I offered to take Matt and Penny out for dinner the night after I arrived here, but the two of them adhere to the Dean Ornish diet; they had almost given up on restaurants because they usually just end up ordering salad anyway. Factoring in the kids\u2019 predilections made it impossible. Instead, Penny made an inedible quinoa casserole. When I wasn\u2019t picking up quinoa grains from the carpet, or restraining Dante from making a mast and sail with a broom and afghan, I watched my hosts with fascination.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re out of salt,\u201d Penny said, sprinkling the last few crystals onto the pasta.<\/p>\n
Matt immediately drew his iPhone to record the information. \u201cIf you write it down when we\u2019re almost out, then we can get a new box before the old one runs out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Penny stood on her tip toes to peer into a cupboard. \u201cHave you seen the colander?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI always keep it in the cupboard with the pots and pans. Where do you keep it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWherever I can find room.\u201d<\/p>\n
All so mundane, so healthy. When Penny remembered she\u2019d taken the colander \u2013 the only one they had \u2013 to use in her lab, Matt offered no criticism, just a puzzled stare. When Dante pulled a curtain off its rod, he only blinked. It was always Penny who remembered to fill my glass, who offered to rent videos for the kids, who reminded Matt to open up the sofa bed or get an extra pillow down from a high shelf of the closet. I began to develop a theory that she had domesticated him, that he depended on her to gently guide him in relating to other human beings. In return, he organized her life and plucked the leaves from her hair.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, Dr. Ornish allows good wine, and I\u2019d insisted on buying a couple of bottles on the way back from McDonald\u2019s. Penny poured me a glass, even as she asked me if I wanted some. Then, while I put the kids to bed, she and Matt retired to the upstairs office, inviting me to follow them when the kids were tucked in. She was reading the latest issue of Cell<\/em> when I came upstairs with my wineglass. Matt was at his computer. \u201cYou two seem incredibly well matched,\u201d I said. \u201cHow did you find each other?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe internet,\u201d Penny said.<\/p>\n A chill passed through me, thinking of Charlie and Zulya.<\/p>\n Penny got up from her chair. \u201cWould you like to sit here?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, please.\u201d I made myself comfortable as possible on a file cabinet. \u201cAn online bulletin board?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMatt,\u201d she said, \u201cwhy don\u2019t you bring a chair up from downstairs?\u201d He nodded and went downstairs. \u201cMatch.com,\u201d Penny said. \u201cIt\u2019s very easy to meet people that way.\u201d She took in my silence. \u201cSorry. It\u2019s too easy in some cases, I guess. For me it was something of a last resort.\u201d She laughed. \u201cThat sounds terrible, doesn\u2019t it? Actually, Matt will tell you that internet dating is the only way to go. I don\u2019t think he ever actually tried anything else. He just made up his mind one day that it was time to get married and booted up his Mac. It\u2019s certainly efficient. Matt pretty much figured out we were right for each other before we even met. I needed a few face-to-face encounters to be satisfied. Of course,” the wisp of a smile crossed her lips, “then we had to go through the genetic testing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou had your genes tested?\u201d<\/p>\n Penny shrugged. \u201cMatt\u2019s a true believer. I think for him it\u2019s a little like what astrology is for other people.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPenny!\u201d Matt appeared in the doorway with a kitchen chair in his hands. \u201cIt\u2019s nothing like astrology.\u201d He set the chair down for me, then reclaimed his ergonomic seat at the computer. \u201cWe wanted to avoid any risk of congenital defect.\u201d<\/p>\n It was almost a relief to hear him disagree with her about something. \u201cYou\u2019re thinking about children?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI<\/em> was anyway.\u201d Penny\u2019s eyes found Matt.<\/p>\n He blinked for a moment. \u201cI think we both decided that our careers demanded so much energy we could never allocate an amount adequate to raising children.\u201d<\/p>\n I winced at the chill in his tone.<\/p>\n \u201cPlus,\u201d said Penny, \u201cwe found out I needed fertility treatments.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d I said. And thinking about my own situation, I truly was. If my bias against marriage had lasted a few years longer \u2013 or I hadn\u2019t met Charlie when I did \u2013 my own clock would have run out. Whatever happened between Charlie and me, I had to thank him for Dante and Chloe.<\/p>\n Penny shrugged. \u201cAnyway, I\u2019ve got my little green babies.\u201d She waved at the Petri dishes on the Ikea desk.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I bet you test all their genes.\u201d<\/p>\n Penny laughed. \u201cFor a living!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOkay,\u201d said Matt. \u201cYou can make fun of me now. But I\u2019m willing to bet you within twenty years everyone\u2019s going to be tested before they get married. Not just because of the kinds of kids they can have, but because we\u2019ll be able to figure out some basic facts about compatibility.\u201d He leaned forward in his chair. \u201cMost of what we now call personality is going to be illuminated by gene research over the next few decades. Certainly all of mental illness will be treatable.\u201d<\/p>\n I took a sip of Merlot. \u201cDon\u2019t you think parents will always be able to ruin their children?\u201d<\/p>\n He smiled just enough to acknowledge my attempt at humor. \u201cSure if you beat someone on the head hard enough, you\u2019ll break it. But what parents do has a lot less effect on their kids than most people believe.\u201d<\/p>\n His jaw tightened beneath his beard. \u201cI spent four years in weekly, sometimes biweekly psychoanalysis in which a very well-intentioned and erudite man tried to figure out how our parents\u2019 sex life had affected my behavior. He applied the most sophisticated techniques known to the field of psychology. And they were totally pointless. I figured out once my parents spent more on Dr. English than they did on my undergraduate education. And they were educated people. I really wonder what they were thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n As a parent, I had a pretty good idea what they were thinking. Their son was behaving strangely and they were trying to get him some help. I tried to think of someway of changing the subject.<\/p>\n But Matt was on a roll. \u201cIt was all such garbage! Obsessive compulsive disorder has nothing to do with oedipal fantasies. People don\u2019t wash their hands over and over because they feel guilty about masturbating.\u201d<\/p>\n Penny raised her hand, palm out like a traffic cop. \u201cMatt –\u201d<\/p>\n He scowled. \u201cAdrienne has to hear this.”<\/p>\n Did I? I thought back to our last conversation, standing in the toy store months earlier. I must have said something that had gotten under his skin.<\/p>\n “Maybe you\u2019ve read some of the research,\u201d he went on. \u201cBrain scans are identifying some of the specific dysfunctions. Population analysis has already implicated Val-158-Met substitution in the COMT gene. In a dozen years, we\u2019ll probably have a gene therapy that can cure it. But I won\u2019t get in line for it because I don\u2019t have OCD.\u201d<\/p>\n More than anything else he\u2019d said this caught me by surprise. \u201cNot at all?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo!\u201d He shook his head for emphasis.\u00a0 \u201cWhat are obsessions?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUhh\u2026 things you can\u2019t stop thinking about\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRecurrent intrusive thoughts. I didn\u2019t have any. At least not until everyone started trying to convince me that my parents were driving me insane. I had unpleasant thoughts then, but not the kind in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Only once before \u2013 when he got into the fight on the school bus — had I seen him so red faced and intent, his lean body tensed as if for combat, and suddenly I wondered whether he had really changed since I had known him, or whether he had always been the person I saw before me, deep inside. A person who constructed his own reality.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are compulsions?\u201d he asked me.<\/p>\n \u201cHabits that you can\u2019t break. Things you can\u2019t stop doing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSenseless, repetitive acts. My behavior may have been repetitive, but it wasn\u2019t senseless. I knew what I was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I offered to take Matt and Penny out for dinner the night after I arrived here, but the two of them adhere to the Dean Ornish diet; they had almost given up on restaurants because they usually just end up ordering salad anyway. Factoring in the kids\u2019 predilections made it impossible. Instead, Penny made an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[71,66,70,41,69,68,62,10,67,22],"class_list":["post-789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrienne","tag-digital-books","tag-group-marriages","tag-interactive-fiction","tag-interactive-novel","tag-poly-books","tag-poly-literature","tag-poly-novel","tag-polyamory","tag-polyamory-and-genes","tag-polyamory-novel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":797,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions\/797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The truth about OCD<\/h3>\n