The Pisces
Page 50

Chickenhorse said she had canceled her date with the guy from the dog park. She said that she had gotten a weird feeling from him.
“Weird in what way?” asked Dr. Jude.
“I don’t know. He was wearing one of those newsboy caps. And when I thought about the cap, I felt triggered. I just don’t trust any man in one of those caps. It’s like a flashing red no.”
“What is it specifically about that hat? Have you had a negative experience with a man in one of those hats in the past?” asked Dr. Jude.
“No,” said Chickenhorse. “The truth is…maybe it’s me. I know you want me to start dating again. I know you think I’m ready. But I don’t think I’m ready. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be ready.”
I wondered if this was what recovery looked like, the only option for women like us. Was it better to be somewhat sane without a man than to be crazy with one? Dr. Jude seemed to think it was possible that we could date consciously, eventually come to be in healthy relationships. She believed in us, and our ability to get better. But I didn’t believe in us. Chickenhorse didn’t believe in us either.
Brianne had stuck with her decision to give no money to the faux businessman. Now he’d stopped speaking to her. He had sent a final email a few days prior, stating that it was all her fault they couldn’t be together, because she couldn’t front him the money to return home. He called her selfish and said that he would be back when he was back. But he said he didn’t want to be with a person who lacked trust and generosity in that way.
“My life is very full,” she said, her lower lip—newly pumped with collagen—trembling a little. “It really is a very full life and I feel grateful for everything I have in it. But I was hopeful about this one. I thought that after I’ve done so much work on myself in here that maybe I was being rewarded for all of my efforts. I let myself get excited. Maybe that was my mistake.”
Everyone murmured that it was better she knew now that he was an asshole. But they didn’t say asshole. They said “unable to commit” and “love avoidant” and “terrified of intimacy.” It was sweet the way they wanted her to be okay. They seemed like they were really rooting for her. Strangely, in that moment, they all looked like children to me. I saw them each as they might have been as children: not in body, but an innocence inside. I remembered that each of them had mothers who once loved them. Their mothers loved them and just wanted them to be happy. How strange that every person had a mother. It made me sad that people had mothers who stuck around a very long time. I imagined the mothers who didn’t die would play with their daughters’ hair every day, brush the stray pieces off the forehead, tickle their necks, stroke the crowns of their heads.
After my mother died and Annika went back to school, my father offered to play with my hair before bed. It was a kind gesture, but we both knew it was just too weird. He wasn’t the touchy-feely sort. More of a head patter.
“Play with my hair,” I would say to my teenage friends, but when they played with my hair it was never enough. I needed more than the friends were able to give. I envied my friends who could have their hair played with for a few minutes and then simply be done with it. They could take it or leave it. They knew that their mothers could come in later to finish the job, without them even having to ask. So they took it all lightly. They did this with their lovers too.
I looked at Brianne’s cheeks, straining desperately to be young, and wondered what her face had looked like as a little girl. She found it unfair, terrifying, that time was actually passing. Time wasn’t supposed to pass. Or it was supposed to pass for everyone else but her. I understood this. I was scared too. I wanted to stroke her cheek and tell her that she didn’t have to put anything else in it. That she was still young in some essential way. A wave of pain rose inside me that I had never known could be so palpable. I felt that it was going to kill me, and tried to shove it down. The pushing back against it left me with a choking feeling. Who even knew what was killing me more: the pain itself or the fight against the pain? I was seeing, hearing, and feeling too much. I felt that if I did not leave the room in that moment that I would suffocate on something—the feeling or the resistance to the feeling—and I would die.
I ran from the room clutching my throat and out onto the sidewalk. I crouched down in a squat with my head between my knees. Just to be alone again, away from all of that humanity that echoed my own, made me feel better. The sadness and nausea began to subside. Then I heard the door of the building open and footsteps behind me. It was Chickenhorse, coming to check on me. I wondered how she got elected.
“Hey, just making sure you are okay.”
“I’m not,” I said.
“Do you want to come back inside?”
“No, I need air.”
“Do you think I should sit with you?”
“I should probably just be left alone.”
“We aren’t going to hurt you, Lucy.”
I looked at her face. For a moment she didn’t look chickeny or horsey. Her eyes were big and brown and with her mouth closed she had nice, plump, red lips. Was it possible that she was actually pretty?
“Listen,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on with you. What it is exactly that you’re doing. I mean, aside from the Jamie thing. But, whatever it is—you don’t have to do it.”
I laughed out loud, a crazy-sounding laugh. I was crouched on a sidewalk in the middle of the day. Whatever I was doing, of course I had to do it.
“You don’t really know me,” I said.
“Maybe not,” she said. “But I relate.”
I didn’t want her to relate. I didn’t want to be like her. But I knew she was being honest.
“So what’s the solution? Never date again?” I asked.
She looked at me.
“Honestly, I don’t know. Things were so bad for me by the end—the end of my last run. It could have killed me, easily. If I ever end up in that emotional space again? In a way, I think I’d be lucky to be dead. It would be worse to roam the planet, a tormented soul, for the rest of my life.”
Maybe this was why I was in group, to remind people like her of the hell that awaited them just on the other side. I was here to be a cautionary tale.
“How did you get through your withdrawal without dying?” I asked.
“I just kept going. One minute at a time. And gradually I saw that the feelings didn’t destroy me.”
“But you were forced to give him up, right? You didn’t choose to do it. I mean, he got a restraining order?”
“What does a restraining order mean to people like us? In the face of our kind of obsession? But I guess, technically, yes, I was forbidden from being with him. I didn’t make the choice.”
So there it was. She hadn’t so much recovered as she was stopped by the law. I pictured her like a marionette, a marionette of obsessive love, with a judge pulling the strings. She was running in place, like a boxer, but could not move toward what she thought she loved.
“But what if you could be with him? If you could be with him again, wouldn’t you do it in a heartbeat?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” she said quickly.
“Come on. What if he was standing right here on the sidewalk?”
She thought about it for a second and the corners of her mouth twitched downward.