Meg and I met when we were both students. Once she’d broken up with my brother, we got to be close friends. We confided in one another over cappuccinos on Telegraph Avenue, or hiked beside the Bay collecting shells. Occasionally we changed out of blue jeans and drove into the city, lured by the promise of escapades of one sort or another. Once we accepted an impromptu invitation from a couple of handsome older men and dined at one of San Francisco’s best restaurants. Another evening, we danced with a visiting hockey team at the top of a fancy hotel.

I envied Meg her long legs and graceful neck, the way she moved like a cat, bounding down the steps to my car or curling up in the green armchair next to her fireplace. Whatever she wore seemed exactly right. Her white tennis shorts fit in a way mine never did, her stomach was flat, her tiny feet looked perfect in espadrilles. I had grown up longing for physical attributes not my own, convinced that if I had freckles or straight blond hair, my personal problems would evaporate. Meg was proof that being a knockout truly did make things easier, though she was too humble to make a big deal of it. She got every job, every boy she wanted, even if she didn’t want them for long.

We moved to different towns, staying in touch by phone or visits. I visited her family’s sprawling ranch in Oregon; frequently she flew to see me in L.A. Meg never looked much different or much older, just more sophisticated as the years elapsed. Sometimes there was a little sadness behind her eyes, or a wry smile instead of her generous laugh, but she was always luminous. She’d arrive at the airport sporting a slim knit suit, or a short new hairstyle which set off her hazel eyes. Our separate lives tumbled by with lightning speed. One year she brought photos of her fiancé, a wealthy architect. The next time we met, a July weekend in Carmel, we perched on a sofa in the hotel lobby poring over baby photos of her twin boys. As always, she seemed nervous, contented.

“Let’s go find a good restaurant and talk ourselves hoarse,” she said, stowing the photos back in her wallet. She wore a beautiful white linen shirt tucked into khaki pants, a silky cream-colored scarf, auburn hair held back sleekly in a tortoiseshell clip. She looked more like a Vogue model than a mother of two. Just as always, a couple of men in the lobby strolled by us and did a double take when they noticed Meg on the sofa. She couldn’t help her own effect.

“It’s just 5:30,” I said, happily. “We’ve got a whole evening. Let’s do drinks by the water first.”

“No, let’s eat now,” she said, an oddly stubborn edge to her voice. “If dinner’s much later, it doesn’t work.”

I glanced up at her. She was trying to tell me something, I wasn’t sure what. She gazed at her hands.

“Meals can backfire for me.” Dumbly, I nodded, still not understanding.

“I won’t keep it down,” she said, almost irritated, it seemed, at having to spell it out.

Suddenly her worried expression broke through the shell of my naiveté. My poised, graceful friend was trying to tell me she was bulimic.

“How long have you been . . . dealing with this?” I said, tripping over the phrasing.

“Oh, years,” she said. “Teens, 20s. Doesn’t matter.” She dabbed at her eyes, now clouded with tears. “Let’s just go.” She stood up, suddenly fragile.

Though the small restaurant had an exquisite menu, we didn’t linger at the table. Meg ate bits of everything, chatting, as if everything was fine, but clearly she needed something else instead. I signaled the waiter for the check. We made our way to the back patio, coffee cups in hand, and sat side by side on a bench together under a cypress tree, almost like our old cafe days. Except that now Meg was crying, and telling me about nights eating leftover food out of the kitchen trashcan, hoping her husband wouldn’t catch her. She talked of a late-night foray to Seven-Eleven years before she was married, pretending she was buying food for her family, when the clerk said cheerily, “I remember you, you were here the last couple of nights, too.” Insisting on 5 p.m. dinners at her parents’ house so she could rush to the gym later and burn off the terrifying feeling of fullness. The night spent cleaning the kitchen after her cousin’s birthday party, trying to wrap the remaining cake and eating as if her heart would break.

When she finished talking, I reached for her hand and held it for a long time without saying anything. I thought of all the times I’d wished I looked like her, the nights driving into the city with her, somehow hoping a little of her star shine might rub off on me, though I wouldn’t have admitted it to myself at the time. I thought about my friend Sally’s willow-thin daughter, hospitalized for anorexia a month before her senior prom, and about my mother, too nauseated from chemotherapy to eat the dinner my father had made for her. I thought of how long it takes to learn to feed ourselves, a whole lifetime maybe. I wondered why it is that so many of us can trust our friends, but not our bodies—and why we cannot, will not eat.

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Stacy Appel is an award-winning writer in Lafayette whose work has been featured in the Chicago Tribune and other publications. She has also written for National Public Radio. She is a contributor to the book You Know You’re a Writer When . . . , by Adair Lara. Contact Stacy at WordWork101@aol.com.

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