Growing Pains by Holly Gallagher
CONTENT WARNING: This short story is about eating disorders and contains discussions of disordered eating.
Growing Pains
Pants or the dress? You hold them over your half-naked body in front of the dusty mirror. Dress, she always liked you in a dress. Stockings? No, the dress is enough of a concession, and besides, your only stockings have a tear from when you got pissed and made a scene falling up some stairs at Amber’s wedding. She mustn’t see any artefacts from that time. You mustn’t give her that satisfaction.
You run your hands through your hair and secure it back with a butterfly clip. Your hair is black and heavy as wet dirt, like your father’s. What will her hair look like? It’s only been a year but a lot can change. She always liked it short, ‘So practical,’ she’d muse, ‘I save so much time not having to style it in the morning.’ You must prepare yourself for the idea that perhaps she’s stopped dying it, and where once was vibrant auburn will only be cold, clinical white. Perhaps, in the time she’s been gone, she’s come to terms with her mortality. Perhaps, she’s started to crochet.
You should order the salad. No, order what you feel like. You’re a grown woman and you can eat what you want. She’ll get an appetizer, say she’s not hungry, ask to try yours and then scoop half of it onto her plate. ‘I’m checking to see it’s not poisoned,’ she’ll tease as if you’re still eight and you find that funny. You will not order the salad. Eat something substantial, you’ll need the energy. You will not think about the diet pills you found in her purse and stashed beneath your mattress when you were thirteen.
It’s too early to leave yet. There’s no one home but you perch yourself on the very edge of the lounge with your legs tight, and your shoulders arched inward as if it is crowded and you are trying to be spacially considerate. Your gaze is fixed forward but it is hazy and unfocussed, your brain is too preoccupied to bother interpreting trivial light and colour. That is until the world snaps back arrogantly, the TV and the floor lamp staring you smugly in the face.
At the restaurant, the waiter brings you water and a menu. Should you mention the boyfriend? No, do not invite conversation on romance. You don’t want a lecture on the entrenchment of patriarchy in monogamy or to provide an opening for her to tell you about her latest “lover”.
What will you say when she asks about work? You tell the truth. You’re a photographer, free-lance, artistic stuff, different, working with musos. You will not tell her about the wedding gigs or the night shift at the servo. You will not let her raise her eyebrows and smile in that “I told you so” look, before reminding you of when you were seventeen and claimed you weren’t motivated by money. It was that evening when she had her work friends over and she shuffled you around like a mortified show pony, or a bull as she would’ve said because you’d just gotten your septum pierced and she couldn’t stop mentioning it, ‘I just don’t understand why you’d do that to your face, your beautiful face.’ The grown-ups concurred you’d never get a “serious job” with something like that.
The waiter returns to your table and asks if you’d like to order.
‘I’m waiting for someone.’
Where is she? You try her mobile but it goes straight to voice mail. No need to worry yet, lateness is not out of character for her.
It will be nice, you remind yourself. She always has a good anecdote. A small chuckle escapes your lips as you think of how she’ll no doubt come with a creased yellow envelope filled with printed photographs of the places she’s been. It must’ve been her fierce aversion to the iPhone camera that first allured you to photography.
Time passes without much resistance as you lose yourself in these vague thoughts of her quirks. After getting through the second bottle of water the waiter returns and smiles sadly, ‘I’m sorry, miss. I think your date has stood you up. Would you like to order anything for yourself?’
You order a salad. Ring her, straight to voice mail. You will not think about the other time this happened. Just after your dad broke it off with her, she ran away to Melbourne for a week with only the clothes she wore. She didn’t answer the phone until she’d come back, standing in the airport terminal she chirped, ‘Don’t worry silly, I’d never leave you.’
You will not think of her brittle wrists or her spine poking out of her pale back as you watched her throwing up over the side of a footbridge when you were fourteen, or of the strange men she brought home, or of the time when you were twelve and she told you why you never see your grandfather. You will not think of her squeaky sobs, of how you wrapped your arms around her fading torso and held her head to your chest, only a child, but already learning to touch like a mother. You will not think of how she loves you or does not love you, you know by now she wants to, and that should be enough.
On the train, you rub your palms up and down your bare legs to warm them. A text message sounds, ‘Sorry love, got caught up at work. See U tomorrow?’
A group of teenagers play music loudly at the back of the carriage. A woman turns around and asks them to stop. The kids only laugh and turn the volume higher. The woman huffs and starts issuing indignant reprimands, threatening to ring the police. One of the braver boys stands up and does an exaggerated impression of her, pursing his lips, and waving his index finger emphatically. His friends recoil viciously with laughter. You feel your head drop against the window and your eyes fall shut, comforted by the sweet relentlessness of children. Comforted because unlike the poor woman being mimicked, you know that the only immunity to their histrionic outbursts is calm indifference. You know there is a kind of constancy in the chaos, like the push and pull of tides, or the roll of thunder that follows lightning; even nature’s most anarchic bodies have patterns. You know this, and yet there is a dim throb of shock that hangs on the edge of your throat. You will not pay it any mind, though. You will not cry in public.
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