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I even partook in an equestrian therapy session, riding a horse, despite hating its smell. Any movement was better than none. It was exercise, after all.
I was in the grips of a severe exercise compulsion, an extension of my eating disorder, until Dr. Larsen appeared at our bedroom door one morning. Emily was at the nurses’ station having her feeding tube cleaned out, so I was alone.
“Good morning, Beatrice,” she said, stepping inside the room.
“What do you want?” I said.
She didn’t respond and walked toward my bed.
“Why are you in here?” I asked.
She pulled back the blanket from my bed, revealing a large egg-shaped circle of sweat on the bottom sheet.
“Your bedsheet is wet,” she said.
“So?” I said. “I sweat during the night when I sleep. Some people do.”
“That’s not why you sweat,” she said. “You’re exercising through the night. You’re also running up and down stairs all day. Your showering time has increased to the point that the skin on your elbows is cracking.” She pointed to two small ulcers, on each of my elbows. “Beginning tonight, a staff member will be seated by your bedroom door to ensure you don’t exercise at night. You’ll only have a bedsheet, no comforter. Showers will take place on alternate days, timed to three minutes. The staff has been instructed that you’re barred from doing any errands for them moving forward.”
“What is wrong with you, you fucking Nazi!?” I screamed at her. This was something, coming from a Jewish girl like me whose own grandmother had fled the Holocaust. “You micromanage every part of my life. You don’t even let me wear shoes. And now, you won’t even let me sleep with a blanket!”
“That’s right,” she calmly said. “For now.”
She was doing what was needed to corner ED. Going up against him meant playing a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. He’d always come up with new ways to restrict calories or expend energy. Someone had to be there constantly, boxing him into new corners in a sustained effort to extinguish him. At the time, I was unaware of this and was terrified that Dr. Larsen threatened my ability to burn calories.
“You’re just a narcissist that wants everyone to be like her, so they’ll be miserable too,” I told her.
“This isn’t you talking now,” she told me. “It’s ED. He’s pretending to be a comforting friend when he’s really a monster trying to destroy you. I’m here to tell him to take a hike until you’re strong enough to do it yourself. You may not believe me yet, but one day you’ll not only be strong enough, you’llwantto.”
As if, ED told me.
CHAPTER20
AS A PSYCHOLOGIST, I’m trained to observe what isn’t said—the unspoken. Because, often, the most important part of a patient’s story is what they deliberately or subconsciously leave out.
And there’s something I didn’t tell Eddie when he asked me to make a list—what Pearl told me this morning. When Mom first arrived in LA, she was relieved to have put New York behind her, but she wouldn’t tell Pearl why, not even when Pearl asked her, which was why Pearl was surprised when, years later, Mom decided to return to New York for her college reunion.
Why would Mom have gone to the reunion if she was happy to put New York behind her? I guess, maybe, if enough time had passed, she might’ve had a change of heart.
But she also told me she wasnervousbefore the trip. She said it was because some of her former classmates had gone on to have big theater careers, and she wondered if they’d still have anything in common. But maybe that wasn’t the reason. Maybe something happened to her in college that she was worried about revisiting.
When she returned from that trip, I saw her bruised body up close, which she said happened when she was mugged. After that incident, she warned me to stay away from NewYork. And I always did because Dad never seemed keen on me going there, either.
After he died, I was supposed to visit for a bachelorette weekend. But when my girlfriend called off her engagement, the weekend was called off too.
What was it about New York that made Mom so nervous about me going there? Did the Cadells try to go after her during the reunion weekend, and she worried they’d target me there if I went to college in the city or ever visited?
That doesn’t make sense, though, because if she’s still alive, it was her life in LA that she ultimately abandoned. And if she feared the Cadells might come after me, she would’ve been just as worried about it happening in LA.
Maybe she wasn’t worried about somethinghappeningto me in New York. Maybe she was nervous I’ddiscoversomething there. Something about her. Something that might end up compromising me …
I call several hospitals near NYU to see if they have any medical records of Mom being admitted as a patient after the mugging in 1997. A hospital record might provide more information about what really happened if what she told me wasn’t true.
I know it’s more than a long shot because of HIPAA laws, which I’m well versed in, but I’m desperate, so I still try. Every hospital employee I speak with tells me that I need to email them her death certificate and my identification as her daughter before they can look into it. Nobody can tell me when or if anyone from the records department will get back to me. Only one young woman even asks for my name and phone number to get back to me.
I know I’d have a better chance of getting answers in person. It’s harder to turn people away when they’re standing in front of you.
This is why I didn’t ask Eddie to put on the list what Pearl told me, because I would’ve come to the conclusion thatI’ve reached now: I need to go to the one place Mom warned me to stay away from—New York City.
