Stolen Child

by Laurie Gough

  “That’s not what you led me to believe. Have you really cured people with OCD as many times as you claimed? And where did you get those statistics?” For some reason that part bothered me more than anything, her quoting me the success rate of hypnotism for OCD.

  Again she said she couldn’t remember but it had been a real scientific study.

  I’d find out later it was completely bogus.

  That evening I got to thinking about family secrets, not Alzheimer’s, but real ones. I’d tried to tell the hypnotist this story but, strangely, she was much more interested in the histories of Quinn’s grandmothers. This was a story about my father’s father. A few years before my dad died he discovered something surprising about his father. He’d always known that my grandfather had run away from his home in rural Prince Edward Island when he was eleven, and at age twelve he walked the length of Nova Scotia, sleeping in barns and working odd jobs on the way. As twelve-year-olds tend to do. At least in the 1880s. As a young man, he ended up in Maine, perhaps became a communist in Boston, and didn’t return to Canada until the outbreak of World War I. He wanted to fight in the war and the only way to do this was to go back to Canada. (The United States wouldn’t join the war until 1917.)

  By strange circumstance, my dad recently came across his father’s World War I record of attestation and enlistment. The document stated that his father, William Gough, was married at the time he joined the Canadian regiment. Married to a woman named Edith Gough. Who was Edith Gough? My dad had no idea. As far as my dad knew, when the war ended his unmarried father left Europe for Montreal. In Montreal, he met a shy, auburn-haired librarian named Jean McDonald, my grandmother. When he met Jean McDonald he didn’t tell her he’d been married before, or perhaps, was still married. All those years after running away from home and joining the Canadian army are a mystery. So what became of Edith? Did she die of the Spanish influenza? Was it a bad marriage? Were there children? Did my grandfather simply abandon her? He never once mentioned Edith to my grandmother or to his sons, Patrick and Billy, the boys who loved baseball and birds and whose ashes now lie together at the base of a tree near the Humber River. Apparently my grandfather had secrets that my dad and his brother, Bill, my eccentric historian uncle, could never guess at.

  I wondered if it was possible, after all, that family secrets might be lingering somewhere in Quinn’s genes. Then again, who comes from a family that doesn’t carry old secrets that meander darkly through the bloodstream?

  CHAPTER 21

  Journal

  I had no idea how precarious happiness is. Or health. At any moment the wind can gust up and blow these things away from you. I feel like this is all a bad dream or masterminded by an evil warlock and any time now I’ll wake up and the nightmare or spell cast on us will be over. Is the world getting darker or has it always been this dire? In the news they keep discussing a terrorist group called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant that’s slaughtering villagers by the hundreds. The Syrian civil war is raging on and people in the refugee camps are eating dogs and cats to survive. In the United States they’ve had some debt ceiling crisis that might mean a total collapse of the economy. Every time you read the news there’s talk of another superstorm. What once seemed solid and reliable to me as a kid — the world, the future — now feels like a drunken out-of-control brawl. The cumulative weight of all of these new threats is staggering.

  Meanwhile, at our house, all Quinn said today was his chant about winning the Olympics. He must have said it several thousand times. His brain has been hijacked by the OCD monster.

  I remember something I once read by Garrison Keillor, that even though children may not seem to notice us and they seldom offer us thanks, what we do for them is never, ever, wasted.

  I tried to remember this tonight while Quinn was lying next to me at bedtime, stiffened and immobilized with his OCD, seeming not to even know I was there. I decided I’d just talk, tell him stories. I talked for over an hour about our two winters living in San Miguel de Allende, how Quinn used to go out to buy us avocados and limes from the little market around the corner, how the Mexican ladies would sometimes give him a free guava, how Rob once ordered a dozen Thursdays instead of a dozen eggs from those ladies, and the time the school bus driver forgot to stop at the bus stop on the way home, just kept barrelling down the highway with Quinn inside and I had to flag a taxi and chase the bus. I talked about how when we went to the dental hygienist’s house to get our teeth cleaned for twenty-five dollars her little dog would sit on our laps as she polished our stains away, and about the time when Quinn’s grade one teacher gave Quinn the starring role as Joseph in a nativity play but didn’t tell him he was playing Joseph until he was onstage in front of the audience. As Rob and I sat and watched, Quinn held the hand of a little Mexican girl playing Mary and we could see how bewildered he was.

  I’m pretty sure my words got through to Quinn because he let out a tiny snigger at that last story.

  Sometimes you have to look for just one or two good things in an otherwise lousy situation, just to set yourself at ease for a while. On James Bay, in the midst of my time teaching there, I’d sometimes escape that wretched abuse-ridden village and walk to a nearby frozen bog with some little girls in my class — the few who weren’t tragically violent and unreachable — and we’d giggle as we did cartwheels in the snow and I told them about Anne of Green Gables and they told me about goose camp. Many nights on James Bay, after a teaching day unleashed from hell, I’d step outside my little house into the lung-splitting Arctic air and look skyward to watch the aurora borealis cha-cha a green shimmering swath across the sky like Fred Astaire cutting up a rug. I’d let the whole celestial carnival sink inside me until I felt better.

  I have to find something positive about each day or I’ll become completely unhinged. This is what I found today:

  1)Our family doctor saw Quinn again this morning and realized, like Noah at the children’s hospital, that Quinn must be red flagged asap to see the child OCD specialist at the psychiatric hospital.

  2)Quinn is now making himself write, “I will win the 2024 Olympics ...” over and over. I told him that if he was going to write that he should at least use cursive rather than printing. (For the past few years I’ve been showing him cursive since, incredibly, they no longer teach cursive at his school.) Then he wrote the phrase about the Olympics, beautifully, eighteen times.

  3)I had a break last night and went over to where Chantal is staying and it was like a vacation back to the old me. She found what I was telling her so strange and unreal that she laughed hysterically. Again! Just like at the restaurant! For some reason I find it a huge relief to see her react this way. I have no idea why. The sheer absurdity of life maybe? We’re all actors in a surreal play? In any case, visiting Chantal helped nudge some clouds out of the way, at least for a while.

  4)Mum advised me to forget the “hypnotist charlatan” and not to put any more energy into it. She’s right. As of now I’ve completely let it go. Peace and good fortune to you, flaky lady!

  We were lucky to get a call from a private psychologist who had a cancellation that week. On Friday morning, it was raining and the three of us drove to Dr. Cebulski’s office in Westboro, an Ottawa neighbourhood full of fair trade cafés, young families, and sporting equipment stores. Quinn took forever getting up the stairs of the office building, backtracking and erasing his steps. Finally, we were all seated in the doctor’s office on cushy chairs, facing each other. The office felt like a living room, with a softly lit lamp, paintings of canoes on lakes, and a window view of shoppers scurrying along sidewalks beneath umbrellas. Dr. Cebulski seemed like the kind of person you’d like as a neighbour, quiet-spoken, friendly, and full of stories. We explained to him how Quinn’s obsession had switched from wanting my dad back to winning the Olympics, that Quinn was squeezing his fists tight most of the day, chanting, backtracking, and performing countless other rituals al
l in the hopes of winning the hundred-metre race in 2024.

  “Oh, that’s like baseball players!” said Dr. Cebulski. Immediately, I liked him even more.

  “So, Quinn,” he said, “you know how when the batters get up to bat a lot of them start touching the rims of their helmet a certain number of times, or unstrapping and restrapping their gloves, or toe-tapping after each swing, or crossing themselves, or holding their bats up high in the air?” Quinn nodded. “Some of them take the exact same route each time to get to the batter’s box. One guy draws an intricate symbol into the dirt with his bat every time. There are all kinds of things these guys do in that batter’s box. Do you know why they do those things?”

  “To get a hit?” said Quinn in a near-whisper.

  “That’s right. To get a hit. Do you think doing those funny things helps them get a hit?”

  Quinn shook his head.

  “I don’t, either. The guys who do those things and the guys who don’t do them all have a batting average of around three hundred, which means seven out of ten times they don’t get on base.”

  I liked Dr. Cebulski’s laid-back, subtle approach. His words seemed like they’d sink in. I felt badly that Quinn was so clamped up, hardly uttering a word when Dr. Cebulski asked him questions. We’d decided beforehand that the last half-hour of the appointment would be just Rob and me learning what we could from Dr. Cebulski while Quinn sat in the waiting room. When Quinn’s half-hour was up, he shot out of the office like a mouse from a trap. He hated being the centre of attention at the best of times. Dr. Cebulski told us we were doing all the right things with the cognitive behaviour therapy, mentioning we could concentrate on the cognitive part even more, as in getting behind the logic of winning a race at the Olympics. “Ask him what will happen if he doesn’t win the Olympics. Get him to explain the connection between closing his fists and saying his chant and how that could affect his chance of winning a race eleven years from now. Ask him what would happen if he opens his hands up today. Does he really think that could make him lose a race when he’s twenty-one years old?”

  I kept nodding my head. I liked hearing this because we’d been doing it all along. I just hadn’t thought it could work because it was too logical and OCD seemed everything but logical.

  Dr. Cebulski then said something so chilling that I felt a cold ripple snake up my spine. In his soft-spoken voice he said, “You two are in for a long ride. Quinn seems to have full-blown OCD.”

  I stared back at him. I guess I’d realized this but hated hearing it confirmed by someone who’d obviously seen a lot of cases. He continued, saying, “Maybe when Quinn is fifteen or sixteen he’ll start figuring this all out, start learning how to manage it.”

  I felt the bottom fall out of my stomach. Fifteen or sixteen? I sat there speechless in the chasm of his statement. We’d now officially been thrown from the path of our lives. Hurled. Catapulted. Sky-rocketed.

  After the appointment, we drove to nearby Chinatown to pick up some greens at a Chinese grocer and get some lunch. As we walked along Somerset Street, Quinn kept falling behind to stop and put his hand on his heart, chant his Olympics mantra, and, often, hop backward. I couldn’t help noticing that people strolling by on the busy street were witnessing this, probably assuming he was a boy in serious trouble, which, I suppose, he was. It was the first time he’d actually performed this many visible all-consuming rituals with so many people around. In the hospital neighbourhood earlier in the week, the suburban streets had been nearly deserted. As I watched Quinn shuffle and murmur his way through Chinatown I tried to see him through the eyes of strangers. I only did this for a second though because I thought my heart might crack in two.

  At the Pho Bo Ga Restaurant we ordered large steaming bowls of vegetable noodle soup. “Hey, Quinn,” said Rob. “I have an idea. Think of something you really want. Not to win the Olympics but something else.” Just then the waiter brought Quinn his mango shake. Rob moved it to the other side of the table, out of Quinn’s reach. “Okay, you want this shake, right? What’s something you can do to make it come to you?”

  “Ask for it, saying please?” said Quinn.

  “What else?” said Rob. “How about clapping your hands four times and humming a tune? Will that make the shake magically slide over to you?” Quinn shook his head. Later, after we’d eaten and were waiting for the bill, Rob said, “Hey, I’d rather not pay our bill. Quinn, do you think if I put on my hat and make this funny face and chant the words, I won’t pay my bill, I won’t pay my bill, that we’ll still have to pay our bill?” Quinn’s eyes had become very big. He was transfixed. “Watch this,” continued Rob. Rob put on his hat, made a Mr. Bean face and starting chanting in a frog voice that he didn’t want the bill to come. I joined him with an Ethel Merman voice. Then Quinn started chanting in a silly voice, too. We were sitting in a crowded Vietnamese restaurant chanting in frog, Oompa Loompa, and Ethel Merman voices, “We don’t want our bill to come, we don’t want our bill to come.” Customers eating nearby stopped talking to stare, looking curiously amused.

  The bill came anyway. “I guess our magical thinking didn’t work that time,” said Rob. “Oh, well, maybe next time.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Journal

  We’ve been going full throttle with the cognitive behaviour therapy. This afternoon I got Quinn to read aloud because we’ve discovered that if he reads aloud without pausing he can go three or four minutes without having to chant. During a timed ten minutes when he was trying not to read everything that he’d read me backward, we watched some Olympics races on my tablet. We watched Usain Bolt, the Jamaican sprinter, and a bunch of Kenyans. “Do you see a pattern here?” I asked Quinn. “These guys winning the hundred-metre races are all big, tall, and black. You’re not. What do you think your chances are?” The colour drained from Quinn’s face. Clearly devastated, he started chanting repeatedly.

  The next night at dinner Rob tried another ERP experiment. Only this time he tried it on me. He moved the tablecloth so it was all bunched and crooked. He also moved all our placemats so they were off-kilter and folded over. He winked at Quinn, turned to me, and said, “So, I bet you’d love to set this stuff back the way it goes, right?” It was true. It was driving me crazy how askew everything was. Maybe this was OCD. I’d never thought of it that way before. I recalled how as a kid I’d liked all the ornaments on my bedroom dresser to be perfectly arranged. And my dad liked all his books and papers to be at ninety-degree angles on his desk. I guess these things are a tinge OCD. Rob asked if it was bugging me to see the table messed up like that and I said it was bugging me a lot. “How do you feel on a scale of one to five?” he asked. I said maybe a three. Quinn moved his glass of water to the extreme edge of the table, something he knows drives me to distraction. He and Rob exchanged conspiratorial glances. Rob started timing me to see how long I could go without having to move everything back to where it belonged.

  “Whoa, this isn’t easy! I don’t like this one bit,” I said, looking at the things awry and the water about to crash to the floor. “Quinn, I can see how hard this must be to hold back, to not do what you feel like doing. This is awful!”

  “I know!” said Quinn.

  That evening I went to the community centre to watch an all-candidates debate for an upcoming local election. When it was over I saw my friend Isabel in the parking lot. Sometimes all it takes for a torrent of emotion to come pouring out is a good friend giving you a worried look and asking you how you are. I couldn’t even answer her. I just broke down sobbing. She hugged me and then I cried and howled all the way home in my car.

  When I got back I could see that Quinn had been crying, too. He told me how unfair it was that all the guys who win those races are tall and black. I explained to him, not for the first time, that until 1904 black people weren’t even allowed to compete in the Olympics at all and how unfair was that? “I know this is your OCD doing this to you, g
iving you these obsessions that don’t make sense and making you do these rituals. Isn’t OCD a nasty evil bully?”

  He stared at me. The silence filling the space between us felt unnerving and then I realized it was because he wasn’t chanting. Suddenly, his face flooded with hot tears as he stood bereft in front of me. He collapsed to the floor pounding his clenched fists on the rug and shrieked, “My dream is dead! My dream is dead! I’ll never win!”

  A tsunami of alarm swirled through me. His grief looked as severe as it had been over my dad dying. This is OCD, I kept telling myself. And if this Olympics obsession is receding, what in God’s name will the next one be? He ran to his room and flung himself on his bed, where he lay with his eyes closed, unmoving, unreachable. When I asked him if I could read to him or sing to him or hug him goodnight, instead of shaking his head no, he flitted his closed eyes back and forth so he wouldn’t have to move his head.

  We’d lost him again.

  That night as Rob and I lay in bed, the waning moonlight flowing through our window, Rob said, “I don’t think we can do this alone any more. Except for Tina, Anna, and your mother, it feels like we’ve isolated ourselves.”

  I looked out the window at the trees blowing in the autumn wind. I heard squirrels scurrying around in our attic, trying to move in for the winter. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” I said. “We have so many friends. Wakefield is such an amazing community. We can start telling more people. They’ll help us. Even if people just came by to ask how it’s going. At least you and I could get out for a walk.” I paused, wondering if we’d meant for this whole thing to be a secret. I realized we hadn’t. It had just become that way on its own. “Let’s tell everybody.”