Since She's Been Gone, page 13
“Yes …”
“This is Ramona Marino,” she says.
Ramona … Marino … My foggy, starved brain can’t place her.
“From Bell Hospital,” she says. “You contacted me yesterday about your late mother’s medical records.”
I now remember that she was the only hospital employee I spoke with who took down my information.
“Hi,” I say.
“It turns out we do have records for your mother,” she lets me know.
“You do?” I say.
“Yes, but the hospital won’t let me release them unless you come in person with her death certificate and your identification. They won’t accept emailed copies. You mentioned you’re in LA, so I’m not sure how that could work—”
“I’m actually in New York now,” I interrupt.
“Oh, great,” she says. “I’m not at the hospital. I’m at the office building next door on the fourth floor.”
She gives me the address. I jot it down on a napkin, about to leave, when Mabel walks back to me with her pink apron.
“You barely ate,” she says, pointing to the bagel that’s only missing one bite.
“I’m in a rush,” I say.
“Let me get you some foil so you can take it to go,” she says.
“It’s fine,” I say, picking up the twenty I dropped on the table, handing it to her. “Keep the change.”
“Thank you,” she says, putting her hand on my shoulder. “Remember, take care of yourself.”
I nod my head and leave.
CHAPTER
34
April 1998
“WE’RE PREPARING FOR your discharge,” Dr. Larsen told me during our daily therapy session.
“Discharge?” I said. The word stuck in my throat.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s time. You’re ready,” she told me.
I sure didn’t feel ready. Even though there were concrete goalposts I could point to that marked progress in my recovery, like how my shoes and comforter were returned to me, and the fact I was eating a variety of foods with more ease, I was still terrified. Change is hard for those used to the rigid tendencies of eating disorders, and I was no exception.
It had been three and a half months since I had first arrived at Better Horizons, and Dr. Larsen, the nurse, Iris, Kyle, and the entire staff had grown to feel like family. Contemplating leaving them and returning to a house without Mom was too overwhelming.
“I don’t want to go,” I told Dr. Larsen.
“That’s understandable,” she said.
“What if I relapse?” I asked her.
“I’ll still be here,” she told me. “But keep in mind, you’re not the girl who arrived here in January.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“You just told me you don’t want to leave and are scared to go.”
I thought about that. When I first arrived, all I wanted to do was leave.
“I’m also nervous about school and if I’ll be able to maintain my recovery there,” I told Dr. Larsen.
“You’ll attend an outpatient program a few nights a week near your home and build a recovery community. You won’t be alone. And your teachers will help you make up the work you’ve missed. You’ll have the summer to do that as well.”
I could feel the tears bubbling in my eyes.
“I don’t think I can do this without you,” I finally admitted. I realized she was the closest thing to a mother figure I had had since Mom. The prospect of letting her go had echoes of losing Mom.
“I believe that you can. You’ve learned how to fight ED, the most ferocious foe, which means you can do anything with your life. You have so much to be proud of. I’ll still be here, rooting for you on the sidelines. Someone you can always turn to.”
“When am I leaving?” I asked, blinking away tears.
“In a couple of days,” she said.
Two days later, I walked down the same stairs I had tiptoed down a few months before when I had tried running away. But this time, I had my luggage in my hands, and I was going home. The entire staff was waiting for me in the living room and started clapping.
Dr. Larsen handed me a goodbye book that they had all signed. She hugged me and whispered in my ear, “This isn’t the end. It’s the beginning of your life.”
At the time, I had no idea that over a decade later, under very different circumstances, she’d make a reappearance in my life.
CHAPTER
35
RAMONA MAKES COPIES of Mom’s death certificate and my driver’s license. She’s in her early thirties and has long, wavy dirty blond hair pulled back by a thin silver headband with rhinestones.
“Thank you for following up,” I tell her.
“My mom died when I was ten,” she says. “I know what it’s like to try to piece their lives together after they’re gone.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“There are so many things I wish I could ask her—some important, some silly. Know what I mean?” she asks.
I nod.
“How will I know if I’ve found the one? Am I allergic to bees? Is it normal to wonder if you’re fulfilling your life’s purpose? Sorry,” she says, blushing. “This isn’t very professional.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” I say.
“I’ll be back with your mom’s records.” She stands up and leaves the room with the photocopies.
ED is still hustling me about eating the bite of bagel. I cover my ears like old times, trying to tune him out, when Ramona returns.
“You okay?” she asks.
I quickly drop my hands from my ears back to my sides. “My ears are still popping from the plane,” I lie.
“I hate when that happens,” she says.
I notice the single sheet of paper she’s holding. And my heart starts to flutter like my entire future hinges on this one thin slice of tree.
“I forgot to mention on the phone that the year your mom was admitted to the hospital is different from the one you asked about,” she says.
“It wasn’t 1997?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “It was 1974.”
1974? I quickly do the math in my head. Mom was a college student then.
“She spent a month at the hospital,” Ramona adds.
“A month?” I repeat, stunned.
Ramona pushes the paper toward me.
Irene Mayer, DOB: 01-02-1955
Admitted: March 23, 1974.
Discharged: April 27, 1974.
Mom never told me she was hospitalized during college, let alone for a month.
“This record doesn’t explain why she was admitted,” I say.
“The hospital’s gone through several system upgrades since the seventies. They stopped keeping track of admittance reasons after 1990,” Ramona explains. “You could try NYU. They might have it in their records.”
“Okay,” I say.
I thank her again for following up with me before leaving.
When I step outside, I stare at Bell Hospital next door, feeling more confused than when I arrived. Mom spent a month here in college, and I have no idea why.
My phone starts ringing. It’s Eddie, and I quickly pick up.
“Hi,” he says. “Just checking in. Everything okay?”
“Yes,” I say.
“When are you going back to Paul’s for lunch?” he asks.
“After I go to the NYU registrar’s office. I just found out my mom was hospitalized for a month during college, and I’m trying to find out why.”
“Okay,” he says. I can tell he’s trying to cover his worry. “Please call me when you’re back at his place.”
“I promise I will.”
“And Beans …” He stops himself.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Sarah misses you,” he says.
“She texted me earlier,” I let him know.
“She did?” he asks.
“I guess she got a hold of your phone,” I say.
He lets out a small chuckle that briefly cuts through his worry. “That’s a first. I had no idea she knew my passcode.”
“An early adopter,” I say. “And I miss you both.”
* * *
The line at the NYU registrar’s office is endless. Purple and white signs line the wall with instructions for registering online. A female student in front of me with a dyed blue bob is tapping her foot while listening to headphones.
When it’s finally my turn, I walk up to a thin man in his forties with a long, pointed nose and one deep crow line between his brows. He waits for me to speak first.
“Hi,” I say. “I recently learned that my mother was hospitalized for a month while she was a student at the Tisch School of Arts, and I’m trying to find out why for my own medical reasons. Is this something that would be in your records?”
“What was her name?” he asks.
“Irene Mayer.”
He types on his keyboard. I notice the name tag pinned to his brown shirt pocket: Neil.
“Thank you for helping me, Neil,” I say.
“I can’t find her,” he says. “When was she hospitalized?”
“March to April of 1974,” I say.
“She wouldn’t be in this database,” he explains. “That was too long ago.”
“Do you know who I might be able to speak with that has access to older records?” I ask.
“Technically, I’m not supposed to access them, but since you thanked me …” He types some more.
“Thank you,” I make sure to say again.
He stares intently at his computer screen, searching and searching.
“I found her,” he finally says.
“You did?” I say more excitedly than I meant to.
“She was enrolled as a freshman in the Tisch School of Arts in the fall of 1973. It looks like she went on leave in spring semester of 1974.”
“On leave?” I say.
“She took a semester off,” he says.
A semester? According to the Bell hospital record, she was only hospitalized for a month between March and April of 1974. Why would she have taken an entire semester off?
“After she returned to the university, she transferred out of the Tisch School of Arts and into the College of Arts and Science,” Neil continues.
“Really?” I say. I thought she’d graduated from Tisch. She always made it sound that way.
“Is there any mention of why she took a semester off?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “But I see that she still graduated on time. Must’ve been a smart cookie to make up an entire semester.”
I wonder if I can contact someone who was with her at Tisch to see if they know why she took a semester off and transferred colleges within the university. The problem is she didn’t keep in touch with any friends from NYU, at least none that I know of. Maybe that was by design, related to what Pearl said, how Mom told her she was relieved to put New York behind her.
“Are you done yet?” a male student behind me in vintage Levi’s calls out.
Neil shakes his head behind the Plexiglas, displeased with the display of rudeness. “No, she’s not,” Neil tells him. The student rolls his eyes.
“Do you by any chance have a list of Tisch alumni that were freshmen in the fall of 1973?” I ask.
“The university doesn’t give out personal alumni information. Maybe try LinkedIn? You could do a search for NYU alumni that graduated the same year as your mom.”
The hope I felt a few minutes ago when Neil found Mom’s name in the database vanishes, and the desperation settles back in. He clocks my disappointment.
“Do you live in New York?” he asks me.
I shake my head.
“I can give you a pass for the university library if you want to search on one of their computers,” he says.
“Thank you,” I say. “I’d appreciate that.”
He hands me a pass. I thank him again and leave my business card for him to contact me if he comes across anything else.
I turn around to leave, passing the guy in Levi’s, who groans, “Finally.”
When I open the door to exit the registrar’s office, I almost bump into a man entering who puts up his right hand to stop me from crashing into him. I notice a small heart-shaped birthmark that almost looks like a tattoo on the top of his hand.
“Watch it,” he says.
CHAPTER
36
April 1998
RETURNING HOME AFTER Better Horizons was hard. Mom’s absence in our home was profound. Unlike before, when ED had given me a way out of feeling my grief by obsessing over my weight and food, I wasn’t running away from my sadness anymore.
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.” She shakes 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.
CHAPTER
37
I’M SEATED AT a 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.”
“This is Ramona Marino,” she says.
Ramona … Marino … My foggy, starved brain can’t place her.
“From Bell Hospital,” she says. “You contacted me yesterday about your late mother’s medical records.”
I now remember that she was the only hospital employee I spoke with who took down my information.
“Hi,” I say.
“It turns out we do have records for your mother,” she lets me know.
“You do?” I say.
“Yes, but the hospital won’t let me release them unless you come in person with her death certificate and your identification. They won’t accept emailed copies. You mentioned you’re in LA, so I’m not sure how that could work—”
“I’m actually in New York now,” I interrupt.
“Oh, great,” she says. “I’m not at the hospital. I’m at the office building next door on the fourth floor.”
She gives me the address. I jot it down on a napkin, about to leave, when Mabel walks back to me with her pink apron.
“You barely ate,” she says, pointing to the bagel that’s only missing one bite.
“I’m in a rush,” I say.
“Let me get you some foil so you can take it to go,” she says.
“It’s fine,” I say, picking up the twenty I dropped on the table, handing it to her. “Keep the change.”
“Thank you,” she says, putting her hand on my shoulder. “Remember, take care of yourself.”
I nod my head and leave.
CHAPTER
34
April 1998
“WE’RE PREPARING FOR your discharge,” Dr. Larsen told me during our daily therapy session.
“Discharge?” I said. The word stuck in my throat.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s time. You’re ready,” she told me.
I sure didn’t feel ready. Even though there were concrete goalposts I could point to that marked progress in my recovery, like how my shoes and comforter were returned to me, and the fact I was eating a variety of foods with more ease, I was still terrified. Change is hard for those used to the rigid tendencies of eating disorders, and I was no exception.
It had been three and a half months since I had first arrived at Better Horizons, and Dr. Larsen, the nurse, Iris, Kyle, and the entire staff had grown to feel like family. Contemplating leaving them and returning to a house without Mom was too overwhelming.
“I don’t want to go,” I told Dr. Larsen.
“That’s understandable,” she said.
“What if I relapse?” I asked her.
“I’ll still be here,” she told me. “But keep in mind, you’re not the girl who arrived here in January.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“You just told me you don’t want to leave and are scared to go.”
I thought about that. When I first arrived, all I wanted to do was leave.
“I’m also nervous about school and if I’ll be able to maintain my recovery there,” I told Dr. Larsen.
“You’ll attend an outpatient program a few nights a week near your home and build a recovery community. You won’t be alone. And your teachers will help you make up the work you’ve missed. You’ll have the summer to do that as well.”
I could feel the tears bubbling in my eyes.
“I don’t think I can do this without you,” I finally admitted. I realized she was the closest thing to a mother figure I had had since Mom. The prospect of letting her go had echoes of losing Mom.
“I believe that you can. You’ve learned how to fight ED, the most ferocious foe, which means you can do anything with your life. You have so much to be proud of. I’ll still be here, rooting for you on the sidelines. Someone you can always turn to.”
“When am I leaving?” I asked, blinking away tears.
“In a couple of days,” she said.
Two days later, I walked down the same stairs I had tiptoed down a few months before when I had tried running away. But this time, I had my luggage in my hands, and I was going home. The entire staff was waiting for me in the living room and started clapping.
Dr. Larsen handed me a goodbye book that they had all signed. She hugged me and whispered in my ear, “This isn’t the end. It’s the beginning of your life.”
At the time, I had no idea that over a decade later, under very different circumstances, she’d make a reappearance in my life.
CHAPTER
35
RAMONA MAKES COPIES of Mom’s death certificate and my driver’s license. She’s in her early thirties and has long, wavy dirty blond hair pulled back by a thin silver headband with rhinestones.
“Thank you for following up,” I tell her.
“My mom died when I was ten,” she says. “I know what it’s like to try to piece their lives together after they’re gone.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“There are so many things I wish I could ask her—some important, some silly. Know what I mean?” she asks.
I nod.
“How will I know if I’ve found the one? Am I allergic to bees? Is it normal to wonder if you’re fulfilling your life’s purpose? Sorry,” she says, blushing. “This isn’t very professional.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” I say.
“I’ll be back with your mom’s records.” She stands up and leaves the room with the photocopies.
ED is still hustling me about eating the bite of bagel. I cover my ears like old times, trying to tune him out, when Ramona returns.
“You okay?” she asks.
I quickly drop my hands from my ears back to my sides. “My ears are still popping from the plane,” I lie.
“I hate when that happens,” she says.
I notice the single sheet of paper she’s holding. And my heart starts to flutter like my entire future hinges on this one thin slice of tree.
“I forgot to mention on the phone that the year your mom was admitted to the hospital is different from the one you asked about,” she says.
“It wasn’t 1997?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “It was 1974.”
1974? I quickly do the math in my head. Mom was a college student then.
“She spent a month at the hospital,” Ramona adds.
“A month?” I repeat, stunned.
Ramona pushes the paper toward me.
Irene Mayer, DOB: 01-02-1955
Admitted: March 23, 1974.
Discharged: April 27, 1974.
Mom never told me she was hospitalized during college, let alone for a month.
“This record doesn’t explain why she was admitted,” I say.
“The hospital’s gone through several system upgrades since the seventies. They stopped keeping track of admittance reasons after 1990,” Ramona explains. “You could try NYU. They might have it in their records.”
“Okay,” I say.
I thank her again for following up with me before leaving.
When I step outside, I stare at Bell Hospital next door, feeling more confused than when I arrived. Mom spent a month here in college, and I have no idea why.
My phone starts ringing. It’s Eddie, and I quickly pick up.
“Hi,” he says. “Just checking in. Everything okay?”
“Yes,” I say.
“When are you going back to Paul’s for lunch?” he asks.
“After I go to the NYU registrar’s office. I just found out my mom was hospitalized for a month during college, and I’m trying to find out why.”
“Okay,” he says. I can tell he’s trying to cover his worry. “Please call me when you’re back at his place.”
“I promise I will.”
“And Beans …” He stops himself.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Sarah misses you,” he says.
“She texted me earlier,” I let him know.
“She did?” he asks.
“I guess she got a hold of your phone,” I say.
He lets out a small chuckle that briefly cuts through his worry. “That’s a first. I had no idea she knew my passcode.”
“An early adopter,” I say. “And I miss you both.”
* * *
The line at the NYU registrar’s office is endless. Purple and white signs line the wall with instructions for registering online. A female student in front of me with a dyed blue bob is tapping her foot while listening to headphones.
When it’s finally my turn, I walk up to a thin man in his forties with a long, pointed nose and one deep crow line between his brows. He waits for me to speak first.
“Hi,” I say. “I recently learned that my mother was hospitalized for a month while she was a student at the Tisch School of Arts, and I’m trying to find out why for my own medical reasons. Is this something that would be in your records?”
“What was her name?” he asks.
“Irene Mayer.”
He types on his keyboard. I notice the name tag pinned to his brown shirt pocket: Neil.
“Thank you for helping me, Neil,” I say.
“I can’t find her,” he says. “When was she hospitalized?”
“March to April of 1974,” I say.
“She wouldn’t be in this database,” he explains. “That was too long ago.”
“Do you know who I might be able to speak with that has access to older records?” I ask.
“Technically, I’m not supposed to access them, but since you thanked me …” He types some more.
“Thank you,” I make sure to say again.
He stares intently at his computer screen, searching and searching.
“I found her,” he finally says.
“You did?” I say more excitedly than I meant to.
“She was enrolled as a freshman in the Tisch School of Arts in the fall of 1973. It looks like she went on leave in spring semester of 1974.”
“On leave?” I say.
“She took a semester off,” he says.
A semester? According to the Bell hospital record, she was only hospitalized for a month between March and April of 1974. Why would she have taken an entire semester off?
“After she returned to the university, she transferred out of the Tisch School of Arts and into the College of Arts and Science,” Neil continues.
“Really?” I say. I thought she’d graduated from Tisch. She always made it sound that way.
“Is there any mention of why she took a semester off?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “But I see that she still graduated on time. Must’ve been a smart cookie to make up an entire semester.”
I wonder if I can contact someone who was with her at Tisch to see if they know why she took a semester off and transferred colleges within the university. The problem is she didn’t keep in touch with any friends from NYU, at least none that I know of. Maybe that was by design, related to what Pearl said, how Mom told her she was relieved to put New York behind her.
“Are you done yet?” a male student behind me in vintage Levi’s calls out.
Neil shakes his head behind the Plexiglas, displeased with the display of rudeness. “No, she’s not,” Neil tells him. The student rolls his eyes.
“Do you by any chance have a list of Tisch alumni that were freshmen in the fall of 1973?” I ask.
“The university doesn’t give out personal alumni information. Maybe try LinkedIn? You could do a search for NYU alumni that graduated the same year as your mom.”
The hope I felt a few minutes ago when Neil found Mom’s name in the database vanishes, and the desperation settles back in. He clocks my disappointment.
“Do you live in New York?” he asks me.
I shake my head.
“I can give you a pass for the university library if you want to search on one of their computers,” he says.
“Thank you,” I say. “I’d appreciate that.”
He hands me a pass. I thank him again and leave my business card for him to contact me if he comes across anything else.
I turn around to leave, passing the guy in Levi’s, who groans, “Finally.”
When I open the door to exit the registrar’s office, I almost bump into a man entering who puts up his right hand to stop me from crashing into him. I notice a small heart-shaped birthmark that almost looks like a tattoo on the top of his hand.
“Watch it,” he says.
CHAPTER
36
April 1998
RETURNING HOME AFTER Better Horizons was hard. Mom’s absence in our home was profound. Unlike before, when ED had given me a way out of feeling my grief by obsessing over my weight and food, I wasn’t running away from my sadness anymore.
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.” She shakes 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.
CHAPTER
37
I’M SEATED AT a 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.”
