Group

by Christie Tate

  “Duly noted.” He smiled like what else you got?

  I put my hand on his cheek. Where did he come from?

  We kissed again, but then John pulled away and looked down at his hands. His expression was serious.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I already knew about your therapy and your twelve-step meetings.”

  “What? How?”

  “I read some of your essays. The ones you saved on the Skadden system.”

  Oh my God, I’d forgotten about those. Sometimes, while waiting—occasionally for hours—for partners to get back to me with edits on a brief, I’d write essays, scraps of stories. Stuff about growing up in Texas, going to Catholic school, and anecdotes about group therapy. I saved the writing under my name on the firm system with deceiving titles like “Tate Billing Information” or “Tate Litigation File.” I thought they were well-hidden Easter eggs.

  “You found those?”

  He blushed. “I wanted to know more about you.”

  “By reading ‘Tate Billing Info’?”

  “It worked.”

  We went back to kissing. But then I stopped us again. My conscience ached like a sore muscle.

  “I saw Turandot with my ex three nights before I saw it with you.”

  Surprise spread across his face. “But you acted like you didn’t know anything about it.” Before the opera, John invited me over to his house to present a PowerPoint he’d prepared about Puccini’s life and the plot of Turandot. He’d added a cartoon video of Puccini’s car accident right before he completed Madama Butterfly. I’d been utterly enchanted by the work he’d put into educating me on the opera so I could enjoy it as much as he did. I wasn’t about to raise my hand and tell him I’d just seen it from the fourth row.

  “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  “It takes a lot to rattle me.”

  “Have I?”

  “Almost.”

  * * *

  After three weeks of dating, I got up to leave John’s place one night well past midnight. He told me I was welcome to stay, but I wasn’t quite ready. It had only been six weeks since I had slept in Brandon’s bed.

  “We don’t have to have sex,” he said.

  “I’m just not ready.”

  He walked me out to my car and held me underneath the navy sky.

  “I’m not up for having sex with someone who isn’t in love with me. I’m not interested in that.” My beautiful clear voice.

  “I do love you, you know,” he whispered in my ear.

  “What?”

  He looked me in the eye and said it again.

  “How do you know?”

  “I can feel it.”

  “We’ve only been dating three weeks.”

  “So I’ve known for three-ish weeks.”

  We eventually progressed to spending the night at each other’s house and stayed up talking and doing “everything but” until morning’s first light bled through the curtains. Whenever we got to the part of the night where either we were or weren’t going to have sex, I pulled away. “I’m still not ready,” I would say, unable to explain why. He was infinitely more suitable for me than any of the men I’d ever slept with or groped in a suburban mall parking lot, but I couldn’t move forward sexually.

  “Why are you torturing him and yourself?” Max said. “I feel so sorry for him.”

  “What are you afraid of?” Everyone wanted to know, including me.

  Dr. Rosen pointed out this was the healthy relationship I’d been waiting to find myself in. I was using my voice, setting boundaries, and staying in my body when I was with him. He thought I was scared of sex because it would bring me and John even closer. For once, I fully agreed with him, but I still wanted to know: “Why can’t I just have sex with him already?”

  “Mamaleh, you will when you’re ready.”

  And then one spring night, I no longer needed to keep John at a distance. Our bodies fit together. The physical part of our relationship was an extension of all the things we were already doing—talking, eating, laughing, kissing, touching, and sleeping. For the first time, I understood that sex was a big deal for me not because it involved private parts or because the nuns told me it was one of God’s major preoccupations or because my mother told me I’d wind up in hell if I did it before marriage. It was a big deal because with sex, I gave John my body in a singular way, and he gave me his. Together, we shared the pleasure of that exchange. And even though he was kind, committed, and loving, it was super hot.

  39

  When my thirty-fourth birthday rolled around, John and I had been dating for only four months. I hoped for a dinner that required a reservation and some heartfelt words on card stock, signed Love, John. Dr. Rosen hinted I might get an engagement ring, but I cut him off. The last thing I needed was the weight of expectations on my four-month-old relationship. The joke was on Dr. Rosen when John gave me a Sonicare electric toothbrush and a homemade wooden picture frame. Lovely, but not gemstones that announced “lifetime commitment.”

  Several months after my birthday John and I took a two-week trip to India with his high school friends. Nothing like a trip to a third-world country where you can’t always control your bowels to solidify a relationship. John held my hand during Diwali fireworks, helped me find tampons in a Goa supermarket, and carried the souvenirs for all my group members in his carry-on, including a brass Hindu symbol that represented luck and fortune, which happened to look like a backward swastika. That was for Dr. Rosen.

  In December, John and I spent our first Christmas-Hanukkah in Los Angeles with his family. During his family’s epic thirty-person Hanukkah gift exchange, his mother gave me a Victoria’s Secret gift certificate, and his grandmother gifted me a white marble box with intricate tile from her long-ago trip to India. John’s cousins taught me how to make latkes, and his brother showed me old family pictures of their Russian forebears—stern men with long beards and black hats and women in black dresses with high collars. When John set the camera on the tripod for a group photo, I stood next to him, and he put his arm around me. I folded into the welcoming arms of his family.

  We stole away from the official celebration one afternoon for a quiet walk on the beach in Orange County. The brilliant California sunshine on the hot white sand almost hurt my eyes—it was the same ocean that Brandon and I had walked along just a year before, the same water that stole David’s life. It was comforting to see it still churning toward the shore. I rolled up my jeans and slipped off my boots so I could feel the sand, warm and gritty between my toes. We stopped at a rocky ledge to watch the ocean. There, underneath a surreal blue sky, I scanned the beach for celebrities and their dogs. John was quiet, until we headed back to the car.

  “I want to move forward. With you.” He said words I’d never heard a man say to me: engaged and certain and together and future. I held my hand over my galloping heart.

  * * *

  On a Monday morning in March, I walked into group a few minutes late and sat in the empty seat to the right of Dr. Rosen. I sat quietly, not overly gesticulating or calling attention to my left hand.

  “I’m sorry, I’m almost blinded by the ring on Christie’s finger,” Dr. Rosen said when he’d waited long enough for me to speak up. Laughing, I jumped out of my chair and spun around the room sticking my hand in everyone’s face.

  “Not too big, not too small,” Max said approvingly.

  Patrice held my hand up to the window to see it in the sunlight.

  Grandma Maggie beamed. “I knew it, kiddo.”

  I’d never cared about jewels, but this ring was so much more than its stones. John and I designed it together. There was a larger stone in the middle, flanked by three smaller ones on each side. The big stone represented me and John; the three smaller stones on either side were Dr. Rosen and my groups. Those three smaller stones were the foundation of my life. They’d introduced me to myself, my appetites, my rage, my terror, my pleasure, my voice. They made me a re
al person. There was no “John and me” without them. Every single day of my marriage would be a tribute to the work I’d done in group, and I could not separate my romantic relationship from the hours and hours I’d spent in group, growing up and growing into my life.

  “I cannot believe that John puts up with you,” Lorne said, winking at me. “Good job finding a man who doesn’t have to flip you every night.”

  Dr. Rosen had oohed and aahed over my ring and offered a genuine mazel tov that landed on my heart like a blessing. I could tolerate this mazel tov in a way I could not take in the mazel tov he offered for my class rank seven years earlier during my first appointment. Now I knew that Dr. Rosen loved me and that I deserved his praise and whatever “mazel” was. But I longed for more. An explicit blessing. Not permission, but consecration. I looked at him and said, “I want something more from you.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “Not exactly sure.”

  “Talk about it in your groups and see if you can get clarity.”

  * * *

  Dr. Rosen answered the door to his tidy white town home in jeans and brown sandals that exposed his toes. Were you supposed to see your therapist’s bare feet? I thought not, so I directed my attention to his bright kitchen. But then I felt my head practically crack open with pain—a ferocious stress headache from having dinner with my fiancé at my therapist’s house. I’d felt vaguely nauseated as John drove us out to Dr. Rosen’s quiet suburban neighborhood, but now all I wanted was a cold compress and extra-strength Motrin. I squeezed John’s hand and tried to steady my nerves. It’s perfectly natural to have dinner at your therapist’s house. I handed Dr. Rosen’s wife a bouquet of light pink peonies that she smelled and said were her favorite.

  “Can I use your bathroom?” I asked, not because I had to go, but because I wasn’t ready to make small talk over apps with the man I planned to marry and the man who’d witnessed multiple temper tantrums and pinworm-inspired monologues. I sat on the toilet and massaged my temples, willing the pain around my skull to dissolve. I counted the number of toilet paper squares I used (six) and the pumps of liquid soap (three). The temptation to swing open the medicine cabinet made my fingers itch, but the prospect of confessing my snooping next week in group held me back.

  As I cruised through the living room on the way back to the kitchen, I wanted to look at the books on the shelves, the pictures in frames, the tchotchkes on the coffee table, but I was too scared. You’re not supposed to surveil your therapist’s personal possessions. Plus, what if I saw embarrassing things, like Nicholas Sparks novels or pictures of Dr. Rosen and his wife posed with Goofy on a Disney cruise?

  Mercifully, his wife invited us to sit down. She spoke with a thick Russian accent and smiled warmly. Between John’s and my plates was a wrapped present. “Open it,” Dr. Rosen said, smiling. John pulled off the paper and held up a white tile with colorful painted flowers and script that read Shalom Y’all. They’d found it on their recent trip to Israel and loved that it celebrated both of our heritages: Texan and Jewish. I couldn’t even summon words—all I could do was stare at the script, absorbing the fact that when Dr. Rosen traveled across the globe, he still continued to hold me in his mind. Me and John.

  Dr. Rosen lit two candles and said a prayer in Hebrew. Then, as we’d discussed in group, he put his hands on my head and recited the Hebrew blessing over a child. The press of his hand on my head stopped the pulse from my headache, but when he moved on to John, the pain roared back. As Dr. Rosen said the prayer over John’s head, tears sprung to John’s eyes, making me tear up as well.

  Dr. Rosen’s wife apologized that parsnips were not in season. I looked at Dr. Rosen, who smiled at me. A week before, Dr. Rosen had asked me in group what my favorite foods were and I answered by starting to cry. Foods were coming to mind, but the words were stuck as pictures in my head.

  I remembered when I first got into recovery for bulimia and latched on to dozens of rules so I wouldn’t fall back into bingeing and purging. I didn’t eat sugar, flour, wheat, corn, bananas, honey, or potatoes. I didn’t eat between meals or after nine at night. I never went back for seconds of anything and never ate standing up. Shortly after I got into recovery, my parents and I drove from Dallas to Baton Rouge for my brother’s college graduation, and my dad stopped for lunch at Lea’s Lunchroom in Lecompte, Louisiana—my parents’ favorite pie shop. The only thing on the menu was honey-cured ham sandwiches and four kinds of pie. I asked the waitress if they could take the shredded iceberg lettuce from the ham sandwiches and make me a salad. Not possible, she said. Starving, I ordered two ham sandwiches, ate the lettuce with salt and pepper, leaving the ham and bread behind. My plate looked like a crime scene. I watched as my parents ate their ham sandwiches and split two pieces of pie, one chocolate and one lemon. I didn’t know how to ask them to take me somewhere to get food I could eat. I didn’t know how to tell them my belief that adhering to my food rules kept me alive. All I knew how to do was sit in my chair and smile stupidly as my empty stomach growled and begged me to take up a fork and load it with pie.

  In group, Dr. Rosen employed eating metaphors with me from day one. But this dinner at his house wasn’t a metaphor: it was Dr. Rosen and his wife feeding and blessing me and John. He wanted to feed me exactly what I wanted. My favorites. In group, Rory had told me to close my eyes and shout out my favorite foods. I squeezed my eyes shut and ground my fists into my eye sockets as I whispered, “Parsnips. Mango. Salmon. Potatoes.”

  Dr. Rosen’s wife served a brilliant-orange carrot soup with a dollop of melting cream in the center. I swirled my spoon around, and the cream dissolved. It tasted rich and earthy. Dr. Rosen listed all the ingredients in each dish, even though I had let go of most of my food rules by then. The salmon was perfectly pink, and the potatoes had a touch of rosemary and salt. As they carried empty plates to the kitchen after we ate, Dr. Rosen and his wife spoke softly in another language that sounded half Russian and half Hebrew.

  I don’t remember uttering a single word the whole night, though I must have spoken. I was all sensation: My throbbing headache. The flavors on my tongue. John’s hand on my leg. The feeling of wanting to cry for no reason other than that the night was so lovely, the food so delicious, the occasion so improbable. I remember that it seemed like Dr. Rosen’s wife was in charge as she told him where to find the silver spoons for the tea and the knife for the cheese. What a thrill to watch someone boss Dr. Rosen around! I couldn’t wait to tell Max.

  For dessert, Dr. Rosen placed a wooden cutting board with several hard cheeses, grapes, and dried cherries in the middle of the table. I popped a grape into my mouth. Its slick sweetness beat my headache back by an inch. The last bars of daylight streamed through the window making shadows on the table. Dr. Rosen said sometimes they saw deer in their wooded backyard. My body ached with fullness. I’d taken in so much; I was ready to go home.

  On the way back to Chicago from the suburbs, I reclined the seat and cranked up the a/c, aiming the vents at my face. I cried all twenty-one miles back to the city. John held my hand.

  “Is this happening?” I cried. John held my hand tighter.

  “Where did you come from?” I cried some more.

  Mile after mile, I cried. Feeling pouring out of me. “I can’t believe any of this is happening. How did I get here?”

  John held my hand as the city skyline sparkled beyond the windshield.

  “I feel afraid,” I said as we pulled up to my place.

  “Of what?” John asked.

  “You.” He raised his eyebrows and smiled. “We’re stuck with each other now. I feel a strange loneliness. I’m not sure where I am.” John squeezed my hand as if he understood.

  I thought once you got engaged, you were filled with certainty and bliss about the person you were marrying and the life you were building. I thought that finding the man I would marry would cure my deep loneliness. But I didn’t feel pure bliss. I felt whispers of fear and loneliness. I
was still me.

  “All these years, I’ve been the single-est person everywhere I went—group, law school, Texas friends, family. Christie—unattached, single, no-plus-one Christie. I hated that role, but now that it’s no longer mine, I feel like I’m free falling. Like I’m losing something. It feels like I’m not special anymore, now that I’m not crying in all corners of Chicago about my shitty love life and unpopulated weekends. Now I’m just like everybody else. Does that make any sense?” Where did the apples go? The worms? The purple towel that I’d ripped the threads out of? Who was I now and where did the old me go?

  John brushed my cheek. “You still cry more than most people. That probably won’t ever change.”

  40

  Barack Obama was hours from winning the title of Forty-Fourth President of the United States. All of Chicago went bonkers—jubilant people were streaming from their offices downtown to Grant Park, waiting for Obama to take the podium as the president-elect. Raj popped his head into my office around four and offered me an extra ticket to the rally. I turned him down, even though John and I campaigned for Obama in Wisconsin and were dizzy with joy at his victory. Physically, I didn’t feel like myself and hadn’t for a few days. That afternoon, I’d had to mute a conference call because I was about to go off on an opposing attorney who insisted our client was liable for fraud. I’d punched my desk so hard that my stapler clattered to the edge. An hour after the call I was so walloped by fatigue that I put my head down on my desk and slept for twenty minutes. I suspected flu and was convinced if I went down to Grant Park in the cold November air, I’d end up hospitalized with mono.

  That night, John and I ordered takeout and waited for Obama’s speech. The TV cameras panned to the crowd assembled five miles from our house, and I regretted not being there. John saw friends he knew from law school standing five feet from Oprah. “That could be us!” What was wrong with me? It was the most historic night of my lifetime, and I’d opted to sit on the couch, braless, shoveling a Cobb salad in my mouth with my feet propped up on two Crate & Barrel boxes—early wedding presents from John’s aunt.