I am back in community space and my stomach hurts.
Once upon a time I used to eat. I even used to like to eat. I used to bake the best tarte aux pêches and dunk crackers in my cocoa or tea, and flip heavenly, airy crêpes with my eyes closed. I had a secret recipe for Sacher torte. I used to savor fresh, hot croissants on Sunday mornings with Matthias.
I used to eat. I used to like to eat, then I grew scared to eat, ceased to eat. Now my stomach hurts; I have been anorexic so long that I have forgotten how to eat.
Dinner is over, my first real meal in years. But the anxiety has just begun. It is 7:28. The day is settling down but my feet, heart, and mind are racing.
Direct Care says:
Anna, sit down please. Stop pacing like that. You’re making everybody uncomfortable.
But I cannot. I am going to be sick.
I need to step outside.
You cannot.
No, I cannot breathe. I cannot stay indoors, sit down, or stop pacing. Or do this. I want my anorexia back! I want to leave!
The clock hits 7:30. The doorbell rings.
19
Matthias is standing at the door, clean shaven, hair handsomely combed, holding a red rose and looking extremely ill at ease. He is wearing a crisp blue shirt that I like, one I had ironed last week. Last week. Another world and time away, neither of which seems real.
For an instant I stand, stunned, expecting him to disappear when I blink. He does not. I blink again, just in case. Then I fly into his arms.
I am touching Matthias. Hugging Matthias as though I have not seen him in forever. It has been forever since he dropped me off here only a few hours ago. The heat from his chest. I had forgotten the rhythm of his heart on my ear. My husband holds me stiffly, unpleasantly aware that we are being watched.
A curious crew of six pale girls and Direct Care stand behind me. I do not notice them, too busy showering him with kisses and questions:
What are you doing here? I cannot believe this! Are you allowed to be here?
When I finally let him he hands me the rose that is now less crimson than his face, and says in a flushed voice:
They told me visiting hours were at seven thirty.
Visiting hours. Visiting hours! How had I not registered that? I must have misplaced that piece of information in the pile I was given at orientation. I ask Direct Care:
How much time do I have?
Ninety minutes,
she says,
till I call you for the evening snack. You may not go outside unsupervised yet, but you may go to your room.
I am so happy I do not even revolt against the house rules; that I am twenty-six and have just been told that I “may” take my husband to my room. The rules of the real world do not apply here, in the house at 17 Swann Street. I accept that, for now; I only have eighty-nine minutes with Matthias left.
Then a sobering realization: it is past seven thirty. I look at the front door and back at the other girls. No other visitor is here. Suddenly I feel inconsiderate for having kissed Matthias in public. I push him back gently, and with an effort at retenue, take him upstairs to my room.
Our restraint lasts until he closes the door of the Van Gogh room … then we kick our shoes off and race toward the bed. We kiss till we are both out of breath.
You bought me a rose,
I finally say.
I missed you,
he replies.
I missed you,
I say and realize that I no longer have a stomachache.
He touches my fingers. They are cold. He rubs them, my hands, my feet. I massage his shoulders and neck, pressing at the points I know are always tense. Both acts feel delicately, painfully familiar. We used to do this all the time; spend hours kissing, touching one another, tracing maps on each other’s skin.
I am not sure exactly when we stopped. Perhaps before Christmas last year. It had come gradually. Less, then less time spent kissing, touching. Matthias had blamed his exhaustion after work, the weather, perhaps a flu. I had believed him because it had suited me. I had no interest in, energy for sex.
How did your first day go?
he asks.
Tell me everything.
I scrunch my nose. I say,
You go first.
He counters,
We’ll take turns. You start.
So I do, with dinner, the only concrete achievement to report. I tell him I ate hummus, a bagel, some carrots, and yogurt. He stares at me in disbelief:
You ate all of that, Anna?
He kisses me and I decide, perhaps prematurely, that eating dinner was worth it.
Now your turn.
He tells me he searched everywhere for the coffee this afternoon. To which I reply:
Left cupboard. Second shelf. The tin with a red lid.
I tell him about orientation, the other girls, my first meeting with the therapist. He tells me about the drive to work after leaving me here. The hollow apartment at six in the evening made worse by the missing coffee. Television and cereal for dinner, from the box. I ask him what he watched. He cannot remember. It does not matter. Then we just hold hands.
He breaks the silence first:
How do I determine where my side of the bed ends and yours begins?
I hear the question he is not asking. The answer is: I do not know. I do not know if we will be okay. I want to tell him we will. I want to reassure and comfort this man, this boy sitting on my bed. I answer in the same code:
I left you a container of spaghetti with mushrooms in the fridge.
The trouble with visiting hours, the trouble with happiness, is that time ticks and both end. Our treacherous ninety minutes fly over us as we just sit on the bed. A glance at his watch and Matthias begins lacing up his first shoe. He pauses to look at me:
This reminds me of when we first started dating.
I remember us then. The little cupboard room we lived in, the student stipend we lived on. The novelty of his smell. The first time he put his arm on my chest and fell asleep; the reassuring weight of him.
He turns to his second shoe and I to the photograph of that first morning on the whiteboard.
You look like you did in that photograph. Do you remember that morning?
He looks at it and me and us and neither of us says, out loud, that life has changed, we have both changed since that photograph.
He is brave and quiet and I know that he is returning to an empty home. To whatever cereal is still in the box and a container of spaghetti. Because of me tonight, for the first time in years, we will both go to bed alone.
I stop his shoelace tying and kiss him on the lips, nose, cheeks, collarbones, eyelids and lashes, chest. I kiss him enough to last him, I hope, until visiting hours tomorrow.
For a second, we are not in Bedroom 5 of the house at 17 Swann Street. For a second we are in that photograph. Then Matthias pulls away and we are back.
Date tomorrow night?
I will be here.
And the night after that, and after that?
I will still be here.
Matthias leaves at 9:00 P.M.
I had been instructed during orientation not to open my bedroom window. Flight and suicide prevention, Direct Care had explained. Well, I am not going anywhere, not if Matthias is coming tomorrow. I open the window rebelliously and watch our blue car drive away.
I think of Matthias in our studio apartment, on pause in our bed and our life. I think of Van Gogh in my Van Gogh room. Open windows at the Saint-Paul asylum. Starry, starry nights and flower shops. Then Direct Care comes by:
Time for the evening snack. The other girls have started. And close that window, Anna.
20
You can always tell when Matthias and Anna are nearby.
General chuckle.
Ah bon?
Oui, just listen closely and follow the little kissing sounds.
Anna turned tomato red, but both she and Matthias laughed. They had to admit Frédéric had a point. They were always making kissing sounds.
Are we one of those couples?
she asked.
We are,
Matthias replied solemnly.
Anna, we are one of those annoying couples that make everyone around them cringe.