Skin and Bones (2 page)

Jack didn’t ask how he had access to medical files.

“Anorexic. Sometimes in denial, sometimes not. Promising candidate for the program,” Lard said all official-like. “Family intact. Both your parents live under the same roof?”

Jack nodded. “Yeah.”

“My dad is some guy who had sex with my mom and she doesn’t remember who he was because it was during her hippie-druggie-commune period,” Lard said. “And the reason I eat half a dozen pizzas at a time while glued to the Food Channel is because it fills the hole in my gut from not knowing my sperm donor.”

Why would this guy be spewing his family history now? Jack figured it was his standard bullshit.

“I bet your parents have screaming matches that turn into knock-down fights and your neighbors call the cops.”

Jack shrugged. “They hardly even argue.”

“They must be repressed.” Lard stuck a finger in his mug and flicked water. “Jack Plumb, I hereby christen you Toothpick.”

Jack blotted his face before his skin could soak it up. He needed a minute to think. Toothpicks had two functions—to spear food or pick teeth. Having a nickname so closely associated with eating wouldn’t cut it. “What about Bones? As in, skin-and—”

“I like it,” Lard said. He sat at his desk, combat boots propped on the windowsill. “This place has about a million rules designed to—and I quote—keep us safe. Like, what are we? Fucking nine-year-olds? We can’t even shut the bathroom door to take a dump. You know the fart fan? It’s disconnected so they can
listen
. Talk about sick.”

“They want to make sure we aren’t tossing our cookies,” Jack—aka Bones—said.

“Do I look like I spend a lot of time throwing up?”

“Not really.”

“They go through our trash too. Patients find all kinds of places to get rid of what they’ve eaten. I call them Vomitus Interruptus.” Lard studied Bones. “Just so you know, I’m not into that crap. If you are, that’s your business. But I don’t want to hear it, and don’t ever let me smell it. Let me see your knuckles.”

Bones held up his hands to show he didn’t have scars from sticking his fingers down his throat.

“You wouldn’t believe what they do with chocolate laxatives,” Lard said. “Put them in brownies—shave it over ice cream.”

Bones believed it. He’d gone through boxes of them since that fateful day in the sixth grade. That was another reason he’d agreed to check into the program. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life worrying about soiling his skivvies.

“I’m learning to cook while I’m here,” Lard said. “I help the chef in the kitchen. Gumbo, a real chef. Not one of those fast-food poseurs in a Pillsbury hat.”

“Isn’t it sketchy being around food like that?”

“No, man, it’s just the opposite. There’s something about cooking that keeps me from wanting to eat everything in sight.”

Bones tried to follow his logic. He hadn’t thought that highly of food since he was ten-and-a-half and a store clerk handed him jeans labeled
Husky
. “Try these on for size,” she’d said. Until then, he’d thought he was going through a growth spurt. But the clerk must’ve known better because
Husky
fit just right, as reinforced by a triangle of full-length mirrors.

And that’s how it had started.

With one lousy remark.

That was the first time he’d tried to lose a few pounds. He tested the Grapefruit Diet, Atkins Diet, South Beach Diet, 24-Hour Miracle Diet, Cabbage Soup Diet, Fat Smash Plan, the Master Cleanse. He listened to crashing waves on a CD called
Thirty-Day Subliminal Weight Loss Plan: Lose Fat While Your Unconscious Mind Does the Work
, which made him want to pee constantly.

“How long’s your sentence?” Bones asked.

“A month this time,” Lard said. “Three months last summer. Entered the program with type two diabetes—on insulin and everything. Lost over one hundred pounds, man.”

Bones couldn’t imagine that. “Why’d you come back?”

“Sort of like a refresher course, and, like I said, I like working in the kitchen.”

There was a loud knock on the mostly open door.

“It’s open,” Lard deadpanned.

Nancy peeked in. “GTs in twenty minutes, guys. Don’t be late.”

“Group therapy,” Lard said after she left. “It’s all about feelings.”

Bones knew what GT meant. He’d suffered through every type of therapy session: Art Therapy Groups, Peer Group, Body Image Groups, Creative Expression Groups, Imaginative Movement Groups. Skill Training Group was a catchall that included anger management (punching bags), relaxation (meditation), and social training (playing cards).

He’d endured endless lectures by so-called experts, who insisted patients begin every sentence with
I feel…

Food isn’t the issue
, they all droned on.
It’s about seeking perfection in an imperfect world and the need to be in control of one’s destiny.

“And be careful what you say around here. The walls have ears.” Lard swung his stubby legs to the floor and grabbed a journal off his desk. “Come on, it’s time to meet the rest of the tribe.”

The dayroom was about as inviting as a mausoleum. It had a basic worn couch, mismatched chairs, shelves with ancient board games, tattered paperbacks, plastic chess pieces. Folding chairs were arranged in a haphazard circle.

Bones stood by a window staring at the street below. A metro bus gusted by on the street, followed by a blur of cyclists. An ambulance turned into the emergency entrance, reminding him that the program took up only one wing of the ten-story building. Typical type hospital activities went on everywhere else.

“Everyone gets a journal,” Lard said, choosing a folding chair. “It’s a ritual.”

“Can’t wait.”

“Look at me,” Lard said. He leaned across the room and thrust his face at Bones. “What do you see?” Bones saw brown eyes behind glasses that were so uncool they were actually cool and a face that held the secrets of being pockmarked. The usual result of excessive amounts of sugar and fat.

“There are basically two kinds of people in here,” Lard said. “Losers with eating disorders, and me. I like to eat. Food tastes good. It’s what keeps me alive. But I don’t overdo it anymore. Since you’re one type and I’m another—we should probably make a pact right here and now.”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t mess with my shit and I won’t mess with your shit.”

It made sense. “Cool shit.”

“We’re gonna get along just fine.”

A girl in flannel pj’s and bunny slippers waddled in. Her face was the color of hot cocoa with more milk than chocolate. Her hair and eyes, espresso beans. Her pierced eyebrow looked like it was bleeding.

“Hey, Teresa,” Lard said. “You doing okay?”

PJ Girl plunked down so hard her chair skidded. “Some days are the pits,” she said, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “Some are the shits.”

Bones tried not to stare but her belly was enormous. It overflowed around her waist to her back, making her look like she had an extra butt.

A second girl came in, pudgier than the first, with bleached hair and purple bangs. She’d razored off the sleeves of her sweatshirt. She sat down next to PJ Girl—er, Teresa—and nudged her with a box of tissues.

To Bones’s right, another fat girl. To his left, a fatter girl. No way he’d survive six weeks of this.

“Welcome to the club, man,” Lard muttered.

As the chairs filled up Bones realized little cliques had cemented long before he’d checked in—the shy and the loudmouths. He and Lard were the only guys. One, two, three…six females including a woman who looked to be in her early thirties. She wore a long strand of pearls and a sheer blouse with pleated slacks.

Bones figured she was a counselor. “She looks normal enough.”

Lard opened his journal, jotted down something, and passed it to Bones.
Eve’s a pediatric nurse.

Dr. Chu appeared, clipboard in hand. He reminded Bones of the principal at his high school. They both had gray ponytails and trimmed soul patches. Dandruff sprinkled their dark shirts.

Dr. Chu stood behind Teresa, who was sniveling into a tissue. His hand rested lightly on her shoulder. “Don’t be afraid to comfort someone in pain.” His gaze moved from one downcast head to the next. “That’s what we’re all about in here. Helping each other through difficult times.”

Dr. Chu had squeezed Bones’s shoulder the same way during his orientation. He was like all the other therapists Bones had met over the years. Smug know-it-alls who didn’t try to hide their smugness or know-it-all-ness.

“Does anyone have something to say to begin?” he asked.

Eve spoke up first. “Dinner last night was two ounces of boneless, skinless chicken breast. Doesn’t anyone care about the pain of those chickens? Or the fuel squandered by the global production of chicken feed?”

Bones did a double take. Guess she wasn’t a nurse working in the hospital, but a nurse in the program, as in a patient. “High-tech turnips…” she was saying. “Are we supposed to eat this stuff or is it going to eat us?”

Lard snorted under his breath. “Gotta love a woman with attitude.”

“I insist on my right to substitute tofu for meat,” Eve said.

Smart
, Bones thought. Tofu is less than a third of the calories of the same amount of skinless chicken breast.

“I’ll take it up with our nutritionist,” Dr. Chu said, lost in the work of being a therapist. “I’d like everyone to welcome Jack Plumb.”

“Hi, Jack,” the room echoed.

Dr. Chu smiled with his mouth closed. “Everyone else, please introduce yourself.”

“Elsie,” said the girl with the bleached hair and razored sweatshirt. “Anyways, I entered the program as a chronic bulimic, but I haven’t purged since I’ve been here.”

“Bullshit,” Lard muttered.

Eve introduced herself. “My medical records say I’m anorexic, but as you can see that’s a misdiagnosis.” She smiled, fingering her pearls. “People are just jealous of my figure.”

Lard blushed.

God, Lard
liked
her.

Dr. Chu reached into his briefcase and pulled out a journal like Lard’s. He handed it to Bones. “Every patient gets a journal.”

“Thanks,” Bones said.

“Anyone else have something they’d like to discuss?” Dr. Chu asked.

Bones counted imaginary red M&M’s through a painfully long silence. The nurse gathered her pearls in one hand. She clearly considered herself better than the others. Her knowing smile said it all. The girl with purple bangs unraveled a thread from her sweatshirt. Lard stared out the window, as if calculating an escape.

Suddenly the girl in pj’s burst into tears.

“Maybe it’s time to talk about it, Teresa,” Dr. said, without losing eye contact with the rest of the room.

Everyone held a collective breath waiting to see what would happen next.

“I-I-I can’t…my mom…” Teresa sobbed into a tissue. “She’d kill me if she knew I said anything.”

“It isn’t healthy to keep things bottled up,” Dr. Chu said. “You have to let it out.”

“I just…don’t think I can.”

“Okay, Teresa. Whenever you’re ready.” Then Dr. Chu announced that today’s session was ending early and handed out a writing assignment. “Go back to your room, lie on your bed, and close your eyes,” he said. “Picture an achievement in your life that made you feel proud and write about it.”

Lard collapsed his folding chair and leaned it against the wall. Bones did the same and they headed back to their room. “Sounds like Eve lives here full-time,” Bones said. “That doesn’t inspire much confidence in the program.”

“There’s no magic pill for what we have,” Lard said. “Especially if you don’t admit there’s a problem.”

Bones found this type of amateur therapy annoying.

“Let’s go to the kitchen and see what Gumbo’s up to. Maybe he’ll have a job for you that doesn’t involve food. Last year I composted scraps, even started a vegetable garden on the roof.”

“The hospital roof?”

“Chu Man doesn’t know about it.” Lard shrugged his burly shoulders. “I’d never be in one of those programs with locked doors and alarms. A guy can’t go outside to fart if he has to.”

“I hear you.”

“Come on, I’ll show you around the roof.”

“Think I’ll take a nap.” Bones really just wanted to be alone for a while. The emotional dump in group therapy had worn him out. “Maybe work on my assignment.”

“Okay, suit yourself.”

Bones laid down on his bed and closed his eyes. He remembered the day his sister became editor of her school paper; the day his dad got a bonus for selling the most insurance policies; the day his mom hit the $10,000 mark for donations she’d raised for the food bank.

He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling, thinking about the A he’d gotten on his mid-term paper and his parents whisking him and his sister off to a restaurant downtown. He’d slumped beneath a crystal chandelier, picking at his chicken piccata, pierced by guilt because he’d copied his essay from
Time
magazine and didn’t have the balls to fess up.

The next morning Bones woke up in a room too quiet for the amount of light pouring in through the window. He glanced at the clock on his desk: 6:45 a.m. Lard was noticeably absent, probably in the kitchen prepping breakfast.

Bones kicked off the starched sheets. He’d been awake most of the night worrying about his menus. Why hadn’t they shown up yet? He laced his Converse, little one-pound weights on his feet, and ticked off ten minutes of jumping jacks. That burned seventy-five calories. Not enough. Never enough. He went for another ten minutes. He struggled to catch his breath. Flashes of cold hit him. He shivered. His nose ran. Bones needed a scale bad, real bad. There was only one fix—sneaking into the examination room where the scales were kept. He remembered it being next door to the laundry room.

That’s it!
He’d act like he needed to do laundry. He studied Lard’s dirty clothes heaped in the corner, sure Lard wouldn’t mind if he washed them.

First he had to shower and change.

Someone knocked on the door even though it wasn’t closed. “Anyone home?”

Nancy, the nurse.

“Yeah?” Bones hugged the wall by the closet, not wanting her to see him all sweaty like this. She’d know he’d been exercising.