i wish you good luck

PART 1: May 2008 METHOD OF K EEPING A S HIPS R ECKONING... parking lot across the street. I felt safe for the first time in years, Lilly told Zee. Zee thought Lillys description sounded anything but safe, yet she knew it was an important statement. What about it made you feel safe? The couch, for one thing. It was this deepcushioned thing, kind of a dark green velvet. Like a forest or something. Forest green? Yes, and the light from the dow. You said it was stormy. It was. Maybe it wasnt the lightit was the sound of the hail against the dow. It was also what was outside. The car sounds and the shops. The bookstore and a ballet school. You could hear the music from the school, and I was picturing the little s doing their barre exercises. Even in the storm, you could hear so well? Zee asked. Yes, Lilly said. Im not going to do that. Zee could see the look of relief in his eyes as Mattei explained the process. First they would wean Lilly off all her meds, and then they would be able to see just what they were dealing with. In the meantime Lilly would be given a complete physical and all the standard tests, checking thyroid and estrogen levels, and even a dexamethasonesuppression test to rule out Cushings, though both Mattei and Zee were already pretty sure what the diagnosis would turn out to be. We already had a physical, the husband said, confused by some of the terms Mattei was using but clear on this one. He gestured to the folder he had presented her with earlier. I want you to have it at Mass General, Mattei said. They agreed. Then Mattei asked Lilly one more question, one she asked all of her patients. Where were you when you had your first panic attack? There was a long silence. The husband, who usually answered every question for his wife, looked baffled. Everyone waited for Lilly to speak. Finally, after the silence was so awkward that the husband was getting nervous, he started to make suggestions to Lilly. In church, maybe? Or at the market? Maybe at the beach with the kids? Let your wife answer the question, Mattei said. I dont know where I was, Lilly said. Her voice was flat. Thats bullshit, Mattei said privately to Zee after the session ended. Everybody knows.

she explained. What Lilly actually cooked were huge guilt feasts. The more she fooled around, the better she cooked. She pureed vegetables, adding odd flavorings like strawberry and peanut butter, anything the kids would actually eat. She went organic at the farmers market. She even dug up the backyard at midnight to put in a vegetable garden. She never finished it, which caused a huge issue with their landscape designer. The Guatemalan yard workers seemed to have less of a problem with it. They just mowed around the pit as if they believed that it really would become something beautiful one day, and they never filled it in as their boss had suggested. One of them even found a packet of seeds in the shed and planted a few rows of what looked at first like carrots but later revealed itself to be yarrow. As the days grew shorter, Lilly sank into a depression that rivaled those of the great poets. She stopped walking. She fired her nanny. Dishes piled up in the sink. One of the ren got lice, and she didnt even know it until the school nurse sent home a note and a bottle of Pronto shampoo. How did that make you feel? Zee never even had to ask the standard shrink question. She already knew the answer. Lilly felt all the most destructive emotions out therefear, judgment, inadequacyas if there were some secret to parenting that shed never been taught. Look, Mattei had told Lillys husband when hed dragged her in to see the famous doctor in what amounted to his last hope for his wife. Most places they give you a pill, they send you on your way. I could hear the music. It was as if real life was happening right outside the dowall around us, reallyand we were part of it somehow. Ive never felt that way before. Safe and warm, she said. He had given her a ride home in his red truck. She made him drop her off down the hill from where she lived, near Grace Oliver Beach, by the little house that had once been a pennycandy store. Can I see you again? he asked, taking her hand. He was so sweet that he made her want to cry. She told him no. He told her he thought he loved her. They made love every afternoon all summer, sometimes at his place, sometimes in the truck if they could find a secluded spot to park. She was always home by five. Lilly thought it was important that Zee know this. Im always home in time to cook dinner, 5

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