I took a ragged breath. “What’re you thinking?” My heart lifted at the thought of a shortcut through the heartsickness.
“We can discuss it tomorrow.” What was he planning? Individual sessions? Match.com for sexually anorexic women?
“Give me a hint.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
24
I showed up in the waiting room ten minutes early, my face tight and splotchy from crying. I slumped into a chair across from the particle board bookshelf and closed my eyes. When someone walked through the waiting room door, I opened one eye, expecting to see Carlos or Patrice, but it was a tall man in a gray business suit holding a brown leather briefcase. Total lawyer or finance type. Ten years or so older than me.
I’d forgotten that Dr. Rosen had announced we were getting a new member.
“I’m Reed,” he said, sticking out his hand like he was at a cocktail party. I didn’t stand up, but I offered my hand and felt something flicker in the air between us when our palms met. His salt-and-pepper hair was short on the sides and longer on the top, and his shoes were polished to such a high shine that I could see my sad, puffy face in them. Of course, I noted the gold band on his left hand and a dimple on his left cheek when he smiled. Seconds later, Dr. Rosen opened the door, and we filed into the group room. Carlos and Patrice arrived before we sat down.
“What’s that?” Reed pointed to a purple terry-cloth hand towel in my lap. I’d been carrying it around with me since the Intern dropped me on the curb.
“This is my mourning rag. I just got dumped.” I grabbed a thread between the fingernails of my index finger and thumb and yanked. I pulled another and then another. Soon individual purple threads crisscrossed my lap. A few drifted to the floor. As I yanked, hot tears rolled down my cheeks. Having something to do with my hands soothed me, and yanking threads out of the cloth helped me parcel out my anger in microdoses. Patrice scooted the box of tissues on the floor over to my chair. I kicked them away. “I don’t do tissues.”
Patrice ignored my outburst, rubbed my arm, and reminded me that the Intern was not marriage material.
Carlos took the lead on the interrogation of Reed and elicited the pertinent information: hotshot investment banker, married, twin girls, sober a few years, and then the jackpot:
“Why are you really here?” Carlos asked.
Reed’s face reddened, and he looked at Dr. Rosen, who nodded encouragingly, like tell them.
“Out with it,” Carlos said. When Reed hung his head, Carlos caught my eye and mouthed he’s so hot. I nodded and yanked out another purple thread.
“I’m struggling in my marriage.” Ah, intimacy issues.
“Go on.” Carlos raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, brother.” Patrice sighed. She sensed what was coming—a tale of unfaithfulness, a long-suffering wife, a mistress who made him feel vital. Dr. Rosen’s face wore his widest grin.
“I was at cocktail party for one of our funds a few weeks ago. There was a woman—” Reed looked around the room, unsure. Could he trust us? “She and I went back to her office, and she gave—”
“Oh my God, she sucked your cock!” Carlos clapped his hands.
Patrice asked if he’d told his wife. He hadn’t; he hoped to save his marriage. Patrice and Rory praised Reed for his bravery in telling us.
I spread my towel out on my lap. I’d plucked a four-inch bald spot in the middle of it. I ran my hand over the sheared fabric. What would it be like to run my hand over Reed’s lapel? His leg? This was the longest I’d gone without thinking about the Intern in a week. I felt something like hope bore its way into my rubble heap of a heart. I wished group was longer than ninety minutes.
Before group closed, I gathered my purple threads and lobbed a burning question. “Do y’all think I’ll ever have sex again?” Reed’s mouth curled into a half smile.
“If you want to,” Dr. Rosen said.
“I do. Really soon.” My body hurt from missing the Intern and the pleasure he offered.
“You’re open to suggestions?”
“I’ll do anything.” Our fidelity-challenged, hot new group member had made me forget that Dr. Rosen was going to suggest something to me. “What’d you have in mind?” I dropped the towel into my lap and opened my palms.
“I suggest you join the Monday/Thursday group.”
I sucked in a sharp breath and grabbed the towel with both fists.
“You cannot be serious. Another group? Twice a week?” Did he know I had a full-time job? Did he know that lawyers have to bill forty hours a week? I shook my head and pursed my lips. I picked up the towel and yanked hard at a thread on the border of the bald spot.
“This group is different. It’s the same members twice a week, which creates additional intensity. Every member is a long-term patient—”
“I need to come here four times a week to get into a real relationship? How fucked up am I?”
“You’re very fucked up.” Dr. Rosen smiled.
“Nice sales pitch.”
Dr. Rosen suggested I stay in the Tuesday-morning group, but drop the afternoon one to make room for this Monday/Thursday group. Where was this offer a year ago when I would have rather shaved my head than return to the group where Nan and Marnie almost came to blows? Now I felt a pang of sadness. Those women carried me through my Jeremy days and all through my fling with the Intern. Nan had held me that day I tried to pull my hair out. Zenia had taught me about fan fiction and long-distance lesbian sex. Was I ready to leave them behind?
“I’ll think about it.”
When we stood up for the closing, I let my sheared towel and all the plucked threads fall to the floor.
Here I was again, debating whether to join
