About the book: Marika is a social worker trying to heal her drug addict clients, but she can't seem to mend her damaged self. She avoids love because love sits too close to death. Her choices have left her carefully ordered life a lonely, disconnected one.
Everything is about to change.
Big-hearted, quirky, emotionally walled-off Marika embarks on a plan that ultimately forces her to confront the very thing she's spent her life avoiding: love.
Marika's Best Laid Plan is story about the power of connection and hope, the things without which life is unbearable.
About the author: Judy Stanigar is a psychotherapist and an emerging author. Her latest novel, Marika's Best Laid Plan, was published by All Things That Matter Press in October 2021.
Judy was born and raised in Israel. When she was a teenager, she moved with her family to the U.S. She attended Columbia University Graduate School of Social Work and worked as a psychotherapist for many years before turning her life-long passion and love of books into writing.
Her experiences as a therapist in a methadone program became the background for her second novel Marika’s Best Laid Plan. Judy infuses her novels with a therapist’s keen observation of human nature. She loves to write about people’s frailties, which make them loveable and relatable. But she tries to imbue her characters with humor and poignancy in equal measure.
Judy has lived and worked across the U.S. and had even done a stint in Jamaica where she taught at the University of the West Indies. She now lives in San Diego with her Jamaican-born husband. She spends her spare time writing, painting, walking the local beaches and trails, and cooking Israeli food with a Jamaican twist. When she’s not working on her next project about her life in Jamaica, she tries very hard to keep the flowers in her garden from dying.
There was nothing unusual about this particular
Monday; it was just like any other day. I forced myself to get dressed and trudge to work, after a weekend spent mostly in bed with my books
and movies. The only person I socialized with was Mr. Saperstein, my downstairs neighbor, the elderly gentleman I had adopted as my
grandfather, mostly because he was alone and had no family and I understood only too well his plight. Besides, I’d never had
grandparents, so why not adopt one? I figured people adopt children, why not grandparents.
Otherwise, on most weekends there was nothing grounding me. I often felt like a leaf dislodged from its branch, disconnected, drifting.
Mondays were the days I started growing roots again as I got jostled inside the jammed subway car on my way to work. ThatI felt a certain
comfort by the bodies around me seemed awfully counterintuitive. All
my life, I'd craved connection and I found a strange solace in being alone together. A shared solidarity with perfect strangers. We’re all
together for a moment in our joint mission of going where we're needed are at least made useful.
It had been a particularly crappy weekend; it was the tenth
anniversary of my mother’s suicide. This morning in the shower, while
letting the water rinse off the dreariness, I took stock of my life. In six months, Id turn thirty and I was losing hope that my empty
so-called life would change for me. All my attempts to get a mate have been miserable failures. And the thought of chugging along like this for
years was untenable. Suddenly I saw Mom’s suicide in a different, more
positive light. She made a choice, and who was Ito criticize her? I turned off the water and shivered as I reached for a towel. I shivered with fear
and excitement. I wasn’t ready to make that same choice today. I'd give myself until my birthday, six months, and then I’d join Mom.
aba
At last, the subway doors opened and I was heaved out onto the
platform by the throngs. It was then I caught a glimpse of Cecil’s unmistakable leonine head. I was momentarily frozen, memories
Monday.
flooding me. Heart pounding, I sprinted after him. My heel got wedged in a groove and I went sprawling on the ground, headfirst. Luckily, ’'I'd
worn pants so didn’t lose total dignity. I jerked my foot and my heel detached from its shoe, which went flying. I picked up the unmoored heel and limped in search of the shoe. An elderly woman approached and handed it to me, shaking her head as if to say “That’s what you get for running after a man.”
She couldn’t have been more mistaken. I’ve never been one to run after men. I was taught better by my mom, may she rest in peace, If
anything, I shy away from love altogether. Love means nothing but loss,
pain, and misery, and contributes to more unhappiness in the world than possibly even hate. Despite what everyone wants to believe, it was
security, not love, that was necessary. Why else are there so many
gorgeous young women on the arms of old, ugly, rich men? Not that I'm a gold digger ready for that kind of compromise. I just don’t want
to always be worried about money. So security is a necessity.
I pressed my fingers against my eyes and tried to focus, to still my
racing thoughts about Cecil. The first year after our breakup, I had mistaken strange men for Cecil all the time. I imagined I saw him
everywhere. Then, after a year had gone by, I stopped searching for him in every man with a blond mane. I had finally accepted he was out of
my life. My dream had been shattered, but not my heart. I had loved Cecil in my way but was never in love with him. He was a trust fund
baby, someone my mom would rate “a good catch.” So, of course, now, after all that time, I saw him. Unfortunately, I’d lost him again. I limped
up the subway stairs in my one good shoe.
I was late for work at the methadone clinic, and if there’s anything I
hate, it’s being late for anything. I inherited my father’s penchant for
punctuality. Also, having a job where my boss, Phoebe, thinks I’m an ineffective clinical supervisor, I work hard to toe the line. I hurried up
the stairs of the 92"4 Street station, dodging the crowd, hobbling along as best I could, holding on my severed heel in my hand. I stepped on a
discarded paper cup, picked it up, and dumped it into an overflowing trashcan. Mayor Koch had promised to clean up the city. But it’s 1985
already, and so far, his success is negligible. Still, I was rooting for him. For a split second I thought of running across the street to the
shoemaker. I looked at the broken shoe and wondered if I should even bother to have it fixed. Such preposterous stilettos. A long-legged model
pranced around me like some exotic gazelle, her lean, lithe body making me feel like a midget, which I practically was at five feet and zero inches. I tended to add an inch if anyone asked my height.
The private methadone clinic where I worked was in the dank basement of a venerable brownstone on the Upper East Side. People
2
lived here in their gracious refinement, without a care in the world, not
suspecting that the patients streaming in and out of the Care Health Institute were a bunch of heroin addicts coming in for their daily
methadone fix. Having a drug rehab clinic in their midst would not be
acceptable, so we did our best to disguise our small, ragtag clinic as some sort of unspecified medical facility; hence the ambiguous name.
Our patients slunk furtively in and out. They didn’t loiter nearby for fear they'd be sent packing, without so much asa three-day detox, by Phoebe Drysdale, our executive director. She wouldn't hesitate to toss
anyone out. Phoebe had the ability to make people feel insignificant.
I arrived out of breath and, despite the still mild June weather,
rivulets of sweat trickled down my back. My curly hair, which was no
longer quite so blonde without the aid of Clairol Number 8, and which no amount of product could tame, was matted and stuck to my neck. I
adjusted my dark sunglasses, hiding my eyes, red rimmed from lack of sleep. Taking a deep breath, I pressed the doorbell, and Theresa, the nurse and my only current friend, buzzed me in.
There was no side entrance to my office, so I endured the daily ritual of walking through the dingy waiting room. The windowless lobby was
gloomy, with its garish green walls long since faded into a drab nondescript color. The dirty beige linoleum floor was pockmarked with cigarette burns, even though smoking was prohibited.
Keeping my head low, I rushed through the room. It was crowded, as was typical on a Monday. A few people were sitting on the hard-
plastic chairs; others were standing in line waiting restlessly to be medicated. To see a true melting pot, come to a methadone clinic.
Addiction knows no color, race, or even economic boundaries. It’s an
equal opportunity disease and one quick glance at our waiting room attests to that.
Overlooking the waiting room was the nurses’ station. Theresa sat, medicating patients through a sliding glass window, like a queen bestowing alms to our one hundred, give or take, patients. She passed out little paper cups with the liquid methadone the patients referred to
as The Juice because the bitter drug was mixed with a sweet red sugary drink. Another door, always locked, led from the waiting room to the offices beyond. Before I could make my escape into the inner sanctum, a husky voice stopped me in my tracks.
“Marika, ju late.” Carmen’s irrefutable gravelly voice and rolling R’s accosted my ears. She was a difficult client, though I tried my best not to play favorites. “Rosie’s number's up and Theresa don’t give her the medication because she can’t pee-pee.”
I gritted my teeth and reminded myself of the hard life Carmen had led.
“Good morning, Carmen,” I said, modulating my tone and forcing a bright smile. ;
“Ju late, so don’t good morning to me,” she said, nodding her head and mimicking my overly jovial smile. Fair enough.
I turned to Rosie and, using my best ‘therapeutic’ voice, said, “Could you give me a few minutes? I'll drop my things in my office and then take your urine. Hold your waters,” I added, in a weak attempt at levity.
Rosie, propped up by Carmen, didn’t laugh. Her facial muscles were
definitely slack, her eyelids at half-mast. I averted my eyes and nodded to Theresa, who finally buzzed me into the inner offices. Theresa, with her no-nonsense, unsentimental ways, kept me sane.
I poked my head into her office. “Goodness, Rosie looks horrible this
morning.”
Theresa let out a robust laugh. “She sure does. It’s been a madhouse
all morning; had to do a lot of breathalyzers. ‘Cause remember, assistance checks came on Friday.”
Yep, I knew that.
“And there's a bunch of patients wantin’ to see ya.” She nodded her
head. “What happened to your shoe?”
“Ugh, the price of vanity.” I rolled my eyes. “So, why aren’t Kumar and Dinesh seeing their patients?” The two counselors sometimes didn’t
rise to the occasion, but they were my staff, and we took care of one another. They toiled here by day and went to medical school at night. It couldn’t have been easy for them.
“Seriously?” Theresa cracked up again. “They couldn’t keep up with the demand today. And Phoebe called, she wants to see you, toot
sweet.”
“Now what?” I moaned.
Theresa tugged at her short spiky dark hair and shrugged. “Don’t
let the old bat get to you. Anyway, maybe she just wants to tell you about our new shrink? Or about Doctor B’s retirement party Friday?” Theresa, unlike me, was an optimist, eternally upbeat.
in “More likely Phoebe wants to chew me out about something or other.”
“Stop that,” she scolded. “Anyway, don’t forget to get Doctor B to write you a script for those sleeping pills you’ve been hankering for
before he’s gone. You never know what the next doc’s gonna be like, so
get them while the getting’s good. Today!” The irony of using sleeping pills while rebuking our patients when they asked for them may have
escaped her.
Theresa called for the next patient to get his medication and I went into my office without stopping to talk to my two counselors. Kumar
and Dinesh came to work at six in the morning, and if at times they took a little nap or studied for their upcoming medical exams, I fault them. In a pinch, I knew they had my back, and I had theirs. It was the Cecil sighting and my fall that had shaken me up and I was in no mood
to banter with Kumar today. There was Rosie to deal with, and, worse
yet, Phoebe-the-old-battleax.
I dropped my purse and broken heel on the desk, took off my shoes
and put on the pair of flats I kept under my desk for days when my feet rebelled from the discomfort of heels. I turned on the light and looked out the window facing north into the back garden. In the afternoon, the office would get a bit of sun, but it was still shady at this hour. I dumped the yogurt, my daily breakfast, into the trash. The Cecil sighting had put me off food. My little fern was woefully droopy; it looked like I felt.
Rosie stuck her head through my open office door. She was the
patient I had great hopes for because she'd fallen from greater heights than most, having been a math teacher once upon a time. However, I
was mindful not to get too emotional over any patient, for they lived a
risky lifestyle and were especially vulnerable now that AIDS had crept into our midst. When I'd just started working here, I’d often stay awake
at night worrying about my patients, but it’s been over six years now, and I guess I’ve hardened. Now whenever I feel weepy over a patient, I visualize a pretty Caribbean beach, or some other beautiful scene, to
be transported to, like in the Calgon commercial. Take me away.
“Ready for the cup?” J asked, trying to lighten the mood.
Rosie gave me a slack smile. She wobbled and I held her arm as we
walked to the bathroom.
Despite having lived a hard life, at forty-one, Rosie was still an attractive, chiseled-cheeked, ebony-skinned woman. From pictures she’d shown me, I knew she was once a great beauty, with almond eyes and a glowing complexion. However, in the decade since she’d lost her last job, the drugs and prostitution had taken their inevitable toll. She could still pull herself together some days, but this was not one of those
days. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hair matted, and her skin blotchy. There was a noticeable reddish stain on her blouse, perhaps from a
cocaine nosebleed.
I looked aside as she pulled down her jeans and tattered red thong
and perched on the toilet. The first time I’d had to take a supervised
urine, I was mortified at the idea of watching someone in this private act. Even now I stood away from the toilet, casting sidelong glances at her as she spread her thin thighs and put the paper cup between them. After much wincing and writhing, she produced a few drops of dark
liquid. It was probably not enough for a conclusive test. “Come on, squeeze out a few more drops,” I said.
“ C a n I start getting take home meds for the weekends? I’m tired of coming in on Saturdays,” Rosie said, enunciating her words slowly,
Everyone starts asking for weekend take homes on Mondays. I’m used to it, and I admire their perseverance, even when they know they
haven’t been clean for the three months necessary to qualify for them, “Gimme a break, Rosie. If I gave you a breathalyzer test right now
you wouldn’t pass it, and I doubt this drug test will come out clean.” “But—”
“And you failed the last drug test just a couple of weeks ago.”
“It was a fucking lab error.”
I'd been waiting for that old excuse. “I can’t bend the rules, not even
for you. Maybe if you stop hanging out with Carmen—” Right after the words escaped my lips, I wished I’d bitten my tongue. I knew better.
“Fuck you, Marika, and fuck your urine tests.” Rosie sprang up from the toilet seat, suddenly agile as a cat, and pulled up her thong. “Here,
keep your fucking take homes.” She shoved the urine bottle, now full, into my gloved hands and stormed out. A drop spilled on my hand and
I winced, despite being gloved.
I stayed behind in the bathroom, trying to stop my hands from
shaking. I hated these angry outbursts, a reminder of Mom and her fits of rage. On Mom’s bad days, my sister and I would tiptoe around the
house. I tried to shrug off the patients’ anger, not take it personally, and reminded myself that they were all in some ways broken people. But Rosie was different. She tugged at my heartstrings for some reason. I stood in the bathroom holding the urine bottle, the yellow liquid
warming my hand. A knot formed at the pit of my stomach, and I held
my breath, then exhaled slowly. It was going to be a long, long day. AndI still had to deal with Phoebe.
bob
Trudging upstairs to her office, flashes of my interview popped into
my mind. When Phoebe’d asked me why I wanted the promotion, I hemmed and hawed about improvements I'd make. She asked me how
I saw myself in ten years, and I blurted that I wanted her job. I didn't,
not really, but I wanted to impress her with my ambition. She’d scrutinized me and muttered that I reminded her of herself at that age,
hungry. Ha, I'd thought, in fact, I have a very poor appetite.
Come in,” Phoebe’s gruff voice came from inside her office.
I tilted my chin upward and swallowed hard, stilling my roiling
stomach, as I marched in. My eyes stung upon entering the smoke-filled
room and the stench of tobacco assaulted my nostrils. It took a second to find her through the haze, but there she sat, a regal figure behind her
desk. Her coarse short hair reminding me of a hedgehog. No makeup,
except for blood-red lipstick, a smudge on her thin lips, with their corners pulled downward, making her appear dyspeptic. Rumor had it that Phoebe was in her seventies, but she was one of those people who
grew into their age and she’d probably looked the same in her youth. “Sit.” Phoebe pointed to the stiff-backed chair across her desk with
her knobby index finger. It was piled high with folders.
I picked up the mess of papers and looked around for a place to put
it down.
“Here, give them to me,” she said. She dumped them on her desk on top of another pile. “There.” She exhaled so forcefully I could feel her breath on my face. I flinched.
My throat was bone dry, as if I had grit in it. I inhaled a short little breath as I fingered the buttons on my blouse.
“You asked to see me.” My voice was reedy. I loathed myself for it. I straightened my shoulders and wedged my hands under my thighs to
stop their fidgeting.
“You were late this morning. But no need to look as if you're going
up to the gallows. Buck up.” She gave a short bark-like laugh, which
quickly disintegrated into a coughing spasm. I waited while she lit another cigarette, even though the stub of the last one was still
smoldering in the overflowing ashtray.
“It’s come to my attention Phoebe always started with that line.
Somehow everything came to her attention, and it was never a good
thing. “It has come to my attention that you went to get a haircut from Pam, your patient.”
I swallowed hard. That had been three months ago, and I had my hair washed and blow dried, not cut. I fidgeted in my seat, even though I didn’t do anything wrong. “Let me explain—”
“Nothing to explain.” Phoebe raised her hand. “It’s simple enough. We do not accept any favors from patients. That’s a dual relationship
and I've fired people for that. There are boundaries, and there are no
exceptions.”
“It wasn’t like that,” I started again. “I paid fully for the service. I
was trying to show support to Pam for finally accomplishing her goal, for completing hairdressing school.”
It took Pam three years to get the courage to go to school; I had walked her to her first day like a parent walks their child to
Kindergarten. She’d been so proud of her accomplishment and I had
promised her that when she graduated, I’d let her blow-dry my hair. But there was no point telling Phoebe any of this; she’d scoff and tell me
I was overly and unhealthily attached to my patients.
Phoebe let outa little snort followed by another short coughing fit.
“I don’t need to hear any of your therapeutic reasons.” She drew out
ther-a-peutic so it sounded like a dirty word. “You crossed a bound
you shouldn’t have. It has the appearance of impropriety, and that’s what matters.”
My stomach clenched and I recoiled at the rebuke. “I get your point, but again I merely thought—”
“Yes, I know.” The matter was officially closed. “Now, as you know, Doctor Bird is retiring and our new psychiatrist, Doctor Scott, will start next week. And, unlike Doctor Bird, he won't be so ... so easygoing. I
expect he’ll be much more involved in every aspect of the clinic, not just medical matters.” She glared at me with her steely grey eyes. A little
smile pulled the corners of her mouth further downward.
My armpits were damp. This new shrink would probably be her spy downstairs, a new obstacle to be reckoned with. I knew I was good at
my job, even though Phoebe was the ever-present thorn in my side. Now I'd have a second thorn. “I’m really looking forward to working
with Dr. Scott,” I said.
“Well, things will have to change downstairs. I’m disappointed in
you; you've been too lax.” Phoebe stabbed her cigarette into the ashtray, and I understood that my audience was over.
My throat itched and my eyes stung. I couldn’t wait to get out of the
suffocating, smoke-filled room. I scrambled to my feet but held myself back from leaping for the door. I’d escaped the harridan relatively
unscathed this time. But, damn, I'd let her get the better of me yet again.
The morning wore on with similar tussles to the first of the day with Rosie, leaving me spent, but it kept me from obsessing about my Cecil
sighting. By eleven, Theresa had finished dispensing methadone and the clinic closed for medication.
At lunchtime, Theresa and I went out, as we sometimes did, to the
corner deli. I had my usual salad, without dressing, and listened to her
go on and on about my being too skinny and not eating enough as she tucked into her mayo-oozing club sandwich. She was what people
euphemistically called voluptuous. Like my sister Daphne. No thanks. My sister had the perfect life with a husband and two adorable kids and a house in the suburbs with a picket fence. But I had the slim body.
“Guess who I saw this morning,” I said, jabbing my fork into the salad. Although Theresa was only a couple of years older than me, she had a ton more experience in the men department, having already been once divorced and twice engaged.
“Seriously? Out with it, kiddo,” she said, her eyes open wide.
“Okay, you'd probably never guess anyway. Cecil, in all his glorious 8lor“y.W”hat's the big deal?” She shrugged, disappointed in my news.
“You both live in Manhattan.”
I didn’t explain that it’d been three years since we broke up and I
haven’t once run into him. “For all I knew, he could have moved all the
way to Brooklyn, or, worse, Queens.” I took a dig at her borough. ”“Anyway, it got me thinking.” I paused for effect. “Maybe it’s an omen.”
Theresa let out a yelp. “An omen? Gimme a break. Since when d’you believe in omens?”
She was right. I didn’t. “I just mean what are the chances of
randomly running into someone in this city? Maybe it means
something.”
“Like what? Don’t even think it! If you two belonged together, you
wouldn’t have broken up in the first place. How’s that for an omen?” She slurped the last of her Diet Coke.
“Lots of couples break up and get back together. It happens all the time. People change, mature.” That had been Cecil’s main complaint about me, my lack of maturity.
Theresa rolled her eyes.
She had a point.
I left my salad half uneaten, and we returned to the clinic.
The afternoon, without patients, dragged on. Sitting at my desk with all my paperwork strewn messily around, I became sleepy. At some
point, I even closed my eyes and drifted off until Theresa buzzed to let me know she was leaving. It was two o’clock. Shortly thereafter our two
counselors, Kumar and Dinesh left, too, although not before we had our
daily skirmish about their need to catch up in their chart work. I was at last alone in the clinic with images of Cecil floating in my head. Cecil,
my handsome, vapid, trust fund ex-fiancé.
I had just gotten my Master’s in Social Work from New York
University and was excited at the prospect of becoming a full-fledged
working adult, leaving the confines of dormitory life for an apartment in the city. In college, I’d only had one boyfriend, a quiet bookish boy,
like me, but he dumped me shortly before graduation because he was
going to medical school and had decided he wouldn’t have the time for a relationship. We'd never gone all the way, because Mom had brought
me up strict. Sex for the sake of sex was whorish. But at twenty-three,
my virginity was an embarrassment, an appendage I needed to free myself of. I was advised by my roommate to just have my first hideous
Marika's Best Laid Plan:
Fantastic spotlight!!
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