secretiveness, but I will somehow understand that it is unmentionable.
I sit down in the chair facing the center of the room and Margery and Henriette. Margery is telling Henriette about taking her grandchildren to Disneyland in July and how everybody is “real excited” including her. Even in animation Margery is rigid, her smile masklike and brittle.
“I always wanted to do that. That dang divorce.” Henriette shakes her head fiercely. This, I will come to understand, is her trademark expression, and it will accompany disgust as well as amusement.
“I know, Henriette.” Margery’s mouth pulls into a line as she stuffs down the rest of her cheerful vacation logistics.
“Let’s get you hired.” Mr. Jenkins pushes the mountain of papers at me that will make me an official employee of Bridgeway House. As I go through them, only scanning and not really reading (working hours, health insurance coverage, workman’s compensation, salary, client confidentiality, house rules, grounds for client expulsion, discrimination disclosure, floor plan of the house, fire escape routes, emergency numbers, grounds for employee dismissal . . . ) he explains my duties. I will carry a caseload of eight to ten clients, each of whom I will see individually for counseling at least once a week. Along with the other two counselors—Linda, who hasn’t shown up yet, and Henriette—I will run Big Group, an addiction education group, with all twenty residents every morning. Twice a week I will run a smaller “split group” by myself, composed of five or six clients who are not on my caseload. The purpose of this smaller group is to deal with emotional issues that arise in response to Big Group or to a client’s individual therapy session.
“Uh-huh. OK. I understand. Twice a week. Yes. ” I am nodding my head gently—to the observer I look like any new employee taking in the information about her duties—but behind the scenes, my heart is acting out a tragic drama in articulate palpitations. I’ve never done individual therapy before, it’s screaming. I’ve never run a group! I don’t know the first question to ask, or the second, or the third. Look at my collarbones (taps out my heart)! Look at my oversized pink t-shirt, at the terror in my eyes, and tell me how you think I’m prepared to do any of this? And then the nervous bird of awareness flits out and I find a perfectly coherent question waiting in the part of my brain that feels reasonably, supremely even, prepared for the job.
“How do you know when a client is making progress?” I ask.
Mr. Jenkins laughs. “It’s an art.”
In 1983, the year I found myself at Bridgeway, America’s obsession with