RESOLUTELY, DAY AFTER DAY, I follow the regimen. Now I wake moments before six and am out of bed before Nancy knocks on the door. With determined steps I circle the hospital for twenty minutes. Eat what’s placed on my plate. Attend group therapy every day. Individual sessions with Ted. Our group plans outings to the High Museum of Art and ZooAtlanta. We’re driven to 12-Step groups to attend meetings of Overeaters Anonymous and Sex Addicts Anonymous. We write out our First Steps in the Workbook.
ART GROUP
We’re to cut photographs from magazines that represent our ideal futures.
In a National Geographic I find a scene of a distant mountain. I want to transport myself into the print. Snow, stillness, serenity. Maybe this is the answer. I’ll journey to a distant land where I’ll never have to think or feel, where no one, nothing, not even a man could find me, touch me, tempt me. Live alone on that isolated mountaintop suspended in cold, empty air. A state of nothingness: I won’t be drunk; nor will I have to struggle so hard to be sober.
Yet Ted says addicts live in just such extremes. In a confusion of people or total isolation. All or nothing. Gorging or abstaining. Addicted to food, addicted to starvation. Wanting every man or no man. Accomplishing everything—a seeming total success—or accomplishing little or nothing, a failure. The word moderation, Ted has told me, isn’t part of an addict’s vocabulary.
There must be a different way….
I think about another picture I saw in a magazine several years ago. It was a photograph of the feminist Gloria Steinem, in an article about Ms. magazine, and her independent life without a man. I was in awe. Now I wonder: maybe I want what she has. Even as I have no idea how to obtain it.
Yet I have held jobs, various professional positions. I’ve worked on Capitol Hill for a congressman and two different senators. After I left Washington I wrote and edited a newsletter for a historical preservation organization. I worked for a zoological society. A few years ago I even went back to school to earn a master of fine arts degree in creative writing.
At my jobs I dressed in business clothes and acted professionally. No co-worker ever guessed the secret life I led. I always showed up on time. I received praise for my job performance and skills. Yet (unlike Gloria Steinem) the job, the education, the degree—life—were never as important or as interesting to me as a man.
After we finish cutting out pictures of our ideal futures, we tape them to the walls of the lounge. There are photos of expensive houses. Happy families eating breakfast together, large bowls of Wheaties. A couple on a sailboat in the tropics. An ad for Publishers Clearinghouse, a van stopping at a house offering champagne, balloons, ten million dollars. Drunk on money, sun, fun. We still struggle to discover what we really need or want.
BODY IMAGE GROUP
I lie on the floor in the group room, my arms by my sides, my legs flat, my eyes closed. Layer by layer, strip by strip, Linda places papier-mâché across my face, forming a mold. I’m soothed and comforted, hidden behind this tangible mask. Linda’s fingers brush my forehead, chin, the bridge of my nose. Even though my mouth isn’t covered, I don’t speak. The room is quiet. All the women, partnered, surround me. I feel as if I’m disappearing behind gluey strips of paper.
As the paper and glue harden, Nancy, the nurse, talks about masks. She wants us to think of our addiction and the different masks we wear that keep our true selves hidden. Her voice is steady, direct, clear.
When Linda is finished, I grip the sides of the mask and pull. It tugs at my skin. Like the addict mask, more difficult to remove than it seems. I place it on the floor in front of me. Of course, it doesn’t really look like me, but still I stare at this mold in the shape of my face. I trace a finger around the eyes, the mouth.
Nancy turns to each of us, asking: What do you see? What do people see when they look at your face? What do you want them to notice?
The masks of the addict are varied. We switch to an addict “face” as easily as we change expression. I am all pretense, a palimpsest, like these strips of papier-mâché. I hide beneath layer after layer of lies, secrets, different lives: the Rainbow Motel image I show Rick; the pretend-I’m-normal mask I show friends; the pretend-I’m-professional mask I’ve shown co-workers; the pretend-I’m-a-wife mask I show Andrew.
This exercise is a ritual. Masks suffocate. Remove the layers. Remove the masks. The false personas. Remove the addiction.
I look at Nancy. Gray threads her dark hair. Her gaze is no-nonsense. Direct. She wears a simple gold wedding band on her left hand. I imagine she has cookouts on Labor Day and the Fourth of July. She probably plans Thanksgiving dinner weeks in advance. I want to ask her how she does this. I want to ask her what she and her husband talk about over dinner every night. Why does nothing lure her out of her house after midnight? How is she brave enough to be pale and ordinary?
Later in the day Nancy brings a mirror and makeup into the group room. She hands out lip gloss, mascara, blush, and teaches us to apply makeup for ourselves, not for men. She instructs us to look at ourselves in the mirror with our own eyes, without wondering what a man sees. I open a tube of Raspberry Glacé. Just the scent, the color, the syllables, remind me of…everything I’m supposed to forget.
“Pretend you’re walking down the beach, alone, wearing lipstick,” she says to me. “Just hold that image, keep thinking it, over and over. You’re on the beach. You’re alone.”
Imprint my mind with new images, colors, scents, sights. A new me.
And for an hour or more I can do this. But tonight Gabriel is to drive us to a 12-Step group. Men.
At dinner, I place food in my mouth carefully, so as not to disturb the Raspberry Glacé.
In a hospital van, Gabriel drives us to a meeting of Sex Addicts Anonymous—SAA—to get sponsors, contacts and phone numbers, a schedule of meetings, so we will be prepared when we leave the hospital. Part of the search, too, is for a Higher Power, a spiritual force stronger than the addiction.
A man stands at the front of a meeting room in the basement of a church explaining the program: it is for men and women who want to recover from their own sexual addiction, as well as offer their experience, strength, and hope to help others recover. It is up to us, individually, to decide how to express our sexuality in ways that will not hurt us mentally, physically, spiritually.
When the man finishes speaking, we split into groups for check-in, pulling metal chairs into two circles. In this room with men, my mask with raspberry lips slips into place. I must—I glance around the room—I must pull my chair next to…which man? You, Man…in the seersucker suit. I sit next to you. I want to meet you, you must notice me, even in baggy shorts and ripped T-shirt.
“My name is Ed, and I’m a sex addict.”
“Hi, Ed,” we intone.
Ed, in a gray suit and bow tie….
It is early September, still warm in Georgia. The room feels close and still. There is no air-conditioning, just a fan, and I think I smell men sweating. It reminds me of Gabriel sweating, that night he woke me.
“…Then when I went out of town on business,” Ed is saying, “I deliberately didn’t put the chain lock on the door of my hotel room. So the next morning, when the maid came to clean, I made sure I was in the bathroom with only a towel. Of course, I acted surprised and embarrassed. But meanwhile, my addict got real jazzed when she saw me like that. Then I masturbated.
“Except now…” Ed straightens his bow tie. “I can’t believe I did it. I feel like one of those sleazy flashers in a trench coat. I want to pretend, since I’m a business executive, that I’m not like that. But I am.”
When he stops speaking, throats clear, chairs creak.
“Hi, I’m Ginger.” Ginger’s eyes, with the hard glitter of addiction, suggest she hasn’t been in recovery long. “I feel like I’m addicted to everything,” she says. A small laugh of recognition ripples through the group. “For one thing, I’m addicted to husbands. I’ve had four. But I’m also addicted to money, television, talking on the phone, gossip. Every time a friend calls to tell me about a problem she’s having, or whatever, all I can think of, even while she’s still talking, is telling someone else her news. And I know it’s costing me friendships. But I can’t stop.
“I also do this strange thing. It’s hard to explain—but like when I pass that S & M Auto Supply place up on the highway, I always think of sadomasochism. Or, you know all those Georgia license plates that have that prefix ‘SFX’? I always think of ‘SEX’ when I see them. Stuff like that. Honestly, about all I’m not addicted to are broccoli and spirituality.”
She pauses. The hardness in her eyes softens. Then she talks about her childhood, how her addiction began because her mother used to hit her. To numb out she became compulsive, about small stuff at first. “Like all day at school I’d obsess about what kind of candy to buy on my way home, licorice or Hershey’s kisses. Later, when I got older, I’d lie in bed—not just masturbating—but kind of stroking myself to feel better. This whole addiction just began as comfort.”
“Hi, my name is Jim and I’m a recovering sex addict.”
Jim…the man I sit beside in the seersucker suit and white shirt, open at the collar, and gold wire-rimmed glasses. His brown hair is short, his nose thin and straight, his eyes pale green, the color of limes.
“I’m still acting out,” he says. “Well, I’m not actually having sex, but I’m still into crazy thinking. Yesterday, I was stopped at a traffic light, and there was this girl in a red Camaro in the next lane. And it’s like I imagined smiling at her and having sex with her, and that she would love having sex with me. I mean, just like that.” He snaps his fingers. “I got so into this thing, just in one minute or so at the stoplight, that I even imagined what it would be like marrying her. And the marriage ceremony. Her wedding dress. My tux.
“But then the light turned green. She turned left and I went straight ahead and I actually missed her. I wanted to follow her. It didn’t matter where she was driving, where she was going, whether she was already married or not. I couldn’t get her out of my head. I still miss her.” He pauses. “Guess that’s all,” he says. “Pass it on.”
Jim…in a gray tux. I am in ivory lace and satin buttons. I clasp a bouquet of white roses and walk down the aisle on a velvet runner. To Jim. Where he waits. For me….
“My turn. I’m Don and I guess I’m a sex addict.
“My wife had a baby about thirteen months ago and I can’t stand having sex with her anymore.” Don’s voice, a monotone, sounds disconnected from the words. “I can’t even look at her anymore, you know, at her body. I don’t understand—it disgusts me. And I feel so guilty.” In shame, he stares at his feet.
“But my mother—I guess this’s the really guilty part—used to come and kiss me good night wearing this sheer nightgown. She smelled so good. And she sat on my bed and held my shoulders and kissed me on the mouth. Just quick-like. But still. After she left, I’d think about her and sometimes my thoughts were scary. I’d kind of fantasize about her while I touched myself. I know how disgusting that sounds—but I did. I thought I was bad and perverted. I was always so ashamed. So now, just thinking about my wife—who’s a mother—all this shame comes back up. You know—since my wife’s a mother now, she reminds me of my own.”
“I’m Vicki. I’ve been sober two years. And it’s so great to see the real world, finally. I’m dating a guy, three months, and we haven’t had sex yet. We’re really trying to get to know each other as friends first. Learn to talk and be honest with our feelings. So far it’s working. I’m surprised. I always told myself the only way to get close to a man was with sex. But I never knew any of those men the way I know this boyfriend.”
Vicki crosses her legs. Her panty hose are without runs or snags, nor do they bag around her ankles. The part through her short hair is straight, and her white cotton blouse is crisp, without wrinkles. “And I planted a small oak tree in my backyard,” she continues. “As a Higher Power. I want to feel its energy as we both grow together.”
Several people in the group glare at Vicki as she speaks, at her upbeat, cheery recovery.
“Hi, my name is Linda, and I’m a love addict. Or a codependent sex addict. Or a romance addict.” She smiles. “Or all of the above.”
I’m surprised that Linda, in a lavender gypsy dress, has chosen to speak.
“I feel like giving up,” she says. She opens her purse and removes a tissue. “My two children are anorexic. My husband is addicted to prescription drugs, but since he’s a respected doctor, we all pretend it’s not a problem. So he blames me for everything wrong in our family. And I don’t know, maybe he’s right.” She leans forward and stares at the floor, the tissue grasped in her hands.
“I lost my job because my boss’s wife found out I was fucking her husband,” Linda continues. “We’ve been having an affair for over a year. I’ve only ever even had two or so affairs, but I feel like the original Velcro woman. I mean, I can’t ever break up with the man or let go. And this man, my former boss, he’ll never leave his wife, but I don’t want to lose him. I love him. And I know how crazy that sounds, but I don’t think I can live without him.
“I mean, I know, my therapist tells me, I just ‘use’ him like a distraction to numb out. To avoid dealing with the fact that my marriage and my life are a mess. Sometimes—this sounds awful—but I’d stay late at work to be with him, rather than go home and fix dinner for my kids. This’s all so scary. I really need help. I guess I need a sponsor, too. And some phone numbers for when I get out of the hospital. After the meeting if anyone wants to give me some. Thanks.”
I glance at my watch. A few minutes before nine. Almost time for the meeting to end.
A man with red hair and a blue tie doesn’t introduce himself. He can barely speak. We all stop fidgeting and shuffling, our eyes riveted to his face. “I’ve lost my family,” he whispers. “My wife. She took our son and moved out.” He takes a deep breath and presses his palms to the sides of his face. “I masturbate. That’s what I—I do. And I…did this awful thing. I videotaped it. And my son. He’s seven. I left the tape lying around. He…”
The man stops speaking. No one else claims time. It is like a moment of silence for a wounded son, a wounded father, a wounded family, a wounded life.
With all of us—I know—it’s only when we’re high that we feel indestructible. Here, now, we know we’re not. Here, now, we know we eat ourselves to death. Starve ourselves to death. Drink ourselves to death. Fuck ourselves to death. Slow suicide. Sexual suicide. Suicide of the soul. Waiting for the body to follow.
I am dizzy with the words of everyone’s story—even though I had not intended to listen to anyone. I had believed that our secret words would sound like a wind you can’t hear, gusting along deserted pathways of understanding, because the addict dwells in no terrain of living language.
Except. I glance at the man with the red hair and the blue tie. I try to imagine his son. I try to imagine all the abandoned wives, children, husbands, lovers.
I try to imagine all the cool glass hearts. I try to imagine the sound of glass cracking. As much as before, at the beginning of the meeting, I didn’t want to speak, now I think maybe I should say something—even one sentence.
Except, I want my own heart to remain cool and rigid.
I lean my elbows on my knees, clasp my hands together, and break out in a sweat.
Gabriel, I need to speak your name. I can’t say your name. I can’t even say my own name. I can’t explain who I am.
Except. I am Linda and the man with whom she had the affair. I am Jim as well as the girl in the red Camaro.
“There’s this man,” I finally whisper. I stare at my untied shoelaces. I hear the fan whirring. “We haven’t had sex. So far we’ve just talked. I don’t know if he’s dangerous. He seems so, well, quiet.” And right now he’s waiting outside in the van. All I really want is for this meeting to end so I can see him. “I keep thinking,” I add, “hoping…I want him to be who he seems. But I don’t know if he is. I don’t know if I am. I don’t even know what I need.” I need him. I need to sit in the van beside him. No: I want to be with him in his silver truck. “Maybe I just need to be here. Thanks.”
Chairs are pushed back as the meeting ends. Jim leans close to me. I’m afraid to look at him. I’m afraid all I’ll need is one nanosecond in which to fall madly in love with him. I do not release my clasped hands, scared my addictwoman will brush a hand along his shoulder. If I hear his voice I might touch him. I might even tell him I am the girl in the red Camaro.
“That guy you were talking about…” His voice is low. I barely hear him above the chatter of voices. I hold my breath as he speaks. I don’t want to smell his cologne, scared I’ll remember it forever. “Be careful,” he says. “I’ve come on to women just by talking. They don’t know I got this act. It’s all an act. Years ago I realized there’re lots of women I could seduce better with romantic fantasies than by serious sexual stuff. It’s all a line. Even if it sounds like it isn’t. Maybe especially if it sounds like it isn’t.”
A line of sweat has broken out above his lip. I grip my hands tighter. How easily I could touch that lip, wipe that sweat away with my finger. “Thank you,” I say. “Thank you for telling me.”
I stand to follow the other women from my unit up the stairs to the van—to Gabriel.
“Wait.”
Jim stands a few steps behind me. He pushes at his wire-rimmed glasses as if they’ve slipped down the bridge of his nose. “Don’t take this wrong. You know, I don’t know if we’re even supposed to be talking or anything. I haven’t been coming here very long. But there’s one other thing I want to say, about that man you mentioned.” I nod. “I know you deserve better than him.”
I’m unable to answer. I know if I talk with him one moment longer I will say: You, Jim, could be better than him. I know if I look at him one moment longer, I will follow him home.
When I return to my room after the SAA meeting, Jill stands in the middle of the floor surrounded by her three suitcases. Her face is raw and blotched as if permanently discolored by too much makeup. Her clothes hang loose on her body, which, while not frail, seems hollow, as if it’s been scoured. Her smile, when she sees me, is evasive, shy, almost embarrassed. Odd I didn’t notice this before she left: her front teeth are gray. Bulimic gray. Tarnished from years of vomit.
“I broke one of my damn fingernails,” she says, picking at it. Her voice sounds hoarse from cigarette smoke and damp bars. “It made me so mad.”
“That’s why you came back?”
“Yeah, right. Work through the fucking anger.” Lifting one foot at a time, she kicks her high-heeled shoes across the floor.
I sink onto my bed, smiling, yet not sure whether I’m pleased to see her or not.
Nancy comes in and gives Jill a paper cup for a urine specimen.
“What you check for in this place, anyway?” Jill says. “Alcohol? Drugs? Traces of semen? You do a fat count? See if I’ve been bingeing on doughnuts?”
“Just do it,” Nancy says. “I’m going to check your things.”
Jill goes to the bathroom and Nancy unzips each of Jill’s suitcases. She removes shirts, underwear, slips, slacks, dresses. She unfastens each cosmetics bag and flips open compacts and tubes of lipstick. She inhales containers of body lotion and perfume. She searches pockets, rolls socks inside out, and slips her hand into the toe of each shoe.
She checks for contraband—not just alcohol or drugs. She checks for cookie crumbs and sticks of gum. We are not allowed Lifesavers or breath mints. No cigarettes, laxatives, aspirin, vitamins, antacids, mouthwash. Anything that can be placed in our mouths—as a “drug”—except toothpaste, is forbidden. And we’re only allowed to use toothpaste sparingly. One lone strawberry Lifesaver, sewn into the hem of a dress like a ruby, would be confiscated and flushed down the toilet.
Jill seems to be clean. She has not hidden illegal cough drops in her deepest shirt pocket or a stick of gum in the toe of a shoe. But even though they discovered my razor blade, how easily I slipped Forrest’s maroon scarf onto the unit in my suitcase (like an alcoholic smuggling scotch into detox), because no one knew the scarf was a drug.
Jill returns and hands the cup to Nancy, who leaves. From Jill’s desk drawer I remove her cards and photos and hold up the photo of the little girl in the Brownie uniform, her hair in pigtails, her front tooth missing. “Cute kid,” I say.
She takes it from me and tosses it on the desk, face down.
“Christ, Jill. I say, ‘Cute kid.’ You say, ‘Thank you.’ Or, ‘That’s my sister in first grade.’ Or—”
“Jesse’s only my kid sister.”
I sit back down on my bed and bunch the pillow against my stomach. “Oh. Where does she live?”
“Who knows? Who cares?” I suspect that while she may not know where her sister is, she does care. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t much want to talk about anything.”
“Gosh, it’s really great having you back,” I say. “Why’d you even bother?”
“Because I knew how much you all must’ve missed me.” She arranges her mirror and makeup on the desk. “Didn’t you try calling?” She pauses, looks up.
She wants to know whether I called that wrong number she gave me. “No,” I lie, my face blank. “Figure we didn’t have much to say.”
All the features on her face are still. I almost think she’s disappointed—though she’d never admit it. And in this quiet moment, I think it might have been a mistake to lie. But I don’t want to be vulnerable, am too scared to tell the truth. We both are.
“So—guess it didn’t go so great out there,” I say, changing the subject.
She turns her back to me and switches on the pink mirror lights. “Decided my Higher Power was the CEO of Anheuser-Busch. You know—bars, hot-sheet motels. Another count-to-ten-and-I’m-gone relationship.”
“Good career move.”
“Yeah, well, now that I’m back and have to deal with that Nancy…” She sighs. “Drunk off my ass just feels so much better than sober.”
“That’s because ‘drunk’ doesn’t have any real feelings, period.”
“Reality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, either. Who can stay sober forever?” She reapplies mascara and eyeliner. “I mean, when I stop drinking I start eating. When I stop eating I start fucking. Or I feel like buying every pair of shoes in Macy’s.” She smooths crimson gloss across her lips, then smiles at herself in the mirror.
That smile. Those teeth. “Or you vomit it all up,” I say.
Her lips compress. The corners of her eyes narrow. Yet her mirrored gaze remains latched on mine—not wanting me to know I touched her core of shame. Not men. Not sex. Not alcohol. Rather, shadowy teeth that look like the smudge of an eraser.
She blinks. The blink is silent, of course, yet seems percussive—yes, like shame.
“So what?” she says. “It’s a compromise.”
“Get to have your cake and not eat it, too.”
She jams her feet back in her heels and heads toward the door.
“Where you going?” It’s after ten.
“Thought I’d see if Gabriel’s around.”
No. Don’t go. You can’t talk to him. I talk to him. He’s my compromise. Don’t you want to talk to me?
“Thought I’d see if he missed me,” she adds.
But he can’t have missed her. How can he want her with her gray teeth?
She leaves the room. Again, I pick up the photograph of Jesse, her sister. My sister, Kiki, who knows where I am, here in the hospital, hasn’t called to see how I am…but I want to believe she cares for me, too, even though it’s so difficult for her—always—to show it.
Back when we both lived in Boston I remember one day, during the period when I was still seeing Forrest, sitting on the couch in her living room. Kiki, two years older than I, waits for her husband to return from the science lab where he’s working on a Ph.D. They have tickets for a concert; I am to baby-sit my nephew, napping in the next room. I give my sister a belated Christmas present. She takes the package and drops it on the kitchen counter, saying she’ll open it later. The present is a pair of silver earrings with small lapis lazuli stones. Yet I know that this gift, like all others, scares her, as if binding her in a small commitment to the giver. And I give presents to her still hoping, after all these years, I will discover the one perfect gift that will bind her to me, even if for just a moment.
I timed my arrival to coincide with a radio program on which Forrest is being interviewed. His voice is low background music to Kiki rustling around the rooms. She washes dishes, hangs up clothes, tosses away magazines, letters, papers—hiding evidence that any one specific person lives in her house. I see no teething rings, no rattles or stuffed animals, no baby pictures, no afghans, no man’s slippers or ties or belts. No evidence of baby, husband, wife, or mother. My sister discards even the smallest amount of clutter; to her, life is clutter.
Even as the rooms are spotless, there is no congruent whole. Paintings and prints are haphazardly placed. A chair here, a throw rug there, no cozy corner where you could curl up and read a book.
The room is too chilly for concentration on a book.
I would ask my sister to turn up the heat except I know she’ll refuse. Nor do I tell her I’m cold. I wouldn’t want her to know I’m uncomfortable, for I believe this would please her. It would mean she is tougher, sturdier, healthier than I am.
Forrest, his voice distant and full of static, expresses concern that Communist sympathizers are infiltrating the Vietnam peace movement, the student protesters. I want to tell my sister why I listen to him. I also want to tell her how our father looked at me, as if I were a stranger, when I was home during Christmas vacation. But even if she stopped rushing around the house long enough to sit beside me, I wouldn’t be able to speak to her. She slides through all conversations with light, airy phrases, weightless, almost slick. She can’t hear my words; nor does she speak words that stick.
We never talk about our childhoods, either, almost as if we were raised in separate families, hybrid sisters. In a way we are. I have only vague memories of her growing up. She was always out with friends—or just out. To her, anywhere else was better than home. And while it was true, that anywhere else was better, still, I always wanted to stop her, so she’d stay home with me. I wanted to be weighted by a sister’s presence. Do you want to play a card game? Do you want me to rub your back?—I always asked—trying to delay her departure before she slammed out the door. Her passage through our childhoods was thin, as thin as her body, not wanting anyone to see her, notice her, hold on to her.
I barely listen to Forrest’s interview. Whether Communists are in the peace movement or not doesn’t interest me. I listen because, regardless of what he says, I want to believe he speaks only to me, that I am the sole recipient of his voice, and that I will be able to decode a secret message. In his tone, in pauses between sentences and thoughts, I know he thinks of me, even as he speaks of something else.
Kiki, efficiently clasping her son in one arm, a high chair in the opposite hand, his security blanket tucked in the crook of her elbow, drops the chair in the middle of the room and deposits him onto the seat. She puts his frayed blue blanket on the tray. Quickly he clasps it and sticks a corner of it in his mouth, along with his thumb. He has large solemn blue-gray eyes, still slightly unfocused and drowsy from his nap.
“What’re you listening to that shit for?” she says. “What an idiot—people who see Communists under beds.”
I’ve always thought of her as my beautiful sister, the beautiful sister, with light blue eyes, dark eyebrows, delicate nose, full lips. She needs no ornamentation and wears jeans, a coarsely knit pullover sweater, loafers, and thick socks. A narrow wedding band. Her long hair is in a loose bun. While she is skinny, she is not frail, her frame a sturdy scaffold that will not quake or be disturbed either by tears or by unbridled joy.
I shrug. “He’s a friend.”
“Him?” She nods toward the radio, now slightly impressed that I know someone being interviewed, whether he’s an idiot or not. “How?”
“I was kind of working for him for a while.”
“What for? You don’t need money.”
“Kind of as a friend.”
Now I have her attention. She pauses in the doorway between the living room and kitchen. “No kidding,” she says, her expression coolly nuanced.
Her gaze lingers on my face, possibly the longest I have ever been imprinted onto her consciousness. Usually when we speak, she either glances just past my head or else busies herself with ironing or washing dishes. Now, I can tell, she tries to determine whether I mean the word friend literally or euphemistically. She also tries to determine, I suspect, who this sister is who might attract a man important enough to be interviewed on the radio. If I am anything at all to her, I am only a younger sister who’s murky and secretive. While she would never glimpse my film noir image, she has no other image, either. In fact, now I wish she would ask me what I mean by the word friend. I want her, my older sister, to warn me about married men, older men, urge me to stay away from a man who would have sex with a girl young enough to be his daughter.
“I think, maybe, I kind of like him,” I whisper. “Maybe a lot. But he’s kind of married.”
“Live it up while it lasts,” she says. “But don’t get your hopes up. He’ll never leave his wife for you.”
I watch my nephew suck the corner of his blanket.
A car horn honks. Kiki grabs a jacket, tells me to feed him a jar of strained apricots.
Forrest’s interview is over. I switch off the radio and turn the heat up to seventy degrees. I pull my nephew’s high chair next to the kitchen window and sit in front of him. I open the jar of apricots. I dip a small silver spoon into it and nudge it against his lips. A corner of his blanket remains gripped in his fist. I’ve never heard him cry, as if he already knows no one is listening. He is quiet, seems tentative, as if waiting for something. Whatever it is, I believe he will have to wait a long time.
I feel quiet and tentative in his presence myself. I hold him, burp him, gently place him back in his crib, worried he’ll break. Even in the imbricated layers of family, generations, inheritances, I worry the layers won’t protect him; in fact, he should be protected from these layers. I want to protect him.
In a family scrapbook is a photograph taken at the opening of my father’s bank in New Jersey. We are all fashionably dressed in fall outfits, my mother and sister wearing new hats. My father stands between my mother and me, his arm around me, his hand clamped on my elbow. I stare straight into the camera, smiling. No one notices the slight strain that begins in my shoulders and twists down my body, as if my body senses a faint danger along the spine. My mother looks neither at the camera nor at her family, apparently not sure of her place in the family or in the world. My sister stands to my mother’s right, an empty space between her and the rest of her family, clumped together. She smirks: she has escaped this family. Only my father stands erect, his shoulders relaxed, his smile thin but proud, proud of his family he has created.
I pick up the photograph of Jill’s sister one last time. I wonder what family secrets this small girl has, what she would say if she were brave enough to step from this photograph and speak.
10:40. Jill hasn’t returned yet. I wonder if she found Gabriel in the lounge. I wonder what they are doing. I wonder what Gabriel is doing. Or Jim, home now, slowly removing his seersucker suit.…
No. Stop these thoughts. Right now. Wait.
Men have always pulsed through my mind, unceasing. But now, this eighth day in the hospital, there are thin units of time during breakfast, say, or group therapy, or spirituality, art therapy, game time (addicts don’t know how to relax, so we’re instructed to play cards or board games), when the static of fantasies diminishes.
Like the other day, playing Monopoly, I land on Boardwalk, buy it, build hotels, collect money, and, in the joy of winning, I don’t immediately associate hotels with the Rainbow Motel. Rather, it’s as if for one moment I step outside my self and watch an unknown woman in an unfamiliar body perform one new unusually ordinary task: playing a game.
I lie down on top of the bedspread. I must practice how to refocus my mind, my senses. This is a test: see how long I can go without thinking about a man. I glance at the clock again. 10:45. I concentrate on the word reduction. Reduce sight to what is before me. Slowly my gaze trails around the room. Lingering here. Lingering there. One generic flower petal on the patterned curtains. Textured cinder-block walls, painted tan. White ceiling. Beige industrial carpet. No stains. The dresser drawers are shut. Prints of butterflies with specks of black on yellow scalloped wings. Tan vinyl chair. The thick wood door that would hush sound if I were allowed to shut it. (Doors must be partially open at all times, except when we’re dressing.) The silver knob on the door, similar to every other doorknob in the universe. Ordinary. Familiar.
My gaze narrows. To my size-five-and-a-half feet. Fingers. Kneecaps. Why does this territory labeled “body,” this geography of skin, cause such distraction and destruction? How can this same body now live in a hospital while it attempts to become a different body, learn different routines and movements?
None of the men would recognize me in the hospital. What are you doing here? they’d ask. You’re fine the way you are, they’d say. Those men wouldn’t recognize the woman I’m trying to become. Men.
Better if I don’t notice my body.
11:10 P.M. The red plastic clock I brought from home has a Mickey Mouse face on the white dial. The red second hand clicks past Mickey’s nose, smiling mouth, eyes, black mouse ears. One second. Five seconds. Ten. Twenty. If only I can stay the way I am right now for one more second. One more. Just until the second hand touches the top of Mickey’s right ear.