The Dog Year Page 6

  “I’m so afraid,” Becky said with desperate eyes.

  Lucy stopped. She gripped Mrs. Hallorman’s arm. “Don’t let that fear take root, Becky. Pry it loose. Cancer and fear feed off each other. Here.” Lucy rummaged in her purse and found her business card. With a Sharpie, she penned her home phone number. “Call me any time, day or night.”

  Then, using her master key, she slipped inside the side door and started up the stairs to the tenth floor. On the fifth-floor landing she stopped. Breathing heavily, she unbuttoned her gray wool jacket just as the door to the pediatric floor swung wide. She jumped back, narrowly missing a collision with Charise Schaefer, Junior Leaguer, hospital volunteer, and self-appointed mascot.

  “Look who it is!” Charise crowed. “What a surprise. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you since the Halloween party. Shame on you for missing my after-party and keeping my doctor friend waiting.” She wagged her naughty finger at Lucy and gave her the look of a superior mommy.

  “I went home pretty early. I ate something that didn’t agree with me.”

  “Drank something, I heard. But no matter, I forgive you. Are you on your way up or down? I always take the stairs. That way, I can eat whatever I want and keep my girlish figure.” Charise spoke with a definite nasal twang, a holdover from her rural Minnesota roots, which she tried to hide by wearing clothes from DKNY and BCBG and keeping her tanning packages up to date.

  “You go ahead. I’m catching my breath.”

  “Gotta keep moving if you’re going to increase your fitness,” Charise said, at which point she linked arms with Lucy. “So when can we get you to meet my guy? He’s divorced. Married a real witch, if you know what I mean. No kids, which is ideal, don’t you think?”

  Lucy pulled her arm free. “Charise, I’m not dating yet. I only just lost my husband a few months ago.”

  “Oh, I know, sweetie. And I can see why you’d want to wait, but I’ve read that a date within the first year as a widow is directly associated with successful bereavement and subsequent marriage. I Googled it.”

  “Successful bereavement?” Grabbing the door handle, Lucy said, “This is my floor.”

  “Urology?”

  Lucy read the plaque: SIXTH FLOOR. Urology. She nodded. “I haven’t had a good pee since my husband died. Maybe I should clear this up before I meet your guy. They think polyps or a despondent bladder. Something to do with grief, I guess.”

  Charise pulled her arm free and said, “Polyps?”

  “Yeah. Viral polyps.”

  Watching Charise evacuate the stairwell as if Lucy had threatened to wipe a bladder polyp on her immaculate silk shirt almost made the whole exchange palatable. Hoping the last four flights, which would take her to mental health, would be less like an obstacle course, Lucy slipped her coat off and counted the stairs. The offices on that floor weren’t much different from the plastic surgery suites. Maybe a few more plants. Definitely a lot more brochures: OCD, anxiety disorder, depression; one-stop shopping. The bathroom Lucy visited in order to wipe her sweaty hands featured signs with contact numbers for abuse hotlines. DO YOU FEEL SAFE AT HOME? one read.

  In the waiting room, she took a seat in the comfortable, calming, plum-and-gold upholstered chairs. A coffee machine perked in the corner next to several current magazines offering ways to get “Your Best Self.” One article featured a kitchen renovation that would allegedly bring a family together, reunite loved ones, and heal all hurts. Another hawked the ten-pound solution to all troubles, including a slow economy: “Eat less—Spend less. Lose it and Live Again.” Lucy considered the energy it would take to rifle through each magazine, find the right article, and read up on the various keys to happiness, and decided, quite possibly, that doing so was just too grueling. Besides, in her experience, once you lost it, it was hard to live again.

  The door to the clinic’s offices opened and a strikingly beautiful girl walked in. Lucy examined her with the unabashed scrutiny that was the province of women who don’t think they are pretty. This girl’s blond hair was thick and blown flat as a paint stirrer, her makeup flawlessly applied. As Lucy stared, she realized the girl was actually a woman, considerably older than Lucy had first thought.

  The woman took a seat. She had an almost perfectly symmetrical face with cheekbones that could part hair. The lip gloss and mascara she wore ran interference, distracting onlookers from her clearly sagging spirit. She was dressed in a soft, loose sweater and jeans that made her look like a casual starlet waiting for the paparazzi to snap her photo. Lucy caught sight of a wrist, more bone than flesh. Aware of Lucy’s eyes on her, the woman tugged her sleeve down, inadvertently exposing a collarbone that jutted out like a fracture. She was a gorgeous bag of angles covered with luminous pale skin and fine, downy hair.

  Lucy had certainly seen her kind before. Plastic surgeons, even the ones who dealt with reconstruction, as she did, saw their share of eating disorders. When starving, purging, and exercise didn’t get rid of the inevitable consequences of life, whether due to aging or the birth of a baby, they would come to her, unwilling to live with any evidence of entropy, weakness, lack of control, or imperfection.

  Lucy caught the woman’s eye and smiled. A soft breath escaped from her lips. Then she leaned over and said, low-voiced, “I steal stuff I don’t need.”

  Something sparked between the women. They were team captains of their respective pathologies. Without a smile the woman said, “I won’t eat what I do need.”

  The assistant at the check-in desk signaled for Lucy to enter the counselor’s office. Before doing so, she pulled a business card out of her purse and said to her waiting-room companion, sitting on what had to be incredibly uncomfortable pelvic bones, “If you want to come over some time and not eat . . .” She left the sentence unfinished. The woman’s spider-like fingers unfolded and grasped the card. She nodded, offered a brittle smile, and said, “Okay, thanks. I’ll bring something you don’t need.”

  * * *

  Lucy’s therapist didn’t look like anyone she’d met in her short-term experience with grief counselors. Historically, she found therapists to be overly personal people prone to making generalizations and wearing clogs. But this one, Dr. Tig Monohan, wore normal around her shoulders like a shawl. She didn’t have the kind of eyebrows that Lucy associated with therapists, the ones that conveyed sympathy or disapproval with a twitch, but she did have glossy brown hair and she wore nice pants.

  “So this is how it works, Dr. Peterman. We start here with an evaluation. I’ll ask you some questions. Please answer as honestly as you can and then we’ll decide what kind of therapy would be the best for you.”

  She sat with her hands in her lap. The little girl in the principal’s office. The bad girl from the playground. She’d worn black pants and a cashmere turtleneck to show how seriously she took her situation.

  “Here’s the thing,” she said as she glanced around. “How am I going to get here every week for therapy without running into everyone I know asking unanswerable questions? Yes, I stole a bunch of incontinence pads. No, I don’t want to come to the Christmas party. No, those two things are not related.”

  “That’s part of the deal. You have to own this. No more denial.”

  “I don’t deny that I did it. That would be hard to do, given the video surveillance camera and amount of stuff in my bedroom.”

  “Denial comes in many forms. But we’ll get to that.” Dr. Monohan riffled through the papers on her desk.

  “I don’t know why I do it.” Lucy’s stomach did a flip. “I mean, I’m not so far gone that I don’t know it’s wrong. I’m actually a pretty good person. I just want to go back to work.”

  Tig stopped shuffling papers and trained her gaze on Lucy. “Your status as a good person isn’t at issue here, Dr. Peterman.”

  “Stealing is bad.”

  A smile flashed across Tig’s face and she nodded
. “Stealing is bad,” she said with measured humor and raised eyebrows. “The bible tells me so. Shame on you.”

  Lucy met Tig’s eyes. Nonjudgmental acceptance. She felt her throat close with gratitude.

  “May I call you Lucy?”

  Lucy nodded.

  “Look, Lucy, I’ve got people in here who can’t live without multiple addictions to pain pills, alcohol, and weed. One of my doctor patients smells women’s feet while they are under anesthesia. Yesterday, one of our higher-ups admitted to asking strange women to lick his balls. You’re the light at the end of a long week.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Serious as a breast lift. That’s plastic surgery humor,” she added. “I thought you’d appreciate it. Being a therapist is all about knowing your audience.”

  Lucy blinked. “So are you saying this is just a formality?”

  “Ha! Don’t you wish. No. You’ve got issues, Lucy. We’re gonna check those issues out, hopefully get you to stop taking IV bags, and reinstate you into medicine where you belong. Make no mistake, though: You’ve got some work to do.”

  “Okay. But I think I can stop stealing anytime.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you do,” Tig said kindly. “I’ve been an alcohol and other drugs therapist for ten years; I know intention is a great short-term fix, but I don’t want you stealing tampons from a gas station in three months. We’re going for a long view here. You’re getting a tune-up that includes working on your impulse control and working through your grief. That’s going to take some time.”

  “How long?”

  “That’s up to me. And, to some extent, you.” She met Lucy’s eyes. “You’ll work in this office, and go to regular meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.”

  “What? No . . . I.”

  “We’re a small town. That’s all there is for easily accessible group therapy that deals with addiction.”

  “Forget it. There is no way I’m going to AA.”

  “Then you’d better find a new job.” Tig looked her straight in the eye. The women faced each other like two brick walls, one intact, the other crumbling. Lucy’s glance faltered and Tig spoke again, this time more gently. “I’ll be there. It’s part of my clinic commitment. Since we send all kinds of people to the meetings, we find it’s helpful to have a therapist there, at least some of the time. Now some questions, just to get the details out of the way, an assessment for the record. Have you ever stolen things that you really didn’t need?”

  The question worked like a stun gun on Lucy. She was a thief, a crook, and a robber. This last word made Lucy grimace. She thought of a masked face, a striped suit, a filled sack, the Hamburgler.

  Tig answered her own question, consulting her notes. “Unless you’re planning on opening a clinic, I’m assuming you didn’t need the twenty-two suture kits and fifteen packages of latex gloves.” She looked at Lucy over her reading glasses and Lucy nodded. Tig continued, “Did you feel a sense of pleasure or relief right after you stole these things?”

  “No. Sometimes, I didn’t even notice what I was doing. I’d come home with a pocket full of two-by-two pads and not remember taking them.”

  “So no sense of pleasure or relief? No feelings of anger?”

  “Most days, I don’t feel much of anything.”

  Tig put her pencil down. “When did that start?”

  Lucy cleared her throat, remembered coming home after the accident. The silent house. Oatmeal on the counter congealed and uneaten, evidence of her morning sickness, a feeling she now regretted hating. She saw her husband’s coffee cup. She shrugged.

  “I’ve got a full schedule, Lucy. Lots of people in and out of here. The longer this takes, the less you get to be a surgeon.”

  “Jeez, what’s the rush? I’m just clearing my throat here.”

  “I’ve found that addiction and denial need less kid-glove treatment and more tough love, Lucy. We don’t have a ton of time if we’re going to save your job. It doesn’t do either of us any good to soft-sell it.”

  Lucy dropped her head. “I love denial. I don’t know how I’d get through a day without it.” She swallowed hard. “After my husband died—” She stopped, held her hand up to signal Tig to wait. She tried again. “Richard had a penchant for reading obituaries. He cut out the more memorable deaths or photographs and tacked them to the fridge.” She shrugged. “Sometimes it was a story he liked. Other times, there was something about the face of the person who’d died. It sounds morbid, I know. He saw it as a reminder to stay in the present.” Lucy stared at the swirl in the carpet, heard her husband’s voice, Life is what you do, Lucy, my sweet. And you do it until you die.

  “He liked to quote Zorba the Greek when he was being philosophical about life. The last obits he saved were photographs of two men, printed next to each other in the newspaper. Bob Grabben and Stanley Stolen died on the same day in August.” She stopped, looked at Tig. “I remember wondering if Mr. Stolen or Mr. Grabben had ever shoplifted, self-fulfilling prophecy and all. I guess I started after that.”

  “You think your husband was giving you some kind of coping strategy?”

  “A message from beyond? God no.” Lucy paused and looked around the room. “That’s all I got. I don’t know. I had to do something.”

  “Are you going to keep taking stuff, Lucy? Do you think you can stop?”

  Lucy’s eyes drifted off and floated to a corner in the room. “Women like me, we aren’t just given things. There’s no one standing in line to help us hang a light fixture, change a tire.”

  “Women like you?”

  “You wouldn’t understand. You couldn’t, not with your long neck and perfect eyebrows.” Tig sat back. “Women like me,” Lucy said, “we have to ask. Stand in line. Take.”

  “So that’s what you tell yourself? That’s your justification?”

  Lucy scoffed. Closed her face like the door of a safe in an old western. Spun the lock shut. “I want to go back to work. When can I go back to work?”

  Tig scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to Lucy. “This is a non-traditional AA meeting; I don’t actually lead it, but I listen. The group is a wonderful mix of people—a microcosm, I believe, of what’s really out there. Listen, Lucy, you do my job for a while and here’s what you learn. No one is normal. Everybody struggles with something. Marital problems, depression, codependency, maybe a looming fascination with shoes or leather bags that keeps her working overtime shifts to pay off her debt. Whatever. Stop thinking everyone else has it together. It’s not true. Precious few people have life figured out. ‘Normal’ just isn’t normal anymore.”

  “Let me ask you this . . . the ball-licking guy? Does he get to keep working? Because I could have done something like that instead. I just need to know for the future.”

  “Twenty meetings, Lucy. Get started, and come back to see me in a week.”

  * * *

  Lucy clenched her jaw and moved quickly out the front door of the clinic, arriving at her car breathless. Alcoholics Anonymous. No effin’ way. Once out of the parking lot, she fastened her seat belt, and turned on the radio. Etta James’s voice belted out, “At last, my love has come along.” She snapped the radio off and instinctively made the turn that would take her home, but at the final possible second she yanked the wheel and bumped over the curb and into a parking lot, nearly skidding into a bicycle rack. Her large leather purse flew off the seat, revealing two suture kits, a stack of plastic medicine cups, and a 50-cc IV bag. Three rolls of bandage tape bounced onto the floor.

  She rolled her eyes in disgust and spoke directly to the mess. “Really?” she said, as if the rolls of tape were triplets who refused to stay in their car seats.

  She gathered the supplies, piled them onto the passenger seat, and covered them with her coat. Sitting back, she gazed at the yellow awning above the painted window of Lavish Lattes and Luxuries. It flu
ttered like a wife in a housedress, waving her inside. She thought of Etta James, belting out her signature song. At last . . .

  The door chimed prettily as Lucy pushed into the store. It was a riot of hand-thrown pottery, jewelry, and the smell of rosemary and lavender. Here, she could anonymously escape her life, uninterrupted by memories or do-gooders on patrol. Only college girls on break from classes worked the register, and never could Lucy’s appearance compete with the furious texting that was taking precedence at the counter. What the hell, she thought. No one would notice what she was about to do, and there would be no starting AA until . . . well, until she said so.

  The store was stocked with ceramic containers filled with lotions and flowers growing in saltshakers. Papier-mâché suns hung in corners next to Christmas lights and paper ball lanterns. Gourmet chocolates sat on tables, tempting ceramic frogs that held notices of author readings and jazz on Saturday nights.

  This place is truly Luscious, she thought picking up a ceramic bunny and putting it into her purse. So unlike me.

  She’d never been able to come to terms with the name her mother had bestowed upon her. There was nothing luscious about her. One look made it clear. And everyone knew she knew it. She didn’t have the swagger of the easily beautiful, the knowledge of her own visibility in the world. In fact, she was acutely aware of the contradiction between her name and her looks and walked with an, I know, I know in her posture. If she’d been a Tracy or a Susan, she wouldn’t have gone through her early life with quite so many questioning looks. That’s why these days she rarely called herself anything but Lucy. She glanced at the girl behind the counter, put a hanging fern between them, and selected a tulip candleholder, hesitated, and put it back on the antique kitchen set.