her tongue flicking in and out.
Hours later, her eyes close suddenly and she doesn’t so much go to sleep as fall out of the world. The veins in her neck stand out, as if even exhausted and unconscious she’s straining against something. That’s how it seems to us: as if the Kitty we know is being held hostage by—what, exactly? We don’t know.
We creep out of the room without speaking, taking the long-melted milk shake with us. We lie together in bed, trembling. Was I wrong about Kitty? Is she, in fact, deranged, possessed, mentally ill beyond our ability to help her? The next time she opens her eyes, who will we find: our daughter, or the demon who now seems to possess her?
In the morning, unbelievably, Kitty is back to her normal self, or rather back to the version of normal we’re getting all too used to. She eats breakfast without complaint and goes off to work with Jamie. I’m too rattled to go in to the office. Thank God for a boss who understands about families, because I need this job. We need this job, not just for the salary but because it supplies our health insurance. Such as it is.
That night, Emma’s theater camp gives a performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Kitty doesn’t want to attend, but we insist. We’re trying to maintain some vestige of normal family life, especially for Emma, who stood with us at her sister’s bedside in the ICU. Who sits at the dinner table, hearing the poisonous words that pour from her sister’s mouth. Whose life has already been profoundly altered by anorexia.
Jamie takes Emma to the theater early, and Kitty and I arrange to meet them there. In the car on the way over, Kitty tells me she feels funny again—dizzy, tight in the chest, floaty. It’s been another hundred-degree day, suffocatingly humid; we’re all feeling a little ill. In her fragile state, Kitty’s probably dehydrated and overheated.
I could turn the car around and take her home, but I know how disappointed Emma would be. And suddenly I’m angry—no, enraged—at the idea of upsetting Emma. She’s important too, damn it, and I’m not going to let her down. I pull in to the parking lot, grab Kitty’s hand, and half-pull her into the building, where I jam change into a vending machine. “Drink this,” I say, handing her a twenty-ounce bottle of fruit punch.
“I’m not thirsty—” she begins, but I interrupt her.
“This is not negotiable,” I say, my voice tight. “You will drink this, all of it, and then we will go inside. And if we need to go back to the hospital, we’ll do it after the play is over.”
Kitty’s mouth opens in surprise and hurt. Tears spring into her eyes and roll down her cheeks. Remorse prickles in my chest; I ignore it. “Drink,” I say. She drinks, all of it, as we stand outside the theater, watching families stream in, laughing and talking, going about their lives on an ordinary summer night.
By the time Kitty finishes, my anger has dissipated, leaving me both appalled at my behavior and encouraged by its results. I take the empty bottle from Kitty’s shaking hand and put my arm around her shoulder. “You did good,” I tell her. I put two fingers on the artery in her neck, the way the nurses in the hospital taught me, and take her pulse: forty-one beats per minute. We’ll call the doctor. But not until after Emma’s show.
In the auditorium, I wind up sitting next to an old friend, Lisa. Kitty took dance classes with her at ages four and five. I wonder if Lisa knows what’s going on with Kitty. We haven’t kept it a secret, but we also haven’t broadcast the news. I’m grateful when the lights dim and the show begins, and I can sit in the dark, my face hidden, and focus on something other than anorexia for an hour.
The show is a success, and Emma, a fairy swathed in bright gauzy scarves, has a moment in the spotlight playing the harp. She’s been taking lessons for six months, and it’s thrilling to see her absorbed in the music. And a relief to hear her pull it off without a wrong note. Jamie snaps photo after photo from the audience. At the end of the show, as the cast take their bows, Kitty and I slip away; Jamie will wait for Emma and bring her home, where we’ll celebrate her stage