Margarita

The Wrong Reasons, Part Two

Lily’s driving my leased silver Jetta while I hold my hands around the nape of my neck for support. I still have fear tears in the corner of my eyes, but she’s rocking her hips to “Down on Me” by Jeremih, featuring 50 Cent, trying to make me smile. It works, a little. I join in on the parts I know. “I like the way you grind with that booty on me.” We grin. “Put it down on me.” She rides her seat. “Down, down on me.”

“Ow. Stop making me laugh — my neck.”

We drive along Sunset, passing Mandeville Canyon where my ex-boyfriend used to live. I feel its familiarity, its pull, and then the ache of it. We veer onto winding California roads blooming with green leaves and pink flowers. The sun is bright, almost blinding. I am a dark shadow.

We illegally park in the garage beneath Dr. Callahan’s building. It’s Saturday, so hopefully no one checks.

His office is full of purple and pink crystals. A woman with highly contrasting highlights sits behind the desk with a bowl of chocolates in front of her. She hands me a form about my physical history, injuries, medications, and such.

As I sit, this ferocious little dark brown creature with one red eye yelps like it’s facing death. I jump and nearly reinjure myself. The chihuahua growls. Lily tries to pet it, but it snaps. What a terrible way to be greeted.

We sit at the edge of the couch. Then the dog burrows back under the pillows, like nothing had happened. I hold my left hand to my neck and summarize the story of my life with the other.

Lily sips her iced green tea latte with the little tapioca balls. I’d already devoured mine. She is one of the kindest, most beautiful people I know. When I leave LA in two years, she will help me pack up my belongings because I am overwhelmed. She will carry my boxes of books to my car and then to the post office because of my bad back. Lily is slender but strong.

Dr. Callahan tells me he can fix anyone. People come to him from all over the world. A prince flies him private to Saudi Arabia several times a year.

“It’s a blessing you hurt your neck because it led you to me. I’ll fix you,” he assures me.

Even though the consultation fee is hefty, I feel so much relief, I could cry.

As we’re on our way out, Dr. Callahan walks into the waiting room and scratches the dog’s head. We must look apprehensive because he says, “This is Margarita. She’s a bit grumpy, but once you get to know her she has a heart of gold.”

I find that Dr. Callahan is either a genius or completely insane. Maybe both. But I think he’s helping me.

For years I’ve had this syndrome in my hip flexors, where sometimes I lift my legs and it hurts and the muscles go weak. Other times, they feel pretty strong, and I never understand why. Maybe I’m a fool, but I truly believe Dr. Callahan is fixing my hips. He cracks me and wiggles my feet and does all sorts of things until I walk out feeling stronger, more like me, and I can’t argue with that.

Then there’s the kinesiology part. The first time, he said, “Hold out your arm and say your name.” He pushed down and my arm was real strong. Then he told me to say someone else’s name. This time it went weak. The idea is that my body gets stronger with the truth. He presses on some part of my body, like I’m made of all these hidden buttons, and my leg flops down. He pushes another button and it’s strong. It’s like I’m a computer hard drive with all my wires crossed, and he’s going to find my original programming. He’s rebooting me.

I’ve also made it my personal mission to win Margarita over. She’s like the men I date. The moment I stop trying, she inches forward and sniffs me. I’m going to make her love me.

Dr. Callahan’s office overlooks the glistening ocean, like possibility. He writes my patterns down on little pieces of white paper that for homework I have to read out loud while tapping my chest. Last time we spoke about how my body is my guidance, my conscience. For instance, I might want something but my body wants something else. It’s like my body is the thread that ties everything together.

I’m making progress. Last time Margarita didn’t attack me. I briefly said hello and then ignored her. That’s when she crawled over and sat on my lap. My heart was racing so fast. I tried to touch her, but then she quickly turned on me and snapped. I think I may be winning her over.

I woke up angry. Angry at my life. Angry at men. Angry at my left hip, which seems to have tweaked. It happened when I got out of my car and almost stepped into a puddle and froze.

At the time, I was thinking about how unfortunate it was that I had to spend the afternoon with my boss. How I’d so much rather be doing actual work for him — running errands, scheduling his family trip to Machu Picchu — than taking a walk on the beach in Malibu while shooing him off me as he tries to touch my hair, my neck, hold my hand. “I really care about you. You know that? I really enjoy seeing you.” “Me too,” I say, smiling. I pretend I do too.

His second car broke down at the Malibu house, the one I helped him buy because he didn’t want to rent for the summer. I said I could go out and wait for AAA. But no — he wanted to come with me. He was looking forward to spending time with me.

So I pick him up after Pilates at two. He has me drive the Maserati. It’s always breaking down; I’ve taken it for tune-ups before. He says I look good driving a Maserati. I’m wearing the Tom Ford sunglasses he gave me — he’d told me to try them on, and then said they looked better on me than him. So there I am, driving a sixty-five-year-old man’s Maserati in the sunglasses, my armpits soaked, afraid to lift my arms. My left hip that seized that morning won’t stop shouting at me.

The truth is, I’m grateful for the job. I think he’s a quality man in a lot of ways. He roots for me. He asks about my auditions.

We stop for lunch at the Malibu Country Mart. I order the steak that comes chopped into small pieces, like shriveled cow penises with bits of blood. His wine looks enticing, maybe I could hide behind the bouquet of sweet pepper and cherries. I joke that I’m the designated driver, but he insists I take a sip. Sweet pepper and cherries.

I break it to him that I hurt my hip and won’t be able to walk on the beach. “I wish I could,” I tell him. I wish my body weren’t so messed up.

He’s disappointed, so he gets meaner. This isn’t the day he pictured. He rented the Malibu house for the summer and no one came out, and now the car is dead. “It was a bust,” he says. I try to convince him otherwise.

I tell Dr. Callahan about my hip, about my boss. He says I need better boundaries. He says I should look for a new job. I tell him it isn’t so easy to find something part-time that covers my rent. But I’m always looking, I say. I know I do.

Dr. Callahan spends extra time with me today. We make all sorts of discoveries. He writes on his pad: Voice box high and low. Wants to be a child. Child needs in the high. Allergic to being mature. My body becomes strong when I’m high-pitched, like a little girl, and weak when I speak lower, like an adult.

He has an epiphany. “This is huge,” he says. “You’ve developed OCD as a way to cope with your three different sides. You have the little girl who will do anything to be taken care of. She appeals to older men who want to rescue you. Then you have your mature side, which goes weak when I muscle test you. You’re physically allergic to being mature.”

“And the third side?”

“That’s your fantasy of being a movie star and a celebrity.”

“So you don’t think I’ll ever be famous?”

“You’re not going to become famous by living in a fantasy. If anything, it takes away your chances, because you’ll do anything for that dream. You’ve picked a hard career.”

“Well, I also thought about becoming a writer.”

He laughs, and his eyes have empathy. He hands me a piece of paper. “Tap it out.”

I pay the bill, which makes me sweat. The woman with the contrasting highlights has a heavy Russian accent. She’s studying business in college. She reminds me of Margarita — aloof, but when she smiles at you, you feel a real sense of accomplishment.

It’s been several months since I started with Dr. Callahan, and there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel. We’re unwinding me like an onion. I wonder if I’ll ever get to the center. I wonder if there is a center.

He’s been encouraging me to eat beef. I hadn’t eaten it since I was twelve, when I saw the movie Gordy and felt so terrible for the pig that I became a vegetarian. The truth is, because of my eating disorder, it was just another excuse not to eat. Though in the last few years I started eating chicken and turkey cold cuts, which I folded into little plastic bags and nibbled on throughout the day. At first the beef was repulsive. I couldn’t stop thinking about the cows, but I do feel like I have a lot more energy now.

He can be so spot-on, and then say something completely off the wall. He told me cows are servants to the human race, and that eating chicken makes you frantic, like a chicken. “Do you want to run around with your head cut off like a chicken, or do you want to be strong like a bull?”

“Strong like a bull,” I say.

“That’s why people in Africa don’t have powerful leaders. They all eat chicken.”

He’s nuts. I don’t know what chicken has to do with Africa. He’s nuts, and maybe a little racist. I hope not. I do think he’s a good man. Maybe he meant something else.

But then, lying there on the table, when he says charming men and my arm goes weak, I feel like he’s onto something.

“You’re addicted to charming men. Do you know what the definition of charming is?” He leaps to his bookshelf, where his library holds everything from fairies and elves to the history of cancer. “Charming. To enchant. To bewitch. To deceive. To put a spell over.”

“Why am I attracted to men with wit, then?”

“You must have anger toward your parents. You’re rebelling. You’re afraid of being bored. You’re avoiding a real man and creating a fantasy.” He hands me a piece of paper: Attracted to charming men to avoid a real man. “Tap it out.”

I can’t wait to hear what he says next. It’s like Christmas — not the part where your dog dies, grandparents pass on, and boyfriends break up with you, but the part that smells like pine needles, tastes like gravy, and feels like home.

“Next time, we’ll make sure you’re clear of witty, charming men. You need a solid man, like your father.”

I notice he goes easy on my father and hard on my mother. He’s told me I felt like a burden to her, that I’m allergic to her art books. That made me laugh. Though they are heavy, and they do make me nervous.

Margarita is very sensitive today. She danced when she saw me but kept her distance. Then a woman around the age of fifty-five waltzed into the waiting room and plopped onto the pillows, nearly sitting on Margarita, who snapped and growled and barked as if she were the devil herself. Margarita sprang onto my lap, crossing over to my other side, hiding her snout under my arm. The woman kept provoking her with a stupid little baby song — doo doo doo doo. I couldn’t really blame Margarita. The woman was fine, but she acted like the room was her own. I got great satisfaction out of the whole situation. I was Margarita’s home base, her protector. Her little body was warm on my leg, and I felt more than special. I felt holy.

“Jasmine.” I hear Dr. Callahan’s deep voice. I wonder what secrets we’ll uncover, how much freer I’ll be.

Today, we have an exorcism.

He asks if I’d been in Europe in the late eighties or early nineties. I had — I’d spent a summer in Italy with my parents when I was eight. He says that makes sense. There had been a nuclear explosion, the radiation drifted into Europe, and it got into my soul. He says I’m possessed by my past acting roles — that every time I played a role, I created an imaginary identity, and instead of becoming memories, they became radioactive ghosts.

He loses his balance and falls into the bookshelf. His face goes white, his pupils bulging. He gasps at the ghosts that just walked through him. There were several. He leans onto his desk to catch his breath, to rest.

“I wasn’t ready for that,” he tells me. “Usually I’m prepared. I felt it go right through me, through my back. It was gray and old, like fog.”

I’m not sure I believe him. Maybe he was speaking in metaphors. But then again — who am I to make proclamations about the unseen? I wonder how many more there are in me. Maybe I’m a fool, but I want him to get them all out. I don’t want to be haunted anymore.

Maybe I’m crazy for listening to someone like this, but something inside me says to keep going.

⁂

I move back to New York in 2013. For the next year, I will speak to him on the phone. He says he can read my energy from afar. I still owe him a hundred and seventy-five dollars from that last year in LA. I write his notes on pink Post-its and tap it out on my chest. Fear followed me across the country. Or maybe it’s excitement. Either way, I reach for him.

In time, we speak less. A month goes by. I begin the call the way I always do. “How’s Margarita?”

“Oh, you didn’t hear?” he says. “It’s terrible. A friend had been taking care of her. She ran out into the road. She was hit by a car.”

My insides went sour. He didn’t seem upset enough. For the rest of the session I could barely hear him. I thought about her warm little body, her soft dark ears, the way she curled into me. I had earned her trust. If I had been there, I was sure I never would have let that happen. No one had protected her.

I don’t think we spoke after that. His office called twice about the money I owed, the Russian girl’s heavy accent on my voicemail asking when I would pay. At first I didn’t have it. Then I didn’t want to. He’d gotten enough out of me.

The magic stopped when Margarita died.

Part One of The Wrong Reasons: “Fix Me, Someone”

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