Janice Johnson - The Perfect Mum

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.”

His voice hardened. “I thought I was the problem.”

Unseen, Kathleen flinched. “You are her father. You’re not off the hook, just because she didn’t magically recover once she wasn’t under your roof.”

“All those doctors and all that counseling hasn’t done jack crap,” he snapped.

“Anorexia is the toughest eating disorder to overcome. Up to ten percent of anorexics die.”

“They starve themselves to death.” He sounded disbelieving, just as he always had.

“Or they damage their heart or kidneys.”

“She’s not that stupid.”

“Stupid or smart doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Kathleen said, feeling a familiar desperation. How could she make him understand? “Or maybe it does. Smart girls are the likeliest to develop the problem.”

“How could she lose that much weight right under your eye?”

Of course, it had to be her fault. It couldn’t be his.

What tore at her was a new fear that he was right. She was responsible for Emma’s determination to starve.

Nonetheless, she tried to defend herself. “She’s been seeing a doctor, a therapist and a nutritionist. They advised me to avoid nagging about food. We’ve been trying to make it a nonissue between the two of us.”

“And failing, apparently,” he said cruelly.

She bit her lip until she tasted blood. “It would appear so.”