Family Pictures Read Online Free Page B

she is starving—which, of course, she is.
    Seconds later, she stares at the empty container, moving quickly to bury it at the bottom of the trash can, piling newspapers on top of it to hide it. Without thinking, she moves silently into the pantry, pulling down packets of cookies, snack bars, consuming them without thought or taste, gulping them down until her stomach starts to hurt.
    She steps back, horrified, racing to the kitchen to find trash bags to hide the detritus of this sudden binge, filled with shame and self-loathing.
    There isn’t any question as to what she should do now. The disgust she feels is too much to bear, and there is only one way to get rid of it, and get rid of it she must.
    Once the trash bag is filled, Eve takes it outside, pushes it to the bottom of the can, then locks herself in the bathroom, kneeling by the tub. She hasn’t ever done this before, but she knows what to do.
    She puts her finger in her mouth, reaching for the back of her throat, gagging only slightly. She tries again, panicking, for this food must come out, she doesn’t know what she will do if she cannot purge this food out of her body.
    She tries again, going deeper, scratching the back of her throat, using her other hand to massage her stomach as she thinks of the sugar and fat coating her insides, and then, suddenly, her stomach spasms as a wave of chocolate and sugar comes up, followed by another, and another.
    Her finger goes down her throat twice more, until she is absolutely sure there is nothing left; then she lays her head on the toilet seat in exhausted relief. Please God, she thinks, don’t let me do that again. The food she ate tonight was disgusting, but at least it’s out of her body. She will never do that again, never eat so much she has to make herself vomit. Tomorrow, as punishment, she will drink lemon water all day. Not even one egg white. Nothing.
    Tomorrow she will get right back on track.

6
    Sylvie
    Sylvie has spent the afternoon making date and pecan meringues, a favorite of both Mark’s and Eve’s. She bakes when she is happy, is hopeful this will tempt Eve to actually eat, for who could not be tempted after walking in the door and being hit with the smell of cinnamon, vanilla, and sugar.
    The text comes in just before two thirty. “I’m going to Jenna’s house. I might sleepover.”
    “Papa’s home tonight,” Sylvie, disappointed, texts back immediately. “You need to be home.”
    “Why? I’ll see him all weekend.”
    It’s true. Sylvie keeps thinking of her as a little girl, picturing them all having a wonderful evening together, Mark and Eve then spending hours playing their beloved Ping-Pong in the garden, but those days are gone. Now Eve would sit there picking at the food, pretending to have eaten earlier. She’d be sulky and difficult because her friends would be doing something else. Mark would challenge her to Ping-Pong, and Eve would either refuse, or play badly, refuse to enter into the spirit of the game, and the evening would doubtless end in a huge fight.
    Maybe she and Mark should have a date night tonight, something they haven’t done for so long. When he is here, they are so often invited to things—neighborhood barbecues, informal get-togethers, and when he is away, Sylvie has a tendency to hibernate in the house.
    “Fine,” she texts back to Eve. “Do you want me to drop anything off?”
    “Yes! Can I have my white lacy top and blue leggings? And my makeup bag? And flat iron? TY!!!”
    “love you,” Sylvie writes.
    “u 2” comes back as Sylvie reaches out and takes a meringue. Then another. And another.
    She knows, of course, that Eve’s lack of interest in her mother, so recent and so painful, is part of the separation process. She knows it is entirely normal. It is the subject of all the conversations the mothers at school seem to be having nowadays.
    Which doesn’t make it any less painful.
    Sylvie may be many things: wife, cook, dog-walker, bookseller,