“I cannot believe that John puts up with you,” Lorne said, winking at me. “Good job finding a man who doesn’t have to flip you every night.”
Dr. Rosen had oohed and aahed over my ring and offered a genuine mazel tov that landed on my heart like a blessing. I could tolerate this mazel tov in a way I could not take in the mazel tov he offered for my class rank seven years earlier during my first appointment. Now I knew that Dr. Rosen loved me and that I deserved his praise and whatever “mazel” was. But I longed for more. An explicit blessing. Not permission, but consecration. I looked at him and said, “I want something more from you.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Not exactly sure.”
“Talk about it in your groups and see if you can get clarity.”
Dr. Rosen answered the door to his tidy white town home in jeans and brown sandals that exposed his toes. Were you supposed to see your therapist’s bare feet? I thought not, so I directed my attention to his bright kitchen. But then I felt my head practically crack open with pain—a ferocious stress headache from having dinner with my fiancé at my therapist’s house. I’d felt vaguely nauseated as John drove us out to Dr. Rosen’s quiet suburban neighborhood, but now all I wanted was a cold compress and extra-strength Motrin. I squeezed John’s hand and tried to steady my nerves. It’s perfectly natural to have dinner at your therapist’s house. I handed Dr. Rosen’s wife a bouquet of light pink peonies that she smelled and said were her favorite.
“Can I use your bathroom?” I asked, not because I had to go, but because I wasn’t ready to make small talk over apps with the man I planned to marry and the man who’d witnessed multiple temper tantrums and pinworm-inspired monologues. I sat on the toilet and massaged my temples, willing the pain around my skull to dissolve. I counted the number of toilet paper squares I used (six) and the pumps of liquid soap (three). The temptation to swing open the medicine cabinet made my fingers itch, but the prospect of confessing my snooping next week in group held me back.
As I cruised through the living room on the way back to the kitchen, I wanted to look at the books on the shelves, the pictures in frames, the tchotchkes on the coffee table, but I was too scared. You’re not supposed to surveil your therapist’s personal possessions. Plus, what if I saw embarrassing things, like Nicholas Sparks novels or pictures of Dr. Rosen and his wife posed with Goofy on a Disney cruise?
Mercifully, his wife invited us to sit down. She spoke with a thick Russian accent and smiled warmly. Between John’s and my plates was a wrapped present. “Open it,” Dr. Rosen said, smiling. John pulled off the paper and held up a white tile with colorful painted flowers and script that read Shalom Y’all. They’d found it on their recent trip to Israel and loved that it celebrated both of our heritages: Texan and Jewish. I couldn’t even summon words—all I could do was stare at the script, absorbing the fact that when Dr. Rosen traveled across the globe, he still continued to hold me in his mind. Me and John.
Dr. Rosen lit two candles and said a prayer in Hebrew. Then, as we’d discussed in group, he put his hands on my head and recited the Hebrew blessing over a child. The press of his hand on my head stopped the pulse from my headache, but when he moved on to John, the pain roared back. As Dr. Rosen said the prayer over John’s head, tears sprung to John’s eyes, making me tear up as well.
Dr. Rosen’s wife apologized that parsnips were not in season. I looked at Dr. Rosen, who smiled at me. A week before, Dr. Rosen had asked me in group what my favorite foods were and I answered by starting to cry. Foods were coming to mind, but the words were stuck as pictures in my head.
I remembered when I first got into recovery for bulimia and latched on to dozens of rules so I wouldn’t fall back into bingeing and purging. I didn’t eat sugar, flour, wheat, corn, bananas, honey, or potatoes. I didn’t eat between meals or after nine at night. I never went back for seconds of anything and never ate standing up. Shortly after I got into recovery, my parents and I drove from Dallas to Baton Rouge for my brother’s college graduation, and my dad stopped for lunch at Lea’s Lunchroom in Lecompte, Louisiana—my parents’ favorite pie shop. The only thing on the menu was honey-cured ham sandwiches and four kinds of pie. I asked the waitress if they could take the shredded iceberg lettuce from the ham sandwiches and make me a salad. Not possible, she said. Starving, I ordered two ham sandwiches, ate the lettuce with salt and pepper, leaving the ham and bread behind. My plate looked like a crime scene. I watched as my parents ate their ham sandwiches and split two pieces of pie, one chocolate and one lemon.
