Group

by Christie Tate

  “How does anyone get better?” Marnie was clearly doing better than I was. If we were a tampon commercial, I’d be the one scowling about odors and leakage; she’d be doing a jeté in white jeans on her heavy flow day.

  She shrugged. “You could check it out.”

  I’d had other therapy. In high school, there was a short stint with a woman who looked like Paula Dean and wore pastel pantsuits. My parents sent me to Paula D. after Ms. Gray called about my eating, but I was so busy obeying the command to protect myself that I never said anything about how I felt. Instead, we chitchatted about whether I should get a mall job over the summer. Express or Gap? Once, she sent me home with a five-hundred-question psychological test. Hope coursed through my fingers as I filled in each answer bubble; these questions would finally reveal why I couldn’t stop eating, why I felt like a misfit everywhere I went, and why none of the boys were interested in me when all the other girls were French-kissing and getting felt up.

  Paula D. read the results in her perfectly modulated therapist voice: “ ‘Christie is perfectionistic and afraid of snakes. An ideal occupation for Christie would be watch repairperson or surgeon.’ ” She smiled and cocked her head. “Snakes are pretty scary, huh?”

  It never occurred to me to show her my tears and panic. To open up, I needed a therapist who could hear the echoes of pain in my silences and see the shirttail of truth under my denials. Paula D. didn’t. After that session, I sat my parents down and told them that I’d graduated from therapy. All better now. My parents beamed with pride, and my mom shared her life philosophy: “You just make up your mind to be happy. Focus on the positive; don’t put any energy into negative thoughts.” I nodded. Great idea. On the way down the hall to my bedroom, I stopped in the bathroom and threw up my dinner, a habit I developed after reading a book about a gymnast who threw up her food. I loved the feeling of emptying myself of food and the rush of adrenaline from having a secret. At age sixteen, I thought bulimia was a genius way to control my ruthless appetite, which led me to binge on crackers, bread, and pasta. Not until I got into recovery did I understand that my bulimia was a way to control the unending swells of anxiety, loneliness, anger, and grief that I had no idea how to release.

  Marnie dragged another fry through the smear of ketchup. “Dr. Rosen would see you—”

  “Rosen? Jonathan Rosen?”

  I definitely couldn’t call Dr. Rosen. Blake saw Dr. Rosen. Blake was a guy I’d met at a party the summer before law school. He took a seat next to me and said, “What kind of eating disorder do you have?” He pointed at the carrot sticks on my plate and said, “Don’t look at me like that. I’ve dated an anorexic and two bulimics who wished they were anorexic. I know your type.” He was in AA, between jobs, and offered to take me sailing. We rode bikes to the lakefront to watch Fourth of July fireworks. We lay on the deck of his boat, shoulder to shoulder, staring at the Chicago skyline and talking about recovery. We sampled the vegan food at Chicago Diner and went to the movies on Saturday afternoons before his AA meeting. When I asked if he was my boyfriend, he didn’t answer. Sometimes, he’d disappear for a few days to listen to Johnny Cash albums in his darkened apartment. Even if I could see the same therapist as Marnie, I could not see the same therapist as my ex-whatever-Blake-was. What, was I going to call up this Dr. Rosen and say, “Remember the girl who had anal sex last fall with Blake to cure his depression? Well, that was me! Do you take BlueCross-BlueShield?”

  “How much does this therapy cost?” Couldn’t hurt to ask, though I had no conscious intention of joining a therapy group.

  “Super cheap—only seventy bucks a week.”

  I blew a hot breath out of my cheeks. Seventy bucks was chump change to Marnie, who ran a lab at Northwestern University and whose husband was the heir to a small family fortune. If I skimped on groceries and took the bus instead of driving, I might have an extra seventy bucks by the end of the month. But each week? I made fifteen dollars an hour at my summer internship, and my parents were Just Be Happy people, so I couldn’t ask them. In two years, I’d have a job locked down, but on my student budget, where would the money come from?

  Marnie said Dr. Rosen’s phone number out loud, but I didn’t write it down.

  But then she said one more thing.

  “He just got remarried—he smiles all the time.”

  Instantly, I pictured Dr. Rosen’s heart: a red grammar school cutout for Valentine’s Day with hash marks etched across the surface like bare tree branches in winter. I projected onto Dr. Rosen, a man I had never met, a gut-wrenching divorce, lonely nights in a sublet efficiency with freezer-burned microwaved dinners, but then a twist: a second chance at love with a new wife. In the chest of a smiling therapist beat a scored heart. My chest filled with curiosity and a slim, quivering hope that he could help me.

  As I lay in bed that night, I thought about the women in Marnie’s group: the presumed cutter, the felon, the daughter of the drug addict. I thought about Blake, who had formed tight bonds with the men in his group. After his sessions, he would come home brimming with stories about Ezra, who had a blow-up doll for a girlfriend, and Todd, whose wife dumped all of his possessions out on the sidewalk when she wanted a divorce. Was I really worse off than these folks? Was my malady, whatever it was, so impossible to cure? I’d never given bona fide psychiatry a chance. Psychiatrists have medical degrees—maybe whatever was wrong with me required the skills of someone who’d dissected a human heart during his training. Maybe Dr. Rosen would have some advice for me—something he could impart in a single session or two. Maybe there was a pill he could prescribe to take the edge off my despair and score my heart.

  3

  I found Dr. Rosen’s number in the phone book and left a message on his machine two hours after my dinner with Marnie. He called me back the next day. Our conversation lasted less than three minutes. I asked for an appointment, he offered me a time, and I took it. When I hung up, I stood up in my office, my whole body shaking. Twice I sat down to resume my legal research, and both times I popped out of my seat thirty seconds later to pace. My mind insisted that making a doctor’s appointment was no big deal, but the adrenaline coursing through me hinted otherwise. That night I wrote, I got off the phone & burst into tears. I felt like I said the wrong stuff & he doesn’t like me & I felt exposed and vulnerable. I didn’t care if he could help me; I cared about whether or not he liked me.

  The waiting room consisted of bland doctor’s office fare: an Easter lily, a gray-scale photograph of a man stretching his arms outward and turning his face toward the sun. The bookshelf held titles like Codependent No More and Vandalized Love Maps and dozens of AA newsletters. Next to the inner door, there were two buttons: one labeled “group” and one labeled “Dr. Rosen.” I pressed the Dr. Rosen button to announce myself and then settled in a chair along the wall facing the door. To calm my nerves, I grabbed a National Geographic and flipped through pictures of the majestic Arctic sea wolf galloping across a treeless plain. On the phone Dr. Rosen had sounded serious. I heard East Coast vowels. I heard an unsmiling gravitas. I heard a stern, humorless priest. Part of me had hoped he’d be too booked to see me for a few weeks or months, but he offered an appointment forty-eight hours later.

  The waiting room door swung open at exactly one thirty. A slight middle-aged man in a red Tommy Hilfiger golf shirt, khaki pants, and black leather loafers opened the door. His face wore a slight smile—friendly but professional—and what was left of his wiry grayish hair stuck up all over his head, slightly reminiscent of Einstein. If I passed him on the street, I would never look twice. From a quick glance, I could tell he was too young to be my dad and too old to want to fuck, which seemed ideal. I followed him down a hall to an office where northern windows looked out over the multistory Marshall Field’s building. There were several patient seating options: a scratchy-looking upholstered couch, an upright office chair, or a black oversize armchair next to a desk. I chose the black armchair. A slew of framed Harva
rd diplomas drew my eye. I respected the Harvard thing. I’d had Ivy League dreams but state school finances and test scores. To me, those Ivy League certificates signified that this guy was top tier. Elite. Crème de la crème. But it also meant that if he couldn’t help me, then I was truly and deeply fucked.

  Once I settled in the chair, I took a good look at his face. My heartbeat accelerated as I took in his nose, eyes, and the straight line of his lips. I put them altogether and realized: I knew him. I pressed my lips together as the knowledge sunk in. I totally knew this guy.

  This Dr. Rosen was the same Jonathan R. I’d met in a recovery meeting for people with eating disorders three years earlier. In 12-step meetings, people go only by their first name and last initials to preserve their anonymity. Twelve-step meetings for people with eating disorders are like AA meetings—members gather in church basements where they share stories about how food is ruining their lives. Like our more famous AA brethren whose meetings have been depicted in Meg Ryan movies and referenced in TV shows from The West Wing to NYPD Blue, food addicts collect serenity coins and get sponsors to learn how to live without bingeing, purging, starving, and maiming their flesh. Unlike AA, most of the 12-step meetings I’d attended were filled with women. In ten years, I’d seen only a handful of men in my meetings. One of them was the Harvard-educated psychiatrist sitting two feet away from me, waiting for me to open my mouth.

  I knew things about Jonathan R. as a person. A man. A man with an eating disorder. I remembered things he’d shared about his mother, his chronically ill child, his feelings about his body.

  A therapist is supposed to be a blank slate. There were smudges all over Dr. Rosen.

  I swiveled my body so he could see me head-on. Once he recognized me, would he kick me out right away? His expression remained open, curious. Five seconds passed. He didn’t seem to recognize me and was waiting for me to speak. Now the Harvard thing intimidated me. How could I come across as both witty and tortured, like Dorothy Parker or David Letterman? I wanted this Dr. Rosen to take seriously my newly developed fantasies about dying, yet still find me irrepressibly charming and maybe also a little bit fuckable. I figured he’d be more willing to help me if he found me attractive.

  “I suck at relationships and am afraid I’ll die alone.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I can’t get close to people. Something stops me, like an invisible fence. I can feel myself holding back, always holding back. With guys, I always fall for the ones who drink until they puke or pass out—”

  “Alcoholics.” Not a question but a statement.

  “Yes. My first love in high school smoked pot every day and cheated on me. In college, I fell for a beautiful Colombian fraternity boy who was alcoholic and had a girlfriend, and then I dated a pot addict. There was a nice guy after him, but I dumped him—”

  “Because?”

  “He walked me to class, bought me copies of his favorite books, and asked permission to kiss me. He made my skin crawl.”

  Dr. Rosen smiled. “You’re afraid of emotionally available men. I suspect women too.” More statements.

  “Stable guys who express interest in me make me want to vomit. I guess that’s true about women too.” My mind flashed to a scene from the previous Christmas when I was in Texas visiting my family, and I’d run into a high school friend at Banana Republic. When Lia called out my name, I stood next to the blazers and oxford shirts, frozen, as she hugged me warmly. When she pulled away, a stricken look passed across her face—like I thought we were friends—and then she asked me about Chicago and law school. As we chitchatted among the shoppers looking for after-Christmas bargains, my mind insisted that she didn’t want to be talking to me because she was now a successful physical therapist without an eating disorder or a weird affliction that made her clam up when someone from her past offered her a hug. Lia and I had been close in high school, but I pulled away senior year when my eating disorder revved up and I became consumed with getting my first boyfriend to stop cheating on me.

  “Are you bulimic?”

  “I’m in recovery—twelve-step,” I said quickly, hoping not to trigger his memory of hearing me introduce myself as Christie, recovering bulimic. “The steps helped me with the bulimia, but I can’t fix this relationship thing—”

  “Not by yourself. Who’s in your support system?”

  I mentioned my sponsor Cady, a stay-at-home mom of grown kids who lived in the rural Texas town where I went to college. I was closer to her than anyone—I called her every three days but hadn’t laid eyes on her in five years. There was my random assortment of women like Marnie with whom I connected during and sometimes after recovery meetings. Law school friends who didn’t know I was in recovery. Friends from high school and college in Texas who tried to keep in touch with me, but I rarely returned their phone calls and never accepted their invitations to visit.

  “I’m starting to have fantasies about dying.” I pressed my lips together. “Ever since I found out I’m first in my class at law school—”

  “Mazel tov.” His smile was so genuine that I had to turn my head to his diplomas to keep from bursting into tears.

  “It’s not Harvard or anything.” He raised his eyebrows. “And anyway, so I’ll have a great career, so what? There won’t be anything else—”

  “That’s why you picked law.” His confident diagnoses were both disarming and comforting. He was no Paula D. with her questions about snakes.

  “What’s the story in your head about how you became you?” Dr. Rosen asked.

  “Every family has a fuckup.” I don’t know why I said that.

  “Valedictorian of your law school class, and you’re a fuckup?”

  “Being valedictorian doesn’t mean shit if I’m going to die alone and unattached.”

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  The word want echoed in my head. Want, want, want. I groped for a way to speak my longing in the affirmative, not just blurt out how I didn’t want to die alone.

  “I want—” I stalled.

  “I would like—” More stopping.

  “I want to be real. With other people. I want to be a real person.”

  He stared at me like what else? Other strands of desire floated through my mind: I wanted a boyfriend who smelled like clean cotton and went to work every day. I wanted to spend less than 50 percent of my waking hours thinking about the size of my body. I wanted to eat all of my meals with other people. I wanted to enjoy and seek out sex as much as the women on Sex and the City. I wanted to return to ballet class, a passion I dumped when I grew breasts and fleshy thighs. I wanted to have friends to travel the world with after I took the bar exam in two years. I wanted to reconnect with my college roommate who lived in Houston. I wanted to hug high school friends when I ran into them at the mall. But I didn’t say any of that because it seemed too specific. Corny. I didn’t yet know that therapy, like writing, relied on detail and specificity.

  He said he’d put me in a group. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but the word group landed like a punch between my ribs. A group would be filled with people, people who might not like me, who would pry into my business and violate my mother’s edict not to expose my mental anguish to other people’s scrutiny.

  “I can’t do a group.”

  “Why not?”

  “My mother would flip. All those people knowing my business—”

  “So don’t tell her.”

  “Why can’t I do individual sessions?”

  “Group’s the only way I know how to get you where you want to go.”

  “I’ll give you five years.”

  “Five years?”

  “Five years to change my life, and if it doesn’t work, then I’m out of here. Maybe I’ll kill myself.” I wanted to wipe that smirk off his face, and I wanted him to know I wasn’t going to stick around indefinitely, schlepping downtown to talk about my feelings with other broken people, if there weren’t material changes in my life. I
n five years I’d be thirty-two. If I still had a slick, unattached heart at thirty-two, I would off myself.

  He leaned forward. “You want intimate relationships in your life within five years?” I nodded, willing to bear the discomfort of eye contact. “We can do that.”

  I was scared of Dr. Rosen, but was I going to second-guess the Harvard-educated psychiatrist? His intensity scared me—that laughter, those statements—but it also intrigued me. Such confidence! We can do that.

  * * *

  As soon as I agreed to group, I became convinced that something catastrophic would happen to Dr. Rosen. I pictured the number twelve bus mowing him down in front of Starbucks. I pictured his lungs riddled with malignant tumors, his body succumbing to ALS.

  “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him,” Dr. Rosen said in our second session when I told him my fears.

  “Aren’t you Jewish?” There was the Jewish surname, the mazel tov, the needlepoint with Hebrew letters hanging across from the diplomas.

  “The expression means you should pray that I die.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “If I die”—he clasped his hands together and smiled like a manic elf—“someone better will come along.” His face burst with joy, as if he believed that anything—anything at all—could happen, and it would be glorious and better than what came before it.

  “I was once in an accident on a beach in Hawaii. Someone I was with drowned.” I felt a rise in my chest as I watched his eyes expand before my detonated bomb.

  “Jesus. How old were you?”

  “Three weeks shy of fourteen.” My body buzzed with anxiety as it always did when Hawaii came up. That summer, the sweet spot between eighth grade and starting a new, all-girls Catholic high school, my friend Jenni invited me to join her family for a vacation in Hawaii. We spent three days exploring the main island—black sand beaches, waterfalls, a luau. On the fourth day, we went to a secluded beach at the edge of the island, and Jenni’s father drowned in the surf. I never knew how to talk about the experience. My mom called it “the accident,” other people called it “the drowning.” The night it happened, Jenni’s mom called family members back in Dallas, sobbing into the phone: “David’s been killed.” I didn’t have the words for what happened or how it felt to carry the memory of dragging his limp body out of the ocean, so I didn’t talk about it.