chapter 6

After the incident with the vase, she cuts her stupid attempts at gaining weight all at once. Once again at uni, she makes sure she avoids anyone who might have been there when it happened. Whipped by shame, she eases off the food, and when she cannot do that quick enough, she severs herself away from anything but meagre portions of breakfast and dinner. Often, she will only eat half her meal, scraping the scraps to the dog when no one's around. Her abstinence from unhealthy food, and then food in general, has become religious and ritual.

Within the month, she senses her novella coming to an end. It's an amazing fact, since a myriad of other assignments have piled up around it, as she's come to know it always does, and always will, by the end of every semester. As the assignments get longer and more challenging, so do the days she spends on campus.

Her widowed grandmother, Jane, from her father's side of the family, lives in a city apartment not far from university grounds. After hearing how many hours Melissa has been spending there, she asks whether or not Melissa would like to stay over until the mid year break ends. Melissa inclines to do just that.

There are no more forty-five minute bus trips to and from campus, no more arriving home by the time it is already dark. There are only five minute walks to her gran's apartment and back. She might lose some more weight with these walks every day, she thinks. Any half-witted health expert would tell her she needed to do a lot more than that to see anything good happen.

Melissa knocks on her gran's door, three levels up, and stands there with her bag, waiting. She's let in with kisses and hugs, and no remarks about her increase in size since the last time gran saw her. As they sit at the dinner table talking, her gran spares no suspicious glances, as if curiosity is below her standard. Gran is one of the few people Melissa feels safe around, and she talks with her, she finds herself relaxing her body, which she had not realized was unnaturally tense until now. Even if gran notices Melissa's increase in size since last year, she might simply give as much acknowledgement as a remark on the temperature, and move on - the thought as irrelevant and brief as a breath in the wind, gone as it is made.

Gran's apartment is filled with nothing much; she is a widow. She spends her days in the company of barea walls, and has tired, dry eyes. Since Melissa has arrived to stay, the bagged eyes have become moist again, glinting at their corners. Every time she leaves for uni in the morning, Melissa can sense her gran clinging to the hope she might stay a little longer. And at evening, as she comes in through the door, Melissa always finds her gran sitting comatose in her chair. The closing of the door brings gran's eyes up, and her old body is given lift again. There is always greeting, and asking about her day, and what she has learned, and how is everything? Melissa never has much to say to her, except for the interesting things, which she finds she has to repeat. But gran doesn't mind. Gran just goes and cooks. She spends hours and hours in the kitchen, alone, a portrait of the deceased Pa kept nearby. At last it seems she can provide for someone, other than herself.

Melissa sleeps in the study her grandpa used to work in when he among the living. She remembers little of him; vague impressions of joy, wide-faced wisdom, grey model boats.

The mid-year break arrives. Resting her chin in her hands, Melissa stares out the wide window pane. The evening light has passed away into the night, and the street lights are blinking on. Heavy aromas intrude into the room and congest, with nowhere to go but her nose as she begins to type away. She knows what is coming.

There is a knock at the door, already ajar. 'Mill...' Gran eases the door further, peering in as if intruding on something. 'I baked us some apple crumble, deary.'

Melissa repeats her daily script: 'I've already eaten, gran. Thanks, though. Maybe tomorrow?'
'Oh, Milly. It won't hurt.'

'I'm still full from dinner.' But she is not. Her stomach is a cavity.

'Well okay deary. I'll leave a piece out for you if you change your mind.'

'It's fine, gran, it really is.'

'Okay, just a small bit.'

Melissa cannot say anything more. She will have to politely refuse until gran gives up. If she will. Since the incident, and moving in to gran's, Melissa has eventually been able to shed some of those pounds she'd been a fool and gained. If it is not just her mind playing hopeful tricks, then it could be true; her stomach looks smaller now, and her bum doesn't feel so titanic as it has. She remembers trying on a pretty floral sundress yesterday, only to find that it wasn't as tight as she was expecting. It fit on her. With the clasp done up properly, the pride she felt straightened her back. Perhaps she really did have a chance at the whole weight-loss-game.

Just now, gran swoops in and sets an entire bowl of apple crumble at the edge of the desk. Steam drifts up, and the sweet smell of apple and pastry fills her starved soul, settling. She nearly moans.

'Want some cream?'

'Yes p- Oh, actually no, I-'

'I'll go get some.'

Gran returns with a bottle of dollop cream and pours it across the apple crumble.

'Um, gran, that's plenty-'

But gran has already tipped whole spoon-fulls into the bowl. The crumble bathes in thick white goop. 'There,' she says. 'Just in case you change your mind.' She leaves Melissa to stare at the steaming hot bowl of golden apple crumble sitting an arm's reach away.

Life goes on this way until she is broken in. Melissa must suffer through gran's small moments of heart-brokenness every time gran realizes Melissa has left her gifts cold and un-eaten. The feeling of failure that her gran must bear upon her already frail shoulders forces Melissa to bite the bullet, and save her gran from despair. She allows small amounts at first, just so she doesn't have to feel so rude. But it is her biggest mistake. Thinking she can give Melissa whatever she wants to, gran's unwanted portions grow bigger, more frequent, and Melissa's obligation to eat them doubles up every day. But things seems to be fine. Moderation has always been the key, and it surely still is, even though gran is constantly bringing unneeded food into the study like the friendless old lady she is. Melissa begins to forgive her. And then her forgiveness coincides with new overindulgence.

The mid year break spans a little over a month. Melissa's nights get longer and longer, and the clock in the corner of the screen shows later and later every night by the time she closes her document. One minute here, ten there, until she wonders if her collected weeks of reclusiveness have done something to her head; every morning a new layer of haze compounds upon her day-to-day mental fog. Whenever she remembers those few weeks, all she remembers is the back of her eyelids, words against the sickly blue light of the laptop screen, and some general unwellness of the body.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, during the last night of the mid-year break, she types the last word of her novella.

She inserts a full-stop. Now she sighs, and leans back.

The lights are all off. The time reads 1:34am. Her head feels hollow. Slowly she becomes aware of the way her eyes feel, and how the fabric of her unwashed clothes claws at her skin. She slumps on the chair, staring, and waits for something that never arrives. Maybe she'll get her feeling of victory in the morning...

She saves the document, creates a backup, shuts the lid of the laptop and climbs her way into the bedsheets in total darkness. Her mind beginning to slip away, she gets the faint impression that she still has her clothes on. She pulls them off, dumps them on the floor and lays her head in the pillow.