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

by Clare B. Dunkle

  “My friend Steph’s roommate had a party last week,” she said, “but Steph’s in summer school, so she decided she’d be good and stay in her room and study for her exams. She kept the door shut and studied all evening. She didn’t come out and have a single drink. Around midnight, she needed to go to the bathroom, but the party was going full force. She didn’t want to attract attention and have someone call for her to come drink with them, so she tiptoed across the hall to the bathroom without turning on the light. She took one step into the bathroom and fell flat on her face. A guy was lying on the floor in there; she fell right over him.

  “Steph got a concussion and broke her nose; they had to call nine-one-one. And the guy she tripped over—of course, he’s fine. So, she’s sitting there, holding a towel up to her nose, she’s bleeding all over her shirt, and she yells at the guy, ‘Why were you lying down in the bathroom?’ And he says, ‘Because I wasn’t feeling good.’ And she says, ‘Yeah, but in the dark?’ And he says, ‘The light hurt my eyes!’

  “So now Steph’s back in class, and she’s got two black eyes and a broken nose, and she says everybody wants to know what happened. So she says, ‘I fell in the bathroom,’ and they giggle and say, ‘So—a party, right?’ And she says, ‘Yeah, but I didn’t drink!’ And they say, ‘R-i-g-h-t, sure you didn’t drink!’ ‘The one time I’m good!’ she says.”

  I laughed. This felt like the old Elena, the one I missed so much. I hadn’t heard her talk like this in ages. And then it hit me: Elena had missed her medication that morning—all those powerful, mind-altering, mood-stabilizing drugs.

  Elena was watching a young Hispanic mother with two children. The baby was the sick one. Its black eyes were bright with fever, and it gave a weak, exhausted cough every now and then. I could tell that the mother hadn’t slept lately. Her eyes fixed and drifted in a stare of self-hypnosis.

  The toddler sitting next to her wanted to be in her lap, too, where the baby was, so he scaled her periodically, using handholds and toeholds, in the manner of a small rock climber. Each time he reached a certain point, she detached him and plopped him back down on the seat beside her.

  “So, what did you want to ask me about the book?” Elena said. Even though all I had was a fragment of a manuscript, she always called it the book.

  “Recovery,” I said. “Talk to me about recovery. What does that word mean to you?”

  Elena didn’t answer right away. She continued watching the young mother with the baby.

  The toddler had reached his maximum altitude again, placing one sneaker on his brother’s blanketed form. His mother disentangled him and moved him to his seat. But she didn’t scold him. Her hands were gentle.

  At last, Elena said, “I don’t know.”

  When the topic of recovery had come up before, it had been in the middle of arguments. But we weren’t arguing now. So I waited.

  “I guess, at first, I hoped that recovery would mean that my critical voice would shut up,” she said. “It yells at me all the time. It’s like living with a witch. But now, I don’t know what I hope for. I don’t hope for anything, I guess.”

  My heart sank. But I wasn’t surprised.

  “I think,” she continued, “that recovery means doing the things you know you have to do, even though you don’t want to do them. You build up your willpower. You know you have to eat breakfast, so you do, even though your critical voice is yelling. You know you have to eat a snack, so you do. And so on, and so on, every day. You make yourself buy food, and you make yourself eat it. It never stops being a struggle.”

  “So, for me,” I said slowly, trying to internalize this bleak picture, “it would be like—I don’t know. Like going on a very severe diet, where everything I wanted to do was the opposite of what I did.”

  “Does your critical voice call you a bitch if you go on a severe diet?”

  “No,” I said. “I mean, I don’t know because I’ve never done crazy diets, but my critical voice doesn’t usually call me names.”

  “Then no,” Elena concluded. “That’s not what it’s like.”

  And we fell silent again.

  The toddler had given up mountain climbing for the moment. He’d turned his attention to his mother’s ring. He was holding the ring with both small hands and turning it in the light, even though it was still on her finger. This involved a certain amount of impossible bending, but his mother accommodated him without protest.

  The baby in her lap stirred every now and then and opened its mouth as if it wanted to cry. But all that came out each time was a little cough.

  “What about your friends, then?” I said. “What do you think they’d say recovery was like?”

  “They don’t know, either,” Elena said. “I’ve never met a real recovered anorexic.”

  “Not one? Don’t they bring them back to give pep talks or something? If you don’t meet them, how are you supposed to know what to aim for?”

  A note crept into Elena’s voice. Bitterness? Sadness?

  Maybe fatalism.

  “They haven’t recovered,” she said. “None of them. There’s Sheila: she’s been in treatment off and on since 2004. She never finished high school. There’s Paula: she’s been anorexic since her car accident. Five months of full-day therapy didn’t change a thing. There’s Stella: since leaving Clove House in April, she’s been in the hospital twice. She didn’t sign up for classes this fall, either. She hides out in her room all day.”

  This sounded like somebody I knew.

  “There’s Erin. She’s been at Clove House four times already. Each time they send her home, she gets worse until her heart starts showing damage, and then they put her back in again. I don’t know a single anorexic who’s gotten a job. I don’t know anybody who’s managed to finish school.”

  “What about your friend, the master’s student?”

  “Dropped out. Her parents had to move her back home.”

  “What about Mandy? She looked great the last time I saw her. She actually was at full, normal weight.”

  “Clove House kicked Mandy out of the part-time program last month because her attitude was so bad. We keep track of one another, but nobody knows what happened to her. We haven’t heard from Mandy since.”

  I could feel a chill rising through me, as if ice had been piled around my body. It was all I could do not to shiver and rub my hands. I wasn’t asking interview questions anymore, I was starting to argue and plead. I took a breath and willed myself to calm down.

  “Okay then, what about your anorexia books?” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. “All those memoirs and biographies you’ve read that I won’t read—they’re bound to talk about recovery.”

  “They talk shit,” Elena said in a matter-of-fact tone. “They go along for a while, maybe telling the truth, maybe not, and then all of a sudden, it’s rainbows and unicorns. I don’t know those people. I don’t know whether they were ever like me. Show me a person who says she’s a recovered anorexic, and how do I know she ever felt the way I feel?”

  I could understand that. The writer in me could feel the truth of that.

  “What I’m waiting for,” Elena continued sadly, “is for one of my friends to recover. I still haven’t seen that happen.”

  The toddler finally gave up climbing and exploring. He sat down flat on his rear in the chair and started to whimper. The young mother roused herself at this and gave him a smile. He stopped crying, but he went right back to climbing.

  “Maybe it has to be you,” I said. “Maybe they’re all waiting for you.”

  “What makes me so special?” scoffed Elena.

  Besides everything? I thought to myself.

  “You’re extraordinary,” I said. “How many people do you think could have tackled boarding school in a foreign language? None of the other English-speakers there mastered German—only you and your sister. How many high school students could have handled volunteering at the ER? You handled everything there from infant death to battle fat
igue.”

  “We call it PTSD, Mom,” Elena murmured, but I could tell she wasn’t really listening. “They’re all back, you know,” she continued in a low voice. “All my friends. They’re already back.”

  “Back where?” I asked.

  “Back at Clove House. They go on crash diets as quick as they can, and then they get back in. It’s all they used to talk about, some days, how much they were going to lose to get back in once they got kicked out.”

  “But I thought they all hated that place!” I protested—maybe with more force than I should have. I took a second to bring my voice back under control. “Why would they work so hard to get back in if they hate it as much as they say they do?”

  “We do hate it . . . ,” Elena said slowly. But I could see it in her eyes. Elena wanted to go back, too.

  Go back to what? Not to recovery. That much I was sure of. Elena’s feelings about Clove House didn’t have anything to do with recovery.

  Did any of her feelings have to do with recovery?

  As if Elena guessed what I was thinking, she gave a little shrug. “They’re my friends,” she said.

  A staff member in blue scrubs came through the door and called out a name. It wasn’t our name, and it wasn’t the name of the baby with the cough, either.

  “This is bullshit,” Elena said. “That therapist was a fruitcake. I don’t need to go into the hospital, and I don’t want to. School registration starts tomorrow. Classes start next week. I have things to do. Let’s get out of here, and can we go by Whataburger? I want a Number One combo meal.”

  She knew me so well. Just as she had done with Bea, she was playing on all of my weaknesses. She was saying all the things she knew I wanted to hear. Even now, after everything I’d learned, I couldn’t help hoping that she was ready to make a fresh start.

  We left and picked up our Whataburger order. With an inward sigh, I chose chicken tenders. I had put on eight more pounds so far this year, but I didn’t want to look like I was afraid of food.

  “I want to get my room cleaned up,” Elena said as we walked into the house. “Hey, Val, didn’t you want to go to Babies“R”Us?” And she headed over to the mob of pill bottles. “I feel like death. My head is pounding. Did I forget my drugs this morning? Hey, don’t let’s eat in here, let’s watch a Futurama.”

  Watching television helped Elena get through the ordeal of eating. How sad to think of a burger and fries as an ordeal.

  While we moved the various white paper bags and large plastic cups to the living room, Elena and Valerie discussed what Valerie needed at Babies“R”Us. But by the time the Futurama episode was over, Elena was starting to blink with sleepiness.

  “I think I’ll go nap for an hour,” she muttered.

  “But what about your room?” I prodded hopefully. “What about going to the store?”

  “In an hour,” she said as she trailed across the living room, fluttering her fingers good-bye. “I’ll be up in an hour, I promise.”

  We didn’t see her again until noon the following day.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Three months after Elena and I came home from Clove House, the nutritionist she was working with called me up.

  “Mrs. Dunkle, I have good news!” she said. “Elena gained two pounds this week!”

  “But . . . ,” I said. “How is that even possible?”

  “Well, she did very well on her meal plan last week,” the nutritionist answered, nonplussed. “It’s clear that she’s been working hard . . . What do you mean, how is it possible?”

  “Elena didn’t follow the meal plan you sent home,” I said. “Not at all.”

  “Oh! But she gave me a food diary, all filled out . . .”

  “And she ate very little. She didn’t even pretend to eat more than one meal a day, not to mention the possibility of purging.”

  “Oh. Well, I don’t know. I take her weight on the same scale each week. Maybe it’s possible that she’s eating, Mrs. Dunkle, and you’re just not seeing it.”

  No, it isn’t, I thought. No, it isn’t possible.

  I was on my way to pick up Elena from that appointment. Once again, she had started talking me into driving her around. The way I saw it, it was better than having her sleep her life away at home, and she was so drugged and gaunt that I worried about her endangering herself and others. What if she passed out behind the wheel?

  I pulled into the parking lot, and Elena slid into the front seat.

  “Did you hear?” she asked. “I gained two pounds!”

  I stared at my daughter. She looked worse than I had ever seen her look before.

  Elena’s hair was weedy and dry. It tangled constantly. The skin of her gray, gaunt face was scaly. It sagged in little wrinkles over her cheekbones and pinched in around her temples. Her dark brown eyes were sunken and lifeless, and she looked closer to forty years old than twenty. I stared at her and thought, My beautiful daughter isn’t beautiful anymore.

  “So,” I said casually, “what is your weight these days?”

  Elena named a number only three pounds off her ideal weight.

  And I can fly, I thought sadly. Who do you think you’re kidding?

  But I didn’t say a word out loud.

  We drove to the grocery store. Elena wouldn’t have gone there on her own, but if she was riding with me, she had to put up with it. She trailed behind me around the store, exhausted, begging me to hurry up.

  I took my time.

  “We should get a cake!” Elena announced suddenly. “To celebrate my two pounds.”

  Once more, I stared at her.

  Did she mean it? Would she actually eat?

  “Absolutely!” I said. “Any cake you like.”

  So Elena hauled me to the bakery and studied the cakes with interest. Remembering her former love of fudgy chocolate cakes, I pointed out several of those.

  “No, I want that one,” she said.

  “That one?” I said in astonishment. “But that’s . . .”

  I didn’t finish the sentence, but the disconnect between reality and my day grew even wider. Elena’s choice was a “Disney princess” cake, the kind that looks like a doll. A plastic doll of Cinderella was poking up out of the center, and the round blue-frosted cake was her gown.

  It was the kind of cake designed to appeal to preschoolers or early grade-schoolers inviting their whole class to their birthday party. It certainly wasn’t the choice of your typical twenty-one-year-old.

  But there was a slight possibility—very slight—that Elena might actually eat some of it. I would give a great deal to make that happen.

  “Any cake you want,” I repeated with hollow cheerfulness, and I purchased the plastic princess cake. When we got home, I cut a slice for Elena, Valerie, and myself. To my surprise, it turned out to taste fantastic.

  Fork in hand, Elena talked ninety miles an hour while Valerie and I ate our pieces of cake. Finally, she took a couple of nervous bites and then told us she didn’t feel well.

  “But save my piece,” she said. “I’ll eat it later.”

  Valerie and I watched her go. Then Valerie got up and cut us each another piece of cake. She said, “So, Clint says, now that he’s graduated, they should assign him to a tech school pretty soon.”

  This was a constant hopeful refrain around the house these days. Like me, Valerie is an optimist.

  I had been very impressed at how well she and Clint were handling their separation. During the eight long weeks of his basic training, they had been able to talk on the phone only twice. Nonetheless, Valerie had stayed upbeat and relaxed. We had had endless cheerful conversations about babies and baby care, and if she was lonely, she had kept it to herself.

  Clint’s graduation had been a grand, beautiful ceremony, but afterward, he had been able to spend only two days with his family. On our way back to the car after dropping him off at the dorms, we had passed a young woman who was sobbing as her new airman said good-bye.

  “Look at that!” Vale
rie had said scornfully. “Like he needs that, with everything else he’s got going on! I wouldn’t do that to Clint, no matter how bad I felt. That’s not what it takes to be a good Air Force wife.”

  Now Clint was coming home each weekend while he waited to be assigned a specialty. But once he went into tech school, he might be far away again, and it might be months before their family could be together.

  “Does he have any idea what they might choose?” I asked.

  “No,” Valerie said. “The tests don’t just spell it out. They look to see how you do, and then they look to see what they need. But here’s the thing: most tech schools are only about three months long. That’s not too bad. And if they send him to learn something really complicated, they’ll send Gemma and me, too. They do that with the longer schools.”

  Three months! I thought. I’d hate that! And I remembered how depressed I’d been, away from Joe and the rest of the family at Clove House. But that wasn’t what I said out loud.

  “Three months will go by quickly,” I said.

  “Yeah, they will,” Valerie agreed. “I just feel bad for what he’s missing out with Gemma. He missed her learning to roll over when he was in Georgia. He missed her learning to sit up when he was in basic. He’s already pretty much guaranteed to miss her first Christmas, and if they keep messing around, he’ll miss her birthday, too. I just wish they’d get off their butts and send him somewhere.”

  That was on Monday. On Wednesday, Elena’s alarm went off and once again failed to wake her up. It was so loud that the whole house could hear it, including Gemma, who started to cry. But somehow, right next to it, Elena still slept on.

  In the bedroom, trying to write, I listened to it blare. Then I heard Valerie yell. Then I heard Elena yell.

  Good, I thought. That means she’s up.

  Half an hour later, I walked into the living room. Valerie was on the floor with Gemma, feeding bright plastic balls into a toy contraption. With a whoop, the balls popped up into the air: red, yellow, blue, green. Each time a ball popped up, Gemma gave a scream of delight and made a swipe for it.

  I paused to watch for a minute. Gemma was growing up so fast! Valerie handed her a purple ball, and Gemma held it in both her chubby little hands and brought it up to her mouth to taste it.