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

by Clare B. Dunkle

  Once Elena had the corn snake moved into his terrarium, none of us could take our eyes off him. He looked so beautiful, and somehow primitive and ancient at the same time, like a work of aboriginal art.

  This is what Elena does so well, I thought, remembering the poem she had read to me. She tells me sad stories I don’t want to hear, but then I never want to forget them. She drags me into adventures I don’t want to have, but then I don’t want them to stop.

  She was so brave! She made me want to be brave, too.

  The next morning, Joe had another plane to catch. Well before dawn, I drove down wide-open highway to the airport and pulled to the curb by the terminal doors. It was so early that the airport hadn’t really gotten going yet. The two old porters, standing by the curbside baggage check-in counter, looked ready to fall asleep.

  “See you in two weeks,” Joe said, giving me a hug. “Please write me something I’ll want to read.”

  He had refused to read Elena’s story. I didn’t blame him.

  I’m going to miss this hug while he’s gone, I thought. Joe is so tall and big compared to me that he can rest his chin on the top of my head. When I’m in his arms, I can’t see anything but his shirtfront and his shoulders and his arms as they reach past to wrap around me.

  A hug from Joe is a wonderful place to be.

  I left the airport, made a detour to a nearby drive-through for a wakeup cup of coffee, and drove home through the empty predawn streets. When Elena and I would drive this stretch of road in a couple of hours, it would be a zoo, but for the time being, it was nice and quiet, just the way I liked it. I sipped my coffee and made a resolution: I would write something Joe would want to read. And I’d start right away. That couldn’t get too depressing. I’d have only an hour of writer’s block to face before taking Elena to treatment.

  So, when I got home, I shut the door of the bedroom, and I opened up my laptop. For the first time in weeks, I thought about my mermaid again.

  Where is she? I asked, just as I always had. Where is she? What is she doing?

  And, as the scene coalesced, I began to type.

  “Look what I’ve brought,” Rain said, holding the door open with one foot as she bent to pick up the rattan tray. Mama stirred under the sheet and opened her eyes. A fragile beauty still hung about Mama’s delicate features, but time and worry had taken their toll. Wrinkles pressed close to Mama’s mouth now, and her eyes glittered with fever.

  “They aren’t with you, Rain? They aren’t?”

  Rain pushed the door shut with her hip.

  “No one’s there, Mama,” she said. “It’s just me.”

  No one was ever there.

  I grimaced with annoyance. A sick mother, lying in bed. A weak, sick, fear-racked, paranoid mother—wasn’t that lovely!

  Stupid overactive imagination!

  I blew out my breath and took a sip of coffee. Look again, I told myself. What is the mermaid like?

  And once again, I began to type.

  But Rain was never sick. She was strong. And life was beautiful. Real life was more beautiful than any fairy tale could ever be. The fly-specked window and unpainted walls around Rain suddenly seemed unbearably precious. They were landmarks in the flow of this beautiful life. They said, We are here, and you are here, at this exact moment.

  This is me, Rain thought. This is me, in the middle of my life. I am standing in a room in a town in the middle of a territory so young, it’s not even a state yet. No matter where I go, I’ll carry this town with me—it and everywhere else I’ve ever been.

  Wait! What town? What territory? Where is this? Oh, no! What are we going to do?

  Did we still have an atlas? Could I find maps of the time period? Would I need to use real names of towns? What if the towns hadn’t been founded yet? How would I know I was wrong? What did our library system have? Could I get a list of Western towns and their founding dates?

  Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!

  Then I read the paragraphs again, and my worry subsided.

  I thought, I like this girl!

  Rain crossed and recrossed the room, doing the mundane chores her mother was too weak to do. Quietly, I settled down in the corner to watch. Rain put away laundry. She tidied the bare space. She didn’t mind the boring work.

  But when nighttime came, Rain took her mother’s medicine bottle and crept out of the house.

  Of course! I thought. She’s going to find water.

  Rain and her mother were mermaids, after all. No wonder her mother was sick. She must need so much water per day, week, month, or else she would start to get sick. And not just water, I realized, getting excited now. It would have to be living water—flowing water. Rain must be going out to find a stream or a creek—even a little spring.

  And I pictured a tiny spring nearby with a few green ferns gathered around it, maybe back in the pine-covered folds of the land I could see behind the town.

  But that isn’t what my imagination pictured—

  Because that isn’t where Rain went.

  My mermaid girl turned and walked downhill, down the side of the steep Western ridge. It was nothing but desert scrub and dusty earth, dim under the light of the moon. Far below, I could see more desert, spreading out wide and flat. I could see fuzzy cactus down there, catching the moonlight.

  But . . . why is she doing this? I wondered. There’s no water here!

  Or was there?

  Water was closer now, wandering blind and searching for a way out. Rain felt it, traveling along deep cracks in the sloping ground beside her.

  A sapling grew at an angle out of the hillside, its tender, rustling leaves betraying the secret that lay at its roots. Rain knelt down beside its slim trunk and dug into the ground.

  “Here,” she sang under her breath. “Here! Come this way!”

  The groundwater . . . Rain was calling the groundwater!

  Water hurried. It seeped out around the trunk to wet and cool her hands. A tiny trickle welled up and began to thread its way down the hillside.

  “More!” Rain urged. And more water came. She could feel it feeling its way to her through the tons and tons of rock.

  Of course. Of course! Water came to her call!

  The ground beneath Rain’s feet shook as she scrambled aside. Another few seconds, and rocks bumped and tumbled out of the way. The sapling bent horizontal, thrashing in the current. Then it shot off and out of sight.

  Water sang a wordless song of triumph as it burst out of its grave. Rain sang with it, dancing, and bent to thrust her hands beneath its cold, shining arc.

  Water and she never stopped moving. Water and she were always on their way.

  Tears were in my eyes now. Tears rolled down my face as I watched this beautiful, joyful young creature dance in the moonlight.

  I didn’t see it coming, I thought. I didn’t see it coming! She surprised me!

  My timer went off. Reverently, I saved the Word file. It wasn’t a white page anymore. It was a home.

  She’s alive, I thought as I wiped my wet cheeks. She’s actually alive!

  Then I set aside the laptop, and I went to wake up Elena.

  “Hey,” I said, shaking her, and my old terrier lifted her head from a fold of blanket and gave me a careful look.

  But, “Hey,” Elena mumbled back almost amiably. She didn’t have much trouble waking up anymore.

  “So, I wrote a chapter of the mermaid book this morning,” I said, sitting down on the bed.

  “Mmm?” inquired Elena, face-down in her pillow.

  “The mermaid did something I didn’t expect.”

  “Mmm!” Elena said.

  But she didn’t know what that meant, how that sentence should be accompanied with trumpets. And that was all right. It was part of my other life. It belonged to my other world.

  “Come on now,” I said, reverting to my role in this world. “Got to get moving. Time to get up!”

  Scruffy little Genny stood up, stretched stiffly, and jumped down. But
Elena rolled over with her eyes still closed. She murmured, “I just need to finish this dream first.”

  “I’ll give you five minutes,” I said. “Get to dreaming.”

  So I popped the top off Mr. Snaky’s cage, and I misted it and changed his water and admired his vibrant oranges and reds as he traveled footless along my arm. “Who’s a pretty snaky?” I crooned to him, running a finger down his silky back. “Who’s my big strong boy?”

  And Tor strolled in to ask for his breakfast. And Genny trotted in circles, panting, wondering who I was talking to.

  And my daughter—my bright, fearless daughter—finished her dream.

  EPILOGUE

  Elena stayed in treatment at Sandalwood from October to March before she felt ready to resume college. She enrolled in summer school and promptly fell in love with learning all over again. Once more, she was bursting with information to share. She even told me jokes in sign language.

  The following year, Elena applied to nursing schools and was accepted everywhere she applied.

  The month after the painful breakup described in the first chapter of this book, Elena called me to say that she was traveling to Baltimore to visit an old friend.

  “He’s the only one who’s stayed in touch from my state university days,” she said. “He knows you’re in Germany and Clint and Valerie are in Nevada, and he says he doesn’t want me to be alone over the Thanksgiving holiday.”

  I knew the young man already from Elena’s stories of university life. Like Elena, he had boundless curiosity, a sharp mind, and oceans of ambition. He was a bright, humorous, gentle person with old-fashioned Texas manners, and he didn’t have a mean bone in his body.

  “That’s great!” I said. “You know he’s in love with you, right?”

  “Mom, we’re just really good friends.”

  After the holiday, she called me up again: “How do you know these things?”

  It’s simple. I think of Elena, and I ask myself: What bright young man wouldn’t love her? Answer: Nobody!

  That’s how I know.

  A year after this holiday, almost to the day, the two of them got married. I have never seen Elena looking happier than she looked on that day. She absolutely glowed with happiness.

  In order to be with her new husband, Elena decided to put her nursing career on hold. His job requires constant travel, so she has settled down to keep house in a hotel suite. Elena, turning away from quantifiable perfection to nurture a loving relationship—that’s an idea I like to run barefoot through every now and then.

  Naturally, this transition wasn’t without its tearful moments. Elena could have sold her finest fish for an excellent price, but she gave them away instead—all one hundred and thirty-six fish—on the condition that the least valuable ones would be treated as well as the best ones. She and her husband still have her little dog with them in the hotel. Her cat, Leela, came to Germany to live with Joe and me, so once again, a black cat snoozes nearby as I write.

  I rewrote Elena’s memoir, Elena Vanishing, three agonizing times. Each time I revised it, I reminded myself that once it was finished, I would never have to go back there again. But when Chronicle Books bought it, my agent called me up.

  “They’d like another memoir,” she said. “A memoir from your point of view this time. They think it would help other parents.”

  So I went back there. I wasn’t sure I could, but I did.

  “I’m looking forward to reading this one,” Valerie says on the phone. “I can relate, being a mom and all.” She and Clint now have a family of four: Gemma and her little brother.

  Baby Gemma is already five years old. And she does look a lot like me.

  Valerie and Elena stay in touch daily, and so do their husbands, who have become good friends. We share videos and photos back and forth, and the girls call the house almost every single day. When the phone rings, Joe and I drop everything to get to it. We talk about anything and everything going on in their lives, except for the quarrels they may be having with their husbands. For all I know, neither one of them has any quarrels. After all, both of my sons-in-law are amazing.

  Each day, as I hang up the phone, I think once again about how lucky I am—except, there’s no such thing as luck. My life is so much richer because of the way my girls share their days with me, and I don’t take that kind of attention for granted. My daughters have families now—priorities that outrank me. They have full, happy, and demanding lives.

  So I savor each call. I celebrate each moment they share with me as the precious gift it is. Because how much longer will these two busy women be able to fit me into their days? How much longer will Valerie and Elena be able to spend this kind of time with me?

  Forever, I hope . . .

  I hope.

  AFTERWORD

  This book is an accurate description of how I dealt with my daughter’s eating disorder. No part of it is intended to be a guide for how others should live. Many of the things Elena chose to do were extremely dangerous, and some of the things my husband and I chose to do were also dangerous. The contract we made Elena sign, for instance, that tied her weight to a list of privileges, could easily have driven her to suicide instead of to treatment. If you or someone you know has an eating disorder, please do not take any part of this book as a suggestion for how to handle your own journey to recovery.

  If you are dealing with an eating disorder, the one thing I will advise you to do is to seek professional help. Please, do not try to manage an eating disorder on your own. These are serious, life-threatening conditions. And please, do try to educate yourself with up-to-date information. Eating disorders are complicated, and the professionals who deal with them are trying out new approaches all the time. In the years since my daughter’s eating disorder began, we have seen treatments and theories change radically.

  If you are just starting this journey, I suggest you visit the websites run by the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) and the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD). Their websites will help you find the latest resources available, and the caring staff and volunteers who monitor their helpline and forum can help connect you to the information you need. They will tell you what I am telling you: Recovery is real. You don’t have to lose hope.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Warmest, most heartfelt thanks go first to Elena Dunkle, my daughter and coauthor on her own memoir, Elena Vanishing, for the incredible courage she displayed in sharing the details of her illness with me. She turned the greatest burden of her life into a gift to the world.

  Special thanks to my daughter Valerie, who comes across as a hero in this book because she is; to my patient, long-suffering husband, Joe, who had to watch me live through these awful events again and again as I wrote; to my dear sons-in-law, Clint and Matt, who have always been a part of this family, even when they didn’t know it yet; and to my grandchildren: you are this family’s greatest joy and brightest hope.

  Daniel Ladinsky, the author of Elena’s favorite recovery poem, “We Should Talk about This Problem,” which is quoted in this book, turned the chore of obtaining the reprint permission into a joyful, life-affirming communication. And Erin Murphy, literary agent extraordinaire, believed in me, and she believed in this memoir. She even made me believe in it, too, and that’s the greatest gift an agent can give a client.

  I had just sent a note to my editor to tell her that I couldn’t write this book. Then I spent an amazing evening with fellow YA author Jennifer Ziegler, and she gave me the strength to try again. I don’t know how she did it. Fairy dust may well have been involved. She and her equally amazing author-husband, Chris Barton, have been my cheerleaders throughout this process. Dear friends, this book exists because of you.

  And to Ginee Seo, my unbelievable editor at Chronicle—what can I even say? You had the second sight necessary to see what this book could be, even when that wasn’t what I was giving you. A lesser editor would have burdened me with demands and sug
gestions. You didn’t. You found the words to release me. You freed me to find this book inside myself, and I wrote it down for you.

  Magic exists. You people are magical. I love you all.

  photo credit: JOE DUNKLE

  CLARE B. DUNKLE is an award-winning author of seven acclaimed fantasy and science fiction novels, including The Hollow Kingdom Trilogy, the first book of which was a winner of the 2004 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. A Texan (and former Texas librarian), Clare now lives in Germany, but travels often to the United States to see her family, especially her two daughters, Valerie and Elena, and her grandchildren. Find out more about Clare at www.claredunkle.com.