The Side Effects of Starving - Chapter Two
Michelle called while I was out, and left a message on my machine. I call her at work. Michelle works the phones for an Italian restaurant on Main Street. She says she's getting off at ten, and wants to know if she should bring over some food. I'm not expecting people over, but that never seems to matter much. Whether I plan it or not, they either come or they don't. Phone calls are made and these things just happen."Hawaiian pizza," I tell her.
"What size?"
"Um, small or medium…"
"Which? Small or medium?"
"I don't know. It doesn't matter."
"Look, figure out who's coming over, and call me back later."
Telling Michelle that something doesn't matter is useless. It's just not in her nature to not care. She's one of very few people I know who still cares about details. How many people will be there? Are they vegetarians? I'm more inclined to let everyone fend for themselves. And if there are leftovers, so be it.
Steve rings the bell at eight, and I let him in. "Hurry," he says, "It's already starting!"
"What is?"
"Big Brother, Season Three. Oh, and this is for you."
He hands me a book - The Field Guide to Demons, Faeries, Fallen Angels, and Other Subversive Spirits. "I thought maybe you would recognize your alarm clock friend."
I can't tell if he's mocking me or being nice. "Thanks."
"Hurry up, it's starting."
Steve makes me watch a reality TV show about people who stay in trees competitively. I wondered how long I could last in a tree without any amenities.
There are demons that live exclusively in trees.
Stephanie arrives towards the end of the show. When it ends, we start a movie. Steve is squeamish within the first twenty minutes, when a school principal is impaled by a #2 pencil. People dribble in throughout, saying "Hello," and quickly being shushed by the people who care enough about the dialogue to do so. Michelle shows up, stolen food in hand, in time for the last twenty minutes, all twenty of which thoroughly confuse her.
Stephanie eats a piece of garlic bread, and I'm amazed at how happy that makes me. She's trying even harder now that she's having surgery soon. We all feel much less tense when she eats, as though a piece of bread, or a few carrot sticks, are going to keep her with us just a little longer.
There are demons that live exclusively in people. In our friends.
Stephanie has more than her share.
I can look at her, at the girl I've known for most of my life, and remember a time when I thought that her life must be easy. She was pretty, she was always smiling. When we were sophomores, she smiled while she told me about slicing open her wrists, but it was a different kind of smile, the kind that capture our faces when we realize that our masks are prisons. Two years later, she had stopped cutting herself, but with that went her ability to eat. She was hospitalized for anorexia, and still fights a daily battle with food, with her reflection in a mirror. We had no choice but to fight for her any way we knew how, and there were a lot of tense nights when we did everything short of forcing food down her throat.
Beauty is a funny thing.
Michelle is beautiful too, but like Stephanie, she has no idea. I think that everyone is beautiful to someone, and sometimes that gives me hope.
In an alternate reality, I am Michelle's mother. Steve offered this once by way of explanation for my need to boss her around, and it stuck. It explains a lot for me; the affection I have for her defies reason. I've wondered if I might be in love with Michelle, but then I realize that loving someone and being in love with someone are only two different things if you let them be.
My mother once told me a story about a psychological experiment. Participants were asked to gather the saliva in their mouths for a full ninety seconds, then swallow. Each complied. Then, they were asked to gather the saliva for ninety seconds, then spit into a paper cup. They did so. Then they were told to drink their own saliva. Of course, they all refused. "Well, of course they did," I told her. "That's disgusting."
"But is it really so different? Drinking from your mouth or drinking from a cup? It's still yours."
Humanity is full of meaningless distinctions.
Michelle spends the whole evening complaining about her job, her parents, who she still speaks to, and everything else on her mind, then leaves abruptly without saying goodbye.
The latest new guy – this one's name is Seth – asks me about my scars.
"A dog attacked me when I was six. 74 stitches." And a paralyzing fear of medical professionals that haunts me to this day, I didn't add.
He quickly changes the subject.
When the movie ends, we start another, even though we all have to work tomorrow. We can do this because none of us have jobs that require functioning minds.
I find myself staring at the new guy, who is lying on the floor, with his head propped on Stephanie's thigh. He reminds me of Rob.
I lost Rob a month ago, but I'm not sure he knows. I'm not sure he cares. I still spend a lot of time remembering him. The way he kissed like an inexperienced teenager. The way I knew he wasn't really there when I was kissing him, how much that hurt me, when I shouldn't have cared. I could have gotten past his apathetic affection, we could have stayed friends. But his charm was in his reliability, and then he had to go and let me down.
Once, we were having one of those serious conversations, and I started to laugh at him. He was telling me his problems, and I was laughing. I apologized, but I had to explain to him how young he sounded, how superficial and naïve.
"You know," he said, smiling his copyrighted smile, "There's something truly comforting about you trivializing my problems."
The day I lost him, I stood before him, crying like an idiot, and I said, "I need you to trivialize my problems for me."
He said that he was sorry, and I wrapped my arms around him for the last time in a half-hearted way that let me know he was gone, that made me wonder if he had ever been there at all.
I start to think that Seth was sent to replace Rob, who was sent to replace Josh, who was sent to replace Eric, and so on. But it's one in the morning, no time for thinking, so I force myself to watch the movie.
Everyone goes home alone, and I am home and alone already, so I throw away the pizza box and cry in my kitchen.
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