We step outside to find the van already waiting for us. Sarah and I enter and do not speak. Neither does Direct Care, thankfully. I had once been more outgoing. I used to laugh, ask questions, flirt. These days I find myself shy around people, out of body and place.
I glance at Sarah, next to me in the backseat. She looks like a movie star, and not at all like she suffers from an eating disorder. Or like she suffers from anything. Then again, I have been at 17 Swann Street a week, long enough to know that every one of us has demons, whatever the lipstick we wear.
We park and I stop to soak in some sun before going back into the house. Sarah turns to Direct Care:
Since we got some time before lunch, may we sit outside for a while?
Her vowels trickle like honey, I marvel. I have never heard anyone speak like that. Her hair and lips in the sun are ruby red. I fuss with my own hair.
Direct Care’s shrug is taken as a yes. We sit on a bench along the back wall. I am uncomfortable and self-conscious by this sensual woman, but the sun on my skin is worth it.
I close my eyes.
Sarah speaks:
You like children, then. Want any?
I open my eyes. Sun gone.
I cannot have them just now.
Too blunt. She was just being nice. Damage control:
Do you like children?
I have a two-year-old boy.
I am stunned. A second look at her. I reevaluate her movie lipstick, her age. She looks so young. I try to respond normally:
You must miss him.
Darlin’, horribly.
I do not know what to say, so I say nothing. Then she starts speaking, like a stream:
He was a mistake, you know, my Charlie. I named him after Bukowski. I had no interest in motherhood, or in marrying his idiot of a father. I fancied myself an actress. I knew I had talent. But I was born in the wrong place and the wrong body for a star.
The wrong body. I look at her again and wonder what she sees in the mirror.
Where was that?
Oh, girl, in a farmhouse as deep South as you can picture. I had three brothers and two sisters and one very discontented mother who made jam and pies with lots of cream. She had gorgeous red hair that I did not inherit, but I fixed that when I was seventeen.
She gives her hair a coy shake, for emphasis.
Just about the only thing about her I ever envied.
I could easily see her, red hair and lush curves, dominating any stage. But she is not onstage. She is here, at 17 Swann Street.
My boyfriend’s name was Sam. Sam. Short and sweet and nondescript, exactly like him. One night, we were chugging stolen beer in his car. I told him I was running away. I wanted to become a star. I became pregnant instead.
So I married him and moved from Ma’s house to his.
She laughs bitterly.
I wanted to be anything but her. Instead I turned into her. Thank God I took the jam and pies with me. They kept me company.
Her farmhouse, I note, is my cube on 45 Furstenberg Street. I can relate to her solitude, except that instead of food, I filled that void with air.
But then you had Charlie.
Then I had Charlie.
I did not have a Charlie. I do not have a Charlie. She turns her long-lashed eyes to me:
Why do you want a baby?
Out of body and place again. The best answer is the simplest, I decide.
Because I love Matthias. I want a family with him.
You’re lucky.
She is right. I am.
Don’t let your Matthias go. Whatever you’re here for—anorexia, I’m guessing?—think about what it’s costing you.
I do not appreciate her assumption that I chose this disease, or her unsolicited advice. The air cools between us. She must sense it, because she quickly, candidly adds:
I promise I’m not preaching, darlin’. Believe me, I’m in no place to judge. Look at me: I should be spending Sunday with my son. Instead, I’m sitting here.
Why are you sitting here then?
Because in the hours I spent alone with Charlie, I drank, ate pie, whole loaves of bread with butter and jam.
She tells it like a story, dispassionately. Someone else’s life.
I tried painting, reading, going on walks, but I always wound up in the kitchen. I rode two damn years on sugar and alcohol, and when I could get my hands on it, Xanax.
She stops awhile in the space of those two years. I do not interrupt. Then she resumes:
Our birthdays are a few days apart, little Charlie’s and mine. On my nineteenth birthday I had whiskey and Benadryl while he slept. When I woke up, Charlie was crying in his crib. Sam was bent over me, pathetically terrified.
I turned twenty last week and he turned two and I had whiskey and Benadryl again. Sam threatened to take him and leave me. Then he up and did it, the fucker.
Sarah is twenty. Sarah is twenty. Just a child in a woman’s body. All the makeup in the world will not change that. Still, she pushes her sunglasses up further.
So now I’m here. Not for Sam, but for Charlie. I want to fix myself up before his next birthday. I can’t live without my baby.
It echoes between us. I can’t live without my baby. And I cannot live without Matthias. Matthias who, unlike Sam, did not leave.
Yet. Did not leave yet.
Don’t let your Matthias go. The back door opens and Direct Care’s head pops out:
Come on, ladies! Time for lunch.