The night I committed to Skadden, I stretched out on my bed and took stock of my life. A new job. A new home. In the event of my death, Clare could alert the authorities. Or the doorman. I wouldn’t die alone.
14
Carlos from group was my first male best friend. He would call me on the way to the gym, ranting that his fiancé, Jared, spent too much on Italian shoes or antique linens. He whisked me to restaurants in his tiny silver BMW and introduced me to foods I’d never had (pad thai, sturgeon) or heard of (cassoulet, shawarma). Without Carlos, I never would have tasted spanakopita or stepped foot in Barneys. As I headed into my second year of group, my relationship with Carlos was one of the brightest features of my steadily brightening life. When I bragged in group that Carlos and I had never had any conflict, Dr. Rosen piped up. “Pray for a fight.”
“Why?”
“Because you want a truly intimate relationship.”
“That means fighting?”
“If you aren’t willing to fight, how can you can be intimate?”
Did wrestling with my brother at 6644 Thackeray over the remote control count? I searched my memory for a good old-fashioned throwdown—a slammed door, a fist curled, a throat raw from bellowing. I found nothing. In high school, my friend Denise snuck out of my house so she could have sex with her senior boyfriend at Caruth Park. I didn’t get mad at her for potentially getting me in trouble by fleeing out my window. I swallowed my anger and let her back in when she tapped on the sill. Freshman year of college, my friend Anne invited the guy I was dating over to watch a movie with her while I was at the library. I never said a word. Instead, I moved out two months later. And when my friend Tyra confronted me for leaving her theater performance before her final curtain call, I felt hot plumes of anger shoot up from my stomach to my mouth. She ignored that I brought her flowers, stayed until she’d delivered all of her lines, and left because I had the stomach flu. Part of me wanted to get up in her wounded face and say, real vicious-like, “Could you think about someone else for one hot second?” Instead, I said, “I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll be at the next one.”
When it came to anger, I swallowed, pretended, ignored, withdrew. I knew nothing about fighting.
“I think you should join the Monday men’s group,” Dr. Rosen said to Carlos one Tuesday morning about thirteen months into my treatment. “It will help you prepare for your marriage.”
I asked if I should join a second group too and Dr. Rosen shook his head and said I wasn’t ready. Shame pinned me to my chair, and I remained silent for the rest of group. I didn’t know whether I wanted to join a second group, but that wasn’t the point. Dr. Rosen offered something to Carlos that he didn’t offer me. For the rest of the session, noxious thoughts scrolled through my mind:
He likes Carlos more than me.
I’m not doing this right.
I suck at therapy.
I left group in a wordless, huffy silence. I avoided Carlos’s calls—first, because I was jealous that he was the favored son, and then because I was ashamed of my petulance. We didn’t speak until Sunday night, when I confessed my jealousy. “Don’t be jealous of a second group, girl,” he said. “It’s just going to cost more money and create more hassle.”
That night, I left Dr. Rosen a message asking him to call me before group so I could get his feedback on my intense reaction to Carlos’s invitation to join a second group. Dr. Rosen often returned my calls between sessions. I assumed I’d hear from him.
All day Monday, I carried my phone turned up in my palm like a heart transplant patient waiting for news about a donor. By sundown, I lost hope. I called Marnie while browning a chicken breast on the fancy stove-top range in Clare’s condo. She still saw Dr. Rosen, so I thought she’d understand how I was feeling
Before I could tell her anything, her other line beeped. “Hey, that’s Dr. Rosen. Let me call you back.”
Click. Marnie was gone.
I grabbed the skillet handle and the hot cast iron seared my fingers. “Dammit!” I cradled my burned fingers and hopped in pain, still cursing under my breath. I sat down in the middle of the kitchen and rocked back and forth. The chicken and oil hissed in the pan.
Five minutes later, Marnie called back. I took a deep breath. Maybe Dr. Rosen had called her back because she’d recently gotten pregnant after a miscarriage—maybe things weren’t going well. Maybe she was cramping or had gotten bad news at the doctor.
“Everything okay?” I asked, genuinely concerned.
“It’s our stupid contractor. He put in the wrong door—we ordered oak, not mahogany. Dr. Rosen coached me on how to talk to him tomorrow.”
The air whooshed out of my lungs, and I doubled over. I pressed freezer-burned ice into my burned hand while glowing, newly pregnant Marnie discussed how to boss around laborers from a custom-upholstered settee in her four-story house.
Why would Dr. Rosen help her and not me?
As I dialed his number, my whole body shook. At the beep: “I can’t believe you! You FUCKING ASSHOLE. You’ve been teaching me to ask for help. To reach out. To ‘LET YOU AND THE GROUP IN.’ But you don’t reach back? Fuck you!” On and on, I yelled at Dr. Rosen’s voice mail as my hand throbbed.
His voice mail beeped. I’d talked until the end of the message and then smashed the
