“Karen,” she asks cautiously, “how come we don’t talk anymore?”
Karen doesn’t hesitate. “Because I know what you think about me.”
“What?”
“You think I’m stupid. You think I let myself get tricked into this.”
“I don’t think that.” Amanda’s voice has shrunk; I have to strain to hear it.
“Yes, you do. You’ve never had to work a day in your life on your body, and that means that you will never understand.”
“What are you talking about?” Amanda raises her voice. “Karen, I work out in the gym five days a week to keep in shape so I can get back on the soccer team. That’s working on your body. Not what . . . what you do.”
Karen answers back in a shrill falsetto, “Gosh, Amanda, I never realized that there was more than one way to get skinny! Maybe I should go out for the soccer team. Then I’ll love every inch of my body, just like you!”
“Oh, so now you want me to lie here and list all the things I hate about myself? Is that what you would do in there with all your clever friends? Laugh at the doctors who are trying to help you, and hate yourself as much as possible? I’m not going to do that, Karen. I like my body, I like what it does for me—”
“Well, obviously Rio likes it too.”
“Why are you doing this? God, what is wrong with you, Karen? Don’t you remember . . .” Amanda sighs instead of finishing her sentence.
“What?”
“It’s just that we knew about all this stuff. I mean, we’d talk about how fattist magazines were, and we’d get all excited when an actress that weighed more than eighty pounds starred in a movie. I mean, we’d talk about how messed up it was that the world made us think we needed to be that thin. I just don’t see . . . I mean, don’t you feel like . . .”
“Like what? A sell out? An idiot? A bad, bad feminist?”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“What then?”
“Just, how could you let it happen? Didn’t you feel it was happening?”
I wake up with my back at a right angle to the wall that my head is resting against. For a second I think I’m paralyzed. Amanda is on the phone in Mom’s room,
“I just want to come home early, that’s all. . . . Rio! Just come pick me up at the airport, okay?”
I go down to the kitchen and sit at the table with Mom and Dad. Karen’s leaning against the counter.
“I don’t know, she’s homesick. Maybe she wants to be with her boyfriend for New Year’s eve. I don’t know, she just wants to leave.” Karen doesn’t seem sad about it at all. Amanda walks into the kitchen.
“Well, we’re sure sad to see you go so soon. It’s been so long since we’ve seen you,” Mom says, giving Amanda a hug. “We didn’t even have time to talk.”
Amanda gives a furtive look toward Karen.
“I just miss my boyfriend, and I have midterms.”
All eyes are on Karen, who is still looking pleased, still leaning against the counter. They barely hug good-bye. Karen doesn’t even go with Dad to bring Amanda to the airport. She just watches as he drives Amanda away. Karen looks satisfied. She gives me a sideways look.
“What are you going to do with yourself now, with no one for you to follow around all weekend?”
“I hate you,” I say, and I do, because I don’t know the answer to her question and I don’t know what is wrong with my life and I don’t know what to do to make it better.
23
Mom started taking a class in tax law when Karen got out of the hospital, so she can work as an accountant like she did before she had us. Karen says Mom never wanted to stop working, but Dad made her when we were born. My sister really wants me to hate our dad with her. She’s always listing the crappy things he’s done, and the way he’s never apologized for any of it. What she doesn’t know is that I keep my own list in my head, and for everything she says, I think of something from my own list. Like how when he would make chili, he’d tell Mom and Karen there were no girls allowed in the kitchen, and he’d stand me on a chair next to him and let me mix up the corn bread batter with my hands while he made the chili. Or how when I used to be scared of thunder, he would find me hiding under the front-hall table and get down on his hands and knees and crawl under the table and sit next to me until the storm was over.
When Mom told Dad on the phone that she was taking a class, I could tell he wasn’t happy because she said, “Joseph, you don’t have a say in this. You forfeited your say in our lives when you changed zip codes.”
Mom’s always tired when she comes home from class, and tonight she has a headache too, which means I’ll be waiting till tomorrow to get her to sign the science test I flunked. I’m setting the table for dinner when Karen walks into the kitchen. She’s been up in her room since I got home from school. She doesn’t look well. She’s got bags under her eyes, and she’s got her arms folded and pressed against her stomach.
Mom doesn’t notice her come in, and is bouncing pasta up and down in a strainer over the sink.
“Mom?” Karen says.
Mom keeps bouncing the pasta and doesn’t look at Karen.
“Karen, my head is killing me. If you want to complain about dinner, do it to someone else. You can make your steamed veggies if you don’t want pasta.”
“Mom? I don’t—”
“Damnit, Karen!” Mom slams the pasta strainer on the counter and spins around to face Karen.
“Mom, I don’t feel well.” Karen sits down at the kitchen table, still clutching her stomach.
“What doesn’t feel well?” I can hear Mom try to soften her voice. It doesn’t work.
“My insides,” Karen groans, bending farther forward and looking up at Mom, and then me. I put down the plate I’m holding and sit in the chair next to Karen.
“Well, have you eaten today?” Mom snaps.
Karen nods.
“What did you have?” Mom’s got her I’m-not-going-to-like-your-answer face on.
“Mom, I told you. I ate. I ate enough.”
“Karen,” Mom says in a pleading voice, “why should I believe you?”
“Because I’m telling the truth. These aren’t hunger pains. I know what those feel like.” There’s pride in her voice. Mom ignores it.
“Do you feel like you’re going to throw up?” she asks.
“No. My insides feel like they’re twisted up in knots.”
“Well . . .” Mom sighs. “What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know!” It’s the closest to whining I’ve ever heard Karen come.
“You know, you could have told me this earlier and we could have taken you to see Dr. Frasier! It’s seven o’clock at night now!”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I just didn’t want you to have to miss class and yell at me.”
“Why would I yell at you?” Mom yells, then turns around, dumps the pasta into the sink, and turns on the garbage disposal. She leans over the sink, watching the pasta spin down the drain. I can see she’s taking deep breaths, maybe even crying.
“Get your coat, Karen,” she says, switching off the disposal. “Donnie—”
“I’m coming too,” I say, standing up.
She nods and says, “We’ll find a drive-through and get some burgers on the way to the ER.”
Karen lies on a waiting-room couch with her head on Mom’s lap and her knees curled against her stomach. She fell asleep almost as soon as we got here.
“Do you want more fries?” Mom whispers to me sitting next to her.
I shake my head.
“Are you okay?” she whispers.
I nod. It’s a lie. I’m not okay. But Mom’s not okay either, so what does it matter? I’m doing my part to make things better, or at least not make them worse.
“My quiet little boy,” she whispers, putting her arm around me and pulling me close to her. “I wish you talked to me like you used to. You used to tell me the most wonderful stories. When things are better, when there’s more time,
I want you to tell me all of the stories you’ve been saving up in your head. I want to hear them all.”
I nod. I could do that. I could talk to her again.
A woman and a swollen-looking girl with pasty skin and a racking cough sit on the couch across from us. The young girl doesn’t even look at us, she just curls up like Karen, with her head in the woman’s lap. The woman, I guess it’s her mom, rubs the girl’s back, just like Mom is doing to Karen. We all sit there for a long time, not speaking. There’s a TV in the corner and the long-haired security guard who was standing by the automatic doors walks over and switches it on, with the volume turned low. He winks at my mom. She whispers, “Thank you,” to the security guard and then says, “Donnie, why don’t you go watch some TV.”
I do what I’m told. I don’t want her to regret not leaving me at home.
Once I’m sitting closer to the TV, I can see out of the corner of my eye Mom and the other woman smile at each other. After a moment I see the woman look down at her daughter and then back up at my mom. She whispers, “Cancer”.
I swallow hard against my gasp and look at the girl and think, Please don’t die, please don’t die, please don’t die. Mom glances at me. I turn my head back to the TV But out of the corner of my eye I can see Mom give a long look down at Karen. I want to hear Mom say it. I want to hear her say what she pretends I don’t know. But she doesn’t. Instead she glances at me to make sure I’m not watching, and gives the woman a lying nod that means, My daughter has cancer too.
24
It’s three weeks later and after midnight when Karen walks into our bathroom and finds me sitting on the edge of the bathtub, holding the new food journal that she hid behind the toilet. That night at the emergency room the doctors told Mom that Karen had messed up her stomach with laxatives. When Karen told me about it later she said she’d taken “a whole shitload of laxatives,” and then she laughed and didn’t understand why I didn’t think it was funny. Mom’s taking her to counseling twice a week now. She’s still getting small, I can see her body changing. I don’t know why I thought she wouldn’t get another diary. Maybe because everyone around here pretends like she’s better even as she’s getting smaller.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
I hold up the notebook. I know she can’t scream at me like she wants to because then Mom will wake up and find out. I’m going to tell Mom anyway. I stand up, still holding the journal, and walk out of the bathroom. Karen follows me down the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door.
The January moon is large. It gives the bare trees shadows. Our socks crunch on the frozen grass as Karen follows me to the small swamp on the side of our house. Heavy frogs poke their eyes out of the slimy water. I walk with numb feet into the swamp, rock to rock, until I am in the center. Karen stays at the muddy edge, her arms crossed in front of her. I squat down and push on a rock, feel that it’s loose, and then roll it to its side, leaving a hole that fills with water. I hold the journal up so Karen can see it, and drop it into the hole. Freezing swamp water splashes up at me. I don’t flinch. I roll the rock back into place. My voice carries as I walk back to Karen: “There’s snakes in here. There’s a snake right under that rock. A black one that’s as big as my arm. It’s wrapped around it already. It’s having babies on it, and they’re eating the paper and there’s nothing left.”
I walk by her and don’t look back. I let myself think I’ve taken care of it. Of her. I’ll tell Mom tomorrow.
25
If she won’t eat, trick her.
It dissolves right away and has no taste. The powder comes in a canister that says PROTEIN POWER! and has a little black plastic scoop to spoon it out with. I don’t use the scoop, I have to start much smaller. The first time is when we’re both home after school, sitting on the couch, and she has a glass of diet soda on the table. When she goes to the bathroom, I pull the canister out from under the couch, peel off the lid, and pinch a tiny amount between my thumb and finger. I sprinkle it into her soda and stir it with my finger. It dissolves right away. When she comes back and takes a sip, I try not to watch her to see if she notices. She doesn’t.
After that I buy two more containers. I keep one under the couch, one in the kitchen in the slow cooker that sits on the counter even though we never use it, and one in my bedroom so I can sprinkle it into her water at night when she gets up to pee.
Dinnertime’s a little more complicated. I can’t always get alone with her food because she’s such a freak about making it just right. It’s hardest if she’s just eating vegetables or something, because then I have to sprinkle it right on and try to rub it in with my finger. It’s best if she makes herself soup or something, because then I can really dump it in. I don’t know if it’s making a difference. But I have to do something. She’s getting so small.
26
“Wait, you mean the French actor with the goiter?” Karen leans over to see what movie ad Mom is pointing at. We have the newspaper spread out in front of our plates on the dinner table, and since last time Karen and I chose, Mom is choosing the movie we’re going to see tonight. Karen’s having a good week.
Mom opens her mouth in mock offense. “It’s not a goiter, it’s a mole. And I think he’s handsome! Let’s go see that. Donnie, you’ll like it. It has spies in it.”
I poke holes in my carrots and mumble, “Do I have to go?
“I thought you wanted to go. It has spies in it, maybe someone will get blown up. You’d like that, right?” She winks at me and pats my arm, I lean away from her.
“Donnie, what else are you going to do?” Karen says.
I shrug. I could stay home alone. At least that’d be better than going out with my mom and sister for the third weekend in a row.
Karen rolls her eyes and Mom gives her a quick but cutting glance. “Why? Why don’t you want to go?” Karen asks.
I shrug again, and then ask, “Isn’t Dad coming home?”
He and I could stay home and they could go out.
Karen waves the potato she has speared on her fork at me. “You know he’s not coming home till next weekend. Why do you keep asking that? He said he’s coming home next weekend, you know that.” She turns to Mom and groans, “Mom, can’t you draw him a schedule or something?”
“Shut up,” I growl at her. I hate it when she acts like she and Mom are raising me. I hate it when she pretends like she’s twenty-seven instead of sixteen.
“Come on, Donnie, don’t you want to see the goiter?” Karen holds the forked potato up against her cheek. Mom folds the newspaper and gives me a matter of fact, “Suit yourself. I think you’d like the movie, though. Karen, eat your potato.”
Karen takes a tiny bite and then pushes it back against her face. “Come on, Donnie, come to the movies and kiss my goiter.”
“Karen!”
I like Mom like this, like she’s totally shocked and delighted by something at the same time. “That’s just gross.” I give Karen my best blank look.
“Come on, Donnie,” Karen slurs in a truly horrible French accent. “Come to zee movie and kees my goiter.” I don’t laugh till she’s run around the table and is trying to sit on me, smooshing the potato in my face.
“Kiss my goiter, kiss it! Mom, tell him to kiss my goiter!” She squirms away when I reach for a handful of peas. She knocks them out of my hand and sends them flying. We both freeze, biting down our laughter, waiting to see if Mom will freak out. Mom sighs and takes a sip of water.
“Donnie, kiss your sister’s goiter so she can finish eating it.” We shriek at that, and Mom giggles into her glass.
I hear Dad’s car pull up when Karen and I are on the floor picking up the peas. I give her a “Ha!” before I jump up and run out the front door. I throw my handful of peas into the bushes. I’m starting to regret coming outside to greet him, though. He didn’t tell us he was coming. He never does now. He just shows up and acts all hurt if we weren’t expecting him. Or he doesn’t show up and gets all cranky if one
of us asks where he was. His job, he says, keeps him running. On call. You couldn’t pay me enough to be on call like that. Never being able to plan on anything.
When he waves to me from the driveway, I can’t help but wave back, but I make the movement as small as I can.
“How’s things, little man? How’s eighth grade?” He gives me a slap on the back and passes me to walk into the house.
“Ninth. It’s all right,” I say, following.
“Thought maybe you and I could do something this weekend.” He says this from the closet where he’s looking for a hanger for his coat. There is none, so he drops the coat on the couch.
“Like what? What’ll we do this weekend? Like us, you and me?” I talk to his back as he walks toward the kitchen. He shrugs in response. If I can just get him to pick something, then I’ve got him. It’s harder for him to get out of it if we actually have a plan. Then Mom can say, “You had plans!” and he won’t be able to snap, “What, it has to be a holiday every time I’m in my own home?”
Mom and Karen have cleared the dishes—even though none of us were done eating—and are drinking hot tea at the table, looking decidedly, purposefully relaxed. Mom gets up and kisses Dad on the cheek.
“This is a surprise.” She motions toward the table. “We’re all done eating, but there’s sandwich stuff in the fridge if you want. Frozen pizza, too.” She sits back down and Dad raises his eyebrows at her.
“You all ate early tonight.” He sits down at the table, expectant, and Karen snorts.
“No hello for your old man tonight?” Dad gives Karen what I’m sure he thinks is a charming grin. She won’t have it.
“Hello, old man,” she answers.
Dad looks from Karen to Mom to where I stand by his side. He sets his jaw and looks back to Mom.
“Sure, I’ll have a sandwich.”
Mom smiles and nods, and doesn’t get up.
I tap him on the shoulder. “Dad, what’ll we do this weekend? Could we go hiking or something? Go to the quarry and climb around?”
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