LoveLines

by S. Walden

“You said I was miserable, but I wasn’t. I was worried. I spent most of my life worried because I didn’t want you to suffer the way your dad did. I was happy for the therapy and all those new discoveries about how to manage OCD because I believed they would be able to free you in ways your father never got the chance to experience. I mean, think about it: he only started really getting better when he was much older. He never had therapy as a child. He was trapped in his urges for a good portion of his life.”

  “So I mistook worry for anger?”

  “Sometimes,” Mom replied. “I still got angry because, again, I felt powerless. Look at my behavior when your boyfriend came over.”

  “He was meeting you for the first time, Mom.”

  Mom shook her head. “God, I’m still embarrassed about that. But, I didn’t lie. I told the truth about all the times I wanted to leave your father.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  “Because he needed me,” she replied. “And I needed him. As weird as this sounds, his OCD bound us for life. There was no getting away from each other. He had become my reality. I think I would have been miserable had I left him and married someone without the condition. I think I just wouldn’t have known how to function with a person who didn’t suffer from it.”

  “Hmm,” I said. “That’s interesting.”

  “I guess. And weird. But then love has a way of helping you cope and manage and forgive.”

  “What about Nicki?” I asked suddenly. “I thought you had Nicki because I was your mess-up.”

  Mom froze, the coffee mug pressed to her lips. And then she set it gently on the table.

  “You were never a mess-up, Bailey,” she said. “I had Nicki because I thought she could help you. She wasn’t for me. She was for you.”

  Another shocking revelation. Why was I just now hearing all of this?

  “Really?” I breathed.

  “Yes, really. I thought if you had a sister to take care of, it might help you take the focus off yourself.” She passed a hand over her mouth, trying to hide the grin. “I didn’t know it wouldn’t work out as planned.”

  I burst out laughing.

  “I love that child, but God knows . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “But you two are thick as thieves,” I pointed out.

  “And why do you think that’s the case, Bailey?”

  I shrugged.

  “It’s because I thought you didn’t like me. You were your father’s child from the start. You spent all your time with him. I begged you to bake Christmas cookies with me. You wanted to go help him cut down a tree instead.”

  “I did?”

  Mom nodded. “I’m not proud of it, but somewhere along the way, I gave up. And I gave you solely to him. And embraced your sister.”

  The tears slid down her cheeks, mirroring my own. We sat silent for a time, sipping our coffee, absorbing each other’s words. It’s as though we were discovering each other for the first time—two people who shared a life together for eighteen years and knew nothing about the other. Wasted time. Time that we could never get back. Our only option was to move forward, and Mom voiced the question.

  “So where do we go from here?” she asked.

  I rubbed my cheek. It no longer stung, but it ached.

  “I shouldn’t have hit you,” she observed.

  “Yes, you should have,” I replied.

  She gathered our mugs and walked to the kitchen sink. I followed.

  “I don’t know where we go from here,” I admitted.

  “Do you think we can go somewhere?” she asked.

  I thought about that. I thought about how interesting it’d be to finally have a close relationship with my mother. It was a possibility, but I knew it’d take a lot of hard work. I couldn’t put that work in at the moment because I was grieving for my father.

  “Yes,” I said finally. “I think so, Mom.”

  She was grieving, too. Now I knew. So it wouldn’t be automatic. And it wouldn’t be tomorrow or even a month from now. But sometime in the future, we would find ourselves in a different, better place. It was my only hope, but it buried itself under my pain for the next several months. I was oblivious, standing beside her at the kitchen sink, drying the freshly washed mugs. I’d no idea just how dark the future would get before Mom and I found each other again.

  “Come on, sweets,” Reece said gently, opening his door.

  I sat in the passenger seat staring at our office building, and then I checked my phone: 7:53 A.M. I shook my head.

  “Not yet,” I replied.

  “I’ll go in with you. Together,” he urged.

  “No. Just go. I wanna wait,” I said.

  “Why, Bailey?” he whispered.

  I shifted irritably in my seat. “Because it would make me feel better to wait. Okay?”

  I knew he wanted to press me, but he didn’t. It had been two weeks since my father died, and I was just now returning to work. Before that I stayed home, putting myself back on a much-needed schedule of waking up at the same time every morning, counting my steps, arranging the shirts in our closet and remotes on our coffee table. Arranging all of the things in our house “just so.” I worked for two weeks to get my life back in order. I walked Poppy at the same time every day. I avoided cracks in the sidewalk. Turned knobs. Walked to the beat of the ticking clock in my living room.

  All the things I witnessed my father do when I was little.

  “I’ll wait with you,” Reece said.

  “No!”

  He shrank back in his seat a fraction, and I apologized immediately.

  “You can stay. Or don’t stay. Either way is fine. I know you have stuff you need to start on,” I said. It was my lame, indirect way of asking for time alone.

  “All right,” Reece replied. He was frustrated. I could hear it in his tone. He was frustrated with my schedule—cleaning the kitchen before he even had breakfast.

  “You didn’t get up!” I screamed that awful morning last week.

  “Bailey, it’s fucking seven o’clock on a Saturday morning! Why do I have to get up to eat breakfast at seven in the fucking morning?!”

  “Because that’s when I make it! That’s when I make it!” I screeched.

  “Fine! I’ll make my own goddamn breakfast!”

  “Kitchen’s closed!” I roared.

  I couldn’t handle the mess. I couldn’t handle Reece cracking eggs on my counter and leaving behind strings of goo. I couldn’t handle him frying bacon and popping grease everywhere. I couldn’t handle him squeezing oranges for fear I’d find tiny crusted pulp pieces on the counter days later. I couldn’t handle anything.

  “Kitchen’s closed,” I repeated. “Kitchen’s closed, kitchen’s closed, kitchen’s closed—”

  “You’re going to see Dr. Gordon,” Reece ordered. “I know you haven’t been going. You haven’t gone in months. And you need to. More than anything, you need to go back to therapy. This bullshit stops now.”

  “Don’t you dare threaten me,” I warned.

  “I’m not threatening you. I’m telling you that I can’t live like this. You are consumed with you. You you you. It’s like I don’t even exist in this house.”

  “My father died!” I screamed.

  “I know that! I know that, Bailey! And it’s terrible and sad and lonely. And I wanna be there for you. I wanna help you. But all you wanna do is retreat!”

  I wiped the tears from my cheeks.

  “What do you think all this will accomplish? Huh? You go back to the way you used to act. You give into your compulsions. You live a life trapped in your urges. What? Are you doing it for your father? You think living this way will honor his memory? Bring him back?”

  I charged at him before thinking. I beat his chest then slapped his face over and over.

  “Don’t you ever say those things about my dad!” I cried.

  He grabbed my wrists and held me still, his face inches from mine.

  “I’ve given you two weeks,” he said e
venly. “Now, I’m sorry if you didn’t like what I said. But you’re not gonna hit me for trying to help you.”

  I yanked my arms hard, trying to break free from his grasp.

  “I’m sick to death of the way we’re living, and it stops now. You’re going to therapy. You’re working this out. And I’m gonna be here for you every step of the way, whether you fucking like it or not.”

  He dropped my wrists, and I stood seething, panting with fury, balling my hands into tight fists on instinct. He noticed and leaned forward.

  “Don’t you even think about it,” he said slowly.

  “Get out of my kitchen,” I spat.

  He stood up and took hold of my shoulders, moving me aside. He opened the cupboard and grabbed a cereal bowl. I watched him move to the pantry next and take out a box of Rice Chex. He poured the cereal, then the milk came afterwards. All of it deliberate. All of it infuriating.

  Absolute anger. That was what I felt. Absolute anger at his defiance. Or maybe it wasn’t defiance. Maybe he was trying to show me that he was an equal partner in this house—that he had equal rights to the things in it. But I wasn’t interested in being equal today. I was interested in him getting the fuck out of my kitchen, so I snatched the bowl and hurled it across the room, Chex and milk flying and crash-splashing against the opposite wall. The bowl cracked in two—my broken heart—and I realized I’d made a mess. I did the one thing to my kitchen that I was trying to keep Reece from doing.

  “Feel better?” Reece asked. It wasn’t snarky. He sounded hopeful.

  I shook my head. “I have to clean it up.” And then I burst into tears, sinking to the floor in my despair. Poppy trotted over and licked my face, then lay down beside me as I poured out my grief on the checkered wood. Reece followed after, and we all three lay huddled in a mass of tears, muscles, and fur. My family. My family.

  I checked the time: 7:57 A.M. Reece never left the car, but I hadn’t noticed, consumed in my thoughts, consumed with myself.

  “So what do you think?” Reece asked.

  I sighed. “I guess it’s time to go in.”

  ***

  “How was your first day back?” Dr. Gordon asked. He leaned against his leather club chair, every now and then stroking his white beard. It was stained around his mouth. He smoked a pipe sometimes during our sessions after I told him I loved the smell and wouldn’t mind the second-hand smoke.

  “Terrible.”

  “Why?”

  I slipped off my ballet flats and pulled my legs up on the couch.

  “Because everyone was acting too hard. It would have been better had they just left me alone,” I said.

  “But isn’t it right that your friends are concerned for you? They care about you, and they want to express that.”

  “They’re not my friends,” I mumbled.

  “Christopher is,” Dr. Gordon pointed out.

  I shrugged.

  “Bailey, perhaps you’re angry because you feel like these people don’t really understand what you’re going through?”

  “They don’t.”

  “You told me Christopher lost his dad several years ago.”

  “That was different. He wasn’t close to his father,” I said.

  “Does that mean he can’t understand the grief of losing someone?”

  I shrugged again.

  “And what about your fiancé, who’s never had a real family of his own? Not until you came along, anyway. Can he not understand on some level the pain you’re experiencing? Can he not be allowed to grieve with you? To help you work through all this?”

  Squeeze on the heart. I was a terrible person. I knew it all along. I knew it at six years old when I was told I’d have to go to therapy to “fix my issue.” I was terrible for not wanting to go. I was terrible for having OCD in the first place. I was terrible for driving men away because my OCD was more important than they were.

  Just. Plain. Terrible.

  “Bailey?”

  “Reece said I’m falling back into my old urges because I’m trying to honor my father’s memory,” I said suddenly.

  “Well, let’s talk about that,” Dr. Gordon replied.

  “I don’t think I’m trying to honor him that way,” I said.

  “Then what is it you think you’re doing?”

  I thought for a moment, staring at the bookshelf running the length of the wall from floor to ceiling.

  “Dr. Gordon, you’re so cliché,” I observed, giggling. “That bookshelf. Your chair . . .”

  “I know. It’s a game I play with my patients to see if they’ll take me seriously,” he replied.

  I laughed—a strange sound I’d not made in weeks. Not since I sat at my mother’s kitchen table, drinking coffee and clearing the air.

  “But back to your old habits,” Dr. Gordon said. He paused and waited.

  “I think they’re safe. I think that’s why I went back to them,” I said.

  “And Reece isn’t safe?”

  I crinkled my brow.

  “I see two options here, Bailey. I see the false safety in your rituals and the real safety in the man you love. You have a choice to make because I’m quite certain that you can’t have both. You see, you’re leaning toward the ‘safety’ of your rituals because they’ve been a part of your life since you were six. You know them very well, and they reflect your father, too. Reece, on the other hand, is still rather new. So while he’s the real, true safety you seek, you’re mistrusting because you don’t know him like you do your compulsions.”

  “So what the hell am I supposed to do?” I asked.

  “You tell me.”

  “You’re the expert over here,” I griped.

  “Bailey, tell me what you know in your heart you should do,” Dr. Gordon said gently.

  “My heart? My heart is telling me I need more time to grieve. My heart is telling me that no one understands what I’m dealing with. My heart tells me to push people away!”

  Dr. Gordon took a deep breath. “All right then. Tell me what you know in your head you oughta do.”

  “Trust Reece and not my urges,” I said quietly.

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  “It makes me angry.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have been trusting him!” I cried. “And I have been letting go of my urges and living a better life! And then my dad died, and it’s my fault!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I stopped my rituals! I killed my dad because I stopped my rituals!” I burst into tears.

  “Bailey, we’ve talked about this,” Dr. Gordon said above the noise of my wailing. “You did not invite disaster into your life because you started managing your condition.”

  I nodded, unconvinced.

  “Remember the day you finally discovered how illogical it was to connect bad events to the management of your OCD?”

  I nodded again.

  “You know you didn’t kill your father,” Dr. Gordon said. “I want you to tell me that.”

  I breathed deeply.

  “Go on,” Dr. Gordon gently urged.

  “I didn’t kill my father,” I whispered.

  “Believe it.”

  “I didn’t kill my father,” I repeated.

  “Tell me how you know that.”

  “I didn’t kill my father because managing my OCD had nothing to do with his heart attack,” I said. I wanted to believe it.

  Dr. Gordon waited.

  “So I didn’t kill my dad,” I said, defeated. “Still, everything’s changed. All the goodness that was my life is gone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that it stopped working,” I whispered.

  “What stopped working?”

  “Whatever magic Reece was using to make me feel for the first time in my life that I didn’t have to be controlled by my illness . . . it just stopped working.”

  Dr. Gordon whipped out his pipe. “You mind?”

  I shook my head.

>   I watched him open a small case that sat on the table beside his chair and sprinkle fragrant tobacco in the pipe. He lit it, sucking long and deep until the leaves smoldered. He leaned back, satisfied.

  “Reece isn’t a magician, Bailey,” he said finally.

  “I know that,” I snapped. And then I apologized.

  “No apologies here. You’re free to say what you want and how you want,” Dr. Gordon replied.

  “I know he isn’t a magician, but he felt like that. I was in a dream world. Or magic world. Some kind of other world where things were right and effortless. I forgot I even had OCD!”

  “So he was a magic man,” Dr. Gordon observed.

  “You gonna sing it for me?” I joked.

  “Eh, not one of my favorites,” Dr. Gordon replied. “Now, ‘These Dreams’ is something else entirely.”

  I chuckled. “And yes, it did seem like that—that he was a magic man. Too good to be true, really,” I grumbled.

  “Quite the pressure you’re putting on that young man,” Dr. Gordon said.

  I thought about that.

  “He’s just a man, Bailey,” Dr. Gordon said. “He’s not your savior from all your problems. He didn’t cast a spell or come into your life and blight out all the bad with some magic sword. I can see why you think that. Especially since things got so much better for you when he showed up.”

  I nodded.

  “Perhaps you need to take responsibility,” Dr. Gordon said. It was barely above a whisper, but I heard. And I knew what he was getting at. “Perhaps instead of thinking he can fix your hurt, you should focus on trusting him to help you mend it.”

  Good point.

  “Your father’s death should not undo all of your progress, Bailey. It’s right to grieve. That’s the right, natural thing to do. There’d be something very wrong with you if you didn’t immerse yourself in that pain. But you shouldn’t grieve the way you are. You’re pushing away the people who love you. You’re running.”

  “I know.” And that was the most shameful part about it.

  “So I tell you all of this, and what will you do with it?” he asked.

  He stood up and walked to his stereo. He pressed PLAY and turned up the volume. I listened to Ann Wilson’s voice float out of the speakers, communicating the message my doctor intended. It wasn’t the song I thought he’d play. It was “Never,” and Ann was telling me I was strong enough to be realistic—to stop aching for a dream world that didn’t exist, but rather, take control of my actual life. To grieve properly without coming completely undone.