She is one of David’s so-called Couches, a twenty-four-year-old “obsessive-compulsive,” or “obsessional neurotic” — you pays your money and you takes your choice unless you happen to suffer from a disorder where choice seems obstinately denied.
Susan M has been suffering from her disorder for the past three years now. Her disorder was what forced her to drop out of college. Her disorder is what brings her here twice a week, to discuss over and over again the ritual that keeps at bay her personal hounds of hell.
What Susan M does, compulsively, is lay out in advance the clothing she will be wearing for the next two weeks. Every flat surface in her apartment — tables, chairs, countertops, floors — is covered with the neatly folded garments she will wear on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and so on, this week and next week, each careful little stack labeled with a note naming the day and date. Two weeks ago today, Susan M knew what she would be wearing to this ten o’clock session on Wednesday morning, the nineteenth day of July. She knows, too, what she will be wearing on Wednesday of next week. She has told David she will be wearing the blue shirtdress with a red leather belt and red French-heeled shoes. Her bra and panties will be white. That is the uniform of the day for the twenty-sixth of July, a day before David’s forty-sixth birthday.
Susan M doesn’t know this. She knows scarcely anything about David, except that he listens patiently behind her while she details her lists, frequently planning her wardrobe aloud, well in advance of actually laying it out in her apartment. Counting the hours she spends talking it over with David — “I don’t really need blue underwear with the blue dress, do I? I mean, it’s still summertime” — she will often have her wardrobe planned three weeks in advance of when she actually will be wearing it.
“You lay out your clothes, don’t you? Everybody I know decides in advance what he or she is going to wear to work tomorrow, or to school tomorrow, or to a party that night, or even to bed that night. My mother always made sure I wore clean panties to school because a person never could tell when she’d get run over by a car and have to be taken to the hospital. A clean bra, too, when I got old enough to wear one. I was very big for my age... well, that’s obvious, I guess... I started developing at the age of twelve, very early on, I had to watch what I wore, the boys could be so cruel, you know. What bothers me is why I should be so concerned about performing a simple act everyone else in the world performs. Why should I worry so much that if I don’t get it right, something terrible will happen?”
Silence.
She has said this before.
She knows she has said it before.
“Look,” she says, “I know this is all in my head, why the hell else am I here? I know my mother’s not really going to die if my shoes don’t match my bag next Friday or whenever the hell. She’s in Omaha, how’s she going to die if I don’t have everything laid out? What is this, voodoo or something? Which thank God I do know — what I’m going to wear next Friday, I mean — because I wouldn’t want that on my conscience, believe me. The white sandals with the white leather sling bag I bought at Barneys and the white mini and white tube, a regular virgin bride, right? That’s next Friday, I’m pretty sure it is, anyway. I have the list here if you don’t mind my checking it, I’d like to check it if you don’t mind.”
She sits up immediately, not turning to look at him, embarrassed by this behavior she knows to be irrational but is unable to control, digging into her handbag, green to match the green slippers she’s wearing, and locating her Month-At-A-Glance calendar into which she relentlessly lists all her wardrobe schedules. Still not looking at him, she says, “Yes, here it is, Friday the twenty-first, white bag, white sandals, yep, all of it’s right here, I guess you won’t get hit by a bus, Mom,” and laughs in embarrassment at her own absurdity and then lies back down again and sighs in such helpless despair that she almost breaks David’s heart.
She falls silent for the remainder of the hour.
When at last he mentions quietly that their time is up, she rises, nods, and says, “I know I’ve got to get over this.”
“Yes,” he says.
“Yes,” she says, and nods, and sighs heavily again. “So we’re back to the regular schedule now, right? Until August first, anyway.”
“Right,” he says.
“So I’ll see you on Friday, right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Same time, right?”
“Yes, same time.”
She seems more anxious when she leaves his office than she did when she came in this morning.
He is not at all sure that she will get over this.
He tries Kate’s number several times that day.
The voice on her answering machine chirps, “Hi. At the beep, please.”
The third time he hears it, he wants to strangle the machine.
He knows she had a performance this afternoon, and further knows she has to be at the theater again by six-thirty tonight, she has explained all this to him. Kate’s makeup isn’t as intricate as what some of the other cats wear, but it nonetheless takes her a full half hour to do her face and another twenty minutes to get into costume. She spends the rest of the time before curtain stretching and warming up; a dancer can really hurt herself, she’s told him, if she goes on cold. Half-hour is at seven-thirty. Fifteen is at a quarter to eight. Five is five minutes before curtain, and then it’s show time, folks. He tries her apartment again at ten to six, immediately after his last patient leaves the office, and again at six sharp, on the walk home from his office, from a pay phone on Lex. He gets the same damn brief chirpy message each time. To get to the theater by six-thirty, Kate will have to leave her apartment by six-ten at the very latest. He calls from another pay phone at five past, and gets the same infuriating message again. Frustrated, he realizes he will not be able to talk to her until she gets home later tonight.
If she gets home.
“We shouldn’t be having this conversation,” Stanley is telling him, even though he is the one who called David to say he simply had to talk to him. The two men have eaten dinner in a Turkish restaurant on Second Avenue, and now they are strolling along like two old men in the park, a bit flat-footed, their hands behind their backs, though they are not in any park, and David certainly doesn’t think of himself as old, either. Not now, anyway. Not anymore.
Kate has promised him a party on his forty-sixth birthday.
It occurs to him that she doesn’t yet know he’ll be leaving for Martha’s Vineyard the day after that.
Or that he’ll be gone the entire month of August.
The night is sticky and hot.
The heat has driven everyone outdoors, and the avenue is thronged with pedestrians. Somehow, the city seems softer and safer tonight. At sidewalk tables outside colorfully lighted restaurants, diners seem engaged in spirited conversation, and there is laughter and a sense of gaiety and old world sophistication here on the privileged Upper East Side where for a little while the entire world is strung with Japanese lanterns and everyone is sipping French champagne and dipping Russian caviar and Vienna waltzes float dizzily on the still summer night.
He supposes he’s in love with her.
“I think I’m in love with her, hmm?” Stanley says. “This is ridiculous, I know. For Christ’s sake, Dave, she’s only nineteen years old, if she were a little younger I’d go to jail. I’m a doctor! I’m her psychiatrist!”