by Abby Sher
I found a few eating disorder clinics relatively close by. One in Philadelphia that seemed to have rolling hills and great reviews. Another in New York City that looked more like a spa, with chandeliers as big as my house.
“Cheers.” Travis handed me a Dixie cup full of water and knocked one back himself. When he saw me looking at him blankly, he added, “I’m just … celebrating progress I guess.”
I showed him what I’d discovered so far, and he looked over the sites carefully.
“So … I should check in and see where Alli is in all this, right?”
“I don’t think so,” I replied. “I mean, I think she’s in some big-time denial.” I had already gotten three different alerts from Alli’s Instagram feed showing me pictures of Meowsers hooked up to an IV, his feline pupils dilated. Then there was a whole slideshow of Alli and the young male vet with their arms around each other over the drugged-out cat. The last picture was of Alli and Zoe back at Primally Fit gym. The caption said:
I guess the only perk of having your cat in the hospital is that you can still get to the afternoon BodybyBernardo class! #BodybyBernardo #fitforlife #singlewhitemom
Travis sort of whimpered after he saw that.
“Okay. So it’s just us doing this.”
“Uh—”
“I mean, me,” he corrected. “But how do I get her into one of these places? I can’t just blindfold her and stuff her in the backseat.”
All I could think of was that lady in the gym again, with her boobs hanging out. So open and vulnerable and stern all at once.
“I mean, there must be tips on how to make an intervention. I bet there are even scripts for what to say,” I told him.
“Scripts?” That was the magical word for Travis. His face was lit up with purpose and momentum now. After all, he was the tragically misunderstood Beast. For the next half hour, he pored over the computer, compiling different ideas from the Internet about effective interventions. He read his script out loud to me as he wrote it:
“Step one: Start with love. So, I’m gonna try to use phrases like, You’re one of the most important people in my life, and I believe in you.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
“Step two: Describe specific troubling behaviors and use ‘I’ statements. Okay, I think that’s like, When you don’t eat, I feel scared.”
Again, he looked to me for approval.
“Sure.” I gave him the thumbs-up.
Step three was a little harder for Travis to wrap his head around. It was about detailing what could happen if the addiction went untreated.
“But we don’t know that she’s addicted to anything, really,” Travis said. “I mean, if she went into my herbs, that’s kinda like eating an extra salad.”
“No,” I said resolutely. “She’s addicted to hurting herself and starving herself and making herself sick. Those are harmful addictions. She could die.”
Travis hung his head. “Okay. You’re right,” he mumbled.
Step four was about picking the right place to take the patient for rehab, and step five was showing love and support throughout the entire process.
“Can’t cross your legs during an intervention,” Travis informed me.
“Really?”
He tilted his screen toward me, so I could see the series of informational cartoons he’d been studying. We were supposed to sit with our feet planted and our arms open. According to the illustrations, it also helped if we were wearing bright colors and bulky sweaters.
“Okay. So when do you want to do this?” Travis asked. “I mean, I can usually memorize my lines pretty quickly. But I know you have a busy schedule.”
“I can only do this if we do it now,” I told him.
* * *
We drove back to Meadowlake in separate cars. It was close to three o’clock now and Zoe and Alli still weren’t back from the gym. I really just wanted to get home and see Mom. Gus texted me that she and Elan had gotten back around two and she looked good but was lying down for a nap.
How’s it going over there? Gus asked.
Oh, y’know. Just hangin’ with Travis, waiting to do an intervention, and rethinking the past 16 years of my life. Good times.
Balls, Gus responded.
Balls, indeed.
Travis knocked on my car window and said that maybe we should park our cars around the corner and wait inside. (He still had a key.) It felt like the worst surprise party in the history of surprises, but I agreed to his plan. It all felt so illicit. I didn’t know which one of us was shaking more as we crept through the side door and positioned ourselves in the living room. Travis debated about whether we should sit in the dark or turn on a few lamps for ambience. I voted for one lamp. He made it two. I tried to look really involved with something on my phone while he paced along the edge of the room. Reading through the notes he’d printed out at home. Rehearsing his lines.
* * *
And then …
All the waiting and planning and predicting and avoiding. As soon as Alli and Zoe walked into the house, it was like we all got sucked into this vortex of anguish and anger.
Alli was the first to shriek. “Holy crap! What are you doing here?!”
Then Zoe crashed into the room. “What the hell?” she yelled. “Did you break in?”
Travis tried to speak calmly. He kept opening his arms to hug Zoe, then letting them fall again. He was clutching those notes desperately; his voice fluttering and cracking.
I believe in you.
When you don’t eat, I feel scared.
Zoe plugged her ears and stamped her feet. Screaming at him to get the hell out of her house. Alli was pleading, “The cat is so sick. Can’t we talk about this some other time?”
Then the moment I’d dreaded the most: Travis turned to me and said, “Hannah, did you want to add anything?”
I wished I wasn’t close enough to see the tide of emotions flushing through Zoe’s face. Her tiny body quaking and turning even whiter with rage.
“Hank?!” she bellowed. “Hank!” She stomped and fumed. “Hannah! Louise! Levinstein! Was this your idea?”
She planted herself directly in front of me and I watched the knob of her sternum rising and falling so fast. The silence between us thick and barbed.
“Was it?” she repeated.
“I—I—yes,” I stammered. She looked at me like I’d just smacked her across the dreams and she was going to torch my village. But I couldn’t turn back now. “Because I love you and I want you to—”
“Stop it!” Zoe hissed at me. Her green eyes so cold and hard. Contracting into bright marbles of hate. “Stop it all, Hank. Stop pretending that you’re doing this for me. You know you’re not. You are a jealous, vengeful bitch. You want everything of mine. You want my body, you want my career, you want my life.”
“I—no. I—” I shook my head wildly. I couldn’t find words. There were too many feelings caught in my throat.
“Don’t ever speak to me again, Hannah Levinstein,” Zoe ordered. Her bottom eyelashes were collecting heavy, angry tears. “You can pretend that you’re some sad hero but you’re not. Do you hear me? You’re not. Now leave me the fuck alone and don’t ever come back!”
As I’ve said, I always did what Zoe told me to do.
Even that day. The last day I ever saw her or called her my friend.
I was vaguely aware of Travis shaking my hand goodbye. Also, of Alli weeping on the couch. When I got outside, there was a parking ticket for $150 on HOT RIC because not only was I illegally parked but I also had a broken taillight from my earlier fiasco.
But what I remember most was how much easier it was to breathe once I got outside.
Dear Hank,
So you may have noticed that I took a little break from writing you. Maybe you didn’t. Honestly, I was hurt you didn’t write back. But when I said that to one of the counselors here, she was like, Didn’t you tell her you never wanted to see her again?
And I was all, yeah but
…
I’m sorry, Hank. I do want to see you again.
Somehow.
Someway.
I’m not sure if that’s something you want too though.
Isn’t it crazy how we make all these plans and act like we can map out our futures when in reality, it’s all so beyond our control?
I mean, I know time keeps clicking forward.
I know it’s too late to go back and fix things.
I know I have to start here, wherever the hell here is.
So maybe we could get to know each other again?
Feel free to answer as many or as few of these get-to-reknow-you questions as you like. I know you’re busy.
1. How did Spanish with Señor Farber go this semester? Does he still get those goobers in the corners of his mouth?
2. What’s going on with your mom and Elan?
3. Is it true Yoshi’s had a fire and closed for three weeks?
4. What do you do when you haven’t showered in three days but you kind of love the smell of your own toe cheese? (Not that I’d know.)
5. How’s Gus doing at Meadowlake?
6. Can you tell him hi for me, please?
7. If I made you a jockstrap/scarf in Knitting here, would you maybe wear it?
8. What are you playing on the piano these days?
9. Will you be my friend if I come back twenty pounds heavier?
10. Will you be my friend if I come back at all?
And really the most important question, which I should have asked long ago:
Do you know I admire you?
CHAPTER 19
the cleanup song
I came home shaky and sore. HOT RIC’s back right wheel was rattling and the glove compartment refused to close at all. Everything was spilled out across the front seat—including my exhausted psyche. I tried to inch into our driveway, but Uncle Ricky’s new convertible and Elan’s Subaru had taken up most of the space. Also, in front of the garage there was a tall aluminum ladder set up. Uncle Ricky was manning the bottom, with one beefy arm draped over the crossbar for safety and what sounded like a steady monologue about his love of Upstate New York as the sound track. Twelve feet above him, scooping out my house’s gutters, was Elan.
Of course, he was the first to notice me and waved enthusiastically to welcome me home.
He truly wasn’t a bad guy. This I knew.
And yet I needed a minute or an eon to gather my thoughts. Or at least to sift through the fuzz in my brain and find something to say besides Aaaaaaaagh!
I parked on the street and just looked at my house for a few breaths. This had been my home for my entire life. We still had the same light-gray siding and the one drooping shutter on the upstairs bathroom window. The front door was bright red, but Gus and I had painted it and it had telltale streaks of childhood artistry. We had told my mom we’d redo it for so long. Just like we’d promised to get on a ladder and clean the gutters. And then I said I’d call the guy to come and do that. (Which devolved into me giving Mom a coupon last Mother’s Day that said I WILL CALL THE GUTTER GUY. She smiled, then tucked it into a pocket.)
There were so many handyman projects that I knew really irked her. Like the basement window needing insulation and the hole on the side of the garbage enclosure from a fiercely determined raccoon. Mom had a little list of tasks that were on the refrigerator. At the top it read ONE DAY. I kept planning to look into it—to craft some DIY mesh that stumped the raccoon or to greet her with a brightly repainted front door. But I never did.
Yet another reason why Elan was now the hero of this story. Standing on that ladder, scooping out globs of mangled leaves and twigs from the gutter, he was finally making good on my unmet promise. I couldn’t blame him, really. This was one thing my mom desperately wanted—someone to help patch up all the cracks and drafts that had become our home. There was just one bush that looked like it could be alive. A splotch of green in a cluster of dried-leaf goodbyes.
I watched Uncle Ricky hand Elan one of my pink beach pails from the summer trips we used to take up to Maine. I hadn’t used it in years, but I knew it was mine because it had big bumpy eyes on its side. It used to have squid legs drawn on too, only they’d faded from so many years of salty sea air. Mom and I went on countless shell walks with that bucket—gathering wampum, sea glass, and snail carcasses. I was never that great a swimmer and the water in Maine was always so cold. But those walks with Mom—I lived for those walks.
Now Elan was depositing all the gutter grime in my bucket. His hand dripping with brown muck.
I really wanted to shout, Stop, thief! That’s my squid bucket you’re stealing! And my house and my mom and my soggy leaves and my life!
But, of course, I hadn’t used that pail in at least eight years—if not more. Truthfully, I didn’t even know it was missing until this moment. Or that it was in our house the whole time.
“Aha!” Uncle Ricky shouted as soon as I opened the car door. “Liberace has returned!”
“Hey,” I answered. I’d honestly forgotten about my dismal piano recital from hours before and didn’t want to relive it anytime soon.
“Seriously,” Uncle Ricky called up to Elan. “Have you ever heard this girl play the piano? She’s amazing.”
“So I hear!” Elan responded. He pulled out what looked like a waterlogged birds’ nest and placed it in my bucket. “Hey, Hank. Sorry I’m using your bucket. It was the only one we could find. But I swear I’ll get you a new one.”
Uncle Ricky found that hilarious. His round frame shook with laughter.
“I told him not to worry about it,” he told me between guffaws. “But he was so worried it was some precious squid heirloom. So seriously, if you want to be mad at someone, be mad at me.”
“I’m not mad. I’m just tired,” I told him. Uncle Ricky let go of the ladder to give me a hug that was tight enough to squeeze all the air out of me. Then he twisted my left arm around my back, which was his favorite move to do ever since he started a jiu-jitsu class last year. But I’d also taken a class in self-defense and knew how to wriggle free. I threw in a headbutt to his chest to prove I meant business.
“Uncle!” Uncle Ricky shouted.
“Ricky!” I shouted back.
That made him quake with laughter again. While he was momentarily speechless, Elan informed me that my mom was upstairs lying down and that she would love to see me.
“Thanks,” I told him. I knew I should thank him for so many things—like making sure my mom went to the hospital and then getting her safely home and putting up with my bullshit cranky attitude not to mention dealing with whatever sludge he was now digging out of my gutter. But at this moment, that one thanks would have to do.
* * *
If my mom was excited to see me, she sure hid it well. She was snoring passionately when I came into her room. Her foot was propped up on a pillow and shrouded in a thick cast that went up to her knee.
Though I’d seen my mom disappear emotionally, I had rarely seen her physically incapacitated like this before. Or maybe I had and had just turned away. Through rain, sleet, hail, or chicken pox, to me she had always appeared upright. The only time I remembered her sick was after we had Chinese food one time and she ran to the bathroom, and when I heard her throw up, I cried so hard that she had to come out and console me. That was all I knew—I could not accept her being anything less than steely and indestructible. She was the only thing holding up our rickety family, after all.
I looked at her now, so serene and beautiful. Her eyelids fluttering ever so slightly. Shuttling her between dreams. She smelled like Johnson’s baby powder and her Swedish hand cream. Her dark hair was wet from what I hoped was a delicious shower. On her night table was a glass of seltzer still spitting up bubbles and a bottle of Tylenol. On the lampshade was a pale yellow Post-it note that said, in thick marker, TOGETHER.
No doubt it was from Elan.
I climbed into Mom’s bed on the other side. Trying to fill up the dent in the mat
tress where Dad had once snored beside her. I’d done this so many nights as a kid, and even as a teen. Renting girls-on-a-wacky-road-trip movies or howling at SNL next to her. We loved to tackle the pile of Sunday crossword puzzles side by side like this too. Mom never told me I was too old or annoying. She scratched my back and sang me Yiddish lullabies until I surrendered to sleep. And if by chance she started to doze while I was still bright-eyed, I poked her in the ribs so she’d stay awake with me.
She was my mom and Gus’s mom. That was her primary focus for my entire life. And it wasn’t until this moment, watching her drinking in long, steady breaths, that I saw her as anything more than that. For the first time, I could see how frail and resilient, scared and triumphant she was all at once.
For the first time, I could see how human my mom was.
“Noooo!” I heard from down the hall. “How could you do this to me? I look like a freak!” Gus squealed in between giggles.
“Sssssh,” was the only response I could make out. Followed by high-pitched laughter.
I slipped off Mom’s bed and shut her door behind me, following the noises to the bathroom.
“You have to give it some more time,” a booming voice commanded. “Just stay still.”
“Hello?” I said, tapping on the door with just one finger. I didn’t know exactly what I was interrupting, but my eyes were already watering from the sharp stench of bleach.
Tata flung open the door and announced, “It’s my fault. He wanted to do highlights.”
“Highlights?”
“You’re not allowed to laugh,” Gus told me, even though I couldn’t see him behind Tata’s wide frame. She was wearing a bright red shirt that said F the Patriarchy in gold letters.
“Oh … kay.”
With a sweep of her arm, Tata revealed my little brother, now decked out in a floral-print shower cap and a plastic Superman cape. He was picking bobby pins out from the nape of his neck.