“But there’s just one more address on the list,” she protested. Her hands tightly gripped the brown leather padding of the steering wheel. “You should really see this through.”
“I’m not sure what else I hope to gain. And it’s such a drive to Arizona.”
Iona was quiet as we came to a stop at an intersection. A flood of families filled the crosswalk: children with zinc on their noses and sand pails clutched in their fists, parents burdened by the weight of coolers and beach chairs. Then she spoke.
“I was a lot like you three years ago. Just…stuck. I was an associate at a big law firm but the work was giving me ulcers and partnership kept not happening because they said I wasn’t ‘personable enough’ with clients. I was married to this woman, an artist type, who was critical of everything I did, angry at how much I worked. She wanted me to be more loving, more attentive, more present even as she also expected me to cover all our bills with my high-paying job. Then I met Dr. Cindy and she helped me realize how toxic the whole situation was, how everyone around me was just draining me dry, using me up and giving me nothing back in return. And so I left them both. The job. The relationship.” The light changed and she accelerated into the intersection, driving a little too fast considering all the foot traffic. “My wife came from money. She got her father to pay for the best divorce lawyer in Southern California and they took me to the cleaners. She walked away with the beachfront house, the art collection, the condo up in Mammoth.” Her face was oddly blank as she remembered this. “She didn’t even need any of it. She had family money, see? It was just her way of getting revenge for my leaving her. Another way to squeeze me dry.
“The easy thing to do would have been to slink away, nurse my wounds, let my ex win, and be the ‘bigger person,’ right? But Dr. Cindy talked me into reclaiming my control. We did what you and I are doing right now: confronted my failures of strength. We drove to my old home together and sat outside it, tailed my ex as she drove around, just watching her. Dr. Cindy made me address my emotions straight on and ask myself: What do I want most right now? Turns out that my ex was sleeping with her male studio assistant. They’d been fucking for months, apparently. She was bi and didn’t even tell me.”
“Oh God,” I said. “I’m so sorry. That’s terrible.”
“No.” She had an odd expression on her face. “Not terrible, really. Because that knowledge just helped give me permission to do what I really wanted to do, deep in my heart—what I hadn’t admitted to myself because I was supposed to be nice and nurturing. I wanted to burn that bitch’s house down.”
I was a little startled. “You mean, metaphorically?”
“I mean literally.” Her smile hardened into a twist. “So I let myself inside when no one was home—she hadn’t changed the locks yet, she was too naive to take that kind of precaution. And I set the goddamn house on fire. Made it look like an accident—a gas burner left on. Easy enough. The house was utterly destroyed. But guess what?” She laughed, a sharp little bark of victory. “I was still on the insurance and got half of the settlement. Boy, did that piss her off.”
I was stunned. I tried to imagine the Iona I knew—seemingly so cool and controlled—turning on the stove and holding newspaper to the flame, touching the burning paper to a curtain, watching fire devour fabric and rise up to lick the ceiling of her former home. The heat of the act, so irrevocable. “You didn’t feel guilty about it?”
“Oh, no. My ex was fine. She didn’t need that house. She had money. She had everything she wanted. All I did was take back a little of what I was owed. Proved to myself that I wasn’t going to let the world walk all over me. I wasn’t going to conform to how I was ‘supposed’ to behave.” She made a sharp turn onto the parkway that led to the interstate. “I took back control and I’ve never been healthier. Dr. Cindy gave that to me, she saw a leader in me, instead of a mouse. That’s why I’ve committed myself to the program. It’s really a good life, once you make it to Level Ten. Being a Mentor…it’s great. We get to teach women how to be powerful. We’re starting a real movement, one that has the potential to change the world.”
Her voice was firm, final; and yet now that I think back on the conversation, knowing what I do, I wonder if there might have been something just underneath her words, a faint quaver of doubt that swallowed the end of her sentences. Was Iona aware of her own complicity in what GenFem was becoming, the devil she’d given her soul to, and did she feel guilty about it?
If she did, she hid it well. She brightened her smile, put a hand on my thigh, patted it twice. “And that’s what this process will give you, too. We just need to figure out what control looks like for you.”
I stared at Iona’s face, her pale eyes above blade-like cheekbones, the fine lines that traced her forehead and fanned out from her eyes. I thought about the beachfront house, consumed by flames. She seemed so clear-eyed about it all. And yet what she did was definitely illegal. Then again, no one was really hurt, were they? Maybe it was even deserved, I told myself. And Dr. Cindy had endorsed it. She was there. She was a world-renowned psychologist; wouldn’t she call it out if something was wrong?
The exhaustion hit me then, a tangle of conflicting emotions that I was too tired to parse out. So I just let it all go and sank back into the seat, let the rich leather envelop me, released myself to the reliable V-8 engine and Iona’s certainty. I was glad someone was certain since I was not. Iona steered us onto the highway, due east, toward Arizona, and the last address on my list.
I was already in too deep, past the point where I could save myself from drowning.
29
THERE ARE CERTAIN PIVOTAL moments in your life when you make a decision that will completely change the course of your existence. You might think that you’ll recognize those junctures when they arrive—that you’ll perceive the importance of the moment, give your choice the proper gravitas and consideration, and then accept the consequences of your decision. And yet, so often, these choices happen unconsciously, unintentionally, a piling on of coincidence and circumstance rather than a moment of thoughtfulness. You aren’t even aware they’re happening.
This, certainly, is how I made the decision that would derail my entire life. Not with any forethought or intention, but simply by slipping sideways through events as they happened. One step leading to the next, blindly following a path toward the horizon. Only after my choice had come and gone did I even realize that it was a choice at all.
* * *
—
We arrived in Arizona too late to visit the last address on my list, so instead we spent the night at a hotel on the outskirts of Scottsdale with a view over a golf course. I was asleep by nine and wide awake again by one in the morning. I tossed and turned until I finally pulled out my GenFem binder and read a few of Dr. Cindy’s lectures on letting go of toxicity and regaining control; this made me feel less tenuous, more grounded. By the time the sun rose—a pale gray gleam over the desert sky, the light cold and dry—I was nauseous from sleep exhaustion and edgy with hunger, but once again I felt hopeful. I was making positive change in my life, I reminded myself. If it was painful, it just meant I was doing something right. The Method is patented, I reminded myself. I’m part of a revolutionary movement.