TRANSCRIPTION by BEN LERNER by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

HOTEL ARBEZ

“The last time my father was in this house, it was full of candy. If you opened a drawer: Hershey’s Kisses, marshmallows, every kind of Haribo gummy–bears, peaches, sour streamers, snakes. Blues and pinks that don’t appear in nature. Save in instances of aposematic coloration. Cupboards stuffed with cookies. You couldn’t find a slice of sandwich bread for all the chocolate chip muffins, babka, pastry. The fridge was stocked with yogurts that contained more sugar than ice cream and the freezer was stocked with ice cream. It was like a fairytale, one that featured evil stepparents, witches.”

“A German fairytale.”

“Set in L.A. Because how could real parents preside over such a home? While we still made normal meals, of course, and insisted Emmie sit with us at the table, we were not to try to make her eat; following Dr. Saro’s advice, we’d apply no pressure; we wouldn’t negotiate, no ‘just one more bite of chicken, love.’ She could have whatever she wanted, whenever, wherever: take a box of Oreos to the bath, Twizzlers to bed. So we were suddenly living in a gingerbread house. Or it was like Willy Wonka. I was Wonka, establishing a bizarro kingdom of corn syrup and dyes, but a confused, desperate Wonka–Wonka remade by Bergman. (My dad was kind of a cross between Wonka and Bergman, if you think about it). Or maybe I was more like Faust, a pact with fructose.

The idea was that there had been too much focus on her eating, years of surveillance, too much anxiety and regulation around it, and that Emmie was shut down, that she’d grown averse to ingestion of any sort. If all the rules were lifted, if she could just, say, grab a handful of M&M’s without overthinking it–and I would have wept with joy to see her eat a handful of M&M’s, especially peanut–she’d eventually crave something more substantial; she might work her way back to hunger, balance. We are attempting a radical reset, Saro said. And we have reached a point where calories are calories. Where any kind of eating is a win (he often spoke of ‘wins’). The way, with a very young child, sleep begets sleep, a good nap leads to a good night, so eating might beget eating. Then we would wean her off refined sugar, the unpronounceable chemicals. Since the only ‘food’ for which she’d ever consistently expressed any desire was candy (and occasionally ice cream or cake, though she tended just to eat the frosting), Saro suggested we start there. And what if it doesn’t work, I’d asked. Well, then we need to revisit the medication conversation. And what if the medication doesn’t work, Adelle had asked. Well, there are inpatient options that can coordinate an ensemble of therapies, treatments. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

I remember the trip to the grocery store, the Vons in Echo Park–there was a lot of smoke in the air that evening–when we explained to Emmie that she could get whatever she wanted.

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