Group

by Christie Tate

  I dialed Dr. Rosen, who’d been out of town for a conference and didn’t know about the lie and the anniversary dinner. “I let go of Reed. I won’t have any contact with him outside of group,” I told his voice mail.

  I took a deep breath. There was so much more to say. For weeks, I’d wondered how Dr. Rosen could live with himself as he stood watch over my affair with Reed. Group members had repeatedly confronted Dr. Rosen on my behalf: Why aren’t you doing something about this? Christie’s going to get hurt. This is totally unethical. Dr. Rosen met each confrontation with a neutral expression, asking what, exactly, he should do to stop me.

  During my tenure in Rosen-land, various group members had referred to Dr. Rosen as brilliant. I’d seen him speak fluent German to the Colonel and Max; I’d watched Hebrew blessings roll off his tongue. He made deep connections between seemingly disparate events in group members’ lives. Pet ferrets and the Holocaust. Guitar lessons and cyanide pills. Pinworm and credit card debt. He was sharp, but was that brilliance? Maybe.

  What I valued most in Dr. Rosen were his balls of steel. He trusted himself enough to allow two group members to have an affair literally on his watch. He watched me make one questionable choice after another, patiently waiting for me to come to my God-given senses. If I would have killed myself over this, surely he would have found himself before a licensing board. But he trusted himself—and he trusted me. Waiting for me to wise up must have felt like having teeth removed without Novocain. I could never stand to watch someone I cared about make such questionable decisions.

  I was grateful that he could.

  32

  I was naked, shivering, holding my arms across my chest like a V, which was inadequate to the task of hiding my breasts. Sort of silly given that I’d just had sex with him. My clothes were across the room on the radiator. The only light was the glowing isosceles triangle from the closet. Sade crooned in her timeless voice.

  I stood there for several minutes watching Brandon, who had already buttoned himself into his matching pajama set. He made hospital corners with the bedsheets and folded the comforter just so after pulling it tight. He didn’t acknowledge me, standing there shivering; he was in another world, a fugue state composed of sheets, blankets, comforters, flat lines, and surfaces with no ripples. My arms shivered against my breasts and goose bumps rose on my belly as my mind tried and failed to return to the moments before Brandon’s vision tunneled to his linens.

  Brandon stepped back, hands on his hips, and surveyed the bed. He nodded and mumbled something to himself. He strode to his side of the bed and peeled back the covers gingerly. He shimmied his body down carefully so as to not disturb that hard-won smoothness. With his head on his pillow, he turned to me with a wide, unguarded smile.

  “Coming to bed?”

  After Renee set up my JDate profile, a series of men who were seeking Jewish partners rejected me upon discovering that “Texas Girl” was actually a shiksa named after the savior of the New Testament. Aaron and Oren seemed offended that my profile had been designed to dupe them, while Daniel, Eric, and Marc were amused at my claims to a kosher diet. Jerry, who must have been sixty-two years old, offered to take me to Manny’s deli and then show me his Jewish sausage. I let my JDate membership lapse and moved on to eharmony.com.

  Brandon’s first e-mail charmed me immediately. He asked if I liked to eat breakfast cereal for dinner, which launched a lively debate about the merits of Frosted Flakes versus granola. From his missives, I gathered that he was experienced at dating because he knew how to flirt over e-mail. I also assumed he was well educated, because he knew when to employ a semicolon.

  Brandon met my sole criterion for a date: he wasn’t a married man in my therapy group. He had the settled air of a man in his late thirties who now wanted a steady plus-one. On our first date we met for lunch at the East Bank Club, Chicago’s version of a country club that boasted the membership of Oprah and the Obamas. He wore a blue blazer and smiled with kind eyes. He stood an inch taller than I was, and his hair was longer than it was in his profile picture. He looked boyish and approachable, like a Beatle preparing for his first gig on The Ed Sullivan Show. For our second date we saw a play called Love Song at the Steppenwolf, followed by dinner at Boku on Halsted. Brandon was the type of guy who ordered off the specials menu and wore pressed khaki pants on weekend nights. He always paid, always held the door open, always insisted on sharing dessert. His college, the same place he went to medical school, was famous for educating dozens of presidents and Supreme Court justices. When he laughed, he held his hand over his mouth shyly. He’d recently taken up rock climbing to force himself to learn something that didn’t come naturally to him. His hygiene was impeccable—he brushed his teeth before and after we made out, and showered twice a day. He never cursed, didn’t drink, and never lost his cool. I was 90 percent sure he was Republican, but he had yet to demonstrate any misogyny, racism, or classism, so I let myself be wooed by his blue-blooded manners and kind demeanor.

  With Brandon, there were no spontaneous jolts of desire that propelled me to the floor of my office in search of orgasmic relief. During our first kiss on my couch after the play at Steppenwolf, I felt pleasant, if not particularly turned on. And that was mostly fine by me. The loss of appetite around the Intern and the illicit charge from my relationship with Reed had left me wrung out. With Brandon, my body was a calm lake on a quiet June morning.

  Sometimes, in group, I whispered that I was almost bored.

  “Good,” Max said. “The hallmark of a healthy relationship is boredom.”

  “It’s true, kiddo,” Grandma Maggie said, beaming her smile my direction. “It’s part of every marriage.”

  Dr. Rosen agreed: If I was bored, I was doing something right. But when I listened to other people talk about their early days with their beloveds—Clare or Marnie or Renee—they mentioned not sleeping, not eating, not being able to concentrate. No one described a rippleless lake. Part of me missed the excitement that crashed through me with my previous lovers, even as I recognized that it hadn’t served me. Now, when I pictured my heart, I saw that it was grooved from Reed, gouged a few times by Alex and the Intern, nicked by Jeremy. Of course each group member and Dr. Rosen had left their marks. I tried to imagine attaching to Brandon. Once, at dinner, I stared at his starched white shirt, imagining the surface of his heart. Did his grooves match mine?

  And now I’d watched Brandon straighten his sheets like someone in a sketch routine about OCD. What, I wondered, did his obsessive bed-making ritual portend? I could only imagine that some unspeakable childhood trauma led him to demand such order from his bedsheets. I wanted to ask, but his eyes were already heavy with sleep. He looked so youthful with the sheets tucked around his shoulders—I felt like I should offer him a glass of milk and a graham cracker.

  The sex was weird. We’d walked home from his favorite Thai restaurant, hand in hand. Back at his place, Brandon put on Sade. He led me to his darkened bedroom, where we kissed on his bed for the first time. The calm lake of my belly rippled slightly as he pulled off his shirt and then mine. When all of our clothes were removed, he sat up on the edge of the bed and rolled the condom on. He crawled over to me and straddled my hips with his legs. It was less foreplay than I’d imagined or wanted, but he hadn’t had a girlfriend since medical school fifteen years earlier. I didn’t fault him for being rusty, and I hadn’t been willing to speak up.

  Instead of the standard missionary-style sex I’d expected, Brandon put his right palm under my left shoulder and flipped me over in one swift motion. Everything went black as I face-planted into the pillow. Before I could lift my head or say anything, Brandon hoisted my hips up and entered me. Brandon’s thrusts were swift and clinical, though not unpleasant. I was stuck in my head: surprised and mildly titillated that someone who seemed so straitlaced, so possibly Republican, was into sex from behind.

  But I didn’t want my face jammed into a pillow. I wanted to see him, to hear the music, to
breathe freely. The words to get myself flipped back over—Wait. Hold up. Stop. Flip me back. This isn’t what I’m into—wouldn’t come out of my mouth. As I lay there trying to sort out how I would tell my group about this flip, Brandon’s fingers reached between my legs and my mind went blank as the pleasure rose through me, quick and hot. My back arched, and then my face hit the pillow with a muddled thud. When I rolled over to look at him, he was putting his arms through his pajamas.

  Thoughts swallowed every bodily sensation as if my body rolled up into my brain like a window shade: What’s with the pajamas? Did I enjoy that? Where had Sade gone?

  And this: What happened to my voice?

  From the moment we entered his bedroom, we’d been totally silent. There was no moaning, no panting, no oohing, and no aahing. There was no conversation—no “What do you like?” or “How does that feel?” It was neat and tidy, just like the stack of old-fashioned pajamas lined up in his impeccable linen closet.

  As Brandon slept, I replayed the whole scene, from the flip sex to the hospital corners. None of it turned me off, exactly. He wasn’t mean or inattentive or checked out. I diagnosed him as phobic about face-to-face sex and psychotic about sheets. But we all had our baggage. I could bring all my judgments, insecurities, fears, delusions, and feelings about everything that just happened to group. They would help me sort through it.

  * * *

  “You’re dating Dr. Flipper,” Lorne joked, “but he’s better than Reed.”

  Max said it wasn’t clear if the sheets thing was endearing or a sign that he was rigid and unyielding. “You’ll probably have to get him into therapy,” Max suggested.

  I told them we hadn’t discussed therapy yet, and Max raised his eyebrows at me. “I’m not hiding it, it just hasn’t come up.”

  “You’re waiting for him to ask you if you come to group three times a week?” Max smirked.

  The rule was to tell Dr. Rosen and my groups everything, not to tell my potential love interests everything about my therapy. “I’m not sure if I like him. My body doesn’t really respond to him.”

  “Did you have an orgasm?” Lorne asked.

  “Yes.”

  Dr. Rosen beamed like a full moon hanging in a cloudless sky.

  * * *

  On my thirty-fourth birthday, Brandon stood in my kitchen while I packed my overnight bag. We always spent the night at his penthouse overlooking Navy Pier because it had imported furniture, a surround-sound stereo, and, of course, his pajamas.

  “Who’s this?” Brandon pointed at a picture stuck to my fridge, every surface of which was plastered with pictures, 10K-race bibs, and ticket stubs. Of the dozens of faces he could have pointed to, he zeroed in on the one I didn’t want to discuss. Were we really going to do this on my birthday?

  “That’s my—” I paused.

  He cocked his head like well? and kept his finger pinned to the picture.

  “My mentor.”

  Brandon leaned in close and studied the picture. “Really?” It was a close-up picture of Dr. Rosen’s face from Kathryn’s wedding right before I’d introduced him and Alex. “What kind of mentor?”

  I didn’t want to tell Brandon about Dr. Rosen because I had no idea what he thought about mental-health treatment. When, a few weeks earlier, I’d told him I was in a 12-step program for an eating disorder, he scrunched his face and said, “I don’t get why you need all those people or why anyone can’t stop eating when they’re full.”

  “Well, actually”—fuck it—“he’s my therapist.”

  He leaned toward the picture and gave it a good hard look. “Therapist? How’d you get this picture of him?”

  “From a wedding. Two of his patients married each other—I’m friends with the bride.”

  A flicker of alarm in Brandon’s eyes. “Two patients married each other? What, they passed each other in the waiting room and then fell in love?” I explained about group and how Dr. Rosen didn’t forbid out-of-session consortium. Brandon’s lips settled into a tense line. He paced the floor and asked a dozen questions about how group worked, where my group mates came from, how it all worked. I assured him it was like regular therapy just more crowded. He wanted to know if I ever talked about him, and when I nodded, he stuffed his hands in his pockets. The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees.

  Back at his place, the sex was even quicker and more perfunctory than usual: he flipped me, and we were tucked in within twenty minutes. Afterward, I laid my head on his chest, but I could feel him staring at the ceiling. I sat up.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Brandon’s gaze didn’t waver from the crown molding. “Please don’t talk about me in your group.”

  “What?” Did he know how therapy worked?

  “Don’t mention my name.” I’d yet to tell him that my “group” was actually two groups and that I went three times a week.

  “They already know I’m dating you.” They knew everything. One Monday after group, Max and Brad googled Brandon and discovered that his apartment was worth more than a million dollars and that his mother was a major donor to Catholic Charities.

  “Do they know my name?”

  I nodded, and I felt my face burn red. I wasn’t supposed to say his name?

  “Please”—he turned to face me—“just leave me out of it.”

  I nodded—not because I agreed, but because I understood what he was asking. He took my silent nodding as assent, leaned over to kiss me on the cheek, and settled back on his pillow.

  33

  “How was the birthday?” Max said.

  I praised the salmon and the black truffle panna cotta at Custom House.

  “Did he give you a present, like looking at your face while he fucked you?” Lorne asked. I gifted Lorne my middle fingers.

  “Can we move on?” I asked.

  Max narrowed his eyes. “You’re usually such a blabbermouth—what he said, how he kissed you, whether he was in denial about his OCD—”

  “How he flipped you—” Lorne said, and I gave him two more middle fingers.

  “Now you’re acting like it’s none of our business.” Max said.

  I looked at Dr. Rosen. “Can you help me?”

  Dr. Rosen and I had spoken on the phone the morning after my birthday. He said he would not force me to talk about Brandon in group, but he strongly suggested that I let the group know what Brandon had asked of me. Now he gestured for me to go ahead. I took a deep breath and explained Brandon’s request and my tacit agreement not to discuss him in group.

  Everyone asked the same question: Why would he jeopardize my treatment? I pursed my lips. They were so dramatic. Brandon simply wanted privacy. Just because I was comfortable telling my groups what I ate and how I fucked didn’t mean he was. What was the harm in trying it Brandon’s way? If I returned to suicidal ideation and apple binges, I could always change course.

  The group lobbed more questions at me. Grandma Maggie wanted to know how I would get help with the relationship. Lorne wanted to know if Brandon knew his nickname was “Flipper.” Max’s question landed hardest: Was this relationship worth the sacrifice I’d agreed to make?

  Dr. Rosen sat silently as I fielded questions. I looked over at him several times. In one moment, I would see approval for my decision to be open to Brandon’s request. When I looked again, I’d see the straight line of his lips and detect a wariness that made my spine stiffen. I wanted to press my palms to my ears and scream. Why did every one of my relationships have to be such a goddamned production? When would this get easier?

  By the end of the session, I’d struck a bargain with the group: I would not bring in stories about Brandon, but when I needed help with the relationship, I would leave a message for Dr. Rosen, who would counsel me outside of group. Then I would disclose to the group, not the substance of the conversation with Dr. Rosen, but simply the fact he gave me feedback outside of group.

  “This is never going to work,” Lorne said. I saluted him
with my middle fingers once again. But even as I acted confident about the bargain I’d struck, worry tugged at me. I’d spent five years learning to bare myself to Dr. Rosen and my groups, learning to “let them in.” What would be the cost now of shutting them out?

  “Christie,” Max said in his most serious voice. “Seriously. What’s this about? Why can’t you talk about him in your therapy?”

  I figured there was some ancient family secret he was protecting out of allegiance to his bloodline. My best guess was a family history of something he was ashamed of, like addiction, mental illness, or a pregnancy out of wedlock. I knew that his dad died when Brandon was young, and I sensed both pain and shame woven through that story, which Brandon had alluded to only once. In time, Brandon would learn from me that secrets were toxic and that disclosure was the route to freedom and intimacy.

  That night over sushi, I told Brandon that I was willing to sequester him from my group as long as I could tell Dr. Rosen anything I wanted. He said he could live with that. I rose from my chair and walked around to his side of the table so I could give him a hug. He blushed at the public display. We ordered a lemon tart with two forks. The mood was celebratory.

  The next few weeks in group were awkward. Before Brandon’s edict, I had a place in the hot center of the action every session, talking about who I was sleeping with, who just dumped me. I tore up rags, tore out my hair, and demanded to know how group would help me. They had taught me to laugh at myself and look at my relationships from multiple angles. Now I curled into myself when sex or relationships came up, pressing my lips together to remind myself and all of them that I would not be sharing anything.