XXI

Maybe the air was getting a little thin, or maybe the peanut-butter-and-Robitussin sandwich was finally kicking in. At any rate, I was hot, nauseous, and cramped. I was spending the day in my footlocker, with my snout against the airhole, whimpering like the dog I was.

This was my penance for being mean to Flip.

I closed my eyes and prayed to Mary Hart, the symbol of all that is good and pure in my life. “Please, Mary, deliver me from madness, passive-aggressive hostility, and hetero-hating.”

Amen.

 

According to the Big Book of Symptoms I found in my dad’s library, that heavy feeling in my chest, pressing down on me, was a terminal case of angina pectoris. And all this time I thought it was a broken heart.

(Sniffle.)

 

I took to my bed, yet again, and piled on layer after layer of foundation to cover the pain of rejection. I propped myself up to receive visitors, like Garbo on her deathbed in Camille. . . .

Oh. Oh dear.

Anyone?

Anyone?

Oh, people. GARBO. Greta Garbo! Swedish movie star of the 1930s! Heart-stopping beauty! “I VANT TO BE ALONE!” Frequently lampooned in Bugs Bunny!

It wouldn’t kill you to watch a little TCM once in a while, you know.

Anyway, in Camille she is a nineteenth-century courtesan who dies of tuberculosis, and it’s just the saddest thing you’ll ever see. Sadder than Titanic.

 

SO THERE I WAS.

I had propped myself up to receive visitors, like Garbo on her deathbed in Camille, and bravely offered my hand to be held by the various imaginary friends who stopped by to see how I was doing. “Just a little lip rouge, darling,” I said, “and I’ll be just fine.”

But as the week plodded on and wore me down, I realized that no, I was not going to be “just fine.” Frankly, I was a mess. I wasn’t eating. My weight was plummeting. I weighed about eighty-three pounds (in platforms and hairdo). I was a rag and a bone and a hank of hair. I was sinking into filth and sinking into ennui. I stopped caring about Pop-Tarts, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Days of Our Lives. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t moisturize. I didn’t even bathe for a while there. Even Flossie began avoiding me. And it’s HER JOB to put up with me.