Read Devil in the Details Online

Authors: Jennifer Traig

Devil in the Details (28 page)

BOOK: Devil in the Details
9.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

This, too, had been my therapist’s idea. It wasn’t quite the
social event of the season. The guests included the drum major, an
Amway representative, and the only girl at school who was in my
height percentile, just out of a wheelchair after the procedure
that would make her several inches taller. They were my friends and
I certainly liked them, but there was little chance any of us was
going to be crowned prom queen.

Because I’d learned nothing at all from the apocalyptically
fibrous Shabbat dinner I’d made my family several months earlier, I
served the exact same thing with exponentially worse results. I
don’t know if it was the underdone quiche or the haphazardly
prepared gazpacho, but something made me and several unlucky guests
catastrophically sick. We hadn’t even gotten to our dried fruit
before they began folding over in their seats. “Cramps,” they
exhaled painfully, before leaping over one another to get to the
bathroom.

This was not what I’d planned for the entertainment portion of
the evening. I’d optimistically rented
Girls Just Wanna Have
Fun
, the feel-good romp in which Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen
Hunt triumph over disapproval and
dance
, but there was no
point in watching it now. We’d just have to keep pausing it while
guests scurried off to answer the colonic demands of the offending
microbe. And thus we got to spend our prom night like the rest of
our classmates, bent over a toilet.

So in my own strange way I was fitting in. And while I was
treated to many reruns of the meal, as it came up and out again and
again, it was not, otherwise, a repeat of that first Shabbat dinner
I’d served months before. Things had changed. Here one of my worst
obsessive fears had come true: I had served my friends contaminated
food. The world didn’t end, and afterward, I didn’t feel compelled
to pull out my hair and then burn it as a restitution offering. I
actually felt pretty good. Oh, sure, I was nauseous and crampy, but
as we sat there together clutching our abdomens, I felt, for the
first time in a long while, as if I was part of something.

Judaism is always calling for the separation of kinds: meat from
milk, male from female, linen from wool, this seed from that, and
this may have been a lesson I learned too well. I could dissect and
detach anything. It was the blending that I had trouble with. It
was the integration I couldn’t do. When I found myself in big
Jewish communities, at Brandeis or in Israel, I became less
religious, stopped going to shul, spent Saturdays by myself in bed,
reading tabloids and eating Danish. I was so used to practicing by
myself that it would take me a long time to learn to practice in a
community.

Shalom
can mean goodbye, but it can also mean hello;
bayit
can also mean community. That’s what I’d been
struggling to get. That’s what this year had been, really, a
process of learning to integrate, to come into line with normal
Jewish practice, so I could pass for normal, stay in school, rejoin
society at large. By June, I wasn’t completely socially normal, but
I was getting close. I could attend my graduation. Afterward, my
parents had a party, and I could eat the food even though it was in
communal dishes. I could shake the guests’ hands without a napkin
in my palm.

I was, in fact, getting downright grabby. As I neared sanity my
family was horrified to discover that the by-product of my
rehabilitation was the open expression of affection and sincerity.
I’d always had a smart mouth, but now, suddenly, I was given to
saying things like, “You know, Vicky, it’s okay
to feel
.”
We’d be in the middle of dinner and out of nowhere I’d announce, “I
can hear my heart beating. Isn’t that an amazing thing? All on its
own, it’s just beating, keeping me alive. The human body is truly a
wondrous thing. I just wanted to share that thought with you.” At
the mall, I’d accost my sister over the sale rack with a mock pouty
face, demanding a hug. “I don’t mind if you want to wash my
sneakers or sanitize my purse,” she hissed, “but there’s no way in
hell I’m letting you
snuggle
.”

So this is what a year of therapy had bought us. I was
functional but incredibly annoying. Well, at least the timing was
good. In three months I would leave for nearby UC Berkeley, and my
family couldn’t wait.

Personally I was a little nervous about it. I spent all summer
preparing myself, agonizing over which habits I could take with me
and which ones would have to stay home. I would have two roommates,
who, I imagined, would be put off by someone who spent three hours
a day rocking on a chair in the center of the room, whispering
prayers. While they might not mind if I sanitized my room keys,
they probably wouldn’t like it if I did the same to theirs. They
wouldn’t know what to make of my unusual headwear, my cleaning
products, my need to keep things off the floor.

Well, then, I’d just have to act normal.

By August I was pretty sure I could. The morning I was to leave,
I perched on my torturously uncomfortable prayer chair and said my
devotions for what I knew would be the last time. I prayed for a
good year, nice roommates, decent grades, and frizz control. Then I
finished packing up my things, taking two prayer books but not my
makeshift yarmulke, my shampoo but not my anti-bacterial bleach
spray, my calculus notes but not my collection of lists. I was
ready. We loaded up the car and we were on our way, and I only made
us turn back once to check the outlets. Alone in the house, I said
goodbye to the walls and floors, my hiding spots and sanctuaries.
Goodbye, goodbye.
Shalom, bayit
.

Three hours later I was all moved in to my new room. I would
have to share the phone and the closet, but the southwest corner
was all my own. I could set it up any way I wanted. If I wanted to
spread a tarp over my bunk, well, that was my decision. If I needed
to align my books by height, I was free to do so. Mostly, however,
I just worried about aesthetics. Did the Klimt look better over the
bed or over the desk? What did the Monet print say about me? Did it
convey my sophistication and sensitivity? Or would I be better off
with the Matisse?

After several hours of ordering my father around, not there but
there
, things were just the way I wanted them. My parents
left, and it was perfect. There had been some discussion of trying
to find a new counselor at school, to ease the transition and
prevent a relapse, but as soon as my parents said goodbye I
realized I wouldn’t need one. I’d expected to feel scared, or at
least wistful. Instead I felt fantastic, so good I wanted to jump
on the bed, so good I didn’t care if my shoes rendered the
bedspread unclean. I could wash it a hundred times if I wanted to,
or throw it away, or not worry about it at all.

I wasn’t worried. I could make any decision I wanted now. I
would make some bad ones – it’s a fact that I ate Raisin Bran for
every meal that first year – but on the whole I did pretty well. I
passed all my classes, made friends, fit in. Nobody at college knew
how crazy I’d been, and they treated me as if I was perfectly
normal. Maybe I was. I kept waiting for the scrupulous impulses to
come back, but they didn’t. I did just fine.

Now my parents were in the parking lot. I waved goodbye out the
window, shalom, shalom. This was great. I could do
anything
.
I could join a cult. I could follow the Dead. I could grow out my
bangs. I could take up drumming. I could learn Chinese. I could
become an anarchist or a vegan. I could stop wearing socks. I could
run down the hallway and touch every doorknob. I could stay out,
sleep late, run away, run back. I could do anything. Shalom.

EOF

BOOK: Devil in the Details
9.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Dragon Griaule by Lucius Shepard
Swimming Lessons by Athena Chills
Arena by Holly Jennings
Learning the Hard Way by Bridget Midway
Tin God by Stacy Green