SEX. IT’S BECOME our late-afternoon activity, something Paul and I truly excel at, even in our present circumstances. I look forward to it because, for those few minutes, all else recedes and I can utterly lose myself in the act. That quest to learn the truth about Paul through our bodies—turns out it wasn’t needed. I was the one with all the secrets.
So now I can just relax.
We hold off on my evening meds, letting the morning dose wane till there’s a minimum of drugs circulating through me, blunting my sensations, my down under. He sets the two pills and the glass of water on the nightstand for after.
I unbutton my dress, my bra, my panties. Let it all fall to the floor, then join Paul on the bed.
When we’ve finished, Paul kisses the back of my shoulder, tracing the line of my scapula with his lips, then slides off me and grabs his shirt. I turn over and take his hand, tracing the blue anchor tattoo on his wrist with my finger before he stands up. He’s feeling good, singing some song about blueberries on a hill.
I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, starting to put my clothes back on, when Paul throws open the curtains on the front windows. The brightness of the clear blue winter sky is a shock to my eyes, already reaccustomed to a life inside.
Suddenly images begin to surface from the murky depths of my brain, shaping themselves into bits and pieces of memories:
Wallace leading me out of the elevator into the bright sunlight of Hanover’s first floor. As we walk slowly down the hallway jammed with holiday visitors, I can feel the sluggishness of regression already in me, weighing me down, dulling my senses, my awareness. The red-robed choirboys smirking and pointing at me as they pass by barely registers in my mind.
I remember a kindly old lady handing me a cookie shaped like a star—and Norma promptly stealing it out of my hand. Remember Georgie’s shocked face looking at me, mouth shaped like an O, demanding Wallace tell her what they’d done to me down in the Unit, till the marly nurse scared her away.
Then finally it comes to me. The memory I’ve been waiting for: Officer Worthy in the visitors’ room, rising from his seat as Wallace and I approach.
And now bits of memories from my meeting with the deputy start to come back:
Officer Worthy trying to understand my horror-show words.
Me calling him the Lone Ranger when he told me how he’d forced Hanover’s superintendent to let him check up on me.
Him quizzing me about my yellow note, asking what all my odd phrases meant. And me teasing him about his curiosity, asking whether his wife knew how he spent his free time.
When he tells me the addresses I’d written in it were all for crematoriums, I confess all the other things my sick mind had made up, whole people it had convinced me were real—and he gets an odd look on his face. There’s something he’s not saying.
“Tell me,” I plead, and notice his eyes glancing over my shoulder at something behind me. I turn around—and see Dr. Sherman, now standing with Nurse Wallace by the visitors’ door, watching us.
The discovery brings the voice out of hiding. Close to death now from the protocol, she’s desperately grasping for a new conspiracy theory: Maybe the deputy is working with Sherman and the nurse, trying to get information out of me … All to keep me from my mission—finding the doctor …
On and on she rants, so loudly I can barely think.
I stretch my hand out across the table, again beg Officer Worthy to tell me. His eyes flick one more time to the doctor and nurse. Then he says, “To hell with them. You deserve to know.”
“Know what?”
He levels his blue eyes on mine. “You’ve been lied to here.”
“No. No one here is lying to me…” I say to the deputy, who is trying to pull the rug of trust, so carefully woven for me by the protocol, right out from under my feet.
I’m trying to stay calm, not get agitated in front of Sherman and Wallace. But the pitched battle for composure going on inside me begins to produce a high-pitched whine inside my head, like a pipe bomb’s just gone off.
I can see Officer Worthy’s lips moving, no doubt saying more things I don’t want to hear, but the whining sound is keeping me safe from those things.
The problem: I need to know those things.
So I close my eyes, press my hands to the table, and focus till I tamp down the squealing noise in my head. Then say to the deputy: “Tell me.”
He takes a moment, gathering his thoughts, glances at Sherman and Wallace, then starts. “I do think they meant well when they made the decision.”
What decision?
“There was real concern for you at the time—that you were in such a delicate state … Which I found so strange to hear because that day we met on the driveway you seemed anything but delicate. There was this strength about you. Even without your memory, you seemed to possess a certainty about yourself at your core. And about what you’d seen.”
Seen what?
“But as I said, there was a genuine fear in those days that you might never come to embrace who you really are. But clearly that’s no longer the case. You’ve now fully accepted that you’re Dorothy Frasier. Even submitted to this … extreme treatment of Dr. Sherman’s in the hopes of getting better.” He puts his hands up. “So I can’t in good conscience go along with the continued deception. The woman I met that day on the driveway deserves to know the truth.”
“Truth about what?”
“The woman in braids on the transport bus with you,” he says.
“The one I made up.”
“That’s just it—you didn’t make her up. I saw her, too,” he says. “She was crouched down, waving to us with your purse from the back of the bus as it was driving away.”
I blink, pull myself away from the memory to fully absorb the deputy’s long-forgotten news.
There was a woman in braids on the bus that day who took my bag.
I didn’t invent her. Neither did the voice.
You bet your ass we didn’t invent her.
As I sit here on the bed, it feels like … like there’s a rocket racing through me. Hands shaking, fingers fumbling wildly as I try to button my dress.
I glance over at Paul to see if he’s noticed. He hasn’t. Still singing about blueberries as he pulls on his pants.
I close my eyes again, hoping more flotsam from Officer Worthy’s visit will come to the surface of my mind—
And it does:
“I called Hanover that day,” Officer Worthy says. “It took a few tries, but when I finally got through to Dr. Sherman, I told him what I’d seen and asked if they’d double-checked your identification. He laughed at even the suggestion, reassured me you were indeed Dorothy Frasier. That he’d not only spoken at length to your husband, Paul, he’d even seen a photo of the two of you at the beach that Mr. Frasier keeps in his wallet.”
“Then who was she? The braided woman?” I ask.
“The doctor thinks she was just a drunken vagrant who’d snuck onto the transport bus the night before to sleep one off, then woke the next morning to find herself taking a ride up to Hanover with you patients. And he’s probably right. She stole your purse, then hid in the back of the bus till the driver parked it back at the lot and she could sneak away unseen.”
“Dr. Sherman never told me I’d been right,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I just assumed he would, once he knew the truth. Only learned he hadn’t this morning when he called to warn me not to say anything about the woman during my visit, that it could confuse you unnecessarily.”
“So Dr. Sherman was lying to Paul and me the whole time.” Officer Worthy is quiet, his finger nervously playing with the corner of the yellow note. “What?”
It takes him a moment but he answers. “According to Sherman, he told your husband the woman on the bus really existed shortly after he heard it from me—but strongly advised Mr. Frasier not to risk a further worsening of your mental state by telling you. And your husband … well, he agreed.”
“Paul knew? All this time? No!”
But Officer Worthy nods.
And now sadness, anger, and fear are tearing through me, unbounded, emotions no longer mine to control. Can feel myself coming undone—and the deputy sees.
That’s when Worthy takes my hand.
His hand feels warm and safe, an island of calm in the middle of my raging sea of emotions. For a moment in my head nothing else exists but Worthy and me. And I want so much to stay there alone with him—but there isn’t time. Sherman’s talking to Lester and another attendant, and their eyes are all on me.
“Worthy,” I say, “their shocks are gonna make me forget what you told me.”
“Shocks? Is that what they’re doing to you?” he asks.
“Part of it. I need to get Sherman to stop them till I can talk to Paul … Cuh … confront him.” I grab hold of the table and get to my feet, try to steady myself as the room whirls around me like a top.
“Wait!” Worthy says, starting to rise. “Take a minute, think about—”
But he’s interrupted by Lester and the other attendant, who each grab one of my arms. “Worthy!” I scream as I’m dragged away from him, past the other visitors watching the spectacle.
Worthy and Sherman yelling at each other is the last thing I see before the attendants pull me around the corner.
I open my eyes and take a deep breath. Try to stay calm, reason this out.
Paul knew all along the woman in braids was real. She’s “the woman” he lied about.
The reason I carved those letters into my hand.
And if he lied about her, what else has he been lying about?
Nothing! You heard Worthy, Paul only lied to me on the advice of my asshole doctor. He was just trying to help me.
That’s the regression. You need to fight it. Stop making excuses for Paul!
“Dee, you okay?” Paul asks.
“Y … yes. Okay,” I say. I think I say that. Things are … This is a lot …
Stay with the conversation. Don’t let him know you know.
“You sure?” Paul says, eyes leveled on me. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No, I’m fine,” I say.
But he watches me a few moments more before checking his watch. “Damn, I need to go,” he says, and heads for the door.
“Where?”
“I promised Eloise I’d make a trip to the liquor store over in Chatham before it closes. Get the bourbon she needs for her pecan pie,” he says, kisses me, and leaves.
Soon there are voices out front. I go to the window, careful to stay hidden by the curtain. Paul and Eloise are talking by the car. He looks up toward my window once before getting into the car and driving away.
This is good. He’s left you alone and undrugged—you’ve been handed a chance to find out the truth. Seize it.
The voice is the one seizing chances, taking advantage of my overexcited, undermedicated state to make the lie into something bigger. She’s trying to lure me over the edge, off my even keel. The clock on the bedside table says four fifteen. Next to it are my pills. I walk over to them.
Don’t do it. This thing is more than one lie. Maybe he’s made it all up, your whole life!
Right. Like someone would go to all the trouble of faking my life—the hospital visits, the photos, the house, the bowling trophies. No one would do that.
Exactly. So, why did he? What’s the story?
I hear Eloise walk back into the house, followed by the jingle of her keys and the swick of the front door’s new keyed dead bolt locking smoothly into place. Moments later she’s climbed the stairs and stands in the doorway. “You look a bit tired, Mrs. Frasier. Why don’t you lie down and take a little nap till Mr. Frasier gets back from Chatham.”
“With the cognac you need for the pie?” I ask, naming the wrong liquor in some lame attempt to test her.
But then she says, “Yes, an old family recipe. The cognac is part of the secret. Wouldn’t be the same without it.”
They really should get their booze stories straight.
“I’ll be right downstairs starting dinner if you need anything. Okay?” She nods.
And I nod back. But the nod fails to relax me because I can’t stop thinking this:
Fuck!
Fuck indeed. Lied right to your face.
I close the door and lean my forehead against it to think. Maybe it’s just a mistake. Bourbon for cognac. Paul got it wrong, and now he’s driving across the county for the wrong pie liquor.
You should be asking yourself what he’s really doing.
The sun’s just dipping below the tree line. The clock on the bedside table says four twenty-seven. Eloise has put a record on. I can hear Frank Sinatra rising up through the floorboards.
Twelve minutes gone. Get moving. The doors may be locked but you’ve got a perfectly good window.
No. There will be consequences. The new beginning Paul spoke of, his hope that someday soon we’d be able to loosen the precautions, lessen the medications—that promise of an almost-normal life will surely disappear if I escape out that window. Leaving is insane.
What’s insane is ignoring your gut. Something’s off and you feel it. Screw consequences. Go learn the truth.
The truth? The woman in braids was just a vagrant, and I am just Dorothy. That’s the truth.
Then prove me wrong. Find someone, some stranger, who actually knew Dorothy and ask them a simple question: “Am I her?” If the answer’s no, who does that make you?
I’ll give you a hint. Starts with a B.
Here we go, Bix and her fictional future.
Then I remember Mary’s words that night before I faked the seizure: “Sometimes you need to trust that lunatic voice, ’cause she’s the only one in your corner.”
She was right. Go while you’re still capable of acting on your own. Not yet a complete pod person.
Screw you.
Ticktock.
Fuck.