“Sorry,” Whitney said, but she didn’t sound particularly contrite. “Old habits die hard. Reading upside down is one of my talents, I like to keep my hand in.”
Tess sighed and dropped into her chair. The greyhound, fast asleep on the sofa, mimicked the sound exactly.
“Esskay sounds just like you,” Whitney said. “So put upon.”
“I don’t know why. Her friends respect her privacy.”
“Bad day at the office, dear?”
“Futile one. I didn’t have much to begin with. Now I seem to have less. The Sugar House. I thought it seemed too good to be true, and it was.”
Even while Tess was speaking, Whitney continued to snoop, her restless hands poking at various items on the desk. She examined a framed photograph of Crow and Esskay, opened the lid of the old blue Planter’s Peanut jar that Tess used for receipts, looked skeptically at a skeleton in a rowboat, a piece of Mexican folk art that had arrived just yesterday from San Antonio, an early Christmas gift. When Whitney reached for the Dembrow file, Tess stopped her.
“Confidential.”
“But surely that doesn’t extend to me.”
“Especially you. I’ve never known anyone who liked to trade in privileged information the way you do. You’ll be out on the Christmas cocktail party circuit, entertaining your mother’s friends with the sordid details about my Jane Doe.”
“I should be able to read the autopsy,” Whitney wheedled. “It’s a public document, and I’m a taxpayer.”
“It’s not the official autopsy, it’s my summary of the autopsy. No one is entitled to it except me, and my client.” But Tess extracted her typed notes from the folder, placing the rest of the file in her desk drawer, and locking it. Whitney was like a toddler. When she wanted a lollipop, you diverted her with a carrot, and she eventually forgot the lollipop had ever existed.
Once she had permission to look at the report, she quickly lost interest, skimming the page, making a face where the information was particularly graphic, stopping at another point to nod, then moving on. Then her green eyes narrowed, and jumped back to whatever had caught her quicksilver attention the first time.
“You say her teeth were rotted.”
Tess knew where Whitney was going, she had been there herself. “Yes, I asked the assistant medical examiner about that. But you can’t make an ID through dental records unless you know which dental records to check. It’s not as if there’s some computer database and you can plug in the description of the molars and it will kick the match back to you in twenty seconds. Although I suppose it could happen one day. Online teeth identification, DNA testing-”
“That’s not my point,” Whitney said impatiently, jabbing her finger at the line. “The report said the back teeth are eroded, the enamel gone. You know what that means.”
Tess did, or she did now that Whitney had reminded her. How embarrassing to have missed this detail. It was as if an alcoholic had looked at an autopsy in which someone’s liver was clearly diseased, and been too deep in denial to make the connection.
“Eating disorder,” she said, smacking her own cheek, punishment for her own tunnel vision. “Bulimia. A habit of long-standing, if her teeth were showing signs of decay.”
“And?”
“And, what? So she had an eating disorder. What am I going to do with that information? It’s an interesting detail, but it’s not going to help me identify her.”
“It narrows the range of possibilities. Now you know she was from a middle- or upper-middle-class family.”
“That’s a stereotype, Whitney. All classes, all races, experience eating disorders. Even some men have been diagnosed with bulimia and anorexia.”
“Yes, and every now and then some Eastern Europe pituitary case finds a job in the NBA. There’s a difference between stereotypes, based on bigotry, and generalizations, which are extracted from the fact that some groups do dominate in certain areas. Well-to-do white girls rule in the world of eating disorders.”
“Really? Then how come little working-class moi flirted with bulimia in high school, while you never had a problem?”
“Oh, you were more of a social climber than you’ll ever admit. Going to Washington College, trying out for crew. I used to worry you’d go whole hog, marry some guy named Chip who wore plaid pants and loafers with no socks. Besides, who said I got off scot-free? I had my own brush with it, back in college.”
Tess shook her head, annoyed that her friend’s competitive spirit never seemed to rest. “I don’t think so, Whitney. I was your roommate, remember? You couldn’t have hidden it from me. I can spot compulsive overeaters in the grocery store, just by the way they load their carts.”
“Not at Washington College, at Yale.” Whitney had transferred after their sophomore year, correctly deducing that, in a world gone label mad, a brand-name college was essential. Back then, her ambitions had been aimed, laserlike, at the New York Times and a foreign assignment. “I missed an entire semester. Didn’t you ever wonder why I graduated six months after you did?”
“I assumed you lost some credits in the transfer.”
“What I lost was my breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day for almost three months. I had to be hospitalized for electrolyte imbalance.”
Tess’s mind wanted to reject this information. Whitney had never had a weight problem. Then again, eating disorders weren’t about weight. They were about everything but weight. The scale’s daily verdict was simply a way to measure one’s entire self, and you always came up wanting. It was just a number, they kept telling you. But this was a world where numbers mattered more than anything, a place of ceaseless top 10 lists, top 100 lists, the Forbes 500 and the Fortune whatever. Homeless men knew how high the Dow closed yesterday, and everyone wanted to be number one. All Tess had wanted was to weigh 120 pounds.
Twelve years ago, after waking up in the hospital, her stomach pumped of the Ipecac she had used to purge, she had made a deal with her body: Tell me what you want, really want, and I’ll give it to you. A brownie when you want a brownie, a piece of fruit when you want a piece of fruit. It wasn’t always easy to hear her body over the roar of the other voices in her head, the ones that swore a bowl of raw cookie dough would solve all her ills, but she could usually zero in on the right signal. She hadn’t weighed herself for ten years, and she closed her eyes when she climbed on a doctor’s scale.
“How did it happen to you, Whitney?”
“Rowing was a lot more competitive at Yale. My only shot was the women’s lightweight four. But I’m tall as you, and leaner. I didn’t have much fat to lose. But I tried. God knows I tried.” Whitney’s thin mouth curled at the memory. “Only problem was that, once I got my weight down, I kept passing out. Hard to win a race when a rower loses consciousness.”
Tess had a guilty desire to know more. She and Whitney had traveled in the same dark country, they spoke a language only a few knew. It was so tempting to delve into the details-laxatives or self-induced vomiting? What was the biggest binge you ever went on? Did you ever wrap yourself in plastic while doing sit-ups? Run seven miles after eating a half gallon of chocolate chip ice cream?
Tempting, but probably not healthy.
“Okay, say you’re right. Jane Doe had an eating disorder, and she took it a lot further than we ever did. Which, you think, means she’s not some street kid, but a nice little middle-class girl. So why hasn’t her family come forward? Why isn’t there a missing persons report on file?”