Apple Tree

“Whose pants are those?”

“Mine.”I looked down as I said it, the word muffled in the bend of my throat. I pulled up the jeans I had slept in by my belt loops. Beth did not look convinced. She scowled.

“They’re huge.”

I almost smiled when she said it, my face still turned down toward my jutting hip bones. “Not really.”

She snorted in disgust. Her coat was on, scarf dangling in the space between the lapels. My bare feet were cold on the kitchen linoleum. She looked as if she wanted to say something, her lips pursed, words almost bursting through pink lip gloss. But she turned away instead, slamming the door of our apartment behind her.

Beth and I became friends primarily based on my correct grammar usage in text messages and her perpetual positive outlook on the world that confounded me. We met at the campus health center during college. I was there to lie about my weight and to make sure my blood pressure existed. Beth had come after a cross country meet, bags of ice tied to her shin splints. It’s a wonder we found anything to talk about at all.

I opened the cabinet and pulled out the box of cereal I was supposed to eat for breakfast every morning (130). I took out three tiny corn puffs, crushed them into dust, and sprinkled them over the tablespoon of milk in the bottom of a clean bowl. I placed it in the sink with a spoon. I went into the bathroom and stripped, stepping up on the scale. I looked at myself in the mirror, my skin was a molted looking purple. I was freezing, my fingertips numb against my legs. 107lbs. I poured a cup of black coffee and drank it while I dressed for work.

I ignored the turning heads at the tinkle from the bell on the door. I worked in the upstairs office of City Lights Bookstore and Publishing Company, based in San Francisco. I walked staring at the wooden floor, waving to the cashier before ascending the stairs to the second level, poetry and history, and then again to the third floor, employees only. I nearly tripped over the new book order on the other side of the door, boxes piled high like the famous Bryce Canyon hoodoo rock formations.

“Nathan. Why hasn’t anyone moved these?”

I caught myself, barely, and dropped my bag to counter-balance myself. Nathan appeared in his office doorway, disheveled looking in a wrinkled plaid collared shirt.

“Sorry." He had a spoon dangling from his mouth, a yogurt cup in one hand and a pen in the other. The pen had exploded. It was dripping thick black ink into a pool on the floor. I looked at it while Nathan stared somewhere over my shoulder. I kicked one of the shorter stacks of boxes into a corner and shook my head all the way to my desk.

“There’s a new manuscript on your desk I wanted you to take a look at.” Nathan followed me, still eating out of the cup. My stomach growled when I saw the fluffy pink yogurt (110). I plugged in my coffee pot.

“Did you read it already?” I propped my bag against the decorative pillow on my small futon and grabbed a clean mug from the leaning tower next to the basket of fake sugar.

“Yeah, I just looked through it quickly, I think chapters seven and nineteen need some work, but I told the guy you could edit it for next week.”

“That was nice of you.”

“Calm down, Jack, I can tell him you can’t if you can’t.” Nathan called me Jack.

“I can," I said firmly, jabbing the monitor power button with my index while simultaneously adjusting the height of my desk chair.

Nathan and I graduated college the same year; I took three years longer getting to the company out of school. Nathan started working, and I went crazy. While he acquired real-life experience, I went to prison treatment. I wandered into San Francisco with a fresh layer of fat and one pair of jeans.

My cell phone vibrated halfway through the first chapter of the manuscript. I glanced at it. Beth.

“Hello?”

“Chelsea, it’s me, I’m having people over later.”

“Okay.”

“Are you working late?”

“Yes.”

“Is it because people are coming over?”

“No.”

“Try to get out a little early?”

“Bye, Beth.”

I pressed end on the call, held down the power button, and set it in the top drawer of my desk. I opened the portfolio again and read the next few chapters. It was about a tree-girl, a fantasy novel about the struggle between the earth and humanity, being trapped between two worlds. It fascinated me. The beautiful images in the folder brought the author’s world to life, a woman reaching out into the air, cracking through bark and roots, desperate to escape the plant matter that is her body. I rolled my chair to the window, into a patch of sunshine. I closed my eyes and willed my freezing skin to photosynthesize.

There wasn’t any sunshine in prison treatment. I couldn’t take my energy from the natural star of burning gas millions of miles away. Instead, they fed me. They kept me until I was fat and bloated from weeks of eating pasta with sauce so thick it was almost solid; they left me to feel my insides congeal, watching the dripdripdrip of IV’s filled with poison sodium chloride. They told me I was anorexic. I told them I was an angel.

When I was in college I would pick up Beth on my drive to school. She lived just outside of Portland; we went to Reed together. One trip Beth hangs over my head when she catches me skipping meals:

“How much longer do you think?” Beth pressed her bare painted toes on grey plastic dashboard. Sun-baked air blew against her red sunglasses. She looked like Audrey Hepburn.

“I’m not sure, maybe an hour.”

I picked a pace vehicle, a car to follow so I could let my white knuckles have a rest. Unfortunately, I picked a driver with an aversion to using their blinkers. I don’t know if the accident actually had anything to do with him or his blinkers, but I recall that California license plate with a taste of bile in my throat. I remember seeing him slip into the next lane and wondering, briefly, if I had fed my cat before I left home. Everything looked funny, like a tungsten photograph. My head felt so light I was sure I was levitating off my seat. I reminded myself that I didn’t have a cat. I had never had a cat. I hated cats. And then everything went dark.

Beth’s screaming brought me back into consciousness. I rolled the back of my skull against the headrest to look at her. Her smooth, smooth legs were bleeding, covered in tiny cuts and flakes of broken windshield glass that glittered in the sunshine. The red sunglasses were on the floor, cracked and covered in blue shards. Her eyes were ringed with black running makeup, and when she locked eyes with me my stomach clenched in agony. The airbag was still pressurized against my chest and I could feel the blood from my nose dripping onto it and falling on my new button up. I told my mother not to buy white.

“Chelsea.”

Beth's voice sounded far away, a faint static from the rushing pressure in my head filling my ears. I read her lips more than I heard her. My eye lids were heavy so I let them close, sealing with the moisture my tear ducts were working overtime to remove dust particles with. The sun felt so warm on my face, even through the stinging cuts. I soaked the heat up and stored it in my bones. Maybe I could take it out later, when I needed it in wintertime. I couldn’t hear Beth anymore. This must be what Beethoven felt like.

When I moved into Beth’s San Francisco apartment after treatment, she told me she had one rule. I assumed it would be that I had to maintain some kind of diet or weight, and when she told me what it was I regretted my assumption that the entirety of the universe revolved around my insanity eating disorder.

“What is it?”

“No lying, Chelsea.”

“That’s it?”

Beth looked at me with a reproachful stare. I had clearly deviated from the intense scene she had scripted out in her head months earlier. I fumbled around my inadvertent error and managed to blurt out, “I promise, Beth. No lying.”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, whate-. You’re welcome.” My shrink therapist told me to be more empathetic towards my friends. I remembered to ask him what empathy meant. I forgot to ask him how to do it.

I got my job at City Lights after I ran into Nathan at Borderlands, the fantasy bookstore on Valencia Street. He recognized me before I noticed him, situated as I was in a corner, piles of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett stacked around me in a moat.

“Chelsea?”

I looked up from "The Science of Discworld" and stared at pleated khaki pant legs. I knew who it was before I looked up at him. He was taller, if possible, and his black hair waved in renounced care down to his blazer lapels. He was a San Francisco hipster if I had ever seen one. He looked at the jacket of the book I was holding.

“Jack Cohen fan?”

“Huge.” I tried to keep my voice steady as I began overthinking what should have been a normal interaction. Nothing seemed normal to me anymore.

“Well, Jack, would you like to join me for ice cream after you’ve sorted through your collection?” He tilted his head, watching my facial expression carefully.

No.

Empathy, Chelsea.

“How about coffee?” I smiled up at him and stretched out a hand for him to help me off the floor.

I set the manuscript down again when my coffee machine beeped at me to take away the steaming glass pot. I took my mug, a packet of saltines, and the portfolio with me down to the main store and sat at a cafe table, people-watching out the storefront. I opened the plastic wrapping around the single serving of crackers (24). I ate each of them in precisely four bites, chewing 10 times for each quarter. I read the author’s brief bio on the cover page:

Born in New York City, Brandon Keller attended Marquette University and received a Masters Degree in writing and literature. He lives in San Francisco with his dog, Dutchy, and his fiancee. Apple Tree is his first novella.

Boring.

“How do you like it?” Nathan materialized in the faux wrought iron chair across the table, startling me. He slid the folder across the table away from me and leafed through a few pages of my notes.

“It’s wonderful.”

“Don’t be a bitch.”

“I’m not, I like it actually!” I stood up and snatched the pile of papers from Nathan’s outstretched hands. I was known to be a harsh critic, and usually deserved what he called me, but for once I wasn’t being sarcastic.

“Sorry, then. Don’t leave, come on.” Nathan looked up at me, his brown eyes wide and complacent. Like a deer. He glanced down at the wrapper on the table. His brows furrowed. “Is that all you had for lunch?”

My face flushed and I pivoted so fast I almost hit a shelf with my elbow. “I have a lot of editing to do.” I half ran, half tripped up the stairs, the soft tips of my ballet flats offering no cushion as my toes smashed against the wood.

“Beth?” I called out quietly. My apartment was dark, the hum of the refrigerator breaking the silence. I slipped off my shoes and crept past the first bedroom. I could hear Antonio Jobime playing. Beth must have someone over. I smiled to myself, projecting a list of comically awkward breakfast scenes as I brushed my teeth and pulled on sweatpants before booting up the ancient Dell at my desk. Nathan had finally given me Brandon Keller’s manuscript back after having it for over a week. Our system was to edit a draft and give it to the other person, who edited the edits so to speak. It was now covered in what appeared to be marinara sauce stains.

My mind couldn’t concentrate on the screen, my eyes were watering, fading in and out of focus, and my head pounded every time I blinked. I went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. I took out a bag of grapes and set them on the counter. I set out cheese dip, a loaf of bread, and crackers from the pantry. I opened the freezer and pulled out three frozen dinners from Safeway. In the pale light from the depths of the refrigerator I looked at all of the food lined up on the counter. Mocking me. Eat me. Eat me. Eat me. Eat me and you’ll grow as big as house. Alice in Wonderland style.

Fat pig. Disgusting fat pig.

I put everything away but the grapes and ripped off a chunk of empty stem to leave in a bowl next to the sink. I ate three (10), slowly peeling off the skin of each one before letting the naked mushy grapes dissolve in my mouth. I went back to my room and stayed at my desk, editing "Apple Tree" until two in the morning, when I rolled myself up in my down comforter and drifted off to sleep, my dreams filled with tree-women and cages.

“Chelsea.”

I cracked an eyelid. Beth stood in my doorway, hair damp and shoulders stiff in a blue robe. “Jason made eggs, want some?”

Ew.

“Sure, I’ll be out in a minute.”

I shuffled around the apartment until I felt acceptable enough to make a kitchen appearance. Jason, Beth’s overnight companion, was standing in front of a frying pan, oil hissing like a gas leak. He put a pile of eggs on a plate and offered them to me in a silent greeting. I smiled and took the plate. My stomach contracted and growled, the hollow emptiness taking my breath away. My head pounded, fuzziness taking over the corners of my eyes. I waited until he left the kitchen to dump half the eggs back into the pan and the other half into a Chinese takeout box repurposed as tupperware. On the way to the bathroom I slid the plastic box in my bag near the door.

I dragged the scale out from the toiletry closet. My hands were so cold I could barely get my pajamas off. I held my elbows close to my body and stepped up on the white metal platform. 98lbs. Goal number one. If anyone saw this number I would be carted off back to the loony bin hospital in a straight jacket. I smiled at myself in the mirror. I looked at the gap between my thighs, the way my legs bowed away before touching again at the knees. I touched my collarbones, ran my hands over my ribs like a tiny xylophone. I felt the small knots of bones at the small of my back and grabbed my hipbones; tiny twin hatchets. I threw on a baggy dress shirt and slacks, grabbed a travel mug of caffeine and ran out the door. I threw the container of eggs in a dumpster on the way to work.

“Hey,” I dropped the manuscript on Nathan’s desk without looking at him. I wasn’t expecting him to be in so early, and it irked me that he had arrived first. I think anything he did irked me.

“Thanks, Jack. I’ll tell him it’s done, you didn’t have to do this in one night you know.”

“I got into it.”

“I think you drink too much coffee.”

“Mind your own business.”

“Ouch.”

Brandon Keller brought his novella back a week later, in person, to meet his editors. I was not pleased.

“You’re being irrational, Jack. How do you edit without the author?”

“E-mail. We live in an age of technology. I shouldn’t have to see anyone!” I slammed my open palms on the desk in front of a bemused Nathan.

“You’re weird,”

“Shut up.”

Brandon Keller opened the door to Nathan’s office. I kept my back to the door, trying to plead with Nathan through some kind of psychic eye language. He wasn’t having it. “Mr. Keller, your editor, Ms. Chelsea Sarver.”

“Pleased to meet you, Ms. Sarver” Brandon held his hand out. I self-consciously shook it, watching his eyes cringe slightly at the temperature of my skin. I must have felt like a cadaver.

“Please, call me Chelsea.”

We went over our notes most of the day, breaking only for coffee and the restroom. Brandon was pleasant to work with, quiet, reserved, everything his writing was. He was older than me, maybe by ten or fifteen years, and his eyes were slightly yellowed around his green irises, like parchment paper. He reminded me of my father. I slept on the futon in my office that night.

“Thank you so much, for everything. I’ll be in touch.” Brandon shook my hand the next morning. It was warm from holding my ceramic mug. I smiled at him, even though I had a sinking feeling of despair. The "Apple Tree" was leaving. Now what? I swiveled my desk chair back and forth slowly in front of my window, closing my eyes and wishing I was in my bed. I felt weak and lethargic, my bones aching from the futon and too much coffee. I was so cold my teeth were grinding together and I had to occasionally sit on my hands to warm them up. I pressed my palms flat on my hips, smiling just a little at how much they stuck out. I jumped when Nathan spoke from the doorway.

“Well Jack, looks like you get to leave early today.”

“What?” I stared blankly at him.

“We got off early today.”

“Oh, I forgot. It’s Mike’s birthday, isn’t it?”

Mike was our manager. His wife always made him participate in some overly festive birthday celebration that he came in complaining about the next day. He brought leftovers in to the office; no one felt sorry for him.

“Ice cream?” Nathan grabbed the side of my office doorway, swinging himself around like a toddler. I smiled in spite of my exhaustion.

“Coffee.”

Nathan picked a small coffee shop around the corner from Dolores Park. We took the J across town, making small talk. The Muni rumbled across tracks and dipped underground. Passengers swayed in unison. Our car smelled vaguely of homelessness.

“You still live with Beth, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Where does she work now? She was an...ecology major right?”

“Yeah, Beth was the science nerd and I was the english nerd. She wants to get a job down in Monterey, she’s waiting to hear back about an interview. Right now she’s at that planetarium in the park.”

“Oh yeah, I took my parents there when they visited last month. Pretty cool.”

Seats emptied at one of the stops and I slid into an orange plastic seat. I silently thanked the public transportation gods; the Muni always made me dizzy. A bunch of girls in uniforms got on at the next stop, all giggles and cell phones. I cringed. Nathan laughed at my expression.

“Two coffees and two cranberry muffins please," Nathan said to the man behind the register without consulting me.

“No Natha-”

“They’re fat free I don’t want to hear it.”

I scowled up at him. He looked over my head and walked purposefully to a table by the window. I trailed behind him, frantically going through numbers in my head. If I just eat the cranberries out of the muffin there can’t be more than twenty calories. If I eat each one of them in five chews everything will be okay. It will be okay. It will be okay. I felt sick. If I don’t eat tomorrow I can eat this muffin.

“So, how are you doing?” Nathan was carefully not watching me dissect my muffin into infinitesimal pieces.

“What do you mean?” I looked up sharply.

“I don’t know. I guess you seem preoccupied when you don’t have a story in front of you. Do you like working at City Lights still?” Nathan’s head tilted a little at the question. I popped a morsel into my mouth, pressing it to the roof of my mouth with my tongue. The sugar was a shock to my system. It tasted so good it burned a little.

“Yeah ,I like it a lot. I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to find a job like this,” I looked out the window, wrapping my ankles around each other under the chair. I shivered.

“Yeah, me either. Hey, let me know if you ever want to talk about anything alright?”

Like there’s a chance in hell.

“Alright. Thanks.”

I woke up in the middle of the night a few weeks later, heart pounding in my throat, sheets sticking to my legs and the small of my back. I was having a dream, a nightmare. I was at a wooden table that was much too small for me, my thighs squeezed in between the bench and table, skin bulbous and rotund. The table was covered in food that I was shoveling in my mouth. Cakes and cookies, plates of chicken and beef, pots of noodles drowned in marinara sauce and cheese. I was eating it all with my hands, mechanically chewing and swallowing so hard it hurt.

I ripped off the covers and turned on my light, standing in front of the mirror to look at myself from every angle. I had not magically bloomed overnight. I counted my ribs and ran my hands over my spine again and again. I wrapped my fingers around my wrists so the pinky and thumb could overlap. My breathing regulated itself. I pulled my scale out from under my bed. Beth didn’t know I kept one in my bedroom. She would roll her eyes and huff. I put it on the section of wood floor without an area rug and stripped. Goosebumps ran over me like a blanket. 89lbs. I smiled at myself in my mirror. I looked like a ghost.

“You didn’t eat today,” Beth planted herself in my path through the kitchen.

“Is that rhetorical?”

“Chelsea.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll eat something.” I scowled as I reached up for the box of fat-free saltines (60) on the highest shelf in the pantry. Beth crossed her arms and scrutinized me covering each cracker with a tablespoon of peanut butter (190). I forced my mouth around each one. I felt nauseas, my mind was too fuzzy already for how early it was. Beth disappeared and returned with an index card.

“Go to this address after work.”

“What? What is it?” I didn't recognize the street name.

“Just go.”

“What, are we in the mafia? What is this Beth?”

“Just. Go.”

I followed her instructions after work, feeling mildly ridiculous for doing so, and ended up at Katherine Brooks, Psychologist M.D. I stared blankly at the converted victorian townhouse from the sidewalk. I chewed the inside of my cheek for almost fifteen minutes until I looked back down at the index card. Beth’s writing was loopy, almost cursive but not quite. It was bubbly in places, almost like it should be in pink pen with hearts as dots. Normally I would be furious at her attempt to force me into something like this. But right now, looking up at the faded pink shutters and off-white paint job, I didn’t feel anything. She didn’t trick me into getting into her car, or drag me by my wrist down the sidewalk. I walked here. And I can go inside or turn around. I folded the card into quarters, placing it in the middle of my clammy palm. I blinked to clear my vision.

In a flash of self-righteous anger I started walking back towards our apartment. I don’t need a fucking therapist. I crossed the street, and as I rounded the corner the sun hit me in the eyes like shards of glass. I couldn’t see and I felt myself start to fall, my legs weak and trembling. I toppled over like a little doll, not even able to break my fall with my hands. The piece of paper fluttered to the ground next to me. I looked down at myself incredulously. How dare my legs not work! I did not give them permission to become some pair of foreign, unbalanced mass of muscle and bone. A frustrated tear squeezed out of my eye and I wiped it away quickly, looking around to make sure I was still alone.

Before I went into treatment, I used to fall all the time. I would feel the light headedness take over my vision, my blood pressure plummeting to the ground with me. There was always a warning. Always the sick satisfaction of “this is because you didn’t eat again today” from friends and family. Then the warning signs stopped. There was no“woah there, steady girl.” It was just opening my eyes to the ceiling, Beth hoisting me up by my armpits hissing “this is like, total bullshit Chelsea.” I would always apologize for being too heavy.

“Beth?”

I didn’t recognize my raspy voice. I was covered in a thin layer of cold sweat, my hands shaking and slippery, holding onto the doorway for dear life. I had somehow made it back to the apartment. It took me at least a half an hour to remember what train to get on.

Come on you stupid fat lazy cow. You know this.

“Chels? What are you doing home already?” Beth came out of her room and her eyes widened. She rushed forward and caught me as I fell, my collarbone hitting her forearms.

I looked up at her, not caring about the tears and the snot dripping down my face. My heart was beating so fast I thought it was going to burst in a dazzling spectacle of veins and tissue right out of my chest onto the hallway floor. I didn’t know what to say, I knew I had to go to the hospital but the words weren’t coming out. They were stuck in limbo between my mind and my mouth.

“I need help.”

Beth brought me down gently to the floor. Something dripped onto my jeans. I made my eyes focus on Beth’s face. It wavered in and out. In and out. She was crying. “I have to call for you okay Chels? I’ll be with you the whole time, is that okay?”

My head was incredibly heavy, like a bowling ball balancing on a fence post. It fell forward in a nod. I was freezing and shaking so much the bracelets on my wrist were jangling together like a makeshift tambourine. I giggled. A one woman band.

“Here, drink this.” Beth handed me a cup of orange juice (110) and I drank it with two hands around the cup like a toddler. I resisted the urge to throw it back up into the cup. "I’m sorry,” I whispered.

I could hear an ambulance screaming in the distance. I didn’t know if it was mine or for someone else whose body had decided to do whatever the hell it wanted. God I was dizzy.

“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” Beth held my hand as I rested against the wall, feeling each vertebrae of my spine against the plaster.

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.

I watched the kitchen fade away as I blacked out of reality.