“He’s gone,” I cried to Patrice outside the Hermitage. She wrapped her arm around my shoulders and told me to enjoy the view: a street performer with a boom box coaxing a chained black bear to dance to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
“I can’t. My stomach hurts.” I bent low to scratch at a cluster of bites on my ankle. “I hate Russia, its dumb domes, its mosquitoes, its dancing bears.” In Russia, I was cold, nauseated, and so far away. Lonely and forgotten. I scratched until my ankles bled. My blood and skin mingled under my fingernails. Patrice rubbed my back in a circle and offered me a piece of dark chocolate. I closed my eyes and missed group, where I could cry, gnash, and let all the feeling pour of me.
“I had some time to think while you were in Russia.” Alex and I were walking down Dearborn after a 5K race for the Legal Aid Society. My body was spinning in space, somewhere between Russia and Chicago, throbbing through the jet lag that made me feel drunk.
“The thing is, I know you’re not the one.” He marched down Dearborn without breaking his stride or looking at me.
No, no, no. I breathed through my nose to smooth out my voice. “What are you talking about?”
“I just know. You’re not the person I’m supposed to be with.”
My arms shook in the humid August air. I tasted the postrace banana I’d swallowed four blocks back. Sweat on my neck turned icy cold.
In the lobby he stopped to check his mail, while I shivered like a stray cat by the elevators. Did he really need to get his Visa bill and the grocery store circular at this moment?
When the elevator opened, I shuffled in, but he stepped back to wait for the next one.
I brought the shards of all the dishes I broke that night to my Monday-morning group and dumped them in the center of the circle. Pieces of a ceramic Thanksgiving platter I bought at Walgreens, the IKEA glasses, the pale blue fruit bowl from the Tag outlet that I bought with Carlos. I’d shoveled them into a double-ply Macy’s shopping bag, which I hooked on my arm as I walked the mile from my apartment to group. The jagged edge of a dinner plate pierced the bag and tore the skin on my calf as I crossed Chicago Avenue. A stream of blood ran down my leg and into my black ballet flats.
“He’s gone,” I said to this group that brought Alex into my life. Now I needed them to catch me because I was really falling. “I’m not ‘the one.’ ” Tears fell, soft and incessant. Patrice got out of her chair and pulled me to my feet. She wrapped her arms around me. “I’m so sorry.”
Dr. Rosen leaned toward me as if he was telling me a secret. “Mamaleh, he just got scared when you left for Russia.”
No, he was gone for good. That bomb I’d once imagined beneath his smooth skin and beautiful ribs had detonated. I was in pieces.
“Aren’t y’all disappointed in me? Y’all thought Alex was my person.” I looked at the faces around the circle. Max’s concerned stare. Lorne’s and Brad’s attentive gazes. Grandma Maggie, who was always flashing me her wedding ring and calling me “kiddo,” now shaking her head with pity. Patrice, who was yet again spending her group time consoling me. And of course Dr. Rosen, who still believed in his little Mamaleh, even though she’d broken all of her dishes (again) and carved up her leg on the walk to group.
“We don’t know that he’s not.”
Dr. Rosen, eternal optimist or raving lunatic?
As I walked out of group after the prayer and the hugs, Lorne, Brad, and Max invited me to breakfast with them. “But you can’t bring that insane bag of broken dishes,” Max said, so I left them in the group room. I ate eggs while they drank coffee. We talked shit about Dr. Rosen’s wardrobe, speculated about his marriage to the stylish Mrs. Rosen, who we sometimes saw walking down the hall after our Thursday group. When I stared off into the middle distance, thinking about Alex, his chili, and his brass bed, Lorne snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Come back, Christie! Eat your eggs. Tell us what you think of Dr. Rosen’s wife!”
At ten o’clock, I rose from the table. “I have a conference call in thirty minutes,” I said, grabbing a napkin in case I cried on the walk to work. All three of them stood up to hug me. Lorne reminded me that Alex was “cheesy as hell.” Max told me to order new dishes for express delivery. Brad, who’d paid for my eggs, offered to walk me to my office across the Loop. He carried my work bag all six blocks and assured me at every stoplight that I would find love again. He stayed by my side even when I openly wept on LaSalle Street.
At work, there were no group members to distract or comfort me, so I cried without bothering to shut my door. My coworker Raj stopped by several times to see if I was still blubbering. If I was, he shut the door and speculated about the partners’ sex lives until I let a smile break through. I had a
