I didn’t know what that meant.
“He’ll say I’m a drunk….”
I wasn’t clear on that one, either.
“He’ll say I’m unfit and mentally ill, because I had to go and get help with the drinking…. He had his attorney write me a letter….”
No understanding there, either. Aunt Janet needed help to drink?
Lance told me his father didn’t think much of him. “He wishes I was better. More better. At everything. I don’t do anything right, you know, Stevie. Nothing.” He said this matter-of-factly. He believed it as truth.
Polly told me her father never said anything nice to her, but she kept trying as hard as she could to make him pay her some attention. “He always says, ‘Don’t get fat as your mother has,’ but I don’t think Mom’s fat at all, but I try not to eat much, but he keeps saying it to me. Do you think I’m fat, Stevie? When my hair is messy do you think I look like a stray dog? Do you think my lips are too fat? Dad does. He tells me to roll them in tight so men don’t think I’m cheap and easy.” She rolled her lips in so hardly any lip showed. “Do you think I’m cheap? What does cheap and easy mean on a girl?”
Lance asked, “Do you think all kids are dirty? Dad says they are. Do I look dirty to you? He says I won’t make a good husband because I’m dirty and sweaty and I won’t amount to anything. Does that mean I’ll grow up to be a burglar or something?”
Polly said, “If other girls get better grades than me, does that mean I’m stupid? That’s what Dad says. He says I’m too sexy. Do you know what sexy means? Is it bad?”
Lance said, “Sometimes I think I hate my dad.”
“I know I hate him,” Polly whispered. “I know I hate him.”
Both of them said they wanted to live with me forever.
I wanted that, too. With Lance and Polly I wasn’t embarrassed about Helen, even when she started having long-drawn-out, disjointed conversations with Command Center, which as far as I could determine as a kid was a mean voice in her head. I wasn’t embarrassed when Helen leaned against the wall, eyes closed as she hummed. I wasn’t embarrassed when she dressed up in a ski outfit, complete with mittens and hat, even though it was eighty-five degrees out, and attached a rope to the back of her pants as a tail and started speaking into it. They were family, after all. Helen was their aunt, so why should I be embarrassed?
I loved that summer. I never wanted it to end. We played all day and spent hours with “The Family,” which consisted of an enormous number of relatives.
It ended when Herbert drove up in his Cadillac. He stayed right near the door of that car and honked the horn. Lance, Polly, and Aunt Janet scampered on out…and that was it.
They were gone.
8
Portland, Oregon
“Aren’t you going to eat that?” Eileen asked me, peering at my salad.
“I am eating it,” I said, forking another tomato into my mouth. The restaurant was one of those chic, fancy places. Eileen knows that I am barely making it financially, but we still come to this expensive café often.
I could say no.
I do say no.
And she says, “Stevie, I’ll see you there at twelve o’clock.” And hangs up.
I could not show up.
I always do.
Before the operation, we would treat each other, every other time, even though I asked if we could meet in other, less expensive places, which she declined. Since my operation, half the time she leaves the check to me. Half the time we go Dutch. I don’t mind spending the money as much as I mind allowing myself to be taken advantage of.
“This chicken cacciatore is delicious,” she says, smacking her lips. She was wearing a bright red shirt, snug on the top so about five inches of cleavage showed. She was wearing red lipstick to match and large diamond hoops in her ears, on her neck, and both wrists.
“Oh, good. This salad is delicious, too.” Before my operation, I had wanted to eat a salad about as much as I wanted to dine on grass, so a whole new world of salads has opened up for me. My salad was called a Luau Bikini Salad.
Truly delicious. I couldn’t even believe it was a salad.
Eileen snickered. “Come on, Stevie, you can be honest with me. You don’t want to eat that salad. You’re eating it so you can stay on your diet.”
“It’s yummy—”
She held up her fork in front of my face, waved it, as in, “Don’t go there with me.”
I sighed inwardly.
“Stevie Barrett, I feel sorry for you. You can’t eat anything good anymore, because you feel that being thin is more important than really living, enjoying life.”
I did not bother to remind her that my heart attack could well have taken the word living right out of my life.
Change the subject, I told myself. “How’s work?” I then listened as she ranted about the firm’s customers. “They need to know how their money is doing all the time! Wait for the quarterly financial statements!” The office staff in her father’s investment firm were so incompetent—a stockbroker had screwed up, a partner was a screwup, and three women stockbrokers couldn’t find their bras if Eileen wrapped them around their faces.
“How do you like your new furniture?” I asked.
She liked it. Except the interior designer for the furniture store who had come to her house was “one of those skinny girls, the ones you and I can’t stand, who was rude to me. I called her boss and gave the boss a piece of my mind. She kept suggesting durable material. Well, I knew what she was talking about. The furniture should be durable for the size of my butt. When I called her on it, she got all defensive and said she recommends durable material to all her clients. She wanted me to get blues and yellows, I like mauve and green. I could tell she didn’t approve of my choice, tried to sway me away from those colors…” She went on and on, ordered a pop from the waitress, more bread, more butter. “Don’t forget it this time. Be quick about it.”
“How is your father?”
Oh, he was fabulous, but her stepmother, the woman who had been married to her father for fifteen years, was “an awful witch…. I can’t stand her…always fund-raising for sick kids, asking me to join her, as if I would have the time…. The woman never lets me see my father….”
“Don’t you and your father have lunch once a week and dinner once a week and work together?” I asked.
Yes, they did, but the witch was always trying to control her father. She hated going to Easter at their house—it was such a chore. The stepmother had three grown children and nine grandchildren, and Eileen could not stand children, and the woman’s children always smiled at her, and the parents made their kids say hello, and the kids had asked her why she was fat, and their parents shushed them but the damage was done. “They don’t want me in that family, which is fine. I don’t want to be in their family. They’re loud, stupid, uneducated, obnoxious, low-class…”
The waitress took away our plates. Eileen ordered a piece of seven-layer chocolate cake, and the waitress brought it. At no time did Eileen thank the waitress, who kept refilling her glass with lemonade. In fact, she never acknowledged her efforts. I thanked her. Eileen snapped at her.
She tucked into her chocolate cake. Five bites disappeared down her mouth, then she put a piece of the chocolate cake on her fork. “Try that. It’s delicious.”
“No, thank you.”
She glared at me. “You can have a bite of cake, Stevie. It won’t make you fat again.”
No, it wouldn’t. But I didn’t want any cake. Since my operation, I can’t eat sugar as well as I used to. Same with chocolate. It’s a bizarre thing. Plus it can cause the dreaded dumping syndrome.
“I don’t want any cake right now, but thank you.”
She was furious, I knew it. I could tell in the frozen silence and the stabbing of the cake by her fork. It was a milder form of the fury she aimed at me when I was on a gurney at the hospital, where she had come uninvited, had thundered at me not to do the operation, was I i
nsane, what the hell was wrong with me, I was risking my life to be thin, how stupid is that, you think you’ll be happy when you’re thin, you won’t be, Stevie Barrett!
I had had a heart attack. I had almost died, and she didn’t want me to get the operation.
“So you’re going to make me feel guilty?”
“I’m not making you feel guilty, Eileen. I don’t want any cake.”
“Can I be honest with you, Stevie?”
She studied me with wide-open, sad eyes, and I braced myself.
“You’re going to make yourself sick, sicker than you’ve already been. I’m so worried about you.”
“Don’t worry about me—”
“You’re obsessed, you know. People who were obsessed with eating still have obsessions after bariatric surgery, they just turn them somewhere else. A lot of people become alcoholics or shopaholics. You’re an exerciseaholic.”
“No, I’m not. I walk—”
“You walk every day, Stevie. Every day.”
This sounded as if she was saying, “You stick a syringe up your arm filled with powdered pot and heroin, every day. Every day.”
“I love to walk.”
“You need a shrink.” She put another bite of cake on her fork and held it toward me. “Take one bite. It’s delicious. You can’t fill yourself up with vegetables. Yuck. Splurge.”
“No, thanks, Eileen.” She tried again, the bite of cake six inches from my mouth. I leaned back and put a hand up. She was disgusted with me.
“I didn’t want to say this….” A cake crumb was stuck in the corner of her mouth.
She trailed off.
“It hurts me to say this.”
She had another bite of cake. More got stuck.
I put down my fork. I wanted to shout, “If you don’t want to say it, don’t.”
“You’re extremely sensitive, though, Stevie, so I’m afraid to say it.”
“I’m not sensitive, and if you think it’s going to be something that hurts me, keep it to yourself.”
She laughed. Ate another bite of cake. Cake crumbs settled on her shirt.
“Yes, you are sensitive. You get uptight so easily.”
“No, I don’t—”
“See? You’re doing it right now. You get on the defensive.”
I leaned back in the booth and watched her. I was hurt. I was irritated. I was bracing myself for whatever it was she was going to say. And part of me was wondering, “Why on earth am I even here?”
She went back to shoveling cake in her mouth. “One bite and I’ll leave you alone.” That fork came flying toward me, and that finally pissed me off.
“No, Eileen,” I said, throwing my napkin on the table. “I told you I don’t want any cake! Are you deaf? What do you not understand about no?”
Her hand froze, then she slammed it to the table, the bite of cake falling off the fork. “You ungrateful, rude—” She spit out chocolate crumbs, then shut her mouth tight. “You think you’re better than me, don’t you? You’ve changed since your operation—”
“I would hope that I’ve changed,” I sputtered. “That was the point. I wanted to change. I wanted my body to change, my thinking to change, my whole life to change. I didn’t want to be myself anymore.”
“You didn’t want to be Stevie?”
“Yes. No. Sort of. Part of Stevie, not the other part.” I was confused, rattled.
“I don’t even understand you anymore. You’re not even the Stevie I knew.”
“Yes, I am—”
“You,” she spit out. “You are all you talk about.”
“I’ve hardly said anything this entire lunch—”
“When you can apologize for this conversation, then we’ll talk. Not before.”
“What am I supposed to apologize for?”
She heaved herself out of the booth, crumbs flying. “You’re never going to understand, are you, Stevie? You don’t have the capacity to. You’re not able to. And look at you!” She glared at me, all her diamonds sparkling. “The way you dress now. Think about what you’ve said and done.”
She grabbed her purse and left. One waiter jumped out of her way. She snarled at a child in the aisle and slammed the door.
I glanced down at my clothes. I was wearing a red T-shirt and a blue skirt.
I paid the bill when the waitress brought it by and gave her a huge tip.
My hand shook when I signed it.
Over the next week, I was still upset, and ticked off, about my lunch with Eileen, and since I couldn’t eat my way into a food frenzy, I spent a lot of time with my obsession.
I had a chair with a full back, and I asked it questions: Do you think you’re running out of time to be who you want to be? Do you feel that you’re late to your own life? Do you count the seconds until you leave work? What other job would be more fulfilling? Do you take time to think about you, or do you only think about everyone else? If you had the time to do one trip, where would you go? You could die tomorrow, so why don’t you plan that trip?
I decided I needed a time chair.
I sawed in half an old clock I’d found at a garage sale. It was wood, painted beige, the numbers in black, and it had a loop at the top. It was like one of those old-fashioned timepieces men used to wear in the 1800s, only it was about a foot tall. I wanted to attach each half to the sides of a wood chair I had painted blue.
The chair had a full back, not slats, so it gave me a complete canvas, so to speak, to paint on. I painted curving clocks—one red, one blue, one green, one yellow. Each had an Alice in Wonderland type of design to it. Each clock had a face, eyes, a nose, a smile.
The red clock had purple polka dots, the blue clock had cheetah legs, the green one had stripes and duck feet, and the yellow one had pink flowers sprouting around its square face.
On the seat of the chair I wrote the words “Don’t be late!” under a woman who was totally normal—curvy, in blue jeans and a red T-shirt with colorful bracelets up her arms—except her face was a clock. The clock had blond curls springing out from all sides.
I called it Mrs. Clock Chair.
I am a nut.
I know this.
But for some reason, transforming chairs calms my nerves, and the flashbacks are controlled.
When the chair was done, I would put it in my garage with all the other chairs. I am not a talented painter or woodworker, so none of these chairs are good. They are weird, unprofessional, silly. That’s why I keep my garage doors locked up tight.
The doors are not the only thing in my life locked up tight.
“You need help, Polly,” I said.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You need help. You can’t do it on your own.”
“Yes, I can. I’m managing it, exactly as I learned before, and I don’t need help.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I can hear what you’re thinking, Stevie. Knock it off.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“Well, stop.”
“I’ll take you.”
“No. That’s a no, stop asking, stop bugging me, you’re pissing me off.”
“Good thing I love you so much, Polly, because you are a pain in the butt.”
She sighed. “I love you, too, Stevie.” Her eyes dropped to my butt. “By the way, your butt is very nice.”
“Thank you.”
“Not that I’m hitting on you,” she said.
“I didn’t think you were hitting on me, being my cousin and all,” I drawled. “But if I swung that way and you weren’t my first cousin, hey, baby, bring it on.”
We both laughed
Then Polly wiped tears away with shaking hands.
“You need to go,” I said, gentle.
“Shut up.”
That feeling of dread—raw, real, unstoppable—bubbled up inside of me.
“Please, Polly.”
“No.” She patted her heart. “We’ll be fine, right, heart?”
T
hat night I showered, spread on vanilla-scented lotion, climbed into bed, and worried myself sick about Polly.
I had built my own bed, thanks to Joseph.
What would Jake think of it? I speculated on that. Speculated what he would look like naked. I had had to hide behind my neighbor’s car the other day to avoid him. Mr. James had hobbled out on his walker and said, “Hiding from Jake, honey?” I denied it. He laughed and thumped his walker. “Don’t worry, me and Nancy ain’t said nothin’ to Jake about it. He’s a good man, though.” Mr. James winked at me. “And you’re a good woman. Good and good go together!”
When I moved in, I had only a mattress that I got from a friend of a neighbor. That’s what I slept on for months. I would dream of what kind of bed I would build myself when I had the time and energy to do so.
I took the measurements of my incredibly small bedroom and made a bed out of oak that stretched from one wall to the next. I built the bed frame high, so I need a two-step ladder to climb in, then built a squarish, abnormally tall headrest and footrest that reach almost to the ceiling. I found a pink quilted bedspread with little white flowers, and a puffy white down comforter, both at Goodwill, then collected eight pillows for decoration in pinks, whites, and a little black. The Throne Bed, as I call it, takes up almost the whole room except for a comfy blue jean chair and a small TV on a white shelf I built.
The other bedroom is actually much bigger than mine, but I love sleeping in a small space. To me, it feels cozy and safe, cocoonish.
The caterpillar in the cocoon turned off her light, then stared at the Starlight Starbright ceiling for hours, afraid to sleep and step into the nightmares—afraid I wouldn’t sleep, and my mind would snap.
Not relaxing, folks.
“So you believe, Mrs. Atherton,” Crystal said, disbelief ringing around each word, “that your son went without oxygen for”—she fiddled with her papers for effect—“four minutes, at least, while under sedation at Harborshore Hospital? Is that correct?”
I sat on Crystal’s right in the conference room. Across from us was Mr. and Mrs. Atherton, the parents of Danny, a boy who had gone from playing baseball and reading about dragons and loving music to resting on a hospital bed full time in their dining room, with a feeding tube and a bag for urine.