, or wish you’d done something differently, or shake your fists at the sky. Accept that the bad things happened, but do not allow them to continue to hurt you.

  Bad things will also happen to you that will be your fault. Part of being Better is being able to tell the difference.

  DAY: -28

  TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 1950

  I wish I could tell you that from the moment I entered the hospital, I was strong enough to stop using my abilities altogether. I wish I was brave enough to turn my back on them. But I wasn’t.

  About a month after I arrived, when the lights went out in the hallway and us crazies settled into our lonely beds, I thought to myself, How is Mom doing? Has she stopped drinking? Is Maya helping her?

  And once the thought entered my head, it refused to leave.

  Find her, it said. Go to her. Help her.

  I shut my eyes and tried to smell her. Hear her. Teleport to her bedside. Tap into the unstoppable force I used to be able to control.

  All that happened was my jaw locked up. When ten minutes passed, and it hadn’t unlocked, I pressed the button to call the nurse, and she gave me something to help me sleep, and in the morning my jaw was fine.

  I thought a lot about my friend Darryl. The one who’d abandoned me. I’d taken it so personally, convinced myself that he’d come to hate me, that something was wrong with me. But that wasn’t true. He’d moved on because of him. Because he wanted different things. Because his life was bigger than video games and comic books; because it was easier to find a new life and friends than to be sad about the life and friends he’d lost.

  I’d been furious, back when Maya turned five and went to kindergarten. I’d thrown a fit. I couldn’t understand how she could leave me alone, but of course it had nothing to do with me.

  My sickness made everything about me. My sickness and my selfishness. And the fact that I was still a kid who didn’t understand how the world really works.

  My powers had come from anger, from hate, from fear, from shame. I had fed them; I let them take me over. And now that I’d turned my back on them, I had nothing.

  So, every night I tried again—and failed. And sometimes, but not every time, I wept. Like a man who’d lost both legs or gone blind. What could be more painful than to possess something wonderful and then lose it forever?

  RULE #51

  Without your problems, you wouldn’t be who you are. You would be someone else. Someone significantly less awesome.

  DAY: -57

  TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 1800

  “Friendly’s?” Maya asked as we got out of the car. We stared up at the fast-food joint like it was supposed to tell us something, but it had nothing to say.

  “We used to come here all the time!” Mom said. “Remember?”

  “I guess,” I said, and I did—trips to Crossgates Mall for back-to-school shopping, doctor’s appointments, a million meaningless little Albany jaunts when we were kids. “She’s trying to fatten me up,” I said and pointed an accusing finger at her. “I see through your diabolical plot, woman.”

  “No plot,” she said. “Just so damn tired of staring at those four walls.”

  I was out. After eight weeks, and forty tuna sandwiches, and ten thousand dollars’ worth of inpatient rehabilitation treatment costs—covered, mostly, probably, hopefully, by Medicaid once Mom filled out a small mountain of paperwork, which Maya and I would help with, to the extent that we were able—I was home. Back at my real life. Back in my bedroom, with the Boy in the Mirror, and my Secret Stash of Diet Cokes, and the Computer Full of Things That Make Me Feel Worse About Myself.

  Getting better is boring. Getting better is slow and frustrating, and you don’t want to hear about it. You need to take my word for it, though: it was hell. Every decision was difficult. Every third thought was a terrible and destructive one. I fought with myself five times a day.

  It is still a fight. It will always be a fight.

  That photo of Skinny Mom still hung on the side of our fridge. Life and genetics could gang up on me at any moment.

  “Okay,” Mom said, once the waitress brought menus. “Grown-up conversation time. We’re all adults now, or close enough to have actual Grown-Up Problems, so we should be able to talk like it. Okay? So let’s ask each other anything we want.”

  “Anything?” Maya and I said.

  “Anything. But let’s respect each other’s boundaries, so if somebody doesn’t want to answer your question, we won’t hound them about it.”

  “They can plead the Fifth,” Maya said.

  “Exactly,” Mom said. “Go on. Ask me anything.”

  Maya and I exchanged a look. The wide-open endless galaxy of questions we could ask was terrifying. What if one of our questions broke her heart? What if one of her answers broke ours?

  Maya started us out, asking cautiously: “What are you going to do about a job?”

  Mom laughed. “Well, Maya. Funny you should ask. Because I got the call yesterday—the engineering firm that the state hired to rebuild the town, after the governor declared a state of emergency, has offered me a job.”

  “So that’s why we have the money to go out to eat!” she said.

  “Well, we will,” Mom said. “Soon.”

  “Doing what?” I asked, picturing my mom heaving a hammer, laying bricks, and my heart hurt, because of course she could do it, but she shouldn’t have to, at her age, after working so hard for so long.

  “Actually, I’m going to be the site supervisor for several different locations, includi
ng the water-treatment plant and the slaughterhouse. White collar, all the way. Driving from site to site, drinking coffee from a thermos, bossing people around.”

  “Damn,” Maya said. “That’s amazing. How did you swing that?”

  “My boss came through,” she said. “He wrote a hell of a letter on my behalf. And even called the place, to follow up.”

  Bastien’s dad. So he hadn’t seen me, blind as he was, when I marched a pig army into his house to demolish it. And Bastien hadn’t said anything. Who would have believed the truth, anyway? Probably he didn’t believe it himself. Probably he thought he was dreaming, or that his memories were twisted by the trauma of having his house destroyed before his eyes. The human mind is weird like that. It’ll do anything, construct any crazy story, rather than accept a truth that breaks the rules of the world as we know it.

  “I’d have been screwed without it,” Mom said.

  “What about our house?” Maya asked. “How are we going to pay the rent?”

  “Well, we haven’t gotten an eviction notice yet,” Mom said. “Although we might, any day now. The landlord is pissed, but he’s being patient. I pay him what I can out of our savings. Which isn’t much. But I suspect that having half his properties utterly destroyed by marauding pigs has got him pretty strapped for cash, so he’ll probably take whatever little bit of money comes in. Hopefully that’ll last ’til the new job starts and my first paycheck comes in. And you, Maya? What are you doing about school? College? You missed most of the application deadlines . . .”

  “Not much motion since we met with the principal, and they arranged for me to do the work at home until I’m ready to return. I might even graduate with my class. They’ve offered to help me with deferred college applications, but to be honest I’m not a hundred percent sure I want to go that route. You know? Maybe community college, maybe instant rock stardom?”

  Mom laughed out loud.

  “I have a question for you, Matt,” Maya said, and paused and looked me dead in the eyes so I knew the jokes were being put on hold for a moment. “Why?”