I'm Glad My Mom Died(77)
“You’ve gotta believe me, Jenny,” Steven says with gravity. “I know it sounds crazy, but you’ve gotta believe me.”
I shake myself off and go puke in the bathroom while I come up with a game plan. By the time I get back, I’m trying to figure out if there’s anything I can do about my boyfriend thinking he’s Jesus Christ in the minutes I have left before I need to head out.
It’s clear Steven is unwell, but I have no one to tell that information to who would be helpful in any way. I don’t have any of the phone numbers for his family members or friends—our relationship is too new for that. I try and discreetly ask for the phone number of one of his friends that lives nearby, but Steven bursts into tears, begging me to not tell anyone the secret I told him.
“It’s just between me and you, Jenny,” he cries.
“I think you should tell your family,” I urge him, knowing that if he does, they’ll see that something’s up and likely fly down to take care of him.
“I can’t,” he says, shaking his head. “I just can’t. They won’t believe me. Only you’ll believe me, Jenny.”
I don’t respond. There’s nothing left in me to respond with. I am powerless. And distraught. Steven is my first real love. Up until ten minutes ago, the joy I’ve gotten from this relationship has been the only positive thing in my life recently. I’m not ready to let go. I wipe a tear away with my sleeve, and my eye catches the clock on the wall. I’m gonna be late. I have to leave.
I hug Steven. He hugs me back. I get a text from my manager on the way to the airport. Robin Wright has confirmed.
77.
THE FLIGHT TO SYDNEY IS fourteen hours of puking-in-an-airplane-bathroom hell. I eat two full in-flight meals and puke them both up, plus the near-constant stream of snacks that the flight attendant offers—gummy bears, graham crackers, Doritos. Every last snack is down, up, and out for me. It’s chaos. There’s not one moment of the flight where I’m not eating or throwing up or—in the time between the eating and the throwing up—planning how to get up for the fourteenth time without getting a weird stare from the businessman in the toupee sitting next to me.
By the last time I throw up, I feel like I’m about to pass out. My mouth feels sour from the vomit and sore from the act of vomiting. I shove my fingers down my throat, my eyes bulging as a by-product, and with the brown chunky fluid that pours out of my mouth and into the gray toilet bowl like an ugly waterfall, I spot a small, white, hard chunk. I run my tongue along my teeth and realize one of them is missing. The acidity from my stomach fluids has worn down my enamel to the point that I just lost a lower-left molar.
I taste pennies and spit into the sink. A stream of blood. I reluctantly cup my hand under the airplane bathroom sink and wash my mouth out with the questionable water. I do this four or five times before catching my reflection in the mirror. I try and avoid it, but I can’t. Not in a space this small with a mirror this big. I look at myself for a long beat. I don’t like what I see.
We touch down in Sydney. As I walk toward the Nissan Sentra that’s waiting for me, I see on my phone that there’s a voicemail from an unknown number. I swipe my phone open to check it. It’s Steven’s parents. They tell me that Steven called them, frantic, and they were so concerned that they flew out to visit him. They’re with him now at a mental facility to run some tests because a psychiatrist there thinks that Steven might have schizophrenia. I finish the message and get into the back seat of the car.
“Hey, how’s it going?” the upbeat Uber driver asks.
I look straight ahead, not answering the driver. How’s it going? It’s going fucking terribly. Mom lied my entire life about who my biological father was, I’m caught in the undertow of bulimia, I’m gonna have to do an entire press junket while missing a lower left molar, and my boyfriend’s schizophrenic. It could not be going any worse.
“Ooh, I love this song. You mind if I turn it up?”
The Uber driver cranks up the volume knob before waiting for my answer. It’s Ariana Grande’s hit single “Focus on Me.”
“It’s even better than her last single, huh?” the driver asks. He bobs his head and hums along. Beats the dashboard with enthusiasm.
I look out the window and see the Sydney Opera House in the distance. I tongue my missing molar, deep in thought. Maybe Ariana’s got a point. Maybe it’s time to focus on me.
78.
“HELLO, JENNETTE.”
“Hi, Jeff.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and step on the scale?”
Ahem? Excuse me? Nowhere in my consultation paperwork was there a clause stating that I would have to weigh myself at the first session with this eating disorder specialist I found online. If I’d read that, I’m not sure I would have booked the appointment. And even if I had somehow managed to still book the appointment, I would have worn my “getting weighed in public” outfit, which I wear to every doctor’s appointment I have, regardless of the weather—a poplin skirt and my thinnest tank top. (I want my clothes to add as little weight as possible.) I never would have worn jeans. Goddamned thick, heavy jeans. And a sweater. A lumpy, hefty, cable-knit sweater.
“Do I have to?”
“Yes. But you don’t have to look at the number and I won’t tell it to you. It’s simply for my clinical purposes. I’ll need to document your weight at the start of each session.”