The Perfect Mom

by Janice Kay Johnson

  The drive to her house didn’t take five minutes, which was maybe just as well. He couldn’t think of a damn thing to say.

  Will you go out with me tomorrow night, too? Too desperate.

  I want you. Pushy, and pretty well guaranteed to ensure she didn’t go out with him tomorrow or any other night.

  He kept stealing glances her way when they passed under streetlamps or paused at red lights and tried to imagine scenarios. Him bending his head and her stepping quickly back. Her accepting a kiss with the enthusiasm of a transplanted Californian facing another rainy Seattle morning.

  Her kissing him back.

  He stole another look at her classic profile and soft mouth, and had to wrench his gaze back to the road. Looks had never been really important to him. Brynn had been pretty, but not spectacular. He’d fallen in love with her sweetness, her spirit, her sense of humor, not the sway of her hips or the regularity of her facial features.

  But Kathleen Monroe’s elegance and beauty got to him. Represented something, maybe, that he’d yearned for. Whatever. He didn’t altogether like the feeling, or himself for responding so powerfully to something so shallow.

  Assuming that was what he was responding to.

  A Volkswagen sat in her driveway, and there wasn’t a place on her block to park. In fact, there was barely room for him to maneuver his big pickup down the middle of her narrow street, with cars parked on both sides.

  He hesitated, then set the emergency brake and said, “I’ll walk you up.”

  She reached over, covering his hand with hers and giving a soft squeeze. “Don’t be silly. Somebody might want to get by. I can make it safely to my front door.”

  But she hadn’t reached for the door handle yet, which gave him hope.

  He said quietly, “I enjoyed tonight.”

  She sounded just a little breathy. “I did, too.”

  “Can we do it again?”

  “I’d like that.”

  Was she feeling shy? he wondered in amazement.

  “Kathleen…”

  “Yes?” she whispered.

  He reached out and wrapped one hand around her nape, feeling smooth skin and the delicate jutting of vertebrae. A quiver ran through her, but instead of grabbing for the door handle and babbling her good nights, she only waited, her eyes big and dark in the dim lighting.

  Logan bent toward her, hesitated and then touched his mouth to hers. Her breath sighed against his lips. He brushed hers again, tugged gently at her full lower lip, then covered her mouth with his.

  Incredibly, her lips parted and her hand reached out to snag his shirt. His blood sang as he deepened the kiss just for a moment, tasting a woman as complex as the scents and sadness that clung to her.

  When he lifted his head, she made a tiny, ragged sound. They stared at each other for a moment. Then her lashes fluttered and she withdrew, physically and in every other way, letting go of his shirt as if he was burning her hand and opening the pickup door so hastily she darn near fell out.

  “Good night, Logan.” Her voice was high, hurried. “Thank you, I had fun.”

  “I’ll call,” he said, just before she slammed the door.

  She lifted a hand and hurried away, slipping between the bumpers of parked cars and up the stairs to her house, built high above the street. She waved one more time from the porch before letting herself inside.

  Well.

  Unless she kissed every man that way, and from her startled reaction he rather doubted it, it would seem that he’d been wrong.

  A pleased grin tugging his mouth, Logan readjusted his lap belt over his new configuration and then released the emergency brake.

  He’d stirred her coals, all right, and the heat was enough to warm his hands.

  CHAPTER SIX

  TENSION TIGHTENING HER shoulders and squeezing her temples, Kathleen walked down the hall to Emma’s room. The visit was not off to a winning start, considering that Emma hadn’t been waiting in the lobby for her.

  She passed a big room where a bunch of girls lounged on couches and chairs watching television. Almost all were perilously thin, hair dull and lank like Emma’s, the fuzz on neck and cheeks a testament to the body’s resolve to protect itself. Yet when something funny happened on the show, giggles erupted. Normalcy and tragedy entwined.

  Others gave her wary glances when she passed the open doors of bedrooms. None of the doors were shut, she saw. Apparently closeting yourself in was against the rules. A couple of nurses chatting in doorways or wandering by smiled and nodded.

  Emma’s door, with a poster of Heath Ledger on it, was ajar. Kathleen knocked.

  After a moment of silence, her daughter said in a low voice, “Come in.”

  Taking a deep breath for courage, Kathleen pushed open the door and walked in, smiling. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” Face averted, Emma sat cross-legged on the room’s single twin bed, her feet bare and her hair in a loose ponytail. Her T-shirt bared stick arms and a bony collarbone and neck, but her cheeks had a faint flush of color instead of a waxen pallor for the first time in a long while.

  Kathleen’s chest filled with anguish and happiness so acute, it hurt. She bit her lip hard to stop tears that burned the backs of her eyes.

  “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  Emma shrugged and picked at a chenille flower on the bedspread.

  Sitting at the foot of the bed, Kathleen asked softly, “How are you?”

  Emma still didn’t look up. “What difference does it make? I’m stuck here anyway.”

  Kathleen reached over and covered Emma’s restless hand. “How you are always makes a difference.”

  Her daughter flung up her head, eyes flashing. “I hate it here! It’s like…like prison! They watch you all the time, and they put tubes down your throat if you won’t eat, and lots of the girls are prettier than I am, and…”

  Kathleen scooted over and gathered Emma into her arms. “None of them,” she said firmly, “is prettier than you. I saw a whole bunch of girls when I was coming in, so I’m competent to judge. And Sharon told me they didn’t have to put a tube down your throat. Did they?”

  Rigid in her mother’s embrace, Emma shook her head and sniffed. “But they serve all this gross food, and you have to eat every bite even if it’s something you hate! And it’s like I’m a baby here! I can’t decide anything for myself.”

  Tears escaped Kathleen’s eyes. “I know, sweetheart. I didn’t want to have to send you here…”

  Emma wrenched away, her expression wild. “Then why did you?”

  A lump in her throat, Kathleen said, “Because you didn’t leave me any choice. You say you can’t decide anything for yourself, but you did decide. You lied, and you conned Sharon and Dr. Tisdale, and you lost more weight than we’d agreed on.”

  Emma spat, “Eighty pounds is too much! I was fat.”

  A huge weariness pressed on Kathleen’s shoulders. “I won’t have this argument again. You’re not seeing yourself as you really are. Until your eyes are opened, all I can do is keep you from killing yourself.”

  Defiantly, Emma leaped to her feet. “What if I want to die?”

  Kathleen didn’t touch the tears dripping down her cheeks. “Please tell me you don’t.” Her voice was thick, barely more than a whisper.

  After a frozen instant, Emma’s face crumpled and she threw herself at her mother again. “I don’t want to die,” she sobbed. “I just…I just…”

  Clearly she didn’t know what she wanted. She only knew she was trapped in an obsession she didn’t understand and couldn’t escape. Kathleen didn’t understand it; things might have been easier if she did. Anorexia truly was the monster under the bed, lurking in the closet, hiding in shadows—invisible yet terrifying, real no matter what anyone said.

  “I love you,” Kathleen whispered against her hair. “I love you.”

  “Then take me home!” her daughter wailed.

  Rocking, rocking, her heart squeezed in agony, she said, “I can’t
. You know I can’t.”

  Once again, Emma tore herself away. Face wet with tears, she screamed, “Then you don’t love me!” Leaping from the bed, she raced from the room.

  Kathleen gave a small, unheard cry of pain and sat without moving for a very long time.

  LOGAN CALLED THAT NIGHT to find out how the first visit had gone. Kathleen had already been wondering how she’d come to reveal so much of herself to him over dinner. But the moment she heard his deep, slow voice, so calm, she crumbled without a fight.

  “Terribly.” She clutched the phone and huddled under an afghan in the overstuffed chair in the living room. After dinner, the others had all gone about their business. She’d retreated to pretend to read a book that lay open on the end table. Half-grown Pirate, rakish with the one eye askew, lay purring on the back of the chair as if he knew she needed him. His orange plume of a tail wrapped her neck. “She told me that I don’t love her or I wouldn’t leave her there.”

  He gave a comforting chuckle. “Teenage hyper-bole.”

  Kathleen blinked. “Well…yes.”

  “Isn’t that about what you expected?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “It hurt anyway?”

  She let out a long breath, somehow releasing pain with it. “Yes,” she said simply. “Where Emma is concerned, I can never seem to…gird myself sufficiently.”

  “I’m told that just letting go in the normal way is hard. Having her try to tear herself away must be a thousand times more painful.”

  Kathleen let the afghan slip a few inches and her knees relax against the arm of the chair. “How did you get so wise?”

  Again she heard that comforting rumble of a laugh. “Maybe I’m faking it.”

  “I hope not.” She had to blink away tears. “You always make me feel better.”

  “Good.” Warmth infused his voice. Not just the comforting kind: steaming, fragrant cups of tea and thick quilts and hand-written notes on thick lilac paper. But also something more sensuous, suggesting the rough texture of his calluses against her bare skin, the taste of his mouth, the smoldering glow she occasionally saw in his eyes, before he veiled it.

  A different kind of warmth pooled in her belly, shocking her. How could she be responding like this, when she was racked with so much fear for Emma and so deep a sense of her own failure?

  “Do you have time to get together this week?” he asked.

  She wanted to say, Come over now. Wrap your arms around me and hold me while I cry and then kiss me again.

  Swallowing the lump in her throat, Kathleen said, “I start counseling with Emma this week. Monday and Wednesday evening, then Saturday morning.”

  Tone expressionless, he said, “That won’t leave you much time at home. It’s okay. Just give me a call if…”

  Laughing despite being on the edge of tears, Kathleen interrupted. “You never let me finish. I was going to say, Tuesday or Thursday if you’d like to come over and join us for dinner, or go out for pizza or just for a cup of coffee, I’d like that.”

  There was a long moment of silence. She almost thought he’d already hung up. Then he said, “I don’t seem to be very secure where you’re concerned.”

  “I’ve noticed. I just don’t know why.”

  “I think you must be my dream girl.” He made a sound in his throat. “You know. The one who’s always beyond reach.”

  “I’m…I’m not that…”

  “Yeah. Yeah, you are. At least in my eyes.”

  “Oh,” she whispered, not knowing what to say. She couldn’t possibly make any kind of declaration, if that was called for.

  “Tuesday it is,” he said more briskly. “Why don’t we go out for pizza or whatever you’d like?”

  “Just so I can wear jeans and clogs,” she told him, “anything is fine.”

  Knowing she was going to see Logan Tuesday night was a warm glow she hugged to herself. She desperately needed something to look forward to, as low as she felt about herself and her life.

  Monday night was the first counseling session with Emma and Sharon. Before, Sharon had seen Emma alone and talked occasionally to Kathleen.

  “Now,” she said, smiling at both as if they were in for a treat, “I think it’s time we work together.”

  Plainly Emma was not enthusiastic. She sat in the straight backed chair with her head bent and her spine curved, her hair a curtain to hide her face.

  Kathleen tried to look cheerful and attentive.

  “Emma, you know why you’re here,” Sharon began.

  Emma began chewing on a fingernail.

  “I’m pleased to see that your weight is up by two pounds. How do you feel about that?”

  Emma said intensely, “I hate gaining weight.”

  “You do understand that you collapsed because your body was weakening from malnutrition.”

  She slumped lower in the chair. “I slipped and bumped my head. Big deal!”

  “You scared us,” Kathleen said, with what she thought was admirable understatement. “I didn’t know Ginny could scream like that.”

  Emma looked interested. “She screamed? Really?”

  Kathleen had to grit her teeth. Her charming daughter’s tone suggested that she was about to say, Cool!

  “I suggest,” Sharon interjected, “that we not spend this time together arguing about your weight, or whether you need to gain or lose. Let’s talk instead about your relationship with each other. Who’d like to start?”

  Emma muttered something. Both the women looked at her.

  “Can you say that so we can hear?” Sharon prodded.

  The teenager’s chin shot up. “Why does everything have to be about her?”

  Kathleen felt as if a knife had just slipped between her ribs. She couldn’t breathe, could only sit still enduring the pain that radiated from the wound.

  Sharon leaned forward. “Why does discussing your relationship mean we’re talking about your mother? Aren’t we talking equally about you?”

  “I don’t want to talk about me, either!” Emma declared sullenly.

  “Then what do you want to talk about?”

  “Nothing!” she cried.

  “I see.” Sharon turned to Kathleen. “Is there anything you’d like to say?”

  Kathleen’s fingernails bit into her palms as she chose her words with care. “I would like to know why Emma is so angry at me.”

  “You put me in here!”

  “You put yourself in here,” she retorted.

  “I was fine!”

  “You weren’t fine.”

  “Now, now,” Sharon interrupted. “We’re wandering back into old battlefields. Can we talk about before you entered the Bridges program, Emma? Were you mad at your mom then?”

  Emma shrugged.

  “Is that a yes or no?”

  “I wasn’t mad. Except when she, like, spied on me.”

  “Spied?” Kathleen echoed in surprise. “What are you talking about?”

  “To see if I was eating, or puking, or exercising, or… It’s like you wanted to know what I was doing every minute!”

  Take a deep breath. Stay calm. “I worry about you.”

  She mumbled something else.

  Sharon spoke up. “Louder, Emma.”

  Abruptly straightening in the chair, Emma all but yelled, “I know you worry! I know you love me!” Fists clenched, she stared with burning eyes at her mother. “I just…I wish… Sometimes I wish you’d be mean or stupid or do something awful, like other people. But you always do the right thing.”

  Stunned by the attack, Kathleen whispered, “The right thing?”

  “You’re nice! You’re perfect! I’m the stupid one with the problem.”

  There was a moment of silence. Emma ducked her head and stared down at her lap.

  “So you do believe you have a problem,” Sharon said gently.

  Emma wouldn’t say any more.

  After Emma had hurried out to go to her room, Sharon walked Kathleen to the lobby.

>   “I think that was very productive,” she declared.

  Kathleen rubbed her temple. “Really.”

  “You sound doubtful.”

  “Yeah. I am. All she did was repeat her usual litany. She’s dumb, bad, ugly, stupid and everything is her fault.”

  The two women paused in the lobby by the double glass front doors. “But she did concede she has a problem.”

  “Maybe,” Kathleen said with a sigh. “Or was she just conceding that we all think she does?”

  The plump therapist ignored her reservations. “I’d love to get her to open up more about you. She never wants to say anything bad about you. That’s not normal for a troubled girl her age.”

  Kathleen gazed at her wavery reflection in the glass, eerily indistinct with the lamplit parking lot on the other side of the doors. “I am terribly afraid,” she said in a low voice, “that she has me on some sort of pedestal. Her favorite line at home is, ‘You’re so perfect.’ You know, with that scathing note only a teenager can add. Once, Ian told her that if she’d lose weight, he’d be lucky enough to be living with two beautiful women. I think Emma is still trying.”

  “And you’re her ideal. Yes, I can see that. You’ve suggested something like this before, but Emma mostly talks warmly about you, so I guess I didn’t take you seriously. But if you’re not just her mother, but also her…oh, standard, and maybe in a way even a sort of competitor…” Her cheeks flushed and she nodded vigorously. “Yes, that’s an interesting idea. We can explore it further with Emma on Wednesday.”

  “I can hardly wait,” Kathleen said dryly.

  Sharon laughed. “She’s doing fine. Did you notice how much better she looked? She won’t admit it, but I can see her energy level rising, and the aides tell me she’s eating with less reluctance. Sometimes that’s the big hurdle, you know. Just getting someone like Emma to actually put food in her mouth and chew it and swallow it, day after day. Once she’s done it for a few weeks, the whole idea isn’t such a barrier. We hope to get her comfortable with eating small but wholesome meals.”

  “She did look better.” Giving a twisted smile, Kathleen held out a hand. “Thank you, Sharon.”

  Sharon responded with a quick hug instead. “You’re welcome. We’ll get her through this.”