I throw some of my sister’s old bras into the bag. I hear my dad in the hall and quickly stub out my cigarette on top of the dresser. Then I spray rancid perfume, and wave my hand in the mist to spread it around.
“Frannie?” My father knocks lightly and tells me he’s leaving.
“Okay.” I speak to him through the crack. “See ya.” I try to push the door closed, but he blocks it with his foot. “Why are you being so secretive?” he asks.
“I’m not being secretive, Daddy.” I tug on my robe. “I don’t have any clothes on.”
He quickly pulls back. “I left something for Shelly on the table. Please take it to her. I hope you and your mother have a nice visit.”
“Yeah, should be a regular riot.”
“You don’t have to be snotty.” I roll my eyes as he ambles downstairs. Hit with a pang of guilt, I wait a beat, then race down and catch him in the garage. “Maybe we can have dinner on Friday night?” I say breathlessly. “You can cook something for us.”
“Maybe.” He gets into the leased Mercedes he can’t afford to buy. “We’ll see.” As he backs out of the driveway, he rolls down the window. “Hey, Fran?” I lean forward, hoping to hear him say how much he likes having me home, how he can’t wait to have dinner with me on Friday. “Don’t smoke in the house, huh? It makes the whole place stink.”
Back in Shelly’s room, I pick up the picture again and study it. I don’t think any of us believed that Shelly would get so sick. In fact, I thought she decided to stop making herself throw up. She never regained the weight she lost in college, but I guess we figured her preoccupation with her body was something she’d get tired of, like giant bowls of rice. She was always on some sort of kick, but nothing lasted longer than a few months. In high school, she wanted to join the Peace Corps, then the Libertarian Party, then a kibbutz. When she got to Cornell, she became a raging feminist and stopped shaving, then she wanted to teach English, then she was going to be an anchorwoman. But she finally settled on law school, and when she graduated two years ago, Abby’s father, Lonny, hired her as a paralegal. “I’ll work for Lonny through law school,” Shelly told me. “Then the D.A.’s office. I want to be the youngest judge appointed to the bench.”
I shrugged. “Sounds good to me,” I said, jealous she had her whole life lined up and I couldn’t even decide whether to have tuna or turkey for lunch.
It wasn’t until last June that she started to disappear. When she passed out on the beach, I knew she was in a bad way, but I attributed it to a combination of the anxiety that comes with being out of school for a year and our grandmother dying. But as the months went by, Shelly continued to lose weight. My mother and I tried to talk to her, but she told us that she had things on her mind, that she had started seeing a therapist, and we should mind our own business. So we did. In our defense, she was always bulked up in clothes, so we never actually saw her body. And she didn’t do anything weird with her food, she didn’t exercise obsessively, she didn’t drone on about how fat she was. She simply stopped eating, and over the year, she got thinner. And thinner. And thinner. Since there was no drama, I never felt comfortable confronting her. Neither did my mother, but that didn’t stop her from talking to me about it. “Frannie,” she’d whine, “she’s wasting away. Who the hell is this therapist she’s been seeing? Why isn’t she doing something?! Do you think I should call her?”
“No way, Mom. Shelly would kill you. Stop being so melodramatic.” I hated when my mother talked about my sister’s weight. It made me feel fat and ungainly, in a sick sort of way. But then one afternoon, I looked at my sister, I mean, I really saw her. Her heart-shaped face had shrunk and I could almost make out the outline of her skull under her thin blond hair. Her blue eyes bulged in their sockets and her cheekbones jutted out beneath them, carved into her face as if cast in stone. I couldn’t stop seeing my grandmother’s face, shriveled from old age. For a second, I couldn’t catch my breath. Jesus, I thought. Je-sus. Who is this girl?
“Why are you sleeping?” At first my mother’s voice is far away, but when she repeats herself, I realize she is hovering over me.
Quickly, I sit up, my heart pounding. I talk loud and fast, trying to convince her that I wasn’t sleeping, I was only resting, but my voice comes out high-pitched and tinny.
“Frannie, please.” I look up. She is dressed in her day-off attire: a fuchsia jogging suit, $19 sneakers that look like real Nikes, and socks with little pom-poms on the heel. She holds her newly painted nails away from her body, her fingers spread open like a Japanese fan. I smile at her, but I know there’s no way it’s going to be a guava day. “Get up. Get dressed. Let’s go. We’re late.” She shakes her head at me before leaving.
I really was going to make some job calls, but hit with a wave of exhaustion, I climbed into bed. I can’t break the habit of going back to bed after breakfast. Sometimes I sleep until mid-afternoon, getting up just as people are leaving their offices. It hasn’t helped my job search, but I’m just so tired all the time.
I finger my black interview suit. We bought the suit during my senior year at Syracuse, back when my mother seemed to have faith in me. Now she seems convinced that I don’t want to work, which isn’t true. I just don’t know what I want to be and it seems pointless to commit to one thing until I figure it out. If I wasn’t so stupid about my life, I would have gone to law school or gotten an MBA. Then I’d be something already, or at least on my way.
I don’t know why, when you’re born, they just don’t assign you an occupation. Right from the start, you’d know what to do, and there would be no need for aptitude tests, career counselors, or stupid questionnaires in Cosmo like “Is Your Career Right for YOU?,” the one I filled out at the pool. The results said I should work independently, which annoyed me, so I went back and kept changing my responses until I fell into the “works well with other people” range.
“FRANNIE! Come down!”
I jump up, put on my Keds, and race downstairs. My mother has the phone in her hand, and with the chopstick she is using to dial, she indicates that I should sit. I look at the Jumble and notice that one of the words my father filled in is TROOM. I’m not sure if TROOM is a real word, so I scratch it out and fill in the squares with MOTOR. Then I cross out MOTOR too, figuring TROOM is a salesman’s term only he knows.
I watch my mother get tangled in the phone cord, wearing my favorite earrings, and I can’t believe this is my life. I am a freak: I’m a grown woman, four years away from my thirtieth birthday, and I’m sitting at my parents’ kitchen table on a Wednesday morning. I have a job where I wear orthopedic shoes, an apron embroidered with a yellow duck on the bib, and a name tag with Wanda typed in because I don’t want anyone to know my real name. I’m giving this plan one month. One month to find a job, land a man, and get my life in order. A month isn’t that long. I smile, having told Shelly the same thing about St. Mary’s. “It’s just a month, Shelly. Do your time and get out. How bad could it be?”
My mother hangs up. “Let’s go. Grab my keys, please?” She holds out her hand so I’ll notice her freshly manicured nails and be reminded, once again, how I failed her. She also points to the present lying on the table. When I see it, I get a pang of jealousy. It’s not because my father bought Shelly something special—I mean, she is in the hospital—but I feel like he doesn’t even realize I’m alive. All he had to buy me was one stupid box of Pop-Tarts. I guess he feels I’m lucky enough to be living at home. Or maybe he just loves her more.
In the car, my mother puts a pair of my dad’s boxer shorts on her head so her hair can “breathe” without the hot sun ruining her color. My dad has his boxers starched with his shirts, and the legs stand at attention. It’s funny that my mother, who won’t leave the house without perfect nails, will sit in her car with boxers on her head, but she tells me the car is her private sanctuary. “It’s not like I’m really outside,” she says when I point out that people stare at her. In fact, she had a phone and a CD player inst
alled. If she could convince Collette to do her hair in the front seat, all she’d need is a hot plate and she wouldn’t have to get out of the car for anything except to go to the bathroom.
When we pull out of the driveway, I play with my mom’s vial of Valium. At this moment, I’d give a body part to swallow a handful of her pills and soothe my fluttering stomach. But they give me a foggy head and I have to save the ones I steal from her for the nights I work at Rascals. Besides, taking her pills in daylight makes me feel like I’ve become my mother, even before I’ve been myself, whatever self it is that I’m supposed to be. Then I want to crawl into my little twin bed. And that’s the last thing I need, to be in my bed in the middle of the day. If a bed is any indication of how small a life has become, then I, Frannie Hunter, am queen of a fucking anthill.
2
Why is there so much traffic?” my mother whines as we line up at the Triboro Bridge. I shrug. She always asks me questions I’m not sure I should answer. I know she’s mad that I didn’t go see Collette, but I also know she took a Valium and a half (the extra half, she said, was for Shelly’s good luck), so she’s probably sedated.
Sunlight streams in, and I flip down the visor. My mother wears large, black wraparound shades to shield her skin from the sun. I want to tell her that there’s an obvious Quick Tan line where her neck meets the curve of her face, but she’s in such a bad mood, I don’t say anything. I even pretend not to notice when she crosses three lanes of traffic without signaling.
I rest my head against the window, feeling the faint stir of anxiety. As I watch the cars whip by, I concentrate on counting them until my heart stops racing. I often find myself palpitating in fits of panic for no real reason, my senses so heightened, I can actually feel myself feeling, so I count in my head to calm myself. But I refuse to end up taking Valium like breath mints. A “conscious choice,” my ass.
“I wish Daddy had come,” I say to my mother, who points to her CD case.
“He doesn’t understand these things, Frannie.” She points again, this time with urgency. I sigh heavily to remind her that I am not her slave, and pull the case into my lap. Soon, Johnny Mathis booms through the car. “Daddy had a meeting with a client,” she says dreamily. “Rather than expecting him to sit in a hospital, don’t you think we should thank God he has somewhere to go all day?”
As we inch through traffic, my mother hums to herself. I watch as she cranes her neck forward, focusing on something in the distance. Suddenly she jams on the brake. “Sorry,” she mutters. “So, do you think this place will help Shelly? They say it’s one of the best hospitals…” She trails off as she makes her way onto the FDR Drive.
“For what?” Say it, Mom, just say what it is. I feel my rage toward her building, but keep silent and swallow hard.
“Dear,” she says in the tired voice usually reserved for my grandfather. “Don’t start.”
“You should just say what it is. It’s anorexia, Mom. An eating disorder. It’s like being addicted to alcohol or heroin or, I don’t know…” I pause. “Valium. Maybe if you were able to say what it is, she wouldn’t be in that hospital.”
“It doesn’t help to blame me, Frannie. I know Shelly has anorexia. There, I said it. Happy? I just don’t know if committing herself to a hospital is the best answer. It seems to me like it’s an escape. What’s going to happen when she gets out?”
“Mom, let it go. Even Chubby said Shelly needed to go to St. Mary’s. You were at that session. You heard her reasons.”
Marilyn Rucker is Shelly’s psychiatrist, whom she secretly calls Chubby. A month ago, before Shelly admitted herself to St. Mary’s, the entire family met Marilyn at her office for a family powwow. Chubby is sweet-faced and rotund, and I felt like she really wanted to help Shelly. My mother, on the other hand, says she can’t understand how someone with such an obvious lack of self-control with food can possibly help Shelly deal with her own weight problem.
We waited in the reception area. Shelly was swaddled in a quilted yellow jacket that she refused to take off even though it was eighty-five degrees out. I stood in front of the door that closed off Chubby’s office. “Isn’t it nice to be together?” I said. “Just a normal family from Long Island visiting the big city.”
At that moment, Marilyn appeared in the doorway. I stared at her huge body filling the door frame and felt a flush of embarrassment. Smoothing away a loose strand of hair, she invited us in. I felt her staring at me like I was retarded. I wondered what Shelly told her about me. It couldn’t be all bad, I reasoned. I’m basically well-adjusted, considering.
Shelly immediately sat in the chair closest to the door. My father sat in a chair next to her. My mother opted for the couch. I was still standing, unable to pick a spot, worried that Chubby was assessing our relationships by where we chose to sit. Finally, I parked myself next to my mother, but not too close.
As I sank into the leather couch, I debated whether I should go into the mental health field. Chubby must be doing pretty well, I thought. I definitely want a job where I can have my own office and decorate it tastefully. Tasteful. What a great word. It’s a food word, like succulent. My mother was listening intently to Chubby. I cocked my head as if to say, Look at me, Chubby, I’m a young professional helping my sister get rehabilitated. I would have worn a suit, but no one told me your office was so tasteful.
“Shelly, do you want to start?” Chubby asked. Shelly looked at her hands and murmured something about Chubby going ahead. Chubby leaned forward. “I asked that you come today to help you understand why Shelly decided to go into St. Mary’s. As a family therapist, I believe it’s important to involve everyone in Shelly’s treatment.”
“We want to help Shelly in any way we can, Marilyn,” my mother said. She rolled the name Marilyn off her tongue slowly, as if she could thin her out by stretching her name into long, elaborate syllables. “But I don’t know if hospitalizing her is the best idea.”
“That’s not your decision, Marsha,” Chubby said pointedly. She looked at my sister as if asking permission to continue. Shelly shrugged. “Shelly is severely depressed,” Chubby continued. “In order for us to deal with the depression, we must first stabilize her weight.”
“I realize this, Marilyn, but I don’t know what can be done for her in the hospital that we can’t do out here. Frankly”—my mother looked up at Chubby’s diplomas—“if Shelly is that depressed, I don’t know if she’s in a position to determine what is best for herself.” I followed her gaze. Chubby got her medical degree from SUNY Albany. “In fact,” my mother said dryly, “I don’t know who is in the best position to help her.” If only you were thinner, Chubby, I thought sympathetically, then my mother would take your advice more seriously. She wouldn’t even care where you went to school.
“Well, who should we listen to?” I jumped in. “The person who got her here or the person trying to help her?”
“Frannie.” My father shifted in his seat. “Don’t talk about your mother like that.”
“How do you know I was talking about Mommy and not about you?” No one said anything for a second, and the words hung in the air like a cartoon bubble. I took a deep breath. “Shelly’s not an idiot. If she feels she needs to check into a hospital, then she should. End of story.”
My mother rolled her eyes. “Please, Frannie, Shelly should be with people that love her. A hospital just feels so anonymous to me.”
“And forcing your daughter to go on a diet is loving her?”
“I never forced you girls to do anything. I was just afraid that if you didn’t watch yourselves, you’d end up heavy and miserable.”
“Bullshit! If we ended up heavy, you’d be miserable.’’ I turned to Chubby. “We had to be perfect. For my mother that meant being thin.’’
“That’s not true, Frannie.” Like me, my mother looked at Chubby. Her voice was even and controlled. “I was very overweight as a teenager and very self-conscious about my body. My mother, in fact, fed me too much because for
her, feeding me was showing she loved me. I made the conscious decision to teach the girls that food is not a replacement for love, that eating right and accepting your body is much more important.” She leaned back. “I did what I thought was best. Given the opportunity, I might do things differently, but my intentions were good, and I won’t apologize for them.”
We sat in an excruciating silence. Having gotten up late, I didn’t have time to shower and I knew I stank. I turned my head slightly, trying to smell myself. The digital clock flipped a number once then twice as we waited. Chubby wrote something down. It pissed me off that she wasn’t saying anything, especially at $150 an hour. She was totally wasting my sister’s money. No wonder Shelly was severely depressed.
Finally, Chubby spoke. “It’s obvious that we all care about Shelly and we want her to make the best decision about her treatment. For any patient, our first challenge is to arrest the symptoms of her disorder. We try not to dwell too much on the past, not at this point.” I knew that was directed to me. Oh fuck you, Chubby. “I think most families have good intentions, but there comes a point when good intentions aren’t enough, and a patient needs care that her family isn’t capable of providing.” That, I know, was for my mother.
“So you’re saying I can’t take care of my daughter?”
“No. I’m saying that Shelly needs inpatient professional care. This isn’t a new disorder, Marsha. St. Mary’s is staffed with some of the best clinicians in the Northeast.”
“What are our other options? What if Shelly moved home? David, don’t you think…” She trailed off.
Everyone shifted to look at him. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “Shelly should decide.” Oh shut up, I thought. Until you get a backbone, you should just shut up.
Shelly sat, her lips pursed. She wore baggy jeans, her long legs crossed, and she bounced her foot so hard, I could hear the fabric rub. Look at me, Shelly, I commanded in my head, let me see you smile. Instead, she looked at Chubby. “I just want them to understand that I didn’t mean for this to happen. That if anything, I’d rather not do it at all.”
Hunger Point Page 3