I start laughing. “No, I really mean, I can’t like.”
“Are you on the rag, like?”
“Yeah,” I lie.
He considers this. “I don’t mind.”
“Well I do.”
He gives puppy dog eyes. “Please?”
“No.”
He sits back on the couch and sighs up at the ceiling. “You’re killing me.”
“Sorry,” I say. “But I did say.”
“I know, I know. It’s just hard like. Literally.” He points at his crotch. He’s like a child but I find it endearing so I kiss him like I’m making up for something. He pulls me close to him. Then he shoves his boxers down and starts putting pressure on the back of my head.
“No, no,” I say.
“Ah, come on, like!” he exclaims. “You can’t fucking go around bringing men back to your place and not doing anything with them.”
“I told you that all we would be doing is going to sleep.”
“But then you kiss me like that? You’re giving me blue balls so bad. You’ve no idea how painful that is.”
The kitchen light goes on. Xanthe is half-asleep in the doorway. “Debs, are you OK?”
“Santy, I’m so sorry!” I give her a bleary-eyed smile. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Hello there,” he says, whipping his boxers back up.
She ignores him. “No bother, I just heard voices. Is everything OK?”
“Hello. What’s your name?” he asks.
“Who wants to know?” She frowns.
“I apologize. I’m quite drunk. And your friend here brought me back to your house and,” he cups his hands around his mouth and whispers, “it’s not my fault but she won’t have sex with me. Which is fine. It’s fine, she’s just a bit of a cock-tease.”
“I feel your pain,” Xanthe says, picking up his Batman T-shirt and jeans.
“You’re very beautiful,” he whispers.
Xanthe opens the window and flings his clothes out into the night.
“Hey!” he shouts, standing up. “The fuck you do that for? You fucking psycho bitch!”
He goes for her and I’m afraid he’s going to hit her, but she stands her ground. They’re nose to nose.
“Get out of my apartment,” she says.
“You know what? You’re not even worth it.” He backs away and collects his wallet and shoes. “Jesus Christ. Pair of tight cunts, the both of ye.”
He trips over her bike on the way out and slams the door.
* * *
“Thank you,” I say as I sob into her shoulder.
“Sssshhh . . .” She kisses me on the top of my head and rocks me forward and back. “Come, sleep in my bed.”
She leads me by the hand and gives me a packet of makeup wipes. I look in the mirror. There is mascara all over my face.
“Thanks,” I say, my voice wobbling.
I spend a long time taking off my makeup, making myself feel clean.
“Are you OK?” Xanthe asks.
“Yep.”
“Debbie, you can’t be doing that.”
“I know, it was stupid. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine. I don’t mind you bringing guys back. That’s grand. Just, mind yourself, you know?”
“I thought he was nice,” I say.
“Nice guys don’t act like that.”
“You were such a badass.”
“I know.”
“You need to teach me your ways.”
“I will.”
She hands me a cup of tea.
“Oh my God, I love you,” I say.
“I love you too.”
Results
We’re getting our essay results today and everyone is pretending not to care. We seem to have forgotten that the only reason we got into the course is because we’re all overachievers who feed off external validation. A lot of people in our class got enough points to study medicine. We make jokes about our families mourning the fact that we haven’t the heads for a more useful occupation. Be a something, Orla’s mother told her. Go to college to be a something. I think of what my something could be and I hear Billy whisper professor into my ear. I cringe even thinking about it. It’s like saying I want to be an old man in a tweed suit reading Shakespeare and smoking a pipe.
We’re coming out of a lecture on The Canterbury Tales when a guy wearing a polo neck rushes up to Xanthe, places his hands on both her shoulders, and says, “They’re out.” He readjusts his glasses and skedaddles toward the School of English.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I say.
Xanthe squeezes my hand. “I’ll wait for you.”
* * *
There is graffiti on the back of the cubicle door, written under the advertisement for twenty percent off bikini waxing:
No matter how hard I work, I can’t seem to get higher than a 2.1. What am I doing wrong?
The anxious knot in my stomach tightens. I have been successfully hiding the fact that I haven’t been able to read a word of fiction since the course began. I’ve discovered a hidden talent for tomfoolery. I go into tutorials armed with factoids from SparkNotes. I absorb plot development and character descriptions like scientific facts, happy to take on the role of sophisticated smatterer. It’s easy to make people laugh with whatever scant material I have gleaned from webpages. I’m surprised at how much I can get away with speaking fluently about words I haven’t read.
I’m used to being told I’m smart. It was easy to study in secondary school because I didn’t question any of the information I was given. If the history book told me Hitler won the war, I would have believed it. Facts are incomprehensible to me until I turn them into aspects of a story. Photosynthesis and genetics make no sense outside of the realm of fiction. I ignored every practical application of what I was taught because I didn’t remember any of the stuff anyway.
The truth is that I’m an idiot, but I can play the part of an intellectual for an exam. The night before a test, I’d cram the details of the story I needed to tell into my head. I’d pace my bedroom floor and feel like an actor reciting lines. The next day, I’d projectile-vomit the information onto paper and walk out of the room, my memory completely wiped clean of everything I’d supposedly learned. When I got an A in an exam, I felt validated. It made teachers like me. It made me like myself.
I don’t know how to study in college. They don’t hand out answers the way they did in the Leaving Cert. This first essay we had to hand in was on American literature. In the introduction, I spoke about watching Pocahontas as a kid. I even reference the film in my bibliography. I blush, imagining the lecturer laughing as they read it. But I suppose it could be refreshing? They told us that getting a first means that you’ve made a contribution to academic thought. Maybe all the stuffy world of academia is missing is some Disney sparkle?
* * *
Xanthe and I walk arm in arm down to the School of English. We are managing our expectations. We have discussed the likelihood of getting a 2.1. We will be happy with 2.1s. Firsts are elusive. A 2.1 is achievable. We make our way through the crowd and scan the results. There are only a couple of 2.2s. The vast majority are 2.1s as predicted. There’s one first near the top of the board and a PASS, which everyone knows belongs to the mature student who is the only one brave enough to ask stupid questions in the middle of lectures.
I find my student number. My instinct is to trace my finger across to make sure I’ve the right line but there are too many people around and my result swims in the middle of a sea of 2.1s. There’s a 2.2 hovering near my student number. I look away quickly. I tell myself not to stare. It will surely go away, like a stray dog. Don’t look at it. It doesn’t belong to me.
“You happy?” I ask Xanthe.
“Yeah,” she says. “You?”
“Yeah. Going to find that nerd who got the first and shove their head down a toilet.”
Xanthe has the same embarrassed look she had on her face when she told me she was vegan.
<
br /> “You dickhead, it’s you!” I say, loud enough for everyone else to hear and realize that it’s her. She’s the one to beat.
“Stop it,” she says, elbowing me.
“Here, if anyone deserves to be annoyed, it’s me,” I say.
“A 2.1 is a great result.”
“It’s not a first,” I say. “Fair fucks to you.”
* * *
The therapist introduces herself but I’m not listening. I’m still thinking about the security man downstairs and the way he looked at me. I flatter myself into thinking he tried to guess what was wrong with me. I locked myself into a toilet cubicle for a quick cry before I presented myself to reception. They gave me a registration form.
I realized as I was scoring myself from 1 (not at all) to 10 (all the time) that I wasn’t even impressively depressed. I averaged a five or six out of ten. As it turns out, life and primary school spelling tests are both marked out of ten, although spelling tests are easier to gauge—you’re either right or wrong. How much I identify with platitudes like I feel like I’m a failure is harder to judge. To score myself a ten would be melodramatic and attention-seeking, but zero would make me cocky. I scored myself a modest 4/10. I gave myself a 2/10 for the statement: I have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. I don’t have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. I have a problem with sleep itself. I don’t recognize my own dreams isn’t an option, nor is, I think my mother has brainwashed me and is slowly turning me into her own brand of crazy.
The therapist asks about my family. I don’t mention my mother’s long-term relationship with mental illness because I don’t think it’s relevant to me getting a 2.2, which is the reason I’ve booked myself into therapy. Now, she’s going on about mood disorders. When she hones in on anxiety I stop biting my nails. I’m repulsed by the accusation. Anxiety is a fancy word for worry, and worrying is not a medical condition. Depression is a fancy word for being sad, but it’s a stronger synonym. I could forgive myself for getting a 2.2 because of depression. I can’t forgive myself for getting a 2.2 because I’m a bit of a worrier. There has been no mention of depression at all yet. There’s an epidemic of depression among students. Depression is like the 2.1 of mental illnesses and she’s not even giving that to me.
I try again. “I just . . . I feel like I’m not enjoying life as much as I used to. I’m not coping with my workload. I’m tired all the time.”
She gives me a sympathetic nod and opens her arms like she’s about to give a TED talk. “College is hard, isn’t it? Everyone talks about the parties and freedom. Finding yourself. Discovering your own identity. Nobody tells you about the assignments, the feeling that you’re in way over your head.”
“I know that,” I cut across her but she continues to talk past me.
“Let’s just imagine that we’re walking down Grafton Street.”
I can’t imagine any situation that would require me to walk down Grafton Street with this woman.
“And you spot a friend. Give me a name of one of your friends.”
“Orla,” I say, upgrading her from irritating acquaintance.
“Great, so you say, ‘Hi Orla,’ but Orla doesn’t say anything back. She keeps on walking.” The therapist is looking at me like she has masterminded the most dramatic scene in the hypothetical universe. “How would you feel in that situation?”
“Em, relieved?”
“What thoughts would be running through your mind?”
“That I didn’t have to talk to her.”
“Any other thoughts or feelings?”
“Em, confused maybe.”
She nods. “And why might you be confused?” She makes a circle with her hand that suggests that I’m getting warmer.
“Because she didn’t seem to recognize me?”
“Oh interesting, so see there that we jumped straight to that conclusion. You wouldn’t think she was angry with you or deliberately ignoring you?”
“I don’t think so?”
“Well that’s good. This is just one of the examples where Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT might come in useful. In CBT, we learn to recognize that our thoughts are directly linked to our feelings. We can acknowledge the thought and how that makes us feel. We can catch that thought,” she grasps a fist full of air, “and analyze it before we rush straight to our feelings.”
She takes out a leaflet and opens it onto a page that looks like a diagram of the water cycle. “So seeing Orla on the street,” she says and circles TRIGGERING EVENT with her blue pen. “Leads to THOUGHTS like why did she not say hello? Is she angry at me? Does she not like me? which lead to FEELINGS of confusion.” She points at me. “Or anger, or sadness. Whereas, if we change that thought to something more positive, like, she probably didn’t recognize me or she could have a lot on her mind, then we change the feelings we have surrounding that thought and that interaction.”
“But the opposite could be true as well,” I tell her, frowning. “She could hate me.”
“Yes, but the likelihood of that is slim. The more rational thought is that she didn’t see you.”
“Which is what I thought in the first place.”
“Exactly.” She closes the leaflet. On the cover, there’s a black-and-white drawing of a girl behind prison bars. There’s a cloud over her head. It’s raining. SOCIAL ANXIETY is written in bubble writing in the cloud. “This is just some information to take home with you. There are some exercises in there that you might find useful.”
At this stage, I’m expecting a warning not to put crayons up my nose.
“Generalized anxiety affects one in ten college students,” she says, sliding the leaflet across the desk.
Great, I think. It’s not just anxiety, it’s generalized too.
“It’s very common,” she says. “You’re definitely not the first person that has come in my door today affected by it.” She smiles at me. “Now, before you go I just need you to complete a quick online survey for me.”
She lets me sit in the chair at her desk. It’s another test from one to ten, this time with statements about how much I feel the session has met my expectations. I feel her hovering over my shoulder, so I give her all ten out of tens and thank her profusely on the way out.
“That’s great to hear,” she says. “Best of luck to you now, and remember to take one day at a time. It’s all about the journey.”
I ask at reception if I should book a follow-up appointment. The receptionist looks at her computer screen to check what the therapist said about me and says, “No, she says you’re fine.”
I stop in the bathroom on the way out for a quick break and another cry.
The Cure
A woman with a pram trundles across the driveway to our back door with a sheepish look on her face. I send her around to the caravan. Billy hasn’t had a visitor in a while. I imagine her walking in on him in his boxers sipping whiskey and perusing one of the old newspapers that he stockpiles out there. I hope he’s not drunk.
Billy is a reluctant practitioner of the cure. It’s been in the family for generations. If you happen to know a man who knows a man who knows a man who has the cure—well, Billy is one of the men they send you to. It’s potluck. Most of the others take it seriously. Billy says that he hardly believes in it himself, but it’s harmless enough. Most people leave feeling better. Sometimes, he completely takes the piss, but he has a good track record despite himself. People come to him to get the cure for all sorts of things—babies with colic, burn victims, farmers with ringworm, teenagers with warts or eczema, to middle-aged men with gout or back problems.
* * *
I hear the woman drive out of our gate and head over to the caravan. I spy Billy putting away his grandfather’s wedding ring and the handwritten prayer that he uses in his practice. He looks embarrassed when he notices I’m there.
“Well,” he says.
“Colic?” I ask.
“No, she had bad eczema. It was all scaly around her ears.”
> Billy doesn’t take appointments and he doesn’t accept money, but some people are so grateful that they send him gifts. Most of them are women who have been charmed by the caravan and by him. They see the trinkets that he collects and want to add to his collection. A woman called Julie gave him an expensive vinyl record player. I’ve lost track of the things in the caravan that are gifts or things Billy has sourced himself—candlestick holders, a garden gnome, a tiny brass rocking-chair. He keeps most of the postcards he collects in a box, but he blu-tacks his favorite ones to the wall by his bed.
“I went to see Deirdre today,” Billy says, sitting down in his armchair.
“Oh,” I say.
I know not to ask how she is. I’ve only been to visit my great-grandmother with Billy once, when I was very young. I remember sitting in the conservatory of the convent nursing home, eating stale Kimberley Mikado biscuits and drinking milky tea from a china cup and saucer. Deirdre had been wheeled in by a nun not much younger than her who placed her in front of the television, gave us a tight smile, and let us be. The cast of Home and Away looked out at her but she stared off into the middle distance. There was a string of drool hanging down from her mouth. Billy wiped it away with a tissue, but a fresh string of spit soon replaced it. Deirdre didn’t realize that she had visitors. I don’t think she knew there was anyone else in her world.
“If I ever go like that,” Billy says now, “get the shotgun.”
“I think you have a few years to go,” I say.
“It can get you young too. Early onset. Look at your mother.”
“Billy!”
“What?”
“Mam doesn’t have Alzheimer’s!”
“She’s getting there.”
I fill up the kettle.
Billy tries to change the subject. “Have you got Christmas exams?”
“No, just essays.”
“And they mark you on them?”
“They do.”
“You’d be looking for an A so.”
“Well, it’s a different marking scheme from school,” I say, feeling my face getting hotter. “There are no As and Bs. There are firsts and seconds.”
“Right, so we don’t do sloppy seconds.”
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