I speared a chunk of tomato and considered interesting topics I could raise with Marnie—the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh or whatever Colin Powell was up to. I felt the urge to impress her with my knowledge of current events and display some togetherness of my own. But I was curious about her therapy group. I feigned nonchalance as I asked what it was like.
“It’s all women. Mary’s going deaf, and Zenia’s about to lose her medical license because of alleged Medicare fraud. Emily’s father is a drug addict—he harasses her with hate mail from his one-bedroom apartment in Wichita.” Marnie lifted her arm and pointed at the soft, fleshy underside of her forearm. “Our new girl is a cutter. Always wears long sleeves. We don’t know her story yet, but for sure, it’s dark as hell.”
“Sounds intense.” Not what I’d pictured. “Are you allowed to tell me all this?”
She nodded. “The therapist’s theory is that keeping secrets is a toxic process, so we—the group members—can talk about whatever we want, wherever we want. The therapist is bound by doctor-patient confidentiality, but we’re not.”
No confidentiality? I sat back and shook my head. I twisted the napkin around my wrist under the table. No way could I do that. I once hinted to my high school social justice teacher Ms. Gray that my eating was screwed up. When Ms. Gray called my parents to suggest counseling, my mom was furious. I was polishing off a plate of biscuits and watching Oprah interview Will Smith when my mom stormed into the living room, madder than a one-winged hornet. “Why would you tell people your business? You must protect yourself!” My mom is a proper Southern woman raised in Baton Rouge during the 1950s. Telling other people your business was tacky and could have adverse social consequences. She was convinced I’d be ostracized if other people knew I had mental problems, and she wanted to protect me. When I started going to 12-step meetings in college, it took all the courage I had to trust that the other people would take the anonymity part of the program as seriously as I did.
“How does anyone get better?” Marnie was clearly doing better than I was. If we were a tampon commercial, I’d be the one scowling about odors and leakage; she’d be doing a jeté in white jeans on her heavy flow day.
She shrugged. “You could check it out.”
I’d had other therapy. In high school, there was a short stint with a woman who looked like Paula Dean and wore pastel pantsuits. My parents sent me to Paula D. after Ms. Gray called about my eating, but I was so busy obeying the command to protect myself that I never said anything about how I felt. Instead, we chitchatted about whether I should get a mall job over the summer. Express or Gap? Once, she sent me home with a five-hundred-question psychological test. Hope coursed through my fingers as I filled in each answer bubble; these questions would finally reveal why I couldn’t stop eating, why I felt like a misfit everywhere I went, and why none of the boys were interested in me when all the other girls were French-kissing and getting felt up.
Paula D. read the results in her perfectly modulated therapist voice: “ ‘Christie is perfectionistic and afraid of snakes. An ideal occupation for Christie would be watch repairperson or surgeon.’ ” She smiled and cocked her head. “Snakes are pretty scary, huh?”
It never occurred to me to show her my tears and panic. To open up, I needed a therapist who could hear the echoes of pain in my silences and see the shirttail of truth under my denials. Paula D. didn’t. After that session, I sat my parents down and told them that I’d graduated from therapy. All better now. My parents beamed with pride, and my mom shared her life philosophy: “You just make up your mind to be happy. Focus on the positive; don’t put any energy into negative thoughts.” I nodded. Great idea. On the way down the hall to my bedroom, I stopped in the bathroom and threw up my dinner, a habit I developed after reading a book about a gymnast who threw up her food. I loved the feeling of emptying myself of food and the rush of adrenaline from having a secret. At age sixteen, I thought bulimia was a genius way to control my ruthless appetite, which led me to binge on crackers, bread, and pasta. Not until I got into recovery did I understand that my bulimia was a way to control the unending swells of anxiety, loneliness, anger, and grief that I had no idea how to release.
Marnie dragged another fry through the smear of ketchup. “Dr. Rosen would see you—”
“Rosen? Jonathan Rosen?”
I definitely couldn’t call Dr. Rosen. Blake saw Dr. Rosen. Blake was a guy I’d met at a party the summer before law school. He took a seat next to me and said, “What kind of eating disorder do you have?” He pointed at the carrot sticks on my plate and said, “Don’t look at me like that. I’ve dated an anorexic and two bulimics who wished they were anorexic. I know your type.” He was in AA, between jobs, and offered to take me sailing. We rode bikes to the lakefront to watch Fourth of July fireworks. We lay on the deck of his boat, shoulder to shoulder, staring at the Chicago skyline and talking about recovery. We sampled the vegan food at Chicago Diner and went to the movies on Saturday afternoons before his AA meeting. When I asked if he was my boyfriend, he didn’t answer. Sometimes, he’d disappear for a few days to listen to Johnny Cash albums in his darkened apartment. Even if I could see the same therapist as Marnie, I could not see the same therapist as my ex-whatever-Blake-was. What, was I going to call up this
