“What do you want?” he asked.
“Stop being nice to me!”
“I won’t stop loving you and neither will this group.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. I hated all of them for what they had: in-laws they loathed, forgetful spouses, drug-addicted stepkids. Stuffing recipes. Family. Places to be, people to be with. If I opened my eyes, I would see their faces as I admitted I had nowhere to go. I collapsed onto my legs, grabbed my hair with my fists, and pulled. Hard. The sharp, physical pain brought relief. My fists were full of hair I’d pulled out of my head.
I wanted therapy to be linear. I wanted to point to measurable improvements with every year I put in. By this point, after five years and two months, I should be immune from the fury that made me pull hair out of my head with my own fists.
Patrice put her hand on my back. “Please don’t hurt yourself. Come to my house.”
“I don’t want pity! I want my own! I want my own family! I thought you would help me, Dr. Rosen!” The windows vibrated with my screams. I was the sobbing woman with fists full of hair in group therapy again. Would I ever be anything else?
“Can you stay with the hurt?” Dr. Rosen asked.
“No!” There were zero seconds left in the session. My head pounded.
“Stay with the hurt.”
I stood up and grabbed a ceramic flowerpot from the windowsill. I hoisted it over my head with both hands and brought it down on my head—right where my forehead met my hairline. White-hot silence stunned me before the rush of pain to my head. I let the pot slip through my hands. The dirt, dotted with tiny white balls, rained on the carpet along with a hunk of eucalyptus. Dr. Rosen grabbed my wrists and guided me back to my chair. I didn’t struggle. I fingered the welt already forming on my head. The room fell silent, except for my ragged breathing. “Say it, Dr. Rosen: ‘We’ll stop there for today.’ It’s over.”
It was two minutes after nine. Nobody moved. Without looking up, I asked, “What do I do?” I was asking all of them. We weren’t meeting again for a week. A sob lodged in my chest broke through. “I thought I was getting better.”
“Don’t hurt yourself anymore,” Patrice said. “Please.”
“Christie—” Max hesitated. “Keeping Brandon’s secrets isn’t working.”
I nodded and opened my palms, hoping that the gesture might save me from myself. Dr. Rosen suggested, as usual, that I be around other people as much as possible over the holiday weekend. Go to meetings. Sleep on Lorne and Renee’s couch. Like a preschooler, I should make playdates with people from group or recovery meetings.
At five after nine, Dr. Rosen took a deep breath and clasped his hands together. We all stood up for the regular closing. I held out my right hand, now streaked with my own blood, to Patrice. Dr. Rosen grasped the other. Tears trickled down my cheeks, and my head thrummed with my pulse. After we let go, everyone moved in slow motion. I bent to pick up my bag, keeping my back to the group. I was embarrassed about my tantrum, the bloody wound on my head, my nonlinear movement in therapy.
“Can you all stick around for a few minutes?” Dr. Rosen said. Max, Brad, Patrice, Maggie, and Lorne stood silently in front of their chairs. “I want to get Christie some medicine for that cut.” Dr. Rosen pulled a small first-aid kit out of his file cabinet. He squeezed some ointment onto his finger and rubbed it on my forehead. He patted my head tenderly. “You’re going to be okay.” He repeated it twice. “It’s fortunate you have a very hard head.”
I slid open the curtains to let the bright December sun fill the room. The Pacific Ocean rolled toward the shore like a frothy tongue. The sand shimmered in the midmorning light, and the Ferris wheel on the dock sparkled against a perfectly cloudless sky.
It was Christmas Day, and Brandon and I were in Santa Monica.
After the flowerpot incident, I summoned the courage to be more direct. As soon as he returned from his Thanksgiving trip, I told Brandon straight up: I’d like us to be together for the next holiday. It wasn’t a test or a demand—it was simply what I needed. He suggested we go to LA for a few days. “I know a great hotel on the beach,” he said. He never asked about the bruise on my forehead.
Dr. Rosen appeared agnostic about my relationship with Brandon—he never hinted that I should let go of the secrets—but all of my group mates were skeptical. They would speculate among themselves during sessions. About the secret, whether he was still flipping me during sex, how long we would last. Is she even enjoying this relationship?
On vacation, Brandon and I were loose and loving. He joked more and hummed while he shaved. We had more sex and sang along to songs on the radio and ate dishes with fresh avocado. We saw The Pursuit of Happyness, the movie where Will Smith played a destitute salesman who ends up with an unpaid internship at a prestigious brokerage firm and eventually becomes a wealthy businessman. Brandon held my hand the whole time. The movie proved that seemingly impossible transformations could happen. Under the bright California sky, the ocean as my witness, I let happiness seep in.
“I’m meeting my mom for brunch at the Peninsula on Sunday.” Brandon paced around my living room one January night as I scrolled through work e-mails on my BlackBerry. “Do you want to join us?”
My head jerked up. I dropped my BlackBerry on the counter. Brunch. The Peninsula. His mother. “Yes. Yes, I do want to brunch with you and your mother at the Peninsula.”
It was the first week of January, and everything in Chicago was still and frozen:
