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Returning to restricting my food was tempting, but I knew the path it would lead me down—Emily’s. Still, eating was difficult at home.
Rascal was a marvel to me, how he ate with so much ease. How he’d lick the inside of his bowl dry and the outside too, making sure he hadn’t left a morsel of dog food behind.
Every time Dad and I were in the kitchen, he’d run up to us, bending his head sideways, lifting one of his paws, trying to look as cute as possible, hoping to score another crumb.
Sometimes when I struggled to eat, I tried channeling him, imagining him licking every last bite without a care in the world.
Dad did his best to serve me different kinds of food. I no longer screamed, hit him, or threw plates on the ground. Instead, I shared with him how I felt.
“I’m scared I’m going to gain weight from this pasta,” I told him one night.
“It’s okay to be scared,” he said. “But you need to eat it so you can grow.”
The week I returned home, I began an outpatient program. It was at a recovery center in West Hollywood perched above the Sunset Strip and its legendary landmarks, including Whisky a Go Go, the Viper Room, and The Comedy Store. It was the one closest to where we lived, and Dad drove me there.
In a no-frills, cramped office with one tiny window, I ate dinner with a group of fellow ED patients three times a week. The main difference from Better Horizons, apart from it not being inpatient, was that the group didn’t include any girls my age. The youngest woman was nineteen years old, and the rest were well into their twenties.
Because they were older than me, the magnitude of what ED had stolen from them—college degrees, jobs, marriages—was beyond anything I could have imagined as a teenager in high school. What these women had lost due to this disease was even more pronounced in the backdrop of their contemporaries flourishing in their careers and relationships.
Ginny, a twenty-six-year-old woman, was crying as she spoke about her fiancé, who had just broken up with her because of ED. “He said I keep choosing the eating disorder over our life together, and he’s lost hope that I’ll ever make a different choice. I don’t blame him,” she said. “I’m losing hope too.”
Another woman, Carmen, had just been put on leave from her law firm after passing out at a meeting with opposing counsel. “The partners told me that I can’t return until I have medical clearance from my doctor. But my rent doesn’t stop. My bills don’t either. And unemployment doesn’t cover everything. If they don’t take me back, I’m worried they won’t give me a reference to get a job somewhere else.” Sheshakes her head. “The saddest thing is when they first hired me, they told me I was partner material.”
Susie, a twenty-two-year-old graphic designer, was also on the cusp of losing her job due to exercise addiction. “I was going to the gym across from our office building during lunch. Every ten-minute break, I’d go there to run a mile on the treadmill. My boss started to notice. I could tell he thought it was weird. Last week the gym deactivated my membership and barred me from entering because they were scared I might die on one of their treadmills. So I bought my own and had it delivered to my apartment. I’ve been late to work every day this week because I can’t pull myself away from the treadmill. Yesterday, my boss gave me a final warning.”
I remember feeling out of place with these women and wishing there were girls my age, but being around them served a purpose. Listening to them made me realize death wasn’t the only possible endgame with ED. A hollowed-out life and living on the fringes were possibilities too.
Their stories shook me. I wanted a full life, the kind I knew my mom had imagined for me when she had me, but I still had my recovery floaties on, swimming in the shallow end of the recovery pool. I kept reminding myself what Dr. Larsen had told me—that she believed in me. Her words helped buoy me, especially knowing school was about to start, where I’d soon have to navigate much deeper waters.
CHAPTER37
I’M SEATED ATa desk in front of a computer inside the NYU library off of Washington Square Park, searching for alums on LinkedIn. Thousands of names come up. I don’t have the time to go through every single one to see if they attended Tisch in the fall semester of 1973 with Mom.
I stop typing, close my eyes, and try reaching back into the crevices of my brain to see if I can remember any time Mom spoke of anyone she went to NYU with … but nothing comes up.
I stand up, leave my stuff on the library desk, and walk outside to call Pearl, who thankfully picks up.
“Hi, it’s Beatrice,” I say.
“Are you okay?” she asks me.
“I’m fine, just had a question for you. Did my mom ever mention any friends of hers from NYU?”
She pauses before responding. “Are you trying to track down that other guy?”
“No, I’m trying to understand what happened to my mom when she was in New York and why she was glad to leave it like you told me.”
“She had a friend from NYU that once stayed with us,” she says.
“She did?”
“Yeah, she was a Broadway actress and came to LA one pilot season to see if she could book any TV roles. I don’t think anything came of it because she never ended up moving here.”
“Do you remember her name?” I ask.
“Liz, maybe? Or was it Polly? I’m not sure. It was over forty years ago. But I remember years later your mom mentioning that this woman was on Broadway in a groundbreaking play.”
A memory comes firing back at me. During my freshman year in high school, I signed up to be in the school musical—The Music Man. It was the first time I had ever participated in a school play.
