by Mindy Klasky
Which didn’t exactly prove my point. After all, what would I have said if I really did have an eating disorder?
My father took over, lending his gravest attorney-voice to the chorus. “Kira, as you know, Maddy and I spoke a couple of weeks ago. She just couldn’t overlook your self-destructive behavior any longer.”
I glared at Maddy, but I had enough sense to keep my mouth shut. Whatever she’d said then, she’d said because she was worried about me. I tried to sound as reasonable as possible as I said, “What happened a couple of weeks ago?”
But I already knew the answer. Maddy kept her voice even as she said, “Drew. Drew happened.”
“Don’t bring him into this!” I said. “He doesn’t have anything to do with what I eat.”
Dad shook his head, leaning forward in his chair as if he needed to distract me, needed to focus my attention away from the vulnerable Maddy. Yeah, right. As if Maddy had ever spent a day in her life being vulnerable. “You have to understand how all of this looks to us on the outside, Kira. One minute, you’re working at Fox Hill, happy as a clam. The next thing we know, you’ve quit your job, taken up with some guy you’d barely even mentioned, and you’ve stopped eating.”
“I haven’t stopped eating!”
Jules sighed, then reached for a legal pad that rested on the end table. “We started talking, Kira. Maddy and me. We made a list of things.” She glanced down, almost apologetic. “Strange exercise—crunches that make you cramp up, yoga in the middle of the night. New food habits: my yogurt for breakfast, instead of Cap’n Crunch. Steamed vegetables from Hunan Delight. One single handful of kettle corn, stretched out over an entire hour.”
“I don’t even like kettle corn! I’ve never liked it! I just ate it so that I didn’t disappoint you guys! You know, my best friends.”
Jules looked hurt, but Maddy was the one who replied in her bluff, no-nonsense way. “We are your best friends, Kira. But we’ve let this slide for too long. Jules and I were both shocked when we realized how much weight you’ve lost. We should have noticed sooner. We should have helped you solve your problem.”
“I don’t have a problem!”
I launched myself out of my chair, using my frustration to carry me across the office. When I got to the photograph of my mother, I stared at her for a long time. If she were here, she’d believe me. She’d explain to them that I wasn’t sick. I wasn’t anorexic. She would have noticed my weight loss as soon as it happened; she wouldn’t have been fooled by some baggy sweats.
After all, she and I looked like sisters. Now that I’d lost my TEWSBU weight.
Unaware of my silent pity party, my father took up the attack. “Kira, you can’t stand there and deny that you’ve lost a lot of weight. We all watched you after the…wedding.” He hesitated before the word, as if he didn’t know what to call it, didn’t know how to refer to the disaster. “We watched you take comfort in food. We knew that you’d put on several pounds, and we waited for you to come around, to stop that. But starving yourself isn’t any better. It’s no more a solution.”
I spoke to my mother’s framed photo. “I haven’t been starving myself.”
My father said, “Then work with us.” His tone was so reasonable that I had to turn to face him. To face all three of them. “Prove to us that you’re eating.”
“What? You want me to videotape every meal?” I felt like a rebellious teenager.
This was all about Drew, a voice whispered in my head. They didn’t like him. They’d never liked him. They were trying to drive him away, trying to make my life so difficult, so unappealing that no man in his right mind would stay with me.
Before anyone could say anything to make me even more furious, Maddy stood up. “We want you to keep a food diary.”
“A what?” I sounded incredulous.
Maddy crossed toward me, sweeping a piece of paper from my father’s desk. Sure enough, it read “Food Diary” across the top. The page was broken into sections, carved up for morning, midday, evening. There were three extra blocks for snacks.
“I don’t have time for this!” As I protested, my father set his jaw. I knew then that he would ignore every one of my arguments, no matter how logical they were. I turned to Maddy and Jules instead. “I have a show opening in a month! You guys know what that means! I won’t have time to do my laundry, much less write down every bite I eat.”
Maddy merely shook her head. “It doesn’t take that much time. You don’t need to calculate calories or fat grams. For now.”
“For now?” I was incredulous. “Is that a threat?”
Dad answered. “Kira, I know you’re angry right now. I know you think that we’re against you. But nothing could be further from the truth. All three of us just want you to be happy. If your life is out of control, if you have too much pressure to function in a healthy manner, we owe it to you to intervene.”
He was absolutely, utterly serious. Maddy took advantage of my speechlessness to add, “You can do this. You’re a stage manager. You keep perfect notes for your productions. Just keep track of your food for a month.”
I wanted to refuse. I wanted to tell them that they were collectively nuts. I wanted to tell them that I was hurt, insulted, furious.
But I knew that they were only speaking because they loved me.
Okay. How hard could it be to keep a food diary? I ate enough, every single day, that I would easily disprove their concerns. And, even though she’d been trying to flatter me, Maddy was right. List-making did come easily to me.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll keep your stupid diary.” I looked at the three pairs of eyes, at the three people who loved me most in the entire world. (Except for Drew. He loved me more. But he wasn’t exactly a fair test, under the Teel-ish circumstances.) “But it’s only going to prove that you’re all wrong.”
“We can live with that,” my father said. “We can live with that, and we know you can, too.” He offered me his hand, just as he had when I was a child, when we were agreeing to stupid things.
I could have refused to take it. I could have refused to shake. But that would only make me look more defensive, more like a woman out of control.
I closed my fingers around his and pumped once, earnestly. He took a deep breath and exhaled, as if he were profoundly relieved to have our conversation behind him. “Now,” he said to all of us, “how about if I take you ladies out to dinner? Anywhere you’d like—my treat.”
Back in my bedroom, a rib-eye steak and loaded baked potato later, I was feeling a little more charitable toward my father and my housemates. If I’d only been able to share a glass of the shiraz my father had poured so generously, I likely would have overlooked the entire intervention, considered it just another one of those quirky signs of love and friendship that we’d all laugh about, years from now.
As it was, I continued to feel that I’d been treated unfairly, talked down to as if I were a child. But since we were all on the brink of food coma, I wasn’t going to pursue the matter any further with my housemates that night.
I leaned back against my pillows and caught a whiff of Drew’s shampoo. We’d already been together for three weeks. Time flew. Three weeks of his absolutely undivided attention. If I was completely honest with myself, I was grateful to have this evening off, even if my separation from Drew had meant the showdown with Dad, Maddy, and Jules. That didn’t make me strange, did it? I mean, everyone needed a little breathing room from the love of their life.
Didn’t they? Even if the person they wanted space from was so stunningly gorgeous they were still a heart-thudding surprise each and every morning?
No, I remonstrated with myself. My desire for an evening away from Drew didn’t mean that I would ever dream of taking back the wish that had brought him to me.
I wouldn’t forfeit my new body, either. Sure, I should have handled things a little differently. I could have adjusted my wardrobe gradually, instead of startling everyone with apparent overnight changes. I could h
ave made my actual food likes and dislikes more clear, instead of letting Maddy and Jules think that I was going all anorexic on them.
And I wouldn’t have given back my first wish, either. I definitely wouldn’t have forsaken my job at the Landmark. Sure, the gender-switched production was strange. Yeah, Bill Pomeroy was making the show more and more bizarre with his daily design changes. Absolutely, we were pushing the envelope for a Twin Cities theatrical production. But I was learning new things every day, proving myself every single time I set foot in the theater. No Fox Hill director would ever have shown the imagination for an entire production that Bill cast off in a single day.
No Fox Hill director would ever have chosen to wrap his set in plastic, three weeks before opening night.
Damn. I still had to let John know about the latest Pomeroy inspiration. I glanced at my watch. It was only nine-thirty, even though it seemed much later. I dug my cell phone out of my backpack, along with my well-used phone list.
Chewing on my bottom lip as I tried to figure out a way to break the news, I punched in John’s number. One ring. Two. He answered halfway through the third. “Hey, Franklin.” Ah, the joys of caller ID. “This isn’t going to be good news.”
Music played in the background, loud enough that I raised my voice a little. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“Only to the stage managers who call me after nine. Just a sec,” John said. With a slight grunt, the music was cut off midphrase.
“What was that?”
“Duke Ellington. ‘Take the “A” Train.’”
“You thinking about getting out of town?”
“That all depends on what you’re about to tell me. What’s Bill got in mind now?”
I took a deep breath to fortify myself. “‘I just want to say one word to you,’ Bill told us today. ‘Plastic.’”
There was silence for a long time, and I could picture John measuring out the new command. I was certain he was running a hand over his mustache. “Shouldn’t that be plastics?” he said at last. “With an s?”
Great. We both knew The Graduate. I gritted my teeth and told him about Bill’s innovation.
“Jesus, Franklin! The actors are going to break their necks!”
“We tried it today, with plastic bags over their socks, and we only had one injury.”
“What happened?” He sounded truly concerned.
“Nothing serious. Stephanie slipped. Cut herself on the edge of Drew’s notebook.” John muttered something that I didn’t catch. “What?”
“Nothing. How many stitches?”
“None! It wasn’t that bad. I mean, I could handle it with my first aid kit.”
I heard him swallow something, and I realized he’d probably been kicking back in his living room, relaxing with some jazz and a beer. Maybe reading a script for some future show. Or a novel, something totally unrelated to work. The last thing he’d needed was my interrupting his night with more design bad news. “I’m really sorry,” I said. “About this latest change.”
“Don’t be,” he sighed. “This is just Bill being Bill.”
“Genius that he is.” I thought it would come out sounding light, funny. Instead, I just sounded tired.
“How you holding up, Franklin?”
There was honest concern in his voice, a frank tone that made me swallow hard. He understood. He knew what I was going through, what this production meant, what it was taking to hold it all together. He’d traveled all the way from Texas to join the show; he had to be questioning whether he’d made the right decision.
John would understand if I admitted that I was tired. That I was worried. That I might have bitten off more than I could chew.
Blinking back sudden tears, I reminded myself that I would not give back any of my wishes. I loved where I was in my life. I loved what I was doing. And even a transgendered, underground, slime-filled Romeo and Juliet beat the LSAT. Any day.
“Franklin?” John’s voice was soft, as cautious as if he were whispering to a newborn. I could see him sitting up in his chair now, bottle of beer abandoned on whatever passed for a coffee table in his cheap, temporary apartment. I could picture him leaning forward just a little, flexing the hand that wasn’t holding the phone, trying to funnel the tension of concern down his corded fingers.
“I’m fine,” I said, but I couldn’t raise my voice above a whisper. I cleared my throat. “Just a little tired, is all.” There. That was better. “I’m fine,” I repeated, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
As if he knew I needed a little longer to recover, he said, “Well, don’t worry about the plastic. I should be able to get something at Lyndale Garden, that heavy-duty black stuff for putting under flower beds. We can double it up and store it on spools, use a heat gun to add grommets, so the crew can attach it to the set.”
I listened for another minute as John talked to himself, working out the problem. I could imagine him taking notes, sketching out his requirements as he talked. I could picture his steady, firm hand, dashing out letters and numbers on a sheet of paper. As he took hold of Bill’s mandate, as he crafted a solution, I felt the tension ease in my shoulders. My momentary tears retreated, leaving a path of soggy exhaustion in their wake.
“You still there?” he said as he finished his calculations for how many square feet of plastic we’d need.
“Yep,” I said, sniffing and stifling a sudden yawn. “Do you need me to get any of that? What can I do to help?”
“Don’t worry about it. I can load it all into the truck.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“It’ll all work out. Bill might be insane, but we’ll stay one step ahead of him.”
I smiled at his grim determination. “You don’t fool me, John McRae. I know you love this stuff, no matter what you say about Bill.”
“I’m not trying to fool you, Franklin. Not trying to fool you at all.” The reply could have been innocent enough. They were casual words, directly responsive to what I’d said. And yet, there was a layer of meaning sifted over them, a careful seasoning that warmed my cheeks. I could picture his earnest chestnut eyes, warm beneath his shaggy hair.
I cleared my throat. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there.” He started to say something else but settled for repeating, “I’ll be there.”
“Thanks,” I said, surprised to find that I was whispering.
“You sleep well now, Franklin.” He made his voice as soft as mine. “Good night.”
My phone was warm in my palm as I cut off the call. I sat up and realized that the remnants of my flame tattoos were tingling. I rubbed my fingertips together idly and wondered what John had been about to say, what words he’d swallowed during our conversation. I fell asleep, though, before I could figure out anything he might have meant.
CHAPTER 14
A WEEK LATER, MY TEARY LITTLE BREAKDOWN SEEMED like ancient history as I made a face at myself in the Landmark’s bathroom mirror. I knew I was making more out of the night’s dinner date with Drew than I should be. We were just going out for burgers. It was no big deal.
Nevertheless, I’d dashed out to Macy’s during our lunch break, finally splurging on the cashmere sweater I’d wanted for years. It was a deep hunter-green, a color so rich that I expected it to smell like pine every time I brushed my fingers against its softness. The sweetheart neckline was delicate without being dainty. I’d coveted it forever; I’d hinted heavily to TEWSBU that it would be a perfect birthday gift, and then I’d been too heartsick to buy it for myself after he left me.
But I had bought it that very afternoon. To wear with Drew. For Drew. For myself.
Truth be told, I’d bought it as a sort of magic talisman. Now that Teel was gone, I needed to grant my own wishes. And ever since that night a week ago, the night that Drew and I had spent apart, my boyfriend had been grating on me just a little.
I told myself that was normal. I told myself that every couple went through
a few weeks of absolute bliss before settling into the ordinary annoyances of daily life in the real world. I told myself that I was personally responsible for some of the things that bothered me the most—Drew was clingy because I had wished him to be that way. He touched me constantly because I had made Teel magically bind him to do so.
I glanced at my fingertips. If I held them at just the right angle, the flame tattoos were still visible, a reminder of everything I’d asked from my genie. I wondered if I’d be stuck with them for life, secret marks that would always remind me of the crazy time when I’d had magic at my beck and call.
Or maybe they would fade after I put Teel’s lamp back in circulation. With the crush of the play, I still hadn’t found time—made time—to leave it somewhere. I knew it wasn’t fair for me to keep putting off the transition. Teel needed to find two more people, grant six more wishes so that he could enter the Garden.
I closed my eyes, trying to re-create the feeling of nothingness that had surrounded me when Teel had taken me to that timeless, spaceless place. What did the iron gate really look like? How had the flowers perfumed the air?
I sighed. I’d never know. For just a heartbeat, though, I wished that I wanted something—anything—as much as Teel had obviously wanted to enter the Garden.
I ran my fingers through my unruly hair one last time, then stooped to pick up my backpack. My stage-manager clothes were shoved in with utter disregard for the possibility of wrinkles. I dug beneath them to extract a little clutch purse, and then I was ready to go.
Drew and John were the only people left by the time I walked into the lobby; the rest of the cast and crew had scattered as soon as rehearsal ended. John was explaining, “There’ll be posts every six feet. The fencing will be sturdy enough, even if you walk right into it.” He paused and ran a hand over his mustache. “When you walk into it. There probably won’t be enough light to see it once we paint the fencing black. But don’t worry. It won’t fall down.”
Just that morning, Bill had delivered his latest bombshell: we’d perform the play in the dark. No theatrical lighting at all; nothing that David Barstow had created was dim enough, grim enough to capture Bill’s somber vision of Verona. Instead, each audience member would be given a flashlight, a high-power beam to illuminate whatever he or she wanted to see on stage. Some would naturally focus on the actors, others on the set. A few would probably be jackasses and aim their lights at each other, but that was the price we had to pay for full audience immersion in our theatrical world.