How Not to Eat Dinner

I have more than a cold. I have pneumonia.

It finally sort of let up yesterday, but I still have a fever. I've been out of commission for a good six days at least. Amazing. I haven't been this sick in years.

I feel a little better today, but still as if I've been hit by the truck. My breath has this dry raspy feeling, this heaviness. I can't taste anything very well or smell, either. I keep forgetting things.

I've spent the whole week with doctors.

Lilly's doctor on Monday. She lost weight. I argued with the doctor about it. The number she had was different than the number on the scale. I didn't want to get the nurse in trouble, but it had been written down wrong. Still and all, even though the number was wrong, Lilly had still lost weight.

I don't like Lilly's doctor.

In the office, Lilly confessed that she'd been lying to me, and she hadn't been eating what she said she had. I felt stomped. So much for the Gilmore girls.

I feel like these people are trying to drive a wedge between Lilly and me.

"Have you been eating?" They ask her.

"Not always." Lilly tells her, not looking at me.

I'm exhausted. The pneumonia, school, the job, Lilly, the boyfriend, Nick into college. He got into the state university, not a sure thing, given his GPA. He's not really excited about staying in town, but, oh, well!

Lilly and I met with the therapist that afternoon.

"Have you been fighting about food?" She asked us.

We've only had one fight about food, but it was a doozy. "No," Lilly and I start to say, then "well..."

Tell me about it, the therapist says in her gentle voice.

Lilly begins: "Well, I was making myself dinner, because Mom was sick, and I was taking too long, so Mom thought I wasn't doing it and she got mad. But I wasn't trying to keep from eating dinner."

"So your mom misunderstood?"

"Yeah."

"Is that what happened, Mom?" the therapist asks me.

Here's what happened.

At 6 pm, I was flat on the couch. Fever, coughing up a lung, etc. "You need to get yourself dinner," I told Lilly.

The refrigerator is full of food. It was Thanksgiving, after all. We have 1/2 a turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, vegetables, squash soup...dinner is not an issue. Cooked. Ready to heat up and go.

"I don't want any of this,"Lilly declares. "I want to have that egg and tuna salad Amanda makes." She calls Amanda. Amanda isn't there, so she leaves a message.

"Amanda, I'm getting ready to eat dinner and I want to make your egg and tuna salad. Could you call me back with the recipe, please?"

1/2 hour later. The phone rings. It's Amanda. They talk for awhile. Around 7, Lilly calls out, "Mom, do we have relish?" A list of other ingredients follows. Tartar sauce. Mustard powder.
"Look in the fridge," I tell her. I highly doubt we have tartar sauce.
"Mom, are you too sick to go to the grocery store."
Is she kidding? I'm too sick to walk to the bathroom. She asks her brother.
"No," Nick says, not taking his eyes off his video game. "I'm not taking you to the store for relish."
"But the dinner won't be any good without relish."
She decides she can do it without relish. I hear the sound of water being brought to a boil.
She keeps taking to Amanda. An hour goes by.
"Lilly," I shout out hoarsely, "have you made your sandwich?"
I get up and stagger in to the kitchen. "What's this, Lilly? Why is the egg still boiling?"
She puts her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. "The other egg wasn't the right consistency. I had to do it again."
"How long has this egg been boiling?" I croak.
"Not long enough. Mom, I'm on the phone."
Another 15 minutes goes by. The egg is still boiling merrily.
"Lilly, you need to make yourself dinner."
"I am, Mom," she snarls.
"Ok. Tone. Off the phone."
"You've got to be kidding."
"Now.'
She rolls her eyes. "Sorry, Amanda. My mom wants me to get off the phone."
2 hours and 37 minutes after I first told Lilly to get herself something to eat, Lilly has finally managed to prepare herself an egg and tuna salad sandwich. Then I have to nag her about the fruit.
"I don't have to eat a piece of fruit at dinner!" she tells me. We've had the same diet for 2 weeks.
Mental illness is so fucking fun.
"You're the mom," the therapist says. "You can tell her when she needs to eat."
"I was going to eat." Lilly says, sulkily.
"I know that." I say.
Duh. 2 and a half hours of Lilly not eating.
Her father is this way, too. "I'm doing it, " he'll maintain--whatever it is you ask him to do. And then he'll delay and delay and delay--creating more and more and more rules about how to do it and when to do it. Preparing to prepare to prepare. It's psychotic. "Well, for organizational purposes, I want all the checks I write for the kids to end in '2', so I couldn't send the orthodontist money until the new checks arrived--and we'd switched banks." That sort of thing. The way to avoid having mentallly ill children is not to marry anyone mentally ill, I've decided. But the mentally ill are usually so charming and good in bed! So what do you do?
Oh, well. Too late now. I guess I'm stuck with her.
That's my 1/2 hour.