The Art of Adapting (33 page)

At this, Abby let out a long sigh. Thirty-eight. When she looked at him there were tears on her face. She wiped them with the back of her sleeve.

“You don't count tears?” she asked, half laughing while she cried.

“Oh, no,” Matt said, shaking his head, turning his body to face the window. He didn't like to watch people cry. “I don't count those.”

“Maybe I could . . .” Abby let out another sigh. She was up to forty-two now. “I could eat a slice of apple or two.” She held the notebook out to Matt and he took it. He uncapped his green pen and held it up to show he was ready. Abby stood slowly and walked toward the kitchen. Matt recorded the breaths. He wanted to separate the breaths and the food somehow, but he wasn't sure how. They needed to be on the same page. He could include the time for each notation, but he needed more of a division than that. Maybe a second-color pen. He went to his room and got blue and red pens and waited by the window, anticipation mounting, trying to choose a color.

Abby returned with three slices of apple, two carrots, and one Triscuit. They were arrayed nicely on a plate and she tipped it toward Matt to show them to him. He nodded.

“I can't write them down until after you swallow,” he explained.

“Of course not,” Abby said. “I just . . . which would you eat first?”

“The Triscuit, of course. Brown, orange, white.” He pointed from cracker to carrot to apple.

“Is the apple white?” Abby asked, holding up the thin slice to the light. She'd trimmed the peel off, so it was almost white, almost colorless, but for a hint of yellow. It would turn brown soon, from
the air, but Matt didn't consider that in his calculations. Only the real, natural color mattered.

“Maybe yellow, but that's still a primary color.”

Abby nodded, took a tiny nibble of the cracker. “Primary colors last, I remember now.”

Abby was going to see a therapist about her eating. Or not eating. Matt had seen a therapist for a little while after his overdose. A thin man with sleepy eyes who tried to explain what Asperger's syndrome was and how it made Matt different. Matt didn't feel different, though. He felt like himself, every day. The therapist seemed to want to convince Matt that he was abnormal, while everyone else was normal. But Matt wasn't sure. Maybe Matt was the normal one, and everyone else was abnormal. Who was this man to say different? After all, Matt didn't have problems with the people around him. They were the ones having problems with him. Didn't that mean they needed therapy even more than he did, to learn to accept the people and things they couldn't change? He tried to explain his theory to the therapist, who smiled and called Matt high-functioning, fast-processing, and well-adjusted. Then his five free sessions ran out and Matt never saw the therapist again.

Matt didn't know if Abby's therapist was like the calories: something they weren't supposed to talk about. He wondered if the therapist would like to see the notebook. Matt was very proud of it. He wasn't sure he'd trust a stranger with it, but he might be willing to make a copy. He decided to ask later, after Abby had eaten the food. He didn't want to upset Abby and lose the chance to get some new data.

Matt noted the Triscuit, wrote down the time. He didn't put the calories (twenty), because she hadn't finished it yet. She was chewing too long, the way she did before she spit something out, but she didn't have a napkin, and Matt had let his stash of them run out when she'd stopped eating with him.

“Water,” Matt said. “You need water. To help you swallow.” Abby nodded, but didn't move. Matt knew where the water was, knew which glasses Abby liked to use: the short squat glasses with the heavy base. Highballs. Matt went to the kitchen and got her a
glass of water. When he handed it to her she was still chewing, but she was smiling. As soon as the glass had passed from his hand to hers, Matt sat and noted the smile in the notebook. It was a good day for data.

“I like it when you wait on me,” Abby said.

“I'm not waiting,” Matt said. “I'm taking notes.” He showed her the notebook, the page now fuller with its three categories: breaths, food, smiles, in green, red, blue ink. He let her see it because there were no calories on it yet, since she still hadn't swallowed the cracker. As far as he knew it was only the calories Abby never wanted to see.

Abby read the page and laughed, choking a little around her unswallowed cracker, and Matt made a note of the laugh, struggling over which color pen to use before settling on the blue, the same as the smiles. The page was nearly full. The whole day was turning around. By the time he finished making the note, Abby was laughing harder, peering over his shoulder at the notebook on his knee. He hoped she appreciated the nice balance of information filling the page. She swallowed some water, nearly choking on it because she was still giggling. Matt was tempted to record the choking, because there was so much going on and it was all so much more interesting than the breaths, but choking seemed like it was in the same category as tears: better not to remember.

Abby ate the three apple slices and the two tiny carrots, all very slowly, like she might stop at any moment. She had the order wrong, the carrots were supposed to come first, but Matt didn't say anything. He made his calorie notes and counted her breaths and didn't talk. It was like before, and this made him feel calm. He hadn't noticed how much he missed sitting in the window with her until she was back there next to him.

“If your therapist wants to see the notebook, I can show it to her,” he offered.

“Thanks. I'll ask. I think it can just be our thing, though. I know you probably don't want anyone else to hold it.”

“I didn't mean the actual notebook. I meant a copy. But maybe you won't need the notebook now that you have a therapist,”
Matt said. It hadn't occurred to him until he said it. Maybe Matt wouldn't get to record Abby's breaths and smiles and laughs and calories anymore. Maybe he'd have to find something else to record. He had his license back, and his new red truck. He could go out in the world and find data. But he had grown to prefer his safe, quiet, sunny window. And Abby sitting beside him.

“I don't mind the notebook,” she said. She chewed her last carrot and gestured for Matt to record it. He smiled and wrote it down.

Abby drank her water and set the glass on the window ledge, empty except for the last piece of ice, quickly melting within. The sun cut through the glass and cast rainbows all around her. He wished he'd gotten her milk instead of water. Then he'd have more calories and protein to list. But the rainbows were beautiful, and maybe a drained milk glass wouldn't have been clean enough for those.

“You're Rainbow Girl,” Matt said. He gestured toward the rainbows on the carpet and Abby's calves, but she didn't look down. She tipped her head back and laughed, her old birdlike giggle, and Matt had to make a note of it, so he didn't have time to explain the prism effect of the glass.

When Lana came in she'd complain about the water glass on the windowsill. It was sweating moisture and would leave a ring on the white paint of the sill. Matt was torn between removing the glass to spare the paint and leaving it there to keep the rainbows. He decided the best thing would be to take a picture to remember the rainbows, then move the glass. He got out his phone and tried to see them through the camera, but it didn't work. The feeling in the narrow box of the photo was all wrong: flat and dark. It felt small in the picture, and much bigger here in the room with Abby. He tried different angles, but none of them worked.

“Let me see,” Abby said. She held her hand out for his phone. Matt never gave his phone to anyone else. He saw how Lana let the kids use hers, and they'd already broken one of them: Byron, by dropping it on the concrete front steps. Matt held the phone halfway out to Abby, but he knew he couldn't let it go. He changed
his mind, started to pull it back toward himself, and just then Abby leaned toward him, very nearly touching her cheek to his, and grasped the phone, still in his fingers, pressing the camera button. The screen filled with a photo of the two of them. Matt realized they looked alike: same fair skin, same light hair, same narrow jaw, same round eyes.

“Rainbow Girl and Notebook Man,” Abby said, smiling. “Send it to me, okay?”

Matt nodded, fumbling with the phone. He wasn't sure how to send a photo. He'd never done it before. His pictures were his. He also needed to record the smiles, two since his last note. He looked from the notebook to the phone to the glass. He still needed to move the glass. And the breaths. He was losing track of the breaths. It was too much to do all at once. The calm feeling was gone and his hands and cheeks were tingling. He couldn't do all of it, which meant he couldn't do any of it. His anxiety was rising, his heartbeat picking up, the rainbows still beckoning to be caught on camera, the notebook waiting for the smiles, the glass sweating on the ledge, the phone heavy in his hand.

“I can do it,” Abby said. “Is it okay if I hold your phone?”

“Your mom won't like the glass there. The water. The condensation is getting on the windowsill. But the rainbows . . .” He was having trouble breathing, and Abby's smiles and breaths, he was losing track of them.

Abby jumped up and left the room, left him alone with the rainbows and the notes and the phone still in his hand. She came back with a paper towel, which she folded neatly into a small square and placed beneath the glass. The rainbows disappeared as she lifted the glass, but they returned once she'd set it down.

“Better?” Abby asked.

Matt nodded. “Three,” he said. “Three smiles.”

“Okay, but I can't write in your book, right?”

Matt nodded. Abby was waiting. He couldn't think clearly. He looked at the three pens in his hand.

“Blue. Blue for smiles,” Abby said.

Matt uncapped the blue pen and made the note. He sighed
once that was done. He'd stopped counting her breaths and now he'd never know. “I've lost track of the breaths, though. They're gone forever.”

“We don't need the breaths anymore,” Abby said. “I'm eating again. Back on your plan. Only foods I like. No spitting it out in napkins. Is that enough data? The smiles and laughs and food and birds?”

Matt nodded, relaxing. It was plenty of data. He could let the breaths go. He'd rather record the calories and smiles. He recapped his blue pen, slid it into the coil of the notebook. All that was left was the photo on the phone.

“Never mind the picture. I'm sorry I touched you. I forgot.” Abby leaned back and sighed, folding her hands in her lap.

Matt set the phone down. He still felt overwhelmed. He didn't know what to do.

“I think I'd rather be Rainbow Girl than the Vizsla, if that's okay with you,” Abby said.

Matt nodded. He'd forgotten that she was the new Vizsla. He'd lost them both for a little while. The runner must have found a new route. He never saw the Vizsla anymore.

“You can just be Abby,” Matt said.

Abby extended her thin, pale arm until one of the rainbows rested in the palm of her hand. Matt picked up the phone, switched it back to camera mode, and captured it. It worked. The darkness was gone. The fairness of Abby's skin and the brilliance of the rainbow brought the calm feeling back. Abby was smiling again.

Matt held the phone out to her. She gently took it, careful not to touch his fingers as she did so. While she dealt with the pictures, he noted the smile in the notebook. It was a very good day for data.

Lana took Abby to her first therapy appointment, but Abby would be going in solo. That's what the therapist, Jennifer Powell, had suggested. Abby wasn't nervous until they sat in the tiny waiting room, just a hallway with a few chairs in a big old converted house. Every step in the dark-paneled house creaked under worn Persian rugs, and the windows were covered in heavy drapes. It was a horror-movie house. A door opened and a young, bubbly, pretty girl, with big green eyes, dark reddish brown hair, and fair skin, appeared. Abby half expected her to have an Irish accent.

“Abby?” she asked. She didn't have a fancy accent. Abby nodded and stood. She was trembling all over. “I'm Jenny,” she said, shaking Abby's cold hand. “Come on in and have a seat.” Jenny whispered something to Lana as Abby entered the room.

Jenny didn't have one of those long shrink couches for lying on, she just had an ordinary brown IKEA love seat, like the one Abby's dad bought when he moved out. The room smelled faintly of incense, but Abby couldn't find the source. Jenny sat across from Abby and smiled. She was a bit overweight, which seemed strange. Could someone overweight counsel anorexics?

“Would you like to start out with why you're here?” Jenny asked.

Abby shrugged. She wasn't sure what to say. “I don't like to eat,” she said lamely. “I mean, I have trouble eating. I guess I have an eating disorder?” She didn't know why she made it a question. She felt like she was being tested, only she'd forgotten to study for the exam. There were blinds in Jenny's office, open to reveal slats of light across the whole room, like jail bars. The room was stuffy and Abby took off her sweater, then felt self-conscious about her body. Lana had made a big deal about Abby's arms, saying there was no meat there at all. Abby thought they were a little bit flabby. She focused on her stomach and legs in her workouts. Not her arms. She put an orange throw pillow in her lap and tucked her arms under it.

“One thing about me,” Jenny said. “I've struggled with an eating disorder myself. Obviously not anorexia.” Jenny laughed and Abby felt forced to laugh even though it wasn't funny. “It's been a lifelong battle,” Jenny went on. “I always wanted to fit some ideal, obtain an unhealthy body type that fashion magazines planted in my head when I was your age. You know the pictures I mean?”