“Want me to fill out this part?” Moxie tilts the page, index finger pointing to “sports.”
“Please.”
Jasper watches as she checks off football, ice hockey, and ping-pong: she’s been lying from the start.
Toby doesn’t know what he’s going to be asked to play for his free choice until the last minute. Competitors email a list of possibilities, and the judges announce their pick on the spot. The performer must be ready to enter any of several musical worlds without hesitation.
Manuel Juerta calls out, “Sor’s Grand Sonata, please, Mr. Hausner.”
Toby tugs at his cuffs. “Excuse me. That’s not on my list.”
Juerta peers through his reading glasses at a sheet. “I see it here, son.”
“That piece was on my first list,” Toby says, clearing his throat. “I sent you a replacement list last month. Didn’t you receive it?”
The auditorium becomes very quiet, then there is a whispered consultation among the judges and a shuffling of paper.
Juerta glances up. “We have located it. But this is not a good plan, my friend, to change your mind.”
Toby bows his head in acknowledgement of this indisputable fact. Jasper would have told him it was a daft idea.
“Let’s hear the Giuliani,” Juerta says, easing back into his seat.
Toby’s face relaxes. He could play this in his sleep.
“I like the way you don’t get on my case about eating,” Moxie offers, tapping the pen against her injured teeth.
“That’s not my job.”
“Everyone else does.” She considers Jasper with big amber eyes.
“So I don’t have to.”
She doesn’t buy this. “You probably think I want to disappear, so I starve myself. That my dad or some gross uncle had sex with me when I was little and that I hate my boobs.” She rises to her feet, teetering with the vertigo that accompanies her condition. Jasper holds out a hand to help, but she waves him off. “Everyone’s making such a big deal about it. Why can’t they just go back to their own lives and stop gawking?” She points to her medical chart. “Write something true for a change.”
“What might that be?”
She looks as if she’s going to bark at him, but instead she sits down again with a light thud. “I wasn’t always like this,” she says after a moment. She’s plucking at the material of her skirt. “Something happened. It took on a life of its own.”
Jasper has read her chart before the session: this behaviour began when her sister left home to go away to college two years ago. A fact that tells him nothing.
The life-skills chart spills off Moxie’s tiny lap onto the floor. “You actually believe in this crap? Tell me you don’t. It’s too pathetic.”
The sardonic tone is back, but Jasper isn’t deceived. She tries to wipe away tears without him noticing as she leans over to pick up the paper. The abrupt change in position makes her dizzy again, and she grips the side of the chair. He moves in; he could reach her in one step if necessary. She’s supposed to be drinking Ensure Plus twice a day.
“I believe in your ability to turn your life around,” Jasper says. “A plan can help you get started.”
This solid life Jasper presents to her, measured off in teaspoons, holds little appeal. The institute’s room is two-dimensional, a cubist spray of lines and colour. She sees what other people can’t: hunger gives her special powers.
Jasper points to the chart. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Moxie,” he says good-naturedly. “Erase, please, and start again.”
She mimes indignation, and when Jasper doesn’t respond, she laughs and says, “Tough crew here,” then hunches her brittle shoulders for the task.
How her mother must despair, watching her daughter’s flesh fall away. The woman crowds in at every meal, adding a dollop of sour cream or extra meat, then watches anxiously to see what Moxie does with it, every bite and swallow a victory. After the meal, she stands next to the closed bathroom door, ear pressed to the wood, listening to every sound that breaks through the swoosh of the running tap.
“This is so sick,” Jasper’s client informs him. “You want to know what I’m doing every minute of the day.”
“It’s not for me, Moxie. It’s for you.”
She doesn’t fall for this line, either. But instead of attacking him, she changes her tone and speaks in a low voice, barely audible. “I can’t stop.”
He waits, then says, “I know.”
“Every morning I wake up — it’s there. First thing I think about, even before my feet hit the floor.” She shakes her head. “You can’t imagine.”
But he can.
“Everyone wants to burrow inside me,” she goes on. “The hospital? They can’t get enough, poking around measuring potassium levels, glucose, antibodies, blah, blah heart rhythm, blah, blah thyroid, blah, blah kidney function …” She seesaws back and forth on the chair, voice rising with outrage.
“What if we all went away?” Jasper asks. “Then what would you do?”
She seems to be having trouble catching her breath: lung function poor. Maybe feeling an arrhythmia, though the immediate crisis is supposed to be past. Her bony fingers tap her sternum, as if encouraging the engine to rev up. Her whole body seems to quiver from within. “That’s not going to happen,” she says. “I got appointments into next year.” Her fingers now curl over the rim of the chart — such old hands.
“You’ve heard about the virus,” Jasper prompts.
“No way I’m going inside an airplane. Those things are bacteria bombs.”
“This wouldn’t be a good time to end up in hospital again,” Jasper says.
She rubs her mouth, which is itchy, possible case of thrush.
Jasper gazes over her head at the wall, the framed photo of Monet’s pastel-hued water lilies.
Toby is well into the Giuliani by now, a charming piece but hardly the pinnacle of artistic expression. Prickly heat soaks his armpits, masked by the trim blazer he’s bought for this event. Then he finishes, wrist lifting to let the last of the sound float away.
“I practically died last year,” Moxie says. “They said a couple more days and my kidneys would’ve shut down.” She crosses her legs, making no attempt to mask their alarming thinness: she is in awe of her achievement, even inside her terror.
“We don’t want that to happen again,” Jasper says.
“And this list is going to help?” she asks, holding up the chart.
“What do you think?”
“Don’t feel bad if you can’t get through to me,” Moxie says. “Because I can’t get through to me, either.”
The timer starts blinking: session is over.
“Take the chart home and give it another go,” he says, then holds out a hand to steady her as she rises. She clings to his elbow as they make their way to the door, but already with her free hand she’s searching in her bag for her phone. No doubt she believes that Jasper is ill-defined, that most people stumble through life as deaf as furniture.
Rachel is talking on the office phone as they enter the reception area. When she spots her boss, she waves and continues to speak to the caller. “I get the picture,” she says with a gesture of exasperation, and Jasper understands it is Luke on the other end.
“What did