Melissa

Melissa spends an hour in her basement gym, the cross trainer first and then the rowing machine, working out until her hands are too slippery to hold the handles. In the bath afterward her body is visible from all angles in the steamy mirrors. There is a new softness at her hips and her shoulders look stringy. Shaving at the bikini line she misjudges the angle and cuts the skin; blood ribbons into the water, staining the foam. She watches as though it belongs to someone else. Thirty-five is still young. There are always things to try: a personal trainer, a new diet. She steps from the bath, wraps herself in her dressing gown, and pads barefoot to the kitchen. She waits for the kettle to boil, placing her palm against the kitchen windowpane equidistant from the metal edges. She spreads the fingers; hand as art. The spaces between the thin digits are shaped like knives, there are hollows beside the tendons, some blue veins are scarred. The tips of the fingers tremble. The kettle flicks off; she turns her face from the light. The sun is already heating the curved lines of brick and gravel outside. The landscaper talked about flow and focal points, but Paul took over and the results were disappointing. She makes chamomile tea and takes it to her office, where she sifts through her emails; an architect wants bespoke blinds for his garden room in Dulwich, then there’s a mural to commission for the flat in Chelsea; the clients expect her to be on hand whenever they call. Her desk is awash with computer-aided designs for their kitchen, but it’s unlikely they’ll agree on anything. The plans have been sent back twice already. She’s painted sheets of paper to try against the walls of their flat in soft yellow and burned orange, the colors of happiness, though in reality she suspects those clients are miserable; like us, she thinks as she glances at the glowing hues; like me.

A tapping noise picks at the silence, a tiny woodpecker of sound. She ties her dressing-gown cord more tightly and walks upstairs to the sitting room. Her daughter, up early, is focused on her laptop, legs tucked under her on the leather sofa. She’s in pajama bottoms and a skimpy vest through which breast buds are visible. Melissa leans against the door, pride and fear curdling. Thirteen. She reaches back for her own thirteen, but the years are blurred with misery. Her father’s taunts about puppy fat had sparked a frantic determination to lose weight. The starvation became extreme, the exercising desperate. She was taken to the hospital twice. Recovery was slow and incomplete; Izzy must be allowed to be the person she’s been becoming since she was little, at all costs. Happy or at least content or at least not cowed. It’s worked so far—shame seems to be the last thing on her daughter’s mind.

“Hi, sweetie.”

Izzy jolts and snaps the lid shut. She glares up, her pretty face contracting.