The Perfect Mum

Having her decide what she would and would not eat drove them crazy. So crazy, Dad didn’t even want to see her anymore. Which was fine by Emma. She was glad she’d made him mad. When he cracked and started screaming at her, she’d felt good. Powerful.

And having Mom choose her over Dad had made her feel powerful, too. For a while. Until she’d realized that Mom was just as bad as Dad. She was as determined as ever to control Emma. Now that she’d failed, she was resorting to force, just like Dad had tried to do. Only Mom didn’t shove food in her mouth even though she was screaming. No, she made it look like she was doing the “right” thing. Insisting her daughter get “well.” That was her word. Emma wasn’t “well” because she didn’t want to be a porker like the other girls at school who wore their pants really low but had rolls that swelled over the waistbands.

Emma tried wrenching her hands free again, but they’d tied them too tight. She felt as if she was being poisoned. If she were at home and she’d eaten too much, she would make herself exercise until she thought she’d made up for it. Sometimes it took hours.

Maybe she could exercise even if she was tied down. Emma squirmed and kicked until she got the covers off to one side and her legs were free.

Leg lifts. She could do ten on one side, ten on the other, then ten with both legs together. She could do it over and over. Or bicycle. Experimentally, she curled her spine, but had a hard time getting her hips high enough to cycle her feet.

Okay, leg lifts. Keeping her toes pointed, she lifted both legs, slowly separated them, then brought them back together, feeling the strain on her belly and back and butt. Pleased, she did it again. And again.

When her legs began to tremble and sweat popped out on her forehead, she smiled.

They couldn’t keep her from fighting back. From controlling what happened to her. No matter how hard they tried.

KATHLEEN WOKE TO THE sinking knowledge that today would be dismal. For a moment, she lay in bed, her face buried in her pillow, and tried to remember why. It didn’t take long.

Emma. Always Emma.

Kathleen rolled onto her back and noticed dispiritedly that rain was sliding down the window glass and deepening the sky to a dreary gray. Didn’t it figure.

She’d taken today off work so that she could accompany Emma to Bridges, the residential treatment center for patients with eating disorders. Emma was not going to be happy.

Yesterday, when Kathleen had returned to the hospital, the sixteen-year-old had been either sullen or in a rage. Her generally sweet disposition had been submerged by the terrifying fear of gaining weight that ruled—and threatened—her life.

Today was unlikely to bring an improvement.

At least the residential program included certified teachers so that the kids didn’t fall behind in school. Emma’s grades had actually improved this past year and a half, since Kathleen had left Ian, even if she had refused to let go of her obsession with weight. Kathleen didn’t know if Emma was studying more because she didn’t have anything else to do, now that she seemed to have no friends, or whether she hadn’t tried in school just to make her father mad, and now the payoff was missing. Her natural curiosity and intelligence had reemerged, thank goodness, resulting in almost straight A’s last semester. Kathleen hated to see Emma have to struggle to catch up. Her ego was fragile enough already.

With a sigh, Kathleen made herself get up, put on her robe and shuffle downstairs without even a pause to brush her hair. She needed breakfast and a cup of coffee before her shower. The only plus today was that she’d gotten an extra hour of sleep. The house was quiet, Helen gone to work and Ginny to school, she diagnosed. Jo might still be in bed—no, on Thursdays she had a much-hated 8:00 a.m. class.

Even living as close as they did to the University of Washington, Jo had to allow almost an hour to get there and park in the huge lot down by the football stadium, then hike up the stroke-inducing stairs to the campus.

Kathleen would miss her complaints. Jo and Ryan were getting married in July and taking a honeymoon trip to Greece, while his kids visited their mom in Denver. Then Jo would go home with Ryan, not here.

Which meant she’d be family, but in a different way. Kathleen was going to miss more than the grumbles; she’d miss her.

Kathleen and Helen had talked about making a big push to get the soap business earning real money. They were scheduled to have booths at a dozen crafts fairs in the Puget Sound area in late spring and summer, and Helen was spending every spare minute calling on shop owners to try to persuade them to carry Kathleen’s Soaps. If they could make enough, maybe they wouldn’t have to bring in another roommate. Ginny could have her own bedroom, after Jo moved out. That was their dream: just the two mothers and two daughters living in this ramshackle but charming Ravenna district house that Kathleen had once so optimistically believed she could remodel “gradually.”

That was before they’d discovered rotting floor-boards beneath the upstairs toilet, corroded pipes and an inadequate furnace.

She shouldn’t be spending money on cupboards. She should be spending it on a furnace, she worried, as she poured cereal into a bowl.

Thank God that Ian at least carried Emma on his health insurance. For Kathleen, it would have been prohibitive and her plan was less comprehensive anyway.

She sliced a banana onto the cereal and wished she hadn’t thought of Ian. He hadn’t returned her call yesterday, but she couldn’t assume he’d heard the message.

She still wasn’t convinced that it would be good for Emma to have him reappear in her life, but Emma’s therapist had advised her to keep lines of communication open.

“Emma would deny it bitterly, but being rejected by him has further threatened her self-confidence,” Sharon Russell had told Kathleen. “If he can be made to see reason…”

That would be a cold day, Kathleen had thought privately, even as she nodded. Ian Monroe exuded confidence and was completely baffled by Emma’s uncertainties. He refused to consider the possibility that he had played any part in the development of his daughter’s eating disorder. Heck, he refused to believe she was anorexic. Or maybe he just didn’t believe in eating disorders at all. After all, he had no trouble disciplining himself to eat well.

Perhaps, Kathleen thought, she was being just a little unfair. After all, she didn’t overeat or starve herself, either. It was just that she could understand human frailty. Ian couldn’t.

Or didn’t want to, she hadn’t decided which.

After putting her bowl in the sink, she poured her tea and left it to steep while she called Ian again. She didn’t bother trying him at home. He’d have left for the gym for some racquetball hours ago, then been at the office by eight o’clock. He’d curl his lip if he knew at nine o’clock she was still sitting at the kitchen table in her bathrobe and slippers, her hair tangled.

Discipline.

“Crowe Industries, Mr. Monroe’s office,” the secretary answered.

“Patty, this is Kathleen. Is Ian free?”

That was the fiction that allowed them both to save face: most often, Ian wasn’t “free.” His middle-aged secretary didn’t have to say, I’m sorry, he doesn’t want to speak to you, or lie that he was out.

“Let me check. He mentioned wanting to talk to you.”

Kathleen rolled her eyes. I’ll just bet he does.

But he did come on the phone, an unusual occurrence.

“What’s this about Emma being in the hospital?”

“Why, hello, Ian,” Kathleen said. “How are you?”

“Just a minute.” His voice became muffled as he spoke to someone else, or on a second line. She always had hated talking to him at the office, even when she believed them to be happily married.

He came back on. “Was she in an accident?”

“She has continued to lose weight. Yesterday morning she fainted and hit her head.”

“That’s all?” he said in disbelief. “She bumped her head, and you’re leaving dire messages for me?”

“Which you, of course, panicked about. I noticed you rushed to her side.”

“We both know she doesn’t want to see me.”

“Doesn’t she?” Kathleen said quietly.

He let that pass. “Does she have a concussion?”

“Yes, but that isn’t the major problem. She’s down to seventy-seven pounds.”

Ian swore.

“She’s…” Kathleen had to pause and take a deep breath to make sure her voice didn’t waver. “She’s a walking skeleton.”