Jersey Tomatoes are the Best (35 page)

We’re quiet for a while, then she speaks again.

“But really, Eva. How are you feeling?”

“I’m a rainbow of emotions. Resigned. Terrified. Angry. Depressed. All of them crashing down on me simultaneously. Wendy says that’s why I don’t eat. So I can feel in control of
something.
” I hear a familiar sound from her end.

“You’re snorting,” I say. Henry laughs.

“Sorry,” she says.

“Don’t apologize. It’s your only flaw, and I love it.”

“Oh, I have many flaws, Eva. You’re just too nice to notice.”

“Hmmm,” I say in response. More silence between us. Again, broken by Henry.

“Wendy told me you hear a voice that runs you down and tells you not to eat,” she says.

“That’s my boyfriend, Ed. Remind me to introduce you to him. He’s joining me in Florida. We’re living together, you know.”

“Eva. Seriously.”

“What makes you think I’m not serious?” More silence from Henry’s end.

“Well, at least in Florida you’ll be a thousand miles away from that Wendy. Jeez, Eva, where’d Rhonda dig
her
up?”

“Actually, Wendy starts to grow on you after a while,” I say.

“Really?” Skepticism in Henry’s voice.

“Yeah,” I say. “I think I might even miss her.”

No snort that time. I can practically hear the gears turning in Henry’s brain as she tries to process that new revelation.

“You know, you can visit me,” I tell her.

“You’re allowed visitors?”

“Sure,” I say. “Even prisoners are allowed visitors. You can get that Little David to bring you in his sweet ride.”

“Yeah,” Henry replies, hesitantly. With about as much enthusiasm as wilted lettuce.

Why would she want her new boyfriend to meet you, stupid? Her weird, sick loser friend in psycho rehab? Gimme a break
.

“I mean, if you can get away. I know you’re really busy.”

“Eva, I will come to see you at the very first possible moment. It’s just … more complicated than I want to get into right now. Trust me: I will be there.”

The conversation ends shortly after that. I get her off the phone, make something up about the nurse coming in to check my vitals. I feel tired. Just a little shuffling around this room, the exertion of pulling on shorts and a T-shirt, has winded me. Was it really only four weeks ago that I was spinning, on my toes, across gleaming wood floors?

Yeah, you’re pretty out of shape, blub butt
.

“Shut up.” I say it. I actually say it out loud.

Ate your whole breakfast this morning, didn’t you? Just wait. You’ll be the big pig in rehab now. Oink! Oink! Here comes Eva!

My hands shake as I reach for my canvas bag of writing supplies. I paw through it until I feel what I want. I pull them out: counter journal, pencil.

I flip quickly to a clean, blank page. Left side. I take a deep breath, grip hard and write:

“You are out of shape. You are a fat pig. Henry would only visit you because she feels sorry for you.”

I read it back. Tears slide down my cheeks and fall in round, soft plops onto the paper.

“Even my tears are fat,” I say. This sentence, spoken aloud, strikes me as completely idiotic. Somewhere in the back of my throat, a familiar sensation stirs. It emerges.

I laugh.

Now the other side. I can do this. I write:

“I’m not out of shape. I’m tired because I’ve been sick. I’m not fat. I’m so thin that I’m going to a rehabilitation center for women with eating disorders to gain weight and get healthy. Henry is sad for me because I’ve been sick. She’ll visit me because we are best friends. Jersey Tomatoes. No, Hothouse Tomatoes. Forever.”

I read my words back, once, then close the book. I wait.

Nothing. For right now, at least: silence.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

S
he pulls up in this … boat. This purring wide body, color of old gold, and it’s got
fins
. It’s buffed to mirrorlike perfection, especially the Cadillac emblem on the hood.

As she rounds the circular drive of the Greenlake Academy entrance, I see a magnetic sign adhered to the back passenger door: “Enrique’s Classic Car Restoration.” Phone number in bold just beneath the words. He was willing to lend her the Caddie … the latest result to roll out of his newly created weekend garage business … as long as she agreed to the sign. No problem for Yoly, who’d agree to anything if it meant trying out her new license.

She’s got the passenger-side window rolled down, and as I saunter toward her, backpack slung over one shoulder, I see her smile in my direction.

“
Hola, chica,
” she says. I poke my head through the opening and check out the leather interior.

“When you said ‘classic,’ I didn’t know you meant ‘antique,’ ” I say. “How old
is
this thing?”

“It’s a 1957,” she says. “You don’t want to know what Enrique will do to me if we get a single scratch on it.” I get in, heaving the stuffed pack into the backseat.

“Ay, Henry, what did you bring?” she says as it lands with a thud.

“Blank books and art supplies, mostly. Eva says half the markers are dry and all the crayons are broken in the art room. She also says her bathroom is sad, so I got her these amazing aromatherapy products. Even if it looks like a hospital, it’ll
feel
like a spa.”

“You are such a good friend,” she says.

“I’m pathetic, actually,” I reply. “I don’t visit her nearly enough. You, on the other hand? Friendship Hall of Fame. Thank you so much for doing this!”

“Are you kidding me?” she says. “This is going to be so much fun! First, we are driving in an awesome car. Second, we are going to see David play in a
professional
tournament. Third, we are all going to party at my parents’ restaurant tonight. Fourth, I get to finally meet Eva … which, okay,
does
make me a little nervous. Fifth, and best of all, I get to actually
see
you, instead of just talking to you on the phone! How’s it goin’?”

“Good. Really good, as a matter of fact.”

“Still no regrets?” she prods.

“Absolutely no regrets,” I say firmly. “The coaching staff is great, the academic staff is legit, and I’m really happy with the tennis. They’ve got me entered in a couple of Super Series tournaments next month, and that’s cool. Not too over-the-top, you know?” Yoly bursts out laughing.

“You are the only person I know who describes Super Series as ‘not too over-the-top’!”

“You obviously don’t know enough super-intense tennis people,” I tell her.

“
Speaking
of super intense,” she says, “does he know we’re all coming today?”

“He knows. He’s psyched. Especially for
cerdo asado
tonight,” I say. “Otherwise … he sounds like he’s doing okay, even though he got his ass kicked and didn’t earn any prize money playing Futures tournaments in California this fall. He plans to hang out in Florida for the next few months. Work with Harvey. Practice at that club near Chadwick. I don’t know. I still think he should have gone to college, but hey, no one asked me.…” Yoly clears her throat.

“Uh, I was actually asking about
you
and David. Not
tennis
and David.” She smiles suggestively at me. I shrug.

“Oh, don’t give me that!” she exclaims. “Hanging out in Florida for the next few months? Like, there’s nowhere else in the country he could train?”

Okay, so even I laugh. There’s really no point being coy with Yoly.

“I guess we’re ‘on again.’ In a long-distance-let’s-take-things-slowly sort of way. In a you’re-a-pro-and-I’m-a-high-school-student sort of way. So, yeah. It’s all good. At least for the next couple of months.” She takes her hand off the wheel to punch me playfully on the arm.

“He’s
so
cute,” she says.

“Tell me about it,” I sigh.

It’s a twenty-five-minute drive from Greenlake to the rehab center, but Yoly crawls at ten miles per hour below the speed limit (Enrique’s threats clearly on her mind), drawing more than a few long horn blasts from impatient motorists. Still, this is a treat. Over the past few months I’ve relied on expensive cab rides to visit Eva. The Greenlake people say as soon as I’ve got my permanent license, I can borrow one of the academy’s Zipcars. But I’m hoping Eva will be long gone from Florida before I ever get around to taking my driving test.

Because she’s getting better. Two and a half months of treatment have pushed the protruding bones back into her body, forced the teeth back into her face, and restored the light in her eyes. Her hair, she tells me, has finally stopped disappearing down the shower drain. Her pulse has climbed back to normal. And her weight …

“I’m trying not to think about that,” she said. It was sometime during the first month, and I had arrived for Friday-night visiting hours. The evening air was damp, and she was dressed in sweatpants and a big, loose hoodie. We sat outside in molded plastic chairs, on the patio of the residence hall. Patients and their guests kept passing through the glass double doors, as visitors signed in with the aides on duty and handed over their bags for inspection.

“No contraband,” Eva explained. “No magazines. No drugs. No diuretics. No gum or mints. No sharps …”

“Sharps?” I asked her.

“Tweezers. Nail scissors. Anything you might use to injure yourself.” I gasped.

“Yeah,” Eva sighed, “at least I only have one problem: I don’t eat. For some of these gals? That’s only the
half
of it.” She shook her head sadly, no irony in her voice. She was one of the few, she told me, who
wasn’t
on an antidepressant or sleeping pill or some psychopharmacological brew.

“Just a fiber pill and laxative for me,” she said, almost smugly. “I didn’t poop for the first ten days. That’s how screwed up my system was.”

It’s taken me a while to get used to those sorts of comments. The new expression on her face. It comes over when she’s deep in her own thoughts, staring into some inner reality that pinches her lips into a hard line, pulls her forehead into a determined frown. She’s heard a lot at this place, and tends to make these surprising, soul-baring observations, sometimes with a hard little edge in her voice. Gone is the relentlessly bright girl who told me you could patch any hole in your heart with a little Pink Decadence.

Of course, she never really believed that. Not for one minute. And maybe, I’m thinking, it’s actually a huge relief to her that she doesn’t have to
pretend
to believe it anymore.

As we enter the rehab center parking lot, yellow-green iguanas race-step-slither between low, shell-pink buildings. There’s a cleared central space on the campus, with an assortment of plants, benches and colorful totems. A “healing garden,” Eva calls it. She and I will hang out there while Yoly runs some errands. Then we three will drive to this club just north of Miami, where David is playing in one of those minor pro tournaments that never makes it onto network television.
Win or lose, the four of us will meet Enrique at La Cubana for dinner tonight.

As I walk toward the garden, I see her sitting by herself on a wooden bench. She’s cross-legged, her back poker-straight, and her hands rest on her knees. If she had her eyes closed, you’d swear she was in deep meditation, but she’s watching me approach and smiles widely as my feet crunch over the stones of the garden path.

“Did anybody ever tell you that you walk like a jock?” she says, grinning. I flop beside her on the bench, dropping the pack at my feet.

“How does a jock walk?” I say. She jumps up. She tries to lift the backpack.

“What’d you stuff in here, rocks?” she exclaims. She manages to heft it onto one shoulder. She takes a few steps back, then begins this swaggering, head-bobbing lurch toward me. She swings her free arm and scuffs a few stones for effect.

“I do
not
walk like a thug!” I laugh. She exaggerates the motion until it borders on gorillalike, then, giggling, drops the pack and returns lightly to the bench beside me. She drapes her arms around my shoulders and gives me a soft squeeze. I squeeze back.

“How are ya?” I ask.

She smiles, but does this pseudotremble, as if she’s cold.

“Good, but nervous, you know? I mean, I haven’t been off campus for more than a couple of hours in … well, ever!” I nod, but say nothing. Today is big for her: she’ll be off grounds for almost ten straight hours, a privilege earned only by the
patients at the top end of the recovery ladder. Patients who can be counted on to make healthy choices. Like eating.

I know that the menu at La Cubana, with all its oily fried food, is scary to her. Even scarier than meeting Yoly and David for the first time. But she says she’s ready. She tells me she
has
to do this. And I’m so proud of her, I could bust.

“You’ll do great,” I tell her emphatically. Her eyes slip from mine and land on the pack.

“Did you bring me … things?” she asks mischievously. I zip it open. She squeals in glee over the rosemary mint shampoo I bought her at this Aveda salon near Greenlake.

“You are the
best
, Henry! Thank you so much!” she exclaims. We stuff everything back in the bag after she’s seen it; the aides at the front desk have to okay each item. Then she sits back with this look of anticipation on her face.