In group, Dr. Rosen employed eating metaphors with me from day one. But this dinner at his house wasn’t a metaphor: it was Dr. Rosen and his wife feeding and blessing me and John. He wanted to feed me exactly what I wanted. My favorites. In group, Rory had told me to close my eyes and shout out my favorite foods. I squeezed my eyes shut and ground my fists into my eye sockets as I whispered, “Parsnips. Mango. Salmon. Potatoes.”
Dr. Rosen’s wife served a brilliant-orange carrot soup with a dollop of melting cream in the center. I swirled my spoon around, and the cream dissolved. It tasted rich and earthy. Dr. Rosen listed all the ingredients in each dish, even though I had let go of most of my food rules by then. The salmon was perfectly pink, and the potatoes had a touch of rosemary and salt. As they carried empty plates to the kitchen after we ate, Dr. Rosen and his wife spoke softly in another language that sounded half Russian and half Hebrew.
I don’t remember uttering a single word the whole night, though I must have spoken. I was all sensation: My throbbing headache. The flavors on my tongue. John’s hand on my leg. The feeling of wanting to cry for no reason other than that the night was so lovely, the food so delicious, the occasion so improbable. I remember that it seemed like Dr. Rosen’s wife was in charge as she told him where to find the silver spoons for the tea and the knife for the cheese. What a thrill to watch someone boss Dr. Rosen around! I couldn’t wait to tell Max.
For dessert, Dr. Rosen placed a wooden cutting board with several hard cheeses, grapes, and dried cherries in the middle of the table. I popped a grape into my mouth. Its slick sweetness beat my headache back by an inch. The last bars of daylight streamed through the window making shadows on the table. Dr. Rosen said sometimes they saw deer in their wooded backyard. My body ached with fullness. I’d taken in so much; I was ready to go home.
On the way back to Chicago from the suburbs, I reclined the seat and cranked up the a/c, aiming the vents at my face. I cried all twenty-one miles back to the city. John held my hand.
“Is this happening?” I cried. John held my hand tighter.
“Where did you come from?” I cried some more.
Mile after mile, I cried. Feeling pouring out of me. “I can’t believe any of this is happening. How did I get here?”
John held my hand as the city skyline sparkled beyond the windshield.
“I feel afraid,” I said as we pulled up to my place.
“Of what?” John asked.
“You.” He raised his eyebrows and smiled. “We’re stuck with each other now. I feel a strange loneliness. I’m not sure where I am.” John squeezed my hand as if he understood.
I thought once you got engaged, you were filled with certainty and bliss about the person you were marrying and the life you were building. I thought that finding the man I would marry would cure my deep loneliness. But I didn’t feel pure bliss. I felt whispers of fear and loneliness. I was still me.
“All these years, I’ve been the single-est person everywhere I went—group, law school, Texas friends, family. Christie—unattached, single, no-plus-one Christie. I hated that role, but now that it’s no longer mine, I feel like I’m free falling. Like I’m losing something. It feels like I’m not special anymore, now that I’m not crying in all corners of Chicago about my shitty love life and unpopulated weekends. Now I’m just like everybody else. Does that make any sense?” Where did the apples go? The worms? The purple towel that I’d ripped the threads out of? Who was I now and where did the old me go?
John brushed my cheek. “You still cry more than most people. That probably won’t ever change.”
40
Barack Obama was hours from winning the title of Forty-Fourth President of the United States. All of Chicago went bonkers—jubilant people were streaming from their offices downtown to Grant Park, waiting for Obama to take the podium as the president-elect. Raj popped his head into my office around four and offered me an extra ticket to the rally. I turned him down, even though John and I campaigned for Obama in Wisconsin and were dizzy with joy at his victory. Physically, I didn’t feel like myself and hadn’t for a few days. That afternoon, I’d had to mute a conference call because I was about to go off on an opposing attorney who insisted our client was liable for fraud. I’d punched my desk so hard that my stapler clattered to the edge. An hour after the call I was so walloped by fatigue that I put my head down on my desk and slept for twenty minutes. I suspected flu and was convinced if I went down to Grant Park in the cold November air, I’d end up hospitalized with mono.
That night, John and I ordered takeout and waited for Obama’s speech. The TV cameras panned to the crowd assembled five miles from our house, and I regretted not being there. John saw friends he knew from law school standing five feet from Oprah. “That could be us!” What was wrong with me? It was the most historic night of my lifetime, and I’d opted to sit on the couch, braless, shoveling a Cobb salad in my mouth with my feet propped up on
