“Fine. We had phone sex.”
“While he was buying food for his wife and kids,” Patrice mentioned helpfully.
“He did this with Renee, you know,” Lorne said. “Did he tell you how special you are? That he loved you?”
I told myself the same things every woman in my position tells herself: I was different. But a braided knot in my stomach—one strand for Reed’s wife and each of the girls—tightened. I pressed my lips together and looked at Dr. Rosen, who prompted me to say more, so I described how I’d touched myself on the floor of my closet while Reed told me to imagine him inside me. He’d told me that he loved me, that he’d do anything for me. When I’d heard the cashier ask if he wanted paper or plastic, I tried to hang up, but he wanted me to stay on the line until he got into his car.
“Why the closet?” Max always with the relevant questions.
When the conversation with Reed had turned racy, I’d been standing in my closet looking for a sweater. Next thing I knew, I was on the floor, fingers between my legs, phone cradled to my ear, staring up at the hems of my pants and skirts.
Dr. Rosen spoke up. “Where better to hide sexuality than the closet? It’s an obvious choice.” Unable to meet his eyes, I stared at the outline of Dr. Rosen’s chin. He asked what I was feeling. There was only one answer: Shame. Shame. Shame. All the throbbing excitement turned to liquid shame, sloshing through my body.
“I’m a fucking cliché. I should be better than this. I’m moving backward.” A married recovering alcoholic with teenage children was a trapdoor in the space I’d previously labeled “the bottom.” There was no way Dr. Rosen could convince me that moving from single-but-not-in-love-with-me Alex to married Reed was progress in the right direction. Dr. Rosen insisted I was moving forward. “I want my own husband and my own children, not someone else’s! I want more than phone sex on my ballet flats.”
“What if this is exactly what you need to do to get where you want to go?”
“You can’t mean that.”
“When was the last time you let yourself be adored by a man who wanted to fuck you?”
“The Intern—”
Dr. Rosen shook his head.
“You should be warning me, raising a red fucking flag right under my nose.” It would never happen. Dr. Rosen was die-hard about letting us find our way without judging us. If I, as a so-called sexual anorexic, needed to have an affair with a married man to finally hit bottom with unavailable men, then so be it. To me, Reed was a category-six hurricane about to make landfall, and I wanted Dr. Rosen to pick me up and carry me to higher ground. But that wasn’t what Dr. Rosen did. He was a witness, not the National Guard.
Patrice balked at Dr. Rosen’s laissez-faire approach. “Maybe you shouldn’t talk to him outside of group, Christie.”
I nodded, knowing I should heed her advice, but positive I would stay the course, following the immortal words of Martin Luther: Be a sinner and sin boldly—though Luther wasn’t referring to getting off in the closet to the murmurs of a married group mate.
“How is this going to get me where I want to go?” I asked.
“We’ll find out.” Dr. Rosen shrugged—not an inspiring gesture as I headed toward inevitable devastation.
“Max, help,” I said.
Ever since our showdown, I sensed that I could trust Max more than anyone else in the circle. When you scream into someone’s face, you learn something about how solid they are. Max was a goddamn redwood whose roots ran deeper and wider than anyone else’s in the circle. If he told me to run from Reed, I’d consider lacing up my shoes.
“I think you have to play this out.” Though the serious look on Max’s face scared me, I also heard his blessing for my folly.
But Dr. Rosen was the authority figure, the doctor, the Harvard alum. He should make a decree or recommendation. “Isn’t it malpractice for you to bless this affair?”
“You think driving this underground and making it more secretive would be helpful for you? Come on.”
30
When my group mates considered Reed’s potential as a mate for me, they stopped at the solid-gold band on his left ring finger. I wasn’t ignoring that detail—even when he hinted that I’d be a great stepmother and that he could move into my new condo. Instead, I focused on how much better he was than the other men I’d dated. He told me he loved me every time I talked to him, so he was the anti-Alex. He didn’t care about religion, so he was the anti-intern. He answered my e-mails within thirty seconds and asked me to lunch every other day, so he was the anti-Jeremy. I rationalized that it was good practice to bask in Reed’s love and attention. Eventually, I would transfer my attention to a man who was just like him, except without that gold band.
As soon as Reed sat down in group on Tuesdays, he would extend his hand toward me. I’d held a lot of hands in group: Patrice, Marty, Nan, Emily, Mary, Marnie, Max, Grandma Maggie, Lorne, and Dr. Rosen. Sometimes those hands supported me, and sometimes my palm served as someone else’s ballast. But this was different. Holding Reed’s hand didn’t feel like a gesture of therapeutic support. It felt like foreplay.
The first time we held hands in group, Rory and Marty both gasped. Patrice sighed in frustration. Carlos whispered, “Girl, please.” Dr. Rosen made a show of seeing our hands together, fingers like a lattice to each other’s body, but said nothing. When I caught Dr. Rosen’s eye, the seed of fear and frustration would blossom into protest.
“What’s your plan, Dr. Rosen?” I held up my hand still knitted to Reed’s.
“Plan? I’m not God.”
“What about Reed’s wife? Don’t you care about her?”
“She’s not my patient. You are.”
He asked me what I was feeling. My answer was always the same: shame and hunger. Dr. Rosen asked me what I wanted. “Reed. I want Reed. Are you helping me? I came here for help with relationships—”
“I am helping you.”
“The sum total of your therapeutic advice for me is come here, feel feelings, and disclose everything?” As I confronted Dr. Rosen, Reed held my hand, his thumb tracing a circle across my palm.
“Yes.”
Did Dr. Rosen think that Reed and I should be together? Together together? I stared hard at Dr. Rosen—his unblinking eyes and straight neck, the slight hunch of his shoulders, his shoes planted on the floor. When he peered into the future, what did he see for me? A life with Reed and his girls? A life with someone like Reed, but whom I could have all to myself?
Patrice and Grandma Maggie begged me to cut it off. Lorne trotted out Renee’s history with Reed as a cautionary tale. Max continued to say I had to play this out and that the mysterious alchemy of the advanced group would somehow immunize me from total destruction. Rory, Marty, Carlos, and the Colonel looked to Dr. Rosen, who smiled inscrutably and held his palms open. In the elevator one Tuesday morning, Rory, in a quiet voice, said, “I don’t know what Dr. Rosen is doing with you.” Her eyes darted from my gaze in fear.
In late February, Steven threw a party for Clare’s birthday and invited all of our law school friends. When I stepped into the dark restaurant, I spotted Clare decked out in a silk top and skinny jeans. I felt like I’d just returned from a long trip to a faraway country. My relationship with Reed had so consumed me that I’d forgotten there was a big wide world beyond my three-inch BlackBerry screen, where I read and reread Reed’s messages while waiting for him to break from his family and call me.
All through dinner, my BlackBerry buzzed. Each time it vibrated, I pretended to search my purse for lip gloss or gum or a pen so I could read the message from Reed: I miss you. Two minutes later: When are you going to be home? Ten minutes later: I have a second to talk. Can you pick up? Where are you? Five minutes after that: We are driving home soon. I won’t be online for about an hour.
“Tater, what on earth are you expecting on that BlackBerry?” Clare cornered me in the line to the bathroom.
I told her I was involved with someone, and sh
e wanted to know why he wasn’t with me. My mouth froze in a smile as I realized with perfect clarity: Clare would never meet Reed. I was a secret, a mistress. Having to look Clare in the eye and tell her I was with a man who was currently at his niece’s ballet recital with his wife of nineteen years was a sickening jolt of reality. I mentioned that he was “sort of attached,” and she understood instantly.
“Are you in love with each other?”
I pulled out the Valentine’s Day card Reed gave me that I kept in my purse. She opened it and read aloud. “ ‘I love you, Reed.’ ”
“How’d you meet him?” Clare knew all about group therapy, but the truth stuck in my throat. The words vibrated with sheer insanity as I said, “Group therapy.”
“Well, he clearly loves you!” She waved the card in the air and hugged me again. I absorbed her genuine good cheer for my counterfeit relationship.
Hours later when I climbed into bed, my BlackBerry glowed red with a new PIN message. I typed in my passcode, but stopped myself from clicking on his message. The look on Clare’s face when I told her Reed was married made me want to curl my legs into my body and groan out loud. Reed was never going to leave Miranda and his girls. And if he did, would we even be attracted to each other anymore? How could I ever trust him given his history? And what if the real draw to the relationship was the illicitness, the secrecy, the current of shame that animated our connection? Wasn’t this covered in the most basic of Lifetime movies?
I hurled my BlackBerry into the closet. The pain of not connecting with Reed before falling asleep was physical—a stomach cramp that felt like something scrambled in my guts. Reed might love me, but he wasn’t available. Didn’t I want something real? How did screwing around with a married man make me a real person if the whole thing was a secret? I rocked back and forth. I stuffed a corner of my pillow in my mouth and bit down hard. The red blinking light on my BlackBerry flickered like a heartbeat.
31
I ducked into a Starbucks in Logan Square on a Friday night at six thirty. Commuters were rushing home, and darkness had chased the weak winter sun well below the horizon. Reed’s call was ten minutes late. My resolution from the night of Clare’s party had dissolved the next day, and we resumed our daily phone calls. There was also a weeknight trip to a suburban mall where I helped him shop for a winter coat—when the mall closed, we groped in his minivan by the light of the Cheesecake Factory. Ours was a very classy romance.
When my phone finally buzzed, I moved to a quiet stool away from the espresso machine. Reed’s breath swallowed his voice. It sounded like he was running down the street. I pictured him sprinting down Madison so he could get home. To his family. I want him to run to me. Something cold and sharp in his voice made me sit up taller. He always swore he had no secrets from me, that I could ask him anything. Now it took all my courage ask: “Where’re you going?”
“I’m taking the girls out for pizza.” Girls undoubtedly included his wife. The lump in my throat held the shape of her in that plum dress and those Hollywood highlights. “It’ll be an early night. We’re headed back to Iowa tomorrow.” Miranda’s father had recently been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. I was sure the diagnosis would bring Reed and his wife closer together, but so far, he reported she was shutting him out more than ever.
“Are you okay?” I rocked back and forth on the stool, one hand on the phone, one on my chest.
“Nervous about the trip.” That cold thing in his voice was sharper still.
“I’m here if you need me—” The espresso machine grinded and whirred, drowning out all other sounds.
“I’ve got to go.”
For the first time ever, he hung up without saying I love you. The noisy Starbucks counter spun in my vision as genuine panic set it. I’d felt this before. Reed was loosening his grip on me. Now he would slide under the water and disappear, just like all the others, just as I always knew he would.
Reed’s PIN message popped up just after eleven that night. Sorry, he wrote.
I wasn’t about to interrogate him. I was the anti-Miranda—never suspicious, never prying, never difficult. I wrote back: No need to apologize! I love you! Let’s talk tomorrow. I certainly didn’t ask why it took four hours to eat pizza “with the girls.”
“I lied to you.” It was six the next morning. I’d been up since four, wandering around my apartment and swigging skim milk from the carton, trying to calm my stomach.
“Dude, I already know about the wife and kids.” I forced a laugh; he was silent.
“Last night, Miranda and I went out for our”—I sucked in my breath, mouthing the word before he said it—“anniversary.”
I pressed my back against my bedroom wall and slid down.
Anniversary. Such a beautiful word, now turned bitter in my mouth. The truth of his lie settled in my belly. My body craved expulsion: vomit, tears, screaming. But I sat against the wall, my body perpendicular to my legs.
He hadn’t said a word about his anniversary in group. In all the therapy sessions we sat through together—holding hands—I got the impression that there was insufficient civility between Reed and Miranda to sustain them through a meal without the girls. Now I couldn’t get the picture of them sitting down to fillets and flourless chocolate cake out of my head. I saw candlelight, apologetic caresses, and a softening of all the hard hurt between them.
I shook and shook and shook.
“I love you. Please don’t doubt I love you,” Reed pleaded. “Say something. Please.”
“This is boring.” I’d been smart enough to know we’d never last but dumb enough to hope for a different ending.
Still gripping the phone, I crawled to the bathroom and peered over the toilet seat, a comforting view I’d known so well as a teenager. Nothing came out because I hadn’t been able to eat any dinner, unlike Reed, who’d had a lovely anniversary meal with his wife of twenty years.
“I’m hanging up now.” I flipped my phone shut and threw it as hard I could against the bathroom mirror. It clattered to a stop by the bathtub. I turned off my BlackBerry and locked it in the trunk of my car.
No more PIN messages.
No more phone sex.
No more secret thrills.
The fury in my body—at myself, at Reed, at Dr. Rosen for calling this “progress”—made it impossible to stand still. I was also mad at Max for encouraging me to “play this out.” At Rory, Patrice, and Grandma Maggie for being right all along. I laced up my running shoes and ran ten miles on the Lake. I pounded past groups of runners and clumps of tourists taking pictures of Navy Pier. I pulled my hat low over my brow and didn’t make eye contact with a soul. My music was set to the highest volume, and I let it drown every thought about Reed and what a fool I was. When I was done, I still felt pumped and jittery. I could have run ten more miles. I could have run until I shredded every muscle in my legs, scorched my lungs, and made bloody stumps of my toes.
But what I really needed was to cry.
I sat through a 12-step meeting without hearing or saying a single word. Several people approached me afterward asking if I was okay, and I shook my head no. I leaned into the white of my knuckles. No, I’m not okay.
I sat in my car after the meeting, unsure where to drive. Sunlight streamed in on all sides, and laughing DePaul students and clusters of suburban tourists wandered down the street. The world beyond my car was too noisy and scary.
I called Patrice. “I’ve shut off my BlackBerry. I’m done.”
“I’ve been so worried about you. You shouldn’t be alone right now.”
I drove to Lorne’s house and cried into his throw pillows and fought the urge to unlock my trunk and grab my BlackBerry to check in with Reed. Lorne’s wife, Renee, patted my head, telling of the nights she too cried over Reed once she realized he would never leave his wife. Lorne and Renee’s son, Roman, toddled on the floor at my feet, making sweet baby sounds.
The crush of grief worked me over, and I kept landing on the absu
rd notion that I was unfairly abandoning him. “His father-in-law is dying. Maybe I should break up with him this summer.”
Lorne and Renee shook their heads.
“Dr. Rosen is going to be so proud of you,” Lorne said. Tears sprung to my eyes. What must Dr. Rosen have thought as he watched me holding hands with Reed, describing our silly trip to the mall, our closeted sex life? He’d kept a poker face all these weeks in group, but surely he shook his head back in his office, wondering when his fool of a patient would come to her senses.
“I have an idea. Follow me.” Renee led me to her desk and sat me before her computer. She pressed a few keys, and the screen filled with the smiling faces of a young couple. In the background, blurry images of people holding sparklers surrounded the couple. The words on the screen read, Discover where Jewish relationships begin. Start browsing now.
“JDate?”
“These guys are single—”
“And looking for Jewish women. I’m literally named after Christ.”
“Trust me. They’re going to love you. We’ll call you ‘Texas Girl.’ Once they meet you, they won’t care if you’re a nun.”
I hesitated, but she gave me a look: Are you willing or not? She’d built a happy life with Lorne, a nice Jewish boy, shortly after she broke off her relationship with Reed. Now she had a beautiful son, throw pillows, and farm-fresh eggs in her fridge. She seemed so sure this could work for me. On day one of treatment, Dr. Rosen suggested I could get well if I let him and the group into my decisions. Surely, this counted as not “going it alone.”
Renee coached me through the questions on the profile form. No, I was not Ashkenazi. No, I didn’t attend shul every week. Renee insisted I check the box indicating I kept kosher because I hated ham. I had sparse hope that the men on JDate would embrace me, but Renee had me laughing. She sent me home with leftover challah from their Shabbat dinner. “Shalom,” I said as I shut the door behind me.
Lakeshore Drive heading downtown from the north side on a clear, late-winter night is one of the most gorgeous scenes imaginable—the stony Drake Hotel looms like a castle and the Hancock building grazes the stars. As messed up as I was about Reed, I couldn’t look at the city and feel anything other than awe. It was my third night as an aspiring Jewess on JDate, and I was driving home from a recovery meeting. I knew my apartment would be cold and empty, but I preferred the harsh punch of loneliness to the electric, buzzy instability of trying to build a life around Reed. So far I hadn’t broken any dishes or palmed a letter opener.
Group Page 21
