I couldn’t wait to call Rikki and kept watching the clock until nine, which was her seven, when she and Kyle would be finished with dinner. I was surprised when Kyle answered. Not that it was strange for him to answer the phone, but I’d worked out everything I had to say to Rikki and was nervous about it and was planning on just blurting it out as soon as she picked up.
“Little Man?” I said.
“Daddeeee! Hi! What’re ya doin’?”
“Oh, nothin’,” I said. “I just finished working and wanted to call and tell you how much I love you.”
“I love you too, Dad.” I heard him shout, “It’s Dad, Mom, but I need to say somethin’ to him first!” Then he whispered to me, “Dad?”
“Yeah?” I knew what was coming next. “Have ya gotten me anything yet?”
“Well, not yet,” I said. “But soon.”
“Okay. Guess what?”
“What?”
“I get to bring the rats home for the weekend.”
“Rats?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said excitedly. “From my class. There are two of them. Lucy and Ethel. Oh oh. I have to go now. Mom wants to talk to you.”
“Okay, son. I love you.”
“Love you, too. Bye.”
I heard Rikki tell him to get into the tub and felt tremors in my chest.
“Hi,” she said tentatively.
I took a deep breath. “Hi, Rik. We did it and watched it with Dr. Sawyer.”
“The videotaping?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“And there they were. It was incredible. I mean I know you’ve seen them a lot, so watching them wouldn’t have been—”
“Cam,” Rikki cut in. “I know it was big deal for you. How did it go?”
“Rik,” I said, filling with emotion, “I’m ... a ... multiple.”
She sighed. “I know, honey, I know.” She paused for a few seconds. “Do you believe it now?”
I choked my tears back. I didn’t want to cry. “Yes,” I said. “I believe it. And so do they.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it was hard for them to see the tape, too. Especially Dusty.”
“Oh,” she said, thinking that over. “That hadn’t even occurred to me.”
“Rik,” I said nervously—I had to get it out. “Rik, we’ve got to make some changes.”
“Oh?” she said, her voice cautious.
“Yeah,” I pressed on. “We’ve got to. For me to really accept them, they have to be accepted at home—”
She cupped the mouthpiece and muffled a shout, “They are accepted at home, Cam!” Then she said, “Wait a minute,” and dropped the phone to go close the bedroom door, and the seconds whittled away at my soul. She picked up the phone again and repeated a little louder, “Cam, they are accepted at home!”
“But they don’t feel that way,” I argued. “Kyle panics whenever I switch and it makes them feel bad. You should have heard Clay—right on the tape—how bad he feels that Kyle’s scared of him. He wants to meet him—they all do—so they can feel accepted.”
“We’ve been here before, Cam. Kyle’s ... not ... meeting them,” she pounded, like a hammer on an anvil. I could feel her ferocity through the phone and it scared the hell out of me.
“But he's got—”
“This is not open for discussion,” she snapped. “I’m not letting him meet your alters. That’s it. He’s too young! You said yourself how scared he gets. He’s not ready! I’m sorry.”
And then she was silent, and so was I, and the seventeen hundred and fifty miles between us stretched around the world, and around again, and around again, and my body felt cold, my stomach like stone, and I wondered for a second if I could stay in the hospital forever.
“Rikki,” I said weakly. “We’ve got to go now.”
“Okay, Cam,” she said. “Goodbye.” And her goodbye had the deadly shimmer of a bullet passing in slow motion through the muzzle of a gun.
I hung up the phone and, leaning against the wall for support, slowly sank to the floor, hugged my knees, and began to rock. My unblinking eyes locked onto the wavy pattern on the wallpaper across the hallway, and I began to disappear into it.
Lucinda came over from the nurses’ station, touched me lightly on the shoulder, and said in her soft southern lilt, “Y’all all right, Cam?”
I looked up at her as I waded into the waves and said, “No.”
* * *
Kyle was tucked in and Rikki was lying next to him on his bed reading a Nate the Great mystery, mustering as much zeal as she could after the horrible phone call.
“Mom,” Kyle said, interrupting her reading, “is something wrong with you and Dad?”
That smacked her like a branch in the face. Rikki put the book down and thought fast. “Well,” she said, trying to sound reassuring, “Dad and I’ve been having some disagreements about some stuff, that’s all. Nothing’s wrong.”
“About Andy?” Kyle asked.
“Why would we be disagreeing about Andy?” Rikki asked, surprised.
“Because you’re dating him.”
“I’m not dating Andy,” Rikki said. “Did Daddy tell you that?”
“Uh uh,” Kyle said, shaking his head. “I thought it up. You go out with him like a girlfriend. You should be Daddy’s girlfriend ... I mean his wife.”
“Is that what you think?” Rikki asked, amazed at what had been going on in Kyle’s young mind. “You think I’m Andy’s girlfriend?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’m not, sweetie. Andy’s just my friend. Just because he’s a guy doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. Right?”
“Well, anyway, he couldn’t be like Dad. Nobody’s as good as Dad.” He took Rikki’s hand. “Mom?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you love Dad?”
“Of course I love Dad, honey,” Rikki said gently. “He’s my husband. He’s my best friend.”
“What about me? Do you love me, too?”
“Aww, sweetie,” she cooed. “You’re my little man. I love you more than anything.” Rikki squeezed Kyle’s small hand and kissed him on the head. His hair was a little damp and smelled flowery from shampoo.
“Good,” Kyle said. “Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Multiple personalities isn’t so bad.”
For a moment Rikki was speechless while Kyle’s innocent words grappled with the ghosts in her heart. Then she propped herself on her elbow, turned to him, and gently stroked his smooth face. Their eyes met, and forcing herself not to cry, she said softly, “No, Kylie. It’s not so bad.”
Out in the cool night a neighbor’s dog barked once, and then everything was still again.
“Mom?” Kyle said, picking up the book and handing it to her. “Could you finish the book?”
Rikki looked down at her precious little man and gave him a squeeze.
“Sure,” she said.