Paperweight (7 page)

Thursday, July 10, 4:45
A.M.

I lie motionless on top of the covers for hours, my mind filled up to the very edges, spilling over with the knowing of something I'm desperate to unknow. I sync my breathing with Ashley's.
In, out. In, out. In, out.
A small and pointless act of solidarity. Every hour, a faceless nurse dips into the room for bed checks. She reduces us to numbers.
One, two.

My eyes are tethered to the ceiling, wide and unblinking. I wonder what kind of animal could be capable of that kind of hurt. Her father, maybe. A stock image of a well-dressed asshole flashes through my mind. He sits in a mahogany-paneled office, sipping antique scotch meant for a special occasion that he knows will never come. At the end of his cigarette, a burning pinpoint of fire.

In, out.

Or maybe it was the mother. A woman who looks like Ashley but older, with slightly crepe skin and a thickness around her middle, where she has harbored years of resentment. She stands in the doorway while Ashley sleeps, stalking her prey, exhaling silvery breaths. Waiting for the right time.

In, out.

After the sixth bed check, I can't stand it anymore. I jump out of bed and stretch out on the floor. The cement is cold beneath a paper-thin layer of dusty carpet. I take a measured breath and press my hips into the floor. Lift my right leg slowly, then lower it to the ground. The tightness in my chest dissolves like foam. Next, the left leg. With each exhale, my nearly empty stomach collapses against my backbone.
Nearly empty
. There was the half carton of yogurt this morning and the Gatorade water. Tomorrow will be better.

My thighs are starting to burn, the beginning sparks of an absolving fire.
Forgive me, brother, for I have sinned.
But the exercises don't work the way they should. Soon, the thoughts start to creep in again.
Tomorrow can't be better. They'll tube feed you before they let you get any closer to Josh.
I pick up speed, doubling the reps on each side.
If they skewer you with a tube, pump calories into your gut, you'll lose everything. And if you start to gain on your own, it's over. There is no way out. You are trapped. A caged animal.

A soft knock brushes against the door, and I jerk upright.

“Who's there?” I gasp into the dark. My skin is clammy. I think I might puke. The thought soothes me.

“It's just me.” The door opens a crack and Cate is standing
in the narrow sliver of light. A perfect cartoon stick figure, all spindly lines and protruding joints. Faded pink pajama pants hang from two perfectly jutting hipbones.

“What—are you exercising?” Cate whispers the last word like she is speaking some dirty, delicious sin she can almost remember.

“I can't sleep.” I jerk my head toward Ashley, but she doesn't move.
In, out.

“Oh.” Cate's outline bobs and sways. She is dying to lie down next me, to give in just this once. “You have a call. On the hall phone.”

My throat goes dry, but I don't move. “I didn't hear it ring.”

“It's from Paris.” Her voice shudders with childlike excitement. “Who do you know in Paris?”

“Nobody,” I say quickly. My heart is hammering in my chest. I hate my body for reacting at all, for betraying me this way. Abs tensed, I lower myself to the floor in degrees and resume my exercises. Let her watch. She's too jealous, too weak to tell on me.

She licks her flaky lips. “But . . . what do you want me to tell—”

“Whatever. Hang up. I don't care.” As I deepen the leg lifts, I hear her moving down the hall, then a muffled apology before she appears in the doorway again.

“They said they'd call back later.” Her plastic tube glints in the hall light, a phantom limb.

“How does that thing work?” Seamlessly, I shift to abs.

“What thing?”

“The tube. Did you get it as soon as you got here?”

“Right after my treatment team meeting, yeah.” She fiddles
with the tie on her pajama pants. “I passed out on the plane on the way here, so I guess they were worried.”

I won't reward that kind of arrogance with a response.

“Anyway, at night they hook it up to this machine next to my bed. When they turn it on, this brown liquid stuff goes through the tube and into my stomach. I unhook it in the morning.”

“Gross.”

“I try not to think about it.”

On my last set of crunches, I lift myself to a seated position and hug my knees. “Did it hurt when they put it in?”

“Yeah. You have to lie down on a table while the nurses hold you down and stick it in. They try to get it over with as fast as they can, but sometimes they mess up and have to start over.” Her eyes flicker across the room and settle on Curly Blonde's shape beneath the covers. “How can she sleep like that? I wake up every five minutes in this place.”

I shrug and squeeze my knees tighter. It's weird, but all of a sudden I want to tell her about Ashley's scars. To describe them in detail—how they looked like snaps on a flesh straitjacket—and not because I want to
process it
or I want Cate to
normalize what I'm feeling
(recovery-speak at its finest! I'm learning!) but because it isn't fair. I have enough inside me: Josh and Eden and the Anniversary and my own vanishing act. I shouldn't have to hold this, too.

Ashley slurs in her sleep.

“It's so funny how she brought all those stuffed animals from home,” Cate murmurs.

“So? Maybe they make her feel better,” I snap. “Maybe they help her sleep.”

Cate's eyes widen. “I didn't mean—I have stuffed animals at home, too. And a blanket I've had since I was five. Binky? Stupid, I know.”

I watch Ashley's body rise and fall.

“And they gave me a rubber duck to hold when they were putting the tube in.”

I go back to my exercises until Cate mumbles something about weight and vitals, then shuffles down the hallway. Then I get up and wander to Ashley's side of the room. She's got the stuffed dog and the blue bear in a headlock. The one-eared rabbit is sprawled at an unnatural angle in a nest of blond curls, like it got sick and tired of feeling sick and tired and decided to end it all with a spectacular swan dive. I reach for it. The animal has lost most of its stuffing, but it's warm and soft and smells like lavender detergent.

Ashley's mouth is open, her breath like white noise. I stand there for a while, holding the rabbit by its nubby broken neck. Outside, colorless light is starting to rise over the dust. I sink next to the bed and brush her curls from her hot cheek. I stay next to her, watching the tiny sleep twitches of her cheeks and mouth. I let her rest, because it's the most I can do for her. For girls like us, escape from consciousness is our only reprieve.

Thursday, July 10, 12:47
P.M.

AFTER lunch the next day, the air in the villa feels tight, like late afternoon at home before a summer storm splits the sky. I watch Teagan stand sideways in front of the double doors, glaring at her thick rectangle reflection. At one of the round tables, Ashley snaps through the pages of a generic princess coloring book like she's pissed at their happily ever after. I curl into a ball on the couch, trying to blink away the memory of Ashley's scars. All of the girls are waiting. Some pretend not to be.

“Ooh! He's coming!” Cate squeals from the hall, and a girl herd rushes the nurses' station. The mail guy barely has the space to dump his battered plastic bin of letters before the girls start clawing. It's a feeding frenzy: countless jaws unhinged, starved
for love and words. It reminds me of this special on killer whales I watched with Josh two nights before I killed him. When an intelligent animal is held in captivity for too long, terrible things can happen. It can get depressed, or even violent. When an animal's world shrinks, the smallest nothings become the biggest somethings. It lives sicker and dies sooner. It gives up before its time.

“Stevie? Mail!” The male nurse is probably supposed to make me come to him, but he's one of the nicer ones. So he holds the red envelope like a Frisbee and when I nod from my spot on the couch, he arcs it over the heads between us. I catch it and toss it on the coffee table without looking. I have five more just like it in my underwear drawer. All unopened. “Oh. And one more today.” He sends a second envelope sailing.

“Huh?” I lift my hand just in time to grab it. The envelope is thick and gold. I know this paper. The realization blows through my body like hot desert wind:
Eden
. Without thinking, I lift the envelope to my nose and breathe her in. The sweet smell sends shudders through me. I feel sick and relieved.

“Ashley.” The nurse holds up enough postcards to start a collection.

A slow day for Ashley is three postcards, each one glossy with too-blue water and pink cake-frosting script:
Saint-Tropez! Majorca!
She never looks at her mail, either.

“Thanks, Jeff. I'll get them later.” Ashley looks up from her princess. The hair is an angry wax red. I wonder if I should say something about last night. But rather than say the wrong thing, I say nothing.

“You're lucky to have a dad who writes you.” Teagan slumps
on the couch next to me, nodding morosely at the red envelope on the table. “Don't you want to read it?”

“Not really.” Eden's letter is heavy in my hand. I wish everyone else would disappear. Leave me to read her in peace.

“Okay, ladies!” Shrink announces from the nurses' station. “If you have group on your schedule, meet me at the house! Otherwise, you'll be with Kyle in the villa.”

I pull my folded schedule from the back pocket of my jeans.
Group.
Maybe I'll have time to sneak a sentence or two, while one of the other girls unravels some knotted childhood revelation. Or maybe I should wait to burrow beneath the light of the clip lamp in Cottage Three tonight. Gather up the covers and her words and arrange them just so in soft tufts around me before I sleep. Deep in my gut is the same tugging I feel just before a binge. I want her words to fill me up and I'm scared that they won't be enough when I'm done.

A group of girls follows Shrink down the hall. Ashley trails behind, alone. Ashley never walks alone.

“Hey.” I jump up at the last second, a half step behind her. “Did you, uh, sleep okay?” I slip the letters into my back pocket as we hop down the stairs, two at a time.

“Oh. Hey.” She fixes her gaze in front of her, on Teagan's blistered heels. “I'm—if last night was weird for you—sorry. I just forget that those scars are even there sometimes.”

“No. I get it.” There were plenty of mornings after my mother left when I would wake up and my first thoughts would be totally normal, like,
It feels like Friday
or
Quixotic. I should have played the word quixotic
, and then I would roll onto my side and think,
Oh. I don't have a mother
. It's the one good thing
my brain has ever done for me: kept little secrets to give me a second to breathe.

“Do you want to, like, talk about it?” I hold my breath.

“Nah. It's okay. Thanks, though.”

We walk in silence the rest of the way, stepping in the shadowy prints of the girls before us. They lead through the front door. Once I cross into the foyer, I know: Group is a trap.

There are too many smells at once. Melted butter, slick dark chocolate, and powdered sugar. Thick, wet grease. Salt and the nuttiness of toasting bread. The scents try to overtake me, to drag me back to
Le Crâpeau
's kitchen or the front seat of Dad's Buick or Eden's bathroom. I can't go back there. I open my eyes wide, force myself to take in the details.

The kitchen here is somehow bright and dingy at the same time. Fluorescent bulbs fling light over a room of “not quite” colors: ugly light wood cabinets that aren't brown or cream. Laminate countertops that aren't white or yellow. Linoleum floor squares that might have started out eggshell but now have a faint muddy tinge. On the other side of the counter, there's a long, oval-shaped table.

Ms. Dalton, the white-haired dietician from my treatment team meeting, stands behind the counter. Behind the jar of peanut butter and the sagging tube of cookie dough. Behind the boxes of sugary cereal and graham crackers and bloated cheese puffs. Behind the brown bag seeping with grease, like creeping night shadows on a bedroom wall.

What the hell?
“Is this a fucking joke?” I ask.

“Stevie. Please be mindful of your language.” Shrink stands next to the dietician. “Come on in, girls. Welcome to group.”

The rest take their places on the other side of the counter: Teagan, Jenna the bobby pin dealer, and countless faceless others. They look like dumb, glaze-eyed animals that don't realize they are heading for slaughter.

“Seriously,” I hiss in Ashley's ear. “What.
Is
this?”

“BG,” she whispers back. “Bulimia group.”

“But I'm not—I think my schedule is wrong,” I say loudly. “Wait. Where's Cate?” My eyes snap across the room, frantic. “Shouldn't this be a cottage thing?” I
should be nicer to Cate
, I think.
Since we're more alike than anybody else here.

“You okay?” Ashley rests her hand on my arm.

On my other side, Teagan says, “It'll be
alright
,” or some other lie.

“So as you've probably guessed by now,” Shrink says, “today's group will be a binge experiential.”

I picture a row of girls bent over toilets, Shrink rubbing each girl's back as she moves down the line, correcting form and holding back hair.

“Some of you have experienced this group before,” she continues.

Jenna moos her agreement, flicking the yellow plastic on her wrist.

“And for some of you, this is your first time.”

I clear my throat.

“Excuse me? My
schedule
is wrong,” I say again, louder this time.

The others are silent.

“I should be in the villa. With Kyle.” I stuff my hand in my back pocket and pinch Eden's letter. She'd know just what to say to talk her way out of this. She'd use honeyed words and jokes
and she'd slip outside into the sun before anyone knew what had happened.

“You're in the appropriate place, Stevie,” Shrink says evenly. “As you all can see, on the counter are several different types of foods that you may have used during a binge. But these foods don't have to be used as binge foods. They can be enjoyed in appropriate amounts, and that's what Ms. Dalton and I want to share with you today.”

I cut my eyes from Ashley to Teagan, and back to Ashley again. Their faces are blank and obedient. Their mouths have lolled open, making space. Do they
want
this? An excuse to indulge, permission to cram themselves full, all in the name of health? How can Shrink possibly think that these girls and I belong in the same cage?

In front of me, Jenna murmurs something to a girl who is crying. Teagan plucks a hair from a spot above her ear. For the first time, I notice: She has a bald spot there. A strange vacant spot where hair should be.

“Please take a few moments to make your choices,” Ms. Dalton says.

Finally, Jenna steps to the front and takes a paper plate.

“Good, Jenna,” says Shrink, in a voice like she knows the girl's secrets. I wonder if Shrink says the same kinds of things to Jenna as she says to me. I wonder who she thinks is better, stronger, worthier.

Ashley falls in line behind Jenna. She lifts a gallon of red fruit punch from the counter and tilts it over a paper cup. The syrupy red flows. I see my mother's lips.

“Stevie?” Shrink finds me, pulls me aside while the Green
Girls graze and the Yellow Girls hover, and then there is me, the Red Girl, and I don't belong. How can no one else see that? “Do you think you could give this a shot?”

My gaze bounces from the stack of paper plates to the heaps of food. The calculations make my brain hurt and I don't think they're right anyway because I can't think straight. Gummy worms with grainy sugar scales. Melting vanilla ice cream in its soft cardboard container. Salt and vinegar chips, the kind Josh loves.
Loved
. I take a gaspy breath.

“Stevie, what's going on for you right now?” Shrink's voice finds its way to me.

I cross my arms over my chest and will myself to think about other things. But the other things that come are nightmarish thoughts in lightning flashes: the call from Paris and Ashley's withered scars and the way Josh's face looked just before he died and the way his blood felt sticky running down my palm. I scrunch my eyes shut, but it doesn't help. He's still there, dying and dying and dying beneath me. I can't take it anymore. I want all these girls to leave me here with the food.
Just one more time
. I'll shove it down just one more time, and for a second I will forget. I'm not a bulimic. Sometimes I just need the thoughts to go away.

“Stevie. Let's take a break, okay?” Shrink's palm nudges me out the door, past the other girls and into the still heat outside. I bend over, palms pressed over my knees. Dry heave at the dust.

“I'm going insane,” I breathe. My stomach buckles, and I heave again. I thought it would feel better to say it out loud. It doesn't.

“You're not insane. You're here with me and you're safe.
Here.” Shrink sits on a dirty concrete stoop and guides me down next to her. She hands me a paper cup of water and I drink it. My whole body is swooping and untethered. One violent gust and I will come undone.

“You're not crazy,” she says again. “I think the smells are triggering for you. Bringing back memories that are tied to food, or particularly traumatic times during your eating disorder. But you're perfectly sane, and you're safe here. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you.” Hearing and believing are two different things.

“Would you take a few deep breaths for me?” she asks. “In through the nose and out through the mouth?”

I obey her because I don't know what else to do. My heartbeat slows a little. I still want it all in me: the sugar and the salt and the bread. I need to fill myself up until there is no more room for the past.

“Can you put into words what was happening for you in th—”

“Don't make me go back,” I beg. “Please.”

She angles her body toward me. I can feel her gaze on my face, almost like she's touching me. “What could happen if you tried this exercise, Stevie? What's the worst thing that could happen?”

“Nothing. I don't know. I just . . . Don't make me go back in there.”

Finally, she looks straight ahead. She stretches her legs out in front of her and crosses her ankles. “It can feel really scary, trying to find that middle ground.”

I shrug and stare at the dirt.

“It could even feel impossible. For over a year now, you've dealt in extremes, right? Restricting or bingeing and purging. No in-between, no gray.”

I shrug again. What she doesn't understand is this: I have no choice. For me, the middle ground doesn't exist. I starve or I stuff myself. I'm blacked-out drunk or pissed-off sober. I worship Josh and I hate myself. I blame Eden and I need her. If I can't live, then I'll die. There is no middle—not for me.

“I think, though, that if you try this exercise, you'll see that you're capable of moderation, Stevie. I really believe that.”

“Yeah.” There's no point in explaining to someone who is okay.

“Stevie, if this group is too much for you today, we could stay out here and talk.”

I shake my head. I don't want to talk to her anymore. I don't want to open my mouth, not for food and not for words.

“So are you willing to give it a shot?” she asks.

My skin starts to hum.
I'll fake it
, I tell myself.
Slip some food under the table
.

“I guess.”

“Good. I'm really proud of you for pushing yourself.” Shrink stands and offers me a hand. It's small, and colder than I thought it would be.

Inside, I pretend not to notice as the other girls' eyes follow me to the counter. I breathe through my mouth and peel a thin paper plate from the stack. It's silent at the table. Then Jenna speaks.

“It's weird,” she says. “The last time I ate this stuff at home was in my room, by myself. I would hide food all around my room and then binge on it at night. And I know my mom found the wrappers and stuff when she was cleaning. But she never said anything.” Her voice gets small. “I still can't figure out why she never said anything.”

Simple. She doesn't think you're worth saving,
I think.