Chapter 79
Willa’s stay in the psychiatric facility and its affiliated residences and programs was longer than her last two, with 30 days of inpatient care, 30 days in the sober house, 30 days of outpatient care, and zero days of working out. That last part was the toughest, even amidst all the sobbing and self-hate and guilt and the fact that her roommate had night terrors, during which she frequently screamed that Wolverine needed to take out the garbage.
There were no suites, no ocean views, no meditation or macrobiotic menus. No Ben Affleck sightings during a smoke break. Promises Malibu, this was not.
“I still don’t understand why I can’t work out in the gym here at the hospital,” Willa had said during an early day of inpatient treatment.
“We don’t have enough staffers for one of them to accompany you,” said Paige, her new caseworker.
“You’re worried I’m going to brain myself with a dumbbell.”
Paige looked impatiently at Willa over library-lady reading glasses. “You can understand there’d be some issues about liability.”
“But studies show that exercise increases blood circulation to the brain and improves motivation and mood,” Willa whined.
Paige sighed. “Our time is up. Don’t miss AA.”
She went to all of the meetings — AA, ACA, NA, EA, EDA, LAA, SA, SCA — but never once said the words, “Hello, my name is Willa, and I am a/an [pick your addiction].”
It wasn’t because she stubbornly believed she didn’t have a problem; Jamie’s death and Willa’s subsequent sidewalk blackout, ambulance ride, and stomach pumping were, most certainly, rock-bottom. Rather, it was because she didn’t know which problem to choose. Alcohol? Drugs? Sex? Exercise? Adulation? So she stayed quiet and collected her chips until she had almost enough for a poker game (“No gambling allowed here,” Paige had said, humorlessly).
Now, two weeks after the completion of her treatment, Willa was free. Free to do whatever and go wherever she wanted, thanks to a separation agreement that had her living in an apartment above two aspiring fashion influencers in Smyrna while Pete stayed in the house and maintained primary custody of the kids.
Willa had never been one to believe in magical thinking; she’d tried asking the universe to give her lats more definition but instead strained her back while hefting a box of her old underwear, shoes, college photo albums, and unread New Yorker magazines (was there really any other kind?) into her new place.
But right now it felt like God was saying, “you wanted freedom — go choke on it.”
So, what to do with all of this freedom, and the 10 pounds she’d horrifyingly put on in rehab (sorry — this issue did not magically resolve itself while she was there)? Willa knew she couldn’t go back to FitFams, because of course it was toxic, and because she was banned from the place, and also because it had closed, just like the 79 other studios in the chain. The company just hadn’t been able to survive the news that someone had died in the Atlanta studio. To blame, according to frenzied posts from FitFamsFraud, were FitFams’ poisonous culture and leadership’s failure to implement basic safety protocols, like training employees in CPR and having defibrillators in the studios.
Glen Fowler had agreed to go ahead and buy the company at a bargain price, then largely liquidated it, placing the FitFams machines in his other gyms and treating them as nothing more special than your run-of-the-mill treadmill or elliptical trainer.
Dee, meanwhile, seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth. Or at least from Instagram, which for her was really the same thing.
At first Dee’s disastrous end felt to Willa like soaking in a warm, bubbly bath of schadenfreude. But that sense of smug self-satisfaction soon gave way to a strange kind of sadness. Her family and most of her friends couldn’t understand it; they saw Dee as your standard cartoon villain and the closing of FitFams as a triumph of good over evil. They thought FitFams was just a gym.
Anyone who had spent time at FitFams knew it was more than that. They knew it was a community where people cared about each other and connected as they crushed expectations and became their best selves. Most of them, as clients, didn’t know what went on behind the scenes; Willa and the coaches kept all that from them.
And even with her knowledge of all the real darkness at FitFams, Willa still missed it. Maybe even mourned it.
And, of course, she mourned Jamie.
Jamie’s parents had chosen their Pentecostal church in Alabama as the setting for the open-casket funeral in a last-ditch effort to get God to forget Jamie’s pansexual sinfulness. None of her Atlanta friends were invited because those harlots were sure to arouse improper thoughts by wearing pants that showed the feminine contours of their legs. So the FitFams team and Jamie’s friends from CrossFit, the Rack Room, and the salad bar at Whole Foods decided to hold their own memorial service a month and a half later. Willa went on a day pass from the group home.
Held at the quasi-industrial Goat Farm Arts Center in Atlanta, the event looked more like an Instagram-ready wedding than a final farewell, with chalkboard signage, Mason jar votive candles, and fit girls in flower crowns and flowy BCBG dresses. The event even had a hashtag: #heavenlyjamie.
Willa immediately assumed her usual position, next to the open bar, then remembered she didn’t drink anymore. She honestly didn’t know what to do with her hands. Use both to hold her dumb purse, like the Easter Bunny with his basket? Put them on her hips? Damn you, Calvin-Klein-dress-from-Marshalls, for not having pockets.
“Water, please,” she yelled to the bartender, who cupped his ear so he could hear her order over the sounds of Emmett Squatter, the hipster jug-band quartet.
Jen sidled up next to Willa. “This is what she would have wanted,” she said, then dabbed at the corner of a shimmery eye, careful not to disturb her heavy fringe of fake lashes.
“It’s just so her,” said Flora, who reached into the top of her red, off-the-shoulder, bodycon dress to better position her tits before trotting off to console Jamie’s hot cousin from Birmingham.
Some people were actually dancing. What is going on here?
She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned around. Jeremy.
“This is so weird, right? I mean, who twerks to a jug band? And who does that at a memorial service?” he asked, his eyes following Flora as she dropped it low. His hand was grasping a tumbler of whiskey with an ice floe in the middle. She looked longingly at the sweating glass.
He noticed. “Want me to get you one?”
“No, I’m good,” Willa said for the first time ever.
“Are you?” he asked, tentatively.
Willa was quiet for a moment. “No, not really. I mean, I will be. But … yeah.”
Jeremy nodded.
She looked at him. “Seriously, you don’t need to feel obligated to talk to me. I know I’m a lot.”
He laughed gently. “Nah, you’re OK. I like ‘a lot.’”
Jeremy took one of her empty and awkward hands into his, and then they stood quietly together, watching the washboard guy slay a ferocious solo.