by Kit Reed
Dispatched by the manager, who had retreated to look at the instant replay on his digicorder and mail it to the local news channel, the wait-kids hovered, ready to take the platters away. His face was red and greasy, his eyes were glazed and he could barely move but Danny waved them off. He was down for the count, he was … he was up! Like a tremendous, lazy anaconda, Danny’s arm shot across the cluttered table and he snagged Dave’s plate.
The roar of the crowd struck echoes off the rim of every wineglass and beer mug in the place.
Dave groaned. “Now we’re in for it.”
Betz nodded. “This is gonna be slow.”
It was. The first steak went down more or less while they weren’t looking. The second was harder; it took a while and they could see the marks made by tremendous, taxing effort in every line of Danny’s body and his strained, tortured face. With the third steak, even the sawing into small pieces was hard and as he began, Betz heard herself saying like any cheerleader, “It’s OK, Danny, you can do this.”
Her brother threw her a brave, proud grin. She thinks he said, “I can do this!”
He ate on beyond exhaustion. He ate beyond any thinking of it; he faltered and recovered and went on eating and when she was sure he couldn’t eat any more without dying, Danny ate. Then in the hush that falls at such great moments in any sport, Betz heard the splat as he hit the wall. There was a long hiatus. Danny’s eyes closed and his head drooped. Close, he was so close! The piece of steak he had vowed to exterminate was reduced to a slab the size of his left hand. His fork tipped. His right hand fell. The slick, coated fingers relaxed and his fork fell onto the tablecloth.
The crowd rippled. “He’s down!”
“You can do it,” Betz said under her breath. What am I thinking? “Come on, you can do it.”
But Danny didn’t move. Drenched and sobbing with the effort, he sat there with his mouth jammed with unchewed meat and half-chewed meat spilling out of his slack mouth and running down his face while the onlookers, who had left their chairs by this time, were crowding around the table, placing last-minute bets and muttering among themselves. Would he make it? Could he come back from this or was it the end?
The manager shouted, “Give him air!”
A hush fell.
Gently, the manager shook Danny’s shoulder. “Kid, are you done here?”
Danny was too stuffed to speak. He didn’t move.
“OK, then,” the manager said and the crowd gave up the rushing sound of a vast, collective sigh. In the back ranks, people were fishing in their pockets, betters getting ready to settle up.
The wait-kids drifted in to take away the plate.
Betz thought, Oh, no. Then, in the strange confluence of thought that twins share, she heard her brother saying from somewhere inside the deepest private part of himself, Oh, no.
The manager was slapping Danny on the shoulder. “You did good, kid.” He turned to Dave. “When the kid comes to, tell him he did good.” He dispatched a wait-kid to get the complimentary T-shirt.
Danny was shifting in his chair. His whole body sent the message: No.
Betz jumped to her feet, crying, “Wait!”
Everybody turned to look.
“It’s not over.”
The onlookers jostled for position. Who said that?
Betz stood on her seat so everybody could see. In a clear voice, she called out, “My brother says so!”
The cheer shook the restaurant.
Then, shaking himself like a recovering boxer who refuses to lie down even after the knockout punch, Danny Abercrombie picked up his fork.
People shouted, “He’s back!”
Odd to get what you want and discover it isn’t what you want but what Danny wants. Oh please, Betz thought privately, please just end it now.
But now that he was moving again, Danny wouldn’t stop. He wasn’t about to stop. He beat the odds to get this far and he wasn’t going to quit now. He was still in this game and he would stay in it to the bitter end.
“One more bite,” the customers shouted in unison. “One more bite. One more bite,” as Danny plowed closer to his goal.
Betz was shouting. By the end even Dave was shouting, “One more bite.”
And then—brilliant!
“One more bite.”
It was done.
The last bite went into Danny Abercrombie’s mouth and some ten minutes later it went down. He had done it. It was over. He was over the line!
She and Dave carried him out of the restaurant to the perennial, addictive deafening cheers.
So Danny has won again, and Betz? God, she thinks but only because he is sleeping it off now and can’t hear her thinking it, why this? She is proud of what her brother did but secretly she thinks it is disgusting.
Because she loves him he must never know.
6
“Just one bite,” the Dedicated Sister says. Every angle in her body is thrust forward. Sincere in earthy brown and pink in the face with good intentions, the Dedicated Sister proffers the spoon with a dedicated smile. This one is named Darva. In the new religion, Darva is a postulant, which means she is in training, and the first job given trainees here at Wellmont—in a way, it’s the qualifying exam—is overseeing the patients’ meals. This session is just beginning.
It isn’t going very well.
This particular patient is a hard case. It says so right there on her chart, underneath the achievement graph. The blue line that indicates actual body weight is flat where after several days here, it’s supposed to be climbing. Far above the flat blue line, the pink expectations line soars and spikes optimistically, taunting the designated feeder. Darva sighs. In the days she’s been sweating over this assignment, the patient hasn’t gained an ounce. Another day like this one and she’ll start losing, and if she does, Darva’s ass, as they say in the nationwide Dedicated Sisters provincial houses, is grass. She touches the patient’s tight lips with the spoon. The macaroni exudes warmth enhanced by the kitchen’s special, seductive blend of pheromones. Who could resist?
Instead of opening up, the girl buckled into the tilted Jeri chair clenches her jaw.
“Come on, I need you to eat. Just one bite?”
Resolutely, the patient turns her head.
Resolutely, the Dedicated Sister zigzags so the spoon follows. “You know you’re confined to quarters until you start gaining, so why not eat so you can get out and have a little fun with the other girls?”
Her patient scowls.
“You’ll love them. You really will.”
Obviously the girl is starved for company but what’s a little inconvenience compared to what’s at stake here?
“Really,” Darva says brightly. “Now open up.”
The emaciated girl shakes her head.
Beads of sweat stand out on the postulant’s shaved head. “I can’t let you out of the chair until you eat, OK?”
Time passes.
“You don’t have to eat a whole lot, OK?”
The muscles in the girl’s jaw and her neck tighten as Darva flicks a switch and the macaroni heats up in the laden spoon.
It’s getting late.
“If you’ll just eat something we can enter it in the book and I can let you get down.” The Dedicated Sister is trying to sound confident and motivational but the spoon aimed at Annie Abercrombie is quivering. The Dedicated Sister’s voice is quivering. For the first time Annie looks past the tempting, golden macaroni mounded on the spoon, at the woman’s face. If you took away the ugly brown outfit and scrawled on some hair and eyebrows with Magic Marker, the Dedicated Sister in charge of feeding Annie Abercrombie would probably look exactly like another senior at her high school. She is, oh God, she is crying. “Oh, please! Just one bite. If you don’t eat something they’ll put me on hold.”
“Oh shit,” Annie says. “Don’t cry.”
Drop your guard for a minute, say one nice thing and this is what you get. The click of the spoon against your teeth. The littl
e shock that loosens your jaw.
It’s in!
Sister Darva exhales with a little prayer. “Oh, thank Earl.”
The blenderized macaroni fills her mouth. Dense with cream and thick with cheese, it is wonderful and disgusting. In three years of mostly cottage cheese and lettuce leaves with only the occasional binge, Annie has never even come near anything as wonderful as this. Now that the food is in her mouth—no fault of hers! Now that it is in her mouth Annie holds it there, inhaling the fragrance and vowing not to swallow. She wants it to go down, she’d love to feel it going down, she will do everything to keep it from going down. This is so hard. It is so terrible. She is a prisoner here. In her single arena of control, that she has worked so long and so hard to develop and struggled so desperately to maintain, she is losing control of her own body.
“That’s it, honey.” The Dedicated Sister strokes her throat but Annie Abercrombie will not swallow. She won’t!
Shit. They have her by the short ones anyway.
She is a prisoner here on the ANO ward. Even though she refuses to eat for this, um, she guesses it’s holistic nun—even if she refuses to eat for this gawky girl in the severe brown shroud belted by the rope with its leather sheath with ritual calipers, she’s licked. Even if she can regain control this very minute, even if she can ignore the signals coming in from all points in her body and make herself spit out the macaroni, calories are still marching in. Day and night they are invading her body by the thousands.
It’s in the IV. Slung from a magnetic pole, the pouch of nutrients follows her everywhere, even into the bathroom.
“Good girl.”
Morosely, Annie pretends to chew. Instead she studies the marks on her arm where the needles have gone in and the bruises where she’s yanked them out repeatedly in spite of warnings. Even though it hurts she’s pulled out a dozen IV lines since she’s been here. She would do anything to stop the relentless flow of nutrients. When the van came for her Mom and Dad cried and swore that this was hurting them more than it was her and they were doing this for her own good. They said in the end Annie would thank them for it but that’s bullshit, the Dedicated Sisters are killing her. These women are killing her with their isolation tactics and their inspirational lectures and hygiene texts and wellness videos and these IV lines like writhing poisonous snakes surrounding her; she has to get them off her body. She has to get them out and throw them away before they finish the job. She knows what will happen every time she peels the tape that holds the needle in and pulls it out but she does it anyway. The beeper in the office sounds the minute she pulls the snake off her body. The Dedicated in charge of IV patients comes storming in to reset the needle; with her big square teeth bared and her rough, big-knuckled hands clenched for battle. Every time she has to find another vein and unwrap a fresh needle and drive it into Annie’s vein, it is a struggle and every struggle makes her madder. Now that she’s run out of veins in Annie’s bruised, punctured arms, the IV Dedicated has planted one in the back of her hand. When the Dedicated has used up all the veins in her arms and hands, Annie knows the woman will move on to the veins in her ankles and feet. For all Annie knows she’ll start force-feeding the things directly into her arteries and the only way to stop this invasion of her body—her besieged fortress, her last citadel!—is to escape.
The worst part is, Annie is gaining weight! No way she isn’t. Just the smells from the kitchen make you fat. Hell with what Darva says, hell with what it says on the chart, she’s sure of it. She can see herself getting fatter, even though there are no mirrors in the room. The weight is just piling on. She is becoming grosser and more disgusting by the second. She can feel fat cells expanding in her breasts and creeping down to distend her flat belly and obscure her beautiful hip bones with unwanted flab. Nothing she can do will stop the calories. They’re in the air. Calories stream in through the IV and float in on the greasy steam and apple-pie smells rising from the convent kitchen.
Every chance she gets, she jumps out of bed and starts running in place, but the opportunities are limited. She has to wait until Darva gives up and leaves. Then she has to wait until the evening videos are over because the Dedicated in charge of this ward waits until the last dog is hung and the last hymn sung and “The Star-Spangled Banner” finishes to turn out the lights. Last night it was The Karen Carpenter Story. Who was Karen Carpenter anyway? This is supposed to be a cautionary tale but as far as Annie is concerned, she is practically a saint. A martyr who wasn’t afraid to die for what she believed in. After the videos and the singing she has to sit through Dedicated Mother Imelda’s motivational good-night sermon. Then she has to wait until lights out because it’s the only time she can foil the surveillance cameras. Annie starts running the minute her feet hit the pink shag rug by her bed. If the electronic collar bolted around her neck didn’t shock her into insensibility every time she hit the open door, she’d shake off the shock and keep running and get the hell out of here.
“All you have to do is swallow,” the Ded reminds her, with tears standing in her eyes and a Tic Tac in her mouth.
“Look over there,” Annie mumbles through the macaroni; if she can get the miserable woman to look away for a second she can spit the gorgeous, slimy stuff into her hand and slip it under the cushion in her Jeri chair. “Out the window!”
“What?”
Mumbling through the food, she points. “Cardinal bird!”
“No it isn’t.” Unlike the dog that follows your finger instead of looking to see what you are pointing at, dogged Darva keeps her eyes fixed on her patient. Poor, galumphing Dedicated Sister with her flat voice and naked toes knotting in her big, flat shoes. She says sadly, “There are no birds here. The window’s sealed.”
Annie says through the food, “Snake then. I saw a snake.”
“No you didn’t. Eat,” Darva says, and even though it’s a serious breach of protocol, she confides, “We get in terrible trouble when our patients don’t eat.”
Patients, Annie thinks, why is she using that ugly word when I’m not sick? Can’t she see there’s nothing the matter with me? She shakes her head.
“You have to.”
She says thickly, “No I don’t.”
“Yes you do.” Time is running out. One more day of failure and they will both be catapulted into Phase Two. This is how Dedicated Sister Darva brings her patient to the bottom line. “You’d better swallow this bite now, or we’ll both pay for it big time.”
“Mmm?”
“Really.” Tears stand in Darva’s eyes. “You and I are on probation here.”
“Mmm?” Tears fill Annie’s eyes too; even though she won’t chew and she hasn’t swallowed she can feel the sweet, blenderized golden, cheese-rich macaroni slipping down her throat anyway.
“We’re both on probation and I mean it,” Darva says. It’s clear from her expression that she’s as anxious and miserable as poor Annie here. “If you haven’t gained any weight by Friday, they’ll put me on hold, and you?”
Annie squints anxiously.
“First they put you under.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. Under!
“Yep.” Darva has the advantage now. She delivers the knockout punch. “Then they put in the stomach tube.”
It happens without her knowing it. Annie swallows. The effect is instant and amazing. Heat rushes into her stomach and radiates in all her veins. “My God!”
“Not God exactly,” Darva says candidly. She is talking to cover the intense moment that follows as her patient responds to the massive dose of concentrated carbohydrates and fat, shivering in inadvertent ecstasy; she is talking to cover the mutual embarrassment that comes when, just as the manual said she would, poor Annie looks at the steaming bowl waiting on the hot plate and is momentarily seduced by the idea of asking for another bite. The moment passes. She waits for Annie to ask what’s happening to her.
Annie can’t speak. She is overturned by sensation and driven back inside herself, considering.
“This terrible place is about religion?”
“The last one left,” Darva says, trying to slip in another bite. “You think I’m here to torture you, but I’m not. I’m here to save you.”
Annie’s mouth tightens into a grim, straight line.
“Please, one more bite?”
Grimacing, she shakes her head.
Darva lowers the spoon. Maybe one bite is enough for the day. Convince her of the importance tonight and she will be easier to feed tomorrow. “Conversion is beautiful really,” she says earnestly. “And you’ll be beautiful.”
“No I won’t.”
“Come on. Relinquish. Give in to the power, you’ll be glad.”
“How can you convert me if it isn’t a religion?”
“Oh, it’s a religion,” Darva says. “It just isn’t about God.”
“That’s crazy.”
“No it isn’t.” The Dedicated postulant’s bare brow goes into contortions as she tries to think it through so she can explain. “See, nobody really knows if there is God, at least nobody knows for sure,” she says. “Get it?”
Annie shakes her head.
“I mean, has anybody seen God really? I mean, lately, that we know about?”
“Not that I’ve heard of.”
“My point. We can’t know about God but there are some things we do know, and this. What we’re doing here.” Darva makes a sweeping gesture. “This is one.”
“This terrible place?”
“Your body. It is a temple.”
Annie has been studying the minute fretwork of veins pulsing underneath Darva’s white cheeks and the minute fretwork of pores around Darva’s nose. Her head lifts. Yeah.
Darva catches the first hint of assent. “So we can’t find God and your body is a temple …”
“And?”
“Ergo voilà, QED,” she says, triumphant. “All this. This place. You and me sitting here, this is the new religion.”
