Skin and Bones (22 page)

“Psycho.”

“I cried.”

Lard met them at the door to the kitchen in a puffy chef’s hat.

“Nice look,” Sarah said.

“You’re about to eat your words,” Lard said.

Teresa stepped up in a floral sundress. “Welcome to Chez Kowlesky.”

The kitchen could have been a four-star restaurant—if it weren’t for the counters, sinks, cupboards, stove, ovens, fridge, and blinding fluorescent lights. Bones wondered if anyone else noticed there didn’t seem to be any cooking going on. The stove was off. No pots or pans or the usual steamy chaos. No messy bowls or whisks lying around. And the room was fifteen degrees cooler than normal.

“Think I’ll make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and call it a night,” Mary-Jane said.

Lard hung out by the door greeting Dr. Chu, Nancy, and Unibrow. The latter read the room quickly and excused himself with a Neanderthal grunt. Dr. Chu fingered his tie. “Is dinner being delivered?” As if Lard would order take-out.

Elsie and Nicole came in, short of breath. “Sorry, we forgot we were meeting in here.”

Lard opened a cupboard and reached for a stack of plates. Chip-free china, not the usual scratched plastic. He lined everyone up in front of the counter. Bones was sandwiched between Mary-Jane and Nicole. He knew he should’ve been nervous about whatever was about to happen—something out of the ordinary obviously. But he took a plate like everybody else, trusting his roommate.

Before anyone could make another smart-ass remark Lard opened the dishwasher, lunging backward when steam poured out. “Dr. Chu?” Lard handed over a pair of tongs with a flourish. “Please take your dinner out of the dishwasher.”

Dr. Chu squinted skeptically at packets of foil winking at him from the top rack. Each one had a name on it. The others fell over themselves laughing before taking turns with the tongs. Bones busted up too. Lard had actually done it.

Bones knew dinner wasn’t about Lard showing off what he’d learned in the kitchen. He could’ve poured ketchup over tater tots and the girls would’ve dropped to the floor and kissed his boots. But Lard wanted to do something special for his friends.

“Each packet is its own meal,” Lard explained. “Prepared according to your own individual nutritional requirements. All natural, steamed in their own juices.”

Mary-Jane chewed the end of her braid and eyed her packet skeptically.

“Come on, this is supposed to be fun,” Lard said. “You can’t fuck up foil. Just rip it open.”

“He’s right.” Dr. Chu opened his packet with the care of a surgeon. His dinner glistened in its own salty gel. SPAM. “You’re not being graded.”

Bones unfolded his foil giving the salmon and garden vegetables the admiration they deserved. He may not have been the first person to get the significance of what was happening, but he was the first to say it.

“Do you realize what we’re witnessing?” he said. “Lard’s a guy in an Eating Disorder program who’s more focused on cooking than eating. Seems like such a person should be ready to go home.”

Dr. Chu said, “Or well on his way.”

Lard shrugged, embarrassed. He told everyone how he came up with the idea. “No added calories, like stir-fry for instance, which uses oil,” he said. “And no oil splatter-burns on your clothes. I used full cycle. No soap.”

Nicole, Sarah, and Mary-Jane ate their pork tenderloin silently like three starving refuges. Elsie ate like a three-hundred pound bouncer.

“Stir-fry only takes a few minutes,” Sarah said. “Our dishwasher at home takes forty-five minutes. That’s a long time to wait when you’re hungry.”

“I’m working on that,” Lard said.

“You can recycle the foil,” Teresa said.

Bones couldn’t help but think about Alice. She would’ve loved this more than anyone. He knew the others were aware of her absence and missed her snarky remarks. They had to be worried about her too. But talking about Alice right now would be a downer. Besides this was Lard’s show.

Bones finished his salmon thinking about her treasonous body and reckless mind. He thought of warm days and stolen nights on the roof. He thought of driving down the Santa Monica freeway with the windows down and music cranked. He thought of his hands on her and her hands on him and ten blissful minutes in the elevator with all its hopes, dreams, and promises.

He thought that it was just all so amazing and wonderful and unreal and he knew he’d never let it go.

Bones spent his first few days home with his family cleaning out his room. His sister bagged up sweats for the Salvation Army. The library took his old
Weight Watchers
magazines. The hardest part was getting rid of his dumbbells and digital scales. He told himself this was a good way to start over without moving to China and taking up ping-pong. It pissed him off that he still felt so uneasy at the dining room table with his family. It wasn’t just because he thought eating like a normal person would make him fat.
Yes, it was. No, it wasn’t
. The argument raged on between every molecule in his brain. He’d mistakenly believed that six weeks in the loony foodie bin would erase this type of thinking.

“Eating an apple fills me up,” he told his sister one afternoon. “And being full makes me feel fat.”

“Do you want to throw up?” she asked.

“No.”

“Power down laxatives?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Do jumping jacks in the middle of the night?”

“I have a stash of red M&Ms in my nightstand,” he admitted.

Jill punched him playfully in the arm. “Cut yourself some slack, weirdo,” she said with a crooked smile. “It’s not like you’re still wearing those dumb gloves!”

True.

And he hadn’t missed an outpatient meeting since checking out of the program a month ago. He’d even gotten together with some of the ex-patients away from the hospital. Sometimes they went to the movies as a group; other times they hung out at Julia’s house playing Story Cubes or Bananagrams.

Bones tried not to call Nancy more than twice a week. She usually called back within an hour. His questions were always in the same desperate tone. “Have you heard anything about Alice? Has she woken up yet?”

“Sorry, she’s still in a coma,” Nancy said the first time he called. Her voice quivered. But the next time she answered his questions with a steady patience.

“Is it like being asleep or unconscious?” he’d asked.

“There’s some level of consciousness as long as she’s breathing.”

“Can she hear people in her room?”

“We assume a person in a coma can hear,” she’d said. “Hearing is usually the last sensory faculty to go.”

“There isn’t anything new,” Nancy said the last time. “Except her parents transferred her to a hospital out of state that specializes in comatose care.”

Bones concentrated to slow his breathing. “If they’re experts, then they’ll be able to help her, right?”

Her pause crackled through the airwaves. When she spoke it sounded like her heart was crumbling onto the cold linoleum floor. “The longer she’s unconscious, the worse the prognosis,” she said softly. “Sorry, I wish it were different.”

For the first time since Bones left the hospital he wanted to lock himself in his room and exercise until he passed out. And that’s what he told Lard the next afternoon when Lard picked him up in the Doodle. He was doing fifty in a thirty-five zone. Music engulfed the car like Alice was controlling the radio.

“You think I haven’t wanted to order a dozen pizzas in the middle of the night?” Lard said. “Scarf them down alone in the dark in front of the Food Channel?”

“You still think about that?”

Lard shot him a look. Then he reached into the ashtray and pulled out a roach, twisting the tiny end like he was strangling it. “Let’s face it, man. Some days are just not all that great. You know why I don’t call nine-one-one-PIZZA? Because everything doesn’t have to be a fucking soap opera. Sometimes a person just has to work things out on his own.”

“I still love her.” Bones had to say it, because Lard was the only person who truly understood what had gone on in the hospital. Though sometimes he wondered if he ever really knew Alice or the world she’d created for herself where decisions were made without regard to consequences.

“Do you ever think—” Bones paused, pulling the seatbelt away from his chest, letting it slap back with force, hating the universe for making it impossible to undo the past. “What will happen if she doesn’t wake up?”

Lard hit the brakes and turned into a gravel parking lot.

“Yeah, man. She’ll be dead.”

Thanks.

“I’m going to keep calling Nancy,” Bones said. “And finish writing CRAP. I’m going to come up with an ending that’ll give life to that dark place Alice is in now.”

Lard turned off the engine, grabbed his keys, and grunted his way out of the front seat. “Ducks are waiting.”

Bones picked up the bag of stale bread and followed Lard, weaving around families who were squeezing out the last days of summer barbequing, tossing Frisbees, playing horseshoes.

Teresa waved from a picnic table where she sat with Julia and Ramon.

Lard waved back. “She’s one of the reasons I can’t be a self-centered asshole the rest of my life.”

Bones got it.

Julia scooted off the bench and he took in the picture: her shredded jean skirt and a tank top the color of a raspberry snow cone. She limped awkwardly down the path toward them. “Guess what?” she asked, all smiles.

Bones noticed right away, but he couldn’t say it. There was too much below the surface of what he was seeing.

“Ditched the walker,” she said, impatient for an answer.

Bones clutched the bag of bread and pushed ahead of Lard. Halfway to the table he let the bag fly.

Julia caught it mid-air and took aim back at him. “Ready?”

“Yeah.” He was ready.

4
(6-oz.) salmon fillets

4
Tbsp. freshly squeezed lime juice

1
Tbsp. olive oil

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Cut two 12-inch square sheets of heavy-duty aluminum foil.

Grease the shiny side of the foil with oil. Place two fillets side by side on each square and fold up the outer edges.

Drizzle 1 Tbsp. lime juice over each fillet. Season with salt and pepper.

Fold and pinch the aluminum foil to create a watertight seal around each pair of fillets.

Place fish packets on the top rack of dishwasher.

Run packets through the entire wash-and-dry cycle, approximately 50 minutes.

When the cycle is complete, invite friends into the kitchen and ask them to take their dinner out of the dishwasher.

Eating disorders currently affect approximately 25 million Americans, in which 25% are men.

Anorexia is the third-most common chronic illness among adolescents.

Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness.

The mortality rate associated with anorexia nervosa is 12 times higher than the death rate of all causes of death for females 15–24 years old.

Ninety-five percent of those with eating disorders are between the ages of 12 and 25.

Five to ten percent of anorexics die within ten years after contracting the disease; 18–20% of anorexics will be dead after twenty years; only 50% ever fully recover.

The ANAD website (
www.anad.org
) lists eating disorder support groups by state. A free brochure, “How to Help a Friend,” is also available to download.

The ANAD helpline (630-577-1330) is open Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. central time. ANAD also has an email address,
[email protected]
.

The National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA)

www.nationaleatingdisorders.org

The National Association for Males with Eating Disorders Inc. (NAMED)

namedinc.org

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2014 by Sherry Shahan

Cover design by Nick Tiemersma

978-1-4804-7558-8

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