Joanna noticed that here, in South Beach, the emerald water was darker, the tide stronger than the Lauderdale coast, where she normally sunned her pale body on her winter visits, enduring queries from snowbirds, widowed, leathery-brown men with white-tufted chests, about whether she was from the far north. Now, though, standing near the beach fully clothed, she was not here to get burned but to attend a meeting she didn’t want to.
Joanna scanned the beach, the white sand, the tall, wooden lifeguard tower, which looked unmanned, and up ahead, in the water up to her calves, just beyond the breakers, was a girl, virtually naked, wearing only a thong. For a second, the sight of her bare back and buttocks came as a shock to Joanna who’d certainly heard of nude beaches but had never actually been to one. Self-consciously she looked down at her own body, thick and weighted, cloaked in slacks and a short-sleeved blouse. Middle aged. Invisible. But even ten years ago she could not have pulled off such a scene, the green water lapping her knees, the wind blowing her blond hair in wisps, shoulders thrust back, and as she turned, breasts, small bronze globes.
Joanna made her way back to the sidewalk to restaurant row, where verandas were being set. Soon couples would be sharing romantic dinners on the ocean while she’d be inside listening to young people agonize. Misery loves company. You are not alone. She didn’t believe in such clichés. How could knowing that others suffered as much as you lessen your suffering? She was only going because Dee had asked her to: “All you have to do is listen,” she’d said as if Joanna couldn’t understand, as if going was the only way. But how could that be? Their mother, Dee’s forerunner, had been an obsessive hand-washer, a modern-day Lady MacBeth, and e-coli fanatic, while Dee, who continued the legacy had adopted an even more contemporary fear—AIDS—that somehow through random contact with the world contaminated blood had infiltrated some orifice or membrane of her body.
Turning onto Miramar Avenue, Joanna bumped into a barefooted man, wearing a broad-rimmed straw hat, a parrot on his shoulder.
“Watch it, Lady,” the parrot squawked, flapping its wings.
“Excuse me,” Joanna said. Feeling stupid, she looked up and down the street for her sister’s car, then entered the building and rode the elevator up to the third floor. The receptionist, a fleshy Jamaican woman in a buckling white uniform, said, “They’re all in there” and pointed down the hallway, where Joanna saw an open door. She hesitated. Had her sister already arrived?
“Honey,” the receptionist came up behind her, “don’t worry. It’s not contagious.”
Then Dee showed up. “Sorry,” she said.
Joanna followed her to the room, and they both sat at the table, one empty chair left at the head of the table. A short man in a pin-striped suit walked in and took it. Dr. Joel Smart. He’d written a book on OCD. A Plate Too Full. Well respected, he held some kind of exalted post at the University of Miami Medical School, Dee had said.
Joanna had expected him to be older, taller, in a white lab coat, well versed in the language of rats, of B.F. Skinner. She had vague memories of all this from her college psychology class. But she’d never been to a psychiatrist before. So it was all very new. And maybe her sister was right. She might better understand the nature of the disease and how to deal with it, cooperation and reassurance being an absolute no-nos. If Dee thought she had a brain tumor, feeling her head or taking her to the doctor was a no-no. If Dee thought she felt a lump, Dee wasn’t to get mammography. If Dee saw a dark spot on a table, Joanna wasn’t to debate if it was blood. More than likely, the patient’s crying wolf, the doctor’s book had said. But Joanna had only skimmed parts of it, so maybe there was more to it.
Joanna peered at Dee’s hands now, all ten fingers covered in Band-Aids. Red, crescent moon shaped scars where Dee had picked off contaminated skin lay beneath them.
“We have a guest today,” the doctor began, “here to listen.”
Everybody looked at Joanna, and for a minute she thought they might break out in applause.
“Perhaps we can help Joanna get to know us. Carl?” The doctor looked over at a boy slouched in his chair.
The boy sat up suddenly. “Me? I want to kill my mother.” Asian, he wore black-rimmed glasses, and his face was covered in red lesions.
Everybody broke out laughing except the doctor.
“Thought it was your father,” someone else said.
“Oh, yeah, my father,” Carl said.
Everyone laughed again.
Joanna’s eyes roved around the room. She wasn’t sure what was going on.
“Hilarious, Carl,” the doctor said. “Now how about we get real?”
“Okay.” He slouched back down and rubbed the table with his finger. “Mostly I just pick at my face.” His hand rose as if to demonstrate, but then it sank back down. “I can’t stop. Been trying to get my associate’s degree for 10 years. My parents hate me.”
Joanna tried not to react, tried to be an empty chair, a plant in the corner, in the sun-lit window. She looked over at the doctor wondering if she’d be expected to say something, to participate, even though her sister had assured her otherwise.
“I’m Rochelle.”
Everybody’s eyes shifted. “I tear my hair out.” She dropped her head forward, a bald patch on her crown, a scattering of scabs, where she’d torn out large chunks. She also had no eyebrows, which gave her a perpetually surprised look. “Pluck. Pluck. Pluck.” She shrugged then smiled a little as if to apologize, then raised her hand to her face just as Carl had done.
“It’s all right,” another girl said. This one had thick, dark brows with a diamond stud in one, was chunky, and wore all black. “I mean for the longest time, ever since I was a kid, I thought I was a green blob floating around in space, and the real world, was fake. In a world of blobs, of space, no one cares what you look like. And after all, isn’t that how we all start off, what we’re reduced to—blobs of protoplasm. A jumble of junk.”
The girl glanced over at Joanna, as if to see what she thought, and the image of that other girl at the beach, the long curve of her body, the globes of her breasts, arms dangling carelessly at her sides, came back to her. She could have been the first woman, the first Eve, emerging out of the water.
“Troy here.” The boy swiveled left and right in his chair, had a goatee, flecks of gray in it, watery blue eyes. “I run people over. Mr. Hit and Run. Three hours. That’s how it took me to get here because I ran over so many people. I had to keep going back to be sure. I’ve already gotten in several fender-benders because I have to constantly check my rear-view mirror. When I see dented cars, I leave notes saying, It’s me. Troy Acres. Did I do this? I’m so sorry. Sometimes I follow ambulances, read accidents reports in newspapers, call the police and ask, Was it me? My parents keep threatening to take away my license.”
“Food is made out of human beings.”
“Every time I ride my motorcycle, I think my left arm is on fire.”
“Touching anything with my right hand will kill my family.”
“When my mother can’t find her knitting needles, I always think I’ve swallowed them.”
Their stories so bizarre, Joanna glanced up at the clock.
“Freaks,” Carl said, “all of us.”
The girl with the bald crown started twirling her hair around her finger.
“No,” the doctor said, gently, “we’re all just human. People with OCD maybe more than human. Jean Charlier de Gerson, a 14th century theologian, said OCD is like a gang of barking dogs at your heels: taking no notice is the best way to get rid of them. Of course then they didn’t use the term OCD but scrupulosity or scrupulum, Latin, meaning jagged rock or intense pang of conscience.”
“Why are you always quoting these French dudes?” Carl asked.
“Because they’re pretty smart dudes.”
“What if they attack?” the girl twirling hair asked. “Don’t you have to turn on them, fight back?”
“Why fight what doesn’t exist?” the doctor said.
“Yeah, but the dogs are always there,” the dark blob girl said. “They always exist. You’re lying if you say they aren’t.”
“Maybe if you ignore them long enough they won’t follow you. They’ll go away,” the doctor said.
Joanna looked over at Dee. She hadn’t said a word yet, but she was nodding, smiling as if to say see, this is what it’s like. I’m not the only one. Not that Joanna had accused her of that. In fact, she’d been nothing but tolerant as far as she could tell, never getting angry even when her sister pummeled her with irrational questions. Is this a tumor? Is that blood? Am I going to die? Even expressions like cross my heart and hope to die could set Dee off. “Take it back,” she’d say. “Take it back.”
Joanna well understood the dog metaphor too. She’d been chased by them, real dogs, when she’d been a child, two Dobermans coming out of the woods, baring their teeth, and another time, in a recent dream, she’d been on a dark street trying to find her way, a growling dog trailing her. Joanna looked out the sin-lit window. The girl on the beach flashed in her mind again, her bronze skin, the waves lapping at her calves. Even in winter here, the ocean was warm, salt-laden, buoyant.
“Now,” the doctor said, “we’re going to try a new technique to help lessen your anxiety, something that you can eventually do on your own.” He got up and closed the blinds, then sat back down. First, close your eyes and think about something that scares you, that worries you.” He got up and closed the blinds and then sat back down.
For a few moments the room was silent, only Johanna’s eyes and the doctor’s open. Was she supposed to participate? The doctor never looked at her. He wasn’t looking at anyone as far a she could tell. It was all so peaceful that she closed her eyes. But the only image that came to her was the near-naked girl again, calf-deep in the ocean.
“Now open your eyes. Next thing is tapping.” The doctor crossed his arms and with his hands started lighting tapping his upper arms. “And as you do this, I want you to close your eyes again and travel to a place that makes you feel safe, that comforts you. It can be any place, a real one or a place you make up.”
Closing her eyes, Joanna started tapping her arms. But she wasn’t sure where to go, the image of the girl still before her eyes. As she tried to clear it, she listened to the collective tapping, the rhythmic sound of hands against flesh, like a soft drum beat. Hypnotic.
“Keep tapping,” the doctor said.
But Joanna was still struggling. Where could she go? Why couldn’t she do this?
“Okay,” the doctor said, “stop. You can open your eyes. Now blink them four times.”
The doctor demonstrated.
Joanna tried, but there was something odd about this, forced blinking.
“Now close your eyes again and start tapping, going back to that place, that comfort zone.”
But still Joanna had no place to go. At thirty, how could that be, all those pleasant places she’d gone blurring into one another?
“Now open your eyes. Blink four times. Now let’s take some deep breaths.”
Everyone sucked in, then let their air out, including the doctor.
“And again. Inhale. Hold onto it. Now let go. Good.”
The doctor got up and opened the blinds. “Now how do you feel?”
“Better,” Dee said, the first time she’d spoken.
Then others started blurting out things.
“Calmer.”
“The was weird, the eye thing.”
“What’s the tapping about?”
“Let’s do it again.”
“Are you trying to rewire our brains?”
“Time’s up,” the doctor said, “see you next week.”
“So what do you think?” Dee asked.
They were outside the building now, in the bright light of South Beach, back among the tourists, the restaurants with the patios, the brightly colored umbrellas, the throbbing salsa music. Still hot, many people were in their bathing suits and sun hats. Rush hour, there was lots of traffic.
Joanna scanned the strip, thinking it would be fun to retreat into one of the fancy hotels. “These Art Deco places. All these colors,” Joanna said, admiring the gaudy architecture.
Dee looked around as if all this were new to her. “The Fountaine Bleau. The Marseilles. The Betsy.”
Sometimes they were on the same wave length.
“We could spend our whole lives there,” Dee said. “Never leave.”
A man passed by with an enormous German shepherd.
Joanna reached down to pet it, but it snapped at her.
Yanking the dog back, the man shouted angrily, “Hands off.”
Joanna wasn’t sure if he meant her or the dog. He had an island accent and wore a mangy straw hat.
Joanna looked at her hand.
“Did it get you?” Dee asked, her face contorted.
Joanna dropped her hand so Dee couldn’t see it. “Just a scratch.”
“That’s blood, isn’t it?” Dee looked at her own hands, inspecting her Band-aids. “You don’t think any got on me, do you?”
Joanna sighed, denial fruitless, so she lifted her hand, studying the puncture wounds, the blood welling up from them. Soon it would swell, would bruise and ache. Right now, though, it just stung. “It’s not a big deal.”
“What if the dog has rabies? You could go crazy. Die.” Dee looked down the sidewalk. “Isn’t that him?” She pointed.
Joanna spotted the dog’s four legs in the distance, between the other moving legs. Then the man suddenly broke free and crossed the street, dodging honking cars. On the other side, he and the dog continued down the sidewalk, unencumbered now, the dog stopping to sniff the air, the man to scratch its head, while down at the shore, where waves broke and foamed, the tide coming in, children jumped back, screeching in delight. As far as the girl with the bronze breasts from the beach, Joanna figured she was long gone. She took a tissue out of her bag and started dabbing her wounds.
Janet Goldberg‘s novel The Proprietor’s Song was released last year by Regal House, and her story collection Like Human is due out Fall 2025 from the University of Wisconsin’s Cornerstone Press.
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