Free Eating Ice Cream With My Dog by Frances Kuffel Page A

was a popular meeting, so the circle of Stepfords was large and not everyone would get his or her three minutes to talk about eating and life. For now, it was Rachel’s turn.
    “I haven’t lost any weight in a long time,” she said. I slid down in my chair, pulling my down coat closer. The big room was cold but the Michelin design of my outfit might confound anyone comparing me to her. We were about the same size.
    “I don’t think this program is doing me any good anymore,” she went on. I looked at her from the corners of my eyes. “Whether I come or not, I follow my nutritionist’s plan. I stay the same size; nothing is happening to my weight. In the meanwhile, I’m initiating a lawsuit against a boss and I need other fellowships to get through it.”
    When she smiled, Rachel was pretty, with unsuspected dimples and a bit of glee in her eyes. That Saturday she looked pale and drawn. Her skin showed old acne pits, and the scar of her harelip was a vivid childhood remnant of family troubles running deep and frightening through her nights.
    “I’m sorry to hear you’re having legal troubles,” I said walking over to her after the Serenity Prayer. “Aren’t you working on your own now?”
    “Yeah,” she said, “this is my ex-boss. I took a lot of verbal abuse from him.”
    I sat down at that.
    “Really? Are you suing him or the company?”
    “He is the company.”
    “Can you tell me a little about suing a boss? My ex-boss used to hit me in public, and it got to the point that I was scared to do anything in that office. Is that suable?”
    “When did it happen?” she asked wearily.
    I had the horrible feeling I was doing a Hey-Doc, a family joke about parties at which people would come up to my father and say, “Hey, Doc, I got this pain in my shoulder. What do you think it is?” I’ll make it up to you , I thought. I’ll read your first novel. I’ll buy you lunch.
    “I was fired three years ago.”
    “That’s still in the statute of limitations. You could sue her.”
    Rachel turned toward Pierrepont Street, and I headed to Gristedes for a carrot cake and ice cream. The fury of my Mastiff Geyser eruption with Alix turned into the continuous simmering of a fuma-role. The next three months were hazed by sugar and walking dogs in the heavy-skied days of winter. It felt like every bag of shit I scooped up was talking to me. Not only was I a patsy and a bad agent, I was willfully helpless.
    I had justified my passivity in the job by thinking I was on a cliff. Three years later I got it: I wasn’t on a cliff; I was against a wall, a solid one built out of the law.
    Alix owned the company. What could I do?
    Instead of being a puerile asshole, I could have sued her ass, that’s what.
    I could not live with that piece of myself. So I didn’t. I ate and I raged.
    “I suggested you sue her when you were working for her,” my therapist, the Good Doctor Miller, said.
    “You did?” I was shamed further by this. Not only was I willfully ignorant and helpless, I didn’t listen to plausible solutions, either.
    “You can still sue her,” she went on.
    I studied the orange tulips on her credenza. If there were tulips to be found on the Upper East Side, she had them. The fresh flowers made her tiny office less of a prison cell of neuroses. “I’m not litigious,” I answered at last. “It’s another doctor’s family thing.” This was a point of contention between us.
    “Call me if you need me,” she would say, and I’d remember Mary, one my father’s patients, who’d get liquored up and keep him on the phone for what seemed like hours. I’ve put up with running out of antidepressants, bad fevers, bronchitis, and getting admitted to the hospital because I didn’t want to pull a Mary.
    “I’m sorry that I didn’t understand how shaken you were by being fired,” the Good Doctor Miller repeated. She’d known all along that it was the best thing that could happen to me, a belief I shared