The Art of Adapting (34 page)

Jenny opened a folder and removed a picture of a supermodel. There was nothing special about it. Jenny watched Abby closely. She pulled out another picture. The same picture, only different. She handed both photos to Abby. In the second one the model wasn't quite so tall, and she had shadows under her eyes and lines around her mouth. She had bigger thighs and meatier upper arms.

“The magic of Photoshop,” Jenny said. “You see, that one is the real girl, untouched. This one”—she pointed to the first image—“is what she looked like after they erased every ounce of fat. The ideal that I was chasing? Turns out it didn't even exist.”

Abby looked back and forth until she got it, then she looked up at Jenny. Jenny was waiting for her to say something, Abby was pretty sure, but Abby had nothing.

“It makes me mad,” Jenny said. “That they set young girls up to hate their bodies to sell some product that nobody needs.”

She handed Abby a whole stack of them: before-and-after-being-Photoshopped pictures of models and celebrities. Sure enough, the ones Abby had spread all over her desk in her room, the magazines
full of women with flawless skin and perfect bodies, were fake. They'd been stretched like taffy, wrinkles smoothed out, blemishes lightened, thighs and arms carved away until they were nonexistent, breasts enlarged and lifted. The women themselves were erased, leaving some imaginary girl behind. Abby cared and didn't care. She guessed she had fallen for it, just like Jenny. But that wasn't why she didn't eat.

She looked up and nodded. “I'm sure a lot of girls feel like they have to look like this. And that's too bad.”

“But not you?” Jenny asked. She had her head tilted to the side like she could see Abby better from an angle.

“I don't know,” Abby said. “Sure, I'd like to be perfect. I mean, who wouldn't, right? But the truth is, I just don't like food. I hate certain textures and smells and anything with a lot of grease. I can barely make myself swallow it.”

“What is food?” Jenny asked.

Abby laughed, but Jenny looked serious. “It's, um, calories?”

Jenny collected the photos of the fake supermodels. “Anything else?” Abby shrugged. “How about nutrients? How about vitamins, minerals, protein, fiber, the resources we need to have the strongest, healthiest bodies possible?”

Of course Jenny was right. Abby had messed up on her answer. She needed to think before responding. “Yeah, sure. That, too.”

“I hear you're quite the athlete,” Jenny said. Abby shrugged. It wasn't like she was going to brag. “Why would you rather run during lunch than eat? Why would you work yourself to the point of fainting? Just because you don't like food?”

The only way Jenny could know about the fainting and lunch-skipping running was if Lana knew. Which meant someone had told on Abby. Abby was mortified.

“I just . . . I'm trying to keep in shape.”

Jenny gave her a sympathetic smile. “Sometimes, when people have a lot of change going on, hard things, things they can't control, they find other outlets for their fears, their anxieties. Other means of asserting control over their lives. Exercising as much as possible, eating as little as possible, does it make you feel in control?”
She did this for a living. She already knew the answer. Abby saw no point in playing dumb.

“It takes discipline.”

“And without this discipline, what might happen?”

Suddenly Abby felt angry. She wasn't sure why. “Everything would go to hell.” Except everything already had gone to hell, hadn't it?

“And what would that mean? How would it change your life if you ate more, exercised less, gained weight, actually liked food?”

“I'd get fat. I'd be made fun of. I'd be even uglier than I am now. I'd be a failure. I'd be ruined.” But of course she was already ruined. Only she didn't want to talk about that. Abby took the pillow by opposite corners and spun it forward and backward.

“Do you think your food aversion might have something to do with the fact that you only see food as calories?”

“I don't know.”

“What do you see when you look at your body?”

Abby looked down at her thighs, the fat nobody seemed able to see but her. She shook her head. She was done sharing. She wanted to leave.

“I see nothing,” she said. Abby stopped spinning the pillow and set it neatly aside. She felt a swell of anger and she sighed it away, but it didn't quite leave, not all of it.

“It seems to me that you try very hard to be perfect. Perfect student, perfect athlete, perfect daughter. You have very high standards for yourself. Maybe impossible standards.”

Abby clenched her teeth. It was all she could do not to start her thigh-clenching exercises right there in front of the eating disorder specialist. She wondered if she could get away with it. A feeling of defiance rose up inside her. She slowly tightened up every muscle in her body, just for the thrill of pulling one over on good old Jenny.

“Perfectionist tendencies frequently accompany anorexia. This belief that achieving perfection will finally bring happiness. That you can't be happy unless you are perfect. Do you ever feel like that?”

Abby relaxed her body, took a breath, tightened it up again.

“Are you happy?” Jenny asked. It was a stupid question. Happy people didn't end up in therapy. Abby snorted. Relaxed her body. Tightened up again. “Right now, exercising in front of me, are you happy?”

Abby felt like she'd been punched in the stomach, and her body went slack in response. “No.”

“How do you feel?”

“I feel . . .” Abby felt a swell of tears, laced with rage. She felt humiliated and exposed and like the biggest failure in the world. She looked for one word to sum all of that up, but there wasn't one. “I feel everything. Everything but happy.”

“Well, that's a start,” Jenny said.

“Of what?” Abby asked.

“A process. Next we let those feelings out. We let go of all of the sadness and shame and self-pity and doubt and rage. Everything that gets in the way of us loving ourselves.”

“How?”

“We scream it out, of course.” Jenny smiled and Abby smiled back, sure she was joking. Jenny pointed to the pillow at Abby's side. “That'll do. Pretend that pillow is everyone who ever made you doubt yourself. Make a list. Start with the worst person. Who is it?”

“Caitlin,” Abby said without thinking.

“Caitlin. And what did Caitlin do to you?”

Tears welled in Abby's eyes and she shook her head to clear them. “She's just your typical popular mean girl. She kind of has it in for me.”

“What did she do?” Jenny was nearly whispering, Abby figured to make her feel safe confessing. But there was nothing safe about it. Abby put her sweater back on.

“She started rumors about me. About me and a teacher. They weren't true.”

Jenny nodded, her face smooth with sympathy. She pointed to the pillow. “Tell her how much she hurt you. Tell her how furious you are. Tell her you aren't taking it anymore. Yell at her. Scream at her if you can.”

Abby laughed, but Jenny was dead serious. Abby couldn't do it. “I'm not really a yeller.”

“I'll show you how it's done,” Jenny said. She sat facing the pillow, leaned in close with an angry face, her hands on her thighs. “I hate how you made me feel,” she hissed. “You called me fat. You made me feel ugly. Worthless. I don't deserve to be treated like that, Mom!”

Abby wasn't sure if Jenny was putting on an act just to set an example, or if her mother had really said those things. Abby wanted to give Jenny a hug. But then it was her turn. Abby stared down the pillow, but her anger was very far away.

“Hit it,” Jenny said.

Abby gave the pillow a light-handed smack. It absorbed the blow like Abby was merely air. Invisible. Insignificant. She hit it again, with the side of her fist, hard enough to make a sound, a quiet gust of air leaving the pillow. She tried once more. And again, with both hands. The sound was probably similar to the sound Caitlin would make if Abby hit her in the stomach. Her soft, flabby, stupid, rumor-starting stomach. Abby didn't feel as strong as she used to, physically or emotionally, but she was stronger than this, she was pretty sure. She pulled the pillow closer, raised her fists like a boxer, and let loose a steady stream of punches: left, right, left, right. She was training, just warming up. She thought of Caitlin, chem, the rumors, the years she had left enduring the hell that was high school. And Gabe, whom she still loved even though he was maybe the worst thing that had ever happened to her. She leaned over the pillow, pummeled it with everything she had. Her arms were getting tired but she couldn't stop. She grunted as she punched, found hidden energy reserves in guttural sounds. She was almost out of strength, out of energy, out of will, when she felt a welling inside her, a bottomless anguish for everything that she'd had and lost: happiness, laughter, peace, hope. She hit Caitlin, the rumor-spreading kids, her dad for leaving, her mom for taking so long to notice her again. She even hit herself, for all the ways she'd failed herself. A sob rose to the surface and Abby blocked it with a scream, a primal sound that came from her toes. She stopped hitting the pillow and screamed herself empty at it.

“It's not fair!” she shouted at the pillow, just a stupid orange square that cared nothing for her, just like everyone else in her life. “I always do everything right. I never cause any trouble. I never ask for anything. And for what? None of you care about me! None of you see me! None of you love me! I never hurt anyone! Why do you all want to hurt me? Why can't you just leave me alone? Why can't you just like me? Why don't any of you care how I feel?”

Abby was hoarse and out of breath and a sob came up like vomit, choking her. She cried a hard, airless cry, broken and empty and animalistic, her whole body lurching with the effort. She coughed and choked on her sobs until her breath came back, then buried her face in the pillow and cried it all out. She wept until she had no more tears, just a splitting headache and a runny nose.

She sat up and wiped her eyes on her sweater. Jenny held out a box of tissues and Abby took them. She had the hiccups and her entire body ached. She went through a dozen tissues, blowing until her nose was raw. Jenny waited patiently. Abby glared at Jenny, hating her. Why would she want Abby to feel like this? Jenny had to be the worst therapist ever. This wasn't helping at all.

Abby stood up to leave and swooned. She was too dizzy to take a single step forward. Jenny reached out to catch her. Abby reeled, falling back onto the couch. She threw the box of tissues across the room. They bounced off a wall with barely a sound, leaving a small dent in one corner of the blue box. Abby lurched across the room, using the wall for balance, and stomped on the box, flattened it into a mangled mess. She stormed back to the couch and sat, arms crossed, breathing hard, glaring at Jenny.

Jenny smiled at Abby and clapped her hands in a slow, steady rhythm. “Perfect,” she said.

Abby started to laugh, because the whole thing was ridiculous, and her therapist was insane. She'd assaulted a pillow and a box of tissues and she was supposed to be proud of this. But as she laughed, hiccupping and snorting and coughing, she began to feel lighter. She'd dumped her sadness and anger, had made a complete fool out of herself. She was weightless. Drained clean. And she was still here.

“Now what?” Abby asked. She pointed at another box of tissues. Unsmashed. Waiting. And she and Jenny laughed together.

“Now we start the next phase,” Jenny said. “We've emptied you of the bad. Now we fill you up with good. List everything you like about yourself.”

Abby sighed. “I'm sorry about the Kleenex box,” she said.

“It had it coming,” Jenny said.

Abby laughed. She wanted to skip this next part, but Jenny was waiting. “I guess I like my soccer skills. I'm pretty good on the track. I like when I get good grades.”

Jenny wasn't satisfied. She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes as she considered something. “Here's an idea. Close your eyes. Picture yourself as a little girl, back when you still had favorite foods, before you noticed fashion photos, before the Caitlins of the world got to you. Now tell that little girl everything you like about her.”

Abby closed her eyes and searched her eyelids, lit pink by the sun coming in the window. She remembered a photo of herself from a family camping trip. She was maybe six and shoeless and missing a front tooth and blissfully happy with a s'more in her hand. She imagined kneeling before that girl. “I like your sense of humor,” she said. Her voice was small and thin. “I like your silliness. Your animal impressions. Your made-up stories. Your kindness. Your adventurousness. Your tree-climbing skills. Your honesty. Your compassion. Your pretty smile. Your strong body.” She opened her eyes and Jenny was smiling.

“Good,” Jenny said. “Can we agree that you and little-girl Abby have all of those qualities in common?”

Abby shrugged. She supposed it was true. Some of it was buried, but most of it was still there, inside somewhere. She nodded. Jenny hugged her and the hour was up, just when it was getting good.

Abby was a zombie afterward, completely exhausted. Jenny said a few words to Lana and they left. Abby was quiet the whole ride home, but she could feel her mom trying not to watch her, silently waiting for something. It seemed strange that they had
barely even talked about her eating. Or not eating. But in a way that was the best part.

“It was good,” she finally said. “I'll go again.”

Lana squeezed her hand and held on to it for the rest of the drive. Abby was overcome by sleep before they made it home. She woke up hours later in her bed. She figured her mom must've carried her upstairs like a baby. There was a bouquet of flowers on her nightstand and a card from Lana that read,
I love you and I'm proud of you
.