Hope and Other Luxuries (56 page)

“How about the last piece of cake?” I suggested. It wasn't real food, but at least it was something.

“Nah,” Elena said. “I'm not really a cake person. I'll get something later.”

Later
.

I knew what that meant.

And she didn't get something later, of course. I haunted the kitchen instead, consuming cookies out of a sense of desperation. It was a kind of primitive sympathetic magic, as if my own eating would somehow feed my child.

That evening, when Joe and Clint invaded the kitchen to whip up malts in the blender, Elena reached into the freezer for a frozen pickle. “It's the best thing in the world!” she gushed, gnawing on it while we ate our ice cream. “Pickles are great! I've been craving them all day.”

Pickles! It was the last straw.

I didn't diet, but I knew an empty food when I saw one. A frozen pickle was nothing but an anorexic trick. Elena not only wasn't eating, she was working
hard
at not eating. She'd have hollows in her cheeks in no time.

“You need to work on your recovery,” I told Elena after the others had left the kitchen. “Psychiatrist—therapist—something.”

Elena put down her half-eaten pickle, and tears swam in her eyes.

“I miss Clove House,” she said. “I miss my friends. You were right, Mom. I never should have left.”

I told you!
wailed the Victorian mother in my head, having hysterics on my behalf.
She never should have left—and
you
were the one who helped her leave
.

You helped her leave—again!

While the others went back to the PS3 and picked splicers off the ceilings of Rapture, I took myself off to bed and shut the door. Laughter and happy shouts came filtering in as I lay there in the dark.

I had done this. I had let Elena talk me into doing this. Three months ago, Elena had been dying in her room. The only thing three months of treatment had done was buy us a little time—and teach me just exactly how right I had been when I had realized that a little time was all we had left.

I pushed aside my anger and frustration. They were useless here. Elena had a horrible illness. She was the victim, not me. I had seen how painful it was for her to force herself to eat. Would I have the courage to face that kind of horror?

I pushed aside the terror and anxiety, too. They weren't helping, either. And I didn't cry. The quiet little child who had sat with her coloring books in the corner had learned what crying was for. It was for making other people solve your problems for you. Time after time, I had watched children break down and seen people sweep in to gather them up.

My adults hadn't done that. They had had more respect for me than that. They had known—as I had known—that I could solve my own problems. Yes, life had been hard sometimes, and yes, it had been lonely. But I had learned how to take care of myself.

So now, I looked inside my swirling cloud of emotions, and I found the guilt. I hugged it, and I let it help me.

Guilt has a bad reputation. People talk about it as if it's a dirty word. And it's true that undeserved guilt is as bad as any other false and unfair judgment. But it isn't bad because it's guilt. It's bad because it's a lie.

True, honest guilt is a reminder that once, we had the power to choose what to do—and the power to choose is what makes us human. Saying
I feel guilty
is the same as saying
I had options
. And where there were options once, there probably still are. I had made the wrong choice when I had let Elena talk me into bringing her home. Okay, then—what options did I have now?

And really, it was simple once I began to think about it. There was only one thing to do.

It was simple. But it wasn't going to be easy.

When Joe came to bed half an hour later, he found me sitting up in the dark, scribbling down notes on old receipts by the light of my laptop screen.

“What are you doing?” he asked as he passed me on his way to the closet.

“Elena has to go back to Clove House,” I said.

“Yes,” his voice agreed mournfully from the closet.

So he'd been noticing the lack of eating, too.

“And . . . I have to go with her.”

I said it around a lump in my throat. I didn't want to leave my family—not now! We were finally all together again. Valerie, Clint, and baby Gemma: it was such a precious gift to have them with us. I loved the routine of my house. I loved my husband and my animals and my bright, happy blue fish.

But I blinked the tears away. Because I loved Elena, too.

I loved this funny, fragile young woman whose life had come from my life—loved her with a searing, shining passion. And right now, out of all the ones I loved, Elena was the one who needed me most.

Elena couldn't help herself. She didn't have a choice—not really. I was the one who had power here. I was the one who could solve this problem.

“I know Clove House won't take her back,” I said, “unless she has someone to stay with her. She was already iffy at their halfway house. It wasn't working out, and I don't think they'll try it again. And the insurance
company wanted her to come home because they want her interacting with family. It's supposed to be an important part of her recovery. So, if I promise to stay with her and go to family therapy with her, maybe I can get them all to sign up to it again.”

Joe came back through the darkness and sat down on the bed beside me to look at the laptop screen. I'd been looking up hotels and running figures.

“How long will you be there?” he asked.

“There's no way to know,” I said. “Only, the thing is—this time, I'm not coming home too soon. This is twice now that Elena's cried and said she wished she'd stayed in treatment. I'm not helping her get out of treatment again.”

Joe didn't ask about the crying and wishing. He just sighed and picked up one of the scribbled pieces of paper. It was covered with columns of numbers.

He asked, “Can we afford it?”

I shut down the laptop and put it on the nightstand. “I don't know,” I said. “I've got a few places to call tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he said. Then he lay down and pulled up the blanket.

“You're right,” he said, and his voice sounded dull and empty in the darkness. “Since she won't go to the place in town, this is the only way.” And when I brushed the notes off my side of the bed and lay down, too, he rolled over and put his arms around me.

I cried there in the dark, in Joe's arms.

I don't want to do this!
I thought to myself, a little-child wail in my mind.
I don't want to leave my husband and family. I don't want to leave my grandchild!

But it didn't matter what I wanted. It only mattered what I could do. And I knew, as clearly as I knew anything, that Joe and I were right.

This was the only way.

O
nce again, Elena and I were in the car, and once again, we were singing along to her music. But not for much longer. After hours of thick forests and little towns, the big city was reaching out to us again.

First, the hotel chains appeared, clustered on the outskirts. Then lane after lane added itself to our highway. Gas stations and fast-food restaurants popped up along the access roads, and wide avenues rolled off into new brick suburbs. One office building after another came into view. A green glass hospital sprawled on the crest of a hill.

“It's not far now,” I said. “Let's see what thirty dollars a night can buy.”

The city that houses Clove House is renowned for its medical care, and people come from hundreds of miles away to seek treatment. The Clove House staff had told me about a special charity in the city that offers cheap lodging and free food to patients and their families. That charity was going to put us up for thirty dollars a night.

As I thought about this, I felt distinctly sorry for myself. I had left behind my grandbaby and the Dunkle slumber party. I was missing the rest of my family. And waiting for us at the end of this drive wouldn't be our nice corner suite with the huge picture windows and the furniture in soft spa greens and browns.

No, Elena and I would be spending weeks—if not months!—at a charity house for thirty dollars a night.

I was grateful, yes. I was very grateful. Our bank account needed the break. But whenever I thought of this hypothetical lodging, my overactive imagination presented me with a youth hostel: bunk beds, shared shower facilities, trestle tables, and bare floors. It showed me a refrigerator full of
moldy yogurt and other people's boxes of cold fried chicken. Uncomfortable folding chairs, and the smell of burnt toast. Children crying. Crumbs in the butter.

At least Elena could go to Clove House every day. Me, I'd have no escape from this place for weeks—if not months!

But the GPS hadn't gotten the memo. It didn't know it was supposed to take me to an ugly youth hostel. It led the car through a quiet neighborhood and up to a handsome brick building set back from the street in a green expanse of lawn.

“Welcome!” said the cheerful volunteer behind the counter.

It was a welcoming kind of place.

In the 1980s, she explained, the building had been designed to be an orphanage, and its halls swung out from the main building in an
X
pattern to allow as much light and fresh air as possible into the large rooms.

“Here's our cafeteria,” she said, leading us through the clean, pretty space. Sunlight poured through French doors along two sides.

“Of course, we have a wireless network if you've brought your own computer. But here's our computer lab for the guests,” and she opened a door to a carpeted room as quiet as a library. Ten or twelve desktop computers hummed softly on its long office tables, and the screens were as big as my monitor at home.

“You're welcome to use the exercise equipment,” she said, walking us across a wood-floored gym to a line of treadmills and elliptical machines set up by tall windows at the back.

“And feel free to use any of the parlors,” she added, pointing into cozy rooms filled with couches and easy chairs facing big-screen TVs.

I looked around in wonder. The place was . . . fantastic!

Thirty dollars a day—tax-free!

Elena's and my room was at the end of a long hall, with windows on two sides that looked out toward what had once been the playground: an acre or more of grass, and beyond that, a wooded suburb. Our room was plain but large, with white venetian blinds and simple furniture. Some kindly soul had decorated it with a couple of seagull prints and a
small wooden lighthouse figurine. It held three twin beds, two desks, two nightstands, and a bookcase. The bookcase was particularly welcome.

Peace and hope flooded through my worried soul as I walked in.
Yes
, I decided as I sat down on one of the beds,
I will be happy in this room
.

That evening, Elena and I unpacked. Unpacking makes a place personal. I always do it as soon as I can. Elena quickly tired out and lay down to watch a video on her laptop, but I kept going. I needed my routines and my order. I needed everything to find its rightful place.

Last of all, I set up my printer on the desk. Then I pulled up the venetian blinds and looked outside.

A flock of Canada geese waddled by on the lawn, honking loudly and stabbing their big black beaks into the grass. They were massive. They were even a little bit scary. I'd never seen Canada geese up close before. And this part of the country had chipmunks. We don't have them in Texas. Several chipmunks were digging energetically in the flower beds outside our windows, showing off their bear-claw-striped backs.

Yes
, I thought again,
I will be happy here
.

The next morning, the alarm on my phone woke me up at seven, and I woke up Elena. She smoked a cigarette out on the patio at the end of the hall, and we watched the geese parade by.

“What are they looking for in the grass?” Elena wondered. “Don't they need a pond?”

“No idea,” I said. “Bugs maybe?”

I drove Elena to Clove House. It was about twenty-five minutes away, but the drive wasn't stressful. Big trees, handsome houses, and broad lawns: the Texan in me was thrilled to see so much green.

“The botanical garden here is really great,” Elena said. “I mean it: it's world-class. You should go sometime while I'm in treatment.”

I dropped her off and went home to do my writing work.

But when I got back to the orphanage, I didn't work. I slept. The last two weeks had been horribly stressful, as if I'd had the weight of all our futures on my shoulders. Now, Elena was back where she could be safe and get well. The professionals were taking care of her again. I could fade into the background and go back to a minor supporting role.

It felt blissful to have Elena back where she could get better.

I woke up at one and ate lunch in the sunny cafeteria. It was almost empty. The cook looked as if she were about forty, but she had to be in her sixties. She told me she had fed the “babies” twenty years ago, when the orphanage was still full of children. Her lasagna was amazing—
and
free. And she pointed out the pieces of cake she'd baked that day, waiting in the glass-doored refrigerators. Her black eyes were on me, patient but expectant. It would be impolite not to try a piece, now, wouldn't it?

Her cake was amazing, too. It was pure comfort food. I lingered over the sweet frosting and thought sadly about all the joy Elena was missing. Memories of every person who was important in my life came to me with happy memories of food: either the food we had fixed together or the food we had shared. From my grandmother's lemon pies to Joe's and my halved Cadbury chocolate bars, food was an important way I had been shown love.

I wondered: Was it the food that wasn't good enough for Elena? Was she simply blind to that love? Or was it Elena herself who wasn't good enough for the food and the love that came with it?