Family Pictures

by Jane Green

I shrug, because the truth is, I didn’t even know they were friends before tonight, and it’s relevant only because someone has to help, and they have to help quickly.

  When Mom said she’d call the girl’s mother, I knew, instantly, that was the right thing to do, but the girl’s mother isn’t just anyone.

  It’s the one woman Mom couldn’t bear to help.

  My mom doesn’t say anything for a while. She sits forward, her elbows on her knees, rubbing her eyes, before letting out a big groan.

  “I have to do this, don’t I.” She looks up at me and I can’t say anything. I just nod before sitting next to her and taking her hand. “Jesus,” she whispers. “I can’t believe I have to do this, but if it were the other way round … If it were Grace…” She shudders at the thought. “This girl is ill, and we have to help her. It’s what mothers do,” she murmurs, not to me particularly, but I think to herself, to help her understand why she needs to do this. “We look after each other’s daughters. It doesn’t matter who they belong to, it’s the responsibility we take on when we become mothers. Buck?” She looks up at me. “Do you think you can get her mom’s home number for me?”

  I nod. Eve’s mother has a job. I can google her, find out where she works, and take it from there.

  “Okay.” She takes a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll call an ambulance while you get the number. Do it quickly. We haven’t got any time to lose.”

  56

  Maggie

  “Hello?”

  “Hello? Is that Sylvie?”

  There is a gut-wrenching silence during which I imagine I can hear Sylvie’s heart plummeting in disappointment, knowing she was praying it would be her daughter. “Yes.”

  “Sylvie, this is Maggie Hathaway. I’m phoning about your daughter.”

  “What?” she barks down the phone. “Eve? What about her? What do you know?”

  “She’s with Grace. In New York. I didn’t know myself until just now. She swore Grace not to tell anyone she was there, but Grace is worried sick about her. It sounds like she’s had a seizure, and Grace is having trouble rousing her. Eve had made her swear not to call for help, but I’ve just called an ambulance and it’s on its way.”

  “Oh, God.” Sylvie lets out a sob. “Where is she? What’s the address?”

  I give her the address, my heart tearing at Sylvie’s voice. I feel like I know everything about this woman, a woman I have made it my business to scorn, a woman who destroyed my life and ended up with everything. She is sobbing as I finish.

  “Sylvie.” I wait for her to finish, and I haven’t even thought about what I’m going to say, can’t believe the words that come out of my mouth. “I can get there quicker than you. I’m leaving now. I’ll find out which hospital she’ll be taken to and I’ll let you know. I’ll meet you there.”

  “What if it’s too late?” Sylvie’s voice rises to a panicked shriek. “What if it’s too late?”

  “The ambulance will be there any minute, and I’ll be there in two to three hours,” I say. “I’ll stay with her until you get there.”

  Sylvie’s sobbing subsides as she takes a deep, hiccuping breath. “You’d do that? You’d drive in the middle of the night to see if she’s okay?”

  “Wouldn’t you do the same for my daughter? For anyone’s daughter who was in trouble?”

  “Yes,” Sylvie says. “I wouldn’t think twice.”

  57

  Grace

  Just wake up, I keep thinking. Please, please wake up. I know she will, at some point, because she did the other day, and afterwards she said it was fine, she’d be fine, she just sometimes goes into this weird state, but it’s nothing to worry about and whatever I do, I must not let anyone know.

  I was freaked out then, but I thought maybe it was just a one-off. She seemed okay afterwards, just really tired. But it’s weird that this is the same girl who came with me to our house two years ago, the same girl who Chris thought was totally hot, who was skinny but normal.

  When she showed up here a week ago, I actually gasped. I couldn’t help it. She looks like she’s about to die, and she’s like a shadow of who she was. Each time she’s woken up in the morning, I’ve breathed a sigh of relief that she’s actually still alive.

  I’ve tried to talk to her about it, but every time I go there, she just clams up, so I’ve stuck with the usual bullshit about school, people in my dorm, boys.

  She hasn’t wanted to go anywhere. I’m not surprised. I can’t see how she’d have the energy to do anything, and it seems she doesn’t have much energy to do much of anything other than sleep.

  We’ve had this amazing online friendship for ages now. It didn’t happen immediately—after that weekend when we all found out about Dad, I didn’t want anything to do with her, but then after the court case she Facebooked me, and we started chatting a ton. She was the only one who could truly understand what had gone down with Dad. We had that in common. We would always have that in common.

  I’ve been up the last two nights reading about anorexia, and I know that seizures happen in late-stage anorexia. The other day, when it happened, she said it definitely wasn’t a seizure, and she would know, given that she was the one having it. Or not.

  It was easier to believe her, even though I’m pretty sure she’s having seizures. Today it was so much worse. I rolled her over onto her side so she wouldn’t swallow her tongue, and the thing is, I could feel her body underneath all the sweats she wears, and there’s nothing.

  Nothing.

  When she was twitching, her eyes were rolled back and her sweats rode up with the jerking of her body, and she’s a skeleton. It’s disgusting. It’s devastating. I stared at her bones, and then I just burst into tears.

  I don’t know what to do. This isn’t something I feel able to cope with. She’s sleeping now, but it’s not like normal sleeping. Her breathing seems … hard, like she has to fight for every other breath. I’ve just been sitting in the corner of my room, on the floor, crying, because I don’t know what to do. I think she may be dying.

  I have to call an ambulance even though she’ll hate me. Unless she wakes up soon. Maybe she’ll wake up and it will be okay. I should call an ambulance. Even if she never talks to me again, what else can I do?

  Buck sent a message on Facebook and I told him. I know I shouldn’t have, but I had to tell someone. I need someone’s help, without getting the authorities involved.

  He looked totally freaked out too, and he said he’d get hold of Chris. Chris will know what to do. I just hope he gets here soon, because I’m seriously worried about what will happen. I keep picking up the phone and starting to dial 911, but then I stop, because she’ll kill me.

  I hear noises coming down the corridor. Voices. Loud. Radios. A banging on my door makes me jump, and I run over to find three EMTs there.

  “What the—?”

  “We’re here for Eve Haydn,” one says. “This is very serious. Please move out of the way.”

  I step aside, relief mingling with fear as more tears come.

  They surround her; equipment appears; IVs are plugged in. A crowd gathers in the hallway outside, everyone peering in as Eve is lifted onto a stretcher. Even the EMTs gasp at how tiny she is, how light, talking to one another in hushed, urgent voices.

  She does not move. Does not wake. I am filled with remorse, and shame, that I did not call them earlier. Immediately. That I did not call the other day. That I let Eve, who was so clearly, so obviously desperately ill, talk me into abiding by her rules.

  They check her breathing, murmur to one another with concern, and suddenly, as one leans over her with his stethoscope, he shouts out, “She’s going into cardiac arrest!”

  I am pushed out of the way as they race for equipment, immediately performing CPR as I stand, backed into a corner, shaking with fear, unable to believe this is happening.

  She is surrounded, paddles on her chest as her tiny body jerks off the bed, neither of us breathing until the fourth time, when she starts
to breathe.

  They are so focused on Eve, on making sure she is alive, they do not notice me running behind them to the ambulance, about to climb in as they try to close the doors on me.

  “I’m coming with her,” I say as one of the EMTs turns to study me. I am waiting to see judgment in his eyes—how could I have waited so long, how could I not have called them myself?—but I don’t. I see sympathy.

  And fear.

  “Are you a relation?” he asks gently.

  I don’t even have to pause. “Yes,” I say. “I’m her sister.”

  58

  Maggie

  There is a long line of people waiting to give their names at the hospital, and it is moving slowly. Everything feels nail-bitingly slow. I reached New York in record time—there is no traffic on the highways at night, but now I feel as if nothing is moving quickly enough, and I am scared.

  Eventually, I’m at the front. I lie, tell the receptionist I’m Eve’s aunt, and with no expression in her voice, she directs me to a bank of elevators.

  That take me to the Cardiac Unit.

  I am terrified of what I will find. The whole way down here, I imagined finding Eve in the hospital, but in a room, awake—ill but grateful someone was here, relieved to hear her mother is on her way.

  Cardiac Unit. What does that mean? How does a nineteen-year-old girl end up in the Cardiac Unit? I steel myself as I walk down the corridor. Remember who you used to be, Maggie. The committee chair. The organizer. The woman who held all the power. This is the time to draw on the old Maggie, not the quiet, invisible Maggie I’ve become today.

  I step onto the floor, walk down the corridor, my eyes glancing into a room I pass, barely registering what I’ve seen until I am past it. I pull to a halt, turning and going back to the room. There is a girl curled up on a chair, her sweatshirt balled up to make a pillow, her neck at an awkward angle as she sleeps.

  Grace’s cheeks are tearstained, her face puffy. She looks just as she did when she was a little girl, and I can’t move; I can’t do anything but stand there and look at her as my heart threatens to break.

  Grace. Gracie. My beloved daughter. I want to sweep her into my arms and hold her close, squeeze her and cover her with kisses, make up for all the lost time, all the years I wasn’t present for her, wasn’t able to be the mother I can be today.

  She stirs. I catch my breath. Her eyes open and she looks straight at me, not really seeing, until she focuses and I see a frown, a look of shock as she uncurls, sits up, and rubs her eyes, looking again at me.

  “Hi, Gracie,” I whisper. Without thinking, I am moving slowly toward her, and suddenly her face crumples and she is in my arms—my beautiful, beautiful baby girl—sobbing as if her heart is going to break. I squeeze her hard, feeling her body that is, immediately, almost as familiar as my own, as the tears trickle slowly down my cheeks.

  * * *

  Eve went into cardiac arrest again in the ambulance on the way over here. Her heart stopped for twelve seconds.

  She is alive—just—but there are problems. She has bradycardia—dangerously slow rhythms—and a severe electrolyte imbalance. She is on an IV to replace fluids and minerals, but it has to be slow to stop her body, her heart, from going into shock again.

  “You mean, she could have another heart attack?” I am still struggling to understand how a nineteen-year-old can be this ill. How anyone allowed a nineteen-year-old to get this bad.

  “Her heart and her kidneys are our biggest concern right now. She has a significant amount of edema in her hands and feet due to the buildup of fluid in her body because of the damage to her renal system. Right now, we are trying to stabilize her by slowly replacing the minerals and nutrients she’s missing. There isn’t much else we can do other than wait.”

  “Is she going to die?” Grace asks, her eyes wide with fear.

  He hesitates. “If she can make it through the next twenty-four hours, we’ll be in a better position to know where we stand. Are her parents on their way?”

  “Her mother is flying in from California,” I say. “Her father isn’t…” I trail off.

  He nods, then lays a hand on my arm and gives it a light squeeze just before he walks off, and it is this that sends a shudder of fear running through my body.

  He wouldn’t have done that if he thought she was going to be okay. Grace sees it too, but neither of us mention it as we turn to go in and see Eve.

  * * *

  Oh, God. Oh no. Sweet Lord.

  I take one look and have to walk straight out, straight to the bathroom, where I lean against the door and try to swallow my tears, the lump in my throat, splashing my face with cold water as I try to compose myself before walking back to join Grace, pretending to be the grown-up, pretending I am in control.

  Asleep, tubes surrounding her, Eve is skeletal, her cheeks and eye sockets so sunken, her skin and hair so colorless, it is like looking at an old black-and-white photograph of a corpse.

  This is a child. Sylvie’s child. It might just as well be mine. It could have been mine. She is as close to death as I have ever seen anyone, and it takes a few minutes before I can look at her face without feeling a sob rise.

  I place her tiny birdlike hand in mine, stroking the bones, looking down at her brittle, pale, jagged nails as my tears drip down.

  “It’s bad, isn’t it,” Grace whispers, crying too, on the other side of the bed, holding Eve’s right hand in hers.

  “I don’t know,” I say, wiping my tears with the back of my sleeve like a child, “but it doesn’t look good.”

  How could anyone have let her get like this? I think again, until I remember Grace going off the rails after we first discovered Mark’s betrayal.

  And I realize. How could anyone have stopped her?

  * * *

  We sit for hours, Grace and I. We stroke Eve’s hands until I send Grace downstairs with my credit card to buy moisturizing cream in the hospital store. She comes back up with the softest, fleeciest pink blanket, which we carefully tuck around Eve before gently massaging the cream into her poor skin, as dry and brittle as that of someone four times her age.

  We quietly sing the songs of Grace’s childhood to her: “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” “Hot Cross Buns,” “Ring around the Rosie,” “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

  We sit, Grace and I, telling Eve the stories of Grace’s youth. The funny ones, the sweet ones. We tell her that when she wakes up, Grace will demonstrate the dance she did for her ballet recital when she was five, including the tremendous trip that had the entire audience holding their breath, until she stood up, loudly announcing, “I’m okay, I’m okay!” bowing with a huge grin as the audience cheered.

  We laugh softly at the memories, all the while glancing up at the heart monitor, making sure the line doesn’t go flat, ready to leap up in an instant for help if it does.

  I tell Grace she can take a break, but she won’t leave. In the early hours of the morning, a nurse brings me yet another coffee as Grace, still holding Eve’s hand, sinks her head onto the bed and falls asleep.

  * * *

  I hear Sylvie before I see her. Or, I hear the doctor I spoke to earlier leading her in.

  I stand up, moving quietly away from the bed so she can take my place, be with her daughter, and I watch for a while as she strokes Eve’s hair, murmurs into her ear, kisses her forehead.

  Grace wakes up then, looks at Sylvie, startled, then finds me in the doorway. I gesture for her to come with me, leave Sylvie on her own with Eve, and she does, Sylvie seemingly not even noticing that Grace is there, all her attention on her own daughter.

  We walk down the corridor, Grace still in the half fog of sleep, and I catch my breath as she leans her head on my shoulder, slipping her hand into mine.

  * * *

  Grace is fast asleep—borrowed pillows and blankets turning the sectional into a makeshift bed—when Sylvie appears in the doorway of the visitors’ room.

  This woman I have hated, blamed for the dem
ise of a marriage I now see was flawed and wrong from the outset, stands a few feet away from me, broken.

  I look at her, feeling nothing but concern, care. Even love. I stand up awkwardly, about to ask if there is news, but instead we move toward each other, propelled by an unknown force.

  Sylvie and I stand in the center of this tiny room, my arms locked tightly around her, trying to absorb her pain, trying to let her know she is loved as she leans against me, her body racked with sobs.

  Part Five

  FAMILY

  59

  Sylvie

  Sometimes Sylvie will find herself thinking that this is just like the old days, but it is never like the old days. The old days can be broken into three parts in her mind: years ago, with Jonathan, when life was simple and happy; marriage to Mark, when life seemed simple and happy but was in fact a lie; and after Mark, when Eve fell apart.

  Sylvie will say this is like the old days because when Eve visits from New York, where she is now at NYU, she will perch on a stool at the kitchen counter with a wooden cheese board in front of her and a glass of wine as Sylvie flits around the kitchen, cooking. Angie and Simon will pop in, joking and laughing, the doors flung open to catch the persimmon glow of the fading sunset as they all prepare dinner together.

  When Sylvie thinks it is like the old days, she means the days post-Jonathan, pre-Mark. The days when it was just her and Eve, and both were happy.

  There are, of course, differences today. Sylvie does not miss the subtle changes. Eve may be out of the woods, but she will never be the same; it will always be one day at a time. Watching her now, cutting a paper-thin sliver of cheese, Sylvie breathes a sigh of relief that these days Eve is eating anything at all.

  For years, Sylvie could not watch her eat without the familiar mix of fear and panic curdling inside her, impossible to hold in, sometimes coming out in a bark of anger.