essay

Nourish Me

Maggie and I met when we were both in our early twenties, and once she’d broken up with my brother, we got to be close friends. We spent hours exchanging confidences in cafés or hiking by the shoreline collecting shells; occasionally we’d change out of blue jeans and drive into the city, where we were certain to have escapades of one sort or another. Once, decked out in miniskirts and t-shirts, we accepted an impromptu dinner invitation from two handsome older men we met in a bar, and ended up at the most expensive restaurant either of us had ever seen. Another night, we danced in a club at the top of a fancy hotel and were treated to breakfast with a visiting hockey team.

 I envied Maggie more than a little—she was tall and lithe, long legs and graceful neck carried with ease, moving like a cat whether bounding down her front steps to my car or curled in an armchair in front of her fireplace. Whatever she wore seemed just right—her white tennis shorts fit in a way mine never did, her stomach was perfectly fl at and her tiny feet looked perfect in espadrilles. I had grown up constantly longing for physical attributes not my own, convinced that if I only had freckles, or straight blonde hair, or a tiny mouth, all my personal problems would evaporate. Maggie was proof that being a knock-out made everything easier, even if she was too humble to make a big deal of it––she got every job she applied for, and every boy she wanted, even if she didn’t want them for long.

 By our early thirties, we had both moved to different cities and built separate lives, but we stayed in touch by phone, and rare but satisfying visits. I drove with her to visit her family’s huge ranch in Oregon, and she flew to see me in L.A. Maggie never looked much different or much older, just more sophisticated as the years elapsed. Perhaps there was a little sadness around the eyes, or a wry smile instead of her generous laugh, but she was always luminous. She’d arrive at the airport attired in a slim knit suit, or sporting a short new hairstyle which set off her hazel eyes. On one visit she brought photos of her fiancé, a wealthy architect. Both our lives seemed to tumble by at lightning speed––the next time we met, a Fourth of July weekend in Carmel, we sat in the cozy hotel lobby and pored over baby pictures of her twin boys. She seemed contented with her new life.

 “Let’s go find a terrific restaurant and talk ourselves silly,” Maggie said, stowing the photos back in her wallet. She wore a beautiful white linen shirt tucked into trim khaki pants, a silky cream-colored scarf, her hair held back sleekly in a tortoiseshell clip. She looked more like a Vogue model than a mother of two. Just like always, a couple of men in the lobby had walked by us, doing doubletakes when they noticed Maggie on the sofa. She couldn’t help the effect she had on people.

 “It’s only 5:30,” I said, grinning at her. “We’re on vacation and we’ve got the whole evening in front of us. Let’s go have drinks by the water, and then we’ll do something about food.”

 “No, let’s do dinner now,” she said, an odd firmness in her voice, and then, more casually, “If I eat any later, I’ll have a problem.”

 Something in her tone made me look up in surprise. She was trying to tell me something, though I wasn’t sure what. She looked down at her hands.

 “I’ll have to lose it if it gets too late.” Dumbly, I nodded. I still didn’t understand.

 “I won’t keep it down,” she said, almost irritated, it seemed, at having to spell it out.

 And suddenly her voice and expression broke through the shell of my naiveté. Maggie, my poised, graceful friend, was trying to tell me she was bulimic.

 “How long have you been…dealing with this?” I said, tripping over the phrasing.

 “Oh, a long time,” she said. “Teens. Twenties. Doesn’t matter.” She dabbed at her eyes, suddenly full of tears, with the end of her scarf. “Let’s just get out of here.” She stood and picked up her purse, awkwardly, edging toward the lobby doors.

 We didn’t linger over dinner, though the small restaurant we chose had exquisite food. We made a show of eating and chatting as if everything was fine, but it was clear to me she needed something else instead, and I wondered if I could possibly provide it. I signaled the waiter for the check. We walked out, carrying our coffee cups, and sat side by side on a bench together under a cypress tree in the back patio, almost like our old café days. Except that now Maggie was crying, and telling me about nights eating leftover food out of the kitchen trash can in her house, hoping her husband wouldn’t catch her. And a late-night foray to 7-Eleven years before she was married, pretending she was buying food for her family, when the clerk said, “I remember you, you were here the last couple of nights, too.” She told me about cleaning up the kitchen after her cousin’s birthday party, trying to wrap the remaining cake, and eating as if her heart would break.

 When she finished talking, I reached for her hand and held it for a long time without saying anything, thinking of all the times I’d wished I looked like her. I remembered the nights I had driven into the city with her, somehow hoping a little of her starshine might rub off on me, though I wouldn’t have admitted it to myself at the time. I thought about my friend Sally’s willow-thin daughter, hospitalized for anorexia a month before her senior prom, and about my mother, who cried when she was too nauseated from chemotherapy to eat the dinner my father had made for her. I thought of how long it takes to learn to feed ourselves, a whole lifetime maybe. I wondered why it is that we can trust our friends, but not our bodies—and why we cannot, will not, eat.

~Stacy Appel

Stacy Appel is a writer in California whose work has been featured in the Chicago Tribune and other publications. She has also written for National Public Radio. Contact her at WordWork101@aol.com.