by Sue Margolis
“God, Jean,” Cyn said, “that must be awful, constantly trying to work out who is the real you.”
“My name is Jenny.”
“Omigod. Jenny. Of course you’re Jenny. I’m so sorry. You’ve been here for three months, how could I think you weren’t Jenny?” Cyn sat there, feeling her cheeks burn with embarrassment. Jenny was looking down, now fiddling with her nails.
“It’s all right, Cyn,” she said. “Not to worry. I know I don’t have very much impact on people. The thing is I just don’t know what to do to change.”
“I do.” It was Clementine, a bossy, Sloaney sex addict who worked as a fashion assistant on Vogue. “You’re forty-five. Losing the hair plait and calf-length florals might be a start.” Clementine could be blunt to the point of cruelty. Cyn watched Jenny recoil in shock.
“You know, Clementine,” Cyn came back. “I think that’s a bit much. I wonder why you always feel the need to be so unkind.”
“And I wonder,” Veronica broke in quietly, smiling at Cyn, “why you find it so easy to stick up for other people, but not yourself. Maybe you would like to say a bit more about that.”
Cyn shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, feeling cross with Veronica because she had managed to cast aside her good intentions about Jenny. She knew she needed to stand up to Veronica and tell her she was angry with her—practicing saying stuff like that was the main reason she was in group therapy—but she let it go.
It was hard to judge, but Cyn suspected most people in the group found Veronica as intimidating as she did. The woman had this quiet, almost smug confidence about her. Throughout the weekly one-and-a-half-hour session, she said very little. Instead she sat feet together, hands neatly folded in her lap, eyes constantly roving around the circle, watching and waiting for reactions and feelings to reveal themselves. Her silence and the fact that nobody knew anything about her beyond her name, address, telephone number and what they saw was, of course, very powerful. She revealed nothing about herself, while the group revealed everything.
She was in her late fifties, heavyset with thick ankles and an auburn bob so straight and symmetrical that it looked like it had been cut with the aid of a set square. Clotheswise she favored soft, elegant, loose-fitting layers, set off by chunky amber jewelry—very much the uniform of choice for postmenopausal Hampstead Brahmins who had piled on a few pounds lately.
Since it was the end of the month and payday, everybody had slipped a neatly folded check under the box of tissues that sat on the glass coffee table. Cyn had often noted how Veronica never discussed her fee beyond the first session. It was so British, she thought. She imagined how different it would be if this were New York instead of London. She couldn’t imagine a New York shrink having the same issues surrounding money. Quite the opposite, in fact: “OK, it’s March and these are my spring specials: schizophrenics and passive-aggressives half price. If you book now, there’s also a 20 percent reduction for hypochondriacs. This will include a complimentary MRI scan, a colonoscopy and a Barneys voucher. Also, look out for my twofer deals. Until April I’ll be taking on two anorexics for the price of one overeater.”
Just then, Ken, thirty-six, a deeply sensitive and earnest former Catholic priest who had left the priesthood three years ago and was still plucking up the courage to have sex (and whom Cyn was convinced had the hots for Clementine), turned toward Cyn. “I think Clementine was only trying to offer Jenny some constructive advice. I’m sure she meant no harm.” Cyn didn’t say anything. Instead she sat there wishing somebody would offer him some constructive advice along the lines of: “Ken, since you’re not actually Amish, have you considered the possibility that a beard with no mustache is not a great look?”
“Clementine’s right,” Jenny said. “Maybe my appearance is something I need to think about. Perhaps I could do with a bit of a makeover. I’ve been thinking about it for a while.” She turned to Clementine. “I want to thank you for having the courage to say what you did. It was important for me to hear it.” Poor Jenny, Cyn thought, you could mug her and she would put it down to a “valuable learning experience.”
Clementine offered Cyn a victorious smirk, then said she had something she would like to share with the group. “I finally managed to give up my car maintenance class.” She had started the course, not because she had the remotest interest in learning about car engines, but because it was somewhere to pick up men. “I only slept with nine of the men.” Cyn asked her how many there were in the course. Clementine stared down at her French manicure. “Eleven,” she said without looking up.
“Oh, but you’re getting there,” Jenny trilled. “I mean, Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that. You should be very proud of yourself.”
“I wish I could be proud of myself,” Sandra, a Jewish yo-yo dieter, was saying forlornly. “My mother says her postnatal depression began when I was born and won’t end until I get married. How do you live with all that guilt?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Clementine snapped. “Can’t you get her on Prozac?”
Sandra shook her head. “She tried it, but she says it interferes with her suffering.”
“You know,” Clementine said, “I think my insecurities stem back to when my mother used to come and meet me at school wearing a brown corduroy Donny Osmond cap. Before I came here, I spent ages trying to find the right support group.”
The jokey, most probably apocryphal story was typical of Clementine. In the time that Cyn had been in the group, she’d never heard Clementine talk about her past—at least not in any significant way, in a way that might explain her sex addiction. Whatever happened to her while she was growing up, she still wasn’t ready to go back and face it. Veronica would prompt her from time to time—try to encourage her to talk about her mother, who had apparently brought her up alone. Clementine would go silent for a while and lose herself in her thoughts. Occasionally her eyes would fill with tears, but after a minute or so she would come to, brush Veronica’s prompting aside and make another joke or smart remark. It seemed that as long as she was making smart remarks, she felt safe.
“That must have caused you such unbearable pain,” Ken said to Clementine about the Donny Osmond cap. His face etched with sympathy, he reached for the box of tissues and handed it to her.
By now, Jenny-with-the-identity-crisis was looking more distraught than ever. “I would like to know why Ken hands the tissues to Clementine when she’s upset, but when I’m upset he just ignores me. I mean, am I really that invisible? Doesn’t anybody recognize that I’m in pain, too?”
“Of course we do,” Cyn replied gently. But nobody backed her up. Everybody sat in silence because the truth was that apart from Cyn everybody found Jenny a complete pain in the arse.
The silence seemed to go on forever. Long silences were common during group therapy, but Cyn had never gotten used to them. She always felt the need to take control and say something. Anything. Hey, how many psychotherapists does it take to change a lightbulb? Just one, but the lightbulb must want to change. Boom, boom.
Veronica had often made the point that Cyn wasn’t responsible for the welfare of the group and that she needed to learn how to be comfortable with the silence. She tried, but it wasn’t easy. Right now, she focused on the small vase of flowers on the mantelpiece. She liked the way Veronica always took the trouble to make sure there were flowers in the room. Then she started looking at the Mondrian prints hanging on the white walls, the shelves full of books on psychodynamic theory.
It was Sandra Yo-yo who broke the silence. “You know,” she said morosely, pushing her dark curls behind her ears, “if I had to write my epitaph, it would read: Sandra—Eight Stone Three to Eleven Stone Six.” Everybody giggled at this, even Veronica, who didn’t laugh much as a rule.
“I’m sensing a great deal of repressed rage coming from you,” Ken said to Sandra. “I mean, when you’re overweight, there must be some kind of payoff.”
“Ken, you sound like you’ve swallowed a bloody th
erapy textbook,” Clementine said. “Veronica is the shrink, not you.”
He sat there clearly grappling with the put-down. Before he could say anything Cyn spoke. She had noticed the empty chair next to Jenny.
“I thought we were getting a new member tonight,” she said to Veronica.
“Yes. Jo is coming,” Veronica said, touching her amber necklace. “I got a message on my answer machine just before we started. Apparently there’s a burst water main along Camden Road.” More silence. “So, Cyn. Maybe you could share your feelings with the group about not being able to stand up for yourself.” Cyn thought for a moment. Her mind was a blank. She felt as if she had been put on the spot. It was a bit like being back at school and the French teacher asking her to conjugate an irregular verb she hadn’t learned. Then her mind suddenly flew back to an incident that had happened a few years ago when she was working as a nanny for an English family in Hong Kong.
The job had only been meant to last a year, but she’d stayed five. It was the usual story: agency finds nanny a job with nightmare mega-rich couple. Nanny is desperate to leave but can’t bear to abandon kids.
Tim and Mimi Clydesdale owned a vast colonial villa in Chung Hom Kok. When Barbara and Mal came to visit, Barbara took one look at the closets and said, “My God, you could sit twenty down to lunch in here.”
Tim was a corporate lawyer who earned shed loads. Mimi was pretty, without an emotion to speak of and so thin that she practically disappeared when she turned sideways. She did squat all day apart from going out to lunch with her expatriate girlfriends and moving salad around her plate. In the afternoons she might partake of a little light antiquing. She spent practically no time with her children. The only things this woman had ever nursed was a vodka glass and her American Express platinum card.
Mimi may have been a rubbish mother, but she was a generous employer. Every Christmas she bought Cyn an expensive gift. One year it was a cashmere twin set.
“I put it on straightaway to please her,” Cyn told the group. “She stood there scrutinizing me and said, ‘Cyn, that looks just perfect on you.’ ” She could imitate Mimi’s cold, haughty voice perfectly. “ ‘But, you know, I’m just not sure about your breasts.’ Anyway, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I asked her what was wrong with my breasts and she said: ‘Well, let’s put it this way. You might want to rethink your choice of bra.’ ”
“So,” Veronica said gently. “What did you say to her?”
Cyn could feel her eyes starting to water. “Nothing. I said nothing. My mind just went blank. I could feel the adrenaline pumping through me, but I didn’t dare be rude in case she sacked me. That would have meant abandoning those poor children. I couldn’t have done that. Anyway, I realized that Mimi was only jealous because she had two fried eggs on her chest instead of real breasts.”
“I sense that you are really getting in touch with your anger,” Veronica said approvingly.
“Too right I am. I mean, I have really nice breasts.” By now she was getting quite carried away. “They’re biggish, but they’re really firm and perky. They’re not remotely saggy. To hear Mimi go on, you’d have thought I was suckling sextuplets. All the men I’ve slept with have been extremely complimentary about them. You should see me in a Wonderbra.” She failed to notice that Ken was shifting uncomfortably in his seat and practically drooling. “Although I say it myself,” she went on, “I have a rather magnificent cleavage.”
By now she was vaguely aware that she had lost the attention of the group. Her voice trailed off.
“Hello,” the voice behind her said. “Sorry I’m late. I’m Joe.”
Cyn swung round in her seat to face the door. Not Jo as in a woman, but Joe as in a man. An exceedingly cute and sexy man, who now knew all about her firm, perky, not remotely saggy tits and magnificent cleavage.
For the second time that night, Cyn was crippled with embarrassment. One at a time, everybody stood up to shake Joe’s hand. “I am so sorry about what happened just then,” she said to him when her turn came. “I’m not usually like that. I mean, I’m not usually so in-your-face with my breasts . . .”
“That’s OK, I understand.” He was giving her the most delicious smile. “But do you think that maybe I could have my hand back now?”
“Oh, God. Yes.” She released his hand from her grip and watched him flex his fingers as if he was trying to get the blood flowing again.
He took his seat between Jenny and Veronica. “Welcome to our little group,” Clementine trilled, raking her fingers through her hair. Judging by his tight-lipped expression, Ken was watching Clementine’s trilling and raking with mounting jealousy. “So, Joe, what do you do for a living?”
He said was a film and documentaries editor.
“Wow, that sounds so creative and glamorous,” Clementine simpered.
“Not really,” Joe said. “I just sit in front of a computer screen all day, cutting film, trying to make it tell a story.”
Clementine soon established he wasn’t married and had no children. What he did have, Cyn couldn’t help noticing, was a broad, toned upper body and the softest, warmest brown eyes that were a perfect match for his short choppy hair. She was particularly taken with what he was wearing. His blokey, un-put-together look really appealed to her. Hugh would have recoiled at the battered suede jacket and jeans, but she liked it. She was less than keen on that magazine makeover look in women. In men, she positively loathed it.
“So what brings you to therapy?” Clementine asked him.
“You know, you really are giving this poor man the third degree,” Ken said, although it was clear to Cyn that Ken didn’t think Joe was remotely poor.
“That’s all right,” Joe replied with an easy smile. “OK, why am I here?” He leaned his head back while he thought. Camper boots, Cyn noted. Nice. “I think I have a problem with emotional intimacy. I tend to keep people at a distance. It’s really affected my relationships with women. They’ve all been pretty casual. I tend to pick women who aren’t looking for commitment.”
Bugger, why was it that all the good-looking men were either gay or damaged? It was a couple of moments before she remembered that she was in therapy and not out on the pull and that everybody here was meant to have issues.
Cyn didn’t say very much for the rest of the session, not that she would have gotten much chance since everybody was focusing on Jenny, who was wittering on about how threatened she felt when a new member joined the group because she felt her position—such as it was—was being usurped.
When Cyn got home, Hugh and Harmony had gone. She went into the kitchen to check on Morris Mynah. He had black feathers with flashes of white on his tail and yellow on his head. She thought he looked like a glitzed-up miniature crow. “Fuck, I need a shag,” he said in a perfect imitation of Keith Geary. “It’s been three months. Three sodding months since I last got my leg over.” Cyn giggled. She’d heard this nonstop for a week. Even though it was starting to drive her seriously round the bend, there was no getting away from it—Morris’s imitative ability was nothing short of genius. Even now he could still make her laugh. She was going to miss him when he went. Keith was due back at work tomorrow and they’d agreed (to be more precise, Keith had agreed) that the simplest thing (since it would save Keith having to make the twenty-minute drive to her flat) would be to do the handover at the office.
“Morris, you need a shag. I need a shag. Join the club. Instead, all I’ve got to look forward to tomorrow is the Pickersgill double-glazing people coming in to discuss their new advertising campaign. God, Cyril Pickersgill’s a miserable, boring old duffer. He must be over seventy. I don’t know why somebody hasn’t had the sense to put him out to grass.” She checked Morris had plenty of food pellets and water and put a towel over his cage. The dark tended to keep him quiet. “Night, night, Mo. Sleep tight.”
Realizing she wasn’t tired yet, she poured herself some wine and went into the living room. The video of Working Girl was lying on the c
offee table. It needed rewinding, which meant Harmony must have won her arm-wrestling match with Hugh. She decided this was unlikely and that Hugh had let her win on purpose because she was feeling down.
She picked up the tape. Like Harmony, she adored the way the spunky Melanie Griffith character, Tess McGill, sticks two fingers up at fair play and uses guerrilla tactics to get revenge against her slimy, duplicitous boss.
Cyn wasn’t about to go all L.A. flake and start having an epiphany based on a mindless piece of romantic Hollywood tosh. Nevertheless she couldn’t help thinking that Tess McGill symbolized a missing piece of her emotional jigsaw—the disobedient wayward piece.
She slipped the video into the machine, pressed rewind and went to fetch a packet of Doritos and the wine bottle.
For the next hour and fifty-five minutes, apart from drinking wine and dipping her hand into the Doritos bag, she barely moved. By the time it was over, the idea of doing something wicked and brave—for the most honorable and noble of reasons, of course—was beginning to hold a certain, almost irresistible, appeal.
Chapter 4
Morris’s cage was three feet by four and Cyn had quite a struggle getting it downstairs without tripping over or spilling his food. On top of that, Morris was frightened by the movement and refused to stop squawking and shouting about how much he needed a shag. Old Mr. Levinson, who lived with his wife on the floor below, was taking in the milk as Cyn and the cage went by. “Fuck, I need a shag. It’s been three sodding months.”
“Three months?” Mr. Levinson chuckled. He’d met Morris on the day he moved in and found him hugely entertaining. “That’s nothing. You want to try living with Mrs. Levinson. It’s been thirty years.” He insisted on carrying the cage downstairs for Cyn and held on to it while she unlocked the car. Then he slid it onto the backseat. “Thanks, Mr. Levinson. I really appreciate it.”