The Slippery Year

by Melanie Gideon

  I’ve had mixed experiences with therapy. I sought out my first therapist in college. She was a Jungian analyst. I learned a great deal from her in our one appointment. I learned that if my mental health was really important to me I’d find a way to pay her $360-a-month fee on my $500-a-month cocktail waitress income that had to cover rent, food, and any other incidentals as well as exploring the meaning of the recurring dream where my brain drains out of my ear.

  I found my second therapist on the bulletin board of a grocery store. Discover your power animals, read the ad. Find your purpose in life through Native American wisdom. And the most important bit of information: Sliding scale. I called right away. The woman’s voice sounded just as I’d imagined it would. She was grandmotherly but comforting and firm. I wanted to yell on the phone, What’s my animal? Tell me now! It’s the bear, right? And if not the bear then the mountain lion, or the eagle? But I controlled myself. I felt she was keeping information from me, information she could divine simply by listening to the timbre of my voice, but I kept my mouth shut. I was afraid she wouldn’t take me on.

  I could barely wait for my appointment. I stopped dreaming about my brain leaking out of my head. Instead I began dreaming of my therapist. The wise old Native American woman who would be guiding me. Who would send me on vision quests. Quests with very little food (perhaps I’d lose some weight!) but accompanied by my animal guides. I would learn why I was here. What I was meant to do. Why I was compelled to show up thirty minutes early to every appointment.

  And it was a good thing I did. I had the wrong address. It had to be the wrong address. This was not the house of a tribal elder. It was a house of babies and toddlers. I could hear them screaming in the backyard. I checked my notes. No, this was it. Perhaps my therapist lived by the old ways. Perhaps she lived in a kind of village, with her daughter and grandchildren! I loved this idea. In theory anyway. It wouldn’t work for me. I am an Indian, but the wrong kind of Indian (my father is from Hyderabad) and a Rhode Island Indian to boot, which means, for all intents and purposes, not into communal living of any sort.

  The woman who greeted me at the door looked barely older than me. And she was white. The apprentice, I thought. Most shamans I had read about had an apprentice. In fact, I had hoped that after years of working with this woman I would go from client to apprentice. Once I proved my worth. Once I was living my power-animal life. Then I saw her buckskin suede boots. She was holding a bundle of sage. The room behind her was full of dream catchers and medicine shields.

  “Have you ever been smudged?” she asked.

  “Uh, no,” I said.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said.

  She lit the sage and then, when the bundle was smoking, she waved it around my face. At first it was pleasant and it made me think of cowboys and the high country. Then the aroma turned acrid.

  “It smells kind of like pot,” I said to her.

  She just smiled and continued making large sweeping motions with the burning bundle, while explaining to me that working with her would improve my connection to The Great Mystery, that the gifts of true healing medicine are free (except for the $35 fee we negotiated) and now that I was thoroughly smudged it was time to pick my power animals.

  She snuffed the sage bundle in a seashell. Out came a deck of cards. She began shuffling.

  “Wait—I’m going to pick my totem animals from a deck of cards?” I asked her.

  I had expected that through our telephone conversation and now meeting me in person she would know all about me. She would say to herself, That is a coyote woman if ever I’ve seen one. Look how the spirit of the coyote fills her. Invisible of course to everybody but me. Now I must tell her. The burden and the gifts of the coyote. The wisest and most powerful of creatures. What strong medicine this young woman has. I think I will ask her to be my apprentice.

  “Of course not,” she said, fanning out the deck of cards. “They are going to pick you.”

  “No, you mean I am going to pick them,” I said. “Arbitrarily.”

  She lit the sage and smudged me again, to get rid of my negative energy, and explained that I had nine totem animals. I should shut my eyes and focus and ask the animals to come to me. Then I should pick a card that I was drawn to.

  I did as she said. I shut my eyes and I prayed.

  Please don’t let me pick the beaver. Oh, please, God, don’t let me pick the beaver. Power. Power. Power. Also not the frog. You know I am not a frog person. I have been walking the Good Red Road all my life, so no weasels either. I am your servant, Earth Mother. Anything but a grouse. Not that I don’t like grouses. So great that you made them. I mean, really, how did you think that up?

  My hand hovered over a card. I felt energy rising from it and smacking me in the face. She was right! The animal was picking me!

  “This one,” I whispered.

  “Yes,” whispered my therapist. “Yes!”

  I picked it up and turned it over.

  It was the turkey.

  I continued going to this therapist for many years. Our sessions went a little like this.

  “So and so has betrayed me.”

  “Well, what would opossum do in this instance?”

  Screw opossum, I would think. I hate that little rodent. Why did it have to be one of my nine totem animals?

  “Opossum would play dead,” my therapist would gently suggest.

  “I don’t understand. What good would that do me? Shouldn’t I confront so and so?”

  “Or run away.”

  “I am not the kind of person who runs away.”

  “You are thinking like a two-legged. Think like a four-legged, or a creepy-crawler, or a finned one, or a winged one,” she suggested.

  “I think it might be time for me to go on a vision quest,” I said, looking around the basement. I could hear her kids through the ceiling. There was a large bump and somebody started to cry.

  “I think that’s a great idea!”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, you can go on one right now. Shut your eyes. Let me just go get the cards.”

  Recently I sought out a cognitive behavioral therapist (CBT). At our initial appointment, I gave her my laundry list of neuroses, and she said she thought we could work through them in two months. Two months! All I had to do was something called Risk Assessments whenever my worrying got out of control.

  Here was my first Risk Assessment:

  Feared Event: Getting to the car pool line late.

  Automatic Thoughts: Fuck those people who are in front of me.

  Rate Anxiety from 0 to 100: 95

  Predict the Worst Possible Consequences: I’m fiftieth in line. Child is dead by the time he finds the car.

  Possible Coping Thoughts: Somebody has to be fiftieth in line. Why can’t I be okay with being fiftieth?

  Possible Coping Actions: Get right back in the car pool line after dropping child off in the morning.

  Re-rate Anxiety from 0 to 100: 94

  I went a little overboard with the Risk Assessments. I risk-assessed everything from going to the bathroom in public toilets to getting my eyebrows waxed. CBT made me even more stressed out, as I was constantly checking in with myself, monitoring my mood, thoughts and feelings. It wasn’t long before I found myself longing for my medicine cards days, so I sought out the wisdom of Turkey, the patron saint of gobbling. Turkey told me to quit therapy and instead spend that weekly hour eating dried fried crispy shrimp at Shen Hua. It appeared I had picked the right totem animal after all.

  It’s a few days before our Flan gathering, and e-mails are flying furiously back and forth. The meal is being built like an Amish barn raising, the skeleton of the structure lying flat on the ground, but everybody can see the glorious thing that it will be once it is hauled up—the way it will lean into the sky. Someone is making bagna cauda. Someone else pate en croute. There will be almond soup from the Moosewood Cookbook. Éclairs from La Farine and a separate cheese course with exquisite cheeses from t
he Berkeley Cheese Board. I have decided I’m not going, but I haven’t told everybody yet. I have a good excuse. Chances are I won’t be back in time, and even if I were I’d be in a bad mood from all that driving and traffic.

  I do this kind of waffling a lot. I think to myself, Wouldn’t you really rather stay home? And most of the time the answer is yes. I long for community, yet I shy away from intimacy. And then I wonder why, despite all the fine people in my life, I am so lonely. The kind of lonely I have no right to feel. Especially since I go to sleep every night next to a man I love. Especially since I have a child whom I adore, whose needs, even at the age of nine, fill my days. But the truth is sometimes I am the kind of lonely that one does not speak about because if you did nobody would want to be near you.

  My friend, Laura, who is an acupuncturist, told me that life is devotion, not a pursuit.

  “What do you mean, ‘devotion’?” I asked her.

  “In Chinese medicine the wound is the wanting,” she explained. “The wound is desire.”

  “But how do you stop desiring?” I asked.

  “Say yes. With every breath,” she said. “Make yes your prayer.”

  The next day as I’m driving home from dropping Ben off at school, I spontaneously pull into the parking lot of the Mormon temple. I get that same illicit feeling I do when I’m using the StressEraser—as if I’m hiding something and I’m about to be caught. I get out of the car anyway and walk into the beautifully manicured gardens.

  The temple is an awesome sight. It rises majestically into the air, and even though I am a nonbeliever I swear I feel something—a kind of opening, a longing.

  The temple has five spires, is made of Sierra White Granite and looks like Cinderella’s castle. I can see why Ben thought it was Disneyland. The grounds are also spectacular and offer up a panoramic view of San Francisco and the bay. There are fountains, a little wooden bridge, and a central walkway lined with palm trees. I’m about to leave when a young woman comes toward me and asks, “Do you mind if I walk with you?”

  I’d heard from friends that they were hit on the moment they set foot on the temple grounds. But I thought this early in the morning I could walk around unnoticed.

  “Okay, but I’m leaving,” I say, not wanting to be rude.

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” she says firmly.

  Have they been spying on me? Is she an escort? Have I done something wrong?

  “Is it okay that I’m here?” I ask.

  “Oh, yes,” she says. “The grounds are open to the public. You can come back anytime.”

  “I’ll do that,” I say, having no intention of ever coming back.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” she asks.

  “My car is right there,” I say, pointing.

  “No, I mean do you know where you’re going?” she repeats.

  “After this?” I ask.

  “Yes, after this,” she says.

  “I’m going to Lucky’s,” I say.

  She smiles. “After Lucky’s?”

  “Home.”

  “After home?”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  I drive off like a fugitive, my heart pounding. What was I thinking, going in there? Did I know where I was going? Well, yes. Now I am going to Colonial Donuts to get a glazed donut and a carton of milk. When I get home I write an e-mail to the Flans saying I won’t make it tomorrow and will somebody else please bring salad. I feel relieved when I press “send.” Then I feel sad.

  That afternoon, once again, I am first in the car pool line. I crack open my book. Every once in a while I look into the rearview mirror and see the line of cars stretching out behind me. Three. Five. Ten. Twenty. Lisa must be somewhere back there, but I avoid getting out and looking for her. She’ll give me shit for blowing off our Flan dinner. Or worse, she’ll press that long-promised number of a therapist into my hand. Or maybe she’ll play therapist herself. Sit in the car and ask me Why are you here? And I’ll play dumb. Here in line? Here in California?

  A Toyota Corolla pulls in front of me. I look up as the woman driving it backs up, so close to me our cars are nearly touching. For a second I am so stunned that I don’t register what’s going on. Perhaps she just got a flat tire. Perhaps she dropped her cell phone and has to fish it out of the McDonald’s wrapper detritus on the passenger seat floor before she continues on. When it becomes clear that she has no intention of moving, that she’s just taken my rightful place in line, I begin giving her the dirtiest looks ever. Unfortunately she doesn’t dare look again into the rearview mirror, which incenses me even more.

  This kind of outright cheating, the blatant, brazen disregard for those already in line drives parents crazy. There is an order. It must be adhered to. I was told that on Ben’s very first day of kindergarten. Above all else, do not try and cut in the car pool line.

  I contemplate getting out of the car, marching up to her window and giving her hell. She slouches lower and lower in the seat, and for a moment I think she’s StressErasing, too. I get a great view of what I must look like most days and decide right then and there I cannot StressErase anymore in the car pool line. I am on the verge of leaping out of the car, fantasies of our showdown flitting through my head, when our Car Pool Administrator, Kathleen, comes up the hill, walkie-talkie in hand.

  I’ll do the next best thing. I’ll tell on her!

  Kathleen walks up to the Toyota and leans in. A kind of Whoa! expression crosses her face and she backs away without saying anything. She comes to my car.

  “Hi,” she says. “Just Ben today?”

  “That woman cut in line,” I say. “There were fifty cars lined up and she just pulled in front of everyone.”

  Kathleen gives me a strange look. “She’s weeping. I don’t know what’s going on, but she’s weeping. She didn’t even look up when I passed.”

  “She’s crying?” I ask. “In the car pool line?”

  Kathleen shrugs. “Have a nice day.”

  What’s wrong?” says Ben a few minutes later when he climbs into the car.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “Did something happen?”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Then why does your face look like that?”

  The woman in the Toyota Corolla is still there. She hasn’t picked up her kid. I can’t even see the top of her head anymore, that’s how slouched she is in the seat.

  I catch a glimpse of her shoulders heaving up and down and I can’t help but imagine what has happened to her. What horrible news has she just received? Is her mother dying? Has her husband just informed her he’s in love with somebody else? Did she miscarry? Is her house in foreclosure? Or is it something simpler? Has she just realized her life has not turned out to be what she expected it to be and is she now, right at this moment, laying some dream to rest? I wonder about all these things and at the same time I am selfishly thinking about my own safety. The well-being of my small family, intact for now—but tomorrow, who knows.

  A wave of compassion and shame washes over me. That could be me. That could be any one of us. All of us sitting in our cars alone, day after day, year after year, waiting for those we love.

  I think about what the young woman at the Mormon temple asked me. It occurs to me she was asking her question in capital letters—DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU’RE GOING? Not today, not tomorrow, but after this life? I wish I were one of those people who knew where they were going next. I envy those people their faith, the sparkle and glitter of certainty. The best I can do is hope. I can say with all certainty that I hope I’m going someplace where all the people I love will be waiting for me.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper to the woman as I pull out of the car pool line.

  “Do you know her?” asks Ben.

  “Yes,” I say.

  May

  CAN I JUST READ YOU THIS TEXT?” ASKS TERRY.

  I’m at the neighborhood swim club with some friends. The text Terry wants to share with us is from her new boyfriend.


  “DLG, I can’t believe 24 hrs have passed since I kissed U. 2-night can’t come soon enough.”

  Terry looks down into her lap and sighs. Slightly forced smiles appear on the rest of our faces.

  “What’s DLG?” I ask, thinking it can’t be Dirty Little Girl.

  “Darling.”

  “Oh.”

  Now, as happy as we all are for Terry, and we really, really are, there’s a brief pause in which all us are having our own private thoughts that are not safe to share. Such as:

  When was the last time I kissed my husband, I mean really kissed him?

  When was the last time I was desperate for him to come home? And not because the TiVo went on the fritz or there was a bat in the bathroom but because I felt lost without him?

  When was the last time I got a text like that? Never. I’m afraid of texting. Well, really what I’m afraid of is that I’ll be sending a text and a teenager will come up to me and say you are far too old to be doing that. But perhaps we could do a trade? I could teach you how to not look like an imbecile texting and you could teach me how to memorize phone numbers.

  We have never called each other DLG. Ever, in our whole entire marriage. And what a lovely word that is. And so old-fashioned. How old is this boyfriend anyway?

  There’s something wrong with my marriage. But I can’t tell anybody. I have to just sit here and smile and be supportive and keep acting like a woman who says things like: You’re going on a business trip? To Sweden? How wonderful. How I wish I could come. I’ve always wanted to go to the bear park in Orsa! But instead thinks things like: He’s going for two weeks to Sweden? Yippee! I get the bed all to myself!