* * *
—
William and I went to a woman who specialized in eating disorders, and she was incredibly depressing to speak to. She said that for someone Chrissy’s age—twenty—that it was that much harder for them to come back, and then, as we tried to absorb this, she said, shaking her head, “It’s very sad, because she is in pain. People don’t do this unless they’re in pain.”
I remember that when we left her office, we were not angry with each other. We were both stunned, and we kind of walked around the streets not really knowing where we were going.
I have always a little bit hated that therapist.
* * *
—
I thought about this as I sat as still as a stone in a chair in my darkish hotel room. I thought about the fact that Chrissy had been that sick, and I think in a way for the first time I understood—I mean I understood this fully, with no mitigating in my mind, is what I am saying—that it had been my fault. Because I was the one who had walked out on the family.
* * *
—
I am not invisible no matter how deeply I feel that I am.
* * *
—
And then I remembered how during this time I had traveled alone to the college to speak to the dean there; I had thought that someone at the school could help. And I was an idiot. Because the dean was very unpleasant to me, she was really quite unpleasant, as she told me that when Chrissy got sick enough they would ask her to leave school, there was not one thing they could—or would—do for her. And Chrissy, during my brief visit out there, barely spoke to me; she was absolutely furious that I had contacted the dean. She said slowly, with her teeth almost clenched, “I cannot believe you came out here and saw that dean. I cannot believe you impinged on my privacy that way.”
* * *
—
I want to say—I mean I must say this if I am going to tell the truth—that during this time I went every day to a church nearby that little apartment I lived in and I got down on my knees and I prayed—when I say I prayed I mean that I knelt and waited until I felt a presence of something and then I thought: Oh please please God let her be all right, oh please please please please let my daughter be all right.
I didn’t bargain, I just asked. And always with an apology for asking. （I know there are so many other people who are terribly badly off as well and I am so sorry to ask for this personal favor, but nothing means more to me—please please please let my daughter be all right.）
When I was a child we had gone to the Congregational church in our town; we went every Thanksgiving for their free meal. My father hated Catholics. He said to go down on your knees was disgusting and that only small-minded people did that.
* * *
—
Chrissy got better, though it took a while. She went to a therapist who helped her, not the awful therapist that William and I had seen to talk about her.
* * *
—
Many years later, I spoke to a friend of mine who had been an Episcopalian priest, and he said to me, “Why do you think your praying for Chrissy did not help her?”
And I was astonished. It had never occurred to me.
* * *
—
But as I sat in that chair in my hotel room and thought of these things, I thought that what William had said was true. I was self-absorbed. And I remembered then that one time during those years I was having lunch with Becka in the city—she was home from college—and she was trying to tell me something （even now I can’t remember what she was trying to tell me） and I interrupted her and began to speak of my editor; I was having problems with her. And Becka burst out, “Mom! I’m trying to tell you something and all you can do is talk about your editor!” And she wept then.
Oddly, that moment clarified something to me that day—and clarified it again as I sat in the chair in the darkening Maine hotel room. It clarified to me for a moment who I really was: I was someone who did that. And I never forgot it.
But I had just done it again to William. He had been trying to talk to me about Richard Baxter, about his own work—and he was absolutely right: I just rolled right over it.
For a very long time I sat in that room, and a very real pain—I mean I felt this physically—was in my chest, as though small waves of it kept rolling over and over inside my chest. When it became completely dark, I turned on the overhead light and ordered a cheeseburger to be brought to the room.
* * *
What happened then is what used to happen in our marriage when we fought. Whoever became the loneliest first would give in. And so William knocked on my door and I let him in—he had taken a shower, and his hair was still wet, and he wore jeans with a navy blue T-shirt, this is when I noticed his tiny potbelly—and he looked at the cheeseburger, sort of congealed on my plate, and he said, “Oh Lucy.”