“Okay, let’s see–Junior National Honor Society, being first chair flutist for the one year you played in the band, first girl to play football on the boys team, winning the city’s storefront window-painting contest last Christmas, and all the horses you got on that everyone said couldn’t be ridden. You got on and stayed on. You always pick the mission impossible. You haven’t let anything or anyone stop you from attaining your goals. The list is impressive. It’s also very scary. Your success terrifies me. Because if you choose to continue this, I’ve no doubt you will succeed. But you can’t win by not eating. It makes it hard to love you, Marty.” Dad stops and realizes he hasn’t touched his food.
Sure, build me up just to tear me down. I hate this food and I hate you. That’s it. Get mad. Get mad and you won’t cry. “So you’ll only love a winner.” That should do it. He’ll storm out now and we’ll see who wins.
Dad wipes the foam from his mouth and throws down his napkin. “You want me to love you unconditionally! But what about the conditions you place on me–fly down here, Dad; meet with a therapist, Dad; do this and I’ll eat, Dad!”
“I never asked you…” I can’t talk. The tears are coming.
“Didn’t you, Marty? Ten pounds in six weeks! Big deal! I think a lot of pampering goes on in that hospital and for the same amount of money I could send you to a spa, and you could eat at the best restaurants in town, taken there by your own God damn limousine!”
“I’m sorry about the money.”
“It’s not about money; I can always make money, but I can’t make you. And I can’t love you like this. Once survival is assured, I can afford to invest.”
So now I’m a stock option that has to prove itself before he’ll buy in.
Sandy rushes up to the table. “I forgot your salad.”
“It’s okay. She’s had enough.”
Dad finishes his wine. “Go wash your face and I’ll pay the bill.”
I can’t get to the bathroom fast enough. I shove through the door. Nobody home. I go into the last stall. Lock the door, grab a wad of toilet paper, shove my face into it and cry and choke on the lint, and pray that no one comes in–as quietly as I can.
We walk out of the restaurant. Dad turns and heads towards the docks. I follow a little behind and keep my head down. He sits on a bench facing the bay and pats the paint-chipped wood beside him. I sit and look up. A wave of birds washes over the sky and breaks the silence.
“You see that big sloop out there, moored all by itself?” Dad asks.
“Yes.”
“It’s called a Procrastination 54.”
“Looks like a slice of the moon fell into the water and someone stuck a big fork in it.”
“I don’t know about the moon, but it is a piece of heaven. There are only five of them in the world. The guy who builds them takes forever. He’ll have to live to three hundred and ten to fill his orders. And he doesn’t even let you name them. You sign a contract saying you’ll never change what he christens them.” Dad points to the sloop. “That one’s name is Someday.”
“How do you know all of this?”
“I chartered one once in the Virgin Islands. Schools of dolphins, blue-green lagoons, and turtles that fly underwater. You’d love it. The boat’s name was Tomorrow.”
“I’d like to see it…”
“I’d love to show it to you.”
I take off my hat.
Dad takes my hand in both of his and puts them on his knee. And we stare across the water at Someday.
DAY 54
AUGUST 6
Every day is the same in here. No seasons. No sense of time. It’s like I’m living on the Starship Enterprise. Only my schedule is different.
Get up.
Weigh in.
Pig out.
Mess with my mind.
Have a snack of cottage cheese.
Let someone else mess with my mind.
Eat lunch.
Take a shower and try to scrub off the oil from the lasagna that is leaking out of my skin.
Draw some pictures of what’s going on “inside.”
Have a snack of Oreo cookies and half-pint of milk.
Think of someone I can call who is still talking to me–which is no one.
Waddle into dinner.
Roll back to my room. Try to have a nice visit with whoever shows up, even if it’s always Mom.
Sneak in a few push-ups, sit-ups.
Have a last snack of peanut butter and crackers and milk.
Watch some TV.
Have nothing to say when the night nurse asks me if I want to talk about today.
Do deep-knee bends while brushing my teeth.
Look in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door.
Hate myself.
Go to sleep.
Every day the same. Except when I step outside. As soon as I leave the capsule, there is a day waiting for me. With a name. Like Monday. And certain things you have to do. Like buy a bathing suit and go to lunch at a restaurant afterward. On Monday, Nurse Jane took only Bonnie, Katherine, Lily, and me bathing suit shopping. Because the other girls have been to camp before and completed their badges in shopping and lunching. We were supposed to be supportive and encouraging. Depend on each other, like the sailors would when they had to keelhaul a shipmate. The one being punished had a rope tied around him and was then thrown overboard, dragged under the boat and up the other side as fast as his mates could pull. Monday we were tortured without getting wet.
Wednesday is for getting wet. Today is Wednesday. We have waited our one hour after lunch, been shipped through the pouring rain in our yellow submarine to the pool, and now are going swimming.
Catwoman has been left behind–fear of the water. Rhonda chases Rose, Bonnie, Elizabeth, Victoria, Jamie, Katherine, Nancy, Lily, and me into the change room. We scatter into any hiding place we can find–bathroom stalls and private showers. Victoria and Nancy fight over the handicap change room with a lock. All our suits are black one-pieces, except Lily’s, which is blue. The boutique didn’t have any pink one-pieces you could rinse in a shot glass. Only bikinis. And we didn’t leave any fingerprints on them.
Rhonda claps to get our attention. The echo off all the green tiles startles us. “Sorry ’bout that. You have to take a shower before you swim. Do it in the communal area. Nobody is going to come in here or the pool. We have only forty-five minutes because you guys took so long getting ready, so make the showers short.” Rhonda looks around. “Where’s Lily?”
I know where she is–stalling behind the curtain of a cubby. “I’ll get her,” I say.
“No.” Rhonda looks afraid to lose a fish from the school.
“Maybe she needs help.”
“Okay, but no fooling around.” Rhonda nods.
I do a silly walk to where Lily is holed up. I can’t knock on a curtain, so I shuffle my flip-flops to let her know I’m coming. “Hey, Lil, what’s up?”
“Nothing.” Her voice isn’t big enough to bounce off the walls.
“It’s kind of cold in here, maybe in the pool too. I brought an extra T-shirt if you want to wear it.”
“Okay.”
I run to my bag, grab the T-shirt, and throw it over the curtain rod.
Lily comes out wearing my shirt down to her knees and a towel over her head. “Thanks,” she says, her voice muffled by the thick towel.
“Come on, let’s go swimming. You can show me your dog paddle.” I pull her into the shower for people with wheelchairs and hose both of us down. Rhonda too. By accident. I didn’t know she was waiting for us.
She looks at her pants. “Get in that pool,” she says slowly.
I push through the door that says THIS WAY TO POOL and tow Lily behind me, down a tiled corridor. The chlorine smells a lot better than hospital bleach. Not as good as salt water, but it’ll do. The humidity is an oasis away from the cold dry air of the institute. It figures that an indoor pool has been rented for us. Less chance of someone going AWOL. I don’t th
ink there are any walled beaches in San Diego.
It’s a short walk to the poolside. I round the corner and stop dead. Lily bumps into me. I pull her around so she can see. The tropical storm has passed and through floor-to-ceiling windows and massive skylights, the sun pours in. The light bounces off the water and plays on the walls. In one corner by the deep end, clouds of steam float like gossamer scarves in the air above a Jacuzzi. Everyone except Jamie is in it, trying to burn off calories. Jamie is perched on the edge of the high diving board, her wings stretched out wide. She bends her knees and drives the board towards the water. She swings her arms in big circles. One more bounce and she is flying in the air. Up…up…a swan that is going to escape through the glass in the roof. Gravity finally gets a grip on her and she disappears into the water like a knife.
I’m dying to get into the water. But Lily won’t budge.
Rhonda comes up beside me. “Go on. I’ll look after this little guppy,” she says, and leads Lily away.
I run on my toes, drop my towel at the last second, and do a shallow dive into the shallow end. I swim the breast-stroke underwater, all the way to the deep end. I break the surface to get the air I’ve run out of. Turning to look at the lifeguard sitting in her high chair beside the pool, I see she is smiling. Not yelling at me for breaking the two most basic rules of any pool: NO RUNNING, NO DIVING IN THE SHALLOW END.
I swim along the bottom with my eyes open. There is a ton of chemicals in the water. When I used to surf, I’d check out the reef below me in between waves. It doesn’t hurt. It’s an ocean of tears.
I surface at the side of the pool. “The chlorine is eating my eyeballs. Do you have a pair of goggles I can borrow?” I call up to the lifeguard.
“Sure.” She unwraps a florescent orange pair from around the arm of her chair and tosses them down. “Have fun.”
“Thanks.” I snap them on and pull away in freestyle. One-two-three-four, roll my head to the side and force air and spray through my blowhole, grab some as I roll my face back into the water. Repeat. Over and over. I relax and pick up speed. Dive-flip-turn-slam my feet against the side and explode off the wall. Whip my body through the water with six dolphin kicks. As I come up for air, I can hear my coach’s whistle blowing. The past rushing by me like the water. It gets louder.
I stop in the shallow end to shake the auditory hallucination from my head. Lily pokes me and points to Rhonda, who has a whistle in her mouth. The poor lifeguard is still attached to it by a cord around her neck. She is almost being pulled out of her chair by Rhonda, who has stopped blowing but is now beckoning me to come.
Rhonda looks red from her workout. “Pull back on the throttle, Marty. Take it down to cruising speed. No wake. Got it?”
“Yes, coach.” I slide underwater and release the air from my lungs to watch the bubbles go up as I sink. Four walls close back in on me.
Sitting on the bottom, I watch Jamie dive again. She is just as graceful from down under. Motion out the side of my goggles turns my eyes. I see Lily’s legs moving furiously like little eggbeaters, whipping her white T-shirt into a meringue. I swim slowly underwater and grab her ankles. I hear a muted squeal. I rise out of the water like the creature from the black lagoon. Lily’s clutching onto her small yellow inner tube and giggling at full volume.
“You scared me!” Lily says, eyes sparkling.
“You liked it.”
Lily smiles full of electricity.
“Ditch the tube, Lil, and come swimming with me.”
Her smile goes dead.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t swim.”
“You grew up on a beach in La Jolla and you never…” I don’t finish because Lily is turning away. I put my hand on her tube and hold her in place. “Can you float without the ring?”
No answer.
Cupping my hands, I pour water over her head so we can both pretend she isn’t crying. I have to ask her a question, but my plan won’t work unless I get the right answer. I put my forehead to hers. “Do you trust me?”
Lily nods up and down, rubbing our noses together.
As I pull her to the steps, the other girls file past to the change room. I look at the clock–2:50 P.M. Rhonda comes to the side and squats down. “You guys want to stay?” she asks.
“Yes,” Lily says.
“Okay, but no torpedoing around the pool, Marty.”
“I won’t sink anything.”
“I’ll see you both in ten minutes,” Rhonda says, and leaves us alone.
I stand Lily on the bottom step and remove her lifesaver. The water comes up to her chest and so does the T-shirt. “We have to take this off too.”
She lets me. Maybe it’s just her suit, but her skin looks a little blue.
“Are you cold? Do want to go in the Jacuzzi?”
“No. Let’s go swimming.” She looks scared but excited.
I put her arms around my neck and she jumps on my back. Clings to me like a koala. We move away from the steps, but stay close enough in case she panics.
“Let’s start by floating. The easiest way is on your stomach. Take a big breath, puff out your cheeks like this.” I demonstrate. “Let your arms and legs hang loose and just lie in the water. It’s called dead man’s float.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Lily says, and hugs me tighter.
“Okay, okay, Lily, you’re choking me.”
“Sorry,” Lily says, into my neck.
I lower us both into the water. “Relax. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I’m going to hold you up so you can float on your back. I won’t let go of you, but you have to let go of me. Alright?”
Lily doesn’t answer. She lets her arms slide from around my neck and stops squeezing with her legs. I put my hands on her ribs to turn her on her back. Her face looks as rigid as her little body.
“Take some slow deep breaths. I’m going to put one hand under your neck to support your head and one hand just above your bum. You’re doin’ great, Lil. Breathe. Now push your tummy up towards the ceiling. That’s it. Keep breathing. Stick your arms and legs out to the side. Point your toes and fingers. Great. You got it. You’re doin’ the starfish!”
A smile crawls across Lily’s face.
I’m only holding her up with one finger. “You’re practically solo. Okay if I join you?”
Lily nods yes.
I float on my back beside her. The water around me turns to body temperature. I can’t tell where I end and the pool begins. I think about Lily. About the brittle stars I used to see in the tide pools. Little starfish with round bodies and spindly legs. They don’t do well in captivity. If the conditions aren’t right, they just dissolve.
I take my hand from underneath Lily and put my fingers through hers.
DAY 57
AUGUST 9
Journal Entry # 2
I’m thinking that Katz is not so stupid. I know he’s not stupid. Just stupid about me. Not stupid. Ignorant. Lacking knowledge. So you want to know? Here is a little tidbit for the cat.
They let me out for good behavior. So I did something bad. Tonight I went to a party with Katherine. I didn’t know anybody else and I didn’t care. I got out–that was the point. Out. I had a glass of wine on the outside. Got drunk on the inside. All those alcohol molecules petting the empty shells of my brain cells. After they’ve obliterated what’s inside. Stroking them and saying I’m sorry…I’m sorry. Innocent, fragile little brain cells. Oh, well. So long, boys. Go down with your ships and take your memories with you. Every time I have a drink, I think about my mother…wonder if I’m like her…afraid that I am her.
One glass of wine. If Katz reads this, he’ll be shopping for tequila. A little to-kill-ya for my journal and me.
…here, kitty kitty.
Signed, M.
DAY 61
AUGUST 13
Lily goes first. Gained a quarter pound from yesterday, she skips off to her room to change.
“Step up, Marty,
” Dennis says with something that sounds like “I’m sorry.”
Sometimes I think Dennis hates the morning weigh-ins as much as we do. Like the hangman who hates his job.
I look behind me. There they are–the prisoners all lined up, waiting for their turn at the scaffold. Some are praying. They can already feel the weight of the number hanging around their necks. Choking them till they can’t breathe. It’s only a number. A number on a scale that doesn’t mean anything. No matter what it says, I’m not going to care. I’m tired of caring about a stupid number. Still, I look back again to see who will see my face when I meet my maker.
“Do you want to go to the other room to weigh in?” Dennis says, trying to be sensitive. It pisses me off.
“No.” I stand up straight. Cheek bones up. Rib cage out. Shoulder blades back. And I take two steps forward till my bare feet stay still on the steel long enough for Dennis to weigh me. 100 pounds. I take one step back. 100 pounds.
“Are you okay?” Dennis knows the answer, but asks anyway.
I can barely hear him. 100 pounds. The number I’ve worked so hard to avoid. I don’t care. I don’t care. The boulder of 100 pounds I used all my strength to squeeze under and stay there. What’s the big deal with 100? I don’t care. Now I am three digits instead of two. Two is always under 100. I’ve lost control of my two-digit world. 100 might as well be 300. There is no difference.
“I need to take your blood pressure and some blood,” another nurse says.
“Later.” I start for my room.
“We need to –” she tries again.
“Later!” Dennis barks.
My legs are marching to the cadence of I don’t care. My eyes are busy. Searching, scanning like one of those red lasers on the scope of a sniper’s rifle. Where is the glass? I pace the whole unit. The only glass in here has little veins of metal running through it.
“You can’t get there from, here. We’re not like the other glass. Hit us as hard as you like. We’ll just smash into a thousand pieces. Blunt pieces. Useless. They’ll just call the janitor. There will be no bloodletting by us. No visible scars. Maybe some crushed bones, but those will heal and still no one will see.”
More Than You Can Chew Page 7