For once, I’m not forced to watch Halberstam bent over his notes while I cool my heels in the submissive chair at the start of our session. That’s because he’s not in the room. As you’d expect, I’m drawn to his desk and our files, my object to know, finally, his plans for our future. Such is the nature of power, such is the fear power generates, and I take a tentative, compulsive step before I stop myself. If he should walk into the room …
No desk, that much is obvious, and I construct a nightmare hypothetical, our freedom hanging in the balance, my compulsive curiosity tipping the scales. Who’s got the straitjacket?
Nevertheless, I do wander from niche to niche inspecting his precious objects. Most of the small objects in the niches are new, drawn apparently from a larger collection. My little pigs with their top hats have been replaced with a porcelain flask, yellow with delicate blue flowers rising on winding stems. The lavender dragon, my favorite, has been replaced by a lacquered box. A golden carp swims across its black lid, the fish so perfectly executed it appears to be in motion.
I hear the door open and turn to face Dr. Halberstam. His eyes move across my body, but there’s nothing prurient in his examination. Halberstam’s gotten fairly good at identifying us before we reveal our names. He’s obviously proud of this accomplishment, but it’s happened with every therapist who stuck with us for more than a month. I’m wearing tan slacks and a thin white blouse, thinner than I like but a necessity given the heat radiating from the sidewalks. My makeup is minimal, my hair swept along the side of my head and fastened with a dark blue barrette.
“Serena,” he says at last.
“Sorry, try again.”
“Oh, yes, the dowdy outfit. I should have known. You’re Victoria.”
“Correct.”
“Please.” Halberstam gestures toward the submissive chair and I dutifully follow his command, surrendering to gravity. I’m thinking about the email Marshal discovered, a copy of which I found on our dining table. Our therapist’s a man who likes to play with other people’s pain, but there’s nothing we can do about it. Hacking is a crime, a felony in New York and—
“We’ve been working together for how long?” Halberstam’s voice jerks me to attention. “Six weeks now?”
“About that.”
“So, we’re talking about more than twenty-five visits.”
I know where this is going and it’s not to a place I want to visit. I know also that I have no choice. Halberstam is a predator wise enough to foreclose all lines of retreat. We know him now, except for Tina who’s been gone so long I half expect her to never return.
“I haven’t been counting, but that seems right,” I say.
“Do you see the problem?”
I’m tempted to say, “Yes master.” But I’m not Eleni and I don’t. “You want to meet Eleni and Tina.”
“I can fully understand Tina’s reluctance, assuming she is, as you say, the only one who remembers.”
“That’s changed now.”
“Changed?”
“Since my father stepped into our lives. We remember.” I somehow manage to maintain a reasonably flat tone, though I’m shaking inside. The flashbacks rip into me without warning. Maybe, at some point, I’ll be able to knit them into a whole, a coherent past. Not yet.
I watch Halberstam open the center drawer of his desk and remove a fountain pen, his favorite prop. He stares at it for a moment, then says, “Well, that’s something we need to talk about. Later, perhaps. For now, let’s discuss the report generated by Adult Protective Services. Some of your neighbors have complained about you, Victoria, and the landlord claims that you’re uncooperative and often late with the rent.”
On another day, I might be upset. Not today. Ms. Portman has already called us. As far as APS is concerned, we’re functioning adequately, a conclusion they’ve reported not to our therapist but to the court. As for our dear landlord, Muhammad Nazari, he wants us out, so he can raise the rent on our rent-stabilized apartment by 20 percent. Thus, he harasses Carolyn Grand, as he harasses all his tenants, as landlords all over this city harass their tenants. According to Ms. Portman, Doyle was the only other person to complain.
“No reaction, Victoria?”
“I can’t address nebulous complaints. As for paying the rent, we’ve always, month after month, for all the years we’ve resided in the building, paid our rent before the tenth.”
Halberstam stares at me for a few seconds, then swivels in his chair as he searches for a more productive line of attack.
“Alright, let’s return to our original topic. I’ve seen Kirk three times, Serena twice, you eight times, and Martha fourteen times. But I’ve never seen Eleni or Tina. That’s very convenient, Victoria. Convenient for you. As for myself, I’m beginning to doubt they exist.”
“I don’t blame you. Nevertheless—”
“No.” Halberstam points the fountain pen, an accusing finger if I’ve ever seen one, at the center of my forehead. He’s become more domineering with every session. “The incident that brought you to the attention of the court? Blamed on a nonexistent identity, it need never be explained. And your brutal past? If you invent an identity in charge of remembering, you need never review it.” He leans back in his chair, seemingly content. “Are you playing me, Victoria? Are you hustling me? Do you consider me an inconvenience imposed by the court, an inconvenience you can simply dismiss?”
I remain calm, my legs crossed, my hands in my lap, my expression (I hope) interested, but unimpressed.
Halberstam drops his hand to his desk. “Now, we’ve spoken about Carolyn’s life with her father at some length in the past. Her loyalty to him, though utterly misguided, was only to be expected. But we haven’t touched on what happened later, when she was put into foster care with …” He pauses to check the file on his desk. “With the Aceveda family. I assume you remember now.”
I manage to scoot up on my chair until I’m more or less perched on the edge. That way, as I give Halberstam his cheap thrill, I can lean toward him, share a few confidences. I steel myself against the unavoidable profanities, but when I finally speak, my bitter tone reveals as much as the words themselves.
“With the Acevedas? Carolyn was a whore, Doctor. That’s how she thought of herself, how the other girls thought of themselves. Whores, hookers, working gals, and sometimes when they were really feeling ambitious, escorts. But whatever she called herself, at the end of the day, Carolyn did the fucking and her foster parents, that would be Angela and Benny, kept the money. Whore? Pimp? No more than words to Carolyn. The Acevedas took care of their little moneymakers. They fed Carolyn, clothed her, even sent her to school.”
“To school? Why didn’t she say something? She did eventually let a school counselor know about her father.”
“And where did it get her? No.” I stop suddenly, as the memories pour into my awareness. Everything I want to forget. “Two things, Doctor. The Acevedas were a step up for Carolyn. And if they never showed the girls any affection, they never punished them, either. And the sex part? At age ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen? Sex was all Carolyn Grand ever knew.” I take a moment to let the anger drain away. I have a point to make and I don’t want Halberstam to confuse the issue. “It’s funny how foster-care boys get all the attention, joining gangs, heading off to prison or dead in the street. You don’t hear much about the girls, but certain outcomes are pretty obvious. The boys think violence is the only way up. The baddest get the most. Now ask yourselves what the girls have to offer when they hit puberty and start hanging out. How do they survive? What tools can they deploy? Even if they haven’t been molested already.”
“And what about Carolyn?” Halberstam’s expression doesn’t change.
“Carolyn escaped.”
“How?”
“She went insane. Our father made sure of that.”
“Ah, your father.” Halberstam’s eyes are bright enough to reveal his excitement. Perhaps that’s because he’s got one more surprise. “I’m glad you brought him up. His parole officer, Kevin Powell, phoned me earlier. Your father, it seems, wants to … reconcile is too grand for his aspirations. He wants to atone.”
Inside, I’m begging anyone to take control of the body: Martha, Eleni, Kirk, Serena. The humiliations are too much for me, my dignity too important, and if the others laugh at my pretensions, they’re still my pretensions. Everything about me, from my hair to the generous cut of my slacks to my polished shoes with their two-inch heels, every item is meant to establish a dignity we’ve never believed ourselves entitled to. Dr. Halberstam means to strip that away.
“You need to be more specific. What exactly does his atonement require from us?”
“A supervised meeting at a neutral site. Where it goes from there is strictly up to you.” He brings his hands together, steeples his fingers. “According to Officer Powell, your father is no longer the man you knew. He’s spent most of the last twenty-seven years in isolation and the remainder in therapy. Please understand, I’m not necessarily recommending that you accept the offer and we don’t have to decide today. Think it over.”
His smile curls around his narrow face. Everything in time. Again, I start to rise, and again he stops me with a wave of his hand. “Now, you were six years old when your mother left. Is that right?”
“She ran for her life.”
“Leaving you behind.” He pauses long enough to allow his point to fix itself in my brain. “But that’s another issue we’ll save for a later date. For the present, I’d like to hear about your life before she left. Please, whenever you’re ready.”
I don’t want to remember and Halberstam knows that, his eager look giving his game away. And he’s right, on one level. We’ve always hidden behind Tina. With that defense gone …
“I only remember the fighting, my mother bleeding, calling for help I couldn’t provide. As for Carolyn Grand, I can’t be sure because it all happened so long ago, but I think my father mostly ignored his daughter until his wife left him.”
“And afterward …”