Wintergirls

  “Okay, so I forgot breakfast. It’s been a rough day.”

  “You look terrible. How much do you weigh?”

  “Jennifer’s the scale Nazi,” I say. “Ask her.”

  She crosses her arms over her chest.

  “Hundred and seven on Tuesday.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “She’ll show you the notebook.”

  “You’re going to eat everything on that plate.”

  Two scrambled eggs + milk + butter = 365 + (two muffins = 450) = horror.

  “I’ll try.”

  I take a small bite of yellow. The orange juice is burning holes through the lining of my gut. I swallow yellow and grease, pick up another forkful and open wide for the airplane buzzing into the hangar.

  Mom pours herself another cup of coffee.

  I put the fork down. “I feel sick. I can’t do this.”

  “You are sick. When you eat like a regular person, you’ll feel better.”

  “Eating makes me feel worse.”

  “Take a bite of muffin.”

  I slowly peel off the pink paper. What was I thinking, cooking for her, trying to kiss Mommy’s ouchie and make it all better? I cut the muffin in half, then one of the halves into four pieces, and each of those into two. I put one of the pieces in my mouth. A dry bubble of unmixed flour explodes on my tongue.

  She watches me chew and swallow. She watches me not take another bite, one minute, two, three, four . . . Couple of years ago I saw Mom’s tax return and I did the math to figure out her hourly rate. I just wasted twelve dollars of her time.

  I push the plate away. “I can’t.”

  Instead of exploding, she takes a deep breath and pushes the plate back toward me. “I’ll make you a deal.”

  The orange juice is cramping my stomach. “What do you mean?”

  “If you eat, I’ll explain how Cassie died,” she says.

  “You’re joking.”

  “Do I joke with you about food?”

  I have to stay strong—bend, but not break. “One muffin.”

  “Two muffins. You need the carbs.”

  “One and the eggs.”

  She takes another deep breath. “Deal.”

  It takes an hour.

  Scrambled eggs = 25 bites.

  One muffin = 16 bites.

  036.00

  My pink mouse stomach likes to be small and empty. It hates me for shoving in all that food. I lie down on the couch, pull the electric blanket over me, and try not to heave.

  Mom perches on the couch opposite me. She pulls an afghan over her legs, the one I knitted last Christmas, full of dropped stitches and broken patterns. “You’re sure you want to hear this.”

  “It can’t be worse than what I’ve been imagining.”

  “It’s ugly.”

  “Was she high?”

  “No, nothing illegal, but she was on two antidepressants, a mood stabilizer, and ulcer medicine. And vodka. Lots of vodka.”

  “Alcohol poisoning?”

  “No.” She adjusts the pillow behind her back but doesn’t say anything else.

  “You promised,” I say. “I did what you asked. You have to tell me. Everything.”

  “Everything?” She takes a breath and shifts into attending-physician mode. “Cassie had liver damage, her salivary glands were a wreck, and her stomach was distended.” Mom holds up a loose fist. “A healthy stomach is this big. It can stretch to hold about a quart. Cassie’s could hold three. Plus her stomach walls had thinned and were showing early signs of necrosis.”

  The last time I saw Cassie was just before Thanksgiving break. I was on my way to the library; she was putting up posters for the musical. Her outside was clean and colorful: new jeans, cute sweater, great earrings. Her cheeks were chipmunky and her hair looked like straw. She was not necrotic. She was chewing bubble gum. Her eyes were tired, but we’re seniors. All seniors have dead eyes.

  I walked past her and I whisperedsaid hello, but she didn’t hear me.

  Stretching and retching and filling up and emptying, the Cassie bucket was dragged to the well over and over.

  “Cassandra had a terrible fight with her parents on Thursday, at Thanksgiving dinner,” Mom says. “She got up to purge halfway through the meal. Cindy said even Jerry could see that she was back to her old habits. They told her she needed to go inpatient. She refused. She was nineteen, they couldn’t force her. Jerry lost his temper and said he wouldn’t pay for college until she was healthy. Cassie took off. She called Cindy and said she’d come home on Saturday, that she was at a friend’s house. She was at the motel. She drank, binged, and purged for two days.”

  “So it was a heart attack? Because her electrolytes were messed up?”

  Mom pulls the afghan up to her chest. “No, honey. Cassie’s esophagus ruptured.”

  “Ruptured.”

  “Ripped open. Boerhaave’s syndrome, usually seen in alcoholics who regularly upchuck after drinking too much. Vomiting forcefully enough can tear the esophagus.” Mom looks down at her hands. “She was purging into the motel toilet when the rupture occurred. She was also, like I said, very, very drunk. She went into shock and died in the bathroom.”

  I count to ten, then to one hundred. Mom waits, watching. Inhale. Exhale.

  “Do you have any questions?” she finally asks.

  “Will it be in the newspaper?”

  Mom shakes her head. “I doubt it. Since there were no drugs involved, they’ll say something like the death was the result of a preexisting medical condition.”

  Out on the street, people are getting back into their cars, locking the doors, and driving away as fast as they can. If I were Mrs. Parrish, I wouldn’t let them leave. I’d beg them to move in for a couple months, or pay strangers to occupy every room, eat my food, mess up my carpets, just so the house wouldn’t be empty.

  “Did she feel anything?”

  Mom turns on the lamp on the table next to her. The storm has come down from the mountains. “I’m afraid she did. She died in terror and she died alone. It is an awful way to go.”

  I am an iceberg drifting toward the edge of the map.

  “I don’t believe you,” I say. “You’re making this up to scare me.”

  “I don’t need to make anything up. She’s dead, you went to her funeral. Cindy will show you the autopsy report, if you want.”

  “I don’t want to talk anymore.”

  Mom leans forward. “You’re allowed to feel upset about this. In fact, I’d rather see you upset than pretending it’s not bothering you.”

  “You don’t have to worry.” I sit up and start to braid my hair. “I’m sad she died and I’m really sad she died in such a sucky way, but this is not going to ruin my life. Even before last summer Cassie and I weren’t as close as when we were little.”

  We listen to the wind blow.

  “Cindy wants to talk to you,” Mom says. “She told me you were the only person who could help her understand why.”

  “Why?”

  She nods. “Cassie had everything: a family who loved her, friends, activities. Her mother wants to know why she threw it all away?”

  Why? You want to know why?

  Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself for two or three days. After your skin bubbles and peels off, roll in coarse salt, then pull on long underwear woven from spun glass and razor wire. Over that goes your regular clothes, as long as they are tight.

  Smoke gunpowder and go to school to jump through hoops, sit up and beg, and roll over on command. Listen to the whispers that curl into your head at night, calling you ugly and fat and stupid and bitch and whore and worst of all “a disappointment.” Puke and starve and cut and drink because you don’t want to feel any of this. Puke and starve and cut and drink because you need an anesthetic and it works. For a while. But then the anesthetic turns into poison and by then it’s too late because you are main-lining it now, straight into your soul. It is rotting you and you can’t stop.

&
nbsp; Look in a mirror and find a ghost. Hear every heartbeat scream that everysinglething is wrong with you.

  “Why?” is the wrong question.

  Ask “Why not?”

  The pager buzzes on the kitchen table. She swears, checks it, and makes the magic phone call. “Dr. Marrigan.” After listening, she flies out of the room and up the stairs. I lie back down.

  The blanket has finally heated up and I bury under it. My mouse tummy whimpers because she forced almost a thousand calories into me. I’ll have to stay strong until dinner tomorrow to balance everything.

  I drift away. . . .

  “Lia, wake up.” She shakes my shoulder again. “I have to go. The hospital.” Her eyes are pointed in my direction, but she’s seeing EKG readouts and blood-chemistry reports and the clean, smoking line she’ll be cutting through her patient’s chest in an hour or two.

  I sit up, shivering, and reach for the controls of the blanket. “This thing isn’t working.”

  “I unplugged it so you wouldn’t get burned.” She zips up her coat and bends over to kiss my cheek. “I’m sorry I have to go.” She kisses the top of my head. “Get some rest.”

  She slams the door on her way out, but not because she’s angry. Dr. Marrigan always slams doors to make sure they’re closed tightly.

  037.00

  The house of my mother breathes and eats. The dishwasher cycles through RINSE, SCOUR, NORMAL WASH, ANTIBACTERIAL RINSE, and DRY. The heating system filters all the air through electrostatic lungs and exhales it with a hush. The hot-water tank fires up. The compressor of the refrigerator rattles, then hums, to keep everything cold.

  It wouldn’t matter if I screamed loud enough to break all of the windows. Everything would still function according to the owner’s manual and guaranteed by a thick file of warranties.

  I shiver across the floor and go to the bathroom. When I flush the toilet, the water whooshes everything out of sight. Before I crawl back under the blanket, I open the curtains and stand in front of the chilly French doors that overlookthe backyard.

  When Dad left, she hired landscapers to turn the vegetable garden into a bed of perennials, something that she wouldn’t have to fuss over or water much. The compost pile was taken away, the herb garden went to seed, and the special plot of the strawberry plants turned into a walkway. Guys came once a week to mow, trim, and rake.

  I don’t think she hired them this year. It must have been a jungle in July and August. Now it’s a dead jungle. The grass is knee-high and dead-brown, littered with the husks of weeds and fallen branches. The scraggly perennial bushes are choked with dry vines. The stump of the maple that used to hold up my tree house is rotting. It’s like she doesn’t even know she has a backyard.

  . . . My tree house was our castle until the summer we were twelve.

  Nanna Marrigan came to stay when school let out, because I was too old for a babysitter and too young to be on my own. She baked every morning: zucchini bread, oatmeal cookies, or blueberry pie. She taught me how to knit and Cassie how to crochet, the endless lengths of yarn spooling over her paper hands and around her crooked fingers.

  We did not want to watch an old lady bake or knit. We wanted to hang out at the mall. We wanted to snap our fingers and turn sixteen so we could drive cars and have dangerous boyfriends. The tree house was too small for restless girls like us, but it was all we had. We read, played hearts and Uno, painted our nails, and ate Popsicles and cheese-and-mustard sandwiches until our shirts were permanently stained.

  That was the summer I finally grew, after years of being smaller than everyone. Puberty stretched me on the rack until my arms and legs popped out of their sockets and my neck almost snapped. This new body smelled damp. The butt jiggled, the thighs looked a mile wide in tights, and a soft double chin bubbled up. My ballet teacher pinched the extra inches, took away my solo, and told me to stop eating maple-walnut ice cream. I went from being the elegant swan to the ugly duckling that couldn’t walk without tripping over her own feet.

  Cassie said ballet was for babies. I said I didn’t really care, though I did. Two days after that, she left for drama camp and I was alone.

  That was the summer my father’s most famous book was published and he was on the news all the time, and Mom found out about his new girlfriend. He slept on the couch for a couple of weeks, and then he moved out. Told me he would always love me, no matter what, rented a one-bedroom apartment, and left. Nanna Marrigan said good riddance to bad rubbish, because she never liked my dad to begin with.

  Mom filed for divorce.

  In the counselor’s office, my parents claimed that we would always be a family because of me, but things would be better now. No more yelling, no more arguments. By tearing our family apart, they were actually making it stronger. By the time I figured out that they were not making any sense, the family counseling was done and Dad was walking down the aisle with Jennifer.

  The growth spurt ripped my internal organs to shreds. The pain woke me, screaming, almost every night. My mother had me tested for twenty kinds of cancer and consulted with experts who looked at the black-and-white pictures of my insides and said nothing was wrong with me. The pain would go away when I stopped growing.

  They lied, too. It got worse.

  Nanna Marrigan headed home just before school started. Cassie came back from camp with a fake British accent, a nasty case of poison ivy, and three boxes of laxatives.

  I showed her how I’d been making tiny cuts in my skin to let the badness and the pain leak out. They were shallow at first, and short, like claw marks made by a desperate cat that wanted to hide under the front porch. Cutting pain was a different flavor of hurt. It made it easier not to think about having my body and my family and my life stolen, made it easier not to care. . . .

  Cassandra Jane’s insides popped like a pink party balloon. Nobody sang to her or held her or helped her pick up the broken pieces. She died alone.

  I can’t let myself look out any of the windows that face her house, because it is only now beginning to sink in that she will never sleep there again, never slam the door, never sing in the shower when she’s washing her hair.

  I make my way back to the family room, eyes closed, feet shuffling across the floor. I don’t let myself see anything until I am away from the dangerous windows.

  My stomach is still whining, so I go back under the blanket on the couch, plugged in and turned to HIGH. The grease from the eggs mixes with the muffin dough and juice. It pours into my arteries, a slow-moving sludge that wants to turn into concrete. Any minute now my heart might just stop.

  038.00

  I wake up more confused than usual because my bed isn’t pointed in the right direction, only it’s not even a bed, it’s a couch, Mom’s couch, the soft couch in the house of my mother. I am covered with a heavy Marrigan-woman quilt, patchworked with scraps of ancient dresses and weathered skirts.

  I don’t remember falling asleep or not being able to fall asleep or even dreaming. I didn’t wake up when Mom came home. I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

  Cassie did not visit me last night. That’s a good thing. Maybe she can finally sleep, too.

  The air smells like it always does: coffee and bleach.

  “Mom?” The word tastes funny.

  “In here,” she calls faintly.

  I wrap the quilt around me and shuffle through the house. It feels like I’ve been gone for six lifetimes, not six months.

  After Dad left, she changed everything: new furniture, new carpets, a totally new kitchen. She knocked down a couple of walls, redesigned the space on every floor, put in new windows, and moved the doors. We spent two years stepping over carpenters and masons and dust-covered guys who swore a lot. When it was over, she had a brand-new house, unstained by the presence of my father.

  I half expected her to do it again after I left, but as far as I can tell only one thing has changed: all of the paintings and maps and photos of Maine and her grand-parents and
me as a ballerina, and me as a baby sleeping on her shoulder, all of them have been taken off the walls and set on the floor. They left ghosts behind, brightly colored rectangles with naked picture hooks and thin nails jutting out from the middle. The rest of the walls is faded.

  Her voice filters through the closed library door. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “I’ll be upstairs.”

  My room is exactly the way I left it when they carted me off to New Seasons the last time, from the boot prints on the closet door to the shredded birthday cards on the floor. She didn’t send in the cleaning lady to make my bed or haul it to the curb or vacuum or dust.

  The door frame still has the pencil marks showing how much I grew every year after we moved in, up until I went to high school. Here is the one different thing: the frame has been painted with a clear coating, protecting the lines and the dates from being accidentally erased.

  “Lia? Breakfast.”

  “Coming.”

  By the time I make it to the kitchen, she’s pouring herself a bowl of granola. The counter is covered with food: cereal boxes, oatmeal packets, loaf of bread, bananas, the egg carton, cartons of yogurt, bags of bagels and doughnuts. She went shopping when I was asleep.

  We look at each other over the food. Neither one of us say a word, but the old script is hanging in the air:

  youhavetoeat/I’mnothungry/eatsomething/

  stopforcing/listentome/leavemealone

  Across the street, Mrs. Parrish is walking through a daughterless house, a Cassieless kitchen.

  I have to eat a little of something or she’ll go nuts and I am too tired to deal with it. I pick up the loaf of bread. “This doesn’t have high-fructose corn syrup, does it?” I ask.

  “Of course not,” she says, pouring soy milk in her bowl. Her eyes widen a little as I take out a slice (77) and put it in the toaster.