Addition

by Toni Jordan

  He smiles. He nods. ‘Very good, very good. The referral from the GP says you think it’s time to address your counting.’ He gestures to a folder on his desk. An extraordinary number of stiff white hairs stick straight up out of his eyebrows—possibly redirected hairs that have abandoned his head. They move so erratically when he speaks that I lose count and have to start again. Almost impossible to be sure, but I think 15 left, 17 right.

  ‘That’s a big step,’ he continues. ‘How old were you when you started to count?’

  I nearly say I was three years old, like everyone, but I’ve come all this way. Seamus has taken a half day off work to drive me. I cross my legs. Then I uncross them and cross them the other way.

  ‘To varying degrees, since I was eight.’

  Professor Segrove leans forward and grins, hands on his chin. He is enthusiastic, like a spotty boy at McDonald’s who beams because, yes, you would like fries with that. It’s frightening to see someone who so loves his work.

  He looks at the folder again. ‘I see here you’ve been hospitalised once before. Was this when the counting began to interfere with your life?’

  ‘Yes. 25 months ago.’ Only 45 books on the second shelf. Fatter ones.

  ‘Twenty-five months ago.’ He’s taking notes now, writing on a fat wad of plain paper, and still grinning. Why on earth is he grinning like that? This can’t be that much fun. Does he imagine I will become fodder for an academic paper in New Shrink Monthly? ‘The baffling case of Grace V’?

  ‘Grace, you’ve done very well. Often the most difficult part for people with obsessive compulsive disorder is actually beginning treatment, because it’s such a change to their normal routine. Often people cancel their first appointments.’

  Often people are smarter than I am.

  ‘It was a difficult night last night. I…’ I dig my fingers into the leather of the chair. ‘I measured all the dimensions…the walls…of my apartment. Then I wrote the numbers on the walls. Seamus, my boyfriend…he came over to help at 2.00 a.m. Actually 2.09 a.m.’ I don’t mention how soothing it was to see those numbers on the walls this morning. Whatever happens, I’m keeping them.

  He writes this down. The poor thing is probably stuck in a loveless marriage, living in a cold, empty house in Kew or Canterbury paying private school fees for a child he doesn’t realise isn’t his. If a woman who writes numbers on her walls is so exciting—well, this can be my good deed for the week. He stands up, walks to the bookcase (can’t count the bottom shelf from here), then sits down again.

  I try not to think about how many other perfectly well people have sat in this handsome chesterfield with 19 dimples on the backrest. About how many other innocent little quirks Professor Segrove—no first name on the door, not even an initial, though he looks like a Julius—is working so hard to expel. Fussy eater? Can’t stand chicken? ‘Come, my chicken-loathing friend. I will cure you!’ Cry at old movies or phone company ads where the handsome Italian son calls Mamma back in the village? Arise, and walk! Soon you shall cast aside your obvious depressive illness with possible borderline personality tendencies and become as hard-hearted as the rest of us, able to watch the six o’clock news every day without so much as a twinge of compassion! In the hands of Professor Segrove we will all become normal.

  ‘How do you feel if you can’t count things?’

  Like I’ve got every disease known to man and a few that haven’t been discovered yet. ‘Anxious, I suppose. Sometimes.’

  As if no one else in the world ever worries. Nikola had enormous challenges, things that seemed impossible at the time, dreams even bigger than electricity. Today, with TV, radio, mobile phone and Bluetooth signals zipping around us continually, it’s easy to underestimate the genius behind the vision. But imagine the world in 1900, with none of those things. Queen Victoria is still on the throne. Australia isn’t even a country. Women don’t have the vote.

  Professor Segrove grins again, takes a clean piece of paper and draws a smiley face. He holds it up, facing me. If Mr Smiley had eyebrows it would look exactly like him. ‘Together we will build a staircase to a healthier future, Grace.’ He scribbles again and hands me a prescription.

  My first meeting with the behavioural therapist is straight after my appointment with Professor Segrove. In the waiting room are 15 chairs. I sit and wait. I hope Seamus has found a coffee shop somewhere. ‘It’s no trouble,’ he said, when I told him about the appointments. ‘I’d be delighted to take you.’

  What Nikola imagined was a radio communications tower capable of reaching most of the United States and across the Atlantic. He imagined news bulletins, stock market updates, telephone networks—everything we have today. He was more than one hundred years ahead of his time. One small problem: to build his tower he needed money. Westinghouse couldn’t help, so Nikola turned to the one man who had the cash. The billionaire industrialist J. Pierpont Morgan.

  When Morgan heard what Nikola had to offer, even he was astounded. Imagine, Mr Capitalist, a worldwide monopoly on radio stations. I have already successfully transmitted over seven hundred miles, Nikola told him. It will only cost you $350,000 all up: $100,000 for the first transmitter to cover the Atlantic and another $250,000 to cover the Pacific. Morgan advanced Nikola $150,000; plenty to get started. Nikola was thrilled and promised a hundredfold return on the investment. To start to build his dream, Nikola now needed land.

  ‘Grace Vandenburg? Yes?’ A woman appears from behind the counter. She is tall and thin with black hair so lank it looks damp, reminiscent of an oil spill slicked down her cheeks. Her clothes are 1920s retro: a grey dropped-waist shift over a white shirt, shiny black shoes with a buckle at the ankle.

  No. Nope. Never heard of her. I’m just here to service the photocopier.

  ‘I’m Francine. Please follow me.’

  Francine leads me, shiny black shoes clopping with every step, to a meeting room that is empty except for a circle of plastic chairs. I cross my arms and my legs. Then I think perhaps this looks like a defensive posture, so I uncross them. I look for a window to jump out of but there’s none.

  ‘Welcome, welcome. I’ll be leading both your group sessions, and your individual therapy sessions. I know it’s a little awkward now but believe me, we’ll be the best of friends in no time.’ Her forehead is permanently creased in a frown of caring and concern.

  Actually my friends register is full. I could fit you in but someone else would have to die first.

  ‘Now, first I want to ask about your personal support network.’

  Huh?

  ‘Your friends, family. People who understand you are beginning to climb the staircase to a healthier future, and will give you a hand up, so to speak.’

  That bloody staircase again. ‘Well, there’s my boyfriend. He’s very supportive. He drove me today.’

  Francine’s forehead becomes a furrow so deep I fear it will dent her brain. Or perhaps it already has. ‘No one else? Girlfriends? Family?’

  Sorry. Raised by wolves.

  ‘There’s my mother and sister. I haven’t told them about…the staircase.’

  ‘Tsk tsk tsk.’

  I have never met anyone who actually makes a ‘tsk’ sound. I wonder if it takes much practice. My tongue involuntarily prods my hard palette but I’ll have to wait until I get home to try.

  ‘Our family and friends are our handrails, as it were. It’s vital you tell them. Vital. I know Professor Segrove agrees.’

  This is my golden opportunity to ask Professor Segrove’s first name, but I suddenly think: What if Professor is his first name, like Major Major in Catch 22? His parents might have been far-sighted, planning for young Professor’s future career advancement. Francine takes advantage of my pause to deliver further instructions.

  ‘This is what you do, Grace. In your journal…you do have a journal, don’t you?’

  I snort. ‘Of course. I have 100 back copies of the Journal of the American Medical Association.’

  Francine’
s eyes bulge. ‘No, no Grace. A journal. Like a diary. You must have a journal. This is vital. Use your journal to describe your day-to-day struggles, so that, when you are halfway up your staircase you can look back and see how far you’ve come. Your sense of personal achievement will help you through your darkest days. Also, make a list of people you need to tell about your treatment. You can make a heading: Sharing List.’

  ‘Sharing List? Are you certain? Can’t I call it Support List instead?’

  Francine tilts her head to the side. ‘Well…it’s a little unorthodox but…tell you what, Grace. You go ahead and call it Support List and I’ll check with Professor Segrove. If there’s any problem, I’ll ring you. But the heading must be on page one. Family support is vital, Grace. Repeat to yourself: honesty and acceptance will help build my staircase.’

  When I get back to the car, Seamus is waiting with a take-away coffee and the paper. He likes to read every word of the sports pages. He doesn’t see me as I approach. On the right side of his head is a patch of hair that grows to the side, rather than straight down. I know what this patch feels like. I’ve felt it with my fingers.

  ‘Hey,’ I say.

  He starts, and gets out of the car. ‘Hey yourself. How did it go?’

  ‘I’m cured.’

  He walks around the front of the car to open my door. ‘Seriously. How did it go?’

  ‘Get ready for the highlight of your existence,’ I say. ‘You’re top of my support list.’ When he opens the door, I kiss him.

  So tonight, Wednesday, I start at the top of my list and ring my mother.

  ‘Goodness, Grace. I haven’t missed a Sunday, have I? Are you well?’

  ‘No, Mum. It’s not Sunday yet. And yes, I’m fine. I’m just…’

  ‘Yes?’

  Take a breath. ‘I’ve decided…to try therapy. I’m seeing…a psychiatrist…about…the counting thing.’

  ‘Really, dear? Again? After all this time? I thought you said you were happy. You were always insistent that you were happy.’

  ‘I am.’ Take another breath. ‘But I guess I could be happier.’

  ‘I suppose it can’t hurt, but I want you to be careful. Psychiatrists aren’t right in the head, you know dear. You know what Tom Cruise says. I remember reading that psychiatrists have the highest suicide rate of any profession. Or was it dentists? If it was dentists I could understand. Who would want to spend all day with their hands in other people’s mouths? Quite revolting. Even worse in the old days before gloves. I remember a dentist I once had who was a smoker. I could smell it on his hands. Disgusting. A friend of mine had all her mercury fillings extracted and she’s as right as rain now. Are your bowels regular?’

  She is sweet, loving and accepting. I am conscious of millions of my brain cells atrophying as she speaks. I am certainly not talking to my mother about my bowels, in case she reciprocates.

  Next, I ring Jill.

  ‘Grace? It’s a Wednesday. Is everything all right?’

  ‘Jill…I’ve decided…to try therapy. I’m seeing…a psychiatrist… about the counting thing…Hello? Jill? Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes…I’m here. Are you sure you want to do this? Remember what you said after the last time? “Why should I see a doctor,” you said. “I’m not sick. My mind is an expression of the variety of the human experience,” you said. In fact, I seem to recall you bit my head off when I suggested you try a different psychologist.’

  ‘I remember. I remember what I said.’

  ‘You said therapy is an attempt to force round pegs into square holes. That individuality is a blessing, not a curse.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘“Medicalisation of diversity benefits no one but multinational drug companies with a vested interest in enlarging the definition of illness,” you said.’ This from a woman who takes thirty minutes to find her four-wheel drive in the Southland car park. All of a sudden she’s digitally recorded every single statement I’ve uttered in the past year.

  ‘Jill, I know. I know what I said. But the past is the past. I’m trying therapy now.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure. If it makes you happy. Remember what we told you last time; Harry and I are happy to help. Financially I mean.’

  Wow. And I’m not even a tax-deductible charity. Just saying it must give her a warm glow. ‘Thanks anyway.’

  ‘It’s your new boyfriend, isn’t it? Seamus. When do we get to meet him? Hilly says he’s very nice. He must be worth it.’

  On my way home from the café next morning I make two detours: the newsagent, to buy my journal, and the pharmacy to fill the prescription. I choose a plain exercise book—white pages, blue lines. The ones with kittens on the cover are not for me. In the pharmacy I try not to calculate how much money the drug company is making from me.

  I try, too, not to wonder if this drug is the same one they prescribe to people who shop too much. The same one they make flavoured and coloured for depressed children. As the efficient woman in white makes a label with my name on it and sticks it on the box (that must be a rewarding career after 6 years at university) I’m tempted to ask her if she can also sell me the drug to make me thin. She’d know the one—the one that prevents you from absorbing the fat you eat, so instead it leaks out of your anus later. I am also tempted to ask about a drug to make me tanned, and another to cut down the amount of sleep I need. And then, when I’m a skinny superwoman who sleeps for four hours a night she might recommend a plastic surgeon so I can pay more money to look as average as I feel.

  The following Monday it’s 24 degrees. I start the group therapy sessions in the same room where I first met Francine. When I arrive at precisely 4.00 p.m. she’s waiting, this time in a mole-coloured boat-necked smock. Same shoes—from this angle I can see them better. Tap shoes. That explains the clipping and clopping last week. We sit opposite each other in our awkward plastic circle. There are five empty chairs.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Grace. Most people find the group sessions a rewarding and enlightening part of the process.’

  ‘I bet they do.’

  ‘Do you have your journal yet?’

  I’m tempted to tell her the dog ate my homework, but instead I pull my exercise book from its plastic bag and wave it.

  Francine briefly examines it, then nods. ‘Grace…we have had a little bit of trouble finding people with…similar challenges to yours. You might not be aware but yours is quite an unusual variation.’

  ‘Unusual is my middle name.’

  ‘So, rather than delay your therapy, we’ve decided to include you in our standard obsessives group. Ah, here they are now. Edith, Daria. Gemma. Carla. Gary. This is Grace. We’re all here. Welcome. Please take a seat.’

  Easier said than done. Edith, early twenties with corkscrew blonde ringlets, white singlet and skinny jeans, wears gloves and chooses the seat next to mine, but doesn’t sit yet. She removes a parcel from her green shopping bag: a floral pillowslip wrapped in cling film. Using only one hand, she unwraps it and lays it on the seat, lining up the edges with NASA precision. She carefully returns the cling film to her bag, and then unpacks another pair of gloves: black cotton like the ones on her hands. She removes her old gloves and pulls on the new one in movements choreographed so her skin touches nothing but glove. She sits.

  Daria and Gemma both have perfect olive skin and shiny dark hair; they could be sisters. Daria is perhaps in her early forties, Gemma could almost be fifty. They even dress similarly: tailored pants, one navy and one chocolate, and flowing peasant-style tops, one white and one floral, with sleeves that reach beyond their fingertips. They choose seats opposite each other in our little circle, then each pulls from her bag a fresh folded newspaper, spreads the inside pages on her seat and sits on them.

  Gemma gives a tight smile. ‘Unopened newsprint truly is “hot off the presses”, you know. It’s most unlikely to be contaminated.’

  Carla, a matronly woman in a pink knitted suit, has small rectangular glasses a
nd bouffant blonde hair. Her hands are a collage of pink, glistening fresh. She nods to each of us and produces a bottle of disinfectant and a wad of cotton balls. She begins swabbing her chair.

  This leaves Gary. Dark, tall, thinning hair. Glasses too round for his pudgy face. Jeans, a crumpled T-shirt and sneakers. Late thirties, but out of shape. Perhaps he is absentminded since he’s brought no supplies. He sits on his hands.

  Great. Handwashers. Me and a room full of nutbags.

  ‘Welcome, everyone. This session is really a “get to know you”. A time to feel comfortable with each other. Share the difficulties we face and swap little tips and hints.’

  Carla, who has finished dousing her chair, sits and immediately raises her hand.

  ‘Yes, Carla?’

  Carla turns to Gary. ‘Touching the chair with the skin of your hands is very dangerous. The germs climb on to your hands and run right up your arms until they reach your head.’

  Gary leaps up like his chair has spontaneously combusted, shaking his hands at the blue-tinged wrists. He nods several times at Carla, but whether out of respect for a superior nutbag or resentment I can’t tell. He hangs his head and stands behind his chair. The others squirm in their seats. Different ages, sexes, habits, and the same psychosis. They seem to have a natural affinity, like the members of a rock band. The Germphobics, perhaps.

  Daria raises her hand. Francine beams acknowledgment.

  ‘Daria. Thank you for breaking the ice.’

  ‘I found a terrific shop in Preston that sells those little steel tongs with rubber tips. You know the ones…you can seal them in a zip-lock bag straight from the dishwasher and carry them around all day. I use them to eat potato chips and open doors and shake hands. I always carry at least three.’ She pulls a sample pair, asphyxiated in the closed position, from her bag.

  ‘Thank you for sharing, Daria,’ says Francine. ‘I respect the courage it takes to be the first to speak. But what we’re really looking for are tips and hints to help us fight our obsessions. But thank you for sharing anyway.’

  Gemma raises her hand. ‘I’ve recently learned you can thread an apple with string using a large darning needle so you can hold it under boiling water and then suspend it from a doorway until you’re ready to eat it, all without using your hands.’