Page 62 of The 1 Lawyer

An anorexic woman in her twenties raised her hand. She looked too young to be in rehab, but she claimed to be a bona fide alcoholic. She liked to discuss her personal history at length. To the group, she said, “Marcus said we should think about the triggers in our past experiences that lead to unhealthy behavior patterns. You know, my parents didn’t have boundaries.”

Oh, we knew. She never stopped complaining about her parents. Her father was an accountant in Baton Rouge; Mom was an English professor at LSU.

“Their language is what I’ve been focusing on. I think my dad’s use of coarse language traumatized me, and that made me want to hurt him and hurt myself. So I started drinking back in ninth grade, and it snowballed really fast.”

The therapist said, “Are you comfortable expanding on that? Did your father curse you, abuse you verbally? Because that’s definitely a causal factor in addictive behavior.”

“No. He didn’t curse me, but he turned ordinary words into sexual words. You know deli stuff like salami and smoked turkey? He didn’t call it cold cuts or sandwich meat. My dad called it horse cock. He’d be in the kitchen and say, ‘Lena, you want a horse-cock sandwich?’”

As she related her tale of woe, I thought, How about walking into your house and seeing your dead wife in bed, her eyes wide open, her chest blown apart by a shotgun? That’s traumatic. But I kept my reflections to myself.

Her voice rose as she reached the climax of her story. “And so when I was in third grade, my teacher said, ‘What’s in your lunch box?’ And I told her it was a horse-cock sandwich.”

At the punch line, I made a sound, a cross between a snicker and a scoff. She heard it and turned to me, her eyes accusing.

“You think it’s funny? I was nine years old. I didn’t even know what it meant.”

Actually, it sounded like the kind of joke my old man would’ve played. But all I said was “I get that it wasn’t comical at the time. But it’s the type of story that’s funny in retrospect, don’t you think?”

I turned to the rest of the group and appealed to them. “Am I right?”

Most of the faces in the circle glared at me.

Lena crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her chin. In an injured voice, she said, “I don’t feel like sharing anymore.”

Marcus gave me a no-nonsense look through his round lenses. I suspected he wore the glasses as a fashion accessory. He struck me as that kind of guy. “Stafford, maybe you’d like to contribute?”

“No. I’m good.”

“Really? Still, even after a week? You haven’t made any constructive contributions since you joined us. We’d be interested to hear anything you’d like to share.”

“I’m not so keen on chewing up my folks for their parenting skills. The way I see it, they did the best they could. And my mom passed away when I was young. I don’t like to trash her or talk smack about her.”

Marcus didn’t want to let me off the hook. “We’ll respect your boundaries. Do you want to talk about how you came to be here at Hope Springs?”

I thought about that for a second before I answered. “Nope.”

Marcus made a clicking noise with his tongue. “You won’t benefit from therapy if you don’t take an active part.”

“You think people really benefit from therapy?” I asked.

I experienced a buzz of satisfaction when his mouth dropped open. I said, “I’m serious. I’ve done some reading on it. There are knowledgeable experts who think psychotherapy is futile. It’s a shadowy, vague attempt to solve people’s problems, and its efficacy has never been proven.”

“I disagree,” Marcus said. He sounded snippy.

“Yeah, I thought you might. But can we agree that there’s this billion-dollar industry that has no guaranteed results? Or even a way to measure success? Does that strike you as pretty absurd?”

The therapist scraped his chair back across the wooden floor. “Why are you doing this?”

He was seriously pissed, and the other faces in the circle mirrored his resentment. The only sympathy coming my way was from a longtime drinker who’d fallen off the wagon for the umpteenth time and landed back in rehab a couple of weeks ago. He claimed he’d recently seen the light—that he’d been born again. With a crooked smile, he told me, “I’m praying for you, Stafford Lee. Alcoholism is an equal-opportunity destroyer. Aren’t you sick and tired of being sick and tired?”

I recognized the lingo. He was spouting AA slogans. I tossed one back. “It works if you work it—isn’t that what they tell you? But it hasn’t worked for you.”

The guy’s smile dimmed, and Marcus jumped out of his chair. “Okay, Stafford, that’s it. I’m not going to let you taunt people who are seriously trying to work through addiction. You’re interfering with the recovery of other people in this program.”

“What do you want from me?” I said. “You want me to go? Fine. I’ll leave y’all to it.” Picking that fight in group therapy had agitated me, made me jumpy. I launched out of my chair, tipping it over. I left it lying there.

Just outside the sunroom, I saw Amy. She strolled toward me in slim white pants and a loose silk blouse, looking like she belonged on a fashion runway. She caught me staring. That was humiliating. I certainly didn’t want her to think I was attracted to her, even if it was true.

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