Obsessed

by Allison Britz

  • • •

  “My, my, you’re a chatty Cathy today,” my mom says, glancing at me with a smile over the center console on our drive to Dr. Nelson’s. I’m in a good mood, the winter sun blaring in through the front window, and I’ve been telling her about the play we’re reading in English. She reaches her arm over and tickles me quickly in the stomach. “I missed talking with you like this!”

  I move to continue my story, but as soon as I process her words, my muscles tense up. Why does she have to point that out? Why must we bring attention to this? “Yeah, uh, I don’t know. I mean, yeah,” I grunt, leaning forward to turn up the radio as an escape. My mom’s favorite Beatles song is on, and after she gives me a few overly enthusiastic nudges in my arm, I give in and wiggle around a little bit in my seat, a halfhearted attempt at a dance. My mom laughs with glee and she belts the rest of the song out loud. Humoring her, I begin to gently mouth the words. I’m singing almost as loud as my mom by the time the song ends and we pull into Dr. Nelson’s parking lot.

  I’m feeling boisterously happy. Pencils! Socks! What more could a girl ask for? This is incredible! When plastered against the dark backdrop of the past three months, the past few days have been the best of my life. And I’m going to show Dr. Nelson just how much progress I’ve made. She’s going to be so amazed! I rustle in my backpack, pull my well-used pencil out of the front pouch, and stick it behind my ear.

  I wince briefly as if I’ve got a cramp in my neck. The pencil is so close to my brain. So close to the tumors. But I wipe the thought away like steam on a mirror. It’s just a pencil. Just a pencil. Wood. Lead. Nothing.

  • • •

  Vibrating with anticipation, I try to sit calmly across from Dr. Nelson. Every few minutes a small thought in the back of my head pipes up, Um, excuse me, miss. Um, yes, did you know pencils cause cancer? I smash it hard with my fist. Shut up.

  I can’t believe she hasn’t caught on yet. We’ve been talking, looking at each other across the carpet, for five minutes now and she hasn’t said a thing! As she tells me about the “incredible” cucumber she grew in her garden last summer, I turn my head pointedly to the left so the pencil behind my ear is directly in her eye line. I sway back and forth slightly, hoping it will catch her attention. Come on!

  She’s looking at me strangely, her story halted, trying to figure out what kind of message I’m sending her. Maybe Dr. Nelson isn’t as quick as I thought. I roll my eyes at her and jerk my hand up, pointing at the pencil tucked behind my ear.

  “What’s this?” She mimics my hand gesture. “What are you showing me?”

  “Dr. Nelson! Come on! Pencil! A pencil behind my ear!” I hear it coming out, and it sounds like a whine but . . . but . . . a pencil behind my ear! How can she not see?

  “Well, look at that! Now, if that’s not impressive!” She claps her hands together loudly. “When did you find out you were able to do that?”

  “Just now, in the car.” I shrug, trying to sound nonchalant in a way that tells her I still want more compliments on my bravery. “I also took notes in class almost all day yesterday and today.”

  “You took notes? On notebook paper? With a pencil?”

  “Yes!” I flail my hands at her in excitement.

  “What!” She throws my folder into the air, papers flying everywhere. “That’s amazing!”

  “I know! I’ve been so excited to tell you! And it wasn’t even that bad, you know? I mean, now that I’m okay with pencils, using one to actually write wasn’t a big deal.”

  She’s shaking her head at me, her eyes gleaming. “This is incredible work, Allison. Absolutely incredible. I’m so very proud of you. Wow.” She is still shaking her head as she bends down and quickly gathers all her notes on me off the floor.

  “And I have one more thing to show you.” I wiggle my toes inside my running shoes.

  “Something else? Really? Oh my, okay. Let’s see it!”

  “Well, remember how you said that some things would just get better on their own? Like, once I started getting over a few, some other fears I haven’t even targeted will just go away?” I rustle in my seat, bending down toward my shoes. I’m wearing socks. I’ve been wearing them all day. And nothing has happened! No anxiety. And they’re so comfortable.

  “Yes, yes, I remember talking about that.” She tilts her head, her voice questioning.

  I adjust myself in my seat and pull up my pants leg. “I’m wearing socks.”

  “Yes, so you are.” She nods, sticking up her leg at me, raising her khakis. “So am I!”

  “No, I’m wearing socks.” I roughly pull both my shoes off and wave my white-cottoned feet at her, staring at her hard across the carpet.

  “Oh! Socks! Oh my, you’re wearing socks! How very wonderful!” She gazes at me in amazement, pouring out an endless stream of enthusiasm. “How did this come about? Did you work on them on your own?”

  “No, I didn’t work on them at all! And I don’t know! Like, I have no idea! I just accidentally stepped on one yesterday on the stairs, and it didn’t scare me at all, even though it’s on the list. Even though for months socks caused cancer. So”—I shrug at her—“I decided to wear some today. To show you.”

  “Well, I’m certainly glad you did! Quite the surprise!” We smile at each other across the carpet for a long time. “So. It really seems like you’re doing well. Like you’re getting a handle on this thing.”

  “Yeah, definitely. I agree. It’s hardest at the beginning, but once you get going and get past the first few exposures, things get much better.”

  “Yep. Exactly. That’s ERP in action, my girl!” We nod at each other. “And speaking of ERP, I think it’s time we choose another victim, right? What do you say? You’re clearly well on your way to defeating pencils,” she says with a laugh, raising her arm up to gesture toward my ear. And before I respond, she is in her manila folder, flipping through papers. She hands me a copy of my danger list and looks down at her own. “Okay, well, I think we need to still be focusing on school.” Eyes on the paper, she is intentionally not giving me time to interrupt. “Let’s see: notebook paper for homework, not the computer”—she looks up and winks at me—“your pile, putting binders in your locker. Or, oh. Here we go.” She taps the papers with the end of her pen. “Calculators.”

  We do three rounds of ERP, and by the last one, ears ringing, I peak at a seven, finding my way to relative calm in less than a minute. And I’m exhausted. The calculator is lying on my hand, and although it is no longer screaming at me, I’m looking at the ceiling to ensure I don’t accidentally glance at it.

  “Okay! Very good, very good! You did some great work today, Allison. Truly great.” She looks up at me cheerily, expectantly. But I don’t have the energy to respond. “So, and I’m sure you’re expecting this, your homework is to try to expose yourself to calculators as much as possible. As you’ve seen, the more you do it, the faster you start to become desensitized, right?”

  I nod at her but my head hurts. The weight of the calculator on my arm takes up about half my brain.

  “Also, in addition to working on calculators, I think you—”

  Whipping my head toward her, mouth open, I let out a half cough, half gasp. Is she serious? More?

  “Don’t balk at me like that! Of course there’s more!” She wiggles her eyebrows. “But I think it’s time you got a fun one, hmm? Don’t you?”

  “Fun?” My voice is flat, and I scrunch my nose at her, head still buzzing.

  “Yes, there is such a thing as fun homework, believe it or not. And it’s called shopping. How does that sound?”

  “Shopping? My homework is to go shopping?”

  “Yes! Your Christmas gifts! You have a mini fortune waiting for you in all of the gift cards that you haven’t been able to use.” She underlines the entry on the list with her pen. Oh, right! I exclaim to myself. Through the family grapevine, and to my complete embarrassment, most of my relatives were informed long before Christmas th
at I was going through some sort of emotional crisis. As a result, I was deluged with gift cards to all my favorite stores over the holidays. It was my family’s not-so-subtle way of trying to lift my spirits. But as soon as I opened them, of course, they were moved to the danger list, never to be seen again. I remember stashing them furtively under my bed, tucking them under a pile of contraband clothing for extra protection.

  Oh my gosh, Dr. Nelson, you’re a genius! My face lights up at her. Gift cards.

  “But we’re going to need to involve someone else,” she continues. “Given that you can’t drive yourself yet.”

  • • •

  We walk down the carpeted hall together toward the waiting room. “Momzilla, we’ve got some homework for you,” I call out in a singsong voice. My mom is gazing down at her computer, mouth slightly open.

  “Pardon me?” It’s difficult for her to pull herself from her work, but she looks up at us after saving whatever it is she is working on. “I’m sorry, I missed that.” Sliding her computer to the adjacent chair, she stands up, runs her hands down the front of her business slacks, and approaches the desk.

  “Homework. For this weekend.” Dr. Nelson says. “I’ve got an assignment that involves both you and Allison.”

  “Ohh, I see. Sounds interesting. I haven’t had homework in years!” My mom smiles at me and, nodding, nudges me gently with her elbow, as if we’ve got some sort of secret now. “I’m ready for whatever you got!” With her hand in a fist, she swings her arm into the air. “Go, team!” I cringe, scrunching my eyebrows together, but I shoot her a small grin when she looks my way.

  “Yes, yes, I think you will both enjoy it.” Dr. Nelson cuts her eyes at me quickly. “It seems Miss Allison here is in possession of some very valuable gift cards from the Christmas holidays. And this weekend, both of you are assigned to spend them. All of them.”

  My mom nods again, with even more enthusiasm than before. “Oh my gosh, yes! That’s right. What ever happened to those, Allison? There were some good ones, if I remember. American Eagle, J.Crew, Anthropologie. What else was there?”

  “Nordstrom.”

  “Oh! Nordstrom. Faaancy.” Something in the way she carries out the last word, or maybe the sassy flick of her wrist, suddenly, unexpectedly, draws out a loud snort from my nose. One loud burst of a guffaw that then hangs in the air like a rainbow over the reception desk. It sounds like a loud awkward hiccup, but it’s a laugh. As close as I’ve come to one in front of my mom for as long as I can remember. They both look at me, startled, and I bring my hand up to cover my open mouth. I see Dr. Nelson and my mom make eye contact, and my mom’s face is stretched into a huge smile.

  CHAPTER 27

  I’m leaning down over my desk, scrawling out notes, when a movement catches my attention and I look up. It’s Jenny, two rows over and one seat up. She’s slamming her hand against a plastic binder, trying to force it down into her book bag.

  In a moment of either very good or very bad timing, she lifts her head and looks toward me. We make instant eye contact. It’s for less than a second, but long enough that I know she has seen me. That I have crossed her mind. As soon as she realizes who she is looking at, it seems, she jerks her body back to the front and sits rigidly in her seat.

  Craning my neck, I stare for a few more seconds at the slice of her striped T-shirt that I can see through the desks and bodies. I raise two fingers and wave at her back.

  It’s Jenny who I’ve missed, even more than Sara, over the past few months. The way she shuffles slightly when she walks, her ridiculous laugh, even her long-winded stories. Dr. Nelson said that we need to focus on the important things first. Pencils, my grades, Bed, Bath, and Beyond. But a warmth has risen in me just from catching her eye, just from thinking about her. And I realize she might be one of the important things.

  Maybe I could explain. And then she wouldn’t be so mad. She would understand, hopefully, why I yelled at her. Twice. I’ll just tell her the truth. I’ll tell her everything.

  But I know that’s not an option. There’s too much to say and not enough words. It would take a book to really summarize what’s happened here. I tell myself to remember to bring this up with Dr. Nelson.

  • • •

  In the time since I discovered socks were okay a few days ago, my mind has been bombarded by a meteor shower of safe items falling back into my life. At breakfast, my mom’s glass of milk and my cup of orange juice sit placidly on the counter. The cancer waves that usually surround them are gone. When I go to dig the Christmas gift cards out from under the bed, I find a benign pair of khakis. And somehow the gray sweatshirt with the cartoon horse trots its way back as well. Breathing out a sigh of relief, I grin at myself in my new outfit as I rotate in front of the mirror.

  • • •

  It’s Saturday afternoon and it’s our first trip back to our old stomping grounds since my nightmare. The mall is packed, so my mom and I are in the very last row of spots, at least a five-minute walk across a treacherously cracked slab of pavement.

  I’m not going to be able to make it in one breath, I know this from the start. And about one hundred steps in, as usual, the fuzziness creeps into the edges of my mind. My heart pounds as the blood vessels in my face and neck bulge outward. My mom is talking incessantly, and I don’t think she notices when I lunge forward slightly, exhaling two lungfuls of old air. Leaning back, dizzy, I take a few normal breaths against my will. And, as I glance up at the wispy clouds above, the typically green-contaminated air feels strangely pure in my lungs. Even though I can see green-leaved bushes dotting the medians and tall evergreens planted along the edge of the mall itself, there don’t seem to be any cancer fumes polluting the parking lot. I slow, sniffing gently at the air. Huh.

  And I breathe normally, stepping over cracks in the asphalt, walking by green patches of grass and green cars, until we reach the main entrance of the mall. As I open the door, a wave of comforting heat blows forward, along with the distant sound of classical music playing over the speakers. We pass illuminated stores, gumball machines, photo booths. Without words, we know the familiar route, the loop we always follow that connects the handful of my favorite stores.

  “After you, my darling.” My mom dons a fake British accent and gestures toward the escalator.

  Inside American Eagle, the music is blaring loudly through a thick layer of perfume. I poke tentatively through the stacks of clothes, wary of getting too close, wary of triggering the alarm system that is on the brink of explosion. I know there’s nothing real to be scared of, but that doesn’t make it any less scary. I tiptoe aimlessly around the circular tables covered in mounds of perfectly folded, color-coded piles.

  “Ohhh! What about this?” My mom appears out of nowhere, barely containing her excitement. In her hand is a pink button-up with tiny flowers sewn over stripes. It’s terrible. Really terrible. But as I begin to shake my head, I look at her face and she’s so happy. She’s moving sideways from foot to foot. So I lie.

  “How pretty! Didn’t even see that.” I wave my hand at her and she walks over and hands it to me. I roll my eyes slightly and quietly pat myself on the back for being such a good daughter.

  There are sweaters, a wall of denim, another wall of corduroy. T-shirts, sequins, beads. And that’s when I see it. A white linen blazer hanging on the second row of hooks high on the wall. Gold buttons with small engraved anchors. The inside lining is silk, white and blue stripes. Oh, it’s perfect. It will look so good with my . . . brain cancer brain cancer brain cancer. Braincancerbraincancerbraincancer.

  No! I scream to myself, stomping my foot against the cement floor. It’s beautiful. My hands clench into fists, preparing for a fight. It’s a blazer. Just a jacket. Just pieces of cotton sewn together. It’s a blazer. Nothing more.

  “Excuse me, sir?” I wave over the sales associate who is folding polo shirts on a wooden table, talking over the sound of my brain. “Could you please get one of those white blazers down for me? Extr
a small.”

  • • •

  I’m wearing my newly safe pair of khakis as I slide a navy blue shirt off its thick wooden hanger. My hip bones are protruding sharply outward, and the notches in my sternum climb upward like a ladder. Looking in the mirror in the tight, oblong dressing room, I see that I’m still bones and sharp curves and ribs, but my skin has lost its sickly yellow tone. Despite my knotty hair, if I’m at the right angle, if I catch the right light, I look a little bit like myself.

  The floor of the dressing room is hardwood, so I tightrope-walk my way sideways down the hall and pose on tiptoes in front of my mom. She stares at me, nods twice, and comments, “Very nice,” before bringing her hand up to her mouth. There’s more going on in her head than I can probably imagine. Dr. Nelson has told me, a few times, that my parents are deeply worried and intensely curious about my progress. But I don’t want to talk to them. Not about this. And I make Dr. Nelson promise she won’t share anything either. I don’t want them to know about this part of me. At all. This is my problem, my secret.

  After about twenty seconds of her silent, emotional gaze, I’m getting uncomfortable. There are tears welling in her eyes as she watches me rotate in front of the mirror. Oh, for goodness’ sakes. “Really, Mom?” I jerk my head around the dressing room, moving my arms to show her that we’re in public. “Really?”

  She immediately looks up at me, as if expecting it. “I know, I know.” Wiping underneath her eyes, she adds, “I’m just a mom. You’re going to have to give me a second.” I roll my eyes at her as my heart swells. I love you, too.

  I tiptoe back to the dressing room and slip into the white linen blazer, adjusting it in the mirror. The shoulders are crisp, the sleeves are the right length. The seams cinch in at my sides. It’s perfect. I take it off and throw it onto the seat without even showing my mom. I’m getting that blazer.