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I try hiding how defeated I feel, but Eddie picks up on it. “Don’t worry, Beans. There are a lot of houses on this block we can still try.”
We begin walking away when a frail old lady slowly opens the door.
“Hello,” she says, steadying herself on the frame. “Sorry, it takes me a while to get anywhere these days.”
“No worries,” I say, my hope lifting. “I don’t mean to bother you.”
“It’s no bother. It’s nice to see a smiling face,” she says.
I make sure to smile extra wide before asking her about Margot.
“I’m wondering if you know anything about a woman who lived next door back in the nineties. Her name was Margot Cadell Davis.”
The elderly woman shakes her head in disapproval. “A Greek tragedy.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“All the money in the world and addicted to everything you can imagine.”
The kind of patient Mom would have had.
“That’s very sad,” I say. “Did you know her personally? Do you know if she saw any therapists for her problems?”
“Too many to count. She was in and out of every rehab in town, but nothing ever stuck, even when she was pregnant. Lost a baby because of her addiction a couple of days after it was born. Still couldn’t get her act together and ended up overdosing. Who are you, by the way?”
“We’re friends of the family. They want me to write a profile for her for the National Alliance on Mental Illness to help raise awareness.” I’m surprised by how quickly I make up the lie.
The old lady nods her head. “Don’t tell them I said this, but I was relieved after she wasn’t my neighbor anymore. I wasn’t happy that she died, but she wasn’t easy to live next to.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I can’t count how many ambulances came barreling down this street to whisk her away because of overdoses. She also had a horrible boyfriend. They’d have loud screaming matches in the middle of the street.”
“That sounds very unpleasant,” I say.
She nods again. “One minute, she’d shout profanities at him. The next minute they’d be back to the hugging and I love yous. But it never lasted long before the fighting started again. I think he used her for her money. He was a bit older than her, maybe a decade—a beach bum and not even good at it. A neighbor across the street said he’d always wipe out whenever she saw him surfing. Didn’t stop him from driving around in his VW with a surfboard on top. Like he was the king of Malibu, even though he had the thickest New York accent I’d ever heard.”
CHAPTER15
January 1998
FIELD TRIPS ATBetter Horizons happened once a week and ranged from movie outings to the local mall. They were also earned. Girls who ate food were allowed to participate, and girls who chose liquid supplementation had to stay back.
I had been allowed to go on field trips the previous two weeks, visiting a photography museum and a botanical garden, because I had eaten food. But I hadn’t cared about those trips.
A few days after I began my strike against food and tried to run away, the field trip van was parked in front of the ranch again, ready to take the girls to a rescue shelter for dogs—thistrip I wanted to go on.
I missed Rascal desperately and wanted to be around other dogs who didn’t ask anything of me and who I felt understood me more than anyone, apart from ED.
No indoor pets were allowed at Better Horizons because a common ED trick is dropping food crumbs and letting dogs and cats eat them. So this trip was my only chance to be around dogs while I was there.
We were seated at the dining room table, waiting for breakfast before the van departed for the shelter.
Iris approached me with my plate of food—scrambled eggs, potatoes, and toast with butter.
“Ensure,” I said, snarling at Dr. Larsen, who was once again seated across from me.
“We’re going to the dog shelter today. If you want to join us, you’ll need to eat your breakfast,” she told me.
