Chapter 67 Amelia Blue
“Wake up, missus.” The words sound thick, far away. “It’s breakfast time.”
I open my eyes groggily and find myself face-to-face with a pair of thick-rimmed wraparound yellow glasses.
I blink until I’m able to focus on the little boy behind the lenses.
He looks about three or four, and when he smiles, I can see some of his chewed-up breakfast in his mouth.
He holds out a piece of dry cereal from a plastic bowl in his hands, his face open and expectant.
I part my lips, and he slides the cereal into my mouth.
He feeds me another piece, humming along to a made-up tune, “Breakfast time.”
“Sorry ’bout that,” Dr. Mackenzie says. I stand and see her in the kitchen.
She’s dressed in sweats, her braids loose down her back.
The crisp white blouses and cashmere wraps she wore at the center, I understand now, were a uniform, just like the black scrubs Maurice and Izabella wore.
“My wife left for work a while ago, but our day-care center’s closed because of the weather.
I wanted to let you sleep in, but Milo had other ideas. ”
“Milo’s a smart kid,” I say. Before I can fold the blanket and sheets on the couch, Milo climbs into the warm space my body left behind.
He turns on the TV and expertly finds Sesame Street.
The sound of sweet, silly music fills the room.
He leaves his cereal bowl, its contents half-eaten, on the coffee table, as though he’s forgotten about it completely.
I recall what Dr. Mackenzie said, that children of narcissists don’t know there’s a place in between, a middle ground between selfishness and self-erasure. I never understood that hunger, too, has a middle ground.
My former doctor gestures for me to sit at the kitchen table across from her. “How’d you sleep?”
“Better than I expected.”
“Do you want to tell me what happened last night?”
I’m filled with gratitude that she didn’t ask me hours ago, simply brought me here without insisting on an explanation.
“You’re not my therapist anymore, you know.”
Dr. Mackenzie takes a sip of coffee and smiles. “Old habits.”
I press my hands against my empty belly, no food, no baby to fill it. I begin to wrap two fingers from my left hand around my right wrist, noticing the scratches from shattered glass turning into scabs. I drop my hands abruptly.
“Can I tell you something?” I ask. Dr. Mackenzie nods. “I always blamed my mother for my eating disorder. I thought anorexia was a reaction to her, like I was trying to make order out of her chaos.”
Mommy issues, Andrew said last night.
“You don’t think that now?”
“Now I think—if that’s true, then why didn’t it get better after she died?”
“Some ED researchers believe people with anorexia long to stay small because they’re phobic not about fat but about adulthood.”
Hasn’t that theory been debunked by now? “You think my anorexia is just a bad case of Peter Pan syndrome?” I ask drily. “My childhood wasn’t exactly easy. I hardly think I would’ve tried to prolong it.”
“Maybe not. Or maybe you were desperate to be parented, and part of you believed you could give your mother infinite chances to try again. Maybe you even imagined that if you made yourself small enough, you could become the little girl who’d had both her parents.”
“That’d be quite a feat of magical thinking—believing that if I could transcend the fact that both my parents are dead.”
“One could argue that believing you could live without nutrients is quite a feat of magical thinking.”
I think of the lullaby on my dad’s last album, the song Georgia insisted they wrote together. I never believed her, because it was about a desperately desired child, the words of a parent who had so many plans.
Was I trying to be the perfect little girl they wrote about, longing for the fantasy of parenthood they portrayed? Did I want it as badly as they did?
“I really hated that place,” I say finally. “Other treatment centers don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are. But it’s like Rush’s Recovery wants you to forget why you’re really there.”
“I know what you mean.” Dr. Mackenzie smiles.
For a moment, the only sound is Milo’s show in the background. I take in the dishes crowding the sink, the scribbled drawings on the refrigerator door.
“How’d you end up working there anyway?”
“Honestly?” Dr. Mackenzie asks, and I nod.
“They offered more money than anyplace else, and I have a pile of student loans up to here.” She holds her hand just beneath her chin.
“And I thought, what does it matter whether the people I’m helping are rich or poor, as long as I’m helping them?
Not that it has to be one or the other, but I got certified by working in a women’s prison. ”
“Rush’s Recovery must’ve been a culture shock.”
“In some respects.” She smiles wryly.
“Do you think you’ll keep working there? When it opens again?”
Dr. Mackenzie moves her gaze from my face to the little boy in the living room.
“My family and I live here, and it’s not like there are a ton of places on this small island in need of therapists.
But—Rush’s Recovery never quite felt like the right fit for me.
Andrew—Dr. Rush—his approach isn’t quite conventional. ”
“No,” I agree. My mouth tastes sour. “It’s not.”
Dr. Mackenzie puts her hands on her lap, pressing herself to stand. “We better get going if we’re going to get you to the ferry in time to make your flight back home.”
Home. To the house my grandmother mortgaged to the hilt.
Dr. Mackenzie, Milo, and I pile into my former doctor’s Subaru. The snow on the sides of the road has melted to gray sludge.
Milo stays in the car as we dig my bags from the back, my mother’s notebook now tucked neatly alongside my gum wrappers and cigarettes.
Dr. Mackenzie hesitates like she’s not sure whether to hug me goodbye, so I move to embrace her.
Can’t be more unprofessional than letting me sleep on her couch, letting her son feed me Cheerios.
She holds me tight, the way only Naomi has ever held me.
I feel a lump rise in my throat, homesick for my grandmother’s touch, my house in the hills.
“I hope, I truly hope, that you find what you’re looking for,” Dr. Mackenzie says. “I’m sorry that Rush’s Recovery couldn’t give you what you needed.”
I feel the weight of my mother’s notebook in my bag. Maybe I’m leaving this island with exactly what I need.