OCD Love Story (6 page)

DR. PAT WAITS UNTIL THE
very end of our session to give me the pamphlets. She waits until I have discussed missing Kurt: It happens in waves, and there's nothing I can do about it, since I'm not allowed to contact him. I have about a dozen unsent e-mails in my drafts folder. Dr. Pat gives me a strong warning not to send them, and says she'll have to tell my parents about them. Legally speaking.

“What made you miss him this time?” she says. Dr. Pat likes to find reasons for everything. Motivators.

“I don't know. I guess I was thinking about him on my way home from Lisha's house last night. We watched this horrifying
SVU
episode, and . . . I don't know. It didn't make me think of Kurt or anything, it just upset me, and when I'm upset about one thing I'm sort of upset about everything, you know?”

She nods her head as I talk. “What was so upsetting about the episode?”

“The criminal—the rapist guy—he looked like a dad, you know? He looked like a golf-playing, tie-wearing dad.”

“Did he remind you of your dad?” she asks, totally missing the point.

“No, he didn't remind me of anyone. I just think we're all really capable of scary stuff, you know? I mean, even me. Who knows, right?”

“Well, no, not right. We know you aren't capable of anything truly terrible,” Dr. Pat says, but she's taking notes at breakneck pace.

“We don't know that. Read the paper, right? They're always surprised when a little kid or a nice old woman or a pretty girl does something awful. They always say they seemed
so nice
.”

I'm thinking about that kid Reggie again, the one we discussed in my current events class. I'm thinking about the way his eyelashes were long and that the picture in the paper had him wearing a blue button-down shirt, and that his chin had a little dimple on it. I open my mouth to recount the harrowing story of Reggie, but Dr. Pat's heard it before, and she interrupts since we're almost out of time.

“I want you to look these over,” she says. “I just want you to let me know if anything in there resonates. We can talk about it here, or in group if that's comfortable.”

“I won't want to talk about it in group,” I say. I smile with the words. Dr. Pat and I sometimes joke around, and I love when her smile reaches all the way to her eyes and for a moment I can pretend we are friends.

This time Dr. Pat doesn't smile. She cocks her head to the side and puts the pamphlets in my lap, since I haven't reached for them.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Managing Your Compulsions, Living Your Life.

I giggle.

It is the worst response. But then I can't stop giggling. It's not funny at all, but the laughs are coming from deep inside my stomach and I can't seem to control the waves. My eyes tear up, and I'm afraid I might do that thing where you laugh and cry at the same time, because strong emotions are all so close to each other that sometimes your body gets confused.

The other pamphlets are more of the same, and just when I think I've gotten the laughter under control, it bubbles up again. Sputters to the surface, so that even when I clamp my mouth shut against it, a little spit and giggle burst through my lips. Hot.

“I'm guessing you're uncomfortable,” Dr. Pat says when I have taken a few deep breaths successfully and the giggles have subsided into me just shaking my head and scrunching my nose.

“Um, I'm mostly confused. You think I have OCD? Like, the hand-washing disease? Have you seen my room? Or, like, my general hygiene? I don't even floss.” Today I am wearing secondhand huge bell-bottom jeans and a secondhand flannel shirt and (even though I know it is the big taboo) secondhand
shoes
: brown platform boots that are fit for someone else's feet. With every step I am more and more aware of the previous owner. These are not the actions of someone with OCD.

“OCD is really just a type of anxiety,” Dr. Pat says. She slides forward in her seat, the signal she uses week after week to alert me that it is time for me to hand over my mom's check. “And it shows up in lots of different ways. Some of the things your mother and I talked about, and some of the little behaviors I've noticed in you myself—”

“A
lot
of people get nervous driving,” I interrupt.

“I know it sounds really scary, but it could actually be great for us to put a name to some of your behaviors and fears, don't you think?”

“I don't—”

“I think you'll feel better after you read some of that information,” Dr. Pat goes on, speaking over my small-voiced reaction. “I know I'm throwing a lot at you, but I think it's best if you process this alone and then we chat in group about it, okay?” This must be some lesson she learned at therapist school, so I just nod and smile and grip the pamphlets with a violent force I always suspected I had.

On my way out the door I catch sight of Sylvia and Austin heading in. I usually only see them before my Wednesday session, but maybe they've added a second session this week too. Given the decibel at which they yell at each other in there, I wouldn't be surprised.

I grin at the sight of them. Just what I needed. My chest is tight from my session and the car ride ahead of me, but the
clack
of Austin's cowboy boots on the linoleum gives me a shot of relief. And I know I need more where that came from.

My car feels exceptionally small. I turn it on, knowing I'm not leaving the parking lot anytime soon. But I need the heat and the radio tuned to Oldies 103.3 and the saving grace that is “My Girl” playing at full volume.

I read through the pamphlets. But that is not why I wait in the car in the parking lot for an extra hour after my session. Here's what I learn in pamphlet number two,
Your Brain and Your OCD
: Apparently, obsession and anxiety go hand in hand. OCD has gotten a bad rap, but is totally workable. A person with OCD has to face anxiety head on. Compulsions are just a way of delaying the inevitable rush of feeling and fear.

These are the kinds of things people like Dr. Pat say to make you feel like OCD isn't a death sentence.

Austin and Sylvia don't hold hands on their way out of the building when their forty-five minutes are up. But their legs walk in time with each other, spider-long limbs striding across the pavement in record time. Sylvia drives and Austin sits in the passenger's seat, a fact that I sort of secretly love. I write it down in the pink notebook with the star on the cover. Scribble it out, because they zip away fast and I have to follow closely, without crossing the speed limit.

I have one of those innocuous cars that is just the right shade of dusty navy blue to blend in with the pavement or the sky or streets full of other similarly blue cars. There aren't scars of abuse on its surface but it's also never newly shiny and clean. It's like me: not all used up and dirty but not exactly beautiful either. Nice
enough
. Normal
enough
. Pretty
enough
.

But I love the thing anyway, and not just because it gets me around. I have Mardi Gras beads from a great New Year's Eve out in Boston with Lisha hanging from the rearview mirror. Gold and green, my favorite colors, clanging against each other as I drive. The rest of them are in Lisha's car, hanging from her mirror. We decided they're good luck, though so far nothing too exciting has happened in either of our cars. Besides, I think Lisha just being in my life is good luck. Really.

I keep a minilibrary of my favorite books in the backseat, just in case I'm caught without anything to do, or if Lisha's running late to meet me. There's a hardcover of poems by Mary Oliver, this poet who writes about nature. It was a gift. To be honest it's something Kurt owned and gave to me a few weeks before he dumped me. The spine is broken so it automatically opens up to his favorite poems. I try not to think too much about why they were his favorites. And more books too: old-school favorites like Judy Blume.
The Fountainhead
, which is my favorite book of all time. I can open any of them up to any page and get lost for twenty minutes or an hour, depending on what the situation requires. Add a couple of
blankets, and my car would be just as fantastic as my bedroom.

It's not a short drive to where they live. We make our way through crowded rush hour traffic from the suburbs into the city. I have to drive fast to keep up with their zippy VW, so my heart's pounding. I hate driving fast. I try to be a hawk, watching for pedestrians and oncoming traffic with the full knowledge that if I'm not careful, I could hurt someone. I find that if I blink my headlights in warning every so often I can deal with the windier roads, the merges, the heart-pounding intersections. So that's what I do, all the way from Lexington to a high-rise on the waterfront. We are somewhere between the old-school Italian charm of the North End and the tourist trap that is Faneuil Hall. I pull over across the street. Austin and Sylvia park somewhere around the block but quickly get back to the entrance of their urban palace. It is all windows, all silver and mirrored facades. It's not the kind of place where people actually live, not really, and maybe that's why they're so miserable that they have to go to therapy multiple times a week like me.

How could you live somewhere so icy cold and imposing, so clearly in conflict with the rest of the city, the rest of the human population, and stay in love? As far as I can tell, love takes place in townhouses and cozy cottages and cramped studio apartments and rundown guest houses. This place might as well be an office building or a spaceship.

Austin clasps the doorman's shoulder on his way in. Sylvia doesn't make eye contact and there's no hesitation when she enters. Nowhere else she wants to be but in her glass apartment high above anything resembling real, feeling, troubling, exhilarating
life
.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't get that.

Maybe I don't need to try on her skin to get how she feels after all.

I stay in my car. I don't drive away immediately because I don't want to see Austin and Sylvia's building vanishing in my rearview mirror. I stay because I'm holding out for the possibility that Austin has forgotten something important in his car and will run back out and I'll get a final glimpse of his string-bean body and the way his feet pound clownishly against the pavement.

I'm half right.

It is not Austin who appears a few minutes later back on the pavement, but Sylvia. She has changed her coat to something warm and full of down and has added a ridiculous Russian fur hat to her ensemble. It's cooled down, even inside the car. I've turned it off to distract from my strange waiting game and though the windows are zipped up tight there's no real fight against the last puffs of winter.

Sylvia leans against their building, and like some old-school movie star she has a cigarette case and a silver lighter and an air of certainty about her importance in the world.
She matters. Watching her is like watching a dancer, but it's not enough, the just-watching, and I get tired of the way her hand with the cigarette in it finds her mouth over and over and over without hitching on her jacket or stopping to consider lung cancer or even just missing its mark. She's a painting and a work of art and a person I wish I could be. But the calm I get from seeing her is short-lived. My mind keeps returning to those pamphlets from Dr. Pat that lie, partly crumpled, on the seat beside me.

Or maybe it's Austin who is the real pull.

He reminds me of someone else. Like another guy I used to like who had the same skinny unkempt-ness, the same ironic T-shirts. It makes my heart swing in my chest. He's not my usual type, I guess, but he does look like that guy Jeff. The first kiss one. The one I don't like to think about. Cooter's old best friend. I push the thought away. The memory of a first kiss sticks to your heart pretty ferociously; I think that's true for everyone, but especially me.

I make my heart stop swinging with a deep breath like Dr. Pat told me to do. I put a good strong wall up around that thought and decide not to go near it again.

Sylvia takes another drag on her cigarette and checks her watch. Doesn't look expectantly at the door to her building, so I don't think Austin's going to suddenly appear.

Then that's it, and as impulsively as I decided to follow them here, I decide to leave again. It's a long drive back when
you can't go much faster than thirty miles an hour, and I'm supposed to meet Lisha at our favorite diner for french fries and gossip. I will try not to tell her about my weird little drive to this mysterious couple's building, but Lisha has one of those really nice faces that makes you want to talk. And the girl always says the right thing, or knows when to say nothing at all. I'm an open book anyway, and Lisha is a voracious effing reader.

• • •

I go thirty-two miles an hour the whole way to the diner. I consider those extra two miles an hour a tiny victory. Even so, I'm about an hour late, so Lisha's already at the Pancake House when I get there, still in her tights and leotard, hair matted to her forehead and knotted into a high bun, prickly with bobby pins. She's set up with hot chocolate and half-eaten waffles and a plate of french fries drenched in mustard and tabasco sauce that she's been picking at, hopefully not for too long. Lisha's caught up in her love affair with Russian fiction, though, and she holds up a finger when I sit down, telling me she's got to finish the sentence or chapter but hopefully not the whole book before she can focus on me.

“You know you're the latest you've ever been, right? Do we need an intervention?” she says when she finally looks up at me and bookmarks
Crime and Punishment
. I've told her to give up and finally read
The Fountainhead
, but she's determined. About everything. Always has been.

The waiters know to bring me hot chocolate too, and a fork to help Lisha finish up her binge.