As I mulled over the possibility of joining a second group, I surveyed the developments in my love life since starting the first. I’d been on one official date since the debacle with fifty-minute Sam and the fiasco with Andrew of the charred chicken breasts. Two weeks after I had sex with Andrew, I met Greg at a house party, and he asked for my number. He’d just gotten out of a yearlong medically induced coma. On the way out of a sushi restaurant on our first date, he forgot where he lived. I may not have been ready for a relationship, but he definitely wasn’t.
Then there was Xavier, my ex-boyfriend from college—one of the decent guys I dumped because his steady loyalty nauseated me. I hooked up with him while visiting my family in Texas. We met in a darkened parking lot in a sketchy neighborhood near the DFW airport. When we started making out, I could see the faint outline of stars and galaxies. His lips on mine woke me up. His hand on my thigh was an unlocking, and I wanted to go further, all the way right there under the neon “Checks Cashed” sign. Of course, I’d never felt this gut longing for him when we were together—I avoided sex with complaints about headaches and early morning shifts at my mall job.
As I hitched up my skirt, Xavier pulled away.
“Connie’s flight is about to land,” he said. I stared at him without blinking. “I know what you’re thinking. But I’m not hooking up with you because I’m freaking out about getting serious with Connie.”
My heart sunk. The word fool flashed in my mind. When I returned to Chicago a few days later, my group pointed out that Xavier was unavailable, which is precisely why I was attracted to him.
Now Xavier was engaged. So was my college roommate Kat, two of my law school friends, and two of my cousins. Dr. Rosen’s new group felt like a rope I should probably grab.
“Okay, I’ll do a second group.”
“I suggest an all-women’s group.”
“Why?”
“It’s what’s next for you.” My eye twitched.
He suggested the Tuesday-noon group. One hundred eighty minutes of therapy in a single day. Two round-trip train rides to Washington and Wabash on Tuesdays.
“That’s insane.” Plus, the noon group was Marnie’s. I reminded him that we were friends. My eye twitched again.
“There are social risks for you.” I squeezed my eyes shut and thought of Bianca and that table of girls in fifth grade. Since fifth grade, I’d been terrified that any group of women would eventually turn on me, and I’d end up taking my meals on the crapper. But would enduring some friendship friction be better than dying alone, unloved and untouched, heart as slick as an obsidian stone?
I said yes.
Part 2
16
I was cocky that first Tuesday. I already knew the drill. I’d tallied the minutes I’d spent doing group therapy over the past thirteen months: 5,265. My heart had a few score marks—shallow knicks, but grooves all the same—from all the work I’d done so far.
I wasn’t planning to tell Clare, who wasn’t a consumer of mental-health services, that I’d signed up for two groups in one day, but I’d blurted it out one afternoon on the walk home from family-law class. She paused and then smiled like she was proud of me. “Be sure to take a snack on Tuesdays because that’s a long day, Tater.” She loaned me her favorite Anthropologie sweater to wear on my first double-decker therapy day.
Thirty minutes before my second group session of the day, I strutted out of criminal procedure class, ready to slide like an egg into batter. I was seven minutes early, but I jabbed the group room button anyway, even though its purpose was to alert Dr. Rosen that a group member who arrived late wanted to be let in. Guess who, Rosen? How you like me now? Two times in one day. I took a seat and was soon joined by Emily, who was famous in Rosen-world because her father, a pill addict who lived in Kansas, was enraged when Emily started therapy, so he harassed and threatened Dr. Rosen through the mail and over the phone. She and Marnie were close friends, and as we chitchatted before the session, I realized how weird it felt to intrude on “their” group. I dismissed the fear and greeted a tall woman wearing a straw hat. “I’m Mary,” she said, taking the seat next to me. I’d heard about Mary from Marnie, but couldn’t remember if she was the one Marnie loved or the one whose guts she professed to hate.
At noon, Dr. Rosen opened the door to the waiting room, offering each of us a smile. Before we were settled in our chairs in the group room, we were joined by an ample woman named Zenia, who had mulberry-colored hair and gigantic brown eyes stuck in the expression of surprise! She kicked us off with a story about her multi-orgasmic weekend, courtesy of an erotic online community for Dungeons & Dragons fans. She mentioned a girlfriend who lived in Croatia whom she’d never met in person.
I’d spent more than five thousand minutes in this room. Ninety of those minutes were three hours earlier. Everything looked the same: the swivel chairs, the bookshelf, the cheap mini-blinds, and the limp Easter lily hanging on for one more season. Yet it felt totally unfamiliar. Like a dream where you’re in your house, but it’s not really your house because the door is the wrong color and there are two stories instead of one. At the level of energy and particles, something was totally off.
Dr. Rosen looked like an unfriendly stranger: his lips were set in a stern
