by Nicole Conn
Peyton had told Clara, very firmly, that under no circumstances was she to do any such healings on her mother, but the Clydesdale-like nurse begged Peyton to allow her to do ablutions on Peyton’s mother to prevent the “illuminati from taking over her body. You know, the aliens have already taken over earth, and their intention is to kill every last one of us until there are only five hundred thousand left.”
“And why do you suppose they want any of us left,” asked Wave, Peyton’s best friend, whom Peyton had asked over to see if Clara was safe to be with her mother. “I mean, why not off the lot of us?”
Wave’s offhanded remark only provoked Clara into a never-ending conspiracy theory that began and ended somewhere around the fact that Peyton’s mother had been a victim. “Don’t let this ‘Alzheimer’s’ thing fool you. She’s been taken over.” Peyton was not to believe for a minute that her mother suffered from the last and most dangerous stages of Alzheimer’s.
Wave told Peyton in her deeply rich South Manchester Queen’s English, “You do realize you have a total loon tendin’ to dear Mum. You gotta sack her. Stat.”
Peyton had had her replaced the next day.
Before Peyton could even get to her desk, which she hrea which ad set up in the huge living room, so that she could enjoy the most beautiful and peaceful view her family home afforded, her agent, Emily called.
“Do you want to lose the job I spent weeks finding for you?” she screamed.
She tried to toss in a sympathetic tone that she was absolutely understanding about Peyton’s situation with her mother, “But, Peyton, the magazine you’re freelancing for could care less.”
Peyton replied, “I’ll get it done if I have to work all night.”
“Good because I have you up for a big project with Cosmo, you know that.”
Peyton didn’t much care, but she did have bills to pay. “I’m aware…look, I’m grateful Emily, it’s just that there are only so many hours in the day and you know—”
“Yes, and I think you’re a hero…I just don’t want you screwing up a brilliant career.”
“Got it.”
Elena—two Sundays later...
“I’m not going!” Nash’s voice was tense and exasperated.
Barry stood with his wife amongst the congregants who were gathered on the long sloping front lawn of the church. Dressed in one of his four dark-toned Brooks Brothers suits, his navy blue shirt and one of the many ties Tori and Nash had gifted him with over the years, Barry could as easily have been a politician as a pastor, able to keep everyone chattering excitedly, and create a certain urgency buzzing through the crowd. In contrast to Barry’s stylish clothing, Elena’s had conformed to the code; conservative hues of peach, rose and beige, pastel floral summer dresses. Barry had insisted she keep her hair in the traditional Indian braid, or pulled back, as he warned her, “when your hair’s let free, El—you just look too damn sexy.” He had winked at her when he said it, admiring what he always referred to her as her “exotic sultriness—we can’t have that. You look nice and traditional with the braid, and that way you won’t threaten the wives!”
“You did hear they’re protesting downtown!” Garret, a mid-forties parishioner piped up. He was Millie’s right-hand minion and never far from her side.
“The nerve of those people,” Millie sighed dramatically. “We’ll all be there. All of us, Pastor Barry, won’t we?” she asked of the folks standing by.
Nods of affirmation and plenty of eager “Don’t worry, we’ll all be there” came from one congregant after another. If nothing else, this was one flock of geese that always traveled together.
Barry turned to Elena who was vaguely caught up in the fervor, but, as usual had other things on her mind. “El, make sure you get extra food and drinks for us to take.”
Nash gently tugged as his mother’s elbow, hissed below his breath: “There’s no way I’m going with them, Mom. He can’t make me.”
Elena tried to move them both out of earshot. “Please watch your tone. That’s your father’s decision.”
Nash’s jaw clamped. Elena saw in his eyes the surprise he couldn’t hide at what he felt was betrayal from her. He too was dressed in his Sunday best, slacks, shirt and tie, which he always jumped out of the second he got home into what he called his “real clothes,” a variation of jeans, T-shirts and hoodies. “Are you kidding me? Do you even know what they’re talking about here?”
Tori walked up from behind them. “Don’t these people know that being loud cannot compete with being clear? And Nash is clear he doesn’t want to be involved with this protest. How in the heck can this benefit him or them, for that matter, if he is in complete disagreement with his dad on this?”
“It doesn’t matter, Mom.” Nash’s voice grew louder. “Because there is no way I’m going!”
Before she could even respond another congregant came up to request the Kinder class calendar. Elena tried to divide her attention, but the woman was chattering so enthusiastically she began to glaze over, attempting to listen dutifully, but also trying to keep tabs on the situation with Nash. All this while she continued to shake the hands of the same congregants that she’d shaken hands with every Sunday for the past ten years. She knew the pulp, flesh and feel of every hand, but they still felt all the same. Undifferentiated.
Nash’s displeasure with the church, attending services and now even Barry’s message were becoming more and more of a problem. She kept an eye on Nash as he shoved his hands deep into his pockets, as Barry well-wished other congregants outside the doors of the church.
Barry shot a glance at Elena: Get your son under control.
Even when it was just the last of the folks who were involved in another one of their “God is love campaigns,” the last thing Elena wanted was for the two of them to clash in front of Barry’s parishioners, here outside the church. The rumor mill was a nano-second away at all times and Millie’s face was already pinched with displeasure at Nash’s open display of impertinence.
“Nash,” Barry intoned.
“Whatever—”
“Young man,” Millie interjected with a superior tone, “that is no way to speak near the church, and it certainly is no way to speak to your father.”
“That’s fine, Millie—” Barry tried to take back the reins but before he could, Nash stomped off across the sanctuary lawn. Elena watched nervously as Tori ran to join him, but Nash shrugged her off, trying to distance himself from everyone.
Elena could just make out Nash’s words, “You have no idea what it’s like to lieins like ve in that house—”
“You seem to forget—” Tori stood in front of him now and Elena could not help but smile at Tori’s absolute knowing of Nash. “I spend most of my waking hours there.”
Elena shook her head, taking in Tori, who was the strangest mix of absolutely gorgeous in a sort of Disney-gone-quirky display of glam curls meets funky retro stylizing. Pieces of clothing that had no business being in the same closet somehow made sense the way Tori tossed together her ensembles, a frilly skirt with a businessman’s vest, a bohemian shirt belted by an Indian scarf. And she would not be caught dead, anywhere, without one of her ties. Tori owned the most extensive collection of ties Elena had ever seen and had the most brilliant manner in which she affixed them to herself—sash, headband, belt and tie. She might appear to be nothing more than a dumb pretty blonde but Tori was the most brilliant child Elena had ever met, an absolutely stunning font of fascinating trivia, insight and wisdom.
“Yes, they’re crazy—but you know my parents make yours look like a walk in the park—” Tori stopped to consider her surroundings, the church grounds edging up to the children’s park next door. “Yeah…like a walk in the park.” Then Tori returned to the issue at hand and mollifying Nash. She suggested, “You know, Nash, if there were such a thing as minutes kept of all the myriad circumstances and events regarding family dysfunction I believe it would rival all the sands in the ocean.”
“
Save it.”
Nash stormed to the car, waiting for them to leave.
“Thank you so much for all your help with the food drive,” Elena intoned as she continued to watch her son and Tori. “We’ll see you next Sunday.”
“Pastor Barry, we’ve got all the buses lined up for the march. We’re all going to be there. Every last one of us,” Elena heard Millie profess earnestly as she chattered endlessly about their anti-gay protest. Apparently they were protesting a protest. Elena couldn’t really follow what it was all about, she already had so much on her plate, and she couldn’t get herself really worked up about every new cause du jour Millie pursued. Half of them petered out and were simply a framework for her histrionics. The other half Millie drove with a passion. Either way, Elena tried to stay out of them.
“Hey El.” Barry walked up to Elena. He said, watching his son in frustration, “Sounds like we’re going to have to have a family chat tonight at dinner when I get home.”
“Barry—”
“Don’t Barry me. He cannot behave like that at church.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t force—”
“Coming to church isn’t an option, Elena, so don’t even start.”
“But we’ve always encouraged him to think for himself. Maybe this just doesn’t speak to him.”
“No, he’s just being a fifteen-year-old who’s used to getting his own way, thanks to you, and him not attending my services will simply not be tolerated.”
Elena realized it was a losing battle. “I…I’m going to get the kids home so I can start dinner. Anything special you want?”
It took Barry a moment to move beyond his anger toward their son, but when he refocused on Elena, his eyes warmed, and he smiled. “How ’bout your famous meatloaf.”
“Yes, well…” They both laughed. Elena’s last new meatloaf recipe had been a “disaster of epic portions” Tori had quipped, even if it had been at the expense of her own idea to try every known version of meatloaf as a “truly valued experiment—the very insight into the American soul through one of its most classic dishes.”
Elena smiled back. “I’ll see you at home.”
Barry kissed her forehead, then sighed. “Would you talk to him?”
“You know I will.”
Peyton—that same Sunday in July
Peyton sat in her most comfy sweats and a dark blue muscle T as she flipped the day calendar page back and forth; back and forth, yet it was still there: “Women’s Pay Scale Article Due!” circled in big red marker.
Feeling overwhelmed, she returned to her work. Then noticed that the pens and pencils in her Franklin Day Planner cup holder had been messed with. Must have been one of the nurses borrowing a pen. She knew precisely where and how each pen and pencil fit into the holder on her massive reclaimed pine dining room table that she used as her desk, and now stringently went to work to set the world straight.
As she fussed endlessly, in the back of her mind she ran the rather pointless equation that every moment she devoted to her OCD was a minute lost to her deadline, but nevertheless, in this particular instance her OCD was winning out.
Living with her obsessive compulsive disorder or “relentless brain drain,” as she referred to it, had been a ceaseless, and for the most part, unwinnable battle since she had turned seventeen and had had her first full-blown panic attack. Convinced she was having a heart attack she had driven herself straight to the ER, crumpling the front end of her Toyota into a garbage dumpster on the way, so shaken was she by her racing heart and inability to breathe.
For the next eight years, she battled this disorder by white-knuckling a cure. Sometimes she drank away her attacks, only to find them worse the next day. Doctor after doctor informed her that she was not only healthy, but inordinately fit. Her obsessive need to swim one hundred laps a day along with her rigorous workout regime had prompted one doctor to fawn, “Your body is like a work of art. Your arms couldn’t be more sculpted. I find women with arms so defined, hmm, quite beautiful. Please just don’t overdo it.” The r d it.”obsequious doctor had smiled at her a little too sweetly and Peyton found a new doctor.
She had seen specialist after specialist consumed with the idea of inoperable brain tumors, an as yet undiscovered rare blood disease, an electrical malfunction within her heart—it had to be something. Because even when her mother noted with jarring coldness, “This is all in your head and you need to stop it,” she knew whatever she had was real. If her heart could pummel out of her chest in the middle of the night during a deep sleep, it wasn’t her imagination. Either that or her body had a mind of its own.
One day as she walked by the front of a bookstore she saw a book that literally popped out at her: The Good News about Panic Attacks, Anxiety and Agoraphobia. The sales clerk had stumbled as she was putting up the display and the book flew into the front of the window toppling all the other books in its path.
Peyton walked in, bought the book, started reading it before she even left the store, and didn’t put it down until she had gulped it all down, sitting at the first Starbucks she encountered, swallowing every word whole, the very sustenance she had needed all these many years to finally bring comprehension to what she believed had become insanity. She did not return to work that day. After she finished the book, she walked to her car, drove to her favorite park, sat at a bench overlooking the vast and beautiful view—not the high-rise buildings of the city, but the endless stretch of Baldwin Hills, a vista of sagebrush, green and open skies. As the sun was beginning to set she cried.
She cried for hours over finally being able to put a name to all her strange brain ruminations and her physical body attacks that made her feel an utter loss of control. Not to mention exhausted by the severity of her clamoring heart, her inability to breathe, her feeling utterly outside of her own skin. The physical aspects were daunting, but it was the surreal and bizarre thought process that had taken more out of her than anything. Her do-or-die need for ritual and the fanatical compulsion to follow random thought patterns as if they had any meaning or bearing of any kind on reality had completely devastated any confidence she had in the ability to be normal. Although, as time had gone by, all her daily rituals had become her reality and a great deal of her rational mind had finally come to the conclusion that she truly had gone insane. Yet, here she was, on the printed page. She finally knew herself. A person who had severe and chronic OCD. Breathing deeply, she finally owned her disorder or condition—what it was didn’t even matter to her any longer. Because now she could understand it.
The next day she made an appointment with one of the psychiatrists listed in the back of the book who all specialized in OCD and Panic Disorders. She met with the rather slight and strange little fellow by the name of Dr. James at the very first appointment he could give her. But within moments the kindness in his eyes, the warmth of his smile put her at ease. Unlike any doctor she had ever known, this gentle man called her daily to check in with her and he made her feel immediately safe with his thorough knowledge and guidance. He was used to patients dropping their medication due to the side effects, which Peyton had to agree were onerous. “The pills can’t do anything for you in the bottle,” Dr. James stated a number of times when he called to check on her progress. But along with medication, and the next year in therapy, Peyton finally began to fully under kn fully stand the mechanics of her OCD. She felt like a new woman—the best version of herself she could be. She had lived for eight long years crippled by this disorder, narrowing her life experience to a pure subsistence of writing and swimming maniacally, rarely going out, joining her best friend Wave for rare social outings, but mostly holed up inside, reading in the few free moments her rigid schedule allowed. And then she had found freedom.
It was during her second year of adjusting to life in a more normal manner that she decided to tackle the project of writing her personal memoir. Her agent had said it was sort of like the new AA—everyone seemed to be coming out of the closet and baring their soul a
bout one syndrome or another. Regardless of Emily’s crass pitch, Peyton wrote the book to speak to all the other people out there who had been suffering as she had, so they would know there was a way out—and if there was anyone she could keep from suffering even a second longer, she was determined to do so. For Peyton, taking care of her OCD was as life-affirming as a drunk quitting the bottle.
Her memoir, Trust, Who Needs It?—An Agoraphobic’s Memoir hit number two on the Self-Help Book List the first week it was out and soon thereafter number one. Peyton won numerous awards and a bit of notoriety, she dated another well-known out lesbian in the entertainment industry and within the worlds of OCD junkies and lesbians she had a weird melting pot of fans, and was noted in Curve as a “celesbian on the rise.”
The fact was that OCD was a condition one learned to live with. Medication helped Peyton’s remarkably intense panic attacks to all but vanish. Her OCD, however, flared up on a regular basis depending on how much stress she had to endure and at this juncture, she had learned when to give in and let the ritual double-checking take over…sometimes it just was easier to cave, get it over with and get on with life. As she did now, lining up the pens for the ninth time. Nine was her number and she always performed her rituals in three sets of three. As she was finalizing this last set of three she heard the silky voice.
She knew before she even turned around that Margaret would be dressed in something seductive. As she began to swivel, very slowly to resist what she knew was coming, she saw her in the corner of her eye. Sure enough, the svelte and exceedingly attractive Margaret was clad in lacy attire. With her Marilyn Monroe tousled blond hair, her eerily transparent blue eyes, Peyton could feel before she saw Margaret’s come-fuck-me leer. Margaret was known to be assertive, or “a bloody hounddog!” noted Wave, and was used to getting what she wanted.
“Hey…stranger,” Margaret purred. “I’ve been waiting…”
“God baby, I’m so sorry—but I can’t.”