Chapter 114
“What is this?”
Paula doesn’t look away from the bathroom mirror. She is putting on mascara, which she hardly ever does anymore. Her former colleague, Stephanie, asked if they could get together for a drink. The last time they saw each other was at Stephanie’s parents’ funeral at St. David’s around this time last year. That devastating day when Paula feared she would burst into inappropriate sobs.
“Paula?”
This time the tone of Matt’s voice makes her look away from the mirror. He is holding a pile of loose paper, and she knows immediately what it is. She should have hidden it better. She’d just shoved each page in the bottom drawer of her desk, exhausted each night, glad it was done.
He brings it over to her and she sees her own handwriting, cramped but perfect, filling the paper.
Timmy will not drown.
Timmy will not drown.
Timmy will not drown.
Write it down a thousand times a day and he will not drown.
“It’s nothing,” she says. “It’s just, you know, something I do to calm myself down when I get too worked up about the prediction.”
“But it must have taken hours, Paula,” says Matt, leafing through the paper. “Hours and hours.”
“Daddy!” bellows Willow.
“You’d better go to her before she wakes up Timmy.” Paula applies lipstick. She looks at the dark shadows under her eyes. No concealer can fix that.
“But I’m just wondering,” says Matt, and he is being so careful, tiptoeing through marital landmines, “I’m just wondering if this could be a…” He clears his throat. “A compulsion.”
How does he even know that word? Has he been talking to her sister? Googling?
“Yeah, so I’m a bit OCD,” Matt had said to her, on one of their early dates, when she first visited his apartment and saw his pantry with the spice bottles all lined up precisely, like soldiers standing at attention, in alphabetical order.
People say that sort of thing all the time. Anyone who is meticulous, or extra clean, is “OCD.”
She told him soon after about her diagnosis. She wasn’t on medication anymore, she explained, but she did have to keep an eye on it. Matt had assumed it was handwashing, but she explained that her compulsions varied. He was respectful, asked questions, and she never heard him say “I’m a bit OCD” again. But they haven’t talked about it in years. Sometimes she has wondered if Matt has forgotten about her diagnosis or if he thinks she exaggerated it.
“It’s under control,” she says.
“But do you feel like you have to do it? Or Timmy will drown? And it seems like you do it every day?”
Of course she dates each page. She’s a lawyer. She has been doing it every day since the flight in April. It’s November now. There are a lot of pages.
“Can we talk about this when I get home?” asks Paula. “I’m running late.”
“Sure,” says Matt. “But I think we really should talk about it.”
“I just said we would!” she snaps.
He holds up his hands in surrender. As he leaves the room he is straightening the sheets of paper into a neat pile, as if it’s important documentation for a future meeting.
“How are you?” asks Paula distractedly, when she sits down at the table across from Stephanie, and as soon as she says it, she realizes her tone is wrong.
She has become so self-absorbed that for a moment she literally forgot about this woman’s terrible loss. She should be reaching across the table for her hand and saying, “How are you?”
But Stephanie doesn’t seem to notice Paula’s tone is too casual.
“I’m doing okay,” she says. Her voice wobbles and then rights itself. “Taking it day by day. Some days are better than others. Recently I’ve been making an effort to be more…social.”
Paula should have called her. A kinder person would have called to check in, even if they were just work colleagues. At least sent a text.
“I should have called,” she says.
“No! You’re busy with your kids. Tell me about you.”
Paula finds herself telling her everything, perhaps in an attempt to justify why she has been distracted. Stephanie is a good listener.
Her phone beeps. It’s Eve.
“Read the message!” says Stephanie. “This is all so fascinating.” She turns around in her chair to get the attention of a waiter on the other side of the room. “Let’s order more drinks.”
Paula reads the message out loud. “Her name is Cherry Lockwood. She used to be an actuary—”
Stephanie’s head snaps back around to face her. “I know Cherry Lockwood.”
“You know her?”
“She and her husband were best friends with my parents.”
