![]() She was, at sixteen years, eight months and twenty-one days, a product of her mother’s meticulous and detailed agenda. ![]() ![]() She’d never roamed the mall with a pack of girls, attended a slumber party or giggled with friends over pizza or hot fudge sundaes. She’d never been on a date or kissed a boy. She could name all the bones, nerves and muscles in the human body and play Chopin’s Piano Concerto-both Nos. So she could become a doctor, like her mother-a surgeon, like her mother.Įlizabeth-never Liz or Lizzie or Beth-spoke fluent Spanish, French, Italian, passable Russian and rudimentary Japanese. In the fall, she’d return to Harvard in pursuit of her medical degree. She expected, and directed, her daughter to do the same.Įlizabeth studied diligently, accepting and excelling in the academic programs her mother outlined. Fitch dressed conservatively, as suited-in her opinion-her position as chief of surgery of Chicago’s Silva Memorial Hospital. Elizabeth had adhered to the schedules her mother created, ate the meals designed by her mother’s nutritionist and prepared by her mother’s cook, wore the clothes selected by her mother’s personal shopper.ĭr. It ended in blood.įor nearly the whole of her sixteen years, eight months and twenty-one days she’d dutifully followed her mother’s directives. Its intense loneliness its intense ignorance.ĮLIZABETH FITCH’S SHORT-LIVED TEENAGE REBELLION BEGAN with L’Oréal Pure Black, a pair of scissors and a fake ID. The barb in the arrow of childhood suffering is this:
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