Family Pictures (37 page)

They check her breathing, murmur to one another with concern, and suddenly, as one leans over her with his stethoscope, he shouts out, “She’s going into cardiac arrest!”

I am pushed out of the way as they race for equipment, immediately performing CPR as I stand, backed into a corner, shaking with fear, unable to believe this is happening.

She is surrounded, paddles on her chest as her tiny body jerks off the bed, neither of us breathing until the fourth time, when she starts to breathe.

They are so focused on Eve, on making sure she is alive, they do not notice me running behind them to the ambulance, about to climb in as they try to close the doors on me.

“I’m coming with her,” I say as one of the EMTs turns to study me. I am waiting to see judgment in his eyes—how could I have waited so long, how could I not have called them myself?—but I don’t. I see sympathy.

And fear.

“Are you a relation?” he asks gently.

I don’t even have to pause. “Yes,” I say. “I’m her sister.”

58

Maggie

There is a long line of people waiting to give their names at the hospital, and it is moving slowly. Everything feels nail-bitingly slow. I reached New York in record time—there is no traffic on the highways at night, but now I feel as if nothing is moving quickly enough, and I am scared.

Eventually, I’m at the front. I lie, tell the receptionist I’m Eve’s aunt, and with no expression in her voice, she directs me to a bank of elevators.

That take me to the Cardiac Unit.

I am terrified of what I will find. The whole way down here, I imagined finding Eve in the hospital, but in a room, awake—ill but grateful someone was here, relieved to hear her mother is on her way.

Cardiac Unit. What does that mean? How does a nineteen-year-old girl end up in the Cardiac Unit? I steel myself as I walk down the corridor. Remember who you used to be, Maggie. The committee chair. The organizer. The woman who held all the power. This is the time to draw on the old Maggie, not the quiet, invisible Maggie I’ve become today.

I step onto the floor, walk down the corridor, my eyes glancing into a room I pass, barely registering what I’ve seen until I am past it. I pull to a halt, turning and going back to the room. There is a girl curled up on a chair, her sweatshirt balled up to make a pillow, her neck at an awkward angle as she sleeps.

Grace’s cheeks are tearstained, her face puffy. She looks just as she did when she was a little girl, and I can’t move; I can’t do anything but stand there and look at her as my heart threatens to break.

Grace. Gracie. My beloved daughter. I want to sweep her into my arms and hold her close, squeeze her and cover her with kisses, make up for all the lost time, all the years I wasn’t present for her, wasn’t able to be the mother I can be today.

She stirs. I catch my breath. Her eyes open and she looks straight at me, not really seeing, until she focuses and I see a frown, a look of shock as she uncurls, sits up, and rubs her eyes, looking again at me.

“Hi, Gracie,” I whisper. Without thinking, I am moving slowly toward her, and suddenly her face crumples and she is in my arms—my beautiful, beautiful baby girl—sobbing as if her heart is going to break. I squeeze her hard, feeling her body that is, immediately, almost as familiar as my own, as the tears trickle slowly down my cheeks.

*   *   *

Eve went into cardiac arrest again in the ambulance on the way over here. Her heart stopped for twelve seconds.

She is alive—just—but there are problems. She has bradycardia—dangerously slow rhythms—and a severe electrolyte imbalance. She is on an IV to replace fluids and minerals, but it has to be slow to stop her body, her heart, from going into shock again.

“You mean, she could have another heart attack?” I am still struggling to understand how a nineteen-year-old can be this ill. How anyone allowed a nineteen-year-old to get this bad.

“Her heart and her kidneys are our biggest concern right now. She has a significant amount of edema in her hands and feet due to the buildup of fluid in her body because of the damage to her renal system. Right now, we are trying to stabilize her by slowly replacing the minerals and nutrients she’s missing. There isn’t much else we can do other than wait.”

“Is she going to die?” Grace asks, her eyes wide with fear.

He hesitates. “If she can make it through the next twenty-four hours, we’ll be in a better position to know where we stand. Are her parents on their way?”

“Her mother is flying in from California,” I say. “Her father isn’t…” I trail off.

He nods, then lays a hand on my arm and gives it a light squeeze just before he walks off, and it is this that sends a shudder of fear running through my body.

He wouldn’t have done that if he thought she was going to be okay. Grace sees it too, but neither of us mention it as we turn to go in and see Eve.

*   *   *

Oh, God. Oh no. Sweet Lord.

I take one look and have to walk straight out, straight to the bathroom, where I lean against the door and try to swallow my tears, the lump in my throat, splashing my face with cold water as I try to compose myself before walking back to join Grace, pretending to be the grown-up, pretending I am in control.

Asleep, tubes surrounding her, Eve is skeletal, her cheeks and eye sockets so sunken, her skin and hair so colorless, it is like looking at an old black-and-white photograph of a corpse.

This is a child. Sylvie’s child. It might just as well be mine. It could have been mine. She is as close to death as I have ever seen anyone, and it takes a few minutes before I can look at her face without feeling a sob rise.

I place her tiny birdlike hand in mine, stroking the bones, looking down at her brittle, pale, jagged nails as my tears drip down.

“It’s bad, isn’t it,” Grace whispers, crying too, on the other side of the bed, holding Eve’s right hand in hers.

“I don’t know,” I say, wiping my tears with the back of my sleeve like a child, “but it doesn’t look good.”

How could anyone have let her get like this? I think again, until I remember Grace going off the rails after we first discovered Mark’s betrayal.

And I realize. How could anyone have stopped her?

*   *   *

We sit for hours, Grace and I. We stroke Eve’s hands until I send Grace downstairs with my credit card to buy moisturizing cream in the hospital store. She comes back up with the softest, fleeciest pink blanket, which we carefully tuck around Eve before gently massaging the cream into her poor skin, as dry and brittle as that of someone four times her age.

We quietly sing the songs of Grace’s childhood to her: “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” “Hot Cross Buns,” “Ring around the Rosie,” “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

We sit, Grace and I, telling Eve the stories of Grace’s youth. The funny ones, the sweet ones. We tell her that when she wakes up, Grace will demonstrate the dance she did for her ballet recital when she was five, including the tremendous trip that had the entire audience holding their breath, until she stood up, loudly announcing, “I’m okay, I’m okay!” bowing with a huge grin as the audience cheered.

We laugh softly at the memories, all the while glancing up at the heart monitor, making sure the line doesn’t go flat, ready to leap up in an instant for help if it does.

I tell Grace she can take a break, but she won’t leave. In the early hours of the morning, a nurse brings me yet another coffee as Grace, still holding Eve’s hand, sinks her head onto the bed and falls asleep.

*   *   *

I hear Sylvie before I see her. Or, I hear the doctor I spoke to earlier leading her in.

I stand up, moving quietly away from the bed so she can take my place, be with her daughter, and I watch for a while as she strokes Eve’s hair, murmurs into her ear, kisses her forehead.

Grace wakes up then, looks at Sylvie, startled, then finds me in the doorway. I gesture for her to come with me, leave Sylvie on her own with Eve, and she does, Sylvie seemingly not even noticing that Grace is there, all her attention on her own daughter.

We walk down the corridor, Grace still in the half fog of sleep, and I catch my breath as she leans her head on my shoulder, slipping her hand into mine.

*   *   *

Grace is fast asleep—borrowed pillows and blankets turning the sectional into a makeshift bed—when Sylvie appears in the doorway of the visitors’ room.

This woman I have hated, blamed for the demise of a marriage I now see was flawed and wrong from the outset, stands a few feet away from me, broken.

I look at her, feeling nothing but concern, care. Even love. I stand up awkwardly, about to ask if there is news, but instead we move toward each other, propelled by an unknown force.

Sylvie and I stand in the center of this tiny room, my arms locked tightly around her, trying to absorb her pain, trying to let her know she is loved as she leans against me, her body racked with sobs.

Part Five

FAMILY

59

Sylvie

Sometimes Sylvie will find herself thinking that this is just like the old days, but it is never like the old days. The old days can be broken into three parts in her mind: years ago, with Jonathan, when life was simple and happy; marriage to Mark, when life
seemed
simple and happy but was in fact a lie; and after Mark, when Eve fell apart.

Sylvie will say this is like the old days because when Eve visits from New York, where she is now at NYU, she will perch on a stool at the kitchen counter with a wooden cheese board in front of her and a glass of wine as Sylvie flits around the kitchen, cooking. Angie and Simon will pop in, joking and laughing, the doors flung open to catch the persimmon glow of the fading sunset as they all prepare dinner together.

When Sylvie thinks it is like the old days, she means the days post-Jonathan, pre-Mark. The days when it was just her and Eve, and both were happy.

There are, of course, differences today. Sylvie does not miss the subtle changes. Eve may be out of the woods, but she will never be the same; it will always be one day at a time. Watching her now, cutting a paper-thin sliver of cheese, Sylvie breathes a sigh of relief that these days Eve is eating anything at all.

For years, Sylvie could not watch her eat without the familiar mix of fear and panic curdling inside her, impossible to hold in, sometimes coming out in a bark of anger.

Now, as she watches Eve reach for just one grape, she merely takes a deep breath and repeats to herself, as a mantra: I am powerless over people, places, and things.

And she
is
powerless over Eve. However much she wanted her to change, she was powerless until
Eve
decided to change. It took two cardiac arrests, kidney disease, and osteoporosis, to name but a few of the serious problems Eve has had to deal with, the mountains she has had to climb over the past two years, before Eve decided she wanted to get better.

The turning point came in the Cardiac Unit after Eve was hospitalized. When Eve regained consciousness, the first thing she saw was her mother’s eyes, filled with fear and love. She knew immediately she couldn’t continue doing this, not only to herself, but to her mother as well. She vowed to Sylvie she would change.

This time she meant it.

Eve was transferred to the Center for Eating Disorders at New York Presbyterian, and remained there for months. Sylvie moved her headquarters to New York temporarily, never thinking about what the future might hold, trying to keep her mind firmly on today.

Two years later, Eve is back. Changed, but smiling again. Laughing. Still thinner than most, she has a regimen she follows: three meals a day, two snacks in between, and she will not, does not, waver from the regimen.

“What’s this?” Eve takes more grapes, piling them next to the cheese for her “afternoon snack,” before turning the small Ball jar around, examining the label. “Fig jam? A new line?” She tosses her hair back over a shoulder, hair that is now glossy and shining again, a sure sign she is getting the nutrients she needs.

“It’s a sample. We’ve been trying some out. That’s the one with orange. It’s my favorite.” The old Sylvie would have implored Eve to eat it.
Try some. Just a little,
then been upset when she said no. This Sylvie says nothing, just turns away. It’s up to Eve.

She turns back to see Eve tasting a spoonful. “This is good, Mom,” she says. “Really good.” Instead of laying down the spoon, she reaches in for another spoonful. Not a huge one, not one that foretells an upcoming binge, but a normal spoon.

“Told you,” Sylvie says, a smile of pleasure on her face.

“How come you’re in such a good mood?” Eve peers at her mother thoughtfully. “Do you have … a
man
?”

Sylvie breaks into a peal of laughter as she shakes her head. She is happy, perhaps
happier,
without love. She has had enough of love.

Jonathan was her true love. She never wanted, never thought she deserved another, but Mark was so persuasive, so smitten, and being taken care of was so seductive, she allowed herself to be looked after—allowed herself to be drawn into something she would have been far better off without.

Other things have filled the space once filled by a husband. Success, creativity, gratitude for a life she hadn’t expected, and joy at her daughter finally being healthy.

Sylvie gazes at her daughter, noticing how Eve suddenly has a dreamy smile on her face as she nibbles on the cheese.

“Wait a minute,” Sylvie says. “Do
I
have a man? This isn’t about me. This is about
you.
Look at you, all glowing and happy! You can’t fool your mother, you evil girl! She pulls the stool up next to her daughter, whose smile now stretches from ear to ear, and settles in for the evening. “You’re not allowed to move a muscle until you’ve told me
everything.
”

60

Maggie

Barb gasps as she unwraps the small box and prizes open the lid to reveal a small gold orb necklace, studded with citrines, her favorite stone.