Austin clasps the doorman’s shoulder on his way in. Sylvia doesn’t make eye contact and there’s no hesitation when she enters. Nowhere else she wants to be but in her glass apartment high above anything resembling real, feeling, troubling, exhilarating life.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get that.
Maybe I don’t need to try on her skin to get how she feels after all.
I stay in my car. I don’t drive away immediately because I don’t want to see Austin and Sylvia’s building vanishing in my rearview mirror. I stay because I’m holding out for the possibility that Austin has forgotten something important in his car and will run back out and I’ll get a final glimpse of his string-bean body and the way his feet pound clownishly against the pavement.
I’m half right.
It is not Austin who appears a few minutes later back on the pavement, but Sylvia. She has changed her coat to something warm and full of down and has added a ridiculous Russian fur hat to her ensemble. It’s cooled down, even inside the car. I’ve turned it off to distract from my strange waiting game and though the windows are zipped up tight there’s no real fight against the last puffs of winter.
Sylvia leans against their building, and like some old-school movie star she has a cigarette case and a silver lighter and an air of certainty about her importance in the world. She matters. Watching her is like watching a dancer, but it’s not enough, the just-watching, and I get tired of the way her hand with the cigarette in it finds her mouth over and over and over without hitching on her jacket or stopping to consider lung cancer or even just missing its mark. She’s a painting and a work of art and a person I wish I could be. But the calm I get from seeing her is short-lived. My mind keeps returning to those pamphlets from Dr. Pat that lie, partly crumpled, on the seat beside me.
Or maybe it’s Austin who is the real pull.
He reminds me of someone else. Like another guy I used to like who had the same skinny unkempt-ness, the same ironic T-shirts. It makes my heart swing in my chest. He’s not my usual type, I guess, but he does look like that guy Jeff. The first kiss one. The one I don’t like to think about. Cooter’s old best friend. I push the thought away. The memory of a first kiss sticks to your heart pretty ferociously; I think that’s true for everyone, but especially me.
I make my heart stop swinging with a deep breath like Dr. Pat told me to do. I put a good strong wall up around that thought and decide not to go near it again.
Sylvia takes another drag on her cigarette and checks her watch. Doesn’t look expectantly at the door to her building, so I don’t think Austin’s going to suddenly appear.
Then that’s it, and as impulsively as I decided to follow them here, I decide to leave again. It’s a long drive back when you can’t go much faster than thirty miles an hour, and I’m supposed to meet Lisha at our favorite diner for french fries and gossip. I will try not to tell her about my weird little drive to this mysterious couple’s building, but Lisha has one of those really nice faces that makes you want to talk. And the girl always says the right thing, or knows when to say nothing at all. I’m an open book anyway, and Lisha is a voracious effing reader.
• • •
I go thirty-two miles an hour the whole way to the diner. I consider those extra two miles an hour a tiny victory. Even so, I’m about an hour late, so Lisha’s already at the Pancake House when I get there, still in her tights and leotard, hair matted to her forehead and knotted into a high bun, prickly with bobby pins. She’s set up with hot chocolate and half-eaten waffles and a plate of french fries drenched in mustard and tabasco sauce that she’s been picking at, hopefully not for too long. Lisha’s caught up in her love affair with Russian fiction, though, and she holds up a finger when I sit down, telling me she’s got to finish the sentence or chapter but hopefully not the whole book before she can focus on me.
“You know you’re the latest you’ve ever been, right? Do we need an intervention?” she says when she finally looks up at me and bookmarks Crime and Punishment. I’ve told her to give up and finally read The Fountainhead, but she’s determined. About everything. Always has been.
The waiters know to bring me hot chocolate too, and a fork to help Lisha finish up her binge.
“I think I already had one with Dr. Pat.”
“So what’s the conclusion? Are you crazy?” Lisha says. We don’t talk in vague metaphors or evasive questions like the rest of the world. We tell it like it is and add on a healthy dose of self-deprecation if things are particularly shitty.
“Dr. Pat thinks I am. But that, you know, it’s no big deal and I shouldn’t let it affect my life or whatever.” I don’t say the word “OCD,” because Dr. Pat didn’t actually say that’s what my problem is, and besides, I can’t quite get that terminology out of my mouth. I’m not ready for the I’m Bea and I have OCD moment.
I reach into my bag and find pamphlet number three, Where Anxiety Meets Compulsion: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Obsessions. I slide it across the table and get lost in a waffle instead of looking at Lisha’s face.
“Ah,” Lisha says after a pause.
“Yeah.” I take the biggest possible bite of waffle, and before swallowing, follow it up with three French fries.
“Well, listen. Don’t let her lock you up,” Lisha says with a grin. She is the only person I let talk to me this way.
“On a scale from one to ten, how weird am I? Be honest. ’Cause I thought I was rocking, like, a four, but I feel like Dr. Pat giving me these brochure things lifts me to at least a six, right?”
“I love you too much to rate you,” Lisha says carefully. “I mean, aside from in hotness. In hotness you are a totally solid 8.5 and if you showed off your legs instead of hiding them in those weird hippie pants you’d be a nine for sure.” I can’t help smiling.
“My legs are stumps,” I say, and stuff down a few more fries. Lisha keeps sticking her fingers in her mouth to suck off the stickiness of syrup. Part childish, part sexual. I want to pull the fingers out of her mouth and set them in her lap. She’s not a lost cause, exactly, but she loses track of her hands, her words, her facial expressions too easily and it’s gotta be at least part of the reason she’s still never kissed a guy.
“That guy Beck likes them though,” Lisha says, and kicks me under the table.
“Uh, that guy Beck has never seen my legs. Will never see my legs.” I purse my lips and swallow, because actually I’m not so sure I want that to be true.
“Is he hot? I feel like you’re holding back details.”
“He looks like Kurt,” I say, before I can stop myself. I clear my throat and go in for more waffle, but we have impressively demolished the plate. “I mean, he doesn’t really. Just like, body type. Or whatever. Not even. Whatever.”
“God, Kurt,” Lisha says. “I never think about him anymore.” We make eye contact over the empty plates and even emptier coffee mugs. I am supposed to say I never think about him either.
“Yeah,” I squeak out. It’s not a lie if I just nod my head and say “yeah” a lot. But Lisha’s not letting it go. She wants to know, for sure, that I do not think about Kurt anymore. Ever. She raises her eyebrows, waiting for me to say more. When I don’t, she fidgets in her seat.
“I mean, you don’t talk to him or anything right? Or, like, see him?”
“Of course I don’t see him. You know I can’t see him,” I say. Lisha nods too enthusiastically. “I don’t know why I even mentioned his name.” That thing in my chest grips and without thinking, I pinch my thigh.
Is that a compulsion?
I move my hand under my thigh, sit on it in what I hope is a supremely not-obvious way, and beg Lish with my eyes to change the subject. Lisha knows the look well—we have perfected it, in fact—and she waves her hand like we’re going to just erase the last few minutes of conversation.
“Dessert?” she says.
“Ice cream?” I say. Ice cream is safe, and soft and cool. Numbing.
“I’m all
over it,” Lish says. Her hand motions for the waiter, but her eyes stay on me just a moment longer than they should. I have the impulse to cover myself in makeup—liquid foundation and dark eyeliner and the kind of mascara that glitters. Anything to hide whatever it is she sees on my face. But when I excuse myself to go to the bathroom, I only apply a fine layer of bronzer and ruby-red lip gloss. I don’t want to look too long in the mirror, don’t want to see what a teenage girl with OCD might look like. But I’m not ready to go back out to the clanging utensils and speed-talking waitstaff either. So I reach into my purse for something even better: my pink notebook. Reread notes from Austin and Sylvia’s sessions. Record Sylvia’s outfit from earlier today. With every curve of my pen I get some relief, and in a few moments I have a clear head and a not-shaking heart and the belief that everything will be fine: for me, for Kurt, for Austin and Sylvia, for Beck.
Lisha and I split a bowl of chocolate ice cream. The OCD pamphlet sits on the table between us. I guess I forgot to put it back in my bag earlier, and I can’t stand to look at it anymore, so we just leave it there. Keep it on the table, like the world’s worst tip. But carrying it around will condemn me even more.
I drive home slowly and watch for kids and puppies and the elderly and sharp turns. I just don’t want to hurt anyone.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON GROUP THERAPY. DR. PAT said after yesterday’s session that if I come to group twice a week I only have to see her once a week, on Wednesdays. The room is just as stuffy as it was Tuesday afternoon, and we’re all focused on Jenny again. She’s lost even more hair and if I’m not mistaken, she’s also down a pale white eyebrow. Today she has to resist pulling out her hair during the session. That’s what Dr. Pat has instructed, and it’s about a million times harder for her than it sounds. Whenever anyone mentions their parents, in any context good or bad, she raises a hand to her head and we all have to snap at her to stop. Then she gasps for breath and we wait it out while Dr. Pat holds her hands.
Abused. I knew it.
Not that I don’t feel for girls who have been abused. But I’m a little jealous of them too, because they know why they do what they do. They know what they’re so scared of, what’s made their mind such a weird maze of rules and terrors and nutty solutions to problems that can’t really be solved. I’m so not that (un)lucky.
I tried saying that to Dr. Pat the other day and she said I may not have something as obvious as a decade of abuse, but that I have my own stories. My own traumas. I hate when she says that kind of thing. Makes me shiver.
Meanwhile, I’ve driven by Austin and Sylvia’s apartment building twice since last night. I guess this is what my free time will be from now on: long drives back and forth from Lexington to Boston, stopping only to double- and triple-check that I haven’t nicked any passersby with my car. Then I get to their building, stay for ten minutes just staring at the thing like some pervert.
According to the few pamphlets I did hang on to, these are compulsions. The checking when I’m driving, the checking on Austin and Sylvia, even that little pinch I keep giving my thigh from time to time (more often lately).
Dr. Pat asked me to come in a half hour early, so I’m already strung out on too much therapy.
“Do you have any questions?” she’d said. I had one thousand questions. But asking even one of them meant admitting I might be crazy.
“Is this, like, an official diagnosis?” I said. “I mean, are you saying I have OCD? Like, for sure?”
“I think you have both obsessions and compulsions, Bea,” Dr. Pat said very, very carefully. She held her hands in her lap like she was praying. “And they do seem to be related.” I don’t think Dr. Pat has ever answered a question with just a yes or no. It makes my head hurt. And I didn’t intend to cry, but my eyes welled up with fat tears and my hands shook with the effort of holding it in.
My brain said: GO CHECK ON AUSTIN AND SYLVIA!
My brain said: WEAR MORE MAKEUP TO MAKE YOU LOOK NORMAL!
“Are people with OCD dangerous?” I said, fixing my mouth around the word “dangerous” with effort. It was hard to ignore the blossom of thoughts in my head, but I felt sure I could do it. I could be totally, one hundred percent normal.
“Do you need more reading material?” Dr. Pat said.
“Oh. I don’t know. I guess? I just was worried . . . ” I lost the words in my mouth and shook my head.
“You’re not dangerous,” Dr. Pat said. “You’re not crazy, either, just in case that was your next question.” And then Dr. Pat smiled. Her teeth were whiter than usual, like she’d just had work done on them, but otherwise her face was plain and untouched. Trustworthy.
Then Beck came in, and Dr. Pat uncrossed and recrossed her legs, signaling our time together was over and group had begun.
• • •
Now Jenny’s creating an earthquake with the force of her shakes, and she has one hand in her hair. She hasn’t pulled anything out yet, but her palm rests on top of the largest bald spot, and I get the feeling the intensity of the shaking is in exact proportion to how hard resisting is.
“Can we move on?” Rudy says. He has been hiding his face in his hands. Watching Jenny hurts, but no one else would dare say something. Jenny’s sobs get harder. She’s skinny and her top is too tight, so I can practically see the fear and pain and tears rattling around in her lungs. “If Jenny needs this much help, maybe she should just be in individual therapy, you know?”
“Hey, man,” Beck says quietly. “Not cool.”
“Not cool?” Rudy is all scorn and his face is flaming with infection. “You’ve got a lot to learn, man.”
“What do you mean by that, Rudy?” Dr. Pat says. I’ve noticed she uses our names a lot. Like, a lot. It starts sounding awkward and forced. I’m not used to hearing my name, or anyone else’s, used in casual conversation over and over again. It should make me feel less likely to vanish, since it sort of validates my existence or whatever, but now that I realize how often she uses my name in this group, I sort of freak out and decide I have to pinch myself whenever she uses it to make sure that Yes, I am Bea and Yes, I am here. There’s a bruise forming on my thigh. It seems like I just do this thigh-pinching thing a few times, but now that the skin is turning purple I might have to admit I’m doing it more than a little. Maybe almost a lot.
Good thing I’m not hooking up with anyone right now. Random black-and-blues don’t do it for most guys.
Rudy makes a growling noise deep in his throat and touches his face. Just a quick touch, his hand practically bouncing off the skin the second it makes contact.
“I feel like Beck’s judging me, you know? And this is supposed to be a safe space, I thought. So it’s making me upset,” Rudy says with a little smirk. He’s one of those people who will use your own words against you.
“It needs to be safe for everyone, Rudy. Jenny has to feel safe. Beck has to feel safe. We all need to feel safe. Even me,” Dr. Pat says. Rudy rolls his eyes and settles back in his chair. He stares down Beck and when Beck stares back, Rudy just starts picking at his face. He stops himself before Dr. Pat has a chance to call him on it.
“Bea? Fawn? How are you two doing today?” Dr. Pat says. We shrug in unison.
Beck and Rudy keep checking each other out from across the room and Jenny cries a lot and Fawn hides almost her entire face behind the fold of her turtleneck sweater.
It’s a long hour.
• • •
I don’t like to go home right after therapy, group or otherwise. In fact, I like to stay in the parking lot, right outside where the words were said. It’s not a compulsion, exactly, it’s just a way to let the adrenaline of sharing dissipate before reentering the real world. I keep a notebook in my car for just this purpose. A different notebook. Not the pink one, which I’ve reserved just for notes about Sylvia and Austin. This notebook is one of those mini pocket ones. It looks like an address book but I don’t think people really have address books anymore, so now they just make itty-bitty blank
notebooks. I sit on the hood of my car and watch Fawn and Rudy and Jenny all zip away, and I take notes on what just happened.
There aren’t any cars left in the parking lot aside from Dr. Pat’s big blue SUV. But I haven’t seen Beck emerge from the building yet, so I list possibilities: he’s getting picked up by someone, he lives close enough to walk, his car got stolen, he likes hitchhiking. I write it all down in the tiny notebook. Not just the facts of Beck’s life, but also the possibilities, the little ideas I have about what his life might be.
I’m lost in the list-making (Beck has a bike stored somewhere, Beck is homeless, Beck has a girlfriend who is running late, Beck has a girlfriend who got into a car accident on her way here, I ran over Beck’s girlfriend on my ride over and didn’t notice), so I don’t immediately see when Beck does finally emerge. I smile just at the sight of him. I blush, noticing the broadness of his shoulders. I want to lean against them, have them keep me steady. I shut my notebook like it’s no big deal, but my knuckles go white gripping it closed.
“We meet again,” Beck says. He’s so clean it hurts.
“Hey. I’m glad we ran into each other. We never exchanged numbers,” I say. “I mean, after the dance. The other weekend.”
“Numbers? Oh. Like, to hang out?”
“Or whatever.” I shrug. A reflexive giggle escapes. I’ve flirted before, but never after therapy. “We could be therapy buddies.”
“I’m only here ’cause of my parents,” Beck says, not returning my sneaky grin. I was just trying to loosen the posttherapy mood with some of my Classic Bea Self-Deprecation but maybe Beck doesn’t speak sarcasm.
“Dr. Pat’s great,” I try.
“I told my parents I’d put in a month.”
I’m missing the vulnerable Beck I met at the dance. I pull my legs in, my knees to my chin, and the hood of my car gives a little under my shifting weight. Neither of us speaks. But he’s not exactly walking away either. Then I remember the lack of car, the lack of anyone driving by to pick him up.
OCD Love Story Page 5