“Well, you got a scholarship, for one thing. That knocked the price down a little.”
A scholarship? Ha. “I always thought it was weird that Wallingfield called them that,” I said.
“I know, right? Terrible name for it.” A trace of a smile appeared on Dad’s face.
I remembered on my first day, when Willa had talked about Wallingfield scholarships, how she’d had a tantrum in the dining room. How scared I’d been.
He collected my tray and brought it to me. “Eat,” he said. I noticed that they’d added the scrambled egg I’d erased last night. I picked up the spoon and took a careful bite of yogurt.
With my mouth full I said, “Dad, I wish you’d told me how much it cost. I would have come home.”
“I didn’t tell you so you would feel guilty. I just—I want you to know that we are seriously invested, with every part of us—whether it be money or our hearts—and we will do anything to get you better.” He paused. “Your treatment is worth it, Elizabeth. Anorexia kills people, and if Wallingfield can help you recover, it’ll be the best money we’ve ever spent. Hands down. But it’s on you now.”
Why did getting better have to suck so much? Usually, if you were getting better from a disease, you felt better, right?
“Dad, I want to be done with this. But it is so hard. So. Hard.” I speared a banana slice and slowly put it in my mouth.
He just listened.
“I liked going into a store and having everything be too big, and I liked feeling my ribs, my hip bones, the muscles in my thighs, my Achilles tendons, and my wrist bones. I don’t want to not feel them. And I loved that my stomach was flat. It made me feel special. I like my bones, Dad.”
Once I started, I couldn’t stop.
“Do you know what type of control it takes to not eat? To sit down with a stomach so empty it makes you dizzy and foggy and think about food every single second of the day and still skip breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert? Every day? Do you? It is so hard. But it’s amazing to know that no matter what your body tells you to do, you can control it.” It was like I was describing an elite athlete, an endurance runner or triathlete pushing through normal physical limits, not someone slowly starving herself.
Dad looked horrified.
“Elizabeth, I wish I could understand better. But what I know is that people beat this all the time.”
“But what if I don’t want to beat it?” There. The words were out there.
He took my hand. “Listen to me very carefully. We are not going to let this disease steal you from us.”
“I know, and a part of me does want to get well. I promise.”
He nodded.
I so wanted to believe what I said next. “Okay, Dad. I’ll try. I promise I’ll try. For you guys.”
Dad stood. “You know, Elizabeth, in the end, you can say you’ll try for us all you want, but it won’t mean anything unless you start trying for yourself.”
He stayed with me until I ate every single bit of food on my tray.
At snack time I came down to the kitchen and ate my granola bar and yogurt like a good girl even though I was still full. I ate my lunch, too—a can of Progresso lentil soup, two slices of bread with butter, a cup of green beans with 1 teaspoon of butter, a cup of strawberries sprinkled with ? cup of granola, and 8 ounces of milk. I finished in an hour. Mom and Dad were super cheery, saying, “Great job on that one!” after almost every bite, or “Well, there you go! Almost done now!”
Honestly, it was a little ridiculous. I felt like a seven-year-old at a soccer game, being praised just for running in the direction of the ball.
At 2:30 on the dot, Mary called on my cell phone. I took it in my bedroom. She said I wasn’t going back to Wallingfield. Yet. “However, if you decide you have no choice but to relapse,” she said, “you will.”
“I know. I don’t want to.” What I didn’t say was that I still wanted to be thin. I still wanted to fit into the jeans and skirts in my closet. In my heart I knew that to get better I had to dump them all, but a part of me couldn’t bear it. I had worked so hard for those clothes. Fitting into them had been my biggest achievement.
“So what am I supposed to do now?”
“Well, I know this is going to sound anticlimactic, but I think you are just going to have to trust that with time, things will change. The urges won’t be as strong. And it can help to create a distraction tool kit for when you start to feel like you might give in. Do you remember when we talked about it?”
“Yes.” Mary and I had worked on it at our last meeting together. A distraction tool kit is a list of things you can do when the anorexia voice in your head gets loud, like watch a funny movie, call a friend, go to the mall, listen to music, or do yoga. “But what if all that stuff doesn’t help?”
“Well, then you can call us. We have counselors on duty all the time.”
“Okay.” I wasn’t convinced.
“Elizabeth, what it comes down to is this. Wanting to get better, while important, isn’t enough. You have to work to get better. This isn’t a disease where you take medicine and then wait. You have to choose. Your recovery is one hundred percent up to you.”
After we hung up, I burrowed under a blanket and took a nap. It was only 3:15, but it felt like midnight.
*
My parents were already in their places when I came down for dinner at 7:30. “Your mother and I have come up with a contract,” Dad announced. “You agree to eat your meals. We agree to do everything we can to help you. If you break this contract, we will send you back to Wallingfield. Got it?”
Totally numb, I nodded and signed my name. Mom let out an audible sigh of relief as she went to the kitchen to get our plates. Mine was so full it looked like an entrée from the Cheesecake Factory. There was enough food on that plate for five people—the biggest chicken breast I’d ever seen, about five big portions of broccoli, and one massive baked potato, split with sour cream already getting all liquidy in the middle. I was supposed to eat all this?
My face must have given me away. Mom said, “This is what it said on your menu, honey. What’s wrong?”
She was right, but so, so wrong. Mom, the queen of diet portions, had royally screwed up my dinner. Sure, the menu said one chicken breast, but it didn’t say one chicken breast on steroids! And that potato—at Wallingfield they were never that big, and the sour cream was always served on the side. Always. And five pieces of broccoli with butter didn’t mean five separate heads. It meant five little pieces of the same head!
I cut a tiny piece of chicken and put it on my tongue. I chewed, tasting rosemary, garlic, and olive oil. The chicken was supposed to be plain. Somehow, I swallowed. I cut another piece. Across from me, Dad’s plate was as full as mine. Mom’s plate, however, looked like it always did: little islands of food surrounded by a sea of porcelain.