OCD Love Story

by Corey Ann Haydu

  “You think she had more to tell me?”

  “I’m just curious. I mean, I think I’m pretty boring. There can’t be that much for her to talk to you about.”

  “So you think you’re boring and that my patients or other people you run into are more exciting?” Dr. Pat says. Therapists are tricky. They’ll make connections out of anything. When I first started seeing Dr. Pat, I’d try to talk about casual stuff, but she never let me just have a normal conversation. One time I told her I like pickles in my sandwiches. She reminded me that I mentioned Kurt eating a lot of pickles and asked me what I thought that might mean. Like somehow that proved I was obsessed with him.

  In therapy there’s no such thing as just liking pickles in your sandwiches. I give a big, audible sigh and Dr. Pat pushes her glasses up her nose. They’d slipped a little; the oversize tortoiseshell frames look even larger when they’re askew. “Bea? You seem distracted,” she says when she realizes I’m not going to answer her question.

  “I guess I’m a little distracted, yeah.” The thing is, I like Dr. Pat. I’m doing fine, I don’t have be seeing her or anything at this point, but it’s not the worst thing checking in with her. Her office smells like a vanilla candle and I like the enormous paintings of flowers in close-up that cover the walls. They’re calming.

  “I was thinking,” she says very, very carefully, “that maybe you’d do well in a group setting. Group therapy. Other teenagers, talking about what’s going on in their lives. What do you think?”

  I’m sure shock registers on my face. I don’t hide my feelings well, and she’s taken me by surprise. Group therapy sounds like torture.

  “Um, I’m not feeling supersocial these days,” I say.

  “That was something else your mother mentioned.” My stomach turns.

  “It’s not some thing,” I say. “A lot of people get nervous in, like, social situations.”

  Dr. Pat pushes the glasses up her nose again. I wonder if she needs them adjusted, if they’ve gotten stretched out somehow. It could be dangerous, if her glasses fall off when she’s driving or something.

  “Tell me more,” Dr. Pat says.

  “That’s really it. Nothing more to tell. I just feel a little loner-y lately. I’m sure it will pass.”

  “It’s okay to be having a hard time, Bea,” Dr. Pat says. She takes some notes on her yellow legal pad. “It’s actually easier if you just tell me what’s going on, and then we can address it.”

  “Nothing’s going on though.” I look down at my boots. They used to be boring black suede wedges, but I added a ring of fake fur around the top. I’m thinking I’d like to do the same to my cardigan: add fake leather cuffs to the sleeves and change what’s regular into something spectacular. “I mean, actually, I’m not even that antisocial right now. Saturday night I went to a dance with Lisha. Did my mom tell you that?”

  “She didn’t, but that’s great to hear,” Dr. Pat says, and her smile tells me she means it. Sometimes she nods and smiles with just her mouth, and I think she’s probably tired or bored. But other times her smile is a glow, and I remember how much I like telling her things, how easy she is to talk to. I scoot forward on the couch.

  “It was really fun actually. And I met a guy.” I don’t hide the smile. I meet guys pretty easily, but Beck’s the only one since Kurt who’s made me buzz like this. I’m smiling without thinking. It’s a strange sensation because lately I haven’t been doing anything without thinking. “I’d like to see him again, maybe. But I don’t know what he looks like or, like, his last name. I think he goes to Smith-Latin. . . . ” This is probably not helping my case in terms of sounding superstable, so I take a deep breath and remember to actually explain. “I met him during the power outage.”

  “Aha,” Dr. Pat says. “Well, Bea, I think if you can go to a dance with Lisha and meet a boy in the dark, you can probably handle an hour of group therapy a week.” There it is again. A patented Dr. Pat ninja move.

  The good feelings that were bubbling in my chest drop to my stomach and curdle. I close my eyes to conjure up an image of Austin, thinking it might calm me down. Shaggy hair. Leather jacket. Stubble. I wonder what he’s doing now, what he and Sylvia do after their couples therapy.

  “People with your way of thinking do very well in group therapy,” Dr. Pat concludes. “Some of your behaviors make me think—”

  “Fine, okay, I’ll go,” I say, not wanting her to finish that sentence. I pinch the top of my thigh, over my pants. The way people do when they want to wake up from a dream. It’s just a tiny thing, and doesn’t hurt, but Dr. Pat’s eyes dart to my thumb and forefinger like it might matter.

  It’s not a dream, and I’m still here, but just barely.

  I DO NOT SAY HELLO to my mother when i walk into the house after therapy. She’s reheating last night’s dinner and I want her to know from the way I throw my backpack on the ground with a thud that I’m pissed.

  “Everything okay, Bea?” my mom says because I’m being a three-year-old and stomping my way up to my room. Bam! goes every step on every stair.

  “Just awesome, Mom,” I call back down. I’m ready for a screaming match. I half know it’s misdirected anger (a Dr. Pat phrase—I have been in therapy way too long) but hearing the worry in her voice reignites my anger at having to go to group therapy.

  “It’s so awesome that you think I’m a weirdo. It’s so awesome that you are reporting back to Dr. Pat on every single thing I do.”

  “Bea, sweetheart, you know I don’t think you’re a weirdo. I just thought you seemed a little more anxious lately, and I think that must be so hard. I’m trying to help. . . .”

  “If I’m doing so great, then don’t make me do this group therapy thing,” I say.

  “Honey, have you ever talked about everything that happened with that Jeff boy, that friend of Cooter’s, during your sessions with Dr. Pat? It seems like that might be useful information for her to—”

  I try to stop her with only my eyes, but it doesn’t work, so I break in: “Mom!” Just the name Jeff gives me chills. Kurt’s name makes me weak with sadness and missing and shame, but Jeff’s name in my ear scares me. It is a word I don’t want to hear, a single-syllable sound I wish were erased from the English language. I lift my hands to my ears and wish away this conversation.

  “I just was thinking that’s when some of your troubles started, a few years ago, and I only mention it because your father and I feel so responsible—”

  “Can you please leave it to me and Dr. Pat? Please? If you keep butting in it doesn’t give me a chance to—”

  “Okay, all right,” she says. My mother doesn’t like arguments and neither do I, so we tend to stop them before they begin. My father is always more likely to follow through on a fight, but he’s not home yet, so we’re in the clear. There are so many unfinished sentences between my mother and me, so many unsaid words. I wonder what it would be like to have an entire conversation with her, but we almost never let it happen. “I trust you, sweetie. I’ll stay out of it. Just a suggestion. But I am going to have to insist on following your therapist’s advice on the group thing, okay? Fair compromise?”

  I choose not to answer. Clearly she and Dr. Pat must have planned this weeks ago. Which is totally crazy, because I don’t need group therapy. I mean, I only even went to therapy because of a really bad breakup. I’m not the first girl to do that. Lacey from school went to therapy when her college boyfriend slept with someone else. And I barely even think about Kurt anymore. So should I really have to do this group thing over a year later?

  I start to protest, but then press my lips together and stay silent instead. My mother works with juvenile delinquents. She’s no pushover, and getting into a screaming match will just give her one more thing to tell Dr. Pat about.

  I slam the door to my room. There is nothing my mother hates more. She gives a big, audible sigh and I know we won’t be speaking again tonight.

  I crawl into bed. It’s a perfect cocoon th
at I’ve been working on for months. I collect soft blankets: fleece, chenille, down comforters, chunky quilts, it doesn’t matter. As long as they are thick and soft and decidedly cozy I’ll throw them onto my bed. My mother keeps the house at a ridiculous sixty degrees year-round, so I’m always cold, and I’ve stopped trying to get her to change her ways. Plus there’s nothing more luxurious than crawling underneath a pile of blankets. It reminds me a little of the story “The Princess and the Pea,” that princess atop a pile of wildly different but always thick and luscious mattresses. I want to be that decadent sometimes.

  The walls are covered with images of fashion photography and well-costumed Broadway shows and period films. A little haven of coziness and the things I love. Thank God for this tiny bit of safety.

  Before Kurt dumped me, he used to love coming up here.

  “This is the perfect hideout,” he said once. “You’re the most yourself when you’re in your room, you know that?” Then he’d kissed me, one hand snaking around my back and tucking itself under my shirt. I still think about how his hand felt on the small of my back.

  I try really hard not to think about Kurt too much anymore, but sometimes even a mountain of blankets and an exhibition of fabulous clothes aren’t enough to make the ache of missing someone go away completely.

  When I met Kurt I was kind of on edge, like all the time. I couldn’t have told you what was making me anxious; I couldn’t have named a single specific concern I had. But my body was in a general state of unease. Which is part of what was so great about Kurt: Liking someone that much made the rest of me calm down. I think love does that to everyone.

  We had been doing a current events class at school, and we were supposed to read the newspaper every day and bring in articles that interested us, or articles we had questions about. Mostly people brought in political articles, and we’d discuss Israel or Iraq or the Dow Jones. But for our final project Lacey brought in an article about a little local boy named Reggie who had stabbed his ten-year-old sister. He was at the juvenile detention center my mom works at, and Lacey thought the whole thing was so sad, she wanted to talk to the class about it. We spent forty-five minutes wondering aloud how a cute little kid was capable of something so terrible.

  The unit on current events ended, but I kept reading the newspaper every day for months after. Sometimes there’d be updates on the Reggie boy and we’d share information on him before class started. We all got a little preoccupied with the tragedy: me, Lisha, Lacey, Kim, and the other eight girls from the class. Some mornings if my mother was especially tired and precoffee, I’d be able to pry tiny pieces of information out of her, and then report back to everyone on how he was doing. Anyway, it was no big deal, but I kept a little notebook with articles and stuff on Reggie. And sometimes I wrote down the things my mom said about him, so that I’d remember what to tell Lacey and everyone. It got pretty full, but we were all really interested in this kid and what he’d done and what was going to happen to him.

  Anyway, it was really disturbing for everyone. I met Kurt smack in the middle of all that. So I was a little sensitive at the time; we all were.

  Burly, bulging Kurt. Not only was he so soppy sweet that he couldn’t kill a spider, let alone a human, he was also thick in his shoulders, determined, an all-star football player. He was invincible. Being with him made me feel safe. I liked to kiss him. And climb on top of him in his little twin bed when his family was out of town.

  Something no one knows: Football-playing popular dudes sometimes fall for quirky smart girls as long as they, you know, have a pretty face and decent body. I think they get sick of the anorexic cheerleaders, and if you catch them at the right moment, you convince them to want something more.

  Plus, around this time I was really into miniskirts and go-go boots. My mom wasn’t thrilled, but she knew it wasn’t a phase that had staying power so she let me wear whatever as long as it was retro and from the consignment shop down the block.

  I made one big mistake with Kurt. I left him alone in my room for five minutes once and he managed to find my Reggie notebook.

  It’s funny how something I didn’t think twice about looked entirely different when I saw it through his eyes. Weeks before, when I was gluing in articles and printouts from the Internet and taking notes on those bits and pieces of information my mom let slip from her time standing guard over Reggie and his bad-news friends, it all seemed like something akin to scrapbooking. It seemed like something I had to do for class. But in Kurt’s hands, pages sticking together from lazily applied glue, scraps of paper poking out of all sides making ragged edges, highlighted paragraphs, manic observations . . . I saw it differently.

  Kurt saw it too.

  I walked in on the open-mouthed stare of someone who is never going to sleep with you again.

  “Dude,” Kurt said. He was gorgeous and rippling but not heavy on the emotional depth, and I think those pages were a little much for him to process. “Tell me this isn’t yours.”

  And anyone normal would breezily lie or at least stumble over some sort of acceptable explanation. But I had that itch happening in my throat. My head swam. I tried to say something else. I started to say something else.

  “Oh. Yeah. No. That’s not any kind of . . .” My throat was burning. I am a terrible liar. And being around Kurt slowed me down. I wasn’t quick on my feet around him. So I told the truth.

  “It’s mine. I got really upset about that kid, you know? Like, I just found it really upsetting and actually so did all these other girls. And it’s really practically, like, a school project, but I guess I went a little overboard. So weird, I know. Like, so weird. But I just, I just feel so bad for the family and it’s so weird that he lived so close by and I guess I . . . ” I talk too fast when I get nervous. But it didn’t matter, because Kurt had already checked out. Where most people express emotions in their faces, Kurt did it in his muscles. I could craft an entire scientific study from the way he flexed or clenched or rippled.

  He stopped returning my calls.

  And that’s it. That’s why I went to therapy in the first place, ’cause Kurt was the first guy I had really cared about, and it was so sad to not be with him anymore. There’s a picture of me and him somewhere, I think it’s in my closet where I keep my notebooks, and on impulse, just beause he’s suddenly on my mind, I go look for it. I find it and yeah, I guess I imagine Beck looking a lot like Kurt—muscles and not much hair—but I don’t feel that swing of desire and hurt I used to feel when I looked at Kurt’s photograph.

  There’s other stuff in the closet too. Envelopes with legal letters I don’t want to think about right now. A yellow legal pad with messy notes about Kurt himself. And stuff from Lish and me growing up, just the kinds of old memories people keep around. Notes we passed back and forth during assembly. Cheesy school photographs with lame backgrounds. Stupid Bart Simpson Valentine’s Day cards from my first crush, years before Kurt, the one whose name I want to forget. I wish I didn’t remember that Jeff ever sent me a Valentine.

  I give my thigh another wake-up pinch. And close the closet with a shiver of memories I don’t want to have.

  WE’RE READING OUT OF a lame orange text book and I can’t stop thinking, like I do three times a week when I am in this class, that Latin is not the “useful foundation” my mother and the school handbook claimed it would be. It is not going to help me ace my SATs. It’s not even a spoken language anymore, so when we read paragraphs from the textbook out loud, we sound like Latin robots. “Vir est in horto.” No stressed syllables. No inflections. Robots. Because if I suddenly needed to speak to some Roman blast from the past who showed up at Greenough Girls’ Academy in a toga, the first thing I’d want to tell him is a sentence just like that: The man is in the garden.

  I’m a ball of nerves and Lisha’s sitting next to me, so she puts a hand on my knee to stop my leg from jiggling.

  Only the really big weirdos go to group therapy, I write in the margins of her notebook. When Lat
in class is over, I’m headed over to my first group session. She winces. Lisha is not the kind of person who wants to write notes back and forth in the middle of Latin class. Lisha is the kind of person who believes the school requirements pamphlet when it talks about Latin helping with your vocabulary skills. It is the true sign of friendship that she writes back: Not true! It’s not a big deal. Could be good.

  And I try to believe her, or at least believe nothing could be more painful or pointless than taking Latin for six years straight.

  Lisha waits outside with me after class. She’s got ballet class in an hour, which sounds a whole lot better than my afternoon plans. My mom’s picking me up from school for the first time since I got my license, since she doesn’t trust me to go to group therapy on my own. She thinks I’ll skip out and go to the diner with Lisha instead, but I don’t think I’m cool enough to pull that kind of rebellion off. Neither is Lisha. She’s not the world’s greatest dancer, but she takes it very, very seriously. When my mom pulls up, Lisha says to call her as soon as it’s over and we kiss cheeks three times in a row, which used to be a joke about snooty French foreign exchange students but has turned into the actual way we say hello and good-bye.

  Secretly, we both like the delicate femininity of the gesture. Like maybe we could be that elegant and sophisticated.

  That feeling of fancy girlishness lasts for the ten-minute drive to therapy and then is torn out of me the second I see what group therapy looks like.

  I end up in a room with a girl who has only patches of hair left on her scalp and three other twitchy-eyed, hand-wringing teenagers. I’d like to think I stand out as too normal here. At least that’s what I was going for when I got dressed this morning. No vintage today. I borrowed Lisha’s J.Crew sweater set and my mom’s nice leather boots and my hair is smoothed and straightened but not too perfect. Navy nail polish scrubbed off and replaced with clear late last night.