Emily is still talking to Michele and hanging out with Alice. Wendy tried to talk to her, but it didn’t help much. Now I have two of them to deal with. Alice feels guilty and keeps asking me if she should give Lesbianism another shot.
“What if it doesn’t work out again? Then you and Emily would feel even worse.”
Alice is going to stay for the next academic year. I don’t know if it would have been worse if she’d gotten another job.
Then she called me up and asked me if I knew of a good therapist. If I weren’t so modern, I might I have been insulted that she’d think I would know of one. But I just laughed. “I’ve never been to one.”
“You’re kidding! Doesn’t everyone go to a therapist? Would Karen or Nikki know of one?”
“Maybe, but I don’t know if they ever have either.”
“Golly,” Alice said. “I feel as if I’m in Never Never Land where everybody is always happy.”
“Aren’t you happy? Except for this mess with Emily, I mean?” Alice is one of the most cheerful people I’ve ever met. She told me that it’s her gimmick. People expect writers to be dark and gloomy, so people who hire writers for lectures or guest professorships see her as a breath of fresh air.
“Well, actually I am usually. Most of my friends can’t understand it. But I’m blocked and it’s driving me nuts.”
I didn’t know what she meant. I love Alice, but I didn’t feel up to discussing her gastro-intestinal problems. I don’t even like delivery room stories. “Have you seen a doctor?”
“No . . . I think I can manage with a psychologist.”
I’m all for the mind-body connection and being holistic, but it can go too far. “Don’t mess around with this. You could get impacted.”
Alice didn’t say anything for a minute. Then she laughed. “No, I mean I have writer’s block. I sit down to write and I can’t come up with anything. So I go on Facebook. Then I get so upset with myself that I eat. I threw away all the cookies in the house, but the next day I went out and got a box of Lucky Charms. I picked all the marshmallows out and then I got another box. This has never happened to me before.”
“Why don’t you talk to Kate? I’m sure she’s always recommending therapists to people."
“Oh, thank you. I hadn’t thought of that. I’ve eaten all the marshmallows in the second box and it’s so bad I’m eating the cereal.”
I didn’t tell Alice that you can get bags of cereal marshmallows on the Internet. Nikki told me. But picking the chunks out of the granola is good enough for me.
The good news is that right after she got off the phone with me, Alice sat down and started a story about a town where everyone is happy. And it’s not science fiction. She says she might even turn it into a novel.
The bad news is that the next call was from Emily telling me that Michele is coming for a visit.
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