I’m running like a fool. Like the pitiful mental case we are. Tourists stare at me and speeding cyclists pass close enough to brush my arm. I pay no attention, there being only room in my brain for two thoughts. First, I’m going to be late for the fourth appointment with our shithead of a therapist. Victoria kept the first three, hoping the good doctor would let us off the hook with a cursory inspection. Not happening. He expects to meet all of us at some point. Especially Eleni, our main offender.
So, there’s that bullshit to handle. But there’s also a burning rage because my free-spirit sister has done it again. In the past, Serena regularly hijacked our body as we headed off to work. She liked to take us on spiritual journeys certain to get us fired. The girl believes herself to be an artist and a poet and a pilgrim. In fact, she’s a fucking moron.
I dodge pedestrians all the way to the foot of the bridge, then run alongside city hall to the Brooklyn Bridge subway station. I get lucky for once and a 6 Train pulls into the station as I pass through the turnstile. There are no seats, but I don’t care. I stand in the center of the car, one hand clutching a pole that runs floor to ceiling. I’m wearing a white peasant blouse and a brown, wraparound skirt speckled with gold rabbits. This is Serena’s favorite summertime outfit, but it doesn’t work for a self-proclaimed drudge. Nor does the loosened hair that cascades to my shoulders, or the almostblack lipstick, or the peacock-blue eye shadow.
In fact, I look like an idiot, a complete asshole, a total phony. Like Serena with her beads and her artificial flowers pretending she’s an artist. If we’re ever to have control of our lives, Victoria and I, we need to kick Serena to the curb. Eleni, too. We need to dump the both of them.
But that’s not going to happen anytime soon. And it won’t happen fast, either. The others went only after a long crusade. We froze them out, abandoned them, the parting not without pain, yet ultimately satisfying. Like pulling an infected tooth.
We’d been taking us for granted before unity was even a goal. Then we met Dr. Charlotte Harmon, the first therapist to fully understand our dilemma. We’d created us out of necessity she insisted. Which was fine. Carolyn had to escape and creating identities with no memory of the nightmare she’d endured was a brilliant solution. Her response was that of a sane child dealing with an insane environment. But circumstances change over time and us was not a strategy suitable to our present or future, no matter how well adapted it might have been to our past. We needed a plan B.
Dr. Harmon reached us (most of us, anyway) precisely because she didn’t think we were crazy.
I stand in the corridor outside Halberstam’s office for several minutes before I turn the knob. I need to ease off the gas and I tell myself that we’ve been here. I mean subject to a man with power. Be mostly honest. Don’t lose your temper.
Victoria’s with me this morning as I turn the doorknob and I sense an almost-hidden presence behind her. Kirk, our little boy-girl. Like Eleni, like Serena, Kirk’s a must-go.
Halberstam’s waiting room is as drab as Victoria’s description of his inner office, more beige on beige. That includes a middle-aged receptionist named Tanya who wears a beige jacket over a beige skirt. I take a seat and glance at a magazine, People, but don’t pick it up. I’m not expecting a long delay, being as I’m fifteen minutes late.
Tanya presses a button on the intercom, then leans forward and whispers something into the machine. Finally, she turns to me, her expression grave. “You may go in now,” she intones.
Victoria described Halberstam’s gaze as intense, but I find it evaluating. The kind of look a cheetah might bestow on a herd of gazelles before choosing a victim. But he’s not looking at me when I enter the room. He’s turned to one side, offering his angular profile while he scans a document.
I take a seat in the chair assigned to us and lean back, the sensation as unpleasant as it is submissive. Halberstam appears not to notice, but his disinterest seems to me theatrical. I don’t react because we’re accustomed to the scrutiny of therapists and know their techniques must be endured.
The only therapists who’ve done us any good have been female. Take it to the bank. And while I have no sex life of my own, I know that if I ever go down that road, it will be with a woman.
Halberstam finally straightens in his very upright chair. “You’re late,” he says.
There’s nothing to be gained by lying and I don’t try. “The body,” I explain, “was hijacked as I began to dress for the appointment. By the time I regained control …” I shrug, the message plain enough.
“And who did the hijacking?”
“Serena, our free spirit.”
“And when this hijacking occurred, you were helpless to prevent it? You couldn’t refuse?”
Halberstam’s just verbalized the essence of our problem. Which the jerk surely knew before he posed the question. I supply him with an answer prepared in advance. Tit for tat.
“If Carolyn Grand had a central authority who could order her identities, you would never have known she existed. That’s because she’d be sane.” I pause for a moment, then jump through the required hoop. “We’ve never done the choosing, Doctor, not from the day we were born.”
“Fine, in fact undeniable.” Halberstam leans back and crosses his legs. “Tell me. How do you know that Serena hijacked the body? Why not Victoria?”
I hate the role I’m in, unavoidable or not. I don’t see why I should have to explain anything to this moron. I don’t see why I should have to endure the semi-sneer that passes for a smile. Submission has never been my strong point.
Something inside me, perhaps one of the others, demands that I lie. Tell him you know it was Serena because the clothes you’re wearing could only belong to her. The truth will not set you free.
I ignore the advice. “I know, Doctor, because I was there. Along for the ride.”
“Just the two of you?”
“This time.”
“And other times?”
“Any number, any combination. It’s always been that way.”
I reflect for just a second. Then I repeat myself. “Always.”
“So, you’ve never questioned this arrangement?”
I take a second to adjust my thoughts, then say, “Look, Doctor. Early on I questioned every arrangement. Especially the most basic, who and what I am. But what’s the point? I can’t will myself into or out of existence, so I take what I can get. Like the rest of us.”
Halberstam replies a bit too fast. “Well said. Lack of control is the essence of your problem, a point also made by Victoria.” He folds his hands and lays them on the desk as he fixes me with one of those penetrating stares. “May I ask who I’m speaking to?”
“You’re speaking to Martha.”
“And how would you describe your … your role, Martha?”
“Old-fashioned housewife. I cook, clean, shop, pay the bills. I keep our little household up and running.”
“Victoria plays no part?”
“She does face-to-face. When we have to be seen.” Like my sister, I have no problem switching from “we” to “I” and back again. “Apart from taking out the garbage and collecting the mail, I try to keep my head down.”
“Can you tell me why?”
“I have a short fuse. I don’t really like people.”
“Would you call yourself a misanthrope?”
“I might if I knew what it meant.” My tone is sharp enough to be confused with sarcasm, one of those errors I vowed not to make. I watch Halberstam nod. I’m about to be punished.
“Do you remember what happened to you when you were a child?”
“No, I have no direct memory of my childhood. Carolyn Grand was twenty-five when I first became aware.”
“But you do know what happened, even if you can’t remember?”
“Yes, Doctor, I do know. And I’m reminded every time I step out of the shower and count the scars on my body.”
“The physical abuse.” His tone is eager and he’s leaning forward. “Victoria was very forthcoming about the physical abuse, but the other part, the sexual abuse … like you, she claimed to be totally unfamiliar with that phase of Carolyn Grand’s life.”
“Like I already said, Victoria and I were born on the same day, a week after Carolyn’s twenty-fifth birthday.”
Halberstam waves me off. His features are relaxed now, relaxed and confident. “Your father made movies, Martha, made them and sold them, movies that still circulate among pedophiles. You’ve seen these movies, so your childhood cannot be as remote as you make it out to be.”
Fifteen years ago, one of our therapists, Dequan Cho, decided that it was time that we confronted our past. We’d been running away for years, he explained, and look where we ended up. Our desperate attempt to escape a past that couldn’t be escaped had left us at the mercy of psychological forces we’d never vanquish. Not unless we confronted that past, unless we acknowledged the damage done to us. How? By reviewing some of the movies made by our father.
Cho had a combative personality. Fight, fight, fight. He’d grown up a privileged child in Riverdale and didn’t have a clue about the effect of that footage on poor Tina. Tina had been the star of those movies. Coerced into them by her father, Hank Grand, a malignant narcissist who loved to hurt the people closest to him. And nobody was closer than his daughter.
Unfortunately, Cho’s suggestion wasn’t a suggestion. We were guests of the state, restricted to a locked ward at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center after a now-banished identity took a nap on the Long Island Expressway. Life was crazy then. Identities came and went so fast it was like flipping through a deck of cards. Victoria and I weren’t around at that time, only Kirk, the oldest of us. He wanted out of Creedmoor—desperately, desperately, desperately, as Serena would say—and so he and the others agreed to watch.
Cho played the movies, maybe a dozen in all, for many hours over the next ten days. And I have to suppose our cooperation made a difference because Cho released us a few months later. Kirk and the rest were euphoric—free at last—and they might have remained euphoric if Tina hadn’t made her first attempt at suicide a week later. It took a day and a half to clean up the blood.
“The movies were unbearable, Doctor. But that’s only what was told to me by Kirk. The rest of us, except for Tina, had yet to be born.”
Halberstam spun a pen on his desk for a moment, the flick of his fingers so precise the pen described a perfect circle. I watched his tongue swish over his lips, but when he looked at me again, I saw only indifference in his gaze.
“Let’s talk for a moment about the incident that preceded your confinement at Kings County Hospital. One of your identities, I believe her name is Eleni, made an obscene proposal to a stranger. Do you think she meant to follow through? If the man agreed?”
Victoria’s as outraged as I am. I know Eleni considers me a prude, but that’s not remotely true. If she’d only be discreet. If she’d stop coming home with STDs, stop using whatever drug her partners chose to share, she could indulge her perverted desires from night until morning. There’s no moral issue here, not as far as I’m concerned.
I have a response to Halberstam’s question prepared, just not the one Victoria and I agreed on. “You have a computer on your desk, Doctor. Do a Google search for ‘swinger clubs in NYC.’ You’ll find page after page, club after club, many open to couples only. And if you search a little more, you’ll find agencies dedicated to making your deviant sexual fantasies come true. Just tell ’em what you want and they’ll arrange it. Craigslist, as well. Anything you want. Now, tell me, how many of the men and women who took advantage of the ads were threatened with involuntary commitment as a result?”
Halberstam only smiles. “The incident that brought Eleni to the attention of the police didn’t take place inside a club and it wasn’t arranged by an agency. It happened on a public street, stranger to stranger. The inherent risk is obvious.”
“Really?” I’m going too fast now, but I can’t stop thinking about all those construction workers who make sucking noises when an attractive woman passes by. “How many young men and women do you think visited the bars and clubs in Manhattan last Saturday? How many sought casual sex? How many went home with a stranger? They call them hookups, Doctor, and they happen thousands of times every weekend. But nobody goes to jail because they want to get laid. Except us.”
“Kings County Hospital is not a jail. It’s an ordinary hospital with a short-term psychiatric facility. In addition, you haven’t been charged with a crime and you won’t be. In fact, I’ll probably recommend that your therapy continue long enough for me to fully understand your situation and formulate a course of treatment. I hope things go well, of course.”
Halberstam smiles at that moment, perhaps expecting me to express my eternal gratitude despite the implied threat. That won’t happen because life under Halberstam’s thumb will include the fear, more or less constant, that we can still be committed. That it’s up to him.
“Excellent. Now, you were late today, and I understand why. But I can’t have you perpetually late or skipping sessions altogether. And I must become acquainted with each of your identities, including Eleni and”—he glances at his notes—“and Tina, the young one. You’ve said that individual identities can’t be ordered to appear and I believe you. But I’m hoping you can work on it.”
“We’ll do what we can, Victoria and I.”
“Excellent.” Halberstam looks down at his watch. “Well, we got a late start and our session is at an end. But there is one other thing and I’m going to put the matter bluntly. I only found out this morning, but your father will be paroled in less than a week.”
I can’t process the information at first, and I stammer, “What, what, what?”
“You were ten years old when Henry Grand was sentenced to thirty years in prison for what he did to you and many others. He’s now served twenty-seven. I don’t have any details, not yet, but he obviously convinced a parole board that he no longer poses a significant threat to the community. In any event, there’s nothing you or I can do except deal with it in the course of your therapy.” He gestures at the door. “I’ll reach out to the parole board for more details tomorrow morning. More than likely, some kind of restraining order will be issued. Now, if you’ll be so kind.”
As the door closes behind me, I hear Eleni’s voice in my ear. “Thanks,” she says, “for standin’ up for me.”