Yolk(105)

I’ve canceled plans to eat or not eat. I’ve “called in fat” to work. I’ve gone to the gym instead of confronting someone. Eaten or gotten shitfaced instead of standing up for myself. I’ve been stunned and injured when I’ve lost the weight and not been given the respect or recognition I knew I deserved. I’ve starved myself skinny and been absolutely fucking miserable.

A notebook lands in my lap. There they all are. Everyone’s names and phone numbers, just like they said. There are no last names, but this blackmail collateral is breathtaking to me. It’s unbelievable, this trust fall. I can’t bring myself to add my name, but I’m moved by the gesture. It’s the stupidest, most touching gift I’ve ever known.

There’s so much laughter. Not mean-spirited, contemptuous mirth, but joyful, knowing laughter. Every invitation to an impending social event that necessitated the losing of ten, five, three, forty pounds in two days inspires the snapping of fingers. Chuckling at fights picked at the table so we wouldn’t have to eat pasta. Or so that we could eat the pasta and then storm off to buy secret ice cream on the way home.

There’s talk of cake. Leftover birthday cake. One of the mothers had gotten up to eat a sliver. Then another. And another, until the whole thing was gone. She’d had to put a rush order in at the specialty bakery with a slew of lies to have another one made. Another frosted intergalactic spaceship that she’d had to eat down to the same spot to make things right. I think of how prepared I was to go to H-E-B in the middle of the night for pie. And how the pie I’d eaten after hadn’t changed the perception of my childhood home.

I have never felt so known. So fucking spied on. It’s the limited-edition ginger ice cream. The loaves of bread, the peanut butter. Ramyun. Coq au vin. Ketchup.

There are stories of hope. How things have changed. Hollow teeth salvaged. Missing periods retrieved. Bridges burned and mended. Families left and returned to.

Then a woman with a tidy brown bob and wire-framed glasses, wearing a preppy fisherman’s sweater, cries about her father who died a week ago. After eight years of freedom, she’d started throwing up and hasn’t been able to stop. Tears slide down her cheeks, and she calmly removes her glasses to wipe her eyes. Last night she’d slept for an hour on the bathroom floor next to her toilet. When her three minutes are up, I’m enraged that she’s not given more time. But she smiles and thanks the room and says she knows it will get better because it has so many times before.

There are only ten more minutes of the meeting left, but I’m desperate to leave. I need air. I grab my things to duck out, refusing to look over my shoulder.

In the narrow, airless hallway, I see her come out of the bathroom. Cruella. A vision in lilac with her dog in her arms. Up close she’s somehow younger than I thought even though I’d never assigned her an age. She was nothing more than a cartoon. A caricature of the unwell. She’s wearing a lilac sweatsuit with a matching fringed cowboy vest to match her dog’s hat. The ink slick of her hair is drawn into a bun so tight, it slants her eyes.

“I thought that was you,” she says. As when Jeremy first talked to me, it’s like a painting peeled itself off the canvas to address me.

Her voice is a revelation. It’s far lower and more mellifluous than I could have ever conceived. Cruella has NPR voice.

I’m so stunned that I don’t know what to say.

“Ingrid,” she says, placing her hand on her chest. “We don’t really know each other, but we also do. I see you all the time near my apartment. You must go to fashion school. I can tell because your eyeliner’s always perfect.”

“Thanks.” I’m overcome that I’m not anonymous to her. That she likes my eyeliner. That she’s collected me in some way too. “I love your clothes. The monochrome always pops in a crowd.”

She smiles warmly.

Her dog sneezes. “Christ Almighty, Duffy, bless you.” She hugs him close to her chest.

So, it’s Ingrid and Duffy. I remember now, how I’d seen the dog with the lilac cowboy hat outside. How she and her dog have always foretold good things.

“His allergies are insufferable today. Cranky old man.” She shakes her head. “So, are you one of ours?”

“Um.” I nod slowly. “I guess I am.”

“Uch.” She pats my hand. “The beginning’s the worst,” she says. “But keep coming back. I was a gutter, gutter bulimic. Worst of the worst. I’m still crazier than a treeful of cockatiels, but I’ll tell you what—you’re only as sick as your secrets. The second you talk about it, fffffffft.” She blows a raspberry and waggles her fingers into the air. “It all starts to get a little better. Humans need to share their darkest parts. Unburdening makes you closer to everyone. There’s that thing that all addicts have, that you’re a piece of shit in the center of the universe. That everybody’s obsessed with the ways you fall short. But the truth is, we all have the same, boring problems. Sometimes the best thing you can do is talk about it. It makes no sense, but glory if it doesn’t work like a charm.

“Oh,” she says, plucking a pen from the knot at the nape of her neck and pulling a note card from a pocket. “What’s your number, dear? I’ll call you. I don’t text, I’m old school, but I’ll call you since you’re new.”