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

by Clare B. Dunkle

Maybe, I thought.

  “You haven’t eaten all day!” I pointed out.

  “That’s the other reason I’m going. I told her I’d stop by McDonald’s and pick something up.” She paused in the doorway, and her voice softened. “Really, Mom, it’s just Lisa. Just for an hour. We’ll eat and everything, don’t worry. And I’ll help you with the book tomorrow. I promise.”

  I spread my hands. “Elena, I can’t believe you. I’m not this stupid, really. You weren’t talking to Lisa, and you’re not going to see Lisa—not dressed like that, anyway.”

  Elena drew herself up and folded her arms. They were like matchsticks, too.

  “Just because I tell you things,” she said, “now you think you know everything about me. You know I used to make a habit of telling lies, so now you disbelieve everything I say! I wouldn’t have started this book with you if I knew you’d end up calling me a liar all the time.”

  “This has nothing to do with your memoir,” I said. “It has to do with now. I know you’re not going to Lisa’s because you were talking on the phone with a guy. That’s when you decided to get up and get . . . dressed.”

  Elena threw up her hands in a fury. Her dark eyes were huge in her thin, pinched face.

  “So now you’re listening in on me?” she said. “How do you know who I’m talking to? Have you been monitoring my phone calls?”

  “No. I was walking by. And no, I don’t have to listen in! It’s your tone of voice. You only talk to guys like that. Don’t treat me like I’m a moron!”

  “Oh, yeah, well, thanks, Mom, you guessed it, you’re absolutely right—I’m actually going to turn tricks to support my meth habit!”

  Genny had been listening with her head up and one eye fixed sadly on my face. Now she jumped down and trotted out of the room.

  “Very funny!” I said. “You lied about where you’re going, and you lied about picking up food. Can’t you just for God’s sake tell the truth?”

  “I didn’t lie! I am going to pick up food!”

  “Elena! You don’t have any money!”

  Elena stopped, surprised, and reached into her purse to flip open her wallet. “Where’s the twenty I had?” she cried suspiciously.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t know!” I cried back. “I’m just a person who lives in the same house with you and spies on you and monitors your phone calls! But if I had to guess—now that I know everything about you—I’d say that you used it last night to buy Mexican food!”

  Valerie’s face appeared around the hall door frame.

  “Listen, you two!” she hissed. “In case you didn’t notice, it’s the middle of the night, and some of us actually have to get up in the morning! Momma, why are you even doing this? You know she’s not going to listen. She’s going to do whatever the hell she wants. Elena, if you want to go out dressed like a total skank, by all means! That is totally your God-given right. But I swear to God, people, if you wake up Gemma, I will murder you!”

  I felt my face go hot, and I dropped my voice to a whisper.

  “Oh, Valerie, I’m so sorry. You’re right. I’m sorry we woke you up. But don’t say ‘swear to God.’ It’s wrong. And, Elena,” I continued, turning back to the piano bench—

  But Elena wasn’t there.

  I heard the click as the front door shut behind her.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  When I got up with Joe at six the following morning, Elena wasn’t home. When Valerie came out at eight thirty, groggy from having been up at three in the morning, and handed me a sleepy, happy, freshly changed baby, Elena wasn’t home. She wasn’t home at nine thirty, either, although the sun had been up for hours and every normal person had long since gotten up, had coffee, and driven to work or to school or (in my case) started the washing machine.

  I dialed Elena’s phone and got no answer. How many times had I told her to send me a text if she wouldn’t be coming home?

  By ten o’clock, I had dialed her phone at least a dozen times.

  My overactive imagination started feeding me images: Elena’s car in a drainage ditch. Elena’s car crashed into a tree.Mrs. Dunkle, I’m so sorry. It’s about your daughter.

  Of course she was safe. Of course she was just asleep somewhere.

  Elena’s slender hand flopping over the side of a fifty-five-gallon drum. A lock of Elena’s dark hair sticking up out of loose earth. Mrs. Dunkle. It’s about your daughter.

  Writing was out of the question. I did small, meticulous things. I unloaded the dishwasher. I started cleaning out the fridge.

  Why did she do this to me? Didn’t she have the slightest regard for my feelings? I’m so sorry, Mrs. Dunkle. I’m so sorry . . .

  At ten thirty, I sat down at the kitchen table, and I dialed her number over and over. On the ninth or tenth time, the line picked up.

  “H’lo . . . ,” grunted a husky voice.

  “Elena! I’ve been trying to reach you!” I snapped, relief fueling my anger. “You said you’d be home last night!”

  “Oh . . . Sorry, Mom,” muttered the husky voice. “I fell asleep.”

  “Well, get up!” I said. “Your appointment with Bea is at eleven thirty, and the office is half an hour away. And you’d better not miss this one!”

  Fifteen minutes later, Elena stumbled through the door. She was barefoot, her hair was tangled, and her makeup was smudged. Her tiny dress smelled like a beer keg.

  “H’lo,” she muttered, dropping her purse onto the piano bench.

  “How much did you drink last night?” I demanded. “Are you even good to drive?”

  Annoyance flashed across her puffy face. “Yes, I’m fine to drive!” she said. “You should be glad I didn’t drive last night! I was responsible.”

  Without a word, I turned back to the fridge. Its disorder was so much less frustrating. A few minutes later, I heard the front door shut.

  I finished the fridge and carried the bag of trash out to the garbage can. Then I sat down to have a cup of tea.

  Elena wasn’t dead in a ditch. We wouldn’t get another no-show bill from the therapist. The sun was shining, and my kitchen was looking good. These things were enough to push the day into positive territory.

  I had learned not to ask for too much.

  My cell phone rang. I glanced at it as I answered. It was Bea, Elena’s therapist. “I’m putting your daughter into the hospital,” Bea said. “She needs immediate psychiatric treatment.”

  Long ago, in another life, such a statement would have bowled me over and left my world in tatters.

  Today, I felt hardly a flicker.

  “That sounds like a very good idea,” I said. “Things have been deteriorating these last several weeks. Which hospital are you going to use?”

  Bea’s voice was stiff. “I don’t know. I’m going to call an ambulance.”

  Long ago, I wouldn’t have known the implications of that. Nowadays, I was a veteran. I immediately went into full planning mode.

  Ambulance, I thought. Emergency services, covered in full; hospitalization, another five hundred dollars if she’s there five days, but no—we’ve already reached our yearly catastrophic max. Let’s see, I’ll need to cancel her nutritionist’s appointment on Friday.

  “Okay,” I said, grabbing a pen and starting a list on the Post-it pad on the fridge. “Her insurance card should be in her wallet. Just make sure the EMTs see it and take her to one of the hospitals covered by our plan. That would be . . . well, I don’t have a list with me, but it needs to be a preferred provider.”

  And I should call from my side, too, I thought, just to make sure the EMTs get it right.

  I jotted down a note: CALL, CHK IF HOSPTL PREFERRD.

  “I can’t promise that,” Bea said.

  I paused in the act of drawing a box around my note.

  “I don’t understand. What do you mean?” I said. “You can’t promise you’ll show her card to the EMTs? They’ll ask for it.”

  “Mrs. Dunkle,” Bea said, “I mean that I’m not promising you a
nything.” And for the first time, I registered the fact that her voice was absolutely dripping with rage.

  What? my stunned brain asked. What just happened?

  “Look, Mrs. Dunkle,” Bea continued with icy fury, “if you want to be a part of this decision, then you’d better get over here right now.”

  “I’m half an hour away,” I said automatically.

  “Then be here in half an hour!” And the line went dead.

  I stared at the phone in complete amazement. She had actually hung up on me!

  “What’s that all about?” Valerie called from the living room.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Elena’s therapist. She says—she’s putting Elena in the hospital. She seems to be mad at me.”

  In a daze, I got up and looked around for my car keys. I had brushed my teeth this morning, right? I found my shoes and slipped them on. My phone? It was still in my hand.

  Valerie blocked my way to the door. She was holding Gemma in her arms.

  “Momma, what’s going on?” she said. “Who’s mad?”

  “Honestly? I don’t know. I . . . I guess I upset Bea somehow.” And in my mind, I reran the conversation. “She said she was putting Elena in the hospital, and I said fine, just make sure it’s a hospital on our insurance. And then she said,” and I imitated the angry voice, “‘I’m not promising you anything.’”

  A reckless light shone in Valerie’s eyes. “I’m coming, too,” she said. “Let me grab my wallet. I’ll do the driving.”

  We pulled up at the bland suburban house where Bea held therapy sessions. The living room was her waiting room, and a guest bedroom was her office. We opened the door of that living room to an astonishing sight: Elena, lying on the couch with her head on Bea’s lap.

  “Come in!” Bea called imperiously.

  I obeyed in a dream, astounded by the tableau before me. Bea was looking down tenderly at Elena and stroking her tangled hair. After waiting for the moment to reach its full dramatic effect, Bea softly and sorrowfully pronounced, “I have never met a child so full of self-hate.”

  And her eyes rose accusingly to mine.

  “Woman,” I said.

  She blinked. “What?”

  “Woman,” I repeated. “Not child. She’ll be twenty-one in a month. Calling her a child just exacerbates the problem.”

  Bea’s eyes flashed with anger. She was an impressive white-haired woman herself, a veteran therapist of many years, and she knew exactly how to convey what she was feeling.

  “I’m telling you that your daughter is suicidal with guilt,” she said, “and that’s what you have to tell me—that she’s not your child? Well, for your information, this child has been sobbing for almost an hour about how she can’t win her mother’s approval no matter what she does!”

  Beside me, Valerie stirred and made a strangled sound.

  I held up my hand to stop Valerie from speaking. Valerie was angry, but I wasn’t angry. I just felt old and jaded and tired.

  I understood everything now.

  Elena had seen this woman all of three times, and she had played Bea like a con artist plays a chump. I had seen Elena work her mind games with the therapists at Clove House. My daughter was a force to be reckoned with. Bea might be clever, and she might be a veteran, but I had already gathered that she didn’t normally handle young adults. She clearly had no idea how tricky they could be. Elena had gotten under her skin.

  “So, would you like to know,” I said in what I sincerely hoped was a pleasant manner, “what Elena has done lately to earn my disapproval—no matter what she does? She’s refused even to pretend to eat with her family anymore. She won’t even attempt to eat at all, although we offer to buy her any food she thinks she could stand. She won’t leave her room, where she lies in bed with the lights off, and it’s not as if all we do is yell at her, either—we beg, we plead, we offer her books and movies, but nothing gets her out of bed.

  “Now, last night, after refusing to budge all day, she got up at midnight to go out on the town. She lied to me about where she was going, she lied to me about who she’d be with, she drank alcohol, which mixes in a dangerous way with her meds, and she didn’t let me know she was safe. Finally, at ten thirty this morning, I managed to reach her on her cell phone. Up till then, I thought she might be dead in a ditch.”

  Elena didn’t move throughout this whole recital. She lay perfectly still with her face hidden under her tangles. Bea didn’t stir, either. But she had stopped stroking Elena’s hair.

  “Now,” I concluded, “why don’t you tell me? Which one of those accomplishments is supposed to win my approval?”

  It was a very neat summation. I should have felt scornful and triumphant. But I didn’t. I just felt tired.

  Bea looked me in the eye again. Her gaze was less fierce now. I think the light was beginning to dawn. But Valerie could control herself no longer.

  “I can’t believe this!” she burst out.

  Bea transferred her gaze to Valerie and summoned her dignity again.

  “And who are you?” she asked.

  “I’m that little shithead’s sister!” Valerie said. “Really, Elena? Really? You let somebody believe your screwed-up life is all down to Mom? You’ve done some seriously shitty things, but this is right up there.”

  Elena’s silent form quivered slightly at this but gave no other sign of life. Bea raised her eyebrows and put her hand around Elena’s shoulder.

  She said, “Well, I don’t think talk like that is going to help.”

  But Valerie wasn’t about to be shut down. Her brown eyes were shining, and her mouth was curved in a cynical smile, but I could see that she was beside herself with rage. Her words flowed out in a torrent now, over Bea and Elena both.

  “The one person who has put up with your shit!” she said. “The one person who would do anything for you! The one person you had, all your life, who you knew would put aside everything the minute you needed her!”

  Valerie’s defense gave me a little breathing room. Now I could sort out the hospital problem.

  Psychiatric care, I thought. Do we need an ambulance or not? I think not. Waiting room . . . How long will we be there? Maybe I can make better use of our time by calling the insurance company from there. But maybe we need precertification, and what if they call her right in? No, I’d better check before we go to make sure we’re good. And what about Genny—doesn’t she have her appointment for shots this afternoon? I’d better call and cancel. Call vet . . . Pack Elena a suitcase . . . Make sure to pick up hamburgers for while we wait . . .

  “Like it’s supposed to be her fault you screwed up!” Valerie was saying. “Like you didn’t do every single thing she taught us not to do! Hey, I was an idiot, I know my way around psych wards, but at least I didn’t blame other people for the shit I did!”

  The glare had left Bea’s eyes. She had figured it out. That was good: one item off my to-do list. At these words, however, Bea gave a little shake and said, “You mean, you were in an institution, too?”

  “Eight weeks in England with the rich and famous,” Valerie affirmed. “Tea and crumpets on the lawn every afternoon.”

  “Anorexia?” Bea asked.

  “Depression,” Valerie answered calmly. “I burned and cut the shit out of myself. A lot of it, right there at the hospital.”

  She held Gemma with one hand while she stretched out the other hand. Once again, I saw the shiny lilac dots of the burns.

  They’ve faded out so well, I thought. You’d hardly even know they were there.

  Bea studied them. Then she turned to me. “That must have been very painful for you,” she said.

  Was it? I found myself thinking in surprise. Was it painful?

  My imagination found the memory and played it for me: Valerie walking into the kitchen, humming softly, oddly excited and jubilant. And her hands . . . the oozing round sores on the backs of her hands . . .

  It was as if a crack had opened up in the earth at my feet—a
crack that went all the way down to hell. Violent anguish shot through me. I had had no idea that I could still hurt so much.

  The next instant, rage came boiling up inside, the closest feeling to hate that I’d ever known. How dare this woman try to touch my injured feelings! She’d made herself part of my injury now! That little drama she’d played, ordering me into her presence—and, once she’d found out that she was wrong, to come schmoozing up to me and actually force me to feel . . .

  I lifted my head, and I glared her down.

  “Well,” Bea said, shifting a little and sighing, “I still think it’s a good idea for Elena to go into the hospital. She’s in a very poor frame of mind.”

  An hour and a half later, I was sitting with Elena in the waiting room of a very large and very busy hospital. At least fifty other people were waiting there, too. One man was waiting in handcuffs, with police.

  When I had woken up this morning, I hadn’t had this in mind for my day. But things were starting to improve: at least now we were sitting down. For the first fifteen minutes, there had been no free chairs, and both of us had had to stand.

  Elena and I hadn’t spoken to one another on the way home. After what she had put me through that day, I hadn’t even bothered to suggest that she eat breakfast. But after she had changed clothes, she’d brought a bowl of cereal over and sat beside me while I’d made my insurance calls. Now she was reading a book while I people-watched. A waiting room is a great place to meet new characters.

  “Listen to this, Mom,” she said.

  Half of my brain listened to the passage she read out while the other half thought back fondly over all the thousands of times in her life when I’d heard that invitation. Valerie and Elena were both huge readers, devouring several new books a week, and they often read out passages to me. Elena had probably given me summaries of three-quarters of the books she’d read.

  Or, at least, she had been a huge reader—back when she’d had a life.

  After a little conversation about the book Elena was reading, she began to share amusing stories with me about the party last night. Lisa had been involved in it in some way, so her statements to me hadn’t been complete lies.