Dr. Rosen became a broken record. “Trust it, Mamaleh. Trust.”
As the weeks went on, traces of anxiety remained, but my constipation eased, my joy soared. Both groups cheered my weekly check-ins.
“Stability suits you,” Dr. Rosen said.
“I hope you’re giving us credit for this relationship,” Max said. “In those other groups, you sucked dirty dick and got dumped for being a shiksa. You’re welcome.”
Lorne gave me a thumbs-up, and Brad calculated mine and Alex’s combined net worth given our high-paying legal jobs. Grandma Maggie patted my hand, whispering, “I knew it.”
I beamed and floated. On the July morning that marked my six-month anniversary in the Monday/Thursday group, I announced I was staying. Forever.
“Oh, goody,” Max said in mock annoyance.
“You can stay,” Lorne said, “but I’m not dressing up for your wedding. If I can’t come in jeans, I’m not coming.” He winked from across the circle.
I beamed at them all, my advanced group members. Alex and I had a solid, healthy, sexual relationship, and I gave them most of the credit for that.
“Mom,” I said during a Sunday-afternoon check-in call. “I’ve met someone. He’s great. Really great. We ran a 10K together this weekend.” I danced around my apartment as I told her the news. I’d stepped into the new reality of Christie as a woman who enjoyed her highly hygienic, functional, attentive boyfriend. Christie as a woman worth spending time with and paying attention to. I could leave my dysfunctional past where it belonged: behind me.
“How wonderful, honey. You sound so happy.”
“Come up for some chili,” Alex said one night. He browned ground beef and emptied canned tomatoes into a small Dutch oven. The smell of cumin wafted through the air. I wrapped my arms around him from behind. He kept stirring.
“Do you know what the secret ingredient is?” he asked. I shook my head.
“You really don’t know?” His shoulders slumped, and his face registered confusion bordering on hurt.
Had I forgotten an inside joke about chili? Did Harry Potter love chili? I didn’t want to let him down, but the only thing coming to mind was a tasteless fart joke.
“Tell me.”
“Love,” he said. “The secret ingredient is love.”
I ate two bowls.
“Oh my God,” Lorne said when I bragged in group about the love in Alex’s chili. “He’s so cheesy.”
I swiveled my chair toward Lorne and kicked the air between us. “Don’t ruin it! It was so sweet.”
“Cheesy.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“Of Alex’s stupid chili?”
“You had to buy Renee a giant ring from Cartier, and all Alex had to do was serve me chili.”
“Can you hear yourself?”
One Sunday, Alex and I woke up at five, before the sun glinted across the lake, to ride thirty miles up and down Lake Shore Drive. We wore bike shorts and pounded Gatorade. When we slipped off our bikes for a late breakfast of eggs and English muffins, our backs were stiff, and our gaits were unsteady.
“Come upstairs,” he said.
We kissed on his brass bed, our tired bodies heavy from the early morning and the hours of pedaling. He pulled off my shorts. The noonday sun streamed brazenly across his clean white sheets. His skin tasted like salt, and I wanted to gulp. He filled me up. I came and came again.
This sweet boy-man who cried through Les Mis. Who showed me how brilliant the sunrise over Lake Michigan could be from a bicycle. Who filled his food with love and offered it to me. This man-boy with no sharp edges that could hurt me. My heart and body leaned into him. In my mind, Alex and my new group formed a double helix that wove around my grooved heart.
“This guy is ‘The One,’ ” Marnie said after she met me and Alex one night for sushi. Clare said the same thing. So did Patrice and Dr. Rosen.
“I really like him,” I told my groups and my friends. I said it over and over; I shined my teeth with it. I slept deeply.
In mid-July we attended the wedding of my friend Kathryn, the Rosen-patient who rented me her apartment in Alex’s building. Kathryn married Jacob, a man she’d met in a Rosen-group. Across the room at table four, Dr. Rosen and his wife ate their steak and smiled as patients streamed by to say a shy hello. By the chocolate fountain, I introduced Alex to Dr. Rosen. As they shook hands, I watched Dr. Rosen’s face fill with warmth and welcome. A swell of wholeness flooded my chest. I’d never been so full. Christie, they said. I heard love and claimed it as mine. An insistent joy spun inside me like cotton candy.
That night, in my darkened bedroom, Alex slipped my white cotton nightgown over my head. It felt like falling and being caught over and over. He leaned back.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said.
“I’m so happy,” he said.
“I love you,” I said, holding his beautiful head in my hands.
I sat tall in my Monday-morning group, letting the summer sun bathe my arms from the western window. I wore the million-watt smile. “I told him I loved him.”
“Did he say it back?” Lorne asked.
“Not in so many words.” Brad and Max shared a quick look across the circle. Grandma Maggie gazed down at her hands. I chased away the fleeting worry by sinking into my body. I remembered our skin against skin. Of course that was love.
In late July, I traveled to St. Petersburg
