SPIN DOCTOR

a January, 2006 release

ISBN: 0-06-059613-9
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Chapter 1

ME, SUSAN

My husband Eli didn’t get home until 2 A.M. He never bothered to call, and only muttered something—just before he crawled into bed without showering—about a deadline. He writes graphic novels: comic books for adults. I suppose his deadline was more important than our nineteenth wedding anniversary. And if it did finally dawn on him, no biggie, I’m sure he figured; after all, it’s not like it’s the twentieth. I stopped sticking “countdown to our anni” post-notes on the bathroom mirror years ago, because Eli said they were an insult to our love. He didn’t need the tacky reminders, he insisted. How could he forget the annual celebration of the happiest day of his life? And until last night, I have to admit that was true ... although I have a sneaking suspicion that the placement of the post-notes earlier in our marriage acted as a positive reinforcement.

Yuck! The dog must have peed on our new sisal. God damnit! I stepped in the acrid puddle on the way to brush my teeth because I was bleary-eyed, having had only four hours of sleep, since I was worried sick about Eli until I heard his key in the door. I think he’s become incontinent. The dog, not Eli. Eli’s just somewhat immature. That might explain why he’s still into comic books. Can a man be in his second childhood at age forty-five? I should know this: I’m a psychotherapist. I guess it’s time to brush up on arrested development.

Our sixteen-year-old daughter Molly came home yesterday with a piercing in what I hope she still considers an obscure location. I regard myself as a fairly liberal mom, but I can only hope that the technician, or whatever they call them, was a woman. Is there such a thing as statutory piercing? Ian, our son, is my only hope for normalcy in this family, although I’m not sure that an eleven-year-old boy who already has a thriving career in musical theatre falls into what the red states would define as “normal.” So thank God we live in New York City where his jaded classmates are more jealous than weirded out when he gets to leave school early on Wednesdays to sing and dance on Broadway.

Our apartment is an unholy mess because everyone, including the dog, thinks it’s someone else’s job to pick up after them and I’ve always refused to become their full-time cleaning lady. The dog’s the only one who’s actually got a valid argument. My entire day is devoted to helping other people sort out their messy lives; when I get home, spent and exhausted from internalizing and absorbing the neuroses of a dozen different clients, the last thing I want to do is housekeeping! Gee, it sure would be swell to be able to kick back, have someone else fix dinner, and watch a couple of hours of mindless crap on TV while my children happily do their homework on their own. Is a bit of nurturing for the professional nurturer too much to ask? Complete disavowal of responsibility for a few hours every evening? Bliss! But I am definitely in denial for even entertaining the remotest possibility that this fantasy will ever come true.

It’s now 6 A.M. In an hour it will be time to descend to our building’s laundry room to begin the pro bono segment of my workday, helping my clients face, and hopefully resolve, their emotional crises. Believe me, I appreciate the irony.

FAITH

“I slept on Ben’s side of the bed last night!”

“Whoa, sister!” This was quite a revelation coming from my 7 A.M. appointment, the usually reticent Faith Nesbit. She’s been one of my laundry room clients for a few years now, and it’s been an arduous uphill climb to get her to finally become comfortable discussing her most deeply personal and intimate details. There were times when I felt like I’d earned my Ph.D. all over again. And after all that, Faith still shies away from bringing up anything that bears even the slightest whiff of S-E-X.

“At the risk of invoking the biggest cliché in shrinkdom, how did that make you feel?” Clichés aside, it was the question I needed to ask, as Faith exhibits a classic, virtually stereotypical WASP tendency to talk around her emotions, rather than about them.

Faith was perched on the edge of the couch as though she might take flight at any moment and soar clear through the gap in the ventilation screen behind the washers, while I cleaned out the lint traps, dumping their individual contents into a ratty white plastic bag. “I’m listening to you, Faith,” I assured her. “I just want to get this done before everybody starts coming down here.” Even during these early morning sessions—which a California colleague of mine refers to as “kinda therapy,” meaning the variation commonly offered to acquaintances, friends, and relatives, as opposed to the more conventional variety conducted with those who are official patients—I find myself cleaning up other people’s messes in more ways than one.

“You really don’t need to go to all that fuss and bother with the lint traps, Susan,” Faith chided, her patrician cadences still reminiscent of her Back Bay upbringing, even though she’s lived in New York City for decades. “It’s Stevo’s responsibility.” Stevo Badescu is our building’s superintendent, and is notorious for slacking off whenever possible. “Whenever you need the man, he’s positively nowhere to be found. It must be the Gypsy in him,” she continued, as tart as a freshly harvested cranberry.

“I’ve been living in this building for forty-nine years, you realize, almost a decade before you were born! Ben and I moved in right after we were married in September of 1957—it was our first and only apartment—and I would swear on my mother’s Bible that the supers have gotten steadily lazier over the years.” Faith studied her wedding ring for a moment. “You know, I have a feeling that Ben—wherever he is—” she added, glancing up at the grungy ceiling, “is planning a wonderful surprise for what would have been our fiftieth.”

I recalled that Ben Nesbit had passed away just a few weeks after he and Faith had celebrated their forty-fifth wedding anniversary. They lived down the hall from me at the opposite end of the building. Every once in a while I’d be in the hallway when the Nesbits’ door would open and Ben would emerge with a waste basket in hand; Faith would stand at the doorsill, looking at him adoringly. He would give her a gentle peck on the lips before heading the fifteen steps or so to the little closet that conceals the trash chute, while Faith watched his every movement, brimming with affection. Their little ritual always brought a smile to my lips. Eli was never that romantic, even when we were dating. He’s never even liked to hold my hand.

I dumped the bag of lint into a metal trash can and smiled at my client’s attempt to avoid discussing a difficult subject by changing the topic. Some theorists believe that a therapist is supposed to allow her clients to ramble on indefinitely, even if it results in an avoidance ad infinitum of the important, though frequently painful, issues at hand. They think it’s our job to wait it out patiently until the client decides she’s ready to confront the hard stuff. But clients are individuals, not theories. And Faith needs a gentle nudge back onto the rails because she’s the type of person who feels the need to make demonstrable progress in every session. At least her tangent concerning Stevo had been short lived. Not too long ago Faith would have remained on the subject of the super’s indolence for ten minutes. She was making progress. Progress is good.

“This is really exciting, Faith! I want to hear all about your stretching out like a queen on the king-size,” I said, washing my hands and seating myself on the chair beside the couch.

Faith caressed the arm of the sofa, tapping at a stain on the faded floral upholstery with a lacquered nail. “You know I enjoy working with you Susan because I don’t feel like I’m getting my head shrunk. It feels more like we’re just dishing the dirt down here. I couldn’t walk into a therapist’s office. This set-up is much better. No receptionists who are reading their novels behind the front desk and secretly thinking ‘that woman who dresses in purple all the time is crazy; no wonder she needs counseling,’ no ferns in the corner or modern art on the walls. No fancy diplomas reminding the clients how well educated you are. No credenza displaying third-world artifacts to subtly demonstrate your open-mindedness. But I’m never sure how I feel about having a therapy session on my own couch,” she added, reminding me that some years ago, when Ben had finally convinced her that it was time to get a new sofa, she had donated this one to the laundry room so the tenants could have a pleasant place to sit while they did their wash.

“You know my tendency for parsimony,” she chuckled. “I’m a classic New England tightwad. And I just couldn’t bear the idea of spending all that money on a new piece of furniture when I could have had my girl run up a set of perfectly lovely slipcovers. But Ben was right as usual.” She gazed lovingly at the mauve and aqua calla lily motif. “I loved the pattern—I still do—but it never quite fit our décor. It really belongs in a Miami Beach condominium.”

“You’re avoiding again, Faith,” I reminded her, noticing that she never appeared to stint financially when it came to her wardrobe. Her pieces were all perennials from the top designers, always in various shades of purple: from lilac to plum, from lavender to violet. “Are you sure you’ve never cheated on your income tax, because, damn, you can be the queen of evasion.”

“Well, you know, my generation never much went in for psychotherapy. We think that it’s an admission that you’re cuckoo in the head and need fixing, or else it’s a silly luxury for silly, idle women; so it takes some getting used to for this old bird.”

“Old bird, my ass. You’re so active you put us middle-aged slackers to shame.” We didn’t have too many more minutes left in Faith’s session so I had to nudge her again. “Faith, you’ve been in therapy with me for four years already. You know the drill by now. We can still do some good work before I have to unlock the door.” Like a scolded child, she stopped fussing with the arm of the sofa and, much chastened, primly folded her pale, graceful hands in her lap. “You dropped one shoe; it’s time to let go of the other. So spill,” I prodded jovially. “Last night was the first time that you slept on Ben’s side of the bed … in …”

“Four years,” Faith admitted sheepishly, the color rushing into her already rouged cheeks. “I feel rather foolish about it all. Making such a fuss over it, I mean. A real tempest in a teapot.” She took a breath, then exhaled very slowly before speaking again. “I have continued to sleep on my own side of the bed—the left side as you face it, so I can answer the alarm clock as soon as the damn thing rings—since the day Ben died. I’m seventy-two years old, Susan. And I’ve never been very good at adjusting to change.”

Finally, with five minutes to spare, we were talking about something important. I leaned over and took Faith’s hands in mine. “There’s no change without risk. And risks can be painful because there’s always the possibility of failure. Last night, you took a risk to change old behavior patterns, and … guess what! You survived to talk about it! So, it’s not a tempest in a teapot, in fact. We can get very lighthearted from time to time; that’s the way I like to work down here. But I’m not kidding around. You took a really big step last night—even if you did it in your sleep—and you should feel terrific about that.”

“Well, I guess you’re never too old to learn a new trick, despite the adage. My goodness, I’m chock full of them this morning. Adages. You know …, ” Faith chuckled at her own unexpressed thought. “At first I felt very guilty—that perhaps this meant that I was finally moving on.”

“Why did progress make you feel guilty?” I asked gently.

Faith studied her wedding ring again. “Because I thought that Ben, up on his celestial plane, was probably still thinking about our upcoming anniversary, while here I am, suddenly hogging our conjugal bed. But right now—at this moment—I must say that I feel … a little bit selfish, but also somewhat empowered, I suppose you could say, as though this is the first time in decades that I’ve done something entirely for myself. Guilty, yes, but like a guilty little pleasure—that’s how it feels.” Faith grinned mischievously. “Like having a second helping of dessert when no one is looking. For years I was Ben’s part-time office receptionist and did it mostly because I hated to be alone all day. Separation anxiety, I suppose you’d call it. Ben was my world. I missed him every moment he was out of my sight. When he used to go golfing on Wednesdays, I worried myself sick if he was late in coming home. Then I cared for him after the stroke, even when he didn’t seem to recognize me anymore, but I maintained that vigil until the day he died. And because I was never unhappy a day in my life, I didn’t actively consider that there might be any alternatives to an existence spent almost exclusively in service of my husband’s life and career. Naturally, I’m aware of the Womens’ Movement; I read DeBeauvoir and Friedan and Steinem; I just didn’t feel as though I were reading about myself. I’m not what you’d call a … militant person, Susan. If I’d grown up in Boston in the mid-eighteenth century instead of the mid-twentieth, I would more than likely have been perfectly content to pay the Stamp Tax.” She checked her watch, an old Piaget that she thinks keeps far better time than the cheap clock above the door. She’s probably right.

“Two more minutes.” Faith rose, opened her dryer, and inspected her clothes for dampness. She tut-tutted and closed the door, inserting another quarter for an additional cycle of permanent press. “What the devil is that?” she asked me as I unloaded my washer, transferring an armload of colorful sodden garments to an empty dryer. “Those couldn’t be yours, could they? You don’t wear those sort of prints.”

“Oh, God, no. Besides,” I said, holding up a pair of hideously striped pants, “I don’t think I could get one of my legs in here!” We both laughed at the folly of trying to squeeze myself into the tiny trousers. “No, they’re not mine. They’re Matilda’s,” I said.

“Who?”

“Matilda. The little homeless lady who likes to camp out in our vestibule.” I raised my hand chest-high. “You know who I mean—she’s about Ian’s height,” I said.

Faith clapped her hand to her mouth in shock. “Her? You’re doing a homeless woman’s laundry?” I nodded. “The woman who smells so much?” Faith wrinkled her well-powdered nose.

One of the reasons I became a therapist was to try to improve people’s lives in some way. And I extend that self-imposed mandate beyond my clients to the world at large whenever I can. “Well, Matilda will smell considerably better with clean laundry,” I said. I’m not sure whether Faith’s snobbism is generational or cultural, but it does take a bit of getting used to for dyed-in-the-wool Upper West Side liberals like me.

“I always thought the phrase ‘clean laundry’ was an oxymoron,” Faith mused. “Goodness, I shudder to wonder what Matilda’s wearing now.”

“Actually, she’s wearing one of Molly’s castoffs.” My mother, bless her Eisenhower-era heart, always thinks that Molly should dress like a girly-girl, so she buys her all these cute print dresses, which my daughter would never be caught dead in. Molly’s aversion to looking feminine is the least of my worries, however. I wouldn’t care if she dressed like Darth Vader as long as she went to class. She’s dangerously close to flunking out of high school, her SAT scores were in the toilet, and at this rate the only college she’ll get into is the sort of two-year community program that is compelled to offer remedial classes to the incoming freshmen. My daughter is a very bright girl; it’s just that at age sixteen she’s still going through the terrible twos. I don’t expect her to spend her adult life saying “pass me the scalpel” or “my client pleads not guilty, your honor,” but I really never considered that she might end up asking “do you want fries with that” until it’s time for her retirement. The fact that it’s looking entirely likely that Molly will never use her inquisitive mind and her expensive education to make much of herself disturbs me greatly, no matter how permissive and progressive I like to believe I am.

Faith looked me in the eye. Her own were the watery gray of the Hudson River during a storm. “Is something the matter, Susan?” she inquired forthrightly. “I’m not one to pry,” she continued, breezing past the irony, “after all, my mother was born when Victoria was still queen of England, and she taught me that it’s impolite to poke one’s nose into one’s neighbor’s business—but you look tired. Where’s that wonderful husband of yours when you need him? And don’t tell me he can’t stop drawing his silly comic strips in time to come home for dinner.” Faith had just hijacked the final seconds of her session; our roles had suddenly become switched and my client had begun to analyze me, a countertransference that’s not entirely uncommon when both the counselor and the client feel open and comfortable enough to connect on a deeper level. “You tell that man you deserve to be pampered!” Faith exhorted. “That’s what I told Ben from the day we were married, and he never gave me a bit of guff about it, no matter how tired he was from looking at his patients’ G.I tracts all day. You make sure Eli comes home at a civilized hour. He should offer you a foot massage and pour you a generous glass of whiskey to give you some zip, and then simmer a nice Scotch Broth or a pot of good solid mushroom barley soup to give you some nourishment.”

Perhaps unwittingly, Faith had touched a nerve; pushed one of my buttons. “Scotch Broth? Faith, it’s nearly July.” Whenever someone is very nice to me, especially when I’m feeling particularly vulnerable, it always makes me cry. “I’m all right,” I said, blinking rapidly. I turned my head away so I could regain my composure. “I’m so sorry about that. And unfortunately,” I added, looking at the grime-covered clock above the doorway, “it’s time to stop so we can let in the masses.”

Faith opened her purse and removed a meticulously folded sheet of paper. “I keep forgetting to give you that pot roast recipe you requested. It was the mention of Scotch Broth that jogged my memory. I’ve been carrying this around for weeks.” With a conspiratorial whisper, she added, “A pint of good Madeira is my family secret.” I glanced at the recipe and mentally tallied the number of fresh herbs I’d need to locate. For an older woman, Faith’s penmanship is still remarkably steady, very elegant; very Seven Sisters. She loves to tell people that she attended Smith two years behind Sylvia Plath, so I suppose that she comes by those old-school affectations honestly.

I shoved the recipe in the pocket of my jumper and unlocked the door. Stevo lets me use the laundry room for my private sessions from 7 to 8 A.M., before it’s officially available for the tenants’ use. In fact, if I’m down here to open up for the day, it saves him the trouble. Theoretically, my ladies could see me in a more conventional capacity at the women’s health center in lower Manhattan where I work on a part-time, sliding-scale basis three and a half days a week—that’s the primary source of my bread and butter—but the building tenants are more comfortable here, and it sure as heck is a shorter commute! Also, given the proprietary restraints and code of ethics of the American Psychological Association, because these “clients” are also my neighbors and acquaintances—and they know one another as well—I can charge no fee for my laundry room sessions. As an active placebo, the décor in the laundry room is excruciatingly uninspiring—and, frankly, butt-ugly—but the comforting scents of detergent products—powder fresh, spring flowers, summer rain—have a cleansing connotation. The metaphorical aromatherapy is in fact conducive to my clients’ progress. Down here, they’re literally airing their dirty linen, washing away real dirt as well as the emotionally damaging detritus of their lives. Down here, there’s an opportunity for a fresh start—goodness, isn’t that actually the name of a detergent? There’s hope of renewal. Besides, even if they did have to pay me for our gabfests, my ladies can’t simultaneously do their laundry down on Fulton Street!

“At the risk of sounding ‘shrinky,’—but there’s no growth without risk—you’ve really turned a corner this week,” I told Faith. “You’re beginning to recognize that you’ve been back-burnering or even ignoring things that you might have wanted for yourself over the years. Keep it up! It’s okay for now to make things about you for a change. You’ve got a mission, should you choose to accept it. Actually,” I amended, “I’m not giving you a choice in the matter. I want you to sit up and take notice—maybe even write it down in a journal—each time you have a moment—however insignificant, or even silly, you think it may be at the time—where you’re focusing on your own needs and not your late husband’s.” I grinned. “I knew Ben too, don’t forget. And we both know he would have wanted you to move on eventually. There’s nothing wrong with mourning a death, but you mustn’t let the grief prevent you from embracing life. Okay? It might seem scary at first because these are untested waters for you, but I promise you, if last night’s behavior is any example, you’ll rise to the challenge swimmingly!”

Faith graciously chuckled at my weak pun. “Well, Ben always was more progressive than I!” She leaned so far forward I thought her ramrod spine might crack, but she displayed the resilience of a willow. She was going to be just fine. “My distaff ancestors were proud members of the DAR. His mother was a Socialist, you know—and his father was a card-carrying Commie!”

○○○○○○○○

TALIA

The following day, my 7 A.M. client was Talia Shaw. A few months ago, on the heels of an unpleasant divorce, she’d approached me for counseling, yet it’s been like pulling teeth without anesthesia to get her to articulate what’s bothering her.

Most clients fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum when it comes to opening up during their sessions. At one end are the people I think of as the “reds.” They’re the ones who can talk incessantly; they are masters of volubility, but rarely say anything important for our work together. Their constant chatter without letting me get a comment in edgewise is an active avoidance of potential pain at hearing, or having to deal with, anything that might be unpleasant. At the far end of the spectrum are my “indigos”: those who are excessively silent and frequently withdrawn. My questions to them are answered—finally—with barely verbal responses.

Talia is dark blue.

At Talia’s sessions, usually I’m the one doing most of the talking. Most therapists rarely reveal something personal during a conventional session in a traditional setting, (such as the fern-filled office envisioned by Faith), and even then employ self-disclosure only to further illuminate something directly related to the topic under discussion. But with my laundry room clients, I’ve found that when I open up, they do, too. My methods of therapy down there are more unorthodox, more like sharing and dishing, which allows them to feel much more at ease than they’d be in a more classic form of psychoanalysis. With Talia, however, our discussions to date have been decidedly lopsided. While I still have learned very little about Talia’s background, Talia knows all about my laughably ill-fated forays into modern dance at Bennington, and my own bouts with only child syndrome and bulimia. To look at me now, you’d never guess that I weighed ninety pounds all through college. Maybe my stressful, lifelong weight issues have something to do with the fact that I’d gone completely gray by the time I was thirty-five. Or not. Who knows? I stopped dying my hair two years ago and finally made my peace with being youngish and silvery.

“So, what’s been up this week? You feel like sharing anything?” I asked finally, after Talia had spent the first ten minutes of her session seemingly absorbed with a bunion on her left big toe, leaving me to wonder whether she wouldn’t have preferred seeing her podiatrist.

“Ye-es,” she answered, as though speaking in slow motion. Several more moments elapsed during which I expected her to elucidate—or at least to be somewhat more verbal. I don’t like to sit back and wait too long; though I have colleagues, including my mentoring psychologist Dr. Maris, who believe that the more we try to manage the sessions, pushing our clients into responding before they might be ready, the longer the client will continue their obstructive behavior. And the more control the therapist takes, the less the client assumes for her recovery and well-being. For me, personally, this view works better in theory than in practice.

“Okay.” I waited a couple more beats. “I’m listening.”

“Do you think I’m aloof?” Talia blurted, her question more or less coming out of left field, since we had started the session by returning to the subject of her divorce.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” I replied. “You don’t need my approval. Or my condemnation. Do you think you’re aloof? ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with that,’ as Seinfeld used to say. There’s no value judgment connected to being aloof.”

Talia cracked a tiny smile. “Because I’m not, y’know. Ballerinas in general get a bad rap that way. I’m … I don’t know how to put this, exactly. Can I get up?” she asked me.

“Sure. You’re not glued to the couch.”

“I’m … I’ve just never been comfortable with words. It’s one reason why I had to become a dancer. I never could have been anything else. I can only express myself through movement.”

“Talia, This may be a horrifying reality to embrace, but unfortunately there will always be too many people out there who are ready to put you down because they can’t deal with their own shit, so they’re looking for someone to ‘blame’ for where they are; believe me, you don’t need to do it yourself. So how about re-phrasing what you just said so that you’re not damning yourself?” Talia looked at me blankly. “Well, you could say that you feel that you express yourself most confidently through movement.” She considered it, then gave me another weak smile.

“So, people think I’m aloof, y’know, because I feel so overwhelmed when they’re yakking away about this and that, and all these words are zinging past like they’ve got wings, y’know, and I just can’t join in. I can’t think that fast in my head. I think in my feet. It’s like I’m from another planet than them, y’know what I mean? So I don’t say anything, and people think I’m aloof because of it. If I could, I don’t know, dance my answers, I’d be …”

Talia settled back onto the couch. She’d been pirouetting all the way around the large table in the center of the room while she spoke. “So dance. Native healers all over the world use dance, chanting, prayer, song … whatever works. So, if dancing your answers works for you, it works for me. Do tour jêtés, if you need to. Just watch the fluorescents so you don’t hit your head.” Talia was visibly relieved.

“Let’s pick up where we left off last time,” I suggested, after another substantial pause during which Talia stretched her muscles. “We were talking about getting married. I was pretty young by today’s standards. I was almost twenty-two—”

“Twenty-three for me,” Talia said, jumping in as I’d hoped she might, once I got the ball rolling. “And I’m twenty-six now. Almost twenty-seven. I was married for just about four years. We met in the Starbucks at Sixty-seventh and Columbus. Lance was a videotape editor around the corner at ABC. And a few months ago he decided to leave me on the cutting room floor. He told me I was too self absorbed. Which is pretty funny, y’know? Because if he could have put a mirror, y’know …” she opened her legs into a perfect split, “while he was … y’know, so he could watch himself … and people always say that a dancer can’t pass a mirror without looking at themselves … well, I think he liked mirrors even more than I do.” Her expression grew rueful and she returned her focus to the bunion. “When we first got married, he would like to experiment … with whipped cream, or honey, or chocolate sauce, y’know? And I thought that was pretty sexy because all the other guys I’d ever been with were more into vanilla sex. I don’t mean the flavor—I mean, more … y’know?” She rose again and began to perform a sort of interpretive dance, facing the row of washing machines. “More … regular. Boring. Uninventive, or uncreative, I guess might be a good word. And then I started to realize at some point that Lance was doing all that desserty stuff down there, because … because he really didn’t much care for … I guess deep down, he really didn’t like who I was. And that was his way of trying to change me.”

With a sudden burst of vehemence she kicked her leg up on the top of one of the machines and began to plié with her other leg in second position. “And … here I am, not even twenty-seven years old and my life is almost over.”

Some major abandonment issues here, perhaps? “That’s harsh! So, okay, your first marriage didn’t last. But you’ve got the whole rest of your life—decades—ahead of you, to either meet someone else and try again, or more than one someone else, if things turn out that way. And Lord knows there are plenty of married women who would admit that they’re feeling unfulfilled—usually in more ways than one.” I suppose I’d fall into that category too, depending on the day of the week. “You don’t need to be married, or even in a relationship, to be fulfilled … y’know?” I added, parroting Talia’s favorite phrase.

“I know that, deep down. That’s not it,” Talia said, switching legs. “I’m an aging bunhead. That’s my problem. Like I told you, my life is almost over.”

I regarded her immaculate skin, glossy dark hair, and zero percent body fat. “Why don’t you tell me what you really mean by that,” I said gently.

There was another long silence before Talia spoke. “Any professional dancer will tell you that Dance—with a capital D—is their life. From the time you’re a little kid, you eat, sleep, and breathe it and dream that one day it’ll be you up there under the lights. For little girls, the dream usually comes with the tiara and the tutu and the tights. It’s your ticket to being a princess if you can just work hard enough. But a dancer—especially a ballet dancer—has a shelf life that’s shorter than a quart of milk,” she sighed, her voice full of resignation. “I came up through the SAB—the School of American Ballet—and was selected by Peter Martins, City Ballet’s artistic director, to enter the corps when I was only sixteen. That’s really young to be asked to join the company. So I thought I was going to be a star, y’know? Another Darci Kistler or Merrill Ashley. I was promoted to soloist at twenty. And since then … nothing. I’ve never advanced to principal.”

I noticed that when the subject was Dance, Talia became uncharacteristically eloquent. It was almost as though she’d rehearsed the words, just in case she might be interviewed about her career someday. Absent were her hesitation, her self-consciousness about her verbal acuity, and her “y’know” tic.

Placing her hand on the top surface of the washing machine as though it were a ballet barre, Talia began to do grand battements. “And y’know why?” She turned to me and waited for a response. “Because my head’s too big.”

“I’m not sure I understand why you think that has anything to do with it.”

“I don’t have a Balanchine body,” Talia explained.

I held up my hand. “Wait a sec! Hasn’t George Balanchine been dead for over twenty years?”

Talia nodded. “But the company body type remains true to his standard. Pinheads. You need a small head.” She rapped her knuckles against her scalp the way people “knock wood” as a joke. “And my head’s too big: pure and simple. I was good enough to become a soloist but not ‘ideal’ enough to get promoted to principal. So I’m destined to remain a soloist until I grow too old perform the roles. I’ve got maybe two more good years—tops—before Peter starts looking at the younger dancers and putting me out to pasture. In fact, I think he’s started to do that already.”

Suddenly, Talia burst into tears. She returned to the couch as though she were approaching a shark tank.

“I’ll survive my marriage breaking up, y’know?” she sobbed. “Even though I feel like a total failure. It’s hard to deal with the fact that I’ve been married and divorced and I’m not even twenty-seven. But … dancing … it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. More than anything. More even than being married. If I couldn’t dance anymore, I’d die. I can’t even do anything else. I’ve been dancing since I was three years old; it’s all I know. I never had to have another job. I’ve never even drunk a Coke that wasn’t diet!”

“You’re not missing much on the Coke front, actually; I wouldn’t fret over that. What about teaching ballet? I mean eventually.”

“Never!” Talia snapped. Her narrowed eyes were filled with utter hatred and contempt. “You know that phrase ‘those who can’t do, teach’? Only failures end up teaching!”

“Oh, c’mon, you know that’s not true. I’m sure there are people leading company class over at City Ballet who have been—and perhaps still are—luminaries.” Talia begrudgingly conceded me that point, at least.

It was time to open the laundry room. “That’s it for today,” I told Talia, “so you can start focusing on what you want to dance about next week. And you’ve really got to stop disssing yourself all the time. Bite your tongue when you catch yourself doing that. There’s a big difference between acting modest and being self-destructive. God knows I can relate, but I don’t have your body or your skills. You’re young, gifted, healthy, and beautiful; and bunions aside, you have a world of possibilities at those talented feet.”

Talia nodded dutifully, clearly unconvinced. She retrieved her load of leotards, tights, and leg warmers from the washer and tossed them in a pink plastic basket about three times her body width. Balancing the huge tub in front of her, she resembled a pregnant duck, waddling over to the dryer with her ballerina’s splayed gait. She loaded the machine and set it to permanent press. “Another thing—but I guess it can wait ’til next week,” Talia said, studying her reflection in the dryer’s porthole as her 100% cotton garments danced in clockwise circles behind the glass, “people seem to find me really vain.”