Ruth snorted. “Movement. Please. There’s no real movement; we’re not changing the world. It’s just a concept that they spoon-feed us to get us to feel like we’re in the service of something bigger than ourselves instead of doing something that’s innately selfish.” She laughed softly. “I mean, the point of the whole Method is to get you what you want most, isn’t it? I wanted to lose sixty pounds, I wanted to be stronger. And I did. I’m skinnier and I’m not the emotional weakling that I was and I hate him instead of hating myself.” She paused. “I bet you got what you wanted, too, or else you wouldn’t be at Level Eight, right?”
I thought of Charlotte, the soft give of her cheek pressed against mine. “Yes,” I said.
“So, wasn’t it worth it?”
Suzy’s snore caught in her throat. I wondered whether she might be feigning sleep, listening in, eager to report on our conversation. Ruth, too—how was I to know whether or not she was a spy, spinning yarns to get me to admit that I wasn’t as committed to the Method as I should be?
“Of course it was,” I lied.
“Like I said.” She sounded triumphant. “So what’d you do? It’s your turn. No judgment.”
I turned to lie on my side, facing away from Ruth, so that I was staring into the blank void of the cabin wall. The night chill had seeped into the concrete floor, the metal coils of the bunk bed, until it penetrated deep into my core. I didn’t answer and I didn’t answer and eventually I heard Ruth sigh and roll over. I waited until her snores had joined Suzy’s before I let myself cry.
* * *
—
A bell woke us at dawn the next morning. Before breakfast, a Mentor from Toronto took us on a nine-mile hike up Matilija Canyon, through the poppy-strewn valley and past the scorch on the fire-blackened hills, then up into the mountains, until we reached a modest waterfall. The women chattered and perspired, sharing complaints about politics and the patriarchy and treacherous ex-husbands. We all seem to have exes. It was all reassuringly normal compared to the previous evening—just a women’s retreat!—which made it easier to convince myself that my conversation with Ruth had been a fever dream, nothing of great concern. Ruth was paranoid, that’s it.
The hike was followed by cold showers, and then a morning of workshops on subjects like “Summoning the Warrior Woman Within” and “Childhood Perceptual Distortions: Letting Go and Growing Up” and “Mastering Your Own Life: No Victims, Only Choices.” A light lunch was followed by reading and then one-on-one Reenactments with the Mentors. In the afternoon, we did Service, which was glorified camp upkeep: cleaning the bathrooms, walking to town for groceries, washing dishes in the kitchen. In the evening we had study sessions with Dr. Cindy, Confrontations, and a new exercise called Circle of Confidence where we all yelled trigger words at a member until she found her inner strength to scream back at us.
Despite everything, I found myself enjoying it. (Or: Maybe I am just my mother’s daughter, and the impulse for denial was still too strong.) I enjoyed the camaraderie of the other women as we combed through Dr. Cindy’s patented words in search of the secrets to a better life, as we sweated our way through our hikes and cried through our Circles and laughed over the near-inedible meals we were served. I teared up when Kelly—a Level Nine cancer survivor with alarming eyebrows and a gruff demeanor—was promoted to Mentor and burst out crying. I even started to feel tenderness for poor Suzy, who admitted in a Confrontation that her parents’ wildly unrealistic expectations for her had led her to self-harm. (But thanks to the Method, she’d finally stopped cutting herself.) We were all in this together, exhausted and dizzy with hunger and light with the freedom of letting go. I remembered that this was part of what drew me to GenFem in the first place: the camaraderie that comes from feeling seen and understood.
* * *
—
On my third morning, I was headed up the stairs to shower after the hike when Roni stopped me. She was nearly a foot taller than me, her back ramrod straight under her loose yellow dress, her hand cool and dry on my sweat-sticky arm.
“Iona told me about your house,” she said.
“What did she tell you?” And why was my house a topic of conversation? I wondered.
“That you think it’s just too much house for you right now.” She smiled knowingly. “She said you want to unburden yourself so that you can move forward in your life.”
Had I said that? I reached my mind back to Iona’s one visit to my house a few months back, tried to figure out if she might have misheard me. “Oh, I don’t know—”
Roni stepped in closer, so close that I had to tilt my head up to meet her eyes. She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “It makes sense, honestly. To start fresh. Move somewhere new. Considering your current circumstances.”
Your current circumstances. I wondered what current circumstances she was referring to, and then realized, with a sinking awareness, that she was referring to Charlotte. Roni knew, too. Did everyone? She was smiling with so many teeth visible that it was hard not to read a veiled threat in her words, a wolfish hunger. I thought of Ruth’s word—collateral—and wanted to cry. It wasn’t just paranoia; Ruth was right. How many more pieces of myself was I going to be asked to give away?
Roni rubbed her hand up and down my arm, as if I were a nervous child who needed to be soothed. I had to stop myself from twitching away from her touch. “You know I’m a real estate agent, right?” Roni continued. “All you’ll need to do is give me your keys, sign a few papers, tell me where your important documents are kept, and I can take care of everything else for you. Remember, Give up control in order to take control!”
By then, I understood exactly what would happen after my house was sold. Roni would take her cut, and Dr. Cindy would ask for the rest—another “investment,” perhaps—and somehow I’d end up with nothing at all.
I gave Roni the keys anyway. Because I didn’t have a choice. And—if I’m going to be honest—part of me wondered whether she was right, and it wasn’t such a bad idea to start fresh. To run away. I imagined moving somewhere far away with Charlotte, someplace where no one—not my family, not Chuck, not the Arizona police—would ever find us. A place where I wouldn’t have to explain myself to anyone. Maybe, once I hit Level Ten, I could go be a Mentor in New Jersey. Charlotte and I would be safer there.
I’ll happily sell everything I own, give it all to GenFem, if that’s what it takes to protect us, I told myself. And for a few minutes after I handed Roni the keys to my life, I almost convinced myself that it was possible.
* * *
—
My final evening at the retreat, not long before I was supposed to return to Santa Barbara, Iona came to find me. She was my ride back home, and I assumed she was coming to plan our departure. But instead, she led me down to the field, where we sat in the shade of the oak trees and sipped on canned seltzer. It was coming toward evening but the heat of the day was still crushing. Sweat trickled down my stomach underneath the loose tent of my dress. Beside me—her pale bare legs stretched out before her, flip-flops kicked aside—Iona gazed out across the grass. On the other side of the field, in the rustic amphitheater, Dr. Cindy was giving a lecture on “memory distortion” to a group of women who had just arrived the previous evening.
“You’ve done great work this weekend,” Iona told me. “But I think you have more to do.”
“More?” But I shaved my head! I thought. I smiled and I wore the dress, I took the workshops, I am letting Roni sell my house. Is that not enough?
“Dr. Cindy feels like you have some block that we need to keep working on. She can feel your resistance to fully embracing the Method, which makes us all concerned about how prepared you are for life back in Santa Barbara. You have made choices”—she said this with a waggle of her eyebrow, as if she hadn’t steered me toward those choices in the first place—“which require commitments and I worry that you haven’t mastered the control and strength you’ll need to face these. You’re not ready to go home.”
I thought of Charlotte with a pang. “How long do you think I should stay?”