Hope and Other Luxuries: A Mother's Life With a Daughter's Anorexia

by Clare B. Dunkle

  After all the practice I had had with these nonsensical worst-case scenarios, you’d think I would have been ready for the real thing. But when the phone rang that evening, shrill and shattering, the unhappiness in my daughters’ voices blew away my self-control.

  “They hate us!” sobbed Valerie.

  “They’re so mean!” sobbed Elena. “Come get us! We want to go home!”

  I would have grabbed the car keys right then, but Joe stepped in and took the phone. Unlike the girls and me, Joe was a veteran of the new-school experience. The son of an Air Force sergeant, he had lived on three different continents by the time he was ten, and he had changed schools over and over.

  “You can do this,” he told the girls. “I know it’s hard, but I know you can do this. You’ll be disappointed in yourselves if you leave. Then, the next time you need to try something new, you’ll be afraid to try it. You need to see if you can stick this out.”

  I could hear their voices quavering on the phone: “All right, Dad.”

  “Now, you can’t just wait for the other girls to make friends with you. You need to find ways to make friends with them. Let them tell you about themselves. Let them talk.”

  “But we can’t understand them!” they wailed.

  I was sitting beside him, listening, but I was no help at all. Inside me, the lonely changeling girl had woken up and filled my mind with self-loathing.

  From the day I had first found out I was pregnant, I had promised myself that I would learn from my own childhood, and I wouldn’t let myself get too busy to notice how my children were doing. If bad things started happening, I had sworn to myself that I would step in and fix them.

  When the girls were little, I was a busy career woman, just as my mother had been. I was a university librarian, managing staff and working to earn tenure. It was a dream job, but the whole time I was there, I felt conflicted. I tried to convince myself that my work had meaning, but I couldn’t shake the sense that my most important work was being set aside.

  The fact was that our house didn’t feel like a home to me back then. It wasn’t our safe haven; it was only a place to stop on the road to somewhere else, a bus station of sorts, strewn with the trash of our chaotic lives. We didn’t live there; we just paused there long enough to heat up something out of a bag or a box, tackle the dirty dishes, pull a few wrinkled clothes out of the dryer, and climb into bed for a little sleep.

  Back then, I worried that I was depriving my girls of their family, but what I felt most keenly was that I was depriving myself. As I sat in my library office and did my work, some other woman was raising my little girls. Some other woman had the pleasure of sitting with them and playing games with them and helping them learn to read.

  And me? I was actually paying that woman! I was giving her money to take these wonderful moments away from me.

  For years, Joe and I talked about the daunting changes we would need to make to give up my income, so it wasn’t until Valerie was twelve years old that we finally took the plunge. I’d felt a new urgency about the issue at that point. The girls’ school wasn’t challenging them. We had fallen into a rut. Joe and I were exhausted; it seemed as if we spent all our spare time just trying to catch up with the housework. And Valerie and Elena were about to reach their teenage years—on the verge of leaving for good.

  So I gave up my career. And I never once looked back.

  Now, as I sat by Joe and listened to the stress in my daughters’ voices, all those conflicted feelings rose to the surface again. It was my coming home from the library that had allowed us this opportunity to move to Germany in the first place. The whole idea had been that we would grow as a family, not split up. What had I been thinking of, sending my daughters out alone to face such pressure? What kind of mother was I?

  But Joe kept on talking, and I could hear Valerie and Elena brighten up.

  “Hang in there,” he said. “Remember, you won’t ever have to see these girls again after two weeks. Two weeks? Not even two weeks now. And ask yourself this: Could any of these girls step into an American school if the tables were turned? Could they do what you’re doing?”

  “Yeah!” Elena said. “Their English is awful!”

  By the time Joe put down the phone, he had done it. Both girls had cheered up and started making positive plans. I tiptoed through the next couple of days, keeping busy, unpacking boxes we hadn’t gotten around to since the move, but no more hysterical calls came through.

  Maybe it was going to be okay.

  Then the letters started—long letters, sometimes two in one day. They reflected deep homesickness and stress. As the days passed, the stress eased, but the homesickness remained. I can’t wait till you get us out of here! they said.

  My stomach hurt, and I alternated between elation and misery. I was so very proud of what the girls were accomplishing! It was bound to make them walk taller; if they could do this, they could handle anything. But then I would receive another unhappy letter in the mail, and I would punish myself with more joyless busywork. This was trauma, that’s what it was, and it was all my fault. I had talked my daughters into wretchedness and trauma.

  At the end of fourteen long days, Joe and I made the trek once more to bring back our triumphant warriors. They had done it: they had slogged through the hardship and pain, and now it was time for them to have fun. At home waited all their favorite activities and desserts. I was looking forward to spoiling them.

  Once again, Joe steered the car through the narrow lane to the top of the hill and pulled up in front of the erstwhile convent. This time, we were led into an oak bookcase–lined parlor, our shoes tapping soberly on the black-and-white tiles. Then the head housemother opened the door. She wore a ruffled apron, and her blond braids were tucked up into rolls on either side of her face. She was smiling.

  “Your daughters have something to say to you,” she said in crisp, practiced English, and she reached back to beckon them in. There they were, my two brave girls, a little hollow around the eyes, and maybe a little thinner, too, but their faces were lit with shy smiles. The housemother led them forward, an arm around each. She said, “Now, what was it you want to say?”

  “We want to stay and go to school here,” Valerie said.

  “We want this to be our new school!” Elena said.

  I thought my jaw was going to bounce off the black-and-white tiles.

  It’s temporary, I told myself as we walked out to the car together. It’s the desert island effect, the same kind of community building that happens whenever humans form a small group and go through an intense experience together. It won’t last, though. The girls will shake it off and change their minds in an hour.

  And I could tell by the look and the smile Joe gave me that he was thinking the same thing.

  But all the way home, Valerie and Elena chattered to us about new friends and new experiences. Their eyes were shining, and their eager sentences spilled out in fountains of excited words. They told us hilarious stories and heartrending stories. They gave us character sketches of heroes and villains. And their German! Their German had improved amazingly.

  As the girls gushed about the school, I began to see the appeal of joining such a lively, boisterous group. Here were no “twelve little girls in two straight lines,” in Ludwig Bemelmans’ famous words. It sounded more like a three-ring circus. With one hundred and twenty girls in one great big dormitory, there was always something crazy going on.

  The weekend passed, but Valerie and Elena didn’t stop talking about the school. They held long and elaborate discussions about which girls they wanted to room with and which girls would make the nicest friends. I hadn’t seen them so enthusiastic in years.

  Soon we all got caught up in the idea. Joe and I sat down to work out the finances while Valerie and Elena made long lists of things they would need—or at least would want. Finally, I called Sister to discuss plans. It was already spring. Should we just wait until the next school year?

  “N
o, bring them back as soon as you can,” she advised, “before they have time to lose their nerve.”

  The days flew by in a mad rush. We had to track down all kinds of supplies that we had never known existed before: laundry labels and little zippered pencil cases, special graph paper and school fountain pens. (German schoolchildren still write with fountain pens.) By the time we drove Valerie and Elena back to school, we were all riding high on a wave of adrenaline.

  Once there, Joe and I hauled in suitcases while the girls vanished into the busy dormitory like drops of water falling into a pond. Then he and I drove home in the dark, with the sudden silence ringing in our ears.

  We wouldn’t be seeing our girls again for three weeks.

  The following morning was completely different from any day that had preceded it. Since Valerie’s birth, the welfare of the children had shaped every one of my days. Now they weren’t here, and I wasn’t worried about them. My day seemed to have no shape.

  Joe sensed this.

  “What do you think you’ll do with yourself today?” he asked me over breakfast.

  The thought completely baffled me. I felt simultaneously lighthearted and numb. I felt as if I might be walking in my sleep.

  “Maybe I’ll do some cleaning,” I said. “Maybe get a little ironing done.”

  “My shirts are starting to pile up,” Joe agreed, getting up to rinse out his coffee cup.

  I kissed him good-bye at the door, and then I took my own cup of coffee and wandered the empty rooms. Nothing moved, and nothing made a sound. The old Dalmatian was asleep on his rug. Our old cat might as well have been a couch cushion.

  For the first time in fourteen years, I had no children to plan for or care for. I had no job, no schoolwork, no errands, and no projects. I had not a single thing, in short, that had to get done. It was a phenomenon I could barely comprehend.

  I’ll clean, I thought as I drifted through the silent spaces. Now that I’m alone, I can get this house whipped into shape. But I didn’t—because, with the imagination I have, it turns out that I am never alone.

  When I was little, my imagination terrified me with glimpses of disaster, but it also helped me escape my lonely childhood. I spent days at a time shut away in my room, staring at the wall while my imagination played its movies. Every book I read, I moved into and took over, and I turned my own characters loose in that world to see what would happen. I played with other worlds the way some children play with Legos.

  That was fine when I was young and lonely, but once I grew up, I decided that my imagination was a waste of time. All it did was steal energy and attention that ought to belong to others: my family, my home, or my employer. I realized that I must be the only manager in the library who spent half her break time staring at a blank wall.

  Through careful attention, I slowly learned to conquer my imagination. It was like stopping any bad habit—like getting a handle on nail-biting. I would catch my mind as soon it started to wander, as soon as I saw those first few seconds of new film. Then I would stamp a neon-green X over the image.

  But now, as I sat on the sofa in my empty house and drank my cup of coffee, that mischievous imagination crept up on me unawares. Little by little, a forest of tall, twisted trees wove itself around me. It grew until the walls of my living room faded out, and I could see that it spread for miles: wild, verdant woodland, engulfing tumbled hills and rugged boulders. Beneath its mossy boughs, narrow paths wound away into the shadows.

  What is this place? I wondered.

  England. Northern England. At the edge of this forest stood an old English mansion. Nearby, sheer cliffs fell to the surface of a deep blue lake.

  Who lives here? I wondered.

  And two people walked out of the forest, hand in hand—a young woman and a girl.

  Who are they? I wondered.

  By this time, I had forgotten about cleaning my house. I had forgotten that I even had a house.

  The two girls were sisters, Kate and Emily, and they wore dresses with the empire waists and long, trailing skirts of Regency-era England. They appeared to have stepped out of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and I realized that Kate, at least, would have loved to find herself in Pride and Prejudice. But, bad luck for her, this was not a Jane Austen world.

  There were surprises waiting for the two sisters in this tangle of hoary trees. I glimpsed a large black cat with huge golden eyes—I could tell right away that he wasn’t a regular cat. I spotted a short, ugly gypsy woman who read palms and told fortunes—I was positive that she wasn’t a regular gypsy. I saw a tall, stooped man with a black hood over his face—I was sure that he wasn’t a regular man. He was a brilliant magician and a magnificently ugly monster. He was Marak, my goblin King.

  I had sensed Marak’s presence in that twisted old forest even before Kate and Emily had stepped out of it. As soon as I saw that land, I knew it belonged to him. I am fond of every single character in each of my books, including many of the villains. But the goblin King is the oldest and best beloved of all my character children.

  That day, Marak’s story unspooled itself before my eyes, a movie that was playing just for me. The first time Kate, my Jane Austen girl, got a good look at him, his ugly face was peering at her out of her own mirror. While Kate stared at him, I forgot entirely that I had breakfast dishes to wash. I forgot that I had promised Joe I would iron him some shirts. I even forgot that I should probably make at least some sort of effort to defrost dinner.

  What does a goblin look like? I wondered. What does Kate see?

  Long hair—rough hair, like a horse’s mane. Shrewd eyes in two different colors, one eye green and the other eye black. A lean, pinched face, bony forehead, sunken temples, deep-set eyes, and pointed ears that flopped at the tips like a dog’s. Shiny gray skin, brown lips, and dark pointed teeth—teeth like tarnished silver.

  Marak’s hair was all one length, brushing his shoulders in a shaggy mane. It was pale beige. Or was it? The image came into clearer focus, and I saw a palm-size patch of black hair growing in a cowlick over the green eye. That black hair cast long sooty streaks over the pale hair below.

  While I sat and studied this brilliantly ugly monster, a sudden sound jarred me out of my reverie. The front door. The front door? It couldn’t be! But it was. The workday was over, and Joe had come home to admire his newly cleaned house and ironed shirts.

  “Oh, hey!” I called, jumping up. “So, I was thinking of French toast. How does that sound to you?”

  Over the dinner we threw together, Joe said, “I thought you were going to clean today.” But he said it philosophically—almost dispassionately. After fifteen years of marriage, he had learned not to count too much on my homemaking skills.

  Joe and I had met while I was earning my master’s degree in library science and he was a young engineer working for the Navy. Like Valerie and Elena, he and I were opposites in almost every way: I had gotten degrees in Russian and Latin, with a strong focus on literature, while he had managed to steer clear of the liberal arts almost entirely. He was practical but hot-tempered; I was dreamy but reserved. He thrived on routine; my student days had no order whatsoever.

  We fell head over heels in love.

  Throughout our years of marriage, Joe has been the anxious nest builder, the one who says, “Where’s the money going to come from?” And over the years, I’ve been the flighty adventurer, the one who says, “If not now, when?” Joe and I trust one another completely, but we also know what we can count on each other to do. If Joe calls home from a business trip and says, “I want to read poetry with you,” I know that he’s telling me he misses me, not that he has a sudden burning desire to read Keats. And when I tell Joe the first time or two that I think I might get to the ironing, he knows that I’m about as likely to follow through and do that ironing as he is to sit down with that book of Keats.

  So, that first evening the girls were away, I felt comfortable knowing, as Joe munched on his French toast, that he hadn’t real
ly expected ironed shirts just yet. Nevertheless, I felt I should explain.

  “It’s this new daydream,” I said. “It’s keeping me from getting any work done.” (And was that a circle of ancient oak trees on that hill?)

  “What’s the daydream about?” Joe asked.

  “I don’t know. A goblin King.” (A king of what, exactly? And why were his eyes different colors?)

  I didn’t expect Joe to ask any more questions. He had heard me make similar complaints for years. I had been at war with my imagination for our entire marriage, and I had complained about it the whole time. Joe is reassuringly immune from this weakness, so I didn’t expect goblins to interest him particularly, much less where they lived (jeweled caverns? Yes, and the twilit, indigo-tinted lands below the lake) or what they ate. (Sheep? Yes, sheep probably made the most sense.)

  But this time, Joe surprised me.

  “Why don’t you write it down?” he said.

  The idea didn’t immediately appeal to me. It sounded suspiciously like work.

  “Why?” I asked. “Who would bother reading it?”

  “I would. You’re always complaining about daydreams, but I never get to see what they’re about.”

  That made me feel grateful and more than a little guilty. Maybe I would get the shirts ironed after all.

  The next morning, after I kissed Joe good-bye at the door, I took my coffee cup and wandered the house again. I paused for a couple of seconds by the ironing board, but then I went to the computer. There was work, and then again, there was work.

  I sat at the keyboard and pondered. I thought about daydreams. I thought about stories. Writing is a bridge between two people, the writer and the reader. Who would be my reader? That reader would shape every single word.