Hope and Other Luxuries

by Clare B. Dunkle

  I laughed again. Even though my shot nerves still kept me from picking up a book these days, small stories like these were feeding a hunger that was starting to grow inside me. Little by little, they were pulling me out of my shell.

  “When I’m old,” Elena mused, “I want to be exactly like that. Wonderfully weird, keeping everybody guessing.”

  My imagination started to assemble a reel of film. Elena, old. Elena, white-haired, with a dancer’s ankles like her grandmother, and a lift to her chin that showed that you’d better not mess with her. My daughter, old. My daughter, surviving. Surviving . . .

  Instantly, I felt a stab of pain from my shot nerves.

  Don’t think about it! Don’t!

  I took a deep breath and focused on the cars in front of me.

  We made it past the drugstore and its full parking lot and craps game, and the traffic broke loose and picked up speed.

  “So, I need to ask you something,” I said. “About the memoir.”

  “Let’s hear it,” Elena said.

  Lately, I had started working on Elena’s story again. My imagination wasn’t quite an empty room now—more like a foggy street. Characters, half dream and half daydream, had begun to walk out of the mist as I was falling asleep at night. But I didn’t trust them yet. I didn’t want to get to know them. I couldn’t bear to lose them again. So, as painful as it was to go back through those bad memories, Elena’s story felt like the only writing I could do.

  I had begun doing my interviews again on our commutes, trying once more to discover my character. And Elena told me anything and everything I asked. It never ceased to amaze me how candid she was. Her fearless honesty was the opposite of my huddled, pain-filled hesitation.

  Elena still thought I could do this.

  She still thought I could write.

  “The Summer from Hell,” I said now. “Senior year. I didn’t end up helping at all. If I went back, knowing what I know now, how could I have helped you? What could I have done differently?”

  “Not much,” Elena said with brutal and impartial honesty. “Maybe commit me. But then I never would have spoken to you again—and I mean never. If someone were to turn me in back then, I’d never have forgiven them.”

  Like the contract, I thought—it was a miracle that she was working around to forgiving me now . . .

  Immediately, I felt that jolt of pain again, like the stab of pleurisy that keeps the breaths careful and shallow:

  Don’t think about it! Don’t!

  I turned my attention back to those earlier days.

  “Take Anna Anton,” I said. “She tried to tell me what was wrong. She called me from boarding school and told me you wouldn’t eat.”

  “Anna Anton was a bitch!” Elena snapped.

  “She said you were ill and didn’t want to live,” I said. “That was true. I drove all afternoon, I had a frantic meeting with the housemothers . . .”

  “And I had to work my butt off to get you all calmed down! . . . She was a bitch,” Elena said again.

  Implacable resentment, my writer’s mind noted. Irrational, implacable resentment.

  I fell silent.

  “There’s this novel I read,” Elena told me, “where a girl’s best friend tells her school counselor she needs help, and she winds up getting put into a hospital. But at the end of the book, the two of them make up. Well, that would never happen with an anorexic.”

  “You can’t be sure,” I protested.

  “I am sure,” Elena said, and my writer’s mind noted her air of calm assertion. She wasn’t upset anymore. This wasn’t just resentment. “If someone had had me committed in high school, I would never speak to that person again, ever—period, dot. You, Dad, my closest friends—I don’t care. I might forgive them, and I might even understand it. But the friendship would be done. Dead. Done.”

  “But you needed help in high school!”

  “Yep.”

  “If you’d gotten it then, it would have been the best thing for you.”

  “Yep.”

  “And . . . Anna Anton was trying to get you that help.”

  “Anna Anton was a bitch!”

  This is another one of those anorexia things, I thought, that doesn’t make sense.

  But that wasn’t fair, and a writer has to be fair. So I amended that thought:

  Maybe I don’t have the right angle on this yet.

  When I got home from the commute, Valerie was up. She was walking slowly—very slowly—across the living room. Gemma walked along beside her, keeping a death grip on Valerie’s index finger.

  Gemma gave a happy cry when she saw me, and I bent down and held out my hands.

  “Come on!” I said. “Come to Grandma!”

  And Valerie pulled her hand free.

  Gemma stood there for a second, wavering a little, her big blue-green eyes on my face. Then she dropped to her hands and knees and zoomed over to me.

  “So close!” I said as I scooped her up. “You’ll be walking any day now, and then your mommy’s going to have to run to keep up with you.”

  Valerie followed us into the kitchen. “Speaking of, I had an idea.”

  “Let’s hear it!” I said as I filled up the coffeepot.

  “I’m thinking about getting a three-month lease on an apartment near Clint’s school,” she said. “That way, we’d be able to see Clint in the evenings and on the weekends. He’s missed out on so much of her babyhood already. I don’t want him to miss out on her first birthday.”

  “But will a place let you get a three-month lease like that?” I asked.

  “I’ve been doing some calling, and yeah, they will if you’re military. They’ll even let me break it if we’ve got orders.”

  I thought about this as I measured out scoops of coffee. I’d gotten used to having the two of them with me. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might be losing them so soon. But I sneaked a glance at Valerie. My sunny daughter was finally beginning to droop. She hadn’t exactly had the happiest year of her life here.

  “Do it!” I said. “I’ll help.” And I did help, even though we quickly figured out that it meant I’d be towing a trailer across three states.

  I was absolutely petrified about that trailer. I had nightmares about it for days. As I towed it home, I listened to every rattle and slowed down for every little dip in the road. My imagination sent me flashes of everything that could go wrong: a tire going flat, the hitch coming undone, the trailer dragging me into a ditch . . .

  But I stayed upbeat and hid my fear. Valerie needed me to do this. She needed me to do it—

  And that meant that I could.

  The trip was completely uneventful. It even wound up being fun, and Clint was beyond thrilled to have his family back. I left Valerie and Gemma in their new apartment, surrounded by boxes and toys, and Gemma took her very first steps before the week was out.

  By the time Gemma was walking, Joe and I were able to park our cars in the garage again. The media room was a media room once more; the office went back to being an office. And even though I missed my family now when I dropped Elena off at treatment in the morning, the peace and quiet did my shattered nerves good.

  One evening, when I picked up Elena from the treatment center, she pulled a piece of paper out of her backpack. “Connie read us a poem today in spirituality,” she said. “I asked her for a copy because it made me think of you.”

  “A poem?” I said, pleased.

  I love poetry. My mother and I have shared countless poems with one another over the years, and so have Elena and I. My favorite poem is “Morning Song of Senlin,” by Conrad Aiken. It became my favorite poem when I first read it in fourth grade. I’ve read it many times since and never regretted my choice.

  “Who wrote your poem?” I asked Elena.

  “Daniel Ladinsky,” she said. “It’s from his book I Heard God Laughing.”

  God, laughing. My imagination brought me images to match that thought. Sunrise over the ocean, with the noisy
, boisterous rolling of the surf. Wildflowers, whispering and chuckling and bowing in the wind. Lightning, and the boom of thunder—a grand, victorious Ha-ha! Strong, lovely images.

  And then she read,

  There is a Beautiful Creature

  Living in a hole you have dug,

  So at night

  I set fruit and grains

  And little pots of wine and milk

  Beside your soft earthen mounds,

  And I often sing.

  But still, my dear,

  You do not come out.

  I have fallen in love with Someone

  Who hides inside you.

  We should talk about this problem—

  Otherwise,

  I will never leave you alone.

  I was quiet with the poem for a minute. I let the words soak in and find their places.

  “When I heard it, I thought of you and Dad,” Elena said. “I thought about what it was like for you, being the parent of an anorexic. This is what it’s like, this poem. I understand that now. I understand how hard it was for you to save me.”

  Tears welled up in my eyes.

  How funny that I should seem this way to my daughter. I saw it from the other way around. This person persisting, coming to sit beside the cave and sing, was how my daughter seemed to me. I had become so terrified of life, so timid about emerging from my shell of fear. It was Elena, day after day, who came with news from the outside world. She brought me gentle, happy truths, like the story of the funny grandmother, and she brought me big, hard truths, like the story of her eating disorder.

  She was so brave, my daughter. She was absolutely fearless. Even now, with this poem, she was reaching out to me, and she made me want to come out of hiding.

  Tomorrow, I decided, I am absolutely going to write!

  The next morning, after our commute, I sat down to play one game of FreeCell—but really to work up my courage to write.

  See? I’m already on the laptop, I thought as I organized the cards in tidy sequences of ace to two. I can open up Word. It won’t be that bad. It can’t be that bad.

  The phone rang. It was Sandalwood: Jen’s number. Jen was Elena’s therapist.

  Mrs. Dunkle, I’m so sorry. It’s about your daughter.

  No, of course that wouldn’t be what Jen would say! That was completely ridiculous! But still, my hands shook as I answered the phone.

  Elena left the treatment center. Elena cut herself. Elena is in the emergency room . . .

  No, no, no! That wasn’t what Jen had said. She hadn’t even spoken yet!

  “Hello?” I said into the silence.

  “Mrs. Dunkle,” Jen’s firm, capable voice said, “could you and Mr. Dunkle come in for a special meeting this afternoon?”

  Oh, no! What is it? What’s happened now? What are we going to do?

  “Of course,” I said, trying to control the panic in my voice. “Three o’clock? That sounds fine.”

  And when I called Joe, I could hear the panic in his voice, too.

  Writing was out of the question. I shut down the laptop, and my imagination played out every disaster that could possibly have occurred.

  Elena’s insurance is refusing to pay. Elena isn’t making progress. Elena is taking herself out of treatment. We need her on suicide watch . . .

  Joe stopped by to pick me up, and we drove to Sandalwood in silence. In silence, we filed into Jen’s empty office to wait. A special meeting with the therapist can mean just about anything. It can be horrible: Your daughter is having strong urges to self-harm. Or it can be exciting: Your daughter is ready for half days. So Joe and I sat side by side, trying not to hope, trying to gather our courage.

  It’s when you let down your guard that the ax falls.

  It’s hard to prepare for the special meeting. There’s how to sit, for instance. Upright and attentive? Or will that look too much like fear? Leaning back into the couch, relaxed? Or will that look hardhearted? And then there’s the whole problem of which expression to put on. Where to put the purse. What to do with the hands.

  I had tried to prepare. God knows, I had tried to prepare. But not a single one of my imaginary disasters came within miles of the truth.

  In a dream, I heard myself say, “You think she needs a what?”

  Calmly, Jen repeated herself:

  “I think Elena needs a snake.”

  It had to do with the self-harming urges, Jen explained. She and Elena were working on distraction skills, and they’d been trying certain tactile distractions like strings of beads, as well as a favorite perfume to smell. But late at night, when Joe and I were in bed, those urges were still getting the better of Elena. She thought a snake might help, and Jen agreed with her. Playing with a snake would be an excellent distraction.

  Future disasters immediately started to play themselves out in my head: a snake slipping around the edge of Elena’s room and sliding under the door, a snake getting stepped on, a snake scaring guests . . .

  Too painful! Too risky! What are we going to do?

  “But what about Tor and Genny?” I protested out loud. “Can’t they distract you?”

  “They just sleep,” Elena pointed out—which was certainly true.

  Joe was doing much better with his expression than I was. “Well,” he said, “if you think it’s worth a try . . .”

  A snake lying neglected and ill, skin half shed, covered in mites . . .

  Darling! Darling! No! Let’s talk about this!

  “But—I don’t have time to take care of a snake!” I said.

  “You won’t have to, Mom,” Elena said. “I’ll take care of him.”

  “That’s what you said about Dylan,” I muttered. And at the thought of my poor lost blue dragon, I felt even worse.

  Jen gave Elena a pass for the afternoon, and Joe drove us to the pet store to take a look at snakes. For once, I wasn’t scanning the traffic and backseat-driving him to death. I was still watching snake footage. A cute, tiny mouse, huddled down amid wood shavings, quivering in abject terror . . . The pounce, the squeeze, the long, painful trip down the tight gullet . . .

  “No one in my house,” I burst out, “is going to eat someone else in my house!”

  “Mom, snakes don’t have to eat live prey,” Elena said. “In fact, it’s better if they don’t. No live prey. I don’t want to see that, either. Okay?”

  That was a relief. I did feel a little better.

  Joe and Elena walked through the pet store while I loitered behind, mulish and out of sorts. Near the reptile terrariums, Joe corralled a young man with a name tag to ask him about snakes.

  “How about a corn snake?” the young man suggested. “We have some nice young ones.” He picked up a plastic box and stirred the aspen-shaving litter with a pair of tongs, and two little brown snakes shot up out of the shavings and began weaving back and forth like a pair of tiny cobras.

  He gasped and almost dropped the box. “I’m not really the snake person,” he confessed.

  “Is there a snake person?” Joe asked.

  The snake person was paged. She turned out to be a tough-looking young woman with short blond hair and a frank, confident manner.

  “You might think about a boa,” she suggested.

  “Ugh,” I said faintly.

  I had known a boa once. He was a nice snake, but he was also a muscle-bound monster. He was like one giant roided-out bicep.

  Body builders make me queasy.

  Meanwhile, Elena was still studying the plastic box. She said, “Look at this little red guy.”

  Behind the two aggressive young brown snakes, a third snake was looping along lazily. He was the most peculiar color: salmon orange, with dark red spots down his back.

  He was quite unexpectedly beautiful.

  “That’s an albino corn snake,” said the snake person, fetching him out with the tongs. She wasn’t quite right about that, but never mind.

  Elena spread her fingers and watched the little red snake weave his way among
them, the tip of his tail curled tightly around her thumb.

  It wasn’t that I disliked snakes per se. I had always loved the feel of snakes, like fine smooth plastic. I reached out and took the slim red snake on my palm, and with him came a bright, busy crowd of memories.

  Funny hognose snakes, playing dead. Big black king snakes, sunning on the gravel drive. Water snakes, swimming at the head of their V-shaped wakes. Garter snakes with yellow racing stripes.

  Tiny blind snakes, pink and shiny, like a more perfect earthworm . . . How old was Elena the first time I had showed her a blind snake? Emerald-green grass snakes, elusive and beautiful, the elf of the Texas snake world . . .

  Texas has a lot of snakes.

  Tor had once dragged home a massive garter snake by the very tip of its tail. That snake had been distraught at the rough treatment. It had flung itself back and forth with impotent fury. I had made Tor let it go, and it had flashed away in an instant. It was astounding how fast that snake had moved without feet.

  That’s such a strange mode of travel! I thought yet again, interested in spite of my bad attitude as the little guy navigated carefully from finger to finger. Imagine: a life without feet!

  The little snake wasn’t panicking or flailing, he was just looking around. He had a docile nature. “He’s a picky eater, though,” the woman warned—to Elena’s great delight.

  “I’m bonding with him already!” she said.

  But my mind wasn’t through playing disaster footage yet. It flashed to the image of a listless reptile, immovable in its terrarium, afflicted with some mysterious, expensive ailment . . .

  What do we do? What do we do?

  “What do we know,” I said, “about keeping a snake?”

  “You could buy our corn snake book,” the woman said.

  In the end, we brought the little snake home, along with the corn snake book, aspen chips, red and blue light bulbs, misting bottles, driftwood, a hollow ceramic “rock,” daytime and nighttime lamps, an under-tank heater, frozen mice, interchangeable water dishes that couldn’t tip over, and a twenty-gallon terrarium—in all, several hundred dollars’ worth of snake and snake paraphernalia because no animal—not even an animal I opposed—would know hardship or want in my house.

  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.