An Illicit Pursuit (7 page)

“It’s beautiful.” I hear Grace whisper. The
next songs follow, some from mine, others from romantic classics. I
can’t help but feel the rush of emotions overwhelming me through my
music. And apparently, I’m not the only one, because I spot tears
rolling down Grace’s face.

“Oh, Mom.” Adriana says and, before I know
it, she jumps from her seat and hugs her mother. Then her little
daughter, Joan, mimics her, then her husband. Soon the entire
family is wrapped up like a big snowball around Grace, with tears
covering their faces. Except for Adam. Once he notices what’s going
on, he springs to his feet and strides toward the house.

I stop in the middle of the song. “Did I do
something wrong?”

Grace raises her hand to wipe the tears away.
“Absolutely not, honey. Your songs brought back some wonderful
memories.”

Adriana chimes in. “Your voice is something
special. I’m glad the harpist ditched us.”

Embarrassed, I drop my gaze to my guitar.
“Thank you.”

“Thank you, darling,” Grace says. “Your voice
is pure from heaven. I couldn’t have had a better birthday
present.”

“What’s with Adam?” Nikki motions toward the
house.

“Shall I go check up on him?” I ask. Grace
nods, and I place my guitar inside its case and walk inside the
house to find Adam leaning on the counter in the kitchen, his back
turned to me.

I move toward him, leaning my back against
the counter next to him. “Too ashamed to show your tears?”

He looks at me. I’m taken aback that his eyes
are indeed wet with tears.

He tears a paper towel and dries his face.
“I’m not a macho man.”

“What made you run away like a little puppy,
then?”

“I can’t bear seeing my mother cry, even
though they are tears of joy. I’ve seen her crying enough times
that I can’t handle it anymore.” His voice cracks. He looks so
vulnerable and fragile, as though he’s not this huge, muscled
mass.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” A strong urge to hug and
comfort him fills me. I lift my hand and hold his arm gently,
unable to ignore the firm biceps jumping under my touch.

A sudden beep startles us. “The oven,” Adam
points out, walking away to turn it off. Grabbing a pair of oven
mitts, he pulls an enormous enamel pot out of the oven and
carefully places it in front of the window, facing the
backyard.

“Smells amazing,” I say, trying to sneak a
peek of the food when Adam opens the lid. I’m famished, and the
sight of the beef sizzling inside the pot isn’t helping.

“Nikki, Brendie, time to get busy,” Adam
shouts through the window. Thank God!

The girls run inside and set about carrying
wine glasses and china, and placing them on the large rectangular
table in the living room. The table is ready in a matter of
minutes. This tells me the two are well-practiced in terms of doing
the side chores.

As if sniffing the delicious smell of the
food, two more people arrive. An older man, who is Adam’s carbon
copy save for the grey shades in his hair and lines around his
eyes, introduces himself to me. “Dr. Peter Garnett, but you can
call me Peter. And this is my daughter number two, Eleanor.”

I shake hands with Peter and Eleanor. She’s
the only blonde among the five siblings, taking after Grace.

“He’s not a medical doctor,” Eleanor says
when we shake hands. “Just a professor in Anthropology. And I’m a
freshman in the same department.”

“Anthropology sounds interesting,” I mumble,
uncomfortable by the number of eyes staring at me all at once.

Grace sits at the head of the dinner table;
Nikki and Brendie on either side of her, Eleanor is next to Nikki,
I settle between Eleanor and Adam, and his father is at the other
end of the table. Adriana and her husband take their seats together
across, from me.

Between the murmurs of conversation, I hear
Adriana’s daughter is already sleeping in her bedroom. Which makes
me wonder whether Adriana, too, lives here in this house with her
husband and her daughter. The space wouldn’t be an issue, for
sure.

Adriana efficiently serves us the plates. The
beef is melting off my fork, so is the mashed potato with gravy.
Simple dishes turn into heavenly tastes in my mouth. I fill the
little space left on my plate with the delicious Greek salad with
lots of olives and feta cheese and dig in. Adam confirms my
suspicions about Adriana’s accommodation. After Grace had been
diagnosed with cancer, Adriana and her husband had bought the house
together with her father, in order to accommodate the entire
family.

Nikki is the first one to finish her plate.
She takes a large piece of the beef and biscuits for the second
round, while Brendie’s plate remains mostly untouched. She
mindlessly plays with the lettuce with her fork. I can’t help but
notice her delicate wrists and arms and sunken eyes, in comparison
to Nikki’s plumper figure.

Eleanor keeps me entertained about the
shortcomings of studying at the same department where her father
works. At some point, Peter asks me about my career. Before I can
swallow a big chunk of beef, Grace raves about my songs and the
exceptional quality of my voice. Feeling glad he didn’t ask me
about my love life—probably because he must be thinking there’s
something between Adam and me, and he wouldn’t be completely wrong
about it—I explain to him about my brief role in the movie.

“Her role is the best part of the movie,”
Adam adds when I swallow another piece of meat. I should probably
take a break from eating, so that I don’t make a fool of myself
while talking, but the food is addictive.

“You’re exaggerating.” I elbow his ribcage
gently and turn to Peter with an attempt to change the topic to
something other than me. “I’d really love to hear how you and Grace
met. You look great together. A perfect match, I must say. I love
hearing about true love stories. It gives me inspiration for
composing songs.”

“Well, I don’t know whether it’ll inspire any
songs, but here it goes,” Peter says and blows a kiss to Grace.
“Her fiancé was a friend of mine.”

I nearly choke on the potato in my mouth.
“Grace was engaged to another man when you two met for the first
time?” I can manage to ask between coughs. Now Adam’s pursuit of me
makes total sense. It’s in his genes. His existence happened based
on that.

As if Adam has read my thoughts, he chuckles
and pats on my back to ease my coughing. “Yeah, you heard him
right.”

My eyes dart between Adam and his father,
waiting for an explanation. His father continues, “When I saw Grace
with her fiancé for the first time, I knew they weren’t meant for
each other. Grace is, simply put, an elegant, beautiful woman just
like her name is, while her then fiancé, was everything but. I
spared her the trouble of an unsatisfying marriage and possibly a
heartbreaking divorce by stealing her.”

“Yes, you did, Love. And I’m thankful to you
for that,” Grace says, lifting her wine glass toward Peter.

I feel Adam’s gaze on me. I have little to no
doubt that he’s trying to telepathically persuade me that he wants
to save me from a potentially broken marriage, too. I’m tense, and
too much pressure makes me lose my appetite in a flash. Good thing
only a little mashed potato is left on my plate. I force down the
rest of the food and listen to the details of the love story of
Grace and Peter.

At one point, I get distracted when the twins
get up and leave at the same time, but I continue listening to
Peter. He loves talking, and from the tender look on Grace’s face,
she loves listening to him. A great match, indeed.

When the twins come back, I notice they
change seats. Nikki, the plumper one, is now sitting at Brendie’s
chair and eating her food, which makes it her third plate, while
Brendie touches nothing on the Nikki’s already empty plate. I look
at Adam and Grace to find out whether they notice it, too, but they
are both engrossed in Peter’s talk, like everyone else at the
table.

We move to the couches for the birthday cake
after the main dish. A chocolate-mousse cheesecake with two candles
in the shape of five and zero on it. Grace blows the candles, while
we sing the happy-birthday song for her. She thanks and hugs each
of us, while Adriana begins cutting the cake.

The cake is so delicious I’m pretty sure I
can finish it in one sitting with no problem. Shamelessly ignoring
all table manners, I ask for a second plate. I’m not the only one
asking for a second one. Nikki sweeps her first and second plate so
fast, as if horses are chasing after her, and then excuses
herself.

I feel very awkward at the familiarity of her
ritual, yet tell myself to ignore it, since it’s not my place to
point it out as a guest. After some minutes of mentally arguing
with myself, though, I lean in toward Adam to ask where the
bathroom is. He gets up to accompany me. Ever the gentleman. But, I
insist that I can find my way alone and he tells me it’s by the
front door.

All I need to do is follow the sounds of
puking, I think to myself, as I walk down the hall toward the
bathroom. And, as I expected, I hear the same sounds that used to
come out of my throat as I emptied my stomach after binge eating. I
wait, without making a noise, until Nikki comes out.

Shocked at seeing me, she steps back, wide
eyed. “I’m sorry. Have you been waiting long?”

“Long enough to know what you’ve been doing
in there.” I should probably not involve myself in this. She’ll
scold me to mind my own business. Which she’d be totally right
about. But I remember myself, not long ago, being all lonely,
vulnerable, and overwhelmed by any tiny, little stress in my life
during those tender ages of puberty. Nikki isn’t like me. She’s
surrounded by a huge, loving family. Yet, that doesn’t prevent her
from having issues that are beyond herself, right?

“Please don’t tell anyone. I’m fine. Must be
stomach flu.” She’s blushing with shame. It’s better than her
yelling at me.

“I won’t. But, can we talk in private for a
minute?” I ask.

She nods and takes me to her bedroom
upstairs. I sit on one of the two beds, studying the posters of
young movie actors and singers on the walls and the treadmill by
the door. I’m almost sure only Brendie uses it.

Brendie shows up, too, and stands next to her
sister in front of me, arms crossed. I feel like I’m the one who is
about to be preached to and not the other way around.

Inhaling a deep breath, I start, “I kind of
noticed what you two were up to at dinner. I know I’m a total
stranger, and it’s not my place, and you’ll probably call me a jerk
or other names for telling you what I’m about to tell you, but
still, thank you for at least giving me a chance to speak my
mind.”

“I swear I’m just sick. No big deal. Really,”
Nikki says and sits next to me.

“What’s wrong, N?” Brendie asks.

I jump in to answer before Nikki can open her
mouth. “I caught her purging herself after eating three full
plates, one being yours, and two rounds of desert.”

“Oh,” Brendie sighs and takes a step
back.

“I’ve been through the same thing,” I say. “I
mean binge eating, or bulimia. That’s the technical term for what
Nikki is doing.”

Brendie studies me up and down, cringing as
her eyes roam over my hips.

“I’d happily eat several plates of food at
once and throw it up,” I add. “But, let me tell you the throwing-up
part isn’t permanent, because the gag reflex gets accustomed to all
the fingering and stops working after a while. Now I can put my
entire fist down my throat, but I won’t be able to vomit.” A little
exaggeration won’t hurt, I hope. “Nikki, if you keep on eating like
this, you’ll enlarge your stomach. And when the time comes, you
won’t be able to vomit. That’ll mean you won’t be able to stay slim
anymore. You’ll be fat. Extremely fat.”

I think the word fat echoes in Nikki’s ears,
because terror crosses over her face. I stand up and spin around
for them to examine my body clearly. “This is my thinnest figure.
After all those months of binge eating, I ruined my entire
digestive system. And now, whatever I do, I can’t lose this
fat.”

I grab a handful from my hips, and both girls
yelp a loud “Ewww” at the same time.

“My breath used to smell like a dumpster
because of all the puking. No one, not even my sister, wanted to
talk to me because of it. The boys in the school would call me ‘eau
de dumpster.’ That isn’t even the worst; my face was covered with
acne and wrinkles. Just take a good look at my face.” I move toward
them so they can see my face at a close distance. “I’m just
seventeen. Can you believe it?”

“Seventeen?” Nikki shouts. “You look like
thirty?”

Thirty? THIRTY? Thank you?
Trying to
pretend to be unmoved, I pull out my phone. “Want to see how I
looked back then, when I was binge eating and couldn’t throw
up?”

They nod, with both entertainment and anxiety
flashing across their faces. I scan through the folders and find a
family picture of me with my mother, half-sister, and step-father.
“Can you guess which one is me?”

“Oh, gross. You looked like a bull,” Brendie
points out.

“Yeah, a giant bull. And, look how slim my
parents and my sister are. My fatness isn’t genetic; it was simply
my fault. Be warned; if you eat too much, even throwing up won’t
save you later on.”

Brendie pushes Nikki’s shoulder and says,
“Yeah, N. You should stop eating altogether and start
exercising.”

“No, that’s not the right way to go, either.”
I shake my head. “I mean the ‘stop eating altogether’ part. Let me
show you a picture of my friend from the eating-disorders clinic I
stayed in.” That’s half-truth. I didn’t stay in a clinic, but I
visited one once. And the picture I’m about to show them was swiped
from the internet. They don’t need to know that, right? “She ate
only raw carrots and frozen peas for one full month and dropped to
seventy pounds.” I zoom in the picture and show it to the
girls.