Page 71 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
22
FRESHMAN YEAR
IN AN ATTEMPT TO ENSUREI remain as faithful to Leo and guilt free as possible, I start tracking spit droplets. Not just spit that flies from the mouths of attractive young men—spit from anyone. Because I might be a lesbian, right? And I might be attracted to my family members, right? And if either of those are true—which Dr.Droopy says is impossible, but of course my brain doesn’t listen—then it isn’t just non–family member boys who pose a risk. It’s anyone.
I didn’t realize how prolific human saliva was until I started to track it. Every time someone speaks, there’s a chance a fleck of spit might fly from their mouth and land on some part of my body—hands, arms, legs, whatever. Sometimes, I don’t even see it happen; I just feel a sprinkle on my skin. Those moments are the worst, because I can’t be sure whether the droplet is real or a figment of my imagination.
Each time I see—or feel—someone else’s fluid make contact with my body, I enter into an internal debate: to wash or not to wash. I always end up saying yes. I make up an excuse to run to the bathroom or the kitchen sink, scrub my hands and any other body part the spit might have touched—an elbow, the edge of my collarbone. Then I blot my skin dry and return to the conversation, refreshed.
The list of people I can’t be around grows longer and longer. I start avoiding family gatherings. Impossible, really, when you’re the youngest of such a large group. But I do the best I can.
I feel droplets everywhere, all the time. Even when no one is talking.
What happens is this: I feel a wetness, a chill. Like a single raindrop. Laser-pointer tight, focused on one area of my body. It’s phantom saliva, I think, but what if it isn’t? What if it’s spit from the mouth of Manuel or my mildly attractive female history teacher, and that spit lands on the back of my hand, and I don’t wipe it off, and later, when I’m eating lunch, that spit goes from my hand to my sandwich to my mouth? What then?
“It’s not cheating for someone else’s spit to land on your body,” says Manuel for the fortieth time that week. He’s the only person I’ve told about this Worry besides Dr.Droopy. We’re sitting at our usual lunch table, just us two in the back corner.
“I know,” I say, sitting on my hands to keep them safe.
“It’s just your OCD,” he adds, also for the fortieth time. “It’s trying to trick you into thinking you’re a bad person again.”
Poor Manny. I’m ten years old again, confessing to Speedy every bad thing I’ve ever done. Only this time, my best friend is the stand-in for my father. I feel awful. I don’t know why I keep going to him when the Worries get bad. I don’t want to burden him. But he always claims that it’s no burden at all, that he loves being here for me. He even did a bunch of research onRelationship OCD—which is what Dr.Droopy says this is—and often uses what he learned to help calm me down.
Still, I can’t help but worry that he’s lying. That Iama burden. That my stress is bringing him down, too.
It’s exhausting. I wash my hands every chance I get. I have to. If I don’t, there might be residue leftover from someone else’s body that might then touch my mouth or—worse—myvagina. I shudderat the thought. I wash even more. I wash so often that the skin of my wrists cracks open and bleeds.
—
KARMA WAS RIGHT: DAD DOESgive me the Talk eventually. He tells all of us, individually, once he deems us mature enough.
His Talk isn’t about how babies are made; it’s about his life as a drug addict. That’s how it goes, right? Sex and drugs. Drugs and sex. One always follows the other. All of life’s Harsh Truths! Let’s have ’em!
I already know many of the details, obviously, but I pretend not to. It’s his story; he should be the one to tell it.
At the beginning of his marriage to Mom, it was easy for Speedy to hide his addiction. They settled in Chicago, which is a full 298 miles from the connections he’d accumulated over the course of his life in St. Louis. He began a new life there—a clean life, with a clean house and a clean wife and two clean children. In Chicago, he didn’t use. He didn’t even want to use. In fact, if he’d never returned to St. Louis, Mom might never have discovered his secret. The problem might have resolved itself.
But he did return. Because guess what? Speedy had two other kids. Two sons, both of whom still lived with his ex-wife in St. Louis. And even if he was terrified to leave his clean house and his clean wife and his clean babies, he was more terrified not to leave. He knew how precious those years were. He couldn’t miss them. Every month, twice a month, he returned to his old home, a city that housed his friends and connections and phantoms and opportunities. Every month. Over and over. And every time he drove south on I-55, he told himself he was just going for the boys. This time, he’d stay clean. This time, after spending the day at the park or the hockey rink, he’d drop the boys back off at his ex-wife’s home in Lafayette Square and drive straight to his hotel room.
And every time after dropping them off, night closed in,bringing with it bottomless craving and a room empty of every person who could make it go away. He didn’t drive straight to his hotel. First, he made a stop.
He never came home sober.
“Your mother saved me,” he tells me. “Without her, I would be dead.”
When Mom found out about what he was doing every time he went to St. Louis, she didn’t yell. Didn’t even raise her voice. She just looked at him and said, “Clean yourself up or I’m taking them. Both of them.”
So he did. Just like that. No counseling, no rehab, nothing. Just Dad and his will to live.
Getting clean isn’t a question of doing, Dad says; it’s a question ofnotdoing. Of not going back. Of not getting high again. Of not calling the wrong people. During the day, he distracted himself however he could. He asked Mom to hide his wallet and car keys. Once, he even tied his wrists together to keep himself from picking up the phone.
Nights were worse than days. Much worse. At night there was nothing to distract him, nothing but the fleshy darkness of the backs of his eyelids. He stared into that darkness with gritted teeth, projecting onto it the image of his two babies and a wife who would leave him. He sweat his addiction out into the Egyptian cotton of their bed. In the morning, he says, his body’s imprint looked like a shallow river.
—
“NOT YET,” I SAY EVERYtime Leo asks if I’m ready.
“Why not? Don’t you love me?”
