Addition (17 page)

‘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 and 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.’

Almost before Gemma finishes, Daria’s hand is up again. She waves her flowing white top. ‘I use the fabric of my sleeve to open doors. I can also turn on taps using my elbow.

‘Again, thank you Gemma and Daria, for those helpful tips. I know a good one: everyone could try wearing a tight rubber band around their wrist. Each time you think an obsessive thought, give your rubber band a flick. Negative reinforcement.’

Daria screws up her face at Gemma. ‘I can flush a toilet using my foot.’ Even Francine stares.

‘It’s not so hard,’ Daria says. ‘I’ve been practising.’

By the time I get home I’m exhausted. Seamus makes me spaghetti with too much chilli and tells me how wonderful I am, how brave. I manage to eat 30 strands. After dinner, we make love and like most things the more we practise the better we become. My body feels like a vessel in his hands and by itself my skin responds. When he suckles my nipples my breasts grow fuller and heavier with a sweet ache that makes me gasp. When we make love my uterus moves lower, suddenly and irrevocably aware of its hollowness.

Afterwards his head nestles in the concave part of my shoulder, a space made just for this.

‘Tell me a story,’ I say.

‘About what?’

‘Did you always want to work in a cinema?’

He laughs. ‘It wasn’t my childhood dream. But when I was a teenager I was always more interested in footy and surfing and hanging around with my mates. Still am. I love movies. The job is okay. The people I work with are great. Then I go home.’

‘Growing up with a sister and three brothers. What was it like?’

‘Noisy. Crazy. Four wild boys and a sick little girl, two impossibly busy parents.’

‘Sounds like fun.’

‘It was out of control. I’ll give you an example: we used to play a game called snap for slaps. It was the same as the regular card game but the winner was entitled to slap his loser brother as hard as he could.’

‘Wow. Mob rule.’

‘Absolutely. The number one law in the household was to never leave your plate unattended. If your brother ate your dinner you’d be hungry until morning.’

‘So did you suffer many slaps and hungry nights?’

He laughs again and I can feel it inside the cavity of my chest. ‘Until a stroke of good luck. My greatest love as a kid was Superman comics. One day I jumped from the shed roof with a bed sheet as a cape.’

My fingers tighten in his hair. ‘Were you hurt?’

‘Mild concussion, broken arm. But it was a life-changing event. The cast was like armour. Suddenly I was king of the street. Some of the kids used to pick on Kyles. Not after I broke my arm they didn’t.’