Your phone offers dozens of apps that are supposed to help you recover from an eating disorder. Most are probably used for the opposite of that. My calorie counter has come in super handy as I obsessively track each and every thing I eat, the better to constantly whittle down my diet to nothing.
DAY: 28, CONTINUED . . .
Mom was at work when I got home. I went right to my room, did not touch the tsampa my stomach was shrieking for, and opened my window. Stuck my head out.
I could smell the winter air, feel the wind on me. I tried to unweave the thin garment of scent, separate out every strand of smell that I detected. I found jet fuel from miles above me; the lingering smell of a thousand family dinners; a dumpster full of unwanted popcorn behind the movie theater. Cigarettes. Deer poop. But the night was so cold that few scents survived. Molecules stopped moving. Stinks settled. The air told me little.
He was out there, somewhere. My father. The real villain. The one who stole my sister away.
I would know his smell when I found it.
I buried my nose deep in The Dharma Bums. I sucked in, searching for him. I found myself, I found Tariq. I even found my mother. And something else, the faintest scrap, something mostly dead, a salty smell that might maybe possibly have been him.
I stayed up late. I woke up super early. When she walked in the door at 7 a.m. I was already in the kitchen, coffee percolating for her.
“Jesus, Matt, isn’t this a sight for sore eyes,” she said, easing her weight into her chair. “Why are you up so early?”
“Don’t know,” I said. “Woke up with a lot of energy.”
I did not say, Manic bursts of intense energy are a symptom of many eating disorders. Because, still, that’s not my issue.
“You’re smiling more than usual,” I said. “I know it’s not because you think my coffee will be any good.”
“No,” she said, shaking out her hair with both hands. “I had a good talk with my supervisor.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, wondering what new twist Bastien’s father might have added to the equation. “You think there’s hope for the plant?”
“For the plant, not so much,” she said. “He kept saying, ‘We’ll see how things shake out,’ but I can tell when he’s lying. Or when he’s only telling me the tip of the truth.” My mom took the mug I offered her, already complete with precisely as much cream as she likes. She pressed both hands against it and lowered her face to breathe in the coffee steam. When she raised her head, she seemed strengthened. “But he’s helping me out in a major way. I’m being promoted to ‘transition supervisor,’ which involves helping coordinate all the moving pieces as they scale back operations. Complicated stuff, looking at inventory and transfer and personnel . . . but it’s a management position, so not only will the money be better, it’ll mean I’ll get training and experience that could help me get a better job if the plant does close.”
“That’s amazing, Mom!”
“Thanks, honey,” she said and sipped my coffee. “You’re getting better at this. Still needs to be stronger, though.”
“You always say that.”
I sat down beside her. We drank our coffee, and she didn’t say a word about how I shunned the creamer. I should say something, I thought. About the scotch bottle. About her falling down. But if I wasn’t ready for that conversation, she probably wasn’t either.
“Do you have anything of his?” I asked. “My father? Anything other than those books?”
“I do,” she said, and if my question hurt her she hid it well. “A baseball cap, I think. Do you want it?”
“Yes.” I said. Why have you never mentioned this before?
She sipped her coffee. “I’ll see if I can find it.”
“When do you start the new position?” I asked, to shift her mind back to something happier.
“Next week,” she said. “I’m floored, honestly. I never thought he thought much of me. So for him to pick me for this . . .”
“You deserve it, clearly,” I said, and wondered whether I had anything to do with it. Whether being Bastien’s friend, even his fake friend, had helped this happen. Mom always talked about how there were no women in management, and the guys who ran the plant treated girls like secretaries no matter how hard they worked. People as powerful as Bastien’s dad could afford to make big decisions based solely on who their son was friends with.
A whisper in my mind, I wouldn’t be Bastien’s friend without my powers.
“Makes me feel guilty, in a way,” Mom said. “To be getting a promotion even as other people are getting screwed. And to get a leg up on the competition if the plant does close, and I’m up against a couple hundred of my coworkers for a handful of jobs. But I can’t take a stand here. Being principled doesn’t do us a lot of good when we’re living out of a car.”
“Amen to that,” I said and clinked my mug against hers.
It was a raw, living thing, my mother’s love for this town. As much as I hated the place, I could still appreciate how much it meant to her. Eyes shut, silently starving, I could see and smell so much more about it now.
Wherever Mom came from, whatever town and family had created her, she never talked about it. And now I thought I knew why. Abusive or repressive or just plain boring, she ran away from it as soon as she could. Mom had the courage to escape from everything that wanted to keep her locked up tight in a box of things she did not want to be. To build a life for herself on her own terms. Some day, could I?