Eating Heaven (19 page)

Later that night, when the snoring from Benny’s room takes on a deep-sleep rumble, I call Christine back. Reid answers, which surprises me for some reason. I never think of him as actually existing, not on the physical plane. He never comes with Christine to Portland, and he never answers the phone. Hearing his flat, nasal drone makes me wish he hadn’t answered now. All I can think of are mucus-covered towels.

“Reid, what a surprise!”

“Not really,” he says. “I do live here.” Then, “Chris!”

I grimace at his “Chris.” She’s so not a Chris, but then this is a man so intent on being economical that he hasn’t purchased shoes since his mother’s funeral. In 1989.

“Hi!” Christine says, out of breath. “What’s up?”

“What are you doing? I haven’t interrupted anything randy, have I?” I shudder to think about it.

“God, no. I was just up in Reid’s office. We’re making it into a nursery.” She sounds happy, but I bet he’s not. “I’m painting it pale blue and celadon, with peach accents in case it’s a girl.” Just like Mom.

“You aren’t supposed to be painting, are you? Aren’t you like five months now?” I remember some magazine article or wives’ tale from years ago. “Is he helping you?”

“It’s latex. It’s fine.”

“So he’s not helping.”

“No.” Clipped and neat, which means he’s in the room.

“Want me to put the fear of God in him?”

“No,” she says again, this time cheerier. “Everything’s great. Reid’s finally finished editing the eco-terrorism piece—”

“Is he pro or con?” I interject, but she continues as if I hadn’t spoken.

“—so he’s teaching summer sessions this year.”

“He’d better,” I say, although this is good news, and maybe even a sign that people can change.

“How’s Benny?” she says.

“Asleep. I don’t know. I think he’s probably okay, just getting weak.”

“God.”

We’re both quiet.

“I called you about something else,” I say. “I found out something I wish I hadn’t.”

“What?”

“I don’t know if you want to know.”

“Ellie! You can’t do that, not after you say something like that.”

I take deep breath. “Mom had a baby before . . . before Anne. Before us.”

“Really? Did they lose it?” She sounds frantic. “Do we have some horrible gene or—”

“No. God, no! No, it didn’t die. It was a girl. She gave her up for adoption.”

“Wow.” She pauses. “But why?”

“It wasn’t with Dad, Christine. It was before. She was still in college.”

“Oh, my God. Mom? Our mom?”

“And I’m not supposed to tell you.”

“How’d you find out?” she asks, and suddenly I panic. I’m not sure if I’m ready to share the part about Benny and Mom just yet. After years of not speaking of it, I don’t know if I even can.

“I found some old pictures,” I say, hoping she won’t press it. “She was pregnant. It was 1960. So I asked her about it.”

“Wow. Can you imagine keeping that secret for so many years?”

I’m silent, suddenly woozy with a clammy nausea that is becoming more frequent now that I don’t eat. I try to focus on something, on the thought of Christine standing in her dark 1970s-era kitchen that Reid won’t let her redo, wearing a Kmart maternity sweatshirt, no doubt, and caressing her abdomen, trying to fathom how someone who’s gone through what she’s going through can give up her baby to strangers.

I fill her in on the sketchy details I have, sans Benny, expecting her to react much more strongly than she does. I’ve always thought of her as the delicate flower in our weed patch of a family, but she takes it in stride. “I guess everyone has their secrets,” she says, then asks, “Did Mom name her?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t ask,” I say, and suddenly I want to know more than anything what this girl—this woman’s—name is. “Anyway, I just didn’t want to be the only one who knew.”

Christine sighs, then says, “So, Anne’s court date has been postponed. She’s not testifying for another five months. Now she’s thinking of resigning.”

“Thinking of! Why doesn’t she just get out of there?”

“It’s not that easy,” Christine says, defensive. “It’s her whole life, that job. What else does she have?”

My family is a mess. Each of us is broken in some way, missing
something vital. I can’t say this to Christine, and certainly not to Anne. They’re trying so hard in their lives, but their situations are so bleak. Christine in a horrible marriage with a self-absorbed, controlling man on the fringe of normalcy. About to bring a child into it. Anne on the brink of a ruined career, and nothing else to shore her up. And Mom. God, it’s pathetic. So many secrets, so many false fronts.

And me. Maybe I’m the worst of all.

As we’re about to say good-bye, Christine whispers, “I’m going to come help you, El, as soon as I can figure out how to talk Reid into it.”

I sit on the couch for a long time, dead phone in hand, staring at the row of photo albums on the shelf. What other secrets do they hold? Do I really want to know?

In the same funk that used to send me to the refrigerator, I head for my computer, click open my e-mail, and search hungrily for new messages from Stefan, of which, of course, there are none.

The routine of life with Benny takes on a rhythm that feels alternately devastating and full of purpose. I think I understand now what it is to be a mother, to have the complete well-being of another as your sole purpose. I fit in my work (three, count ’em,
three
new stories from Stefan) around Benny’s needs and ever changing schedule. For now, our days start late in the morning. He sleeps in the afternoons and wakes again for evening, falling asleep on the couch in the dark between time of late night and not-quite-morning. We keep blankets and pillows in the living room now, rather than try to get him to bed, which suits both of us fine. Ruthann keeps hinting that it will soon be time to rent a hospital bed, so Benny can be more comfortable, but he resists. He’s a frail old fart, but still, his independence is more important to him than ever. He hates taking the medication, but so far I think I’ve done pretty well at figuring out how to get all those pills down Benny’s gullet every day. Not that he’ll take them in my presence, but I also never see them in the trash, never hear the toilet flush after I’ve given them to him. I guess his independent streak just includes pill taking. I’d gag if I had to take so many.

We don’t tell Ruthann things that would get us into trouble, like
we’ve bagged the stretching exercises that bring tears to Benny’s eyes. Sometimes Benny stays in bed or on the couch all day. And I still haven’t gotten the nerve to give him a sponge bath, even though he’s taken on a permanently musty smell that I sometimes find myself holding my breath against. He does the best he can, but I doubt his hair has been washed in weeks.

There’s something satisfying in our defiance of the pamphlets and Pollyanna instructions we’re supposed to follow. We are rebel fighters, Benny and I, and we are fighting in the only way we know how.

As the signs of summer dawn on Portland—the return of the farmers’ markets, the Rose Festival parade, five consecutive days without a raindrop—Benny seems to brighten with the extra daylight, the shafts of sun from the window lighting his craggy face. He pulls himself up on the bars of his walker and step-plunk-steps to the sliding glass door, where Buddy is mewing her high-pitched trill at a robin pecking seeds beneath the feeder.

“Whatcha got there, pussycat?” Benny says. “A little lunch? What say we just let you out and see what you’re made of?”

“I don’t think Buddy’s a very good hunter,” I say. “She’s all talk.”

“I don’t know, she looks pretty interested to me.” He flicks the lock on the aluminum frame.

“No, really, Benny. I don’t think we should let her out.”

“Don’t you worry, Miss Roosevelt. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

Like he can run as fast as a cat freed for the first time in months. Like he can run.

“Ben.” I try not to sound like I’m speaking to a small child. “Come on.”

His crooked fingers wrap around the handle, try to push. “A cat needs fresh air,” he says, but the door’s not budging. “Everybody needs fresh air every once in a while. It’s not natural being stuck inside all the time.” He strains against the door. “Damn thing needs some WD-40.” Veins bulge on the backs of his hands, in his neck.

“Geez, you’re determined,” I say, standing, scooping Buddy into my arms. She’s chunked up considerably, and squirms like a sleek seal in my
grasp. Reaching around Benny’s walker, I push the door open. “Wow, it’s nice out here.”

“What’d you go and do that for?” Benny says. “I almost had it.”

“You loosened it up for me. Come on, let’s go out. It’ll do us all some good.” I step onto the patio, concrete cool beneath my socks, but the air is balmy with the scent of jasmine. With soft paws Buddy pulls her top half up onto my shoulder to get a better look around.

“It’s supposed to get up to eighty-two degrees today,” I tell him. “Isn’t that great?” I’ve become a confirmed devotee of StormCenter 5, which seems to call itself StormCenter 5 even when there is no storm. “Maybe we should have a barbecue tonight.” Benny loves barbecues more than anything. I turn to look at him still standing inside the doorway. “What’s wrong?”

His eyes are soft, wounded the way they were right after Yolanda left. “How am I supposed to keep my strength up if you do everything for me all the time?”

“Your . . . ? God, I’m sorry, Benny.” His strength? Since when did he care? “I just wasn’t thinking. Really, Ben, I’m sorry.”

Buddy is now fixated on a squirrel on the back fence, her haunches tensed and twitching, and I tighten my grip on her. “No, kitty. You can’t get down.”

“Let her down. Let her do what she’s supposed to do. She’s a cat, for Christ’s sake.”

I’m stung at being admonished two times in rapid succession by someone who in our previous lives never had a problem with anything I did. “But I don’t want to lose her. She might run away.” A tickle develops in my sinuses, a prelude to crying.

Benny sets his walker on the patio, then steps down to join it. “She’s not going anywhere. She knows who feeds her.”

The tickle starts to burn and my nose fills, then my eyes. I turn away, hugging Buddy harder. She lets out a low growl. “How do you know? She might not come back.” Against my will my shoulders shake, and I stifle the sob that tries to erupt.

A hand is on my back, a metal object against the outside of my calf. “She loves you too much to go too far, Ellie. Don’t worry so much.”

“I have to worry,” I say, voice quivering and nasal, like a child.

“No, honey, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do!” My voice is near shouting. “Nobody else does. Nobody else is even here. What am I supposed to do?” I grip Buddy so tightly she yowls and claws free, leaving scratches across my forearms as she bounds to the concrete and twitches her tail, then leaps through the grass toward the squirrel.

“Goddamn it, Benny,” I say, and turn from him. I consider chasing Buddy, but she’s long gone. “Great.”

We both stand silently, watching the space where Buddy disappeared, birds chirruping and a soft breeze stirring the tree limbs. Somewhere, someone is practicing piano; a plane drones lazily overhead. After a long moment, Benny says, “Well, like it or not, I’m still here,” and turns his walker toward the door.

S
o why shouldn’t you be pissed off at your uncle?” asks Suzanne Long from her chintz-covered chair, and I wonder why I thought this might be a good idea.

“Well, first of all, he was right. The cat came back at supper time.”

She waits for the real answer.

“Because he’s dying,” I say. Then, softer, “Because I love him.”

“Those sound like pretty damn good reasons to be mad to me,” she says, leaning forward, clasping her hands on her bare knees. “Have you thought about extra home health care? Respite care?”

“It’s not that bad,” I say, finding it hard to look at her. She’s so perfectly pretty in a floral skirt and loose blouse, summery and fresh, while I’m still wrapped inside my winter sweats, although a smaller version than what I must have worn here a few months ago.

As if reading my mind, she says, “You’ve lost weight.”

“Mm hmm.” I nod and force a smile. “A little.”

“On purpose?” She looks at me too deeply, and I nod again, look out the window. In the next yard, a bank of rosebushes explodes in romance colors: pinks, whites, bloodred. Next to them, green spires of naked foxglove have lost their blossoms.

“Eleanor?”

I look back at her and sigh. What am I doing here?

“I can’t eat anymore. And I try. But it repulses me. Sometimes I put something in my mouth, even something good, and I can’t swallow it.”

“What would it mean if you could swallow? What would it mean if you could eat?”

God. This is too simplistic. I didn’t make out a check for fifty bucks for this kind of drivel. “That . . . that everything was normal,” I say, rolling my lips inside my teeth.

“And it’s not,” she says. “It’s all really fucked up.”

I am getting so sick of crying. Suzanne places a box of tissues in front of me.

“Has anyone ever mentioned you have the mouth of a longshoreman?” I ask, grabbing a handful of Kleenex.

She smiles and wrinkles her nose, which I now notice is hookish and not at all perfect. “Sometimes that’s the only way people will listen to me,” she says.

I blow my nose loudly, a gaggle of geese, then say, “I hate this. Besides, how can you possibly understand? You’re beautiful, you have this great job, you . . . I don’t know. You have poise, perfect control. Good clothes.”

She laughs, then reaches for my hand. “I know this is hard, Eleanor. What you’re doing is really brave.”

I snort and turn away, and she squeezes my hand.

“It is, trust me. I don’t know if I could do it.”

“Of course you could. You’re a therapist.”

“I see clients for one hour at a time. I don’t know if I’d have the inner strength to take care of someone round the clock.”

“But you’re still thin. And there’s still the clothes.”

She smiles, ducks her head. “Thin doesn’t necessarily equate to healthy. What’s more important is that we find a way to live our lives authentically and for ourselves, you know?” She looks back into my eyes, and I see it. Her life hasn’t been any easier than anyone else’s.

“Can I ask you one more question?” she says.

“If you must.”

“Who benefits from all these rules of yours about food and eating?”

I open my mouth to answer, then close it, bite my lips. I shake my
head at her. How did I never know this before? All this time I thought I ate in defiance of my mother and her desire for me to be thin, but no matter how much sugar I ingested, nothing could take that bitterness away.

It only made it more palatable.

Outside on the sidewalk, I stop and close my eyes, breathe deeply, inhale the urban neighborhood smell of mown grass and faint exhaust, revel in the sounds of internal combustion engines and life, trains in the distance, a river of white noise. I miss my neighborhood, especially at this time of year when the small yards are bursting in color, old houses and buildings nearly obscured by foliage and leafy tree branches, streets dappled with occasional spots of sun that break through the shade. On a whim, I decide to walk along Trendy-third Avenue, window-shop. Maybe I’ll stop in at Frozen Moo, have my first guilt-free ice cream since I was ten.

Rounding the corner onto Twenty-third, my heart fills at the sight of the old-house storefronts, people hurrying, talking on cell phones, fathers with children with backpacks, dreadlocked hippies in earnest conversation at a picnic table outside of Coffee People. A revoltingly pierced girl who couldn’t be more than fifteen sits on the sidewalk with a mongrel puppy in her lap and a cardboard sign that reads: “Spare change for puppy chow.” I pull several bills from my purse and stuff them into her pale, dirty hand. She’ll probably buy drugs, but today I don’t care.

The bell tinkles as I open the door to Frozen Moo. I look at the bulletin board, but Suzanne has never replaced the business card I took.

Inside, the place is packed with barely dressed teenagers and moms with kids, outdoorsy types in hiking shoes or cycling shorts, and a few older couples out for a midday stroll. Instinctively, I look to see if there’s anyone fatter than I am, but then I remember I’m not the same size I was. I have no idea what I look like anymore.

At the counter, two teenage boys man the scoops, high schoolers on summer break. They’re clearly not as efficient as the usual help, taking far too long to build a decent double scoop, staring at the cash register
keys as if they were written in Swahili. It will take forever to get a cone at this rate.

Do I really even want one? I work to imagine the cold, creamy sensation, the sweetness, and I don’t feel repulsed. Heartened, I study the list of flavors overhead, even though I know them as if they were my children’s names. The only flavor that sounds not too cloying is vanilla, and a waffle cone sounds delicious. This is going to be the most normal thing I’ve done in months.

Finally, at the front of the line, I place my order with the taller of the two boys. His long, skinny arm snakes into the case, fumbles for a while in the vanilla bucket, then produces a sloppy ball of ice cream at the end of his scoop. He shoves it so hard onto the cone that it cracks. I consider asking him to redo it, but I’m not sure he’d do any better, so I dig money out of my purse and wait for him to ring up the sale on the register.

As his eyes search the keys for the correct button, my attention shifts to one of the older couples at a table in front of the window. I hadn’t noticed at first glance that the woman has only a few cotton-candy wisps of hair beneath a blue kerchief. She is frail and her face is sunken like a dried apple. Her husband spoons ice cream into her mouth, which she seems to enjoy in a distracted kind of way, never looking at him directly. The man, however, never takes his eyes from the woman’s face, his wife, I decide. His face holds such concentrated tenderness that I look away quickly, feeling as if I’ve intruded somehow.

“Dollar ninety-five,” says the boy, and I hand him two dollars, turn, and leave the store as quickly as I can and pace up the sidewalk to the girl with the mongrel puppy.

“Would you like an ice cream?” I say, stooping to hand it to her. “I haven’t touched it.”

“I don’t eat dairy,” she says, staring at me flatly.

“Well, you should.” I thrust the cone at her. “You look like you could use some protein, some calcium, for God’s sake.” The puppy scrambles for a lick. “At least let him have it,” I say, rising, turning to go, but when I glance back, she’s sharing the cone with the dog, tongues touching in a way that makes me shudder.

I drive through the retail district and head downhill toward home, my eyes misting at the sight of old apartment buildings and painted ladies, dilapidated storefronts. They all look beautiful to me today, especially once I’m on my block. Why haven’t I come home in so long? I park at the curb, and yet another whim sends me across the street instead of going inside my building. I press the buzzer for Irina Ivanova’s apartment. Suddenly, I want to see the white sheen of Tati’s hair more than anything, watch her walk on wobbly legs to her mother.

“Yes?” An older woman’s voice.

“Oh, is Irina there? Irina Ivanova?”

“No.”

“Is this still Irina’s apartment?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, do you know where she went?”

“No,” she says, sticking with curt monosyllables.

“Well, then, sorry to bother you.”

No answer. It’s as if I were never even here, like I’m James Stewart in
It’s a Wonderful Life,
only with no Clarence to guide me.

Inside my building, the hallway has a new-paint smell, and indeed, it’s been painted a fresh coat of institutional beige. I climb the steps to the second floor, remembering each squeak and moan of the ancient floorboards. Past the Nguyens’ beautiful red door, the door to my apartment looks ugly and plain, and I resolve to paint it when I move back, a cheerful lime green, maybe, or plum.

Inside, I remember why I chose this place. It wasn’t the dishwasher at all. It was the way the afternoon light filled the room with a peach glow, the high walls curving into the ceiling, and the sheer sensation that this was a place more me than anywhere I’d ever lived before. I don’t want to be at Benny’s anymore. It’s strangling my soul, sucking me dry. I drop my purse in its old place by the phone on the table and notice the message light blinking. I quit checking home messages after a few weeks at Benny’s. Everyone I know has my cell number.

I hit the button. Three messages. The first one is from weeks ago.

“Hi, it’s Anne. Call me.”

Have I talked to her since then? I can’t remember.

The next message is Anne again, from last week.

“It’s Anne. I guess I should call Benny’s, huh? I don’t know. I just don’t know what I’d do if he answered. I’ve been so awful about keeping in touch with him, and now . . . well. You know. Now it would seem like I was only calling because he’s . . . you know. God. This all sucks. My life sucks. Your life sucks. Christ. What else can happen?”

And the next is from just four days ago.

“Eleanor? Where are you? This is your cell, right? Well, it’s the only number I can find. Listen, I was thinking about it, and maybe you’re right. Maybe I should come home, for a while, anyway. I’m starting to hate this fucking place.”

I should call her, but I can’t do one more thing. I’ll do it tomorrow. I walk to my bedroom, to my bed, rumpled and unmade as if I’d just woken up in it this morning. I slide off my shoes, crawl onto the mattress, fall to my side in a heap, wishing Buddy were here. I love my pillows, I love my fuzz-worn sheets, the thick down comforter that presses down on me, weights me so that I cannot move. I breathe in the quiet, out the hot, sorrowful air trapped in my lungs, in the stillness, out the weight of caring, until my breath is as cool and serene and empty as the space around me.

I wake, and the light inside the apartment has gone deep gray. “Oh, for God’s sake,” I say, scrambling up, finding my shoes. I teeter as I stick my feet into them, still groggy and disoriented as if I’ve been in a coma, nauseated with not eating. What time is it? What day is it, for that matter?

I rush to the phone, punch in Benny’s number.

He answers on the first ring.

“Benny, I’m so sorry. I fell asleep. I’m on my way right now.”

I fumble for the switch on the lamp by the phone, look at my watch. It’s ten after eight.

“Ellie? Where are you? Are you all right?”

“I’m just at my apartment. I fell asleep.”

“Well, thank God. I didn’t know what’d happened to you. I was wondering if I should call the police.”

“Are you okay? Have you eaten? Have you taken your pills?”

He chuckles. “I’m fine, I’m fine. There’s so damn much food in that refrigerator there’s no way I could starve. Don’t worry. I’m watching
Matlock.
”

“But I was going to go shopping, make you something special.”

“Honey,” he says. “You don’t always have to do that.” He laughs. “We could eat Burgerville, for all I care. Relax. You’re going to be no use to me if you put yourself in the hospital.”

“I’m fine.”

“Well.”

“I am.”