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3
    Sylvie
    “I love you, Mom!” Eve puts her arms around her mom, as Sylvie squeezes her hard, grateful she has a daughter who still hugs her, is not embarrassed by her or suddenly hating her in preparation of the imminent separation.
    Eve steps back, twirling. “How do I look?”
    “You look beautiful,” Sylvie says, which is true. At seventeen, Eve has her mother’s petite features and dark hair, her father’s olive skin, and somewhat startlingly, his bright green eyes.
    Sylvie imagines all mothers think their daughters beautiful, but Sylvie, schooled by her mother to be nothing if not objective, knows that were she to pass Eve as a stranger on the street, she would still gaze at her prettiness.
    Eve turns to the side and looks down, rubbing her hands over her stomach. “Do I look fat?” she asks, frowning. “My stomach is huge. I think this top makes me look really fat.”
    “Eve!” Sylvie admonishes, staring at her daughter’s tiny frame. “You’re tiny. You couldn’t look fat even if you tried.”
    “I do.” Eve attempts to grab a love handle, which is in fact merely skin, to demonstrate the weight she needs to lose. “I look enormous. I ate so much chocolate yesterday.”
    “Evie, I promise you, you’re tiny.” Sylvie frowns. “I’m worried about you. I’m worried that you keep thinking you look fat when you’re so, so thin.”
    “You don’t have to worry,” Eve says. “I’d just like to lose ten pounds. Then I’d be perfect.”
    “If you lost ten pounds, you’d look skeletal.” Sylvie is worried. “Don’t lose any more. Please. You’ve already lost so much weight.”
    Eve gives her mother an exasperated look. “Mom. I needed to. I was huge before, an elephant.”
    “Eve, you were never huge. It was baby fat.”
    “Well. I have ten more pounds of baby fat and then I’ll be perfect,” Eve says, grabbing her jacket. “Don’t be such a worrier.” And with that, she’s gone.
    *   *   *
    Sylvie is worried.
    Eve, such a chubby, gorgeous baby, grew into a skinny toddler; then, at around ten, like so many of the young girls at that same age, went through a plump phase before growing taller and slimmer.
    She was normal until around sixteen, when she announced she was turning vegetarian. This was interesting only because Eve was not a big lover of vegetables, and her version of vegetarian involved copious amounts of macaroni and cheese, French bread, and cookies.
    Her weight climbed, Sylvie saying nothing, attempting to guide Eve to a healthier way of eating without actually saying anything about her weight, but Clothilde was shockingly vocal each time she saw Eve.
    “What is this?” Clothilde would lean forward in her chair, grabbing the excess flesh sitting on the top of Eve’s jeans. “All this fat? Eve! You are eating too much. All this American bad food. No boy will like you with … this.”
    Sylvie begged Clothilde to stop saying anything, knowing how much this upset Eve, but Clothilde just pursed her lips. “I don’t want a fat granddaughter any more than she wants to be fat, and if you won’t tell her, I have to.”
    “Do you have any idea how upset she is?”
    Clothilde merely shrugged. “Good. Perhaps she will stop eating.”
    It wasn’t until Eve had her first major crush that she stopped eating. He had told a friend that Eve had a “pretty face,” but was “too big for him.”
    It changed everything.
    At first she announced she was no longer eating carbs. Then no dairy. She seemed to exist on bowls of miso soup and fruit, and Sylvie, deeply concerned, had been in to see the school counselor.
    She told Sylvie it was common at this age, that the girls were experimenting with their sexuality, their appeal to boys, and faddy diets were all the rage, and would pass.
    Sylvie was not reassured in the slightest. When she brought up the possibility of an eating disorder, the counselor had dismissed it as everything having to be a “disorder” these