The Appetites of Girls

by Pamela Moses

  “Thank you. So this is what I have to do to meet up with you? I can’t seem to pin you down for dinner, but you can’t make any excuses now. I’m taking you for a drink,” she had laughed.

  Sitting at a wine bar a few blocks from Isaac’s, we had talked about Jonathan, whom she was still seeing, about her plans for law school, and about her work at Outdoor Playground, the job I knew she found far more rewarding than she had anticipated. I could not believe it. Francesca the critic, the agitator. She had never looked prettier and, for the first time, seemed actually content.

  “It’s really good to see you, too.” Francesca asked about my work, when I had last spoken with Opal and Ruth, if I planned to continue my living arrangement with Toru. “Do you love being in New York? It’s the greatest city, isn’t it?” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her hair longer and a shade lighter than I remembered. She nodded as I answered, but before we’d ordered our drinks, I noticed her smile begin to stiffen. She cleared her throat as if about to speak but then only adjusted the bud vase on the table between us. For a moment she looked away to the window behind me. When had Francesca ever been at a loss for words? It wasn’t until later in the evening when we stood to leave that I comprehended her awkwardness. “We should have done this much sooner. Take care of yourself, Setsu,” she said, frowning into my eyes, as if to make the words mean something more. And it was then I understood. I caught her staring at the places where my silk tank top gapped—places the curves of other women’s arms and shoulders and chests would have filled but where there was little more to me than thin tissue and bone.

  God! God, what was I doing! How long did I think I could continue this without damaging myself in ways that could not be undone? I remembered something Rachel had mentioned to me during one of our shared shifts. She needed a new roommate, she’d admitted, to cover costs. At the time, I had ignored her offer. But I began to think I had been too hasty. I had only planned to stay at Isaac’s until I could find a better opportunity with higher compensation, but even if I picked up a few more hours at the Music House, I could manage half her rent, couldn’t I? And was this wishful thinking, that perhaps I would even find enough remaining for a weekly music lesson? The mirror clouded over once more, and I slipped my robe over my shoulders, pulling it tightly across my chest. No. No! I could not be expected to neglect my own needs forever. So this is what, clearly, calmly, head held high with self-assurance, I would explain to Toru.

  But when I returned Thursday afternoon from the music shop, I discovered Toru swaddled in blankets, huddled in his corner rocking chair, a large embroidered handkerchief dangling from one hand. He turned to me with swollen eyes.

  “Shiro left. He packed his things this morning. What kind of warning is that?” The words shot from Toru’s mouth like little pellets. “He said the arrangement we had in this house did not suit him. The three of us together here. What am I supposed to glean from this?” Toru swiped, with his hankie, a trail of wetness trickling from his left nostril. “Is that an explanation? Always there was a friction between the two of you. I sensed it. Did you know about this, Setsu?”

  “No, Toru, no.” What good could come of repeating what had occurred? “I’m sorry you are so upset,” I said, my voice thin, shaky as my limbs, which were now shivering from the realization of what I had caused and from the slowly emerging thought that Toru was now my responsibility and mine alone.

  So my plans would wait. What choice was there? Until I was able to find someone to replace Shiro, someone Toru found agreeable, I was accountable for his meals, the laundering of his sheets and pajamas, the sorting through bills, catalogs, the slow dribble of fan letters. I even drew Toru’s bath for him each evening, and now and then, to my deep embarrassment, he requested I hand him his towel as he emerged from the dripping water, buttocks sagging, penis hanging like a limp white worm. I learned to take phone messages for him on the small tabs of memo paper he had given me for that purpose. What little time I had left I spent in the kitchen, craning over slow-stewing meats and vegetables, stirring pots of unadorned noodles, soft rice. “To your health. For energy, brother,” I would say as I placed his tray of food on the bed beside him.

  After some weeks we fell into a rhythm. As Shiro had done, I found I was able to anticipate most of Toru’s needs before he asked. And then—this was not pride, a figment of my imagination, was it?—I began to notice small improvements in his appearance. Minor changes since I had begun to care for him—a ruddy hue in his cheeks, a fullness in his face, a straightening of his shoulders. Even his appetite had increased. The food I set before him began to disappear more quickly, and often, after finishing most of his own serving, he would let out a small grunt, pointing with his fork toward whatever remained on my own plate. “Were you going to eat that, Setsu?” So always I handed over whatever I had left, reasoning that he needed it more than I.

  At Isaac’s, I now found myself often too weary to engage in conversations with the other employees. I listened quietly as they joked or compared stories of disappointing dates, overcrowded parties. But one late Tuesday afternoon, Rachel pulled me aside. Her violin coach, the well-regarded Gregory Palevitz (whose name I had now heard repeatedly from coworkers and patrons), had a single opening on Thursday evenings. She remembered that I had mentioned wishing to resume my studies. Was I interested in auditioning for him? She would put in a good word but needed an immediate answer. Gregory’s sessions filled quickly. Days before I would have dismissed this as an impossibility, but twice in the past week, on returning home from work or errands, I had glimpsed Toru (unaware of my presence) making his way from the kitchen back to his bedroom with energetic, almost clipped steps, humming, a glass of juice in hand. So early Wednesday, as I arranged a plate of coddled eggs and wheat toast before him, I introduced the topic. “I’ve been considering something, Toru. I believe . . . I think I might like to try taking lessons again.”

  Toru moved aside the notepad he had been inspecting to make more room for the tray. He arched his brows. “This is your business. Why should I wish to stop you?” But he quickly lowered his head over his food so that I could not ascertain whether or not my announcement had surprised him.

  “My audition for the teacher would be tomorrow evening at six, so I would not be here for your supper. But most of it I could prepare ahead of time,” I said. “You would need only to boil your rice, reheat your chicken and vegetables. It’s really very simple. I could leave directions by the stove. I would not suggest this, Toru, but you have looked so much healthier of late. Perhaps you, yourself, have noticed in the mirror?”

  Pink flashed across Toru’s cheeks for the briefest of instants, then he shrugged his shoulders. “Well, let’s see how I am faring,” he said, massaging his throat with his fingertips. “You know I can’t possibly predict how I will feel from one day to the next.” Leaning on an elbow, he rummaged through the top drawer of his bedside table until he found a tape he wanted to place in his Walkman, then plunged a spoon into the center of one of his eggs.

  During the remainder of that day and night, I could not take my mind off the appointment with Gregory Palevitz, nor could I stop myself from regularly scrutinizing Toru’s appearance or listening to the muted noises that sounded from behind his door for signs of recuperation or decline. It was shameful to dread his deterioration because it would interfere with my plans. Still, I could not suppress the knot of irritation that rose in my chest the following morning as Toru began to moan of burning in his joints, of a leaden heaviness in his head.

  “I guess your lesson this evening is out of the question, Setsu,” he said, blowing a thin hiss of air at the very impossibility of the thought. “Too bad I can’t control my ups and downs, eh?” He turned to me with a half-grin, half-grimace, which vanished before I could begin to read it. Then pointing to the cluster of bottles on his dresser, he asked if I would mind handing him the two farthest to the left. I watched as he gingerly unscrewed their caps and shook two pills from ea
ch into his palm. I should have offered words of comfort but could think of nothing but my own disappointment, the ill timing of Toru’s relapse.

  “You know, big brother, I have faced some discouragements, too. And I think, well, sometimes I think moving on is only a matter of making a decision. Perhaps you just need to press—”

  Toru snorted and swatted at a strand of hair drooping onto his brow. “And what have you suffered, Setsu? Are you comparing your losses with mine? How could you have the slightest inkling, the faintest notion of what I am enduring?” His mouth pinched into a thin crease, as if challenging me to answer. But I could find no words. What came to me instead was a memory of sitting beside my parents in a large and darkened auditorium, watching as Toru’s violin glimmered under the stage lights, as his fingers galloped up and down the fingerboard playing the pieces of which I had memorized every note. Of crossing my ankles in the ladylike manner my mother had taught me, of holding my folded hands tightly on my knees because my heart was aching for reasons I did not understand. Yes, Toru was right. From the beginning, he had attained far larger successes, climbed to far greater heights. How much longer a distance, then, when he fell. So how could I begin to judge his struggles? What advice had I to offer?

  “I am sorry, Toru. I did not mean to distress you,” was all I could think to say.

  But Toru only squeezed his lips, turning them a mottled white, then closed his eyes. Within moments, I could hear the raspy exhalation of his breath in slumber.

  How I hated for Toru to be angry with me. The few times I had made him cross in childhood the whole house had seemed blanketed in the same awful loneliness that clung to my insides. And despite the passage of years, little felt different now. So with silent hands, I slid open the drawers of Toru’s nightstand and began sifting through newspaper clippings, yellowed programs—the many proofs of his past accomplishments—hoping to find those that would best placate him when he awoke. Toward the back of his middle drawer lay stacked pads of paper covered with the notes I found him so frequently reading, beside them his tape player and a pile of cassettes. Lifting the top few tapes and pads from the drawer, I could see that he had marked them with various labels and dates and that each tape seemed to have a corresponding set of notes. Several were from recitals and conferences, but others appeared to be simply recordings of old lessons and practice sessions. In the far corner of the drawer, a cassette in a scratched case caught my eye. It was more battered than the rest and was dated only a short time after Toru had come to live with us. As I held it to the light, I could see that its label was smudged and browned with age and that the blocky numbers and letters of the date were in Toru’s boyhood penmanship. So, curious, and judging that Toru would not wake for some hours, I inserted the cassette into his Walkman and, settling into the rocker across the room from Toru’s bed, fitted the headphones over my ears.

  For some moments nothing was audible but the whir of the plastic ribbon around its spools. And then notes—so familiar, though at first I could not place them. Oh! Was it? Yes! The Corelli—the piece Toru and I were to have played as a duet. Two different violins were distinguishable. Somehow, without my knowledge, he must have taped one of our shared practices, borrowing, I assumed, the old, large-buttoned recorder that my parents had kept in the living room armoire. How very strange all these years later to hear preserved our childhood sounds, and I could not help feeling, with a stinging in my breast, that I was rousing sleeping ghosts, that these were fragments from a dream, from a life I’d long forgotten. But I could not bring myself to stop the music, and as I listened, I could not deny that one instrument stood out—its notes sweeter, more melodic, as if singing its very sorrows and joys. So it was just as well, perhaps, that Toru had performed the piece alone.

  A series of slow, fluid notes concluded. A far livelier section commenced. But moments into this new rhythm, my breath froze in my lungs. Despite the warmth of Toru’s room, I was too rigid with cold even to shudder as I heard a sound I recognized, a sound as familiar as my own heartbeat. How was it that I had confused the two? How could I have missed my own playing? To be certain I was not mistaken, I consulted the notes Toru had taken on that day. And there it was—in Toru’s own scrawled hand—an accounting of his progress and below that, an accounting of mine. Here was proof of the things he had hidden. Here were all of the truths he had denied. For Toru had known then what I had been unable to see. And he had made me believe what I had been too ready to accept.

  The bitterness that had contorted Toru’s face as he drifted off had not lessened; even in sleep, angry lines cut along the sides of his mouth. On shoeless feet, I replaced the tapes and pads in the drawer where I had found them, then crossed Toru’s room and slipped through the open door. Against a wall in the guest bedroom lay my violin, the top-facing side of its case flecked with dust from lack of use. Gently I took the instrument into my lap. I brushed my palm over its blond-brown wood, ran my finger over its bridge and around the scroll at the tip of its neck. Then, for a moment, I clutched it to me, as if somehow by gripping to stop the flood of regrets—the stretch of years I had lost, the wasted possibilities, the many things that might have been. But when I lifted my violin to my shoulder, fitted my chin into the smoothly cupped rest, a melody seemed to rise up from the center of me—Pachelbel’s Canon in D, a piece I had adored as a child. “To be the daughter of two musical parents! So lucky! Surely you were born with a gift, Setsu,” my adoptive parents had told me long ago when I was very young. Then I had nodded shyly, tentatively, only beginning to believe. But now I would say it aloud. I would whisper it to the empty room. “Yes, Setsu, yes. This, this is the truth of you. This is who you are.”

  My breakfast that morning had been a mere handful of crackers, a weak cup of tea, not nearly enough to fill me. And suddenly I was aware of a great gnawing, as if my stomach panged from years of portions that hadn’t satisfied, from every missed meal. So making my way to the kitchen, I fished through the refrigerator for a package of maple ham, a wedge of cheddar; I plucked a bag of sesame rolls, hazelnut cookies, and a container of cocoa from the cabinet shelves. Not Toru’s favorite things, but mine. As I layered a roll with slices of sweet ham and cheese, poured milk into a small pot for hot chocolate, I hummed the notes of the Canon in D. Then of a Strauss waltz, a Vivaldi concerto, a Tartini sonata. The pieces bubbled up in me like the steam rising from my saucepan. I returned my violin to its case then set it near the front door in preparation for my lesson that evening, and as I did, the aromas from the foods caused a small pool of water to form beneath my tongue. In just moments all would be ready. And this time I would eat and eat. And I would not cease until I had swallowed away the very last throb of hunger, until I’d had all that my body could hold. Until the music in me came out in sound that could be heard.

  TAKING WING

  (My Story)

  • 1992 •

  For some time, I tried. To be agreeable. To be acquiescent. But an eddy of agitation had stirred in me, and it was growing. Until, one evening: “For God’s sake, Ma! I’m almost a college graduate! Twenty-one years old! Wake Up! I’m no longer a baby!”

  Since the close of my freshman year, a time Mama and I never referred to, I had watched with envy as my friends tasted new freedoms—semesters spent overseas in cities I’d seen only on maps, unsupervised vacations on islands off the New England coast. Setsu disappeared for a summer to Rome, Francesca to Madrid. My suitemates knew never to ask my plans. Knew, of course, none would be made. All of them seeing—since what had occurred—how my reins had only shortened. During my remaining years at Brown, Mama and Poppy had begun to make more regular visits to campus and to find reasons, every two to three weekends, for me to return home—a wedding for my second cousin Miranda, a bar mitzvah for Aaron, the Schafers’ middle son. “How are you feeling?” Mama now had the habit of asking offhandedly, attempting nonchalance when we were together. But I caught her running her tongue along her teeth and peering into my eyes for sig
ns of fatigue, or frowning at my breasts or abdomen for evidence of sudden swelling. Always Mama had kept careful track of the foods I consumed, but now, when in her presence, I felt her eyes on me with every forkful I lifted to my lips, with every bite I swallowed. All this, for a time, I had endured in silence. What choice did I have? “You reap what you sow,” people say, and I had sown seeds of foolishness, carelessness.

  My outburst that evening had broken from my mouth unplanned, unchecked, but I’d felt a certain rush, a bristling of pride mingled with nerves, at my own defiance.

  Now Mama’s face was red as ripe currants. “After all Poppy and I have done for you? That’s what you have to say! Tell me, Ruth, exactly when did it become a crime for a mother to look after her own?” She let her knife and fork drop from her quaking hands and clatter against her plate. “If you’re so ready to take on the world, why don’t you act like it?”

  In her opinion, my last four years had been a series of fits and starts, with no sensible plan emerging. “It’s just a matter of finding what’s most worthwhile and then persevering,” Mama had said when I’d called home with news of my classmates’ decisions to be premed, to practice law, to follow the trails their fathers had forged into the world of finance. I had heard the knot in her voice, her ears closed to my hints at what I loved most of all—the writing classes I’d enrolled in, despite her reminders they held no relevance to my major.

  Sarah and Valerie raised their napkins to shroud their smiles, their eyes darting, skittish as minnows, from Mama to me. This, from them, I would have expected. But even Poppy said nothing, scraping hurriedly at the remains of his supper. Mama pulled a balled tissue from the sleeve of her blouse. She sniffed nasally, and as she pressed her fingertips to her pinkish eyes, I sensed it. The turning in the rest of them, a flowing of sympathy from each of them to her. It occurred to none of them that there might be truth to what I’d said.