that if I gave in he’d just eventually find somebody else and hurt me again. Little did I know that this fear was going to tamper with the rest of my life. I became so opposed to caving in and accepting my husband again that I even managed to find a temporary distraction of my own, a man whose welcoming face and deep blue eyes decisively numbed me to my husband’s entreaties.
Six months to the day after signing the final divorce papers, my ex-husband was diagnosed with incurable throat cancer. He was by then unattached and living alone. Breck asked that I allow him to move back into our New York apartment—this was still two years before I moved full time to Vermont. I agreed, he came home again, and together Breck and I nursed him until he died. And in those last days of his life I came to deeply regret my decision not to forgive him. I even guiltily wondered if my refusal might have played some part in his fatal illness. Worse still, Breck has always blamed me for not having it within myself to reconcile with her father once he’d terminated his affair. And after he passed away, she confessed to me that even though we all managed to be together again during his last days, her sense of family had been irrevocably shattered.
And probably even more painful to her were a few men who in the coming years came to live with us temporarily—each of them no longer than six or eight months—but ultimately never enchanting me as much as my ex-husband. Breck naturally hated all these “pretenders,” comparing them unfavorably to her father and resenting me because I so easily allowed them to move in after having refused her father’s attempt to mend the marriage.
Then at the age of seventeen, and right after I began teaching at Saint Mike’s, Breck began to lose interest in eating. She got morbidly thin. I remember standing with her on my bowed, nineteenth-century bedroom floor, pointing at the full-length mirror, trying to show her how much bigger I was than she—my wrists, my arms, my trifling breasts (she was virtually flat-chested). And I’ve always been considered a slender, leggy woman. “How can you not see this?” I pleaded as we stood there.
“I can’t, Mom, I can’t. To me, I look huge.”
“But do I look huge?”
“No, Mom, you look just fine. ”
“But you’re way thinner than I am.”
“No, Mom, we’re different body types.”
“We’re not. We have exactly the same build.”
“Not true. I’m built like Granny,” she insisted, which was understandable and yet delusional. “And anyway, you’re older. Pushing forty. Standards are different for you.”
I argued no further.
That summer Breck ate so little and grew so thin she stopped menstruating. Her face grew positively skeletal, as did her arms, her stomach stretched tight and concave, and her doctor strongly advised me to commit her to an inpatient eating-disorder clinic. But before I gave in, I nurtured a hope that if we made a trip up to Granny’s house (which by then I’d inherited) on Grand Manan and spent a few weeks by the sea, walking low tide, picking wild blueberries, buying fresh lobsters, and just being alone with the boom of the breakers, that Breck would get a perspective on what she was doing to her body, to her psyche, and start nourishing herself again. And so we drove eight hours up through central Maine with its lake regions, its wildly verdant and rocky mountains, and crossed into barren New Brunswick. Leaving our car on the mainland, we made our ferry crossing.
Perched on a cliff high above the Bay of Fundy, the houses have shingled sidings, many of them old and buckling and a tarnished natural sea gray color after withstanding decades of salt air. Breck always loved driving up there, and on every visit she hounded me for stories about indomitable “Granny,” the dowager empress of the island, and the summers I’d spent on Grand Manan.
Upon arrival during that time of her illness, Breck and I enacted our
Six months to the day after signing the final divorce papers, my ex-husband was diagnosed with incurable throat cancer. He was by then unattached and living alone. Breck asked that I allow him to move back into our New York apartment—this was still two years before I moved full time to Vermont. I agreed, he came home again, and together Breck and I nursed him until he died. And in those last days of his life I came to deeply regret my decision not to forgive him. I even guiltily wondered if my refusal might have played some part in his fatal illness. Worse still, Breck has always blamed me for not having it within myself to reconcile with her father once he’d terminated his affair. And after he passed away, she confessed to me that even though we all managed to be together again during his last days, her sense of family had been irrevocably shattered.
And probably even more painful to her were a few men who in the coming years came to live with us temporarily—each of them no longer than six or eight months—but ultimately never enchanting me as much as my ex-husband. Breck naturally hated all these “pretenders,” comparing them unfavorably to her father and resenting me because I so easily allowed them to move in after having refused her father’s attempt to mend the marriage.
Then at the age of seventeen, and right after I began teaching at Saint Mike’s, Breck began to lose interest in eating. She got morbidly thin. I remember standing with her on my bowed, nineteenth-century bedroom floor, pointing at the full-length mirror, trying to show her how much bigger I was than she—my wrists, my arms, my trifling breasts (she was virtually flat-chested). And I’ve always been considered a slender, leggy woman. “How can you not see this?” I pleaded as we stood there.
“I can’t, Mom, I can’t. To me, I look huge.”
“But do I look huge?”
“No, Mom, you look just fine. ”
“But you’re way thinner than I am.”
“No, Mom, we’re different body types.”
“We’re not. We have exactly the same build.”
“Not true. I’m built like Granny,” she insisted, which was understandable and yet delusional. “And anyway, you’re older. Pushing forty. Standards are different for you.”
I argued no further.
That summer Breck ate so little and grew so thin she stopped menstruating. Her face grew positively skeletal, as did her arms, her stomach stretched tight and concave, and her doctor strongly advised me to commit her to an inpatient eating-disorder clinic. But before I gave in, I nurtured a hope that if we made a trip up to Granny’s house (which by then I’d inherited) on Grand Manan and spent a few weeks by the sea, walking low tide, picking wild blueberries, buying fresh lobsters, and just being alone with the boom of the breakers, that Breck would get a perspective on what she was doing to her body, to her psyche, and start nourishing herself again. And so we drove eight hours up through central Maine with its lake regions, its wildly verdant and rocky mountains, and crossed into barren New Brunswick. Leaving our car on the mainland, we made our ferry crossing.
Perched on a cliff high above the Bay of Fundy, the houses have shingled sidings, many of them old and buckling and a tarnished natural sea gray color after withstanding decades of salt air. Breck always loved driving up there, and on every visit she hounded me for stories about indomitable “Granny,” the dowager empress of the island, and the summers I’d spent on Grand Manan.
Upon arrival during that time of her illness, Breck and I enacted our
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