OCD Love Story

by Corey Ann Haydu

  Kim and Lacey have Life Skills first period.

  All the girls who come to the library loft are in that nebulous world between popular and loser. We’re not really a group, but we have a couple of inside jokes and sit together during all school assemblies. Their numbers are in my cell phone.

  Kim and Lacey used to chat with me about that kid Reggie, the one we talked about in current events class, but at some point I kept talking about him and they stopped really participating in the conversations. Kim would try to change the subject and talk about the hot new soccer coach. I’d get all flustered and imitate a girl who cared about hot soccer coaches, and I’m not a great actress so I’m sure I didn’t pull it off.

  Besides, the soccer coach is not that cute, and girls only like him because they all just like soccer players in general. When I tried that theory out on Kim, she blinked too quickly and got suddenly superinterested in her algebra book.

  • • •

  Lish and I pick books for each other, which is what we always do on our time-outs. Today I hand her an Italian cookbook and she gives me a month-old copy of New York magazine, which she knows is my favorite. She must feel really bad for me today, so I can only assume I look like crap. We sit side by side on the floor for the whole period. Our backs rest against the rickety shelves, and I successfully skip over the article about New York’s faltering prison system and instead rip out a few pictures from the “Street Style” article: neon armbands, vintage chandelier earrings, high-waisted linen pants, dark green denim.

  One of the models reminds me of Sylvia. I pinch my thigh and promise myself I can drive by their place after school. It’s no big deal, my mind says. It’s better for everyone if I just go check on them.

  “Is this helping?” Lisha says, catching me mid thigh-pinch.

  “Totally!” I say, but my teeth grind as I smile.

  When the period’s over, we part ways with cheek kisses and plans to meet up at the Pancake House later. Lisha has AP Calculus and I have an elective photography class. Guess which one of us got into Harvard early?

  My library time-out with Lish chilled me out a little, and I make it to the end of the school day without incident, but before I’m even to the parking lot, my phone is dinging its text message sound. It’s Beck. Smith-Latin must get out at the same time as Greenough Girls’. Ding-ding. Beck again, and then again. I’m about to tackle responding to the first few texts, but my mind (uncontrollable, but somehow ridiculously predictable) zips to thoughts of Austin; and worrying about what to text Beck morphs quickly into worrying that Something Terrible has happened to Austin. Plus I promised myself I could go check on them after school, and it would be a terrible idea to break that promise. And once I’m gripped with that thought, the text message dings from Beck are inconsequential and I just have to go. I have to check on Austin.

  My car is fully stocked with today’s newspaper and my pink notebook with the ugly gold star and the binder from current events class that I have recently stuck a few more articles into. I wish I’d stop carting around the book of Mary Oliver poems from Kurt, too, but I can’t seem to let them go. Not the poems, not the notes I have inside about him, and not the very small urge to stop by the ice cream place I know he still probably frequents. I throw the poetry book in the back. I’m not an idiot; I’ve already gotten into enough trouble with Kurt.

  Anyway, there’s a half-drunk, mostly cold thermos of hot tea in the car too, and my mother’s forty-dollar lip gloss, and cigarettes I bought last night in case Sylvia’s out there looking for a smoke.

  I think of everything and I’m pretty sure if I could use my organizational skills for something else, like wildlife survival kits or preparing people for nuclear warfare, I’d be a millionaire. Or at the very least actually a useful human being. But as it is, I just have a packed car and a lot of extra shit that makes me look like a sociopath.

  I’m dry-mouthed and I don’t really want to drive because it seems like the kind of day I might go crazy and run someone over by accident. So I go twenty miles an hour and lean forward to make sure I don’t take my eyes off the road, and I stiffen every muscle in my body so there’s no chance of relaxing for long enough to do something stupid.

  I’m almost at the highway, which I’m going to have to force myself to go thirty or forty miles an hour on.

  I hate merging. Let’s be honest, it’s a cesspool of dangerous possibilities and accidents waiting to happen. Merging should be illegal.

  My hands are shaking now, and my phone’s still buzzing with text messages until Beck has sent exactly eight. I know ’cause at a stop I see that the last one reads: Sorry to text so many times. Once I sent 2 I had to send 8. Lucky for you, I’m done now.

  He may be the perfect guy for me but I can’t text and drive at the same time and even when I try to smile at the memory of Beck’s fingers reaching for mine over ridiculously expensive pasta and awkward glances, I fail. I can’t even get the image of his face in my head. In fact, I can’t get the image of his hands into my head either, but my mental photograph of Austin comes in clear as day. His hair. His stubble. The scuffs on his cowboy boots. The worn elbows on his fitted sweater. His kind eyes and full lips and irrefutably sexy swagger.

  When I finally get off the highway almost ninety minutes later, I slow down to fifteen miles an hour but it feels almost excusable since it’s a school zone. A girl with pigtails is walking a yellow lab and I’m moving so slowly we’re almost at the same pace. It doesn’t stop me from slowing down even more, though. I can hear my heart in my ears and I have never been more certain of anything: I am going to run her over. I am used to the thought occurring, but this is the first time it has felt like a prediction and not a fear. I slow down even more until I’m barely moving, but the certainty of what I’m going to accidentally do keeps pounding through my whole body. The gasping, the difficulty breathing, makes it worse. I know if I’m distracted by the need to get a breath in, I’m even more likely to lose control of my car. All of that is waving through me and when I finally get past the little girl, she turns onto a side street.

  I think.

  Then I’m not so sure. She’s not in my rearview mirror, she’s not ahead of me, and the more I mull it over the more I am sure, sure that I actually did hit her. So I turn around and drive down the side streets until I find her. There she is: skipping now, letting her dog lick her hand, all ignorant innocence and precocious grade-school energy. She’s okay. I can continue driving.

  But is she okay? Was that the same little girl? Shouldn’t I make sure?

  Every time I pass her I get an instant of relief followed by a deep nausea at the danger I put her in. And then the need to check on her just that one last time.

  By the time I get to Austin and Sylvia’s place it’s way past five and I’ve driven so many side roads and made so many nervous loops I’m motion-sick and exhausted. My eyes hurt from the focus of watching so intently. But I’m lucky, ’cause Sylvia’s cigarette addiction is seriously hardcore and she’s out there smoking within a few minutes of me parking. I guess I hadn’t known this was what I was going to do until I got here, but watching her and waiting for Austin to join her or appear in the sixth window up from the ground or walk in with Chinese takeout gets to be too much. I’ve come this far, it’s taken this long, and I need more.

  The streets are bustling. I step out and the noise is familiar and disorienting after so long in the car. Kids giggling and throwing tantrums, assholes who don’t use headphones letting their music play for everyone, cars shifting gears, amping up, dying down. All the sound is layered on top of a thin layer of icy snow. You’d think the puffy down jackets and wool caps would absorb some of the city sounds, but there’s just as much noise in the winter as there is in the summer.

  Sylvia’s underdressed. Her leather jacket hangs open, a low-cut sweater shows off that perfect boob job, a hat and scarf are maybe keeping her warm, but I shiver just looking at her raw, exposed, practically blue fingers holding the
cigarette to her mouth. I’m going to approach her. It’s not a decision so much as an imperative, and I wind up next to her without even really realizing it.

  “Can I have one?” I say. Her lips are overblown but even that edge of fakeness doesn’t obscure the glamour of her beauty. The trueness of it. She is gorgeous by any standard. Her boots are trimmed with fur that I think could be real, and the size and sparkle of her diamond ring hits me hard. I can smell her. I can feel the amount of body heat she has coming off of her; I can see the way her hands shake on the way to her mouth.

  “Oh, sure, it’ll kill you though,” she says. She sounds just like she does behind Dr. Pat’s door: brassy and hoarse and opinionated. Everything in me is thrilling at being this close to her.

  “That’s okay,” I say. Sylvia laughs. I don’t know if it’s ’cause she thinks I’m joking or if she’s laughing at the way all teenagers are full of angsty drama. It doesn’t really matter, ’cause she gives me a cigarette and lights it and another one for herself and it seems like maybe she’s even in the mood to talk.

  “Christ, it’s cold,” Sylvia says. “You know you’re an addict when you’ll freeze your fingers off just to get some nicotine in your system.”

  “You have a no-smoking rule in your apartment?” I say. It’s so easy. Just like that I’m asking about her place with Austin. I am moments away from hearing her say his name, from learning more about them, from getting at least a quick glimpse into their lives.

  “My husband hates it,” she says. And my heartbeat slows. And my hands stop shaking despite the cold, and my head clears up, suddenly ready to function on a normal plane. Sylvia smells like expensive perfume and smoke and something else: men’s deodorant. She smells, I think, like Austin must smell, and I could inhale her. But first I need to keep appearing normal.

  “Oh yeah?” I take an inhale like I love smoking, but I’m working hard to choke it down without coughing. If I’m going to buddy up with Sylvia I have to be a real smoker. It’s like religion: To pull it off you have to be there all the time, not just on holidays.

  “He hates a lot of things,” Sylvia says. “You know? Some people could make a living from hating stuff.” I can do this. I can be Sylvia’s smoking buddy. I raise my eyebrows and nod really slowly like we’re sharing a real secret.

  “But he gave you that ring?” I say. It might be crossing the line, but this is not a puritanical, shy, secret-keeper like the women from my suburb. She is something else and I think I might be on the right track.

  “Why do you think I keep him around?” she says with a wink, and we both laugh and take in smoke at almost the same time.

  “I’ll remember that for when I find a guy,” I say, and Sylvia smiles again. “I’m Bea, by the way.”

  “Sylvia. You new to the building?” There’s only one answer, and it’s the one that will make it possible for me to share more cigarette breaks with Sylvia. Only one answer that will let me run into Austin on a regular basis without seeming insane.

  “Uh-huh.” The lie makes me dizzy, but the promise of it bringing me closer to Austin is so strong that I resist the urge to rake it back. I pinch my mouth into a smile and drop my cigarette on the pavement. I rub it out with the scuffed-up edge of my insanely pink snow boots. “But I’m actually heading out. You waiting for the husband to come back?” It’s pushing it a little far, trying to figure out when Austin will be back. But if I don’t ask I’ll end up hiding behind a tree all evening just to make sure, and it’s too cold for that right now.

  “I have the place to myself tonight,” Sylvia says. “When you’re my age, you’ll know how great that is.” She’s can’t be more than ten years older than me. I remember the last session I overheard. She told Austin she wanted a baby but would never get pregnant if he couldn’t “keep it up” for longer than five minutes. I’m itching to reread my notes.

  “Thanks for letting me bum one from you,” I say, and give her a high-wattage smile. The kind that comes lined in bright red lipstick and is this close to a really big belly laugh. Sylvia shrugs and smiles back. I want to say something else, but she does it first.

  “I’m sure I’ll see you out here again soon.” I nod and hope it doesn’t look puppy-dog eager.

  It takes her going inside for me to realize in a shiny, crystal-clear moment that I have just screwed myself royally. Now she knows what I look like and I’ll have to be supercareful at Dr. Pat’s not to be seen by them.

  ’Cause not getting there early to listen in on their sessions isn’t an option. You’d think I’d be annoyed at the extra layer of complication I’m adding to my already ridiculous, probably illegal habit. But I look forward to the set of necessary rituals that will come with keeping myself hidden at Dr. Pat’s while also convincing Sylvia I am an avid smoker who lives in her apartment building.

  More rules to follow. It actually eases the anxiety of having to leave their building now.

  I’d like to drive home, but I’m too amped up to be safe on the road, so I walk a few streets over to a coffee shop and call Beck back. Now that I’ve seen Sylvia, I can picture Beck’s face again. The mental image is all cleared up, unfogged. I remember the shape of his eyes. His arms. The ridiculous action-figure way he walks.

  “Hi,” I say when his voice mail picks up. “It’s Bea. Just returning your texts. Which were totally fine, by the way. So, yeah. Don’t worry about it. But also, don’t call me back right away, ’cause I’ll be in the car and driving and stuff. Okay. But call me after. I mean, later. Okay. Bye.”

  I wish I hadn’t left a message at all, but the calm from talking to Sylvia lasts long enough for me to drink a huge mug of mocha in peace and to drive home at an almost reasonable thirty-five miles an hour. I think, not for the first time, that I’ve had my fill now. That I won’t need to do any of that again.

  But when I get home, I make a beeline for my room with the notebook to read about their last session. I wrote the notes in such a daze, such an autopilot, zombielike state, that I don’t even remember what was in there. So opening the notebook to reread is almost as serious a jolt as the original listening-in.

  Sylvia: You must be getting it somewhere.

  Austin: I’m not a machine. I’m not some sex machine for you.

  Sylvia: Most guys—

  Austin: You’re the one who’s gone outside the marriage—

  Sylvia: ONCE.

  Austin: Oh, okay, just once. Then that’s fine—

  Dr. Pat: Let’s all take a moment.

  Austin: (mumbles)

  Sylvia: I CAN’T HEAR YOU.

  Austin: (mumbles)

  Sylvia: See, this is the kind of passive-aggressive—

  Austin: I said you make me feel like I’m nothing.

  Dr. Pat: (something superdeep and meaningful that shuts them both up)

  Before I forget, I make a point to write down as much of the conversation I just had with Sylvia as I can remember. I don’t let the dinging of text messages coming in on my phone stop me. I write and write until it’s all there in print. And when I’ve read it over once and gotten a little of that peace back, I am ready to look at my phone again.

  It’s Beck.

  He’s at the gym and needs a ride.

  If I pick him up he’ll take me to a movie.

  But I can’t tell Dr. Pat.

  It doesn’t have to be a date date, but he’d like it to be a date.

  I write back quickly and tell him to not wear a tie or blazer or whatever. Then I add a smiley face so that I don’t sound like a huge bitch. He doesn’t respond, so I get in the car immediately, before he can change his mind and definitely before I can change my mind, since some of the calm from my time with Sylvia is already evaporating at the thought of being around Beck.

  I read an article three weeks ago that said people in relationships are less likely to have homicidal tendencies. I’m not saying that’s a motivating factor or whatever, but it made an impression somewhere in my head, and Dr. Pat smiled when I told he
r about it. She likes anything that encourages me to have things like friendships. If I can fall for Beck, maybe it means I’m not one of those secretly dangerous people. I mean, I bet Reggie didn’t have normal crushes on normal girls.

  Not that I like Beck because of some sociological study, but it makes the prospect of liking him more manageable, less terrifying. Maybe he’ll touch my hand again. Maybe he will put hands on my hips or cup my face. Maybe his mouth will find mine the way it did in the dark, and I’ll remember that rhythm we found, that slow pressure and mounting passion from the night of the dance. That’s the real reason I go. The hope of losing myself in him for another few moments. The hope of losing myself in anything at all.

  He’s waiting in the gym parking lot when I pull in. He’s changed out of workout gear and into jeans and a wool coat that is, of course, too tight. His hair’s wet, hopefully from showering, not from sweat, and there’s a woman holding his arm. School ended a while ago and I know from looking at him that he has been at the gym since the second the bell rang at 2:20. The lady gripping his arm is more or less the female version of Beck and hasn’t had time to get out of her gym clothes. She is muscular in a bumpy, unreal way that I’m not sure I’ve seen before on a flesh-and-blood female. Her hair’s back in a long, sweaty ponytail and she is so solid I could probably drive my car right over her and not harm her at all.

  She would be the perfect friend for me. Unbreakable. Just like the guys I usually like.

  Beck’s leaning away from her a little, probably ’cause of the unclean hair or the fact that she doesn’t use baby wipes after every few lifting sets.

  “Hey,” I call out, and the woman lets go a whimper of relief at my coming toward them. Taking care of Beck was not on her schedule for today, I think.

  “Oh, good!” she says. She pats Beck on the arm before beelining for me, and he follows behind at a much slower pace. I notice him wipe off his hands ineffectually with his jacket. Then he uses the sleeves to wipe at an exposed part of his neck and his forehead, too.