Falling in Love

by Stephen Bradlee

  But as I stared up at Paul through my aching eyes I realized that if I could somehow convince him to again consider being with me, then I might not be the only mental case in the room. He would have to be as messed up as me.

  But I never managed to get out my near-death-experience-changed-me-into-a-sweet-girl BS story. After a few more pleasantries, Paul left and I was sure that I would never see him again. I was the only nut in the room after all. Paul had finally realized that his one true love wasn’t true to anyone, not to him, not to myself.

  Three days later, the doctors felt that I was well enough to be released from the hospital on the condition that I return in two weeks for an examination and that I meet regularly with Helen. Helen said that she would try to get me into a halfway house for substance abusers. Since my accident had happened while I was intoxicated, she asked me if I had an alcohol problem. I replied that I had more of a “life problem.” This apparently wasn’t specific enough so she marked me down as an alcohol abuser and I got accepted into the halfway house.

  I appreciated having a place to stay but I dreaded the meeting with Helen. I kept thinking about what would be my answer if she asked me whether or not I had attempted suicide. If I answered “yes,” I was afraid that I might end up in some hospital for who knows how long, so I decided that I would just say no. I figured I wouldn’t mention that my last thought before my near death was of relief that my life was over. That might be as dangerous as saying that I was trying to kill myself.

  Two days later, I went to her office for my first counseling session and was shocked to see Paul there. Helen had encouraged him to come and he had finally agreed.

  I think that Paul was as apprehensive about the meeting as I was but Helen didn’t ask either of us embarrassing questions. Instead, she asked how our relationship had begun. I think both Paul and I were relieved that we got to talk about the good times that we had enjoyed together.

  Then Helen pressed me about the nights that I had gone out after being with Paul but I couldn’t talk about that horrible part of our relationship, that horrible part of me. Finally, Helen asked us to return in a few days.

  After a polite goodbye to both of us, Paul quickly left, and I regretted not talking about my nights’ out. Not that I wanted to rehash my disgusting behavior but I had wanted to apologize to Paul. I felt terrible that I hadn’t gotten a chance to say that I was sorry and that if we got into some kind of therapy, I felt certain that I would never do anything like that again. I feared that Paul wouldn’t return for the next meeting where I could tell him this.

  But three days later, Paul was beside me as I talked about the night I had gone to the party. I said that I had just gone for a drive to get some fresh air and that I had made a mistake by going to the party and then I had gotten drunk and didn’t quite remember what happened after that but obviously I knew it was something that I wasn’t proud of. But I was fairly sure that it wouldn’t happen again because I would never let myself get that drunk.

  By the time I was done, my story didn’t even sound convincing to me, and I was sure that neither Paul nor Helen really believed this sanitized version. But what was I supposed to say? That I had read in some book that a good way to quit smoking was to smoke so many cigarettes that you got sick of them so I decided to try that with a hallway full of guys? I was supposed to tell the man I loved that this was why I wouldn’t let him touch me but instead I would let every man at some party do anything they wanted with me?

  I did manage to turn to Paul and say, “I’m sorry. I would never do that again.” He didn’t look like he believed me and, actually, I didn’t really believe me. Not after I had told myself over and over that every time I did something like that, it was going to be the last time. There was never a last time.

  On our third session, Helen asked us about our pasts. Paul admitted that a number of his relationships had been like ours and that he had a tendency to “pick losers.” He quickly looked at me like he regretted his words but he didn’t take them back. I didn’t protest.

  Helen turned to me. “Have you had this kind of traumatic breakup before?” she asked.

  I couldn’t look at Paul. I nodded and whispered softly, “Yes.”

  Helen didn’t look surprised. She smiled and offered, “Maybe the next time will be the charm.”

  That actually did seem semi-certain to me. I knew I couldn’t keep living through this agony. But I remained silent because I was afraid that if I said the wrong thing, she would lock me up and I just wanted to get out of Sparta forever.

  “Do you think you were suicidal that night?”

  So much for hoping that silence might keep me out of the loony bin. But then I thought that maybe I should try to be honest, that maybe I deserved to be locked up. “I don’t think I was consciously trying to kill myself but I was in such a mess that I certainly didn’t care if I died. Maybe that makes me suicidal.”

  She smiled softly and shook her head, “Not necessarily. We all have moments when we wish we were dead. The difference is acting on that wish.”

  Helen asked us to return the following Tuesday and Paul looked impatient. “We’ve been here three times now. Aren’t you ever supposed to say anything?”

  Helen hesitated, looking perplexed. Finally, she said, “I think you both may need specialists.”

  “Specialists?” asked Paul. “What for? There’s nothing wrong with me. I’ve jut been unlucky.”

  “You think so?” replied Helen. “Your best friend tells you your girlfriend is sleeping around and that night you propose to her?”

  “I thought he was kidding.”

  “Does he usually—?

  “—All right,” Paul cut her off. “All right!” He looked away.

  “There is a twelve step program for codependents that I suggest that you try.”

  Paul turned to glare at me. “What about her?”

  “Well, I think Sherry might need another group,” she said, “for sex addicts.”

  I stared at her in disbelief. I was appalled that she would call me a sex addict, that she thought I was addicted to sex, like I actually liked doing what I did when I went out like that. I hated it. But then I realized that most addicts wanted to quit what they were doing, whether it was drugs or alcohol, or, I guess, sex, only they couldn’t. Just like me.

  Then I felt a little relieved. I had always felt alone, the only perpetually bad girl in the world, constantly wracked with guilt and pain. Now Helen was saying that there were not only other people like me but that there were so many they had a whole organization. And that they were meeting the following Sunday evening at a local church.

  I hadn’t called my insurance company about the accident but it didn’t matter. Without telling me, Paul had fixed my car so that it was better than ever. Did he do it to give me more guilt? I didn’t even bother to try to figure that one out. But there I sat in a shiny car parked down the street from a lovely white-stone church surrounded by a lovely garden and a graveyard. I had arrived a half-hour early because I wanted to see what kind of people called themselves sex addicts. Most of them were men but there were a few women. I was surprised to see that they all basically looked normal, like the people you might see in a shopping mall.

  I started to go in but then got scared. What if the new people had to introduce themselves or something? After waiting several minutes, I got the courage to go inside. I hated the idea that I might be associated with a group called sex addicts but I also wanted so badly to stop doing what I was doing that I was willing to do about anything.

  I walked along the stone path to the side door and quietly slipped into a small meeting room. People sat in a circle of chairs listening to a well-dressed man. He seemed to be fighting back tears as he said, “I thought I couldn’t sink any lower. But that bottom line, too, had a trap door.”

  I felt pangs of pain in my chest, just looking at his face, the intense agony. “Then I did hit bottom,” he continued. “When I molested my own step-daughter,
my darling, defenseless, ten-year-old Amy.”

  Suddenly, revulsion overcame me and I couldn’t breathe. I rushed back out the door and let it slam behind me. I stood outside fighting for air. I rushed back to my car and squealed out of there. I had gone several blocks before I finally stopped hyperventilating. I wasn’t sure what my problem was but I knew I was not one of those people. I would never do what that guy had done. Never! Whatever I was, I wasn’t a sex addict.

  At our next meeting, I made sure Helen knew that. “I may have some problems,” I told her, “but I’m no sex addict. They’re perverted.”

  Helen asked me to give it another try but I knew I was never going back. She asked Paul if he had gone to the codependents meeting and he shook his head. When the session was over, Helen said she was now confident that I wasn’t suicidal and that I would no longer have to see her. But she again recommended that both Paul and I seek therapy.

  Paul and walked out together. We hadn’t spent anytime together outside of the therapy sessions and, once more, I was afraid that I might never see him again. Maybe Paul had the same feeling, or maybe he was just being polite, but he asked me to lunch. Because Paul was due back at his office shortly, we went to a nearby fast-food restaurant called Burger Heaven. We made small talk, avoiding this huge weight between us but neither Paul nor I had the courage to talk about it, to talk about us.

  A guy eating a burger in a corner booth kept staring at me. He looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place him and figured, or at least hoped, that I didn’t know him. But when Paul returned to the salad bar, the guy finished his burger and came over.

  “Hey, Honey, how about a nooner?”

  I looked up at him, startled. Then I recognized him. He was the guy from the party they called Tex, and he was one of the guys with which I had humiliated myself. I felt sickened. “Forget it,” I snapped back.

  “I could never forget you,” he said with a wicked smile.

  Paul returned to the table. “Hey, Manning. Are you really with this babe? I heard you thought she was a virgin.” He laughed.

  “Get lost, Tex.” Paul looked like he wanted to hit him. Other patrons began staring at us.

  Tex turned toward the door, saying, “Manning, you’re the dumbest guy on earth.” He glanced back, laughing, “Have you even had her yet?”

  When Tex got to the door, he turned around and acted like he was pulling a train whistle near his crotch, saying, “Choo, choo.” Then he walked out, laughing.

  I sat there, too disgusted and humiliated to eat. Paul didn’t sit back down. Finally, he said, “I can’t take this. I can’t.”

  He walked toward the door and I began crying. I couldn’t let him just walk out of my life. I ran out the door.

  Paul had already started his car. I ran up to him, pleading, “Don’t leave, Paul. Please. I can change.”

  A family heading inside the restaurant stopped to stare at me. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything but Paul. I cried out, “I love you, Paul. I do.”

  Paul hesitated for a moment. Then he backed up and raced out of the parking lot. “Please! Paul!” I screamed after him. But he was gone.

  I fell to my knees, heaving and crying. After a bit, I felt an elderly man trying to help me up but I twisted away, too mortified to even touch anyone. I jumped into my car and raced out of the parking lot, almost hitting a truck. After a few blocks, I pulled over and sat there crying. I knew I had to get out of that town. Immediately!

  I headed for the biggest city I could find, where I could get lost. Where no one knew who I was or about my past and all the mistakes I had managed to make during my short span on this planet. I was going to start a new life.

  As I crossed the George Washington Bridge, I began reciting an Emily Dickinson poem. “Two butterflies went out at noon and waltzed above a stream. Then stepped straight through the firmament and rested on a beam.”

  The cheapest room I found was in a women’s only hotel in Greenwich Village with the shower and toilet in the hallway. I hoped that the money I had saved while working for Paul would last me until I got a job. I made the rounds of temp agencies, offering my meager office experience. But filing and light typing in Rosebud, Indiana, didn’t make much of an impression in the Big Apple. I thought of mentioning that I had worked for Paul as a legal secretary but I was petrified that someone might call him for a reference.

  Within a week I was out of money. I was so depressed that every night I went out drinking and every morning I ended up in a strange apartment. I wasn’t sure why I was paying rent when I rarely slept in my room. But somehow giving up my room and living from guy to guy didn’t seem to be moving in the right direction. My new life was beginning to look a lot like my old life.

  I decided to sell my car. I couldn’t afford a garage and parking on the street was a real pain. I drove out to Queens and took whatever some dealer gave me. How I intended drive to California without a car was something I hadn’t quite yet worked out.

  Soon, I was nearly out of that money. After applying at my seemingly hundredth temp agency, I was heading into an elevator when I heard someone yell, “Hold it! Okay?” I tried to push the right button to keep the door open but failed miserably. After sprinting down the hallway, a young woman slid to a stop in high heels in front of the elevator and quickly kicked up her leg as a wedge between the closing doors. They reopened and she joined me in the elevator.

  “Sorry,” I said, still staring at the array of buttons trying to determine which one would have parted the doors.

  “Not to worry,” she said. She was tall attractive brunette with a full-figured body, a regal air and carried one of the largest purses I’d ever seen. “I really don’t have to be anywhere for an hour. I just hate waiting. Right?”

  I shrugged in agreement, even though I really didn’t have that strong of an opinion regarding waiting for elevators.

  She stared closely at me. “You okay?”

  “Sure.”

  She kept staring at me and I began to feel uncomfortable. “Come on, really. What’s the problem?” she asked. When I didn’t answer, she added, “Look, I read people all day long and you’ve got a problem? Okay, so it’s none of my business but tell me anyway. We don’t know each other, right? So what have you got to lose, and maybe I have an answer?”

  “Are you an analyst?” I asked.

  She laughed. “An actor. Brimming with talent but still undiscovered so I play the role of legal secretary to pay the bills and I read people to help with my characters. And when I look at you, I’m reading a big problem.”

  “Well, I’m broke and can’t get a job,” I admitted, finally. “I’d love to be just a secretary, period.”

  “So be one. What’s the big deal?”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Of course it is. You’re beautiful. You’ve got a nice voice. So be a receptionist if you can’t type.” The elevator reached the bottom. “Come on. Let’s go have coffee. On me.”

  Suddenly, she was out of the elevator and halfway across the marble foyer as I stood dumbfounded in the elevator. She turned around. “You coming?”

  I tried following her as she effortlessly threaded though throngs of people that I subsequently bumped against. For someone who had no where to be for an hour, I couldn’t believe how fast she walked. I ended up at a window table in a gourmet coffee shop while she got our order. I had asked for coffee, thinking what else are you going to order in a coffee shop? But she returned with cappuccino, saying that I looked like I “needed a lift.” She had ordered chai tea for herself.

  Her name was Dede Dalton and she spent the next fifteen minutes talking about the audition she had in an hour for an off-Broadway play about some scandal in the Twenties and that if she got the part, it could lead to her big break. She talked so fast that I had trouble keeping up. Then she reached down and pulled a vintage silk dress from her purse and held it up. “What do you think?”

  I really didn’t have a clue but said t
hat it looked fine to me.

  Then Dede got around to the reason we were there and grilled me about my meager work experience. When I told her that I had worked for Paul her eyes lit up, so I quickly added that because we had gotten involved, I was worried about using him for a reference.

  Dede didn’t seem to care. She took a notepad from her purse and scribbled on it, while asking, “You ever been to L.A.?”

  “No.”

  She ripped off a page. “Now you have. You worked for these three firms for eight years.” She looked closely at me. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  She crossed out one of the firms and changed some dates. “These two firms for five years.”

  I was shocked. “What if they check them out?”

  “They can’t. Both of these firms went belly up. But they were big. Offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago. Every agency in New York has heard of them. You worked in the L.A. offices.” She handed me the paper. “You now have five years of top drawer legal experience.”

  “You don’t think it’s a coincidence that both the firms I worked for went out of business?”

  “Think anyone cares? This is like underage drinking. The bartender asks for an ID, you show him one and he doesn’t care if you’re twelve. Same here. You know what a brief is?”

  “I think so,” I said, not exactly sure.

  “You can type?”

  “Yes,” I replied more emphatically.

  Dede gave me the names of five temp agencies. “These are the best in the city. Go to them last. Go to any others and take their test. Make sure you are confident that you can pass the typing test for these agencies before you go to them. Then you’ll always have a job because lawyers are never going away. You may not like the job but you will always have one.”