I asked about the daily schedule. “Well, you’re in group all day, then dinner, then meetings. On Tuesdays and Thursdays you’ll do an hour of yoga, and equine therapy on Wednesdays.”

“Will I be able to drink coffee there?”

“You’ll be able to drink decaf anytime. Caffeinated is only served from seven thirty to seven fifty a.m.”

“Does that mean that if I’m not done at seven fifty, they’ll take it away?”

Nancy paused. I imagined she’d hadn’t encountered many people who anticipated every hypothetical. For a moment I felt slight shame. “I doubt it,” she said.

I then asked about food.

“I think you’ll be quite pleased on that front,” she said. “We’re proud to offer a range of gourmet options. Our chef’s from the big city, Louisville.”

Her reference to Louisville as the “big city” inspired skepticism. “Can we eat whenever we want?” I asked.

“Breakfast is at eight, lunch is at noon, and dinner is at five.”

“What if I’m not hungry at those times?”

“You still have to eat.”

“Will they force me to finish my plate?”

“No, it’s cafeteria style, you can eat as much or as little as you want.”

“What if I get hungry late at night?”

“They usually keep yogurt and fresh fruit in the fridge at the women’s house.” Not true, I later discovered, when I snuck into the kitchen for a nighttime snack and found just a rotten apple and some Smucker’s jelly packets pilfered from the cafeteria.

Still disgruntled about the early-bird suppers, I asked, “Dinner’s really at five? What if where I’m from we never eat before nine?”

“Doesn’t matter, sweetheart,” Nancy said. “Here, we’re all Americans.”

•

The first thing I noticed when I walked into the main office at the Ledge was that Nancy was wearing short shorts. She stood by the photocopy machine and smiled a tight smile, and her shorts were at least eight inches above her leathery knee. The rules I’d received before arriving, along with a credit card authorization form, explicitly stated that tank tops and short shorts were forbidden at the Ledge. So I went to the Gap and bought knee-length shorts. I then scoured my closet for T-shirts and came up with three. They hung on me like curtains. I showed up looking like either a cabana boy or a seventh grader. And there, standing in front of me, was Nancy, tanned and glowing with an aura of recently laid contentment, wearing freshly cut Daisy Dukes. She extended a manicured hand and said, “Nice to meet you in person!”