“The police let the three of you leave all alone?” Dr. Rosen asked.
“Sebastian was almost eighteen.”
“His dad had just died,” Rory said, her voice breaking. “You were children.”
“The police should have taken care of you.” Patrice reached out for my hand. I grabbed it and she squeezed it like she had that first morning during the closing prayer.
“And when you made it back to the condo?” Dr. Rosen asked.
“We had to tell Sandy. We knocked on the door because we’d lost the keys. When she looked through the peephole, she understood the terrible math. One of us was missing. She started screaming, ‘No! No! No!’ ”
“Jesus, Christie,” Carlos whispered.
I’d pushed past them in the doorway and hid in the bathtub—no water running—so I could get out of their way. Behind the shower curtain, I picked at the dried mud and blood caked on my legs, trying to bear their grief. They remained in the doorway, holding each other and sobbing, until the last beams of daylight faded to darkness.
“What did it sound like?” Dr. Rosen asked.
I opened my mouth to imitate their wailing. Nothing came out. When I tried again, the sound froze inside me, my aperture for grief sealed up inside my throat.
“You did it a minute ago. You can hear it in your head,” Dr. Rosen said.
I could hear it, the three of them, huddled and wailing, but no sound would come out. That terror and grief were a part of me, an organ that covered everything, like skin or hair. Like a stain. I didn’t know how to let it go. I managed a few guttural barks. I shook my head. “I can’t.”
I’d long ago accepted that I’d carry Hawaii—those screams and the terrified clenching of every muscle when I thought of the ocean—for the rest of my life. It was the price of having survived. What would it look like to heal? I couldn’t conjure a version of me that wasn’t haunted by the ocean gushing out of David.
Dr. Rosen suggested an experiment. “Repeat after me: ‘I did not kill David.’ ”
I shook my head. “Jesus, Dr. Rosen, I don’t think I killed him. This isn’t an ABC after-school special.”
“You feel responsible.”
“That’s ridiculous. I was thirteen—”
“The sign.”
“You always mention it, hon,” Rory said.
“Sign?” I said, my gaze darting around the room.
“The ‘No Trespassing’ sign,” Rory said.
I slumped back in my chair as if I’d been hit. Did I really think it was my fault? “That’s what I’ve been carrying all these years?”
“It’s one of many stories that you carry.”
We were never supposed to be on that beach. The whisper that had been echoing through me since 1987 roared in my ears: You could have stopped it. Should have. I might have been thirteen, but I could read. I understood we were breaking the law. I knew what “No Trespassing” meant.
“Ready to repeat after me?” Dr. Rosen said. I nodded. “Look at Rory and say: ‘I did not kill David.’ ”
“I did not kill David.”
“It’s not my fault he died.”
“It’s not my fault he died.”
“I don’t have to blame myself.”
“I don’t have to blame myself.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“Now breathe,” Dr. Rosen said. My lungs expanded underneath my ribs. When I exhaled, my breath came out jagged, its edges caught on the hooks of the resistance I’d built up over seventeen years.
“So this trauma has kept me alone all these years?”
“Your buried feelings about it has driven you away from people.”
“Why?”
He leaned toward me and spoke slowly. “If you get into an intimate relationship, your intense feelings are going to come out just like they did this morning. You’ll attach to someone.” He pointed at himself. “He might go to the beach. He might not come back. Love will lead you to the beach a thousand times a day for the rest of your life.”
“I’m never getting over this.”
Dr. Rosen shook his head. “Christie, you will never get over this.”
Dr. Rosen closed the session in the usual way, and Patrice and Rory both turned to me and wrapped me in their arms. Carlos stood just to the side, waiting for his turn. So did Marty and the Colonel. Each of them held me tight. Dr. Rosen also held me for a few seconds longer than usual. Just below the surface of my skin, I could still feel my body shaking with the memory of the waves hitting the black sand beach.
13
In August 2002, I celebrated my first anniversary in group by anxiously refreshing my e-mail with an index finger every three minutes in the student lounge where I was camped out with other law students. I’d finished a ten-week summer internship at Bell, Boyd & Lloyd, and the hiring coordinator said they’d e-mail us about permanent job offers by the end of the day. Over the summer, I’d written memos, researched principles of contract law, and stayed past nine several nights to prove my commitment. I also cheered at a Cubs game and sipped club soda at happy hours to prove that one future day I would be capable of socializing with blue-chip clients. But now I needed a job offer.
At four thirty, I gave the mouse one last press. My eyes seized on the e-mail from the firm: The committee still hasn’t voted. Every other year in the firm’s history, all of the interns were offered postgraduation jobs at a boozy party in the conference room overlooking downtown Chicago. This year, we’d primly sipped cranberry juice and nibbled roasted almonds as the managing partner talked about the economic downturn with a tight smile. Now this e-mail proved that the rumors that had spooked us all summer were true: they didn’t have enough jobs for all of us.
My third year of law school had just started. Graduation loomed nine months ahead. The dot-com bubble had burst, and law firms typically did not hire third-year students—they hired the interns who worked for them over the summer. Some law firms were imploding; there one day and gone the next. My school, Loyola, was in the second tier, so I was competing with students who hailed from the University of Chicago and Northwestern, both of which were in the top ten. When I graduated, my debt was going to total over $120,000. If I didn’t have a job, a good one, then how would I pay for rent, student loans, and therapy?
I race-walked to the career services center, where several other students were flipping through job listings in big white binders. A paltry list of firms scheduling interviews with third-year students was pinned to a bulletin board. Someone had scribbled We’re Fucked at the bottom. Two organizations were interviewing third-year students: The Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corp. and Skadden, Arps, a top-ranked firm, famous for having the highest starting salaries in the country. The JAG Corp. was out because I didn’t want to disclose my mental-health treatment or the three times I’d smoked pot to the federal government. As for Skadden, it was a powerhouse law firm stocked with thoroughbred attorneys from Ivy League schools who routinely worked sixty-hour weeks. Skadden was the Harvard of law firms. They would never hire me.
I fought the urge to vomit on the white binder.
My closest law school friend Clare pooh-poohed my fears. “You’re first in our class! You have it made.” Yes, as valedictorian, I would land a job, but if it only paid thirty grand, I would sink under the weight of my debt. I’d taken out a private loan, at 10 percent interest, to pay for treatment with Dr. Rosen. My law school debt was considerable. How would my life work if I had an extended job search? Would I have to move back to 6644 Thackeray?
In group, Dr. Rosen was insistent. “Interview at Skadden.”
I balked. I saw myself as second tier, a middle-of-the-pack lawyer. My law school was second tier, as was Bell, Boyd & Lloyd. The Skadden partners argued before the Supreme Court and helmed complex commercial litigation covered in multipage Wall Street Journal articles. They wore custom-made suits with Italian leather shoes. I was a little girl with pinworm
s, a college student who almost died from self-induced vomiting, a young woman with an apple fetish barely in remission.
“Skadden’s not for me, Dr. Harvard.”
“Yes, it is.”
What the hell did he know? He sat around with psychologically broken people all day. Skadden would expect me to perform at my highest level around other people who were doing the same and had been since they graduated summa cum laude from Princeton. I was a Loyola Rambler.
“You’re brilliant. Skadden is going to want you.”
Brilliant was a word to describe Madame Curie, Steve Jobs, or Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, the female physicist who invented caller ID. It was not a word for me. Being first in my class made me a workhorse who desperately wanted achievements with which to wallpaper over the holes in her personal life, not brilliant. I had the LSAT score to prove it.
Patrice nudged me in the forearm and then exaggerated the motion of rubbing her chest like Dr. Rosen always did when someone gave him a compliment or an insult. I rubbed my chest halfheartedly. But some part of that brilliant penetrated just below my breastbone, a sliver of it nested in the soft part of me that was willing to receive it.
At home, I opened my closet door and stared at my navy Calvin Klein suit and Cole Haan flats. Of course I’d wear the lipstick Carlos picked out. At least I could get the costume right.
A week later, I sat across from a balding white guy in his sixties who stood in his stocking feet, leaning on oak bookshelves where his children smiled from chunky silver picture frames. Head of Skadden’s litigation department. He winked and asked me where I saw myself in five years, chuckling as if the question was bullshit. I told him the truth: “I hope to be moving toward partnership.” I didn’t mean firm partnership necessarily, but he didn’t know that.
The next partner who interviewed me had the most sumptuous charcoal-gray suit I’d ever seen. I studied it so I could describe it to Carlos later. During our thirty-minute conversation, he rolled up five separate pieces of Scotch Tape—sticky side up—and daubed at invisible dust specks on his desk. When he shook my hand at the end of the conversation, he said, “I promise we can give you exciting work.”
The male associates had quirky artifacts in their offices: a framed vintage Cubs jersey, a Gorbachev bobblehead doll, a signed Bruce Springsteen album. None of them seemed psycho or incapable of talking about their lives outside of work. The only woman I met, Leslie, had an open smile and an easy laugh. I felt myself sink into the chair in a way I hadn’t in the men’s offices. When I asked her if it was possible for a woman to succeed at Skadden, she nodded her head slowly. “Yes, I think so.”
For lunch, two junior associates, Jorge and Clark, hailed a cab that whisked us to Emilio’s for tapas. Jorge had a regal bearing and wore a bow tie and cuff links. Clark was baby-faced, slightly disheveled, and recently married. Once we were seated, Jorge suggested we each order four plates to share. I’d never had tapas. I’d never eaten chorizo and Manchego cheese for lunch, or any other meal. I’d never shared twelve plates of food with two men while trying to land a job.
When the food arrived, I calmed my breath and took bites from each of the plates: grilled goat cheese on toast points, Spanish sausage, tricolored olives glistening with oil, sautéed escargots, and grilled potatoes. As the savory bites slid down my throat, my belly quivered with pleasure and shock. This was a long way from cabbage, tuna, and mustard. I worried the corner of a white linen napkin between dishes and thought about Rory’s mind exploding when I reported my food later that night.
Even if I didn’t get the job, the meal was a miracle.
They assured me they had lives outside of work: Jorge had a fiancée, Clark an abiding fondness for hours-long poker games. As I chewed my last bite, I felt desire stir in my chest. I wanted to work at Skadden too. I wanted to breathe the rarefied air of a fancy law firm just like Clark and Jorge were.
We parted ways outside Emilio’s, and I walked down Ohio Street toward Michigan Avenue. My smart navy shoes clicked on the sidewalk as I turned down Michigan Avenue, past Tiffany, Cartier, and Neiman Marcus. My feet fell into a perfect staccato rhythm, and my spine was pillar straight. My stride was that of a woman who was first in her law school class. It might have been a second-tier school, but only one person had done it. The truth of that number—one—sizzled through my body, finally something more than abstraction or shame. It was energy, and it belonged to me.
By the time I slipped my key into my door, I believed I deserved an offer from Skadden—in part, because I was first in my class, but also because down the street was a wacky doctor with an impressive pedigree who told me I was brilliant. And even if I didn’t believe I was brilliant, I did believe that he believed I was.
I ended up with two job offers: one from Bell, Boyd & Lloyd, where I’d done my internship, and one from Skadden. Clare said I should go back to the smaller firm because Skadden would work me to death. Hadn’t the point of therapy been to keep me from taking a job that would suck the life out of me? I didn’t want a life consumed by work. My favorite law school professor told me to go for Skadden because I was young and energetic and it was too good an opportunity to pass up.
With twenty-four hours left to make the decision, I took it to group. I’d left lunch with Jorge and Clark, high on serrano ham and convinced I could succeed at Skadden, but doubt crept in. Would Skadden suck me dry with billable hours? Skadden could be my nightmare come true if work left me no time to work on my relationships.
Dr. Rosen disagreed. “It will be easier to practice law around other brilliant people.” There was that word again. “You could call now and accept the offer.”
It was one thing to tell a hot guy from school that I was a cocktease, but it was quite another to turn a decision like this—the genesis of my legal career—over to Dr. Rosen. I told him I needed a few minutes to think about it. He did his “suit yourself” shrug and turned his attention to someone else.
With fifteen minutes to go in the session, that stirring of desire and ambition in my chest returned—quivering, translucent, fragile as a bubble. After my first year of law school, before my initial call to Dr. Rosen, I downloaded the application for Northwestern Law School. With my class rank, I could have transferred there and enrolled at the number eight law school in the country. I filled out the application and put the pages into a thick manila envelope. But at the mailbox in front of the law library, my fingers wouldn’t grab the small metal handle on the door. My elbows wouldn’t bend, my biceps wouldn’t curl. The future that beckoned on the other side of that mail chute required more of me than my body could give. I didn’t belong there. I was a second-tier person. I walked ten paces back toward the library and chucked the envelope in the trash.
Skadden was prestigious, and I didn’t know if I belonged, but my fear of not measuring up was suddenly not as strong as the propulsive yes in my chest. It seemed absurd to let insecurity and fear hold me back from all Skadden was offering. Plus, they would pay me enough that I could afford rent, student loans, and therapy.
As the group session ticked down, I stared at the peak of the sooty Jewelers’ Building a few blocks away. I held still to keep this brand-new vision from evaporating: My business card on heavy white card stock. My five-figure bonuses. My updated wardrobe. My Tumi briefcase. My cases and clients. Could I take all of this in? Could I try?
I wanted to try.
I held up my phone like a torch. “I want Skadden.”
Dr. Rosen gestured with his hands, like go right ahead.
I flipped open my phone and dialed, but hesitated before pushing send. Patrice scooted her chair toward me and put out her hand. I placed mine into her open palm.
The recruiting partner’s voice mail picked up. When it beeped, I looked to Dr. Rosen for a boost. He nodded.
I inhaled quickly. On the exhale, I stepped into my future.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” I said, when I flipped the phone shut. “This is my life.”
I had a new job to go with my new home.
* * *
A few weeks earlier, Clare, my friend from law school, called and announced: “Tater, I need a new roommate.” I thought she’d ask her boyfriend, our fellow classmate Steven, to move in, but she said they weren’t ready for that step yet.
Clare’s Gold Coast condo had a marbled lobby, a twenty-four-hour doorman, and a pool. It was walking distance to school and three El stops from Dr. Rosen. Deep purple curtains held by gold velvet sashes hung in her living room. I’d have access to the gym and a parking spot. My whole body trilled with pleasure at the invitation. She offered to charge me the same rent I paid for my efficiency with the clanking radiator, the water-stained ceiling, and the decades-old kitchen appliances. How could I say no? Ten minutes later, I flipped through the yellow pages and hired a moving company.
* * *
The night I committed to Skadden, I stretched out on my bed and took stock of my life. A new job. A new home. In the event of my death, Clare could alert the authorities. Or the doorman. I wouldn’t die alone.
14
Carlos from group was my first male best friend. He would call me on the way to the gym, ranting that his fiancé, Jared, spent too much on Italian shoes or antique linens. He whisked me to restaurants in his tiny silver BMW and introduced me to foods I’d never had (pad thai, sturgeon) or heard of (cassoulet, shawarma). Without Carlos, I never would have tasted spanakopita or stepped foot in Barneys. As I headed into my second year of group, my relationship with Carlos was one of the brightest features of my steadily brightening life. When I bragged in group that Carlos and I had never had any conflict, Dr. Rosen piped up. “Pray for a fight.”
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