LITMIR.BIZ

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don’t follow.”

      “I have pet fish,” she says in a tone of exasperation. “They like to ride with me on my bike. Well, in the basket on my bike, actually. I keep a leash around their bowl just in case…”

      Two weeks ago I was covering the Middle East peace summit at the White House. Two weeks ago.

      “…people don’t stop at stop signs anymore so I say—you can’t be too careful. That leash gives me peace of mind, let me tell you.”

      “Excuse me. Regina, is it?” Isabel asks. Regina nods her head, eager to hear her partner’s comments.

      “Regina, I want to tell you something.”

      Regina shimmies up to the edge of her seat.

      “I don’t care about your fish,” Isabel says.

      Not only do I not give a shit about your goldfish but I think you’re a freak. Everyone here is a freak—come to think of it. I don’t want to hear about everyone else’s pets or whether the barbecue sauce here can compare to some shithole in some godforsaken town in Minnesota or whether someone’s mother neglected them in early childhood—which, I’m sure, is a topic we’ll be covering in great depth in group therapy.

      “I really don’t care about your fish,” she says again.

      Regina stiffens in her seat.

      Isabel continues. “I just want to get out of here, okay? I’m only here because I screwed up and didn’t take enough Tylenol PM—not because I want to talk about my childhood or my pets.”

      Exhausted, Isabel sinks back into her chair and looks out the window.

      Unfazed, Regina shuffles over to a free chair across the room.

      “Sukanya, I notice you haven’t taken part in this exercise.” The nameless nurse is looking at a young woman with long, dirty hair who has remained silent in the corner of the room. “Can you tell us why you have decided not to participate?”

      Isabel looks at Sukanya, who has been catatonic since she arrived at Three Breezes.

      The only thing she has uttered, to Isabel’s morbid fascination, is “I’d prefer not to say.” And, right on cue, Sukanya fixes her stare on the overenthusiastic nurse and quietly repeats her mantra: “I’d prefer not to say.”

      The nurse pauses for a second, clearly trying to decide whether to pursue Sukanya’s cryptic reply or cut her losses and proceed on with the group.

      “Well, it looks like time is up for this session.” She directs her attention to the rest of the room. “You’ll gather here again in two hours for another group. That’s two hours, people.”

      She definitely dots her i’s with smiley faces. And does that annoying sideways smiley face on her e-mails.

      Everyone files out of the makeshift living room on the unit. Everyone except Sukanya. She stays in the same chair all day long. Group therapy sessions may come and go around her but she just sits there.

      I wonder if there are such things as bed sores for people who sit. Chair sores.

      Isabel, who has just learned that she can indeed go outside the unit for fifteen minutes at a time during breaks pushes the door open and lines up at the box lighter to smoke.

      Kristen is already out there, sucking the air out of her cigarette as if her life depended on it.

      Lark is there, too, even though she has been warned by her doctors not to smoke because she has extreme asthma.

      “So what’s the deal with Sukanya,” Isabel asks Kristen as she inhales. Isabel and Kristen seem to recognize in each other an unspoken similarity, perhaps in background or in mentality. They look alike—both are thirty-something, career-types, and their social skills mirror each other’s. To Isabel, Kristen seems like someone she might have been friends with outside of Three Breezes, had the circumstances been different.

      “I don’t know,” Kristen answers. “I can’t even imagine what must’ve happened to her. Or what’s wrong with her.”

      “Does she ever have visitors?”

      “I saw her parents once—at least I assume they’re her parents. They brought her Beanie Babies. Like twenty of them. They were all wrapped up in tissue—each one individually wrapped—in this beautiful gift bag, and it just sat on Sukanya’s lap until they opened each one for her. Like a baby or something. Then they oohed and aahed over each one like they’d never seen them before, like she would like them if she saw they liked them. I don’t know, it was weird. Sad.”

      “What’d they look like—the parents?”

      “Normal. Like you and me—or like our parents, I mean. You know,” Kristen replies in an insider tone.

      Isabel knows exactly what Kristen means. She knows that clubby tone.

      “I guess you could look at any of our parents and think they looked normal, though, right?” Kristen says. “My parents look totally cool. My mother’s a whack job but she looks normal.”

      Kristen laughs nervously, afraid that she has crossed the line and has shared too much too soon.

      I’m supposed to jump in here and save Kristen from feeling embarrassed. I know the drill. I can’t do it.

      Isabel feels a wave of exhaustion that brings the social interaction to a screeching halt. She musters a smile and walks away, knowing Kristen is offended.

      On her way past the living room, Isabel sees Keisha nodding her head to the beat of the music funneling into her ears from headphones the size of fluffy earmuffs.

      With those headphones on she looks like a black Princess Leia.

      Eight

      Isabel and Kristen are sitting next to each other for the evening session. All the patients on the unit are seated in a circle and in the middle is an empty chair.

      “What’s the deal with the chair?” Isabel whispers to Kristen, who is still wounded by Isabel’s snub earlier in the day.

      “You’ll see,” she answers curtly. “He does this every once in a while.”

      Isabel is smart enough to know that someone is going to have to sit in that chair in the middle and, whatever it entails, she does not want it to be her.

      “My name is Larry,” a large man says after quietly closing the living room door. If Larry were a state he would be Vermont: earthy, self-sufficient, nonthreatening, easy to overlook. Almost entirely gray, his beard appears to be aging faster than the rest of him. His clothing is eclectic and, Isabel notes, hemp in spirit if not in reality.

      “Because I see we have someone new in our evening session I want to start tonight by quickly going around the room. Let’s start to my right, here.”

      Isabel’s heart races, knowing she will be second.

      Oh, God, I hate these things.

      “Um, I’m Kristen. I’m here for a lot of reasons. I’m bipolar and I have obsessive-compulsive disorder. Among other things.”

      All eyes settle on the newcomer: “I’m Isabel,” she says, her voice an octave higher than usual.

      “Why are you here, Isabel?” Larry prompts.

      “I don’t know,” she says, feeling her blush deepen. “I mean, I guess I’m here because the doctors thought I should be here.”

      Please move on to the next person.

      “Well, welcome, Isabel,” Larry says. “You’ll get the hang of this pretty easily.”

      “I’m Ben.” The giant can’t wait until it’s his turn. “I’m here because the judge ordered me to be here.”

      “I’m

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