Do Not Resuscitate

“What do we have on the menu this morning?”

Dad’s talking to himself.

Or to Uncle Brian, but Uncle Brian is too busy drinking coffee and staring at the comics page of the paper to pay much attention, so Dad’s probably talking to himself.

He places his hands on his hips, taking survey of the food he has cooking. He’s got so much going at once, he’s going to forget something and set the house on fire. He’s M. Shadows, not supermom Suzy Homemaker.

“I cut up some fruit,” Dad says, and his eyes bore into the side of my face. Again. Searching for a reaction. Looking for a hint that maybe this is the right thing to give me to eat.

And I swear I can feel his smile.

The forced, pseudo encouraging, “please eat some fucking food, Danny, stop acting like a five-year-old” smile. I keep my eyes firmly trained on the island so I don’t have to see that smile, so I don’t have to bear the heaviness of his exhaustion and irritation full-on.

Uncle Brian turns the page of his newspaper. Food sizzles on the stovetop. Val’s antique wrought iron clock ticks. The refrigerator buzzes. I don’t make a noise.

So Dad places a bowl of mixed fruit on the kitchen island, right in my line of sight.

Don’t recoil. Don’t scream. Don’t acknowledge the bowl of brightly colored fruits. It’s not there. They’re not cut the wrong way. They’re not touching. They don’t exist.

But they are, they are, and they do.

I want to go upstairs.

Dad doesn’t notice. He’s done it wrong, and he doesn’t notice. He keeps listing foods and placing plates and cups and bowls in my face.

“Here’s a cup of Special K and half a cup of skim milk, separate. I measured them. A cup of orange juice. Black coffee. Half a grapefruit, half a cup of almonds, and wheat toast. Plain. But I have spreads, too.”

There’s a feast in front of me. More food than I’d eat unless planning to hurl chunks in the bathroom. Enough to make the impulse to work out impossible to ignore.

And it’s wrong. It’s all wrong.

“I have turkey bacon, oatmeal, and egg whites cooking, too… I think.”

There’s more?

Dad’s staring at the stove top, distracted by the food sizzling and steaming and making the kitchen smell delicious—it’s the bacon, always the bacon. He wouldn’t notice if I “accidentally” knocked the dishes to the floor and made a break for the stairs.

Sure, I’d get lightheaded standing, pass out, hit my head on the island, and never make it to my room, but the food would be gone. Then, maybe, my throat wouldn’t be so tight.

“What else?”

No more. Stop, Dad. I can’t do this.

“I could get you some rice cakes with some peanut butter or jelly, the low calorie one, or…” he trails off. Lost. Wracking his brain for more food to fuck up.

“Hardboiled eggs,” Uncle Brian offers. He turns the page of his newspaper. “Greek yogurt. Granola.”

Shut your whore mouth, Uncle Brian.

Dad claps his hands, gives Uncle Brian an excited “Yes” because Uncle Brian’s suggestions are apparently genius, and turns to the cupboards to grab more pots and pans. More food. He’s making more food. He’s going to dirty every dish in the house to make more food to add to my all-you-can-eat anorexic buffet.

I need out.

Uncle Brian puts his paper down and hefts himself out of the chair next to me. “I got it.”

What is he doing?

He goes to Dad’s side, checks the food already on the stove, flips one, takes another off and slides white substance onto a plate, and grabs one of the pots Dad’s laid out. He’s helping Dad cook. He’s seriously making a portion of Dad’s attempt at breakfast.

Neither of you knows what you’re doing. You make food wrong.

They go on cooking. The bacon has been on the stove too long. The oatmeal must be boiling down too far. And what did Uncle Brian just put in it? Why is he chopping vegetables? Where is he putting that? What does he think he’s doing? Cease and desist.

I’m not eating that. I’m not eating any of this. You can’t make me.

“The she-devil will be up soon,” Uncle Brian comments.

I think the smell of food is choking me, clogging up my airways, heavy in my throat.

Dad chuckles. “I promised her breakfast in bed.”

Uncle Brian adds the plate of egg whites and turkey bacon and a little squirt of ketchup and a square of butter to my growing collection. Grease from the bacon is touching the eggs. Flecks of salt glitter in the light. The ketchup is wet and glistening. The butter is warming up and starting to create a lake.

I’m going to throw up.

“You’re letting Brooklyn eat in bed?” Uncle Brian asks.

“She saw it in a movie,” Dad says, “Let’s get Val’s breakfast started, too.”

And there’s the bowl of oatmeal, the plastic container of yogurt, granola and blueberries and sautéed vegetables on the same plate.

I’m going to scream.

“Omelet?” Uncle Brian asks.

“For Val. Brooklyn hates them.”

They’re cleaning dishes, prepping to make more food, in a whirl of movement. Someone places a bowl of four hardboiled eggs in front of me, shells still on, full instead of cut in half with the yolks taken out.

I’m going to cry.

I have to get rid of this.

Dad and Uncle Brian aren’t facing me again. They’re pretending to be focused on making breakfast for Val and Brooklyn and themselves, pretending to ignore me by giving me their backs, pretending to give me privacy so I can eat. They don’t understand. That’s not how this works. I’m not eating.

I should throw each dish in the garbage one by one. I should shove them to the floor in a dramatic display. I should get up and leave, ninja-like. I should, but I can’t.

Starvation hurts.

I need the food gone. I need it out of my sight. I need it to disappear or combust or float away. It’s taunting me, flaunting its faultiness, mocking me. I need to push it.

Why are these dishes so heavy? I have to use all my strength. Push one set to the left, as far it will go. Another set to the right, to Uncle Brian’s newspaper. Pick up the cups and plop them down on either side. Away. Loudly. Dad and Uncle Brian must be able to hear the scrap of dishes against marble, the sharp tap of glass, the sloshing of liquids threatening to spill over, but they don’t turn around.

And it’s gone. The food is gone. Out of sight, out of mind. Except I can still smell bacon and egginess and veggies and toasted bread. It’s clogging my throat and filling my stomach.

I’m hungry.

“Medicine,” Dad blurts, stops what he’s doing, whirls around, and opens a cabinet. “You need medicine.”

God, yes, happy pills.

The cabinet slams shut. Dad’s body is back in front of the island, and he lines up three containers, the fourth he keeps in his hands. His fingers struggle with a safety cap, pop it open, fish out a pill, the first of four I’m supposed to choke down apparently, and then he goes still, hesitates. The food’s not where he left it. It moved. He heard it.

Did you think that sound was me eating?

Dad recovers and puts the pill where the plate of inedible fruits used to be. Right under my nose. Fine. Pills are fine. Food is not. He does the same with the last three containers: struggle with the child safety lock, fish out a pill, put the pill where Danny can see it and hope that maybe, just maybe, she’ll actually take it. A perfect line of pills, varying in sizes, colors, shapes, and chalkiness.

I’ll take them, Dad. Don’t you worry. One of these is the pain med, and I hurt too much to consider playing Russian roulette or just not taking them in an attempt to avoid the heart medications. I’m going to be lighter than a feather. Some dreams do come true.

Dad disappears, cabinets bang, the refrigerator opens and slams shut, and Dad comes back to place an opened water bottle next to my pills.

“You need to eat a little something,” Dad says in his soothing tone.

He thinks putting on that voice is going to make me eat. I’m going to have a miraculous breakthrough and realize I’m worth something to the world, starving myself to death isn’t the right route, and, Dad, I’m ready for recovery, give me the two billion calories the doctors think I should shove down my throat, I can handle it.

Life doesn’t work like that.

“Okay, Danny? With the medication, you need to eat. I don’t know what will happen if you don’t, but…” Dad sighs. “Please, just eat. A couple bites of toast.”

I’ll risk not eating, thanks.

He shifts from foot to foot awkwardly, then turns to help Uncle Brian with whatever they’re attempting to make. His back is firmly to me, no peering over his shoulder to watch my movements since I can’t be trusted to swallow anything. Good. I grab the water bottle and the first pill. My hands shake. Water spills onto the counter.

These pills are gross.

Don’t gag. Take the next one. Keep them down. Two smallish ones left. I can take them. Oh, God. Okay. Okay. I’m okay. One more. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. Go.

I threw up a little in my mouth.

“… egg in a basket…”

Huh?

It’s just a fragment of Dad’s sentence, which I haven’t been listening to, something about Brooklyn’s breakfast in bed, but I go alert, catch onto the food in question, the words twirling around. Egg in a basket. Fried eggs. Buttery, toasted white bread. The worst kind of deliciousness. Dad’s specialty.

I’m salivating.

Dad’s big back is blocking the counter. I can’t see what he’s doing, but I know: cutting holes in the fatty white bread with a cup, throwing greasy butter in a pan, melting, melting, melting, lay down the first slice, and plop goes the egg right in the hole, wait, no, it’s not done, Danny, be patient, flip, wait, minutes feel like hours, and finally, he slides it onto a plate, then starts the next one. The circles get cooked last. Those are his to eat while I get the eggy, buttery mess on my clothes, my hair, my hands, the carpet, the coffee table, everywhere.

I mean Brooklyn.

While Brooklyn eats in bed and causes a royal mess.

I’ve watched him make these so many times as a kid. On Saturday mornings when Mom was slaving over schoolwork or as special birthday breakfasts or just because I was hungry and he couldn’t make anything else.

Dad puts a plate delicately stacked high with fried eggs in bready baskets on the island. Next to the orange juice that he measured wrong and the bowl of touching colored fruits. Mine the moment Dad turns his back.

Brooklyn’s. Not mine. Those are for her, for the best breakfast in bed ever.

I want them.

Relaxed heaviness is pulling my entire body down. My eyelids droop, snap open, droop, snap. Stay open. I have to stare at the pile, to protect it for Brooklyn, to make sure no one takes one from her, to drool over the way the magnificently brightened lighting makes the golden brown of the bread a gorgeous temptation.

“Alright, time to—”

Dad cuts Uncle Brian off. “One more.”

“One—Oh. Yeah. Okay.”

Brooklyn can’t eat that many, Dad. She thinks she can, but she can’t. She’s three. She doesn’t understand the concept of stomach limitations. She’ll eat half of one and leave the rest for you. I was three once, too. Don’t you remember?

They make one last eggy basket anyway, hold off on eating whatever they made for themselves to keep the excitement of cooking for once alive. Their food is going to get cold.

I’m cold.

Those baskets would warm me up.

I don’t even hurt anymore. I’m pretty sure I could pick the entire plate up and fly up the stairs. Literally fly. I’d walk so fast, I’d become airborne. Then I’d become a circus sideshow. The Flying Anorexic. I could drift around in a tent above the heads of the audience, and they’d Ooh and Ah at how amazing I am. I’d get a sparkly spandex outfit, too. In black to slim down my bones.

Who snorted?

Me. That was me.

Because, really, M. Shadows’ daughter flying around a circus tent in spandex, touting the awesome properties of black clothing or diet pills or organic products to a crowd full of awestruck spectators, ICD discharging to cause some mild panic, is probably the best advertisement anyone could ask for. I mean, I’d buy it, whatever it is, and I’m totally not biased, and oh my God, the clouds are so fluffy. Like giant, deformed cotton balls and—

Egg in a basket.

One on a plate covered in flowery designs and some cartoon character.

In front of me.

Magic.

I conjured it. I thought about it so hard it appeared. I’m a wizard, Harry… That’s not how the line goes… Who cares? I have an egg in a basket. It’s beautiful. Buttery. Flawlessly toasted. Unbroken yolk right in the center of the egg white and hole, which is also exactly in the center of the bread, and the bread is in the center of the kiddy plate. Perfect. Absolutely perfect.

I can’t eat.

But… But it’s perfect.

I cut it. I can’t resist

In half. Break the yolk. Across the center to make four squares. The bottom left corner square, always the bottom left corner square, into four more squares. The bottom left corner square of the bottom left corner square into four tiny perfect squares. Four is a good number. Four is the best number. The only way to cut food is in fours. The knife and fork go back on the napkin, my hands in my lap, and my eyes on the itty bitty bottom left square.

I can’t eat.

It’s perfect—perfectly made, perfectly cut, perfectly displayed—and I can’t eat it.

I chug my water bottle, what’s left of it. The remnants of nasty chalky pill are on the rim. I swear. I can taste it. I want to gag. It’s so gross, but the happy pain meds made me light and airy, and I can suffer through the nasty taste for that feeling.

The microscopic squares are soaked in yolk. Yellowy and goopy and beautiful. Organized chaos.

I can’t eat.

But maybe… if I eat a little… the last four microscopic squares… it’ll make me feel… good inside… better… happy and warm… transport me back to childhood, when I was blissfully unaware and no one knew I’d be such a failure… Dad’s dimpled smile and Sunday morning cartoons and drawing duck-shaped skirts to help Mom with her projects…

I spear them and shove them in my mouth.

All four pieces of that bottom left square of the bottom left square at once.

Tingling spreads through my tongue, almost painful, but I keep chewing slowly, and flavors burst in a sudden explosion of greatness. Salt then butter then the goopy yolk then the dampish bread. My eyes flutter shut, the fork rests on the island top, I lean back in my seat, and I chew and chew and chew until I have to swallow and I’m left sitting there, sighing deeply. Lazy, content drowsiness seeps through my veins. I could sleep here, but I have a warm nest upstairs. I pry my eyelids open again. Barely but they’re open, and—

Dad’s smiling at me.

His megawatt, dimply smile. It reaches his red rimmed, bloodshot eyes, makes the corners crinkle and his eyes wet. A big, real, ecstatic smile. At me, for me.

And I think the strange, fuzzy, buzzing thing inside me isn’t some side effect of my ICD.

I might be kind of close to happy.