When we got home I’d been up for thirty-six hours. I was exhausted and ambivalent and unsure of what to do next. Should I just go to sleep, or should I bathe, pray, vacuum and dust, then spend a couple hours checking all my books for unkosher food stains? I’d left a mantle; should I pick it up again? Reluctant but resigned, I decided yes, yes I should. It was such a comfortable mantle, such a flattering hair shirt, and I didn’t have anything else to wear.
My mother found me in my bathroom, holding my nightgown by the hem to form an apron filled with water. I think I was worried an insect had touched it while I was gone.
“Don’t,” she said softly.
I thought for a minute, letting the water flow over the hem and all over the sink top. I knew she was right; this wasn’t going to get me anywhere. But it had simply never occurred to me that I could do anything else.
Having an obsessive-compulsive impulse is like standing on red-hot coals. Every cell in your body is screaming for you to jump off. To keep standing there is so hard. It’s just so hard. Leaning over the sink that night, I suddenly understood that that’s what I had to do. I had to stand on the coals and take a tiny step forward. I had to feel the impulse and move past it. I got it, all of a sudden, just like that.
Maybe going away had given me some distance from my disease. Maybe, as I would soon write in my college application essays, the trip to Europe had changed me forever. Or maybe the years of checking sockets had paid off. Here, finally, was my lightbulb moment. I understood how I would get better. It was a fire walk, a circus feat, a high-wire balancing act of a thousand tiny steps. It would take ages, but all I had to do right now was turn off the faucet. Then tomorrow I would inch forward some more.
But right now, it was just the faucet, a simple twist to the right. “Okay,” I told my mother, and turned the water off. I pulled the nightgown over my head. “Okay.” I was so tired. I wadded the soggy flannel into a ball and offered it up. I was a tightrope walker charging forward, a flying Wallenda in damp underwear.
“For me?” my mother asked, holding the dripping gift at arm’s length. “You shouldn’t have.”
“De rien,” I answered. Then I shuffled to my bed, where I slept, and slept, and slept.
INTERSTITIAL
DISEASES I HAVE SELF-DIAGNOSED (A PARTIAL LISTING )
Cancer (of breast, brain, uterus, kidneys, skin)
Hepatitis (A, B, and C)
Herpes (simplex I and II)
Toxic shock syndrome
AIDS (incl. attendant disorders of thrush and Kaposi’s sarcoma)
Stroke
Deep vein thrombosis
Blood poisoning
Tuberculosis
Lupus
Schizophrenia
Parkinson’s disease
Lou Gehrig’s disease
Acid reflux disease
Congestive heart failure
Meningitis
Diabetes (I and II)
Lyme disease
Epstein-Barr virus
Tetanus
German measles
Diverticulitis
Retinitis pigmentosa
Leprosy
Necrotizing fasciitis
Multiple sclerosis
Vitiligo
∨ Devil in the Details ∧
Hell on Wheels
Or maybe it was going to be harder than turning off a stupid faucet. Gah.
I was still a mess. The only difference was that I knew it. But that’s something. If I wasn’t on the road to recovery, at least I had a map.
My parents thought the road might be better traversed in a car. Shortly after we got back from Europe, they started badgering me about getting my driver’s license. Driving would foster self-reliance and independence. It would also provide the means to run away, and should I be so inclined, my parents let me know they wouldn’t try to hide the keys. I wasn’t tempted. They’d tried to make me get my license a year earlier and it had not gone well at all.
Driving was not the first thing I was ever bad at. By age sixteen, I had proved myself inept at ballet, singing, and every sport except tetherball. I couldn’t make gravy or plot a sine curve. But I had never failed at any task so spectacularly as when I tried to learn to drive. The fact that this was an activity that involved heavy machinery scared me to death. I mean, I couldn’t pirouette, but you can’t do much damage with a toe shoe.
If I had my way I would never have to drive at all. My plan was to make a lot of money doing something I was actually good at – the tetherball, maybe – and hire a chauffeur. Driving just didn’t interest me at all. The only places I ever wanted to go were to the supermarket and the synagogue, and it wasn’t like I was embarrassed to have my mother drive me there. The older married couples who made up the rest of the congregation didn’t seem to think I was uncool just because my mom was my ride. No, I didn’t need to learn to drive. I was fine.
My parents, however, had other ideas. “If you need to go out and pick up some more S.O.S. pads you can find your own damn ride,” my mother sighed, putting her feet up on the coffee table and shaking open the newspaper. “I’ve shuttled you around enough today.”
Our town was small but spread out, and you needed a car to get pretty much anywhere. By my sophomore year my parents were nearing their threshold. And even I could see that there would be some advantages to having a license. It would make getting to school much easier, for one. We lived too far away to walk, but my parents wouldn’t drive me unless it was storming, and even then it had to be so bad that there was a very real possibility of being hit by lightning. Riding my bike was out of the question. Nothing was lamer than riding your bike to school. It would be better to arrive in a stroller. That was just as lame but not nearly as much work.
For a while I pedaled halfway there, hid my bike in my best friend’s shrubs, and then walked the rest of the way with her. But this got to be too much of a production, and finally my parents started paying the student body president, who lived across the street, to drive me. The problem with that was that we had to leave at 6:00 a.m. We were in student government together and had a mandatory zero-period leadership class. I’d had quite enough of that. She couldn’t resign, but I could, and I was looking to quit as soon as I found another ride.
So when my mother marched me down to the DMV the very day I was old enough to get my learner’s permit, I dutifully complied. It was probably a bad sign that I had to cheat to pass the eye test. My mother thought I was faking when I struggled to make out the letters on the bigger rows, but I really couldn’t see. Apparently my vision had gone to hell and I’d just been too busy inspecting the upholstery to notice. This explained why I wasn’t doing so well in trigonometry, where I couldn’t see the board, but not why I felt compelled to inspect that upholstery in the first place.
Well, at least I’d see the contaminants more clearly now. I was getting glasses, yet one more accessory to transform me from nerd into full-blown social outcast. What was the point of driving if I would have to wear glasses to do it? I was better off on my bike.
Once I had my permit and my corrective lenses I was ready for what my school called driver training and I called the most unpleasant experience of my life. Driver training is just an awful concept. It’s The Breakfast Club crossed with Speed. Your life is in the hands of three people picked at random, with nothing to protect you but the passenger-side brake. Worse, you’re unlikely to have a single shared interest. Personally, I like to have a little something in common with people when I’m going to be stuck in a car with them for four hours. I’d also like a little background. Are these the sort of people who drink gin for breakfast? Are they despondent over a recent breakup? Any past history of seizures? These are the sorts of things I want to know.
To be fair, my fellow trainees had more to fear from me than I did from them. At fifteen, they were all expert drivers, all of them capable of hot-wiring a Corvette or subbing for a demolition-driving brother should he become incapacitated after
taking a round without a helmet. My only previous driving experience had been in a go-cart. It wasn’t even a real go-cart. It was on a motorized track. You just sat in it and pretended to drive. I hadn’t liked that one bit because I thought it made me look silly. Now, behind the wheel of a real car for the very first time, I felt the same way. I lurched through the town like a sitcom teen, my classmates providing the laugh track.
My mother was furious when I told her the teacher couldn’t believe my parents had never let me drive before. “What do you mean, we should have been letting you drive?” she fumed. “It’s illegal! The school told you I should have been letting you drive? Should I also be teaching you to shoot up and sniff glue?”
Four lessons later, I flunked driver training, surprising exactly no one.
Still stung by the teacher’s reproach, my parents decided to continue my driving lessons themselves, in spite of the fact that we didn’t have the specially equipped car or, for that matter, a beginner-friendly car of any kind. All three were stick-shift imports whose sensitive circuitry and hard-to-replace parts suggested they’d been designed to spite me and all the other stupid American teenagers. There was my father’s sports car, which I was only allowed to ride in if I promised not to touch anything or to sweat on the upholstery. Out of the question. Then there was the battered VW Beetle my parents had bought on their honeymoon, now abandoned on the sidewalk in front of the house. Barely running, its sole responsibility now was to drive down the neighbors’ property values. It was so dinged and dusty that my father’s nurses had decorated it with surgical dressing and Band-Aids. Inside, the upholstery had dried and cracked into shards that poked your thighs, exposing tufts of horsehair and rusty springs. The condition they were in closely resembled that of the passenger seat in a friend’s van we referred to as “the angry chair,” because its errant springs had given more than one rider anal cysts. The unlucky shotgun passenger was forced to ride on his knees, facing in, with his backside resting on the dashboard.
So that was out, too. Thus it was decided that I would learn to drive on the family sedan, a Datsun Maxima that was annoying for a host of reasons. It was a talking car, which had seemed very novel when we first got it. If you did anything wrong – left a door ajar, forgot to turn off the lights, neglected to put on your seat belt – you were subjected to admonitions by the crisply reproachful voice system. Now, four years later, the novelty had worn off. “I took enough lip today,” my mother barked when the electronic voice reminded her to release the hand brake, “and I’m not taking any more from you.”
It was indeed a frustrating machine, a small car that seemed to have been designed for freakishly tall people. At five feet even, I was just too little for it. The seat belt that should have crossed my chest crossed my throat instead, pressing uncomfortably on my windpipe. I couldn’t see where the car began and ended. My parents bought me a booster, and I moved the seat as far up as it would go, but I still felt like a munchkin in a tank.
Was it just me? I had a friend who was a full foot shorter than I, only four feet tall, and she managed to get around just fine. There were people missing limbs and other crucial faculties, people who had to steer with their toes or teeth, all of whom could operate a car no sweat. At fifteen my sister could drive with just a knee, leaving her hands free to unwrap burritos and flip off tail-gaters. But I struggled.
The problem, of course, was not in my body but in my brain. OCD is based upon an irrational belief that if you don’t do something perfectly – wash your hands, pat the end table, plug in the coffeemaker the exact right way – someone will get hurt. But with driving, that’s a distinct possibility. You’re sitting in several thousand pounds of metal packing several gallons of flammable material. If you don’t do something perfectly, someone really might get hurt.
Especially if I was at the wheel. Oh, I tried. My father and I dutifully set out for my driving lesson every Sunday. He felt it was important for me to master shifting gears before I was set loose in traffic, so our lessons took place in a deserted trucking company parking lot on the outskirts of town. I would drive around and around the lot for hours, shifting from first to second to third. This went on for months. My driving skills did not improve. My command of passive-aggression advanced considerably, however, as I shot my father hostile looks and made terse loaded comments. “You know, this would be easier for me if you weren’t scrutinizing me so closely. I think I’m doing fine. I’m really not sure what you expect.”
My permit expired. My sixteenth birthday came and went. Instead of a car, I got a sewing machine. That was just as well. My anorexia was blazing again, and I was far too busy doing leg lifts to bother with the DMV. And since none of my clothes fit anymore, it was nice that I could take them in.
What did I need a license for, anyway? I didn’t have anywhere to go. Of course, my classmates didn’t either, and that didn’t stop them. That was sort of the point, the aimless driving. They cruised. Cruising up and down the town’s Main Street was such a popular activity the city council had tried to ban it, making it illegal to drive down the same street more than three times in an hour. But this only added to the appeal. Now you weren’t just driving aimlessly; you were breakin’ the law. The only time it was officially permitted was on Cruise Night, a summer festival featuring tricked-out funny cars, cover bands, and corn dogs. To commemorate the occasion, you could buy a T-shirt featuring a cat wearing sunglasses riding in a convertible.
I found the whole thing unspeakably tacky. Stupid cruising. Stupid cars. Stupid driver training. I was so turned off by the whole industry that I briefly considered using my post as president of Students Against Drunk Driving to undertake a new campaign, with a simpler, better acronym: Students Against Driving. Drink all you want, we would say, but lose the wheels. Sidecars, yes; cars, no.
I continued happily license-free for another year. Then we got back from Europe and my parents started badgering me again. Next summer I would turn eighteen, and they had less than a year of control over me left. If they didn’t force me to get my license now they’d be stuck hauling me around forever.
In short order my mother made me renew my permit and announced that she would teach me to drive herself. This time there would be no laps around the parking lot. She put me right into traffic. “Sink or swim,” she said, putting on her sunglasses and reclining the passenger seat.
Our first time out I plunged us into a ditch. Sink.
Next Sunday we tried again. This time, I cut off two cars and a tractor, but I managed to stay on the road. The following Sunday there was a near sideswiping, but that was all. I was gradually getting the hang of it.
A few months later I was competent enough to think about taking my driving test. But first I would have to pass driver training. Fortunately the instructor, who was also my Honors Chemistry instructor and the only teacher who knew my biweekly ‘dermatology’ appointments were with a therapist, took pity on me and scheduled some sessions just for me, on his own time. Maybe it was just because he was so nice, or maybe he was afraid of pushing the dermatology patient too far when she had volatile Honors Chem supplies at her disposal. Whatever. I passed.
After all this trouble my actual DMV driving test was pretty uneventful. I got a 71, one point above failing, a D-minus. It was a fair grade. I was a D-minus driver. I got into an accident the very next day. It was so embarrassing. I had plenty of classmates who’d done that very thing, but they’d done it in the course of something wild and exciting, drag racing or stealing joyrides. I’d done it while taking two ten-year-olds to a matinee of An American Tail. It was a really stupid accident, too, plowing into a parked car while doing a three-point turn. This would not have been so stupid if I hadn’t been in a cul-de-sac at the time. Why a three-point turn? It was a cul de sac! Even the ten-year-olds couldn’t help but laugh at me, and along with the singsongy complaints of the talking car itself, they formed a humiliating chorus.
Our Datsun was fine, but the Opel I’d smashed into n
ow had a large canyon in the driver-side door. This was not a dent. You could bathe a toddler in this concavity. I carefully printed my name and phone number on a sheet of binder paper and left it under the windshield wiper. Then I drove to my father’s office, handed his receptionist my license, went straight home, and obsessively cleaned the house until my parents arrived.
It was something, watching them try to convey the message that they were very, very angry with me, that I must never do this again, but that I shouldn’t feel too discouraged to get right back behind the wheel tomorrow. As much as I wanted them to, they would not take away my driving privileges. Perhaps they should have. I promptly had two more accidents, neither one involving a moving car.
I’m not sure why I had so much trouble with stationary things, parked cars and traffic islands, curbs and poles. They were always jumping out at me, especially when I tried to park. In lots I would park away from all the other cars, in a remote corner where no one would ever think of parking next to me. A couple times, however, someone did, pulling in just as I was locking the car. “I think you should probably move your car, sir,” I always told them. “I have no idea what I’m doing and I can pretty much guarantee I’ll take out your rearview mirror.”
Driving was hard, but parking was worse. I was lucky that we lived in a town with plenty of lots; I never had to parallel park, and fifteen years later, I still haven’t, not once ever. But still, I struggled. The most difficult parking in town was in our own garage. It was small and narrow, and the driveway was angled, forcing you to come in from the side and then sharply maneuver straight, all the while being careful not to ding my father’s sports car on the right or the side of the house on the left. There was no room for error, and my sister and I knocked mirrors off several times. Once my sister even knocked off a door. This turned out to be a blessing, however, because when we went to get that fixed, the mechanic noticed that the alignment was dangerously out of whack from my run-in with a curb several weeks earlier. I believe the phrase he used was death trap. We’d all been driving the car with no idea. “That could have killed any one of us,” my mother said through gritted teeth, in the you-did-a-bad-thing-but-that’s-okay tone that she was becoming expert at.
Devil in the Details Page 18