“Um … it’s just me,” I replied, frantically gathering up the still-wet papers.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Dad looked groggy.
“Yeah, sorry. Did I wake you?” I tried to look calm. I leaned back against the counter like I was just hanging out. In the kitchen. At midnight.
“No, I’ve been having trouble sleeping,” he said. “I often come down for a late-night snack these days.” He smiled and patted his belly, which had gotten soft since I’d been gone.
Great. I’d made Dad fat. The irony didn’t escape me. “I’m sorry, Dad, about tonight. I’ll do better tomorrow. I promise.” It scared me how easily the lying came.
“Okay. Just remember, your mom and I are on your side.”
“I know.” I wanted him to leave, but he walked over to me and he held out his arms and I gave him a quick and efficient pat. I could practically feel the papers drying all stuck together in that horrible pile.
“You want anything?” He opened the fridge.
“No, I’m okay.”
He nodded. “You know, I think I’ll pass as well. Can I walk you upstairs?” He turned around, and I noticed little patches of gray around his temples and dark circles under his eyes. He slumped now, too, even when he was standing. He hadn’t looked like this six months ago. It reminded me of how presidents are elected looking one way and, four years later, they look like they’ve aged a couple decades.
“Thanks, Dad, but I’ll be up in a minute. I was just looking at a magazine.”
“What one?” he asked, his voice suddenly sharp.
“Huh?”
“What magazine?” He studied my face. He knew I was lying.
“Uh, well, I don’t know what happened to it. It was just here.” I scanned the kitchen. There had to be a magazine somewhere.
It didn’t matter, because he didn’t buy it. “Elizabeth, you have a chance here. An opportunity to get better. Don’t screw it up.”
I nodded.
“We want to trust you, but if we can’t, things will change around here. You know what I’m saying?”
I pictured Mom and Dad monitoring my every bite, forbidding me to close my bedroom door, be alone in the house, or take a walk. I shuddered. No. That couldn’t happen.
“You can trust me, Dad,” I said. And I wanted that to be true. But even more importantly, I wanted to trust myself.
“I hope so.” He reached over and placed his hand on my cheek, like he had when I was little. It felt warm and solid and made me feel even worse for lying.
“Well, good night, then. Don’t stay up too late.” After one last glance around the room, he left, the door swinging behind him.
As soon as Dad was gone I tried to scrape away the blobs and dabs of Wite-Out, but all I succeeded in doing was making even more of a mess, including a tiny hole in one of the papers, which I ended up trying to fix with more Wite-Out. In the end, completely defeated, I shuffled the scarred papers back into a neat pile and trudged upstairs, praying that tomorrow a miracle would happen, that somehow I’d wake up, and the Wite-Out would just be a bad dream.
43
The first thing I smelled the next morning was coffee. Real coffee. Someone was grinding beans. I jumped out of bed, pulled on an old pair of cross-country sweats, and headed downstairs. I was literally salivating. It smelled like heaven. I couldn’t wait to have a steaming, hot cup of real coffee, not instant decaf, in my hand.
It wasn’t until I’d swung around the large, wobbly newel post at the base of the stairs that I remembered. The menus. Shit.
I heard the rattle of the dishwasher closing and for a moment fooled myself into thinking that maybe everything was fine. But when I walked into the kitchen, Mom was standing at the counter, one hand on a bottle of dishwasher liquid, the other flipping through the unruly stack of paper.
My body clenched up. I tried to inch my way out of the room without her seeing or hearing me.
“Elizabeth.” Mom’s voice was quiet. She turned around, and for a second I knew what Mom would look like when she got old. “Why would you do this?” And then, louder, “I don’t understand.”
She’d set the table for one with a white lacy place mat I’d never seen before and a bowl from the pink-flowered fancy china set we only used at Thanksgiving and Christmas. She’d filled it with my yogurt and on a matching plate had arranged banana slices to look like a flower, with one raspberry in the middle. She’d poured my required glass of milk in our finest crystal and even stuck in a paper umbrella, like the kind you get at a beach resort.
“Don’t understand what?”
“Your menus. What happened to your menus?”
“I don’t know. Did something happen?”
Mom looked at me for a long second.
“Don’t lie to me.”
I crossed my arms and glowered at the wall behind her like this whole thing was her fault.
“Explain yourself.”
I didn’t say a word.
“Explain yourself,” she said again. “Now.”
It isn’t what you think, I wanted to say, but deep in my heart I knew it was exactly what she thought. She stared at me for a few seconds more, then dropped the wad of paper in disgust and left the room.
I was going back to Wallingfield for sure.
Back in my room I locked my door, pulled on my earbuds, and put on the J-Curve mix. I closed my eyes and pretended I was anywhere but here. The music was loud but not loud enough to keep me from hearing Mom’s knock. I ignored it. She texted me a bit after that. Come out and talk to me.
I’m sorry, I typed. I made a mistake.
I wondered if I’d get my same room when they sent me back.
I’d read once about how sometimes people who are released from prison commit crimes just to go back to jail. Did I want to go back, too? I pushed my pillow against my face as hard as I could. For the first time in weeks, it smelled like home.
An hour or so later, there was a knock on my door. “Elizabeth,” Dad said through the wood, “open this door right now.”
When I opened it, Dad was standing there, holding a tray with my breakfast on it. He looked even more tired than he had the night before. “You have a two-thirty phone call with Mary.” He put the tray on my desk and sat down on the corner of my bed. I could smell a hint of his cologne. I’d always loved that smell. It made me feel safe.
“Elizabeth,” he said, voice tight. “What the hell were you thinking?”
I stared at my hands and didn’t answer. I don’t know what I was thinking, I wanted to say.
“Answer me. Why did you do that? We just spent thousands of dollars to try to get you well. And then you do this? What are we supposed to think right now?”
“I thought health insurance paid” was the only lame answer I could come up with.
“Health insurance covered two weeks; we had to pay the rest out of pocket.”
I’d heard Wallingfield cost a thousand dollars a day. I’d been at Wallingfield for forty days. Forty minus fourteen was twenty-six, which meant … Holy crap. Twenty-six thousand dollars! That’s why he was so mad at dinner when Mom mentioned the convertible.
“Dad, we can’t afford that. What are we going to do?”