Before You Knew My Name (42)

(Ruby and I didn’t study the same American history. But I think she is right about that part.)

These last few days, Ruby has almost talked herself out of coming to the meet-up many times over. But her nightmares have intensified since learning about PTSD, as if she has finally given her subconscious permission to have at it. She dreams of floods and gates that won’t open, and yellow reeds wrapped at her throat. Sometimes—most times—she sees that bloodied face, eyes popped open, and wakes in a sweat, convinced she is back at the river.

(This isn’t me, by the way. When she has this kind of nightmare, I don’t stand a chance.)

There is something else, too. When Ruby got home from the coffee shop that Sunday afternoon, a message from Ash was waiting for her:

I’m in London. Jetlagged as fuck. I don’t know what messages you’re talking about, but all okay my end. Don’t know about you though. You ever going to tell me what happened the other day?

He hadn’t told her he was travelling for work. Crisis constructed. Crisis averted. She called him then and there and told him about finding a dead body. Forgot she was angry with him. And now they’re back on the merry-go-round.

(I don’t stand a chance there, either.)

But she’s here now—we’re here now—following All-American Larry around the room as he finishes setting up, chatting over his shoulder about this and that, the weather, an Indian restaurant in her neighbourhood ‘that you just have to try, Ruby. Oh, it’s so good. I never was much for that vegetarian stuff, seemed like something was missing, you know? But they just might have me converted.’ A laugh, a look up, and a quick sign of the cross, before he winks and gets back to loading fresh beans into an old coffee machine. He is excited to have a new person here tonight, feels like a man about to start a race as he wonders what this Australian woman’s story might be. He doesn’t have to do this, give up his free time to help people like her. The practice in Murray Hill, the patients he treats there—it takes more than enough out of him. But he made a commitment to give back to the community outside of those $350 per hour sessions, or rather, because of them. Sharing his good fortune and sound mind twice a month is his penance for making a living out of people’s misery. It really is the least he can do.

And besides, you never know where the night will take you. Trauma is unruly like that. All the messiness of real life, it’s better than the best TV show. He never did make it as an actor. But listen, when life gives you lemons, you can always find someone to make you lemonade.



Ruby is busy worrying no one else is going to show up tonight, that she will end up the only attendee, when a young woman half-trips through the door, hair and bag and one shoe flying. After waving at Larry, who beams beatifically as if greeting a dear friend, the girl picks up her wayward shoe and shuffles over to the circle of pillows.

‘Oops,’ she says in Ruby’s direction, offering a sheepish smile.

At Larry’s insistence, Ruby is already seated cross-legged on the floor, and this slight, dark-haired person sits herself down directly across from her. Unable to think of something to say, Ruby starts pulling at a loose thread from the cushion she is sitting on, twisting it tight around her index finger, causing more and more cotton to unravel. Unlike Ruby, this new person appears to be completely relaxed. Despite the somewhat ungraceful entrance, she now sits perfectly upright on her orange cushion, smiling at each person entering the room—they are coming through the door thick and fast now—and she perhaps sneaks a look at Ruby once or twice, though Ruby, keeping her own eyes to the floor, cannot be sure.

Soon enough, the circle has filled up with people. Larry claps his hands, before sitting down on a spare cushion next to Ruby. With a flash of panic, she realises that instead of being the only one here tonight, she is the only new person in attendance. The only person who doesn’t know the rules. As if on cue, after thanking everyone for returning to the circle, Larry asks Ruby to introduce herself as the group’s newest member—‘And all the way from Aussie, too!’ She sees eyebrows raise at this piece of information, and suddenly wants nothing more than to get up and run.

As the sessions plays out, nothing feels right. Not all those eyes on her. Not Larry’s barely concealed glee at having a new story to bat around the circle, and definitely not the way she senses others in the group are impatient for her to finish introducing herself—details minimal as they are—so they can have their turn for the night, each person contributing a story seemingly worse than the one before, a Jenga tower of misery just waiting to topple.

At the base, on Ruby’s right, is a middle-aged woman who, after a home invasion, has had triple locks drilled into every door in her apartment, including the closets. Next comes a man who found his three-year-old nephew drowned in a hotel pool three summers ago. On top of their stories comes the weight of an elderly gentleman who accidentally put a shopkeeper in hospital when he drove his Mercedes through a grocery store window. One traumatic event teetering on top of another, and though Ruby feels a heart-clench of sympathy for all the pain laid out in front of her tonight, by the time it gets to Tanker, an engineer in his late twenties who had a gun held to his head during a convenience store robbery that turned fatal for the owner, she has to admit she made a mistake in coming here. Her situation is so different, she almost feels foolish. It is as if Tanker and the other members of the group are still deep inside their disasters, struggling for the surface, while she sits outside of the experiences that led her here, watching from a distance. That’s the best she can explain it without the therapy language they all seem so familiar with. The group members might suggest she is repressing her feelings, avoiding them, but really, after listening to the circle of stories tonight, what she wants to say is this: