The Woman in the Window(5)

That’s three halves, but you don’t debate math with someone who’s rotating your spine.

I joined Happn a month ago “just to see,” I told myself. Happn, Bina had explained to me, matchmakes you with people whose paths you’ve crossed. But what if you haven’t crossed paths with anyone? What if you forever navigate the same four thousand vertically arranged square feet, and nothing beyond them?

I don’t know. The first profile I spotted was David’s. I instantly deleted my account.



It’s been four days since I glimpsed Jane Russell. She certainly wasn’t proportioned like the original, with her torpedo breasts, her wasp waist, but then neither am I. The son I’ve seen only that once, yesterday morning. The husband, however—wide shoulders, streaky brows, a blade of a nose—is on permanent display in his house: whisking eggs in the kitchen, reading in the parlor, occasionally glancing into the bedroom, as though in search of someone.





Friday, October 29





6


My French le?on today, and Les Diaboliques tonight. A rat-bastard husband, his “little ruin” of a wife, a mistress, a murder, a vanished corpse. Can you beat a vanished corpse?

But first, duty calls. I swallow my pills, park at my desktop, knock the mouse to one side, enter the password. And log on to the Agora.

At any hour, at all hours, there are at least a few dozen users checked in, a constellation sprawled across the world. Some of them I know by name: Talia from the Bay Area; Phil in Boston; a lawyer from Manchester with the unlawyerly name of Mitzi; Pedro, a Bolivian whose halting English is probably no worse than my pidgin French. Others go by handles, me included—in a cute moment, I opted for Annagoraphobe, but then I outed myself to another user as a psychologist, and word swiftly spread. So now I’m thedoctorisin. She’ll see you now.

Agoraphobia: in translation the fear of the marketplace, in practice the term for a range of anxiety disorders. First documented in the late 1800s, then “codified as an independent diagnostic entity” a century later, though largely comorbid with panic disorder. You can read all about it, if you like, in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. DSM-5 for short. It’s always amused me, that title; it sounds like a movie franchise. Liked Mental Disorders 4? You’ll love the sequel!

The medical literature is uncommonly imaginative when it comes to diagnostics. “Agoraphobic fears . . . include being outside the home alone; being in a crowd, or standing in a line; being on a bridge.” What I wouldn’t give to stand on a bridge. Hell, what I wouldn’t give to stand in a line. I like this one, too: “Being in the center of a theater row.” Center seats, no less.

Pages 113 through 133, if you’re interested.

Many of us—the most severely afflicted, the ones grappling with post-traumatic stress disorder—are housebound, hidden from the messy, massy world outside. Some dread the heaving crowds; others, the storm of traffic. For me, it’s the vast skies, the endless horizon, the sheer exposure, the crushing pressure of the outdoors. “Open spaces,” the DSM-5 calls it vaguely, anxious to get to its 186 footnotes.

As a doctor, I say that the sufferer seeks an environment she can control. Such is the clinical take. As a sufferer (and that is the word), I say that agoraphobia hasn’t ravaged my life so much as become it.



The Agora welcome screen greets me. I scan the message boards, comb the threads. 3 months stuck in my house. I hear you, Kala88; almost ten months and counting here. agora dependent on mood? Sounds more like social phobia, EarlyRiser. Or a troubled thyroid. still can’t get a job. Oh, Megan—I know, and I’m sorry. Thanks to Ed, I don’t need one, but I miss my patients. I worry about my patients.

A newcomer has emailed me. I direct her to the survival manual I whipped up back in the spring: “So You Have a Panic Disorder”—I think it sounds agreeably jaunty.

Q: How do I eat?

A: Blue Apron, Plated, HelloFresh . . . there are lots of delivery options available in the US! Those abroad can likely find similar services.

Q: How do I get my medication?

A: All the major pharmacies in the US now come straight to your door. Have your doctor speak to your local pharmacy if there’s a problem.

Q: How do I keep the house clean?

A: Clean it! Hire a cleaning agency or do it yourself.





(I do neither. My place could use a wipe-down.)

Q: What about trash disposal?

A: Your cleaner can take care of this, or you can arrange for a friend to help.

Q: How do I keep from getting bored?

A: Now, that’s the tough question . . .





Et cetera. I’m pleased with the document, on the whole. Would have loved to have had it myself.

Now a chat box appears on my screen.

Sally4th: hello doc!





I can feel a smile twitching on my lips. Sally: twenty-six, based in Perth, was attacked earlier this year, on Easter Sunday. She suffered a broken arm and severe contusions to her eyes and face; her rapist was never identified or apprehended. Sally spent four months indoors, isolated in the most isolated city in the world, but has been getting out of the house for more than ten weeks now—good on her, as she’d say. A psychologist, aversion therapy, and propranolol. Nothing like a beta-blocker.