But by her teenage years, Lisa had either accepted my areas of incompetence or figured out how to maneuver me into position. For the prom, she wisely scoped out the mall on her own, so that I could come back with her, approve the dress, and pay. I even looked forward to it. We could spend a little time together outside the home battlefield, and the mall had a food court we could check out.
lisa: A mall is the worst place for someone with severe anxiety. It was like somebody had slipped me a psychedelic. As sleep-deprived as I was, with all the mall’s sounds and colors, I felt detached from reality. I was overwhelmed by the crowds, and by the task at hand. I took Mom to the Jessica McClintock store, where I’d tried on the twirly dress. They didn’t have my size anymore. I knew that Macy’s carried Jessica McClintock, and they had the dress, but we could only find my size in a petite.
Now here’s what I feel is a difference between my anorexia and many others’. I looked emaciated and many people assumed I weighed less than 90 pounds, but I still weighed 110. In most clothing brands I had dropped to a size 0 or a 1, but Jessica McClintock dresses seemed to run small.
We grabbed a size 4P and a 6P, and one other possible dress. I tried on the 4 first, which fit just fine although there would not be much room to grow. Not that I wanted to, but this seemed to be a concern of Mom’s. I did a few sit-ups in the dressing room. The 6P allowed some room. I was scared of gaining weight before the prom, Mom was hoping that I would, and my friends tried to convince me that I wouldn’t. I wanted the 4P to work, to verify my success at restricting and losing weight. We settled on the dress with room to grow in it.
For shoes, Mom actually picked out pink strappy sandals to match the rose on the dress—shoes with a four-inch heel!
We ate lunch in the food court, which was torture for me. Mom had to pick a place to review and wanted to try a shrimp shack or something along those lines, with a menu of clam chowder and fried fish. Yeah, right.
The only place I let myself agree on served salads and sandwiches, and I was able to find something I thought would be okay: salad with chicken and low-cal raspberry dressing. I thought I ate too much. Mom pushed me to eat more. Either way, the salad wasn’t very good and I immediately felt fat and regretful and certain that the waist room on my dress now would be filled in.
sheila: Lisa and I had shopped together at the Valley Fair Center’s Jessica McClintock store once before, a time I now remembered as impossibly happy, buying her a dress to wear as flower girl in my sister’s wedding. She was four years old and everything about being a flower girl filled her with joy. Fourteen years later I waited in a chair for a sullen, sunken young woman to come out of the dressing room and model the dress she had already chosen. Lisa conferred with the saleswoman and found out her size wasn’t in stock. They could get it from another store, but Lisa didn’t want to wait. She didn’t have a meltdown. Instead, she took me to Macy’s, which had the right size and a shoe department where Lisa liked the shoes I picked out—a miracle.
At Victoria’s Secret, Lisa tried on strapless bras while I went on an anthropological dig through sections of the store labeled Sexy Little Things and Bustiers & Merry Widows. And then I suggested lunch. The mall had recently expanded to accommodate a nine-hundred-seat food court, on the second floor near the stores most frequented by teenagers. It looks like a stone mountain lodge. I needed to check out some of the new eateries, and Lisa would have been the perfect companion—had she eaten. Instead we argued. Ivar’s Seafood, Rubio’s Tacos, no way. Finally she agreed to try California Crisp, which offered made-to-order salads and sandwiches. Lisa picked at her chopped salad and piece of grilled chicken breast, drizzling a fine mist of no-fat raspberry vinaigrette from its side dish. Her side of the table was an empty desert with one green oasis. My half was Mount Everest, piled with a bowl of minestrone soup, a turkey sandwich, a vegetarian panino, and a cheddar cheese-stuffed baked potato. Most of it came home for dinner.
lisa: My parents went to New York a few days before the prom, and I was left alone at home. My brother came home from Berkeley to stay with me, but he provided nothing more than a sleeping body on the couch in front of the TV with the History Channel turned on low. I don’t know what my parents thought he was going to do. He had problems of his own, and taking care of his anorexic sister was not going to be his call to greatness.
My doctor had finally prescribed a sleeping pill. On Ambien I was awarded a few nights of six or seven hours of sleep, but it was barely enough to feel rested. I had developed astigmatism in one eye, so even on nights when I did get some sleep, I still had blurry vision. Wearing my glasses made me feel disconnected, but my contacts were very uncomfortable. I dreaded the idea of wearing glasses to the prom.
Thursday and Friday before the prom were two of my worst days. The Ambien had either stopped working, or I was too anxious about the prom and couldn’t sleep. Sometimes on particularly bad nights Mom had even come into my room to sleep on my floor, like I was a child again, afraid of the dark. In a way I was afraid of the dark, and I had become afraid of my room. It had established itself as a doomed chamber, stripped of slumber. Sometimes having Mom there quieted my mind and I felt safe. But she was gone.
Thursday night I took two Ambien and woke up to a spinning room, falling out of bed as I was trying to get to the bathroom. I was so dizzy, I softly yelped: “Too much Ambien. It didn’t work.”
Friday was torture. I stayed home sick from school. At that point, my teachers knew I was going through something traumatic. They pardoned most of my absences. I don’t remember much from that day except lying on the couch in the family room, staring at the wall and crying. I saw no way I could make it to the prom. And I don’t think there could have been a way if Peggy hadn’t shown up.
sheila: On the Friday before the journalism awards, I had my nails done, for probably the third time in my life. The technology had improved a lot from the old days of poking pointed sticks into cuticles. Now it was all about comfort, warmth, and massage. I stepped back onto Sixth Avenue with hot pink nails to jazz up my little black Ralph Lauren cocktail dress. We had a fabulous lunch at Le Bernardin, showcasing a James Beard Rising Star Chef nominee from the Bay Area.
Lisa called us in New York so many times that Ned and I still shudder when we hear that particular Nokia cell-phone tone. The pressure of the prom was too much. She hadn’t been out late at night in months. She wasn’t ready. She talked and talked, and whatever we said was either hideously stupid or just vapor, it didn’t really exist. She would calm down and then call again. She behaved like our friend’s elderly mother, who phoned thirty times a day.
Guilt doesn’t come close to what we felt. We were unfit parents, betraying our child. Still, we told ourselves, she was not going to die. I was sure I would feel that level of danger in my bones, if only because I couldn’t live the other way. We would find the key, turn it, and the real Lisa would come back. Like the scary night she got the croup as a baby and wheezed helplessly for breath, but Ned turned on the shower for steam, and soon she slept peacefully again. We just had to find the anorexia key.
That afternoon, I did my hair in the usual way: shower and let dry. I applied the usual traces of eyeliner, mascara, and lipstick. Ned said I looked great, and once again, I was happy to be going to a food event as a size 4, not 14. It is an undeniable source of envy to be a food writer, especially a restaurant reviewer, who doesn’t look the part. We stayed with friends in New York, and took the subway to the Grand Hyatt Hotel, atop Grand Central Station, for the journalism awards.
The 2003 awards featured some of James Beard’s favorite foods. Before sitting down to specialties of his home state, Oregon, we mingled and tasted what Beard called “doots,” little dabs of food like truffle-scented popcorn and Depoe Bay Dungeness Crab Cakes with Red Pepper Coulis. I introduced myself to Ruth Reichl and gushed stupidly about her book, Tender at the Bone. Ned and I spoke with a charming gray-haired woman, and soon her daughter joined us. They turned out to be P
erri Klass, the pediatrician author, and Sheila Solomon Klass. Three years later, they published a dual memoir, Every Mother Is a Daughter: The Neverending Quest for Success, Inner Peace, and a Really Clean Kitchen. It is a model of good humor and surprising aha moments for Lisa and me.
Newspaper Feature Writing About Restaurants and/or Chefs with or without Recipes came during the second course: Oven-Roasted Asparagus on a bed of Willamette Valley Fromage Blanc scented with Herbs and Black Truffle Oil, topped with Crispy Julienne Parsnips, accompanied by Willamette Valley Whole Cluster Pinot Noir 2001.
At the Beards, as at the Oscars, presenters announce the nominees and there’s a second or two of paper rustling. Then they said, “And the winner is: ‘Serve You Right’ by Sheila Himmel!” I kissed Ned, walked to the front without tripping, and said a few words about the servers who do the hard work, just as a platoon of them reentered the ballroom, as if to illustrate my point. Foundation President Len Pickell helped drape the Olympics-type medal around my neck. At the front table, the mistress of ceremonies, an award-winning middle-aged TV and Broadway actress, looked anorexic.
Ned ate my asparagus and started in on the Kobe beef entrée while I headed out of the ballroom to call the West Coast, where it was 5:30 p.m. Lisa was home with Jake. When I told him about my award, he worked up a little enthusiasm, but his mind was on getting out of there, because he wasn’t in great shape at that time, having trouble with school and depression. Being with Lisa was making him feel worse. Lisa barely had anything to say, except that my cousin Peggy was coming. She had been great with our kids since they were young. Holidays, birthdays, babysitting—Peggy was there. Maybe Peggy was the one person Lisa would allow to help her.
To share the moment with someone who cared, I called my editor.
lisa: Mom’s cousin Peggy lived in San Francisco, and my family had always been close to her. Peggy carried the most nurturing instinct and warmth about her. At that time I was unaware that she knew I was anorexic. I thought that unless I flat-out told someone, they couldn’t tell.
Peggy had offered to check in on me that weekend. When she called and said she could come down, I accepted. When she and her yellow Labrador retriever, Martsi, arrived Friday night, my sunken, bloodshot eyes and unkempt appearance were enough to tell her how I was. Peggy suggested we go for a drive to calm my nerves. Instead of feeling sorry for me, she engaged me in conversation about school, rock climbing, and yoga. I had been meaning to try yoga. We talked about my date. She asked if I wanted to go to a café, but I wasn’t ready to face a public space. I mentioned how much I missed exercising. I was an invalid and it wasn’t because of a broken leg, which would eventually heal. I just wanted to pick up where I’d left off, get strength, and be active again. Maybe more moderated. Peggy told me I wasn’t ready for exercise just yet but I would be soon.
Back at home, Peggy drew me a bath, like a young child needing supervision so she wouldn’t drown in the shallow water. With the calming illumination of candles and soft music on the stereo, I let myself relax for the first time in months.
But a glimpse of my own body caught me off guard. I really hadn’t looked at it, I mean really observed myself, in a long time. In the shower, and in a mirror, you can disconnect from what you see. But in the bath, that really is you. I looked like an arthritic old woman with these little sticks on either side. For the first time, I knew that I had become much too thin.
To this day I swear by Peggy’s bath, because that night I slept. It didn’t make up for three months of insomnia, but it was seven hours of pure slumber. Peggy made me breakfast, asked me how I felt, and for once my answer was a genuine “good.”
What meant the most to me about having Peggy as a stand-in for Mom was the company to and from appointments. I had made appointments to get my hair and makeup done. At my makeover, the Clinique gals gawked over my long and curly eyelashes. They were annoyingly perky. The rest of me still ached with apprehension, but my face glowed with beauty and life.
After two hours in a chair, getting my hair pulled into ringlets, curls, buns, bobby pins, and a slight shimmer spray, I emerged in elegance. With every step of preparation I gained confidence that I would be making it to, and through, my prom.
All the girls were meeting at Gaelin’s house for last-minute touchups, or rather freak-outs, of makeup, perfume, and nitpicky perfectionist rituals. Gaelin had become my safety net at school, especially since we had physics together. Other friends pulled away, but Gaelin would always check on me and keep me in the group. She’d say, “Come on, we’re going to get coffee.” Or “This is what we’re doing today.” Gaelin was very nurturing at a young age.
Peggy handed me over to Gaelin’s parents, who also had become very supportive during my struggles. Her mother kept telling me I looked stunning, just like a princess.
Up in Gaelin’s room, I sat on her bed, watching my girlfriends fight for the mirror, eyeliner in hand. I felt as ready as I was going to be. Except that my dress felt tighter than when I bought it. Had I gained weight? I was bloated, and I hadn’t had a bowel movement in at least a week. In my right mind I knew it was constipation, but my right mind wasn’t in charge.
Gaelin asked how I felt and I said, “My dress feels tight.” She sighed and looked at me with reassurance, telling me, “It’s okay.” There had been many times Gaelin didn’t know what to say, especially when I believed I had gotten bigger. Telling me I was crazy wouldn’t work. “It’s okay” was the best thing to say.
The guys had been scheduled to arrive fashionably late. I was nervous to see Mike. I thought he was cute and liked what I knew of him, but it did feel like I was going to prom with a stranger. I remembered to bring him a boutonniere, and he had a big corsage for me. It looked enormous on my bony wrist. Then there were group pictures and mothers checking the tailoring on rented tuxedoes, fixing collars, and pleading, “Honey, smile!” Only I didn’t have a nagging mother or an out-of-it-yet-proud father. Where the hell are my parents? On the other side of the country, celebrating Mom’s James Beard award. Why at this moment? All the other girls’ parents were here.
We were lucky to have our prom on the Santa Cruz waterfront, at the Coconut Grove ballroom. But it meant a long limo ride. More time to be anxious, nervous, and searching for topics of conversation with Mike. Luckily we were in a big group.
That evening on the coast, the sky was depressingly gray and the winds harsh. Although it was a quick walk from the limo to the entrance of Coconut Grove, my body chilled right away.
We were herded into a crowded foyer and then up a steep staircase packed with glamorous, boisterous teens. I tried my best not to crumble into a heap of panic. I focused on my breathing, slow and steady. My coats of makeup acted as a shield. At least I looked pretty and put-together! Mike was nervous, too. Instead of trying to think up interesting topics and then having those awkward pauses, we listened to the crowd and blended in. I counted girls wearing the same dress.
I was hungry, as usual, but at the prom so was every girl around me. Girls rarely ate at all on prom day, for fear of last-minute bloating. Most girls’ conversations focused on their hunger. You could hear, “I haven’t eaten all day” all over the room. For once my hunger did not set me apart from the group.
At one point, Mike asked if I liked the food or if I’d had enough to eat. I said yes, which wasn’t completely false. I had enough to my liking and felt satisfied enough to focus on other matters.
My close friends gawked over my entire presentation, and people I didn’t know all that well complimented my look. On one of my anxiety trips to the bathroom, one of my favorite teachers, Mrs. Peters, stopped me and said, “Wow, Lisa, you look beautiful, just beautiful; like a princess.”
sheila: While Lisa was accepting princess compliments, I was meeting friends for dinner and a concert at Carnegie Hall, still believing I would have a premonition of disaster. Our niece, a student at Barnard College, got Ned’s treasured ticket to the Beard gala.
Be
fore Ned boarded the subway to JFK, we made our traditional run to Essa Bagel on Third Avenue. Luckily it was a Saturday, when trains aren’t so crowded, or he would have made lots of enemies with a large duffel bag of bagels in addition to a suitcase. We had fine-tuned this routine since our first trip together to New York in 1978 (a trip so fun that we decided to get married), so that bagels and corn rye bread retained their freshness through six hours in the air and at least four in ground transit:1. Call ahead, so bagels are ready (and just baked) when you get there. Also, to ensure there’s enough of each variety you want, especially pumpernickel.
2. Keep bagels in paper sacks, even if they’re still hot and make the bag sweat, until you get back to the apartment or hotel and can spread them out on a table or bed.
3. When bagels are cool, pack in freezer bags. The bagel place provides bags and twist ties.
4. The minute you get home, store bagels in the freezer.
The family was in crisis, but we were carrying out the bagel ritual as always. We wouldn’t have to eat bland Bay Area bagels for a long while. And Ned would be there whenever Lisa needed to come home from the prom.
lisa: We ended up staying at the prom almost until the last minute. Mike and I danced, my nerves calmed, my fears went away. I stayed awake through the ride home, but for once I was awake because I wanted to be. I wanted to soak up the minutes and internally celebrate my success. Back at Gaelin’s house, her parents had prepared a spread of cookies, pizza, sodas, and fruit. At the first smell of food, everyone swarmed the kitchen.
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