Devil in the Details (23 page)

Even if my therapist did know what I had, it was unlikely I’d
get very effective treatment. All the wonderful drugs we have now
weren’t available then. The prevailing treatment was behavior
modification, and let’s face it, that’s just too much work.

But there were some pills. Now it’s treated with selective
serotonin reuptake inhibitors like Prozac, but then we got
tranquilizers. These were not particularly effective. They don’t
knock out the compulsion; they knock out the compulsive. But that’s
something. Had they been given to the compulsive’s family as well,
you’d have had a pretty good working solution.

So we had the drugs and we were going to France. Or so we hoped;
this was a season of half-starts. My erratic behavior had been
forcing my family to cancel plans fairly consistently. Dinners out,
weekends away – we’d be ready to go and then something would
happen; I would step in something contaminated or touch something
unsafe and I’d lose it, sending everyone stomping back into the
house. We were only two weeks into summer and I’d already bailed on
Rotary Camp, three babysitting gigs, and a day trip to the state
fair. If the thought of kids and corn dogs sent me into rocking
catatonia, what would snails and topless beaches do?

Well, non-refundable tickets have a way of keeping you in line.
And while I seriously doubted I could handle it, I really wanted to
go. Then, two weeks before we were supposed to leave, something was
wrong.

What was wrong was that my abdomen had grown knives. An alien
trying to claw its way out of my liver, or perhaps a wrestling
match in my intestine – there was something inside me, and it was
armed. All the bad things I’d ever thought I deserved were
happening, right now, in my stomach. I couldn’t stand up. I
couldn’t keep anything down. I’d been transformed into a natural
wonder, a marvel, a spouting geyser of vomit and petulance.

Oh, something was wrong. It took about ten hours to convince
anyone of this fact. I was the girl who cried “Wolf!” or not
“Wolf!” but “Contamination!” and “Iniquity!” and “Disease!” Between
my scrupulosity and my hypochondria, my family had learned to
ignore my dire premonitions years earlier. Besides, some moaning
and vomit were all part of a normal day’s work. It would have taken
bleeding ears or perhaps stigmata to elicit more than a shrug.

“Go lie down,” my parents suggested. Ten hours later, when I
wasn’t feeling any better and my eyes had rolled all the way back
in their sockets, they thought it might be a good idea to get this
checked out. Yes, I thought, let’s get this checked out. Too
preoccupied by pain to subject my outfit to the usual inspection, I
quickly slipped into a T-shirt, a skirt that fell to my hipbones,
and a pair of plastic shoes, noting with some satisfaction that
they all matched. I gingerly picked my way toward the car, then
collapsed on the backseat and took up a moan that would not cease
for the entire forty-five seconds it took us to drive the block and
a half to the hospital.

When we got there we learned my father was the only surgeon on
call. The same stupid hospital policy that had prevented him from
giving me the cheekbone implants I’d wanted for my tenth birthday
prevented him from treating me now. I would get nothing for the
pain until they could locate a doctor I wasn’t related to. In the
meantime, perhaps I would enjoy reading this eight-year-old issue
of
Field & Stream
.

I moaned and rolled my head in response. I did not want sporting
magazines. I didn’t even want
People
. I just wanted the
meds. After spending two weeks insisting I go on drugs, now that I
really, really needed them, my father was denying me. I couldn’t
believe it. “I think this qualifies as ‘acting up!”’ I
shrieked.

“If I give you something now, the doctor won’t be able to
evaluate you properly, honey,” my father answered gently. “Believe
me, I would like nothing more than to take the edge off for you.
For all of us. In fact, I’m sure your mother is wishing we’d had a
little wine with dinner right about now. But we didn’t, and you
can’t, and you’re just going to have to take the pain.”

I nodded tearfully, sat up on the examination table, placed a
paper towel on my head, and prayed for the next two hours.

It was appendicitis. Of course it was appendicitis. I had it
coming. The day before, I’d committed so many sins I knew something
really bad was going to happen. There was going to be retribution,
and I was lucky it was appendicitis and not the brain tumor I
actually deserved.

I had spent the day with my best friend’s family. They’d invited
me sailing, and my parents had leapt at the chance to get me out of
the house for a day. “It’ll be great,” my mother promised. “The
fresh air will do you a world of good. Maybe you can start working
on a tan. I bet a little sunshine is all you need to get your
complexion back to a more normal tone. And if you get, you know,
contaminated, you can just dip your hands over the side of the
boat. Won’t that be fun?”

“I don’t think I can handle this,” I answered.

“Uh-huh. They’re picking you up at ten.”

And so we set off along the Delta, a body of water known for its
murky appearance and delicious seafood. As far as I was concerned,
we were stewing in a giant bowl of clam chowder. This was bad
enough, but trying to act normal for eight whole hours – eight
hours that included two meals – that was just impossible. What was
I going to eat? When was I supposed to pray? And the bugs – what
about all the bugs?

I was fine for five whole minutes. Then someone offered me a
soda. Oh, man, a soda. What was I supposed to do about this soda?
There was probably ham in the cooler. The ham molecules had
probably permeated the soda can somehow. There was no way this soda
was kosher. But if I declined the soda, I might offend my hosts,
and that would be a sin, too. Maybe the soda
was
kosher. Or
maybe it
wasn’t
a sin to decline beverages. Yes. No. Maybe.
Wait.
What does the Torah say about ham-tainted carbonated
beverages? What? What?

I interrupted this line of thought to answer, “None for me,
thanks,” and this was the worst sin of all, interrupting a
theological inquiry to talk, and I had to think about that for a
while, and then I got interrupted again, and so it went all day
until they dropped me off at my house, sunburned and sick with
myself for being such an awful, sinful person.

So appendicitis was a light sentence. It was almost a reward, it
was such a light sentence. For the next several months, I took
great satisfaction in picturing the organ, red and glistening and
angry, quivering and erect with toxins. I would imagine the
excision and the disposal, and then I would wonder where it went
and what it had taken with it. I was not sorry to have it gone.

Appendicitis wasn’t bad. And if it hadn’t been appendicitis it
would have been something else. I was a wreck. When my sister
called my friends to tell them where I was, the only surprise was
that I wasn’t on the psych ward. Of course I was in the hospital.
Where else would I be?

Rotary Camp, that’s where. And I was having much more fun in the
hospital. I had worn out my parents’ patience months earlier, but
now I had a whole new staff to fuss over me. I couldn’t wash as
much as I liked, having fainted during my one attempt to shower,
but I was sedated enough not to care. The food part was easy. All
my parents’ friends worked in the hospital. There was always
someone who had missed their last meal break and was happy to help
me get rid of my turkey and Jell-O salad. But they couldn’t have
the pudding; the pudding, I decided, was kosher. I had pudding and
a remote control and push-button morphine. Paris schmaris – I
wasn’t going anywhere.

My HMO felt otherwise, however, and soon I was home, with a head
full of ruminations and a week’s worth of compulsive rituals to
perform. Five days later I could walk a block, with help. Five days
after that I was at the airport, leaning on my suitcase for
support. We were going to France, we were going and we had the
drugs. Me and my family and this bottle of pills, we were
going.

The first pill was forced on me before we even lifted off.
Anyone could have seen this coming. I’d spent the previous three
months curled up under the coffee table crying uncontrollably. I
had an angry red scar on my belly and an anesthesia hangover and
I’d been ambulatory for less than a week. Oh, and I was crazy, and
Orthodox, and my parents had scheduled our transatlantic flight for
a Friday night.

I flipped out as soon as the preflight beverage service began.
There were beverages and snacks, and it was too much. I burst out
crying, knocking over my cup and sending my honey-roasted peanuts
flying, a shower of legume confetti all over seats 8A through D.
“Oh, yes, I think it’s time for one of these,” my father announced,
pulling the vial out of his pocket. I argued briefly, then gave up
and washed the tablet down with the remains of my diet 7-Up.

Half an hour later it kicked in, a dreamy half-buzz I would both
resist and crave. It did nothing for my impulses. It did, however,
distract me. It detached my head from my body, myself from my
surroundings. Now it was like I was watching a movie: Oh, these
beautiful people, they are so pretty, with this lovely twilight
filling the cabin, so lovely, really, look how pretty my sister is,
look. I watched it all unfold and it was lovely, my fellow
travelers all enjoying themselves, all of us having such a good
time. Look at the French couple slipping into the bathroom
together, oh, those French, what can you do. I waved at them
sleepily as they locked the door behind themselves, and the next
thing I knew it was morning and we were on the tarmac.

Because my father is allergic to cabs, he had worked out a way
to get from the airport to our accommodations using only public
transportation. This was a simple procedure that required no less
than two trains, a bus, and three different Metro lines, all easily
navigable with sixty pounds of luggage. Two and a half hours later
we staggered out into the Paris sunshine and began the ten-block
march to our quarters. All along the way beautiful young French
people enjoying
parfaits
and
coupes de glace
at
quaint outdoor cafes gaped at the ridiculous, rumpled American
family who appeared to be taking all their belongings for a walk.
This was not how I had pictured my arrival – I’d been hoping for a
litter, or at the very least a horse-drawn carriage, at the
very
least a
taxi
– but we were here.

We had rented an apartment in the Latin Quarter. It sounded so
bohemian, so chic. “This is so much better than staying in a
hotel,” we told ourselves. “We’ll get the real French experience.”
I suppose we did. The walls were paper-thin, and our fellow tenants
were crazy sex fiends. Below us was a middle-aged painter whose
sole hobbies were seducing shirtless ephebes thirty years his
junior and attempting to kill the neighbors’ cats. He was partial
to poison bombs that bothered the cats not at all but forced the
rest of us to evacuate with our throats closing and eyes swelling
shut. Next door we had a young lady who seemed perfectly nice until
the first night her boyfriend came over. Their gymnastics were
conducted at full volume right next to my head. After a few days of
this I was ready to dose the building’s water supply with
saltpeter. What was
with
these people?

It was an educational trip. Besides learning the French for
“Give it to me good, you smelly bastard,” I picked up quite a bit
about history and physiology. The rest of my family consists of two
medical professionals and a sadist, all of whom are fascinated by
the gallstones, flayed scalps, and pickled genitalia of history. My
idea of sightseeing is Benetton; theirs is seventeenth-century
tumors. Paris is a city that indulges a morbid fascination like no
other. There are museums of embryology, of torture implements, of
dentistry and surgical oddities. There are bones and bugs and
guillotines. My family was delighted. Each morning they would
announce our itinerary over coffee and croissants. “We thought we’d
start with the Catacombs, then check out the Colostomy Museum. If
we have time we’ll hit the Museum of Taxidermied Novelties in the
afternoon.” For a girl whose fear of contamination by death was
such that a dead spider in my sock drawer would prompt six showers,
minimum, this was quite a bit more than I could take.

My scrupulosity made even regular museums agony. I had decided
not to look at any paintings of people; they were graven images,
and if I was going to do that I might as well go ahead and build a
golden calf. Worse still were the religious paintings, idols all.
My parents had seen this coming and had warned me not to try
anything funny. “If we pay eight dollars to get you into a museum
you’re damn well going to look at everything they have there,” they
insisted. I placated them by pretending to look at the artwork; I
was actually just looking at the frames.

This was a great way to make a boring outing a lot less
interesting. The scrupulosity was only part of the reason I didn’t
want to be there. The main reason was that the museums were so
horribly dull. Despite my affectations, I have no interest in
actual culture. I would much rather shop. Even today, I avoid
museums at all costs and cringe when visitors insist on dragging me
to one. I recently had to inform one would-be museum-goer that
unless the museum was having a sale on Capri pants, he would be
going by himself.

But on this first trip to Paris there was no getting out of it.
And that was fine; I deserved boredom and misery, welcomed it like
an embrace. It was around this time that I started letting things
hit me. I wanted to hurt myself, not badly, but enough to cause
some discomfort. I was looking for something in the hair-shirt,
scourge-belt range. These are harder to find than one might think,
even in Paris, so I settled on more pedestrian weapons. I stood in
the path of heavy swinging doors, letting the door smack me
backward, savoring the weighty, satisfying thud. I dropped
suitcases on my feet, slammed windows on my fingers, snapped
branches back to hit me in the face.