When I come alive, our body’s on the bathroom floor, sobbing. There’s nothing I can do but wait for long minutes until it calms. But that’s all the latitude I’m allowing. There’s no room for bullshit self-pity, no matter how fucking pitiful we really are. I’m not afraid that Hank Grand will kill us. I’m afraid he won’t, that he’ll bend us to his will, that he’ll eventually break us, that he’ll leave us even more fucked up than we already are. If that’s possible.
I make my way into our little bedroom, pull on underwear, a pair of loose-fitting jeans and a gray hoodie. Then it’s off to the silverware drawer in the kitchen where I retrieve the paring knife I usually carry. It’s obvious, by now, that Hank Grand’s willing to bide his time, that he’s content to study his prey. It’s been a long time, and the asshole needs to know who we are before he makes his move.
All to the good, the extra time. I’m a fucking Boy Scout and I intend to be prepared, even if that means cutting the bastard’s throat. I head for Marshal’s, dragging all our memories with me. Eleni was right. There’s no escape. No more hiding behind poor Tina. We are Tina.
Marshal has a woman in his apartment when I arrive. Her name is Mary and she has the sort of contented look that follows a serious workout. I’m hoping she made up for me punching him in the eye.
“You here about the material?” Marshal asks.
“Yeah.”
“I looked it over and there’s something you gotta see.” He glances at his girlfriend. “Mary’s gonna head home as soon as her ride shows up. We’ll take a look after. In the meantime …”
There’s a half-smoked spliff in a cut-glass ashtray. Marshal gestures to it, but I refuse. Weed can sometimes take you to a whacked-out place, a paranoid place. Which, when I think about it, is pretty much where I’m already at.
“I’m gonna go for walk,” I announce, mostly because I can’t sit still. “Be back in a half hour. Nice meeting you, Mary.”
Outside, I scan the block to the north and south. There’s no sign of Hank Grand, but I do get lucky. A woman I don’t know approaches, a sudden smile brightening her face. She’s an acquaintance, no doubt, of one of my sisters. Me, I’ve dealt with this situation before and my return smile is even more genuine because she’s smoking a cigarette. Martha’s budget for the Grand household does not include the price of tobacco.
I chat with the woman—her name is Dorian—for a few minutes. It turns out she works at the library Victoria uses for research. Victoria’s been getting a college degree at City University for the past eight years. Taking one course at a time, rarely completing any on schedule. Still, she’s close now, or so she claims.
“Listen,” I tell Dorian as she’s preparing to walk away. “I wonder if you’d be willing to part with a smoke? I’ve been tryin’ to quit, but right about now it’s killing me.”
“Been there,” she says as she reaches into her purse. “Done that.”
Dorian’s about my age and cute. A pudgy blonde with a quick smile and sharp, intelligent eyes. I’m instantly attracted, but her gaze reveals zero interest. I have to content myself with a quick check of her ass when she strolls away.
I decide to walk around the block, maybe burn off a little energy while I enjoy my rare cigarette. Once I get started, I can’t stop. I keep walking, past the trendy cars and the shops on gentrified Fulton Street, then along Lafayette Avenue with its impressive townhouses. My eyes never stop moving and I’ve made up my mind. If I spot our father, I’m gonna make him admit his identity. I’m gonna make a point as well. We’re not nine years old. We’re not his defenseless daughter, not anymore. If he fucks with us, we’re prepared to resist.
I’m thinking about how close fear is to hate when I knock on Marshal’s door fifteen minutes later. I’m thinking either one is motive enough to drive the blade of my knife into Hank Grand’s chest.
Inside, Marshal leads me to the spare bedroom that houses his computers, keyboards, and a host of peripheral devices, none of which I can identify. Marshal holds a degree in musical composition from NYU. In his unlimited spare time, he composes electronic music that he shares with online friends. Myself, I’m drawn to grungy rock bands working venues where the women have enough piercings to set off metal detectors a hundred yards away.
“I worked with your shrink’s files for hours,” Marshal says. “But I got almost nothing. The files are encrypted and I can’t find the key. Also, Halberstam’s permanently deleting his emails. An expert might be able to recover them. Not me.”
I watch him tap the keyboard, watch his computer, a laptop, jump to life. “So, what am I doing here?”
“I found one email in his Sent message box and you need to see it. According to the time stamp, it was written a few hours before his computer dumped its files. It’s probably been deleted by now.”
“What about his patient files?”
“If you’re thinking I can break his encryption, Kirk, I’m more likely to break into Billboard’s Top Fifty list.”
I smile as I wave him off. “Okay, let’s take a look.”
Zenia, my dear. Greetings from sweltering New York. On days like today, when it’s too hot for my daily run, how I do envy your move to ultra-temperate San Diego. In your part of the world, the average high in August is 76 degrees. In bustling New York, the temp broke 90 this afternoon, as it has for the past four days, cooking the brick, the concrete, and the asphalt in the process. I’m living in an oven.
But there’s good news, too. I’ve acquired a patient, a private patient who I’m able to bill at my full rate. No medical insurance discount, no cut-rate Medicaid reimbursement. The bills are being paid by Patricia’s daddy, the same daddy who molested her for years. As the crimes went unreported, Daddy continues to play a central part in her life, although he keeps his hands and his other parts to himself these days. The truth, that he lost interest when she matured, is as obvious as it is unavailable to her. She believes that he’s reformed.
Patricia presents just as obviously.
I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ve weighed more than two hundred pounds since I was sixteen? Daddy came into my room at night.
I have no friends and spend my lonely nights watching reality television? Daddy came into my room at night.
My co-workers hate me, and I only have a job because my father makes them put up with my obnoxious behavior? Daddy came into my room at night.
Zenia, dear, you’re familiar, of course, with the underlying principal: don’t blame me for anything because I’m not responsible. In our profession, we listen to this blather every day. Patients like Patricia come to us because they’re in pain. They tell us they have a right to their pain, but it still hurts. Please take my pain away they demand, without damaging my sense of entitlement.
Under the circumstances, as you taught me so long ago, we’d be fools not to liven the long hours we spend absorbing their self-pity. As for Patricia, I’m going to tell her that salvation depends on her performing a task she cannot possibly perform. I’m going to advise her to lose those hundred pounds.
You also asked after my multiple. No real news on that front. I’m still waiting for the elusive Eleni. But the father has now been released. How I’ll use him, if I’m able to use him, remains to be seen. Something interesting, however, did arise in the course of Carolyn Grand’s second visit. I believe I mentioned that Martha was the particular identity on that morning and that she was late. She excused her tardiness by claiming that an identity named Serena “hijacked” the body. How did she know that Serena was the hijacker? Martha knew because she was there, present, but unable to exert any measure of control. I don’t have to explain my instinctive skepticism. You know me too well. Two identities present at the same time? Why not three or four? But then I reviewed the literature and it seems this phenomenon has been commonly reported. One identity in full control of the body with others (voyeurs?) along for the ride. Fascinating.
I’m not surprised by any of it. The arrogance or the narcissistic chuckle at the end of every sentence. Halberstam’s the creepy asshole Serena took him for. But what I’m not finding is an immediate threat. Halberstam appears to be enjoying his time with us. We’re okay for now.
“There’s more, a lot more,” Marshal says when I return the printout. “I did a little checking online. I mean I don’t wanna pry and I definitely would’ve asked first. Only you didn’t come around, and I didn’t know if I should talk to—”
“One of the other multis?”
Marshal’s grin is apologetic. “Yeah, like that.”
I should probably reassure him, but I don’t. Multi seems too much like an epithet. Something a mob would hurl at you. “So, you said there’s more. Give it up.”
“Okay, follow me. What jumps out at you in that email?”
“Halberstam’s a creep with power.”
“True, but what else?” When I shrug, he adds, “The name, man. C’mon.”
“What name?”
“Zenia.” He leans forward. “First thing, I checked out one of those websites where they list baby names. Zenia’s a Greek name, something to do with Zeus, but it’s never been listed among the top ten thousand baby names in the United States.”
“Which means exactly what?”
Marshal throws up his hands. He’s gone way out of his way to help us and I’m acting as though I were doing him a favor. Nice.
“Go ahead,” I tell him. “And I’m sorry. But what with learning that our prick of a therapist thinks his patients are play toys, I’m not in the best of moods.”
“Yeah, I get it.” Marshal lights the spliff, takes a hit and passes it over. I know he wants me to join him and I do. “Okay, Kirk, what I figured was that Zenia is such an unusual name that I’d be able to find your shrink’s Zenia without too much trouble. No such luck. It seems like there’s not a single Zenia on the planet famous enough to be included in a Google search.”
“Nobody?”
“Right. In fact, the name Zenia is also spelled Xenia, and I found a tennis player named Xenia Knoll. But no Zenias.” Marshal takes a second turn on the joint. He offers it to me, but when I shake my head, he drops it into an ashtray and heads off to the kitchen. A minute later, he returns bearing a pint of pistachio ice cream, a dinner plate, two spoons, and a carving knife. He cuts the ice cream container in half, lays the two halves on the plate and passes me a spoon. Being as ice cream’s a rare treat for us, I get right to work.
“I wasn’t ready to give up,” he explains. “And I finally did what I should have done in the first place. I googled Halberstam’s name and found his Facebook page. No Zenias there, either, but he listed his degrees, including the doctorate in clinical psychology he earned at the SUNY graduate school in Stony Brook. That was in 1996 when he turned twenty-five.”
“You think it’s real? The diploma?”
“I know it’s real, Kirk, because I checked out the med school’s yearbook for 1996 and there he was. Take a look. This was on his yearbook page.”
Marshal’s grinning now, a proud little-boy’s grin as he slides his chair to a nearby computer and starts it up. I watch, impressed by the computer’s speed. It takes less than a minute before Marshal raises a dramatic finger and brings it down on a single key. A second later, a photo appears on the monitor.
Maybe twenty years younger, Halberstam’s posed in a laboratory alongside three young men and an older woman. Oddly, though it’s Halberstam’s yearbook page, the woman is in the center. The men stand to either side, with Halberstam all the way to the right.
“She got a name?” I lean forward to read the photo’s caption, but the letters are blurred. No biggie. Marshal’s printed out the page and blown up the caption. The woman’s name is Zenia Burgos, professor of clinical psychology, founder of the Burgos Trauma Resolution Center. Halberstam calls Zenia, in the last sentence, “my guiding light.”
Once again the satisfied smile. “Nope.”
Me, I don’t really care about Zenia because I don’t see what she has to do with us. But I don’t want to mess with Marshal’s high, either. I accept the printout he offers: a short article published ten years ago in Newsday. On page sixteen.
“I found it on a search for the Burgos Resolution Center,” Marshal explains. “It’s the only relevant item out there.”
The piece is quite short. In 2004, a group of former patients filed a class-action lawsuit accusing the center of malpractice. The lawsuit alleged cult-like practices and patients kept against their will. It also named three defendants: Zenia Burgos, Mathew Ostovsky and Laurence Halberstam.
“The center no longer exists,” Marshal tells me. “So, the lawsuit at least had that effect. And it looks like Zenia moved three thousand miles away afterward, so there’s that, too. But the case was settled before trial, with the settlement naturally including a nondisclosure agreement. The details never became public.”
I thank Marshal for the email and the research, but I’m thinking so what? The review board that hired Halberstam has faith in his professional abilities, which is all that matters. Still, it’s good to know what we’re up against. Even if it means confirming our worst fears.
“Anything else, Marshal?”
“Not really. Halberstam’s Facebook page is mostly about his specialty, treating victims of childhood trauma. You cannot go forward until you confront your past. That seems to be his mantra.