Hope and Other Luxuries (39 page)

Elena grew unexpectedly somber.

“It's really sad,” she said. “Meghan has this great mom—sweet, great sense of humor—I know you two would bond. But when she's around, Meghan clams up. They don't talk like we do.”

Like we do
. Once again, I ran barefoot through that idea, back and forth, while yellow flowers bloomed.

As an early Christmas present to all of us, Joe and I flew Valerie and Clint out to visit for a couple of days. Valerie was her old self again, with that easy laugh and laid-back temperament that had won friends on two continents. It was almost impossible to picture her as the haunted, depressed girl who had burned and cut herself. Clint was earnest and even-tempered, with a dry sense of humor that fit in perfectly with our family.

The four of us drove to a Chinese buffet. Valerie was playing songs off her playlist when a Sum 41 song came on.

“Oh, hey,” Clint said mildly, “I used to listen to these guys a lot back in my ‘angry young man' phase.”

“Um . . . Clint?” Joe said, grinning. “You're not even old enough to order a beer. When did you squeeze in that ‘angry young man' phase?”

Throughout the weekend they stayed with us, Elena was absent from our lives. But on the morning of their last day in Texas, she called.

“Put Valerie on the phone,” she said.

A few minutes later, Elena walked through the door, and within five minutes, she and Valerie were chatting away on the back porch, just as if they'd never been apart.

It was a sight that brought tears to my eyes.

As winter gave way to spring, I felt comfortable enough with our new life to start doing some things for myself. Joe and I were empty nesters now. It was time to embrace that change. So I began taking piano lessons from a dear friend whom I'd known for years. It was interesting work for me because it was entirely nonverbal—it was about sounds, but it wasn't about words. But that didn't stop me from trying to use words to describe it.

“Okay,” I said to myself as I practiced, “I need to hit that hop in the middle, where the song goes from slow to bright. More rabbit—I need more rabbit.”

I also started jogging in the neighborhood to try to lose the extra weight I'd put on cooking for Elena. But that didn't result in a subtraction. It resulted in an addition.

I was jogging a few blocks from home one morning when I saw a small dirty-brown dog sitting on a front porch. She appeared to be part terrier and part bird's nest. I always greet animals when I'm out and about, including (sometimes) very large bugs—the kind of bugs that seem to demand respect. So I greeted the little dog:

“Hi, baby.”

She raced across the yard to me and threw herself down at my feet, hiding her face in her little paws.
Help me!
she said without saying a word.

I took a closer look at this small terrier-nest cross. She was horribly underweight, and her face was covered with scabs. So I took her home with me,
just until her owners come home from work
, I thought.
And I'll give her a bath, too. She's filthy
.

Four hours later, I was still soaping her with medicated shampoos. The little thing was crawling with the largest fleas I'd ever seen, and she was anemic from blood loss. But, even though the treatments stung and hurt, the sweet little thing didn't object. She danced around me while I dried her off, thrilled to have the attention.

Okay, that's it!
I thought angrily.
Those morons aren't getting her back!
Not, apparently, that they wanted her back—I watched for days, but no signs went up around the neighborhood. So I kept her, and I named her Genny, after the stray dog in the Madeline books.

Love and care took Genny from being a skinny, scrawny, ratty-looking dog to being a round, plump, ratty-looking dog. She was already old when she found me, and the closest I ever came to discovering her “breed” was a warning picture on a Norfolk terrier website:
If you purchase your Norfolk off the Internet, you could end up with a dog that looks like THIS!
When Genny was at rest, she looked like a blond wig that had accidentally gone through the washer, and when she was in motion, she looked like a chicken nugget on sticks. But she danced and played and bounded around me as I worked. She still had the heart of a puppy.

One day, Elena came over to do laundry. Genny bounced up to greet her while I made myself a cup of tea and prepared for the exciting and highly enjoyable ride that is a catch-up conversation with Elena. What would it be today? Multiple-personality disorders? A foreign movie plot? Japanese host club boys? Just lately, she had been telling me all about porphyria and vampires.

“What's new?” I asked with interest.

Elena was measuring out laundry soap. “So, I went to see somebody,” she said.

“You mean a doctor?” I asked with a flutter of worry.

Elena was starting to get sick a lot. She was overdoing it at school again—involved in too many activities. Just recently, she had had another sore throat she couldn't shake.

“I mean a shrink,” Elena said.

When we had returned to Texas, I had encouraged Elena to see Dr. Harris again. But she hadn't wanted to, and in the first flush of excitement
over college, she hadn't seemed as if she needed to, either. She had started out the fall semester taking better care of herself than I'd seen her do in a year. Her college friends ate, so she did, too.

At first.

But now, I assessed her over my teacup. She was starting to look nervous and jumpy, the way she had looked during her senior year of high school. And now she was going to see a psychiatrist on her own.

This could be good—or it could be very bad. I waited to see which it was.

“The counselor on campus thought it would be a good idea for me to see somebody after my blackout last October,” Elena said. “She thought I should go see an eating disorder specialist, you know, to make sure I'm over that whole thing—since I had trouble with it when I was in high school.”

I recalled the incident in October with another unpleasant prickle of worry. Elena had ended up in the ER for a few hours. But she'd been drinking pretty heavily, the doctor told us. He thought she'd just passed out.

At the time, I had said to her, “It sounds like you had one of your blackouts from the Summer from Hell.” But Elena had laughed it off and told us she'd been partying too hard. I had remembered my own freshman-year parties and put it out of my mind.

But now here she was, calling it a blackout.

“Turns out,” Elena continued, “there's a place in town that works with eating disorder patients. Sandalwood, it's called. I met with their director.”

She found a Coke can in the fridge and took a few seconds to open it. I watched her in silence. Elena always opened her Cokes just a little bit, so that almost nothing could come out. I couldn't remember how long it had been since I'd seen her finish a Coke.

Elena said, “She told me that I
do
have anorexia nervosa.”

“I know,” I said sadly.

This wasn't something I thought about every day. It was something I tried not to worry about anymore. Elena was an adult now. I wasn't supposed to hover. There was nothing I could do about it. God knows, I had tried.

But the mother who had lived through Elena's senior year—the mother who had watched her measure out every single bite and avoid more than the tiniest ration of calories—that mother had learned a long time ago:
Yes, my daughter
does
have anorexia nervosa
. Maybe she hadn't had it before the Summer from Hell. Maybe her eating disorder had been less severe. But, after the trauma of being forced into hospitals and psychiatric facilities—

And, once again, my mind locked on to the image of Dr. Petras, blustering and issuing his threats.

“The director said my anorexia isn't the family's fault,” Elena continued. “She told me, when it's caused by the parents, it starts really young. Mine didn't start till I was a teenager. That means it was caused by something else.”

“Oh. That's interesting,” I said.

But I didn't get it.

I didn't think to ask,
So, why did this question come up? Does that mean
you
thought your anorexia was our fault? What gave you that idea? Was it something we did? Was it something somebody else did?

Or, even better:

What do
you
think caused your anorexia?

I didn't ask these questions. I just didn't think. My imagination was still playing me the tape of Dr. Petras having his meltdown. It was so stuck on what it
did
know that it didn't notice what it
didn't
.

“So,” I said, “how does the director think you're doing now?”

“Okay,” she said vaguely. “We talked about me joining a support group.”

“How often does it meet?”

“Doesn't matter. She didn't think it would help.”

She didn't think it would help? That sounded odd. “Really?” I said, trying to keep my tone light. “I thought those people love support groups!”

But Elena declined to elaborate.

“Anyway, you'll see a bill,” she said. “They copied our insurance card.”

I did see a bill. It got tangled up in our insurance system, and I wound up having to call both the insurance company and Sandalwood before payment came through. But I didn't bring it up again to Elena.

My daughter was an adult now. I needed not to hover. She had told me to let her deal with her business. I was ready to let her deal.

I had an adoring, ratty little dog to pet and jogging to do. I had piano to practice and books to write. Whenever my daughters wanted to reach out, I was right there to cheer them on. But I was through minding their business and running their lives.

I was done with being Elena's evil witch.

B
ut over the next few weeks, I began to realize that this conversation had marked a turning point. Whether that was due to Elena or to me, I couldn't quite figure out. For my part, I found that it had reawakened old fears. Against my will, I began to worry again.

Elena seemed to have gone through a change as well. The fun and excitement of her freshman year had drained away. Now, everything she talked about involved more achievement—and more stress.

Like the morning she called me during my jog to tell me about the ROTC scholarship.

“The major says, with my grades, I'm a sure thing,” she told me on the phone. “Then the Air Force can pay for my nursing school.”

“Genny, no! Don't eat that. Dogs are so gross,” I said, dragging the little terrier away from something awful in the gutter. “But, honey, you don't have to get a scholarship. We can help with nursing school.”

“Mom, I don't want to use all of your and Dad's money! I thought you'd be happy that I'm trying to be independent.”

“No, I am, I am. It's just . . .”

“It's just what?” she wanted to know.

It's just that you get sick a lot
, I thought.
Your immune system isn't robust, and I should know; you inherited it from me. It's like that doctor told me when I was your age, “Some people can stay up partying all night, and then there's you.” No way could my body have handled a military life, and I don't think your body can, either
.

But I knew just how furious Elena would be if I were to say that out loud, so I hunted for a more acceptable response.

“It's just that I don't want you to feel like you have to.”

I could hear it in the dogged tone in her voice, however: Elena felt like she had to. Once again, she was driving herself to meet Herculean goals. She was doing exceptional work in her classes, and she had even won a rare departmental award. I was proud of her, but I could see that it was taking a toll.

Sitting in one of the brown chairs a few days later, with my laptop open on my lap, I listened to her voice on the phone detailing her final exam schedule. Eight prenursing classes' worth of final exams. The workload was absolutely crushing.

Oh, well. At least she'll be able to rest up this summer
, I thought.

But no.

“Guess
what
!” Elena said on the phone a couple of hours later. “I've been selected as a summer RA!”

“Hey, that's fantastic!” I said. The resident assistants (RAs) had their meals and dorm room paid for and brought in a salary, as well. It was hard work to become an RA, and I knew Elena had worked at it for months. It would finally give her that financial independence she had pushed herself to achieve. Finally, she could say, “I'm taking care of myself.”

“So,” I said, “you'll be quitting the mall job now?”

“I don't need to quit the mall job,” she said. “It's not like the RA job will take that much time.”

Worry plucked at me.

“Yes,” I said, “but you promised when you took all those classes this spring that you'd take some time to recharge this summer.”

“Yeah, but the mall job doesn't stress me out.”

“Elena, you're often there until one or two in the morning, and then you're up before seven the next day. Maybe you don't see that as stress, but your body does. It deserves a little rest.”

“Yeah, maybe . . . I'll see how it goes.”

I was still working at my laptop a little while later when a call came in from a number I didn't know.

“This is Clint. From Georgia,” the voice said.

Worry plucked at me again. Clint sounded upset. Had something happened to Valerie?

“Oh, hey!” I said. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he said.

There was a pause on the line, and then came a sudden rush of speech, the verbal equivalent of a barrel ride over Niagara Falls.

“It's just . . . I want to marry Valerie. I mean, I don't just want to, I'm going to ask her to marry me; I've got the ring and everything. But before I do—before I ask her to marry me—I wanted to ask you and Mr. Dunkle first. If it would be okay with you. Okay if I married your daughter.”