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Therese

They send a woman named Margot to come get me. It seems a bit excessive—I could have driven myself—but I suppose they’ve deemed me a flight risk. After all, I’ve already tried to leave my life (in a sense). They have every right to think I’ll do it again.

Margot is about six feet tall, with the shoulders of a swimmer who specializes in the breaststroke. She has uncannily good posture. If she holds her head any higher, she might tip backward.

“Are you ready?” Her voice is as gruff as her appearance suggests it would be.

I am standing in front of my house, a large suitcase and a small duffel bag at my feet. I am ready, practically speaking. I will never be ready otherwise.

Margot doesn’t wait for me to answer anyway.

She picks up my suitcase, which must weigh forty pounds but looks to weigh five pounds in her impressively capable hands.

The sleeves of her shirt stretch across her flexed biceps as she takes the suitcase to the car and tosses it into the back of the white van as if it’s a child’s backpack.

All this reminds me of that show Intervention , when they escort the addict to a rehab facility—always in a white van—before cutting to ninety days later when the addict is clean and sober, carrying a healthy amount of extra weight, face glowing, full of hope for the future.

Occasionally, right before the credits roll, text on screen reveals a relapse, an overdose, a death.

I wonder what the final on-screen text of my episode would say.

Margot opens the side door of the van, and I climb inside. I hug my duffel bag against my chest as if it is one of my children. I cannot think too much of them, or I will sob.

Margot puts the key in the ignition, and the van comes to life.

This is really happening.

“Last chance. Forgetting anything?” Margot asks.

I’m leaving my family behind, so I’m forgetting everything.

“Therese?” she says when I don’t reply.

“No,” I say. “I’m good.” A bald-faced lie.

The first ten minutes of the drive are silent, which is just fine with me.

We aren’t going far. It’s the only place of its kind in the country (so far), and it just so happens to be forty-five minutes from where I live.

It could be a coincidence, or it could be that my area has an extra-high concentration of insane women.

“You doing okay back there?” Margot says.

Her voice is softer now, perhaps because she has captured the target (me) and successfully strapped me into the vehicle. I am en route and she can relax. Her job is nearly done.

“Are any of the women who have been in this seat okay?” I ask.

She meets my eyes in the rearview mirror, smiles.

“Good point,” she says. “You are definitely one of the calmer ones, so I suppose I was hoping you were okay.”

I try to imagine how the other women behave. I assume there are lots of tears, perhaps pained moaning. Some may kick and scream. Such effortful expression seems futile, though. Very simply, what would be the point?

“I guess I’ve surrendered to this,” I say.

“They say that’s the first step in healing.”

“How many steps come after that one?”

“Don’t know. You’d have to ask a healed person.”

She exits the freeway, and I stare out the window as we approach what will be my home for the next few months.

“Do people leave this place healed?” I ask.

“I wouldn’t know. I only see them going in. But I’m told the success rate is very high.”

“How do they measure success?”

“You have a lot of questions. Someone in there can answer,” she says, pointing ahead.

The van makes its way up a long, narrow driveway, then parks in one of three spots. There’s a sign atop two posts on the expansive green lawn in front of the facility that says:

Wel come

C enter o f M aternal E volution

It feels like an aggressive demand: Come ! I imagine all the women, mothers like me, heeding the demand, walking as if entranced to the doors of this place that promises to make them better.

Margot hops out of the van, opens my door for me, and then goes around to the back to get my suitcase.

“You ready?” she asks.

She needs to stop asking me this.

I follow behind her as we make our way to the entrance, where a plump, round woman in khaki pants stands with her hands neatly clasped in front of her, an eager smile on her face. She is waiting to greet me.

This is really happening.

“Hello!” the round woman says. Her excitement startles me.

Margot sets my suitcase next to me and says, “Well, good luck,” then salutes me and returns to the van.

Everything in me wants to run after her, to beg her to take me home. Why did I agree to come—to Come !—to this place?

I take a deep breath, remind myself that I owe my loved ones this, an admittance of my insanity, a willingness to improve and return a new person.

Or not a new person, but the person I was before I became the one I am now.

Regression is considered a bad thing for children—a six-year-old suddenly peeing the bed, a two-year-old waking two times a night after sleeping through for months, a five-year-old babbling like a baby.

But for adults, regression can be desirable.

I just want my wife back.

Every woman here has probably heard those words.

“Therese? I’m Phoebe,” the round woman says, “and I’m so excited to wel come you.” The effortful overemphasis on the come makes me embarrassed for her.

“Hi,” I say.

“What do you say we go inside?”