I recall the warmth of the plastic pouches, heavy in my palms. I’d never meant to leave them there. Bags are my last option. They were only for when she was in the bathroom or if I’m having a really rough go and I can’t get out of bed. I must disgust her.
I wipe my knuckle against my face, crying numbly.
“I was so scared.” June covers her face with her hands and bursts into ragged sobs.
Her crying makes me cry harder.
“You scared me so much. Worse than Mom. Worse than anything. I almost didn’t come here,” she says throatily. “If anything had happened to you while they were at work and I was here…”
I hadn’t known. And the shame of it throttles me.
I hated June for going to New York. At the time, I couldn’t believe that she would. She knocked on my door as she was leaving. I was catatonic when the garage door closed, this time with my sister on the other side. I cried so long and hard, my shoulders cramped from heaving.
“I thought maybe if I brought you here, if I kept you close by, you’d be okay.” She searches my eyes. “But I know you’re still doing it.”
My sister grips my arm. “Jayne,” she says. “It’s your hands. You can’t stop smelling them. That’s your tell. That’s how I know when you do it. We can get whatever help you need. We’ll get you the best. You just have to get better.”
chapter 46
I look up the address. I’m early, but I’m in the right spot.
According to the pamphlet, there are meetings all over the city, but this one, the only one at this time, is in a claptrap playhouse in the West Village. I walk from June’s. I pass the bakery where I met Ivy, the basketball courts, and a slice spot across from a church. The Thanksgiving decorations are up. It’s perverse how Americans need their cartoon turkeys to seem thrilled at the prospect of being eaten. You’d think they’d slap googly eyes and cartoon smiles on smallpox blankets to go with them. On the corner where I hang a left, there’s a Chihuahua tied to a bike rack, an upturned U. He’s wearing a tiny lilac cowboy hat.
The location is sandwiched between two comedy clubs and features a narrow corridor, black sticky floors, and a rickety, uneven staircase with silver skid guards trimmed on the lip of each step. I want to leave but don’t.
On the second-floor landing, I pass a closed door, behind which someone’s singing a lusty rendition of “Be Our Guest,” that song from Beauty and the Beast. I have no expectations and I’m not a joiner, but the invitation to snoop in New York buildings I don’t know about is irresistible. There’s a bathroom on the third floor. There are two stalls and it’s just me. I’m never in the West Village, but I catch myself thinking that in a pinch, it’s not a bad bathroom to add to the collection. Even when I hope not to ever need them again.
Three thoughts persistently bang around in my head. That they’ll laugh me out of the room for not being fat or thin enough. That the lack of any cost of admission means it’s a cult. And that I’m not sick enough to be with sick people and that being with sick people might wind up being contagious. A truly diseased part of my brain wonders if I’ll be able to pick up any weight-loss pointers.
The room is bleak when I poke my head into the indicated door. I check the time—we’re only four minutes from starting and there are only two people in there. An older Black woman with bright-green eyes and her raincoat zipped over her lumpy purse and an Asian woman in workout clothes who seems like the type of Asian who folds all her underwear the same way.
They’re chatting amiably while setting up chairs, so I grab one off the pile and do the same.
Voices echo in the hallway, and three women enter. They have expensive blowouts and wear designer rubber boots and enormous engagement rings. They’re fancy, these women. I’ve never been to the Hamptons, but I’m willing to bet they have.
They’re followed by two men who smell like cigarette smoke. One has a neck tattoo, and the other, a silver-haired man of about eighty, wears his hair in a small ponytail. Bright hellos and hugs abound. In three minutes the room is filled with the most random assortment of humans.
All told, we’re a smiling group of about thirty straight from central casting, varying ages, races, and sizes. A heavyset man with a yarmulke on his head unravels an iPhone charger and plugs it into the wall. More hugs are dispensed, but they seem to have gotten the memo not to touch me. I position myself in the back for a swift exit and so I can study everyone from the rear. A figure sits next to me. She’s greyhound slender, a teen. In worn Stan Smiths, with a pierced nose and a thigh gap you could lob a softball through, she smiles at me with this beatific light and I feel as though I’ve been lied to.
No one looks like they’re in enough pain.
No one looks like how I feel.
No one looks like they do the things I do.
We gather in a circle holding hands, and the intimacy coupled with the praying in unison instantly freaks me out. At the mention of God, a door in my head shuts with a definitive no. These people—these weirdos—all take deep cleansing breaths. And as we sit down, I pull out my phone and mentally set a timer. After fifteen minutes, I’ll leave.
We take seats. There’s a row of six chairs in front facing the rest of us. It’s not unlike the configuration at church. The Hamptons lady sitting dead center reads a placard from a binder. There will be a speaker, she announces. I’m hoping for one of the fancy women, perhaps the one in a Moncler jacket and mink lashes, but it’s the dude with the beatnik ponytail seated next to her. I have no idea what this old white man can possibly tell me.
He smiles ruefully. He announces that he’s given up. He chuckles nervously and asks his higher power to speak through him, and I wonder if he’ll fall to the ground in a rapturous fit and ululate in tongues. The preemptive secondhand embarrassment radiates from my chest down to my arms and legs. I can’t look at any of them, but I listen.
“Hi. My name’s Cyrus, and I’m a gratefully recovering anorexic and bulimic,” the speaker begins.
“Hi, Cyrus,” they call back cheerfully.
I’m boggled that what I’ve seen of meetings in movies is real.
“I’m also an overeater, exercise bulimic, sugar addict, and laxative abuser.” I can’t believe this man who’s old enough to live through wars and probably protested against Vietnam would admit this to a roomful of people.
I didn’t know bulimics even came in male. Especially grandpas.
As he talks, my desire to leave dissipates. It’s like overhearing an argument or watching a fire. Witnessing a rando who could have come off the B52 bus enumerate all of his shameful pathologies is deeply fascinating. It seems so out of place in polite society. He may as well be naked.
Cyrus recounts how he’d always been a fat kid. He calls it husky, which makes a few of the attendees laugh. I brace myself, searching his face for indignation, waiting for ridicule, but Cyrus seems to light up at the amusement. He talks about how his parents were perfectly nice people. Suburban. His father was a doctor, his mother a fundraiser, and neither of them was particularly around. He confesses how difficult it is to find a reason for it, but he was always filled with a deep loneliness. He leans forward, and his knee starts to jog.