DAY 100
SEPTEMBER 21
I stickhandle the food around my plate like a hockey player does a puck. I haven’t talked to anyone in days. They haven’t even noticed.
“I feel sorry for him. I think he’s really nice,” Rose says.
Nobody asks who she’s talking about. There’s only one him.
“How do you know he’s nice, Rose? Did you talk to him?” I bark and break my silence.
“No.”
“Did he talk to you?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
“He doesn’t deserve to die.”
“NONE OF US DESERVES TO DIE!” I shout, and stand up so fast my chair goes flying and slams into the wall. I almost bump into Nurse Brown, who meets me in the doorway and blocks my escape. I close my eyes and prepare for battle. “I’m going to see Jackie.”
“Okay,” Brown says and moves out of the doorway.
I look over at her. “Excuse me?”
“I’ll call down to her office and let her know you’re coming, if that’s alright with you?”
“Ahh…yeah…thanks.” I walk towards the elevator, but I keep looking back. Waiting for Nurse Brown to pop out from behind the station and yell, “Psych!” Nobody pops or yells anything. I get on the elevator alone and take it down to the basement, where I hope Jackie is waiting for me. It seems a shorter walk to Jackie’s office than I remember.
“Knock, knock!” I say, and tap on the door with my knuckles.
No answer. I put my ear against the wood and listen for little psychologist-at-work noises.
Nothing.
No creaking of a chair or scuffing of feet. No crying followed by Kleenexes being ripped from their cozy little home. Nothing but regular silence.
So, Marty, what do you want to do now?
I stand against the wall facing the door. Jackie should be here soon. When she didn’t answer her office phone, Nurse Brown would’ve paged Jackie. They are not going to let me be alone anywhere for long.
Might as well have seat. Sitting here is better than going back upstairs. Just the thought of it makes me mad again. I never got one ounce of sympathy from them. And I never saw them feel sorry for themselves.
The door of Jackie’s office opens. I don’t look up. I have a staring contest with her shoes. I win. The shoes go back to hiding under her desk. I go into the office. Sit in the usual chair. No blue leather loungers for Jackie’s office. You’re not supposed to be comfortable down here.
“So was that supposed to be some kind of psychologist’s joke…or maybe a test?” I ask.
“To tell you the truth, when Nurse Brown called me I opened the door immediately. But then I thought maybe I’d see what would happen if you thought I wasn’t here.”
“So how did I do? How’s my frustration tolerance these days?”
“A lot better than before.”
She’s right. Before, I would have kicked the door or punched the wall. Or both.
“But Nurse Brown did mention that you were abusing chairs.”
“Just so I don’t lose any brownie points, the chair fell when I stood up.”
“Why?”
“Damn it, Jackie, the whys drive me nuts. And so do the other girls.”
Jackie doesn’t say anything.
“I can’t take them anymore. This crap about how Chris doesn’t deserve to die. But they can’t apply that fact to themselves. They pray every night to protect other people and ask God if maybe he had some time, could he help them. It’s crap and it’s boring and God’s never in his office. Their parents don’t come. Nobody is coming.”
“Your parents came.”
“Yes, they…yes, they did.”
“Your mom comes all the time. She would see you more but it seems to upset you, and she says she doesn’t want to do that. She goes to the support meetings twice a week. Your dad came from New York…”
“Because he was in LA,” I counter.
“He still came, Marty. Some of these parents are twenty minutes away and they don’t visit. Yours are different.”
“Don’t tell me I’m lucky.” I laugh.
“Not lucky, just different…maybe different enough to help you leave here and make it in the real world.”
“Yeah. The real world is just begging me to join it.”
“It would if you were to be something other than anorexic.”
“I don’t know how to be anything else.” I look at the floor.
“What were you before?”
“I don’t know–I can’t remember.”
“I can get your records, if you really can’t remember.”
“I failed at all of those things,” I say, looking up at her.
“No, you didn’t. You quit. You didn’t get the attention you needed, so you went on to something else. There is a big difference between failing and quitting,” Jackie says, staring back.
“I haven’t even finished high school.”
“Neither did I.” Jackie smiles.
“So I’m being counseled by a high school dropout?”
“I didn’t get my high school diploma till I was twenty-one,” she says.
“Must have been weird going back to school at that age.”
“Actually, I didn’t go back to class. I had this amazing English teacher, Mr. MacLeod. My mother wrote to him to ask if I could finish the papers I needed to graduate and would he mark them. He sent the assignments to me. I did the papers and sent them back. He never asked why I didn’t call him myself, or why I didn’t do it earlier….He just helped me. I learned a lot about not judging people from him.”
“Are you saying I judge people?” I ask.
“We all do, Marty. But we use different standards. You expect yourself and everyone around you to be perfect.”
“You want to know why? I’ll tell you. My parents prefer picture-perfect. No mess. No fuss. Just get the job done.”
“You can only expect people–and parents are people too–to do what they can do. And sometimes it’s not much. But if you expect any more than that, you are always going to get shafted. Always.”
“Have you given my parents that little speech?”
“What does it matter? You can’t control what they do. Only what you do.”
“Well, it feels like I don’t know how to do anything…right.”
“Is right the same as perfect?”
“I don’t know.”
“I know something you do well,” Jackie says, sitting up straighter in her chair. “Art. What’s great about art is that it is subjective. You can only judge it by what you like and what you don’t. There is no perfect.”
“An anorexic artist–that’s perfect.” I laugh.
Jackie doesn’t look impressed, but she begins to smile.
“I’m just kidding, Jack,” I say, leaning forward a little.
“I know you are, and that’s why I’m going to make you an offer. How about teaching art to kids?”
A pause. “Are you joking?”
“No. I have a friend who runs the community center across from the art college downtown.”
“And?”
“And she needs people to work with kids at the center.”
“Do you not like children, Jackie?”
“I like them best of all. Adults and anorexics are a pain in the ass. But it pays the bills.” She laughs.
“I’m serious. You would really inflict me upon innocent children?”
“Look, I see the way you are with Lily. I’ve seen your paintings. I’m putting myself on the line, but I’m willing to. Because I believe in you. Do you?”
“I believe I’ll think about it.”
DAY 107
SEPTEMBER 28
Code blue.
From my room I see Chris’s parents for the first time. I watch Chris’s mother watch the staff work on her son.
I go to the window.
His father is waiting out in the car.
The motor i
s running.
DAY 131
OCTOBER 22
After group therapy on Wednesdays, we get a ten-minute break, return to the GT room, and make the list for the Friday meal.
“Marty, would you mind locating Rose and letting her know we are about to start?” Nurse Brown asks.
“I…” Hold your tongue, Marty; this little assignment gets you out of the room. “Yeah, sure. It might take me a while to find her.”
“Rose is in the garden.”
Of course she is. Where she always is when it’s time to make the list.
“You can go now, Marty,” Brown says.
I can taste the envy in the air. Even temporary escapes are considered delicacies. I leave the GT room and head for the garden. I walk down the hall on the twenty squares of blue carpet it takes to get me to the door with careful glass diamonds that allow me to look safely on the garden.
The Garden. What a joke. Big square cement patio slabs. With lots of crisscross cracks to break our mothers’ backs. And there is Rose. Stomping on all the lines. Lifting her knees up past her waist to get maximum thrust on the way down. When the half-barrel planter with the limp pansies and dried-up marigolds gets in her way, she goes around it. Several times. It’s a small garden. The far corners are very near. Fence in our secrets. The “green space” has dead-man’s gray walls and a jaundice yellow floor. And there is Rose, all red from her efforts and the sun.
I open the door and say, “The list.”
Rose stops hurting her mother for a moment. “Shit,” she says.
“Whose turn is it to write down the list?” Nurse Brown says.
No one answers. Everyone freezes in their chairs.
She has asked that every Wednesday for four months. The same words in the same tone. From the same chair. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a tape recorder in the arm of the chair–she sits, presses PLAY, and moves her lips. She gets the same answer. Every week.
“Rose, I think it’s your turn,” Brown says.
Nobody knows whose turn it really is. Nobody wants a turn at writing the grocery list. Brown passes one of two notepads to Rose and throws her a pen. Nurse Brown always writes down the list too. Ever since the day it was Jamie’s turn. Jamie’s pad had THINGS TO DO written across the top. It took one hour and thirty-seven minutes to make up the list the day it was Jamie’s turn to write it. And at the end of the one hour and thirty-seven minutes (not a record), it was discovered that under THINGS TO DO Jamie had written: killmyself.
Forty-three times.
“Whose turn is it to decide what this week’s Friday meal will be?” Nurse Brown asks. Her second rhetorical question of the day.
Everyone shrinks back a little. We stop breathing.
Nurse Brown takes a deep breath…
And the winner is…
Nurse Brown exhales, “Marty, I believe you deserve the honor.”
Everyone exhales, except me. Shit. “What did I do?”
“Nothing…you make deciding the meal sound like a punishment.”
It is a punishment. There is no menu to choose from. It’s hard enough to get ten normal eating people to decide what to have for dinner. Try making that decision for ten of us. Some won’t eat bread or any carbohydrates. Some won’t eat anything with sugar in it, including tomato sauce. Some won’t eat any dairy because those darn cows make grass into fat. And everyone won’t eat FAT.
You cannot cannot cannot make anyone happy. Which means, you’ll never be a hero. Only an old goat. Until next Wednesday, when Nurse Brown picks a new goat.
“Turkey. Thanksgiving turkey dinner.” It just flies out of my mouth.
And the chicken coop goes nuts. They start flapping their little, bony, flaky, dried-up wings and squawking about mashed potatoes need butter, gravy is disgusting, there is sugar in cranberry sauce. Lots. Did you know that? There is sugar and butter in everything. The people who make frozen turkeys probably make the turkeys eat sugar cubes and force them to drink butter. Like the cigarette companies put extra stuff in cigarettes to make them more addictive. Carrots are okay. We all agree on carrots. They’re the only thing we agree on. Every Wednesday. They are first on the list.
When the feathers settle, Nurse Brown looks at me and says, “Why turkey, Marty?”
“Why not?”
“I’m just surprised. Thanksgiving dinner is a very family meal.”
“Not in my family.”
“What is Thanksgiving about then?”
“It has to do with Indians, who didn’t know what they were getting themselves into, and with turkeys, ripe and practicing for Christmas because ‘You’re going to miss it ’cause you’ll be with your dad this year’ and it’s the single biggest weekend of the year for retail. And it’s for my mother to swear at the gravy and give thanks to God for making the grandmothers deaf, so they can’t hear the electric can opener.”
Nurse Brown doesn’t ask me any more questions. She drums her fingers on the notepad and says, “Okay, let’s start our list.”
The evil eye campaign starts again. I’m sick of being grilled. “I could change my mind to luau–roast a nice fat piggy in the parking lot?”
Elizabeth squeals.
But I don’t change my mind about the turkey. Because they are expensive and take an ice age to thaw out, so you only get one shot at it, but it’s a pretty narrow one, so it’s real easy to fuck up. Fuck is my mother’s favorite Thanksgiving word.
Nobody is talking to me. Like it’s my idea to come here and pick up the things on the list. The brain trusts back at Silver Lake think that if we hang out in the place where all the food lives, then we will get used to it. Fat chance. The B’s walk through the store like reformed gamblers through a casino: they stare at the ice-cream freezer as if it were a roulette wheel. Until Rhonda drags them away. The A’s are walking down the very middle of the aisles lined with food like people afraid of puppies would move through Humane Society kennels packed with junkyard dogs. The A’s would turn sideways, and walk that way, if Rhonda wasn’t pushing them to the back of the store.
Rhonda herds us into a corner, right in front of the refrigerated deli case with all the bacon and hot dogs and every water-retaining sodium-packed product known to man. We school like fish for protection. Try to get into the middle of the group and sacrifice our buddies to the outside. Where the bacon is. Rhonda does a head count to make sure none of the fish got away.
“I don’t see Jamie. Does anyone know where Jamie is?” she asks.
Nobody knows. Of course.
“Marty, will you go find her, please?”
“Why do I always get sent to get people?”
“Because you bring them back.”
“Fine.” Not fine, but it’s better than a group search, which would mean we’d be in this grocery store all day.
I know where to find Jamie. I walk to the junk food aisle. If the other customers knew where we were from, they would think that Jamie was an anorexic. She’s not. She’s a bony bulimic. I find her. She’s having a staring contest with an economy-size bag of barbeque potato chips.
“Long lost friend?” It’s a mean thing to say, but I’m pissed.
No answer. Not even a flinch or dirty look. This is not like Jamie.
“Rhonda wants you to –”
“I used to eat three of these in one day,” Jamie says, and reaches out with both hands and picks up the bag. She holds it gently around the waist. “I’d go to a store to buy some carrots. Did you ever notice that the fruit and vegetables are on one side of grocery stores and the shit food is on the other?” she says, still looking at the bag.
I don’t know if she’s talking to the chips or me. Neither one of us answers.
“I’d come into the store for some carrots. You know, something healthy. Every time I’d come for the carrots, I’d test myself and come to this aisle. To reward myself for not buying ice cream, I’d pick a small bag of chips. Since I picked the small bag, I figured I deserved some ice cream anyways.
So I’d get a small container of vanilla. I don’t really like vanilla, but it has the least number of calories. But you already know that,” Jamie says to the chips, but I’m sure she’s talking to me. “Then I’d think, if I’m going to eat ice cream, I might as well have my favorite–double chocolate fudge chunk. And I didn’t want to come back to the store for a long time, so I’d grab the family-size fudge chunk. Then I’d know I was screwed, so I’d put the small bag of chips back. And grab three bags of these bastards,” Jamie says. She gives the huge bag of chips a violent shake. Then hugs it to her chest like a pillow. Hugs it hard. Till it explodes. It sounds like a gunshot. When the red smoke clears, she lets the bag fall to the floor and brushes barbeque powder from her chin and shirt. “Let’s go.”
As we leave, a store manager rounds the corner. He looks confused.
As we pass him, I say, “Cleanup in the aisle of evil.” Jamie smiles. Her yellow teeth explain how she can eat so much and stay so thin.
“Where have you guys been?” Rhonda says, annoyed.
“I was looking for carrots,” Jamie says.
Rhonda narrows her eyes. “Did you two have anything to do with that loud bang?”
“All bangs are loud, aren’t they?” I’m a stickler for detail.
Rhonda gives me maximum glare.
It works. “Jamie killed a bag of chips.”
“I don’t want to know,” Rhonda says, shakes her head and looks away.
That’s the problem with the truth. Everyone wants it. They just don’t want to know it.
We line the freezer single file and bend over like we would a railing on a bridge, but we’re looking for turkeys instead of fish. Everybody scans the tags of the dead birds for numbers. Not price numbers. Because money is no object. We look for weight numbers. Our obsession. We have to have a pound and a half per person. Ten of us (unless someone croaks, or their insurance runs out) plus two staff equals eighteen pounds of dead frozen bird.
Rhonda starts picking up birds from the freezer, checking the tags, and then putting them back. Tag and release. Tag and release. Until she has a pile of birds that weigh around eighteen pounds.
More Than You Can Chew Page 10