Everybody else said no. My college roommate Kat was blunt, sassy, and secure. In college, she told a handsy Phi Delt to “fuck off” when he asked her for a blow job. There was no fist of anxiety in her stomach telling her she had to give him head. At age five, my headstrong brother had an hour-long stand-off with my parents when they insisted he eat a bite of tuna sandwich. He won the tuna showdown while I forced myself to eat every awful, mayonnaise-filled bite, crust and all. Carlos pushed back on Dr. Rosen insisting he was never going to bring in his guitar and sing for the group.
Meanwhile, I considered quitting group so I wouldn’t have to look at Dr. Rosen and say, “Nope. I can’t bookend my masturbation with Patrice.”
I cupped water into my hands and let it drain through my fingers. I’d always hated baths. What’s so relaxing about submerging in water when there’s nothing to stare at except a tiled wall or parts of my body beneath the suds? I hated looking at my body. I always ended up picking it apart—unshaven legs, unpedicured toes, unperky breasts, untoned stomach, and unsmooth thighs. All that scrutiny and shame drowned whatever pleasure I was supposed to be deriving from taking a bath, the pastime that was supposedly beloved by all womankind.
I still saw those things—the chipped red polish, the hairy legs, the lumpy flesh. And I still felt the heat of shame prickling my skin. But alongside it, a spark of something lighter and cooler chased the tail of the shame, and I had the barest sliver of a notion that I could have a different relationship with and to my body and then maybe with other people.
My fingertips pruned as the water cooled to room temperature. A shiver ran down my neck as I sat up. I wrapped myself in a pink-and-white striped beach towel and sat on the edge of the bathtub.
I dialed Patrice’s cell. “I did it. Good night.”
I called Rory to report my food.
I called Marty to collect my affirmation. “You’ve got what it takes, kiddo,” he said in Groucho Marx accent.
I laughed. My neck and shoulder muscles were warm and loose from the bath. I had a woozy, half-asleep feeling. “I love you,” I said, cupping the phone with my still-pruned fingers. The words just slipped out.
“Of course you do, sweetie. I love you too. Isn’t this fun?” I smiled. Fun was not quite the word I would have used for the warm expansive feeling spreading across my chest, but I couldn’t think of better one.
In bed, I had a vision: My group members’ hands tucked under me like in the childhood game Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board. They worked together to invoke whatever spirits would help lift me up, up, up. I could feel Dr. Rosen’s hands cradling my head, Carlos and the Colonel at my shoulders, Patrice and Rory on each hip, and Marty at my feet. I did love them. For their presence, their effort, and their strong hands on my body. They were etching themselves into my life.
It thrilled me, made me want to bawl, and it scared me to death.
10
Fat tears rolled down Marty’s face one spring Tuesday. There was a silver tin in his lap, the size and shape of a small drum or a container of Williams-Sonoma Christmas cookies. He said he was sick of all the death. He didn’t want it anymore.
This was good work for Marty. He appeared congenial and functional on the outside, but we all knew about his stash of cyanide. Dr. Rosen mentioned it almost every session and urged him to bring it to group.
“It looks like you’re ready to let that go,” Dr. Rosen said, gesturing at the tin.
“What’s in there?” the Colonel asked.
Marty held the tin up to his heart. “The remains of a child.”
I dug my heel into the carpet and scooted my chair back. Babies were supposed to be fat-cheeked and loud—cooing, squalling, crying. They weren’t supposed to sealed up in a tin can.
Marty explained that the baby, who died when he was less than a month old, had been the son of one of his first patients in his psychiatry practice. The patient had asked Marty to keep the remains years ago while he worked through his grief, but then the patient died. Now Marty was asking Dr. Rosen what to do with this memento mori.
Dr. Rosen loved to stir up everyone’s feelings around death. If you made a pie chart of group topics, the two biggest pieces were sex and death. And if there was a trauma connected to a death experience, then Dr. Rosen would nudge you about it on at least a bimonthly basis. Rory had to talk about the Holocaust every other time she told a story, even if the decimation of European Jews in the 1940s had seemingly nothing to do with the late fees on her Citibank card. When Patrice struggled with a complex issue at work, Dr. Rosen pivoted right to her brother’s suicide. Naturally, he nudged me to discuss the accident in Hawaii regularly. Usually, I backed away and reminded him to focus on my sex life, not my great misfortune of witnessing a death on a trip to the beach when I was thirteen.
Marty handed the tin to Dr. Rosen, who inspected it and said something in Hebrew. Dr. Rosen told Marty that if he was ready to let go of his preoccupation with death, he’d be able to embrace his life more fully, and he’d grow closer to his longtime partner, Janeen.
A somber silence fell over the group. A wave of feeling swelled in my chest—memory flashes from Hawaii—but I pushed it down; I was
