I wonder if this place was designed to help its patients forget how fucked-up the world is. Sitting in this room is like sitting in a snow globe.
Then again, less than an hour ago, Dr. Mackenzie was studying my body for scars and bruises. Rush’s Recovery may have thick towels, organic lotions, and fine coffee, but my stay here isn’t a luxurious vacation no matter how hard they try to disguise it as one.
The center doesn’t even have a website. If you search hard enough, you can find mentions of an unnamed center where the disgraced Hollywood producer went for sex addiction, the rehab where some billionaire hedge-fund manager went after he’d gambled away other people’s money while high on coke, the recovery facility where a pop star went for “exhaustion,” trying to salvage her reputation after a terrible scandal.
I shift the conversation. “Am I your only patient while I’m here?”
Dr. Mackenzie nods. “Each guest has their own care manager.”
“How many ‘guests’ can Rush’s Recovery accommodate at one time?”
“We have three cottages,” she says, which isn’t exactly an answer.
“How long have you worked here?”
“Just under three years.”
“So you weren’t here when my mother was.”
“No.”
“So for all you know, they used to run this place totally differently.”
“While I don’t know exactly how things worked before I came here, I can assure you that at every turn, our goal is to keep our guests safe and secure during their stay. We want Rush’s Recovery to be a refuge.”
The word brings to mind wildlife trapped inside fences where poachers can’t reach them. Or my great-grandparents, refugees from a government that wanted them dead, forced to give up the lives they’d built in Germany. Refuges can keep you safe, but they come with a cost.
“You can’t guarantee your patients’ safety,” I counter.
“Guests,” Dr. Mackenzie corrects. Her expression softens, like she thinks I’m scared of what I might do to myself if left unsupervised. “I assure you that I will never be more than a few moments away. In fact, I checked on you overnight while you slept.”
“You did?” The skin on the back of my hands feels hot.
“After you went to bed at eleven, I set my alarm to look in on you. Once at two a.m., and then again at five.” She sounds as though she thinks I’ll be relieved to hear it.
“So you’re going to check on me every night at two and five?” I ask.
“Will it make you feel safer to know the schedule?” Dr. Mackenzie asks.
“Yes,” I say quickly.
It’s almost the truth.
In the afternoon, a woman with an Australian accent who tells me her name is Leonie arrives. She leads me to a yoga studio on the cottage’s lower level, passing (I assume) the bedrooms where Maurice, Izabela, and Dr. Mackenzie sleep, where Dr. Mackenzie sets her alarm to check on me like I’m her sick child.
The yoga studio has mirrors along one side, floor to ceiling, like the room where Georgia sent me to ballet class when I was little.
I always wanted to be a ballerina,she said.But Grandma Naomi said that kind of thing was a waste of money. No one makes a living as a ballerina.Georgia mimicked her mother’s voice when she said that. I was supposed to laugh, but I didn’t.
Six years old and you already take her side over mine.
There’s a barre against one wall, and I resist the urge to stand next to it and plié, practicing first position, second position, all the way up to fifth. My ballet teacher said I had bad feet, and Naomi pulled me out of class in fifth grade.
Naomi also decided I should go to boarding school in Big Sur when I turned fifteen (harder for Georgia to show up smashed to parent-teacher conferences that were 350 miles away), followed by college in theNortheast, with the semester abroad (Paris) my junior year, followed by graduate school in New York City.
I think this may have been the first place I actually asked her to send me.
Despite the cold weather, Leonie is wearing only leggings and a sports bra. Her arms are long and lean, her legs tightly muscled, her obliques visible on either side of her torso. She leads me through restorative postures, putting her hands on my hips when I’m in down dog, and I can feel my spine lengthening as she pushes me, like she’s trying to force me to get bigger.
