Going in Circles

by Pamela Ribon

  I still reach for Matthew. I wake up sometimes with a pillow between my legs and one over my head, like I’ve been trying to swim through the bed in my sleep to find him. Actually, first I’d want to swim to the past, find that Matthew, put us both into a coma, and stay there.

  The next step in my Dorkination must go quickly, or I’ll have to start over. I pull the mouth guard from the water and cool it briefly in a nearby bowl of lukewarm water. Then I pop it into my mouth, jamming it against my upper palate with my tongue, trying to form a mold.

  “Push! Push!”

  It’s Lamaze class for my face as Andy reads from the instructions in his hand. I stare at the little white flakes of skin that arc his thumbnails. Once he’s eaten his nails to bloody chips, Andy moves on to his fingers, ripping the flesh away with his front teeth. He’s embarrassed by this habit, so he hides the skin he pulls away in his front pockets. I am pretty sure he doesn’t think anybody knows he does this, including me.

  “Howph dah?” I try to ask, but my mouth is filled with the unfamiliar.

  “Hot,” he says.

  I try to smile, but I start to cry. “I’m hideoth!”

  “No. Come on. Divorce looks awesome on you.”

  I yank out the mouth guard as I take a step back. “Don’t say that word.”

  “I am going to say it,” he says, rubbing his chin with his hand, running his fingers over his lower lip in frustration. “And I’m going to keep saying it until you get used to it. He sucks, and you are getting a divorce.”

  “He doesn’t suck.”

  Andy takes the mouth guard from my hand and places it gently in my mouth. “He kind of does. But mostly he sucks for you. Look what he’s done to you.”

  He’s not just referring to my mouth guard. I used to be considered rather slender, but I’ve become gaunt and bony. It’s not from dieting, or doing one of those I’ll Show Him ridiculous crash-exercise routines designed to make you look as fantastic as possible. I’m not doing anything; I’m simply falling apart. My stomach won’t hold on to anything for long before it churns and rips with anxiety, making my appetite disappear entirely. My complexion used to elicit compliments from even passing strangers. I was so proud of my skin, pink and glowy and rarely in need of any makeup. But these days it is blotchy and angry, cracked and chafed from crying fits. I look like I’ve been lost in the Alps for weeks—raw and jagged, inflamed and weak. It’s only getting worse: lately the bathtub has become clogged with clumps of my hair. As I dislodge the globs of wet, brown twists from the drain I can’t help but think, “Good. There’s less of me.”

  I’m watching Andy watch me and I realize how small and helpless I must look. Self-conscious, I tug a brittle strand of my hair behind my ear, hiding it.

  “You don’t know—,” I croak, before the mouth guard halts my speech. The muffled oddity of my voice is pathetic, and I am stuck between a laugh and a sob as Andy pulls me hard into his arms. He smells like coffee and spearmint gum. I clasp my fingers together behind his back and hang on, leaning into him, my face smashed against his perfect chest. The mouth guard is pinching my gums, a thick hunk of plastic at the back of my tongue. I have to concentrate if I want to be able to breathe.

  I’m outside of myself, like I’m standing in the corner, watching this beautiful olive-skinned man hold the bony, weary brokenheart in her tiny, white, understocked kitchen. The superhero embracing the damsel in distress.

  I want to thank Andy for being here, to let him know how much it means to me that he’s been beside me even as I’ve fallen apart in front of him like a paper doll in a rainstorm. So I finally say something he will appreciate, or at least I try to say it. The words Andy wants to hear tumble out of me, smothered and strained, almost a whisper.

  “Namiht, Madtew.”

  7.

  Continuing his dominance in the category of Super Best Friend, Andy has brought me a present. Actually, he has brought a present for my mouth guard. He pulls a tiny pink box from the pocket of his jacket. It’s a mouth guard holder, complete with a sticker of a unicorn.

  “I want you to always feel pretty,” he says.

  I thank him by opening a bottle of wine, from which I pour a hefty glass.

  After giving my mouth guard box a home on my nightstand, I find Andy wandering around my apartment, glass in hand. “What I like about your place,” he says, “is that you didn’t wait to make it look like you live here. You aren’t living in a pile of not-yet-unpacked boxes.”

  “Thanks. And just so you keep feeling that way, don’t go in the closet.”

  The closet is where Charlotte has hidden all of her not-yet-unpacked boxes. She hasn’t opened them because she doesn’t know what to do with their contents. When she thinks about exactly what she has stored away, fear sets in. Actual fear. It only took close to thirty years, but Charlotte finally has a monster in her closet. To be more accurate, it’s hundreds of monsters, all in hibernation, waiting for their moment to attack.

  The wedding pictures are in there. This beast of burden Charlotte did to herself. She didn’t want to part with some of the best photographs ever taken of her. Maybe one day she will be less emotional over these pictures and will find someone skilled enough in Photoshop to make this album look like she was the life of the party at someone else’s wedding, but until then, the box stays hidden. And since we’re revealing secret monsters here, it’s time to admit that a good percentage of the real reason Charlotte took that box of pictures was so that Matthew couldn’t have it. She wanted Matthew to go looking for it one night and realize it was gone, just like she was. Yes, Charlotte took that box on the off chance this fantasy sequence would play out someday—a scene she will never actually get to see, even if it happens. Matthew is more likely to realize Charlotte packed the thesaurus. If she really wanted her money’s worth on a moment when Matthew realizes all he truly lost by her moving out, she should have taken the coffeemaker.

  Most of the boxes of books remain unopened, because each book tells a story more personal than the one within the pages. Charlotte was still happily attached to Matthew when she was reading the book, or he bought it for her, or it’s one that belongs to him and she packed it—either accidentally or with extreme purposeful spite. Charlotte thinks that if she keeps the spite boxes safely sealed shut, she won’t have to return their contents. They simply won’t exist. This way she can start to make everything be in limbo. Why should it just be their relationship? Put the world on hold! First possessions, then careers, then exhaling after inhaling—make absolutely everything wait to see what happens next.

  Charlotte has created an apartment that looks like the home of someone who isn’t falling apart, and it’s commendable she did it in such a relatively short period of time. But she actually has a little secret. The reason nobody seems to notice that her apartment is more functional than comfortable is because everyone is blinded by her most impressive new purchase. Charlotte spent the majority of her moving money on something that would capture all of anyone’s attention. Not normally a gadget girl (she still prefers holding an actual map in her hand to a picture of a map on a PDA, and somewhere in that Closet of Exile there’s a box of cassette mix-tapes), she surprised herself at her tech-lust for this piece of electronic wonder.

  It’s not just a television. It is the Fuck You Television, and there are no regrets. Just one look, and there are no questions. There are only whistles of awe. It is the main attraction of the apartment, a constant companion for what Charlotte knew would be countless nights alone. This television is wondrous.

  The Fuck You Television is bigger than any other television Charlotte has ever owned, and was the largest she could find that wasn’t designed for a screening room or a conference hall. One tap of the power button and the Fuck You Television plays a little chirpy song, announcing its arrival. “Hello, I am ON!”

  It is white. Not black, not silver. White. This alone seems to be impressive enough to most people. But that doesn’t stop the Fuck You Telev
ision from offering features Charlotte never even bothers to investigate, like how it can become a gigantic computer monitor for her laptop. This television wants to have a meaningful relationship with her iPod. The Fuck You Television can be seen from the street outside the windows of the apartment, which prompted the purchase of Fuck You Curtains.

  See, the “Fuck You” in Fuck You Television isn’t directed at anyone in particular. There’s no “you,” exactly. It’s more of a feeling, a thought. It comes from when Charlotte first moved into this apartment, when she looked over her list of everything that needed to be purchased in order to make it through one day of life in her new home. Bed, towels, toothpaste, table, television, hangers, storage boxes, Scotch tape, pencil sharpener . . . it was overwhelming.

  You don’t realize how many things you’ve acquired in life until you separate yourself from someone else. When you leave, you feel like you don’t need or want anything. That’s for the best, because if you choose to take some of the things, sorting through to determine what’s essential, you’ll never finish packing your home. You’ll never leave. Instead you will stand amid empty moving boxes, growing increasingly furious as you ponder important life decisions such as which whisk to pack and which one to leave. Do you keep the one from the wedding gifts, or the one from when you first moved in together? Which Whisk-o’-Love-and-Commitment won’t reduce you to tears whenever you decide to make pancakes? (Answer: get a new whisk. They’re everywhere.)

  Besides, why would you want something that you used to share with someone who’s currently killing you from the heart out? No good. Start from zero.

  But starting from zero meant that when Charlotte wanted to make a peanut butter sandwich, she’d reach for a knife, only to find: no knife. Also: no peanut butter.

  This would have Charlotte angrily marching the aisles of the supermarket, thinking, “Fine. Fuck you, Peanut Butter. There. Never have to buy that again. And here’s a knife. Fuck you. Now I have a knife. Fuck you, Knife.”

  Now she’s got the Fuck You Trash Can, the Fuck You Shower Curtain, and the Fuck You Lamp. These things only have to be purchased once, and the more you slash items off your list, the easier it gets. There. Done. Fuck You Scrub Brush. Fuck You Weird Little Bowl I Need by the Bed for When I Take Off My Earrings at Night.

  The Fuck You Television was her finest purchase. There was no doubt that it was new, no doubt that it was hers, and there was nothing anybody could say about it other than, “Wow, look at your television!” In fact, the best part of the Fuck You Television is that Charlotte doesn’t have to do anything to entertain people when they come over other than turn that beautiful machine on. It is an instant crowd-pleaser. Right now, Andy’s adoring it, watching an episode of House, wearing a grin almost as large as the screen.

  “This thing is amazing. The resolution is so ridiculous I can count Hugh Laurie’s pores!”

  I crawl onto the Fuck You Couch beside him and bury my head in his lap.

  “Thank you for my mouth guard case,” I tell him.

  “Mnuh,” he says, more to the television than to me.

  “Can I ask you something personal?”

  “That’s the best kind of question.”

  I roll toward him, burying my face in his stomach before I ask, “Do you know a good therapist?”

  He kisses his palm and places it on the back of my neck, his gaze still transfixed by the Fuck You Television. “Of course I do, mamacita,” he says. Then he nudges my chin with the tip of his finger, his eyes finally meeting mine as he says with rare sincerity: “I’m really glad you asked.”

  8.

  I’m spending my lunch break auditioning for a therapist. Apparently my health insurance will cover therapy sessions only if the counselor and randomly assigned caseworker decide I’m in need of mental guidance. As if it’s not humiliating enough to ask for help getting through the day, now I have to find out if I’m the only one who thinks I need it. What if they’re both, like, “Suck it up. Other people have actual problems, you baby”? I think the trick is to sound just crazy enough to make this therapist find me entertaining in a weekly-visit sort of way, but not balls-out-crazy at the level at which I need to be institutionalized.

  The irony does not escape me that in Los Angeles even the shrinks make you go in for an audition. Maybe I should bring a head shot and résumé: “Hi, I played Girl Who Loses Her Shit at a Ruby Tuesday about six months ago for the Santa Monica Third Street Promenade Players. Here’s a CT scan of my skull, a list of past boyfriends for references, and the last birthday card I received from my mother, the one that says, ‘Soon you won’t be able to make me grandchildren.’ ”

  Andy reluctantly admitted that he knew about this therapist from an ex-girlfriend who had gone through a divorce. “She seemed completely healthy about the marriage breaking up,” he said as he handed me Dr. Hemphill’s number. “But luckily she was still riddled with self-doubt. It’s much easier to break up with them that way.”

  “Maybe he’s not such a great therapist, then.”

  “He’s a psychiatrist,” Andy said, pausing for a second as he got distracted by his own arm muscles. He squeezed his right hand into a fist as he watched his forearm flex.

  “So?”

  “It means he can give you really good drugs. Which you should insist he do. Tell him you can’t sleep, you can’t eat, you can’t stop crying.”

  “That wouldn’t exactly be lying,” I pointed out. “But you don’t think it’s weird to take pills that will make me trick myself into thinking everything’s okay?”

  “At this point, I don’t know how you could think that would be a bad thing.”

  This morning, when I made today’s plan, I made sure to insist I follow through on this therapist thing. I told myself I could at least go and see what it’s like. One session. Today’s plan also includes going to my house where Matthew lives and making it through Petra’s party, so honestly, this is the easiest part of the plan. I might as well get it over with.

  As I stand in the lobby of this nondescript corporate building, searching the directory for the correct office, it dawns on me that I’m not nearly famous enough to have all the same problems as the celebrities in this town. At least let me have the fun part of their lives too, like the rooftop parties and the drugs and random sex scandals. Or the clothes and limos and photo shoots. I get the doctor’s appointments and the divorces? Lame.

  This building houses chiropractors, accountants, and the occasional questionable pseudobusiness, like life-coaching. Dr. Hemphill’s office is on the third floor, but when I first enter the elevator, for a second I debate pushing a different button, taking my chances telling my problems to some random tax assessor rather than face the specialist. I’m a bit nervous as to what’s going to happen once I start talking to someone who deals professionally with the things I’m dealing with personally.

  I hope he tells me exactly what I need to do. You know, like a doctor would. “Apologize three times a day with meals. Stay away from alcohol for a few weeks. Get lots of rest and take these pills to kill the voices inside your head.” I could do that; I could follow a doctor’s orders.

  In the waiting room, there’s a little red button I’m supposed to push to let Dr. Hemphill know I’ve arrived. There’s also a chart with my first name scrawled across the top. I push the button and get to filling out my paperwork. This takes much longer than it used to. Grief has made me stupid, or perhaps the constant debate going through my head has left me permanently distracted. All I know for sure is that my brain has decided it no longer cares to remember my driver’s license number or Social Security number. Instead it prefers to let a single lyric from a song I hate play over and over again in my head. That’s what it spends its time doing. Not remembering what medications I’m allergic to, not remembering a series of directions when I’m driving somewhere new. It would rather just hang out wailing, “I got a little change in my pocket, going jing-a-ling-a-ling!”

  “Charlotte?”


  “That’s me!” I don’t know why I just cheered like that. Like I’ve won at bingo or something. Do I want him to think I’m this happy, chipper girl? Well, maybe it would help me land the part. “This girl should be terribly depressed about her life, but she’s got this scary-crazy smile on her face, so . . . medication time.”

  I follow him through a tan, heavily carpeted hallway into his office. It’s stuffy in the room, which is smaller than I would have expected, with a glass coffee table in front of a purple velour couch. He gestures for me to have a seat as he eases into a small, black seat that looks like an ottoman with armrests. Does he sit on that all day? It looks so uncomfortable. I suppose I’d do the same thing to myself if I had to stay awake while people droned on about their problems for hours on end.

  I drop my purse by my feet, then wonder what that says about me and how I treat my belongings and opt to place it beside me on the couch instead. I am aware that the audition has already started as I watch Dr. Hemphill look over the paperwork I filled out, perhaps assessing my penmanship. Do I write crazy enough? Maybe I should have done it in crayon. Maybe I’m supposed to bark, or perhaps eat the orchid he’s got on the coffee table between us.

  Dr. Hemphill is taller than I would have thought, and younger, with this wild patch of blond curls on top of his head that needs some attention. One of the buttons on his shirtfront is undone, and I practically have to sit on my hands to keep from walking over there and fixing it. It’s not like his skin’s exposed—he’s wearing a T-shirt underneath—but it makes me feel like I’ve rushed him, that he doesn’t have time for me. That I’m in the way.

  Dr. Hemphill hitches his pants at the knee as he crosses his legs and asks, “So, Charlotte. What brings you to therapy?”