A woman wearing black pants and a crisp white blouse with black hair plaited into dozens of braids is waiting for me just outside the glassy house’s enormous front door. She rushes to open it for me, introducing herself as Dr. Mackenzie, my care manager. The driver pulls away smoothly, barely disturbing the gravel beneath the car’s wheels, as though the car is hardly touching the ground.
“We’re so pleased to have you here at Rush’s,” Dr. Mackenzie says as she leads the way into my cottage.
I imagine my mother rolling her eyes at such a greeting when she arrived here ten years ago. She never thought there was anything the least bitpleasingabout being sent to places like this.
Or maybe she was grateful to be here, relieved they had space to accommodate her. Maybe she arrived determined todo the work, exactly like you’re supposed to.
I try to picture my mother participating earnestly in therapy, but the images in my head are fuzzy, her voice muted as though even my imagination can’t make up what she might say.
I look around, hoping that being here will help to bring it—to bring her—into focus, but the pictures and sounds remain muddy.
Simplybeing hereisn’t enough.
9Amelia Blue
Dr. Mackenzie shows me the kitchen and introduces me to Maurice, who will be my personal chef during my stay, and Izabela, the housekeeper. Maurice’s hair is cropped close, military-style, and Izabela’s dark hair is held tightly in place with one of those clips that looks like a claw. They’re both wearing uniforms that look like a set of jet-black scrubs. Dr. Mackenzie promises they’ll work out of sight but are available to me any time I need them. (When does anyoneneeda private chef or housekeeper?)
The kitchen is open to the living room (how exactly will Maurice do his work out of sight?), bisected by a long marble island that runs almost the full width of the house. Behind the island is a Viking range with six gas burners and a double oven and an enormous copper sink. The dishwasher and Sub-Zero refrigerator are gleaming stainless steel. The cabinets are painted dark, dark blue, almost black.
In the living room, there’s a comfortable-looking white sectional facing a fireplace, inside of which is a roaring wood-burning fire. On top of the mantel is a row of candles, lit cheerfully and filling the room with the scent of lavender and mint. Hanging above the candles is one of those mirrors that’s really a television in disguise.
“Do you give this tour to every patient?” I ask Dr. Mackenzie.
“We want each of our guests to be comfortable with their environment,” she answers, subtly correcting my use of the wordpatient.
I wonder, but don’t ask, about the patients who arrive strung out. There were days when Georgia was too high to know which way was up, let alone to appreciate a Nest thermostat.
Dr. Mackenzie gestures cheerfully to a large glass bowl of lemons on the kitchen island, the lone pop of color in the room. “Your grandmother told us you like lemon.”
I always have. Maybe that should have been a warning sign. What kind of toddler is drawn to such a sour, bitter taste?
On cue, Maurice offers up a plate of lemon-scented shortbread. (Has he been holding the platter behind his back since I walked in?)
Over the years, doctors and therapists have tried to tempt me with “favorite” foods. When that (inevitably) didn’t work, they switched tactics, forcing me to drink cans of Ensure to meet the weight they designate ashealthy. They sent me home with meal plans that Grandma Naomi studied like maps, but I always lost my way, like Little Red Riding Hood straying from the path to meet the wolf.
I swallow a sigh. I bet other patients (guests) are offered exclusively healthy foods: organic, local, clean. I bet some people come here expressly to lose weight, abstaining from white flour, sugar, dairy. In another body, my eating habits would be praised, not pathologized.
The cookies are very, very pale yellow. Almost white. If I concentrate, I can picture the flour that must have gone into them. I can see flecks of lemon zest sprinkled throughout. I imagine Maurice running a lemon over a Microplane. Perhaps he was careless, looking away, and accidentally scratched his knuckle, so that a tiny droplet of his blood dripped into the dough before he baked it.
“I’m not great with gluten,” I offer finally.
“Our apologies,” Dr. Mackenzie says quickly. I don’t know, and don’t ask, whether Dr. Mackenzie is her last name or her first, like she’s a talk-show therapist. “There wasn’t anything in your medical records about a gluten intolerance.”
Her polite apology isn’t an apology at all but a challenge.
It doesn’t matter how expensive this place is, how pristine the setting, how white the couch, how warm the fire. All these places have the same MO: Get patients to hit a goal weight, then send them home.
Slowly, I reach for a piece of shortbread, its angles sharp and precise. I break off a corner and place it on my tongue.
My mouth floods with sweetness. Then the sharpness of the lemon, the granulated sugar crunching like sprinkles between my teeth. It tastes like the cookies my grandmother used to make. No, they are those cookiesexactly.Naomi must have shared the recipe with Maurice. As I chew, the texture of the cookie turns sticky as glue. It’s difficult to swallow.
Did some chef offer Georgia a personalized snack, too? Did Naomi send another one of her secret recipes? (Then again, Georgia never liked Naomi’s cooking.)
“Mmm,” I say finally, meeting the doctor’s eyes. “Thank you, Maurice.” The chef beams like he’s already fixed me.
Georgia called anorexia a gateway diagnosis, like smoking pot before shooting up. (That had been her route of choice.) The first time I went to treatment, she said,Maybe they’ll find out what’s really wrong with you.After all, her daughter—Scott Harris’s daughter—couldn’t possibly be defeated by something as soft-core as a diet gone awry. Anorexia was too clean, too neat and organized for her taste.
I never had a chance to explain that there’s nothing clean about teeth going rotten and breath that stinks because, without any food to digest, the acid from your stomach bubbles into the throat. Nothing clean about fingernails that are ragged and bowel movements that feel like you’re coming apart at the seams, about hair growing thinner, more feathers than fur. This disease could kill me as messily and horrifically as the drugs and accidents that killed the celebrities she worshipped. Maybe if she knew that eating disorders are the second deadliest of mental illnesses, she would’ve been impressed. (Or maybe not, since opioid overdoses are number one.)
