Group

by Christie Tate

  * * *

  Here, in this room in the middle of downtown Chicago, the side of my fists bearing streaks of bright pink carpet burn, I sat slumped on the floor and tried to calm my breath. Every single set of eyes on me was filled with compassion. Except Dr. Rosen’s. His looked exactly the same: intense but impervious. Almost annoyed at his histrionic patient who was sinking, sinking, sinking.

  “YOU! YOU! YOU!” I grabbed fistfuls of my hair with both hands and pulled as hard as I could. My scalp rang with pain, but I pulled again. And again.

  Someone said something I couldn’t hear. I sat up, still holding my hair as if for ransom.

  “The poor baby,” Nan said. Her voice wobbled. “Poor, poor baby.” My body went slack in the lullaby of her voice. She scooted closer so she could pat my back. I let go of my hair and clambered to my seat. My scalp and hands throbbed with my heartbeat. Stray hairs twined between my fingers. I could not even look at Dr. Rosen. The women beamed me with love, but it stung like pity.

  I had a boyfriend, ten group mates, and almost two years of Dr. Rosen under my belt. I felt as stuck as ever.

  21

  After the Night of the Broken Dishes, Dr. Rosen coached me on how to ask for what I wanted from Jeremy. Pretending to be me, Dr. Rosen would say, “Jeremy, my love, I want you to take me out to dinner tonight,” or “I want us to take off our clothes and hold each other in bed.” As me, Dr. Rosen sat up tall and smiled broadly. He made it look so easy, this asking for what I wanted.

  When it was my turn to ask in real life, I sputtered like an old lawn mower. “I want—do you think we could—would you be open to, maybe—I don’t know—leaving your apartment with me sometime?”

  Jeremy smiled sweetly. “Where do you want to go?”

  “The sushi place down the block?”

  He hesitated and then said, “Sure.”

  One Tuesday morning I got a prescription: invite Jeremy over for the sole purpose of kissing me for five minutes straight. I was skeptical that Jeremy would make the effort for a five-minute kiss, but the point was whether I was willing to ask.

  We giggled as I led him to my bedroom, where we stood on the strip of carpet between my closet and my bed. In the living room down the hall, the TV blared Wheel of Fortune while Steven and Clare cooked dinner. The night sky was a dark blanket over the window. Jeremy futzed with his watch. He stepped toward me with his finger over the button for the timer.

  “Ready?”

  I took a deep breath, and let out a shudder and a tiny squeal. Part of me wanted to break role, call this exercise stupid, and pick a fight. I pulled myself together, squeezed my eyes shut, and tapped into the other part of me: the one willing to have this kiss.

  “Ready.”

  Beep.

  He slid one arm around my waist and one behind my head and kissed me softly. I was stuck in my head—worried about the timer, whether to slip in some tongue, whether I was getting the most out of this prescription. Then I sent my mind to my lips. I inched closer to Jeremy. The tips of my toes touched his shoes and I pressed my body into his, testing. Could he bear my weight? He smelled like sweat, coffee, and mints. I pulled him closer to me for the final few seconds, knowing time was almost up.

  Beep.

  “That was cool,” he said, fiddling with the button on his watch. He threaded his arm through his backpack, getting ready to go. I felt settled and calm, almost like a baby swaddled tightly and held close. When Jeremy hugged me good-bye, he held me for an extra beat. His body felt solid against mine, like he could hold me up for a long time. I stood at the front door until the elevator dinged and then watched him disappear behind the silver doors. The kiss had filled me up. I wanted it to be enough.

  I stayed with Jeremy. I stayed with Dr. Rosen. I stayed with my two groups. I stayed because I believed the agony of staying was necessary to score my heart. I thought that leaving—wanting to leave and actually leaving—was proof I wasn’t cut out for true intimacy. I had to prove to myself that I could endure whatever pain came up in my relationships. I could survive the heat without letting go. I could attach.

  On Christmas morning, I left Jeremy sleeping to meet my friend Jill for coffee. As carols blared through a packed Starbucks, Jill cried about being single with no plans except to visit her abusive father, and I teared up about the sexless state of my relationship. When I returned to Jeremy’s apartment, he called me back to bed. “Take off your jeans,” he said.

  Merry Christmas!

  I liked his initiative.

  There was a condom on the pillow next to him, and my starving body heaved into him. An exhilarating openness overtook my body. He thrust once, and an orgasm seized my whole body in a split second.

  I promptly burst into tears.

  “What is it?” he said.

  Underneath all the frustration and anger was an ocean of hurt and sadness. Waves of loneliness, just as Dr. Rosen had long ago predicted.

  “Why is it so hard?” I said it over and over. Why, why, why? Was it that hard to love me and my body? Why couldn’t we have this physical intimacy all the time? All those weeks I’d chased Jeremy’s love and attention reinforced my fear that something wrong with the way that I loved and how I wanted to be loved. The neglect I experienced confirmed my defective capacity for attachment. I’d picked a boyfriend who doled out unsustaining portions of love and attention. And I’d picked him because he was all I could tolerate, even though I wanted so much more. I was like an anorexic who continued to eat rice cakes and celery even though she dreamed of filet mignon and a buttered baked potato.

  As 2003 dawned, I sailed into my final semester of law school. Jeremy still needed more time apart than I did. He would occasionally shut down and roll over without any explanation, and his passion for his ASCII video games made me roll my eyes. But instead of breaking household items, I sent texts to Rory, Marty, and Carlos: I’m so lonely. He’s playing video games. Between those blackout times when he drew the curtain between us, we inched forward, like Dr. Rosen promised we would.

  But Dr. Rosen’s conflict of interest was no small thing. Was he working for my welfare or Jeremy’s?

  One Thursday night, Jeremy returned from his men’s group and asked if I would buy him a subscription to the Financial Times and a pair of running shoes. I could tell from the way he was asking—and because he’d just come from his group—that it was a prescription from Dr. Rosen.

  “How dare you set me up to be his sugar mama!” I screamed at Dr. Rosen during my next group session. “You’re supposed to be helping me, not using me to bankroll his hobbies.”

  “I am helping you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “What are your two biggest complaints about Jeremy?”

  I’d mentioned that Jeremy seemed stuck professionally. He was a member of Mensa and read Greek philosophers with names I could hardly pronounce, yet his job had no future and didn’t cover his bills. He hated his boss and felt like he was wasting his potential. He once mentioned going to law school. I’d also expressed concern about his sedentary lifestyle, which I was afraid would negatively impact our nascent sex life.

  “If he reads the Financial Times, might it help him focus his ambition? If he gets running shoes, he’ll be more active. Maybe you can run together and then have sex.”

  Dr. Rosen, the great puppeteer, yanked the strings. He’d gotten Jeremy to ask, and he would get me to pay. He knew I had the money because the week before I’d brought the seven-thousand-dollar salary advance check that Skadden sent me. Dr. Rosen suggested I pass it around the circle. When it got to him, he held it above his head: Baruch atah Adonai something-something.

  The rage that had brought me to my knees in group before Christmas surged—rage that Dr. Rosen couldn’t truly help me, so he settled for using me to help Jeremy—but I stayed in my chair, pursed my lips, and let it fester. I didn’t have words, just the sensation of anger heating my body.

  The following weekend, Jeremy started receiving a daily co
py of the pink-paged Financial Times, and we shopped for a pair of retro black New Balances. When I asked him if he wanted to run with me, he said, “Nah, you go ahead.”

  After he went after my money, it got worse. Dr. Rosen took aim at my vagina.

  One late-winter evening, Jeremy swiveled away from his computer game and declared that March would be “going down on Christie” month.

  “Where did this come from?” I said.

  “I just decided.”

  We’d been dating for months, and there’d been little oral action on either of our parts. Now I was looking forward to the gifts that March would bring my way. But on the last Thursday in February, Jeremy returned home from his group with an announcement: “Dr. Rosen thinks it’s a bad idea.”

  I dropped the law book I was holding. “Excuse me?”

  “He thinks I’m trying to blow up the relationship.”

  So now my therapist, who had promised to get me into healthy relationships, including sexual relationships, was actively working against my pleasure. I excused myself and took the phone into the bathroom. I dialed Dr. Rosen’s number, but got his voice mail. I hung up. No voice mails. I would gift him the full force of my anger in person.

  “I hear your anger.” Dr. Rosen answered with calm confidence when I confronted him in my morning group. I pounded fists on the arms of my chair. I called him a misogynist and a control freak.

  “I hear you experience me exerting control.”

  “You told my boyfriend not to go down on me! What the fuck?” He smiled like ooh, goody, she’s really mad! “Stop pulling the strings.”

  Dr. Rosen held up his hands and shook his head. “There’re no strings. I don’t control anyone’s tongue.”

  “You make suggestions to people who pay you to tell them what to do.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to fuck right off.” The anger was stuck halfway between my throat and my chest.

  More stuckness. In my chair, in my body, in my relationship with my boyfriend and my therapist.

  When Dr. Rosen put his hands together, it signaled the end of the session. I stood up with everyone else, but I didn’t recite the Serenity Prayer, and when everyone split off in twos to hug, I took turns embracing Patrice, Rory, Marty, Carlos, and the Colonel. But I turned my back on Dr. Rosen. I wouldn’t pretend everything was okay just because ninety minutes were up. I felt betrayed. His loyalty clearly belonged to Jeremy, and he brought all his Harvard expertise to bear in treating his sexual hangups. Dr. Rosen didn’t have my interests or sexual pleasure in mind at all.

  In the afternoon group, I refused to look at Dr. Rosen but explained to all the women how Dr. Rosen was interfering in my relationship by advising Jeremy not to pleasure me. Marnie narrowed her eyes and yelled at Dr. Rosen for using me to help Jeremy. Then she swiveled her chair toward me and scolded me for being so willing to starve in my relationship. “This isn’t all Dr. Rosen,” she said, pointing at me. “You’re going along with all of this.” I wasn’t upset that she was yelling at me—I could hear that she loved me and wanted more for me. I did too.

  22

  That seven-thousand-dollar salary advance from Skadden made me bold. All my law school friends were planning post–bar exam trips with their beloveds. I dreamed of international travel with my boyfriend. I dreamed of us in Italy, holding hands on medieval bridges and feeding each other bites of pizza margherita, surrounded by languid rivers and soaring cathedrals. I dreamed of us laughing, touching, exploring, and loving. The man holding my hand in my daydreams bore little resemblance to Jeremy. But I set my sights on the trip and wouldn’t back down. I’d worked hard in law school to earn a place at Skadden, which earned me seven thousand dollars in advance salary, and I worked hard in therapy to have a relationship. How hard could this be?

  Negotiations were tense from the start. I would suggest Tuscany or the Cinque Terre, and Jeremy would shrug his shoulders and sigh heavily.

  “We could do Greece, the birthplace of philosophy.”

  More shrugging.

  “Can’t we discuss this?”

  “You get to control this because you have the money.”

  “So you pick.” I threw up my hands. Honestly, I didn’t care where we went so long as it was together.

  After a long pause, he said, “Italy’s fine.”

  Both of my groups and Dr. Rosen advised me to focus on myself and plan the trip I wanted to take. “He’ll either come with you or he won’t,” Dr. Rosen said. So comforting. I pushed aside my brewing dread. I barreled ahead in the face of Jeremy’s resistance because being a young woman alone in Italy was not a story I was willing to inhabit. Solo travel was not one of my heart’s deep callings.

  * * *

  The temperature in Florence soared into the nineties, and BBC Radio reported seven heat-related deaths. Jeremy and I ate a breakfast of soft scrambled eggs, fresh strawberries, and toast with homemade orange marmalade on the sun-flooded second-floor terrace of the Hotel Silla. We moved our chairs to take cover under the shade of a fig tree. I could have stayed there all day, looking over the Arno River and listening to the pigeons coo, but I’d scheduled a bike tour that started at ten. The day before I’d taken a bus to Siena. By myself. Jeremy hadn’t wanted to face the heat.

  “Are you up for the bike tour?” I asked in my upbeat vacation voice, the voice of my heart holding on to hope.

  “You go ahead. I’m going to study.” He pulled out an LSAT workbook and his special black pen. He’d recently decided to apply to law school, which was an undeniably positive development given how much he hated his job. But his ironclad study schedule was not to be interrupted by the Florentine countryside, even though the LSAT was months away.

  “Is there something else you would rather do? I can cancel the bike thing—”

  “No, you go. I need to do a practice test.”

  Leading up to the trip, Dr. Rosen had encouraged me to accept Jeremy’s introversion. Stop trying to change him. I understood the importance of acceptance, but when Jeremy said he wouldn’t be joining me for the second day in a row, I wanted to flip the table and send his precious LSAT book flying into the cobblestone street. How small could I fold my desire so that Jeremy’s rebuffs no longer stung? How could I make myself want less from this man who said he loved me, but who seemed to have so little desire to spend time with me?

  He flicked his pen and started sketching out his answer to one of the questions.

  I kissed him on the top of his head and set out for the bike tour, fuming. Who pays for her boyfriend to come to Italy and ignore her? My heart thrummed its familiar rhythm: alone, alone, alone.

  A lanky expat named Sherry with a yoga teacher’s posture showed me my bike. “Where’s your partner?”

  “Oh, he’s—” Like the wife covering for an alcoholic husband who couldn’t get out of bed, I lied. “Sick.” I blamed the heat and jet lag.

  The twelve other people in our group arrived in pairs. Honeymooners, fathers and daughters, college roommates, a couple celebrating thirty years of marriage. Our first stop was an old stone farmhouse, where a sunburned groundskeeper served us a morning snack. I sat on an ancient stone bench eating the salty cheese and buttery quail egg surrounded by strangers who were snapping pictures of each other.

  “Want a picture?” a father from San Diego asked me. I wiped the sweat from my brow and stood by a fig tree, trying to look natural, even though I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Clasp them in front of me? Put them on my hips? Steady myself on the stone wall?

  The father whispered to his daughter, “It’s so brave to travel alone in a foreign country.” Believe me, buddy, I’m a lot of things, but brave comes well after desperate, foolish, lonely, depressed, sad, lost, humiliated, and starving.

  When the other bicyclists headed back to Florence at the end of the tour, I broke away, pedaling so fast my quads burned. After I returned my bike, I followed the narrow streets back to the hotel but then stopped half
way there. Why rush? Jeremy wasn’t pining for me. Would he even be happy to see me? I veered away from the hotel and toward the tourist strip by the Ponte Vecchio instead, where leather belts hung from stalls like slabs of meat. On a side street, I spotted a pay phone. I chucked coin after coin into the slot until I reached Chicago.

  Dr. Rosen’s voice mail picked up after three rings. At the beep, I let it out. “I just went on a bike tour, alone. Yesterday, I went to Siena, alone. I thought you said you could fix this—that you could fix me.” I sobbed into the grimy Italian pay phone until a computerized voice cut me off.

  After all the therapy sessions I’d sat through. The prescriptions I’d willingly done. The feeling of my feelings. Here I was, still so terribly alone. The loneliness was supposed to recede. I thought my progress in therapy would be a graph line that trended up and only up, but sitting alone in Florence, I felt that same desperate stirring I’d felt in Chicago before starting group. If I hadn’t changed yet, when would I? Maybe it wasn’t possible for me. I loved my group mates—and even Dr. Rosen—but they couldn’t come to Italy with me. Dr. Rosen was right: I’d tasted the company and fellowship of sitting in group week after week, and now the loneliness was darker and more devastating than it had ever been.

  When I returned to the room, Jeremy was asleep on the bed, his study guide tented on his stomach. He smiled when he opened his eyes. I lay down next to him, our bodies barely touching. In silence we watched the light fade from the window as the sun sank behind the Duomo.

  That night after dinner, he clicked off the light and lay down on his back. Would we have sex? I breathed deep and commanded my body not to want. I folded my desire like a tiny origami crane and tucked it away.