I shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t, shouldn’t, shouldn’t, sitting across from il Dottore with his ugly gaze weighing me in the balance. Surely this one can be broken. Surely this one can be made to bleed.
How could he not remind me of my father?
I beg for release, for annihilation, even for true insanity, the confusion of the damned. I am no longer of use to my family. When I look up, nothing looks back, every dream’s dark underbelly now exposed.
Our father had a special closet for his daughter, the doorway overlapped by sheets of cardboard so that no light penetrated, not a ray, the black absolute, the bottom of a coal mine or an ocean. And God help Carolyn Grand if she peeled back that cardboard, God help her if she disobeyed, God help her if she hoped.
I’m in that closet now, though nothing in il Dottore’s office has changed: the antiques in the same niches, the amber lamp resting on his desk, the rug cool and gray, the lacquered desk as black as Hank Grand’s soul.
Carolyn didn’t rebel, no more than the other children who passed through her father’s home, accompanied by their own fathers, their own mothers, pledged offerings to some demon too hideous to be named.
Can you commit suicide if you don’t exist? Can you kill the self without killing the body?
“Serena, I presume.” Il Dottore’s tone is almost gay.
“Yes.”
“Can you speak a bit louder?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, I can’t. Too tired.”
“I see. Well, did you at least bring the memos? The ones I asked Kirk to make sure came along with your next visit?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t.”
He falls back in his chair, shakes his head and rubs at his eyes, the attempt to feign exasperation supremely theatrical. He persists nevertheless, only gradually calming.
“Alright, let’s talk about anger, Serena. Your name, you know, indicates serenity, but is it possible to be serene after what you’ve been through?”
“Are you asking Serena. Or are you asking Carolyn Grand?”
“Serena.”
“Well, the question itself is invalid.”
“How so?”
“You assume that anger and serenity are opposed sides of a two-sided coin. So narrow, Doctor, so lacking in imagination, you the scientist, the objectivist. But why not despair?
Why not, when anger is pushed to the side, acknowledge how meaningless, how absurd, how comical your suffering has been? Why not admit that the well you stumbled into has no bottom? May I tell you a story?”
His blue eyes light up. “Of course.”
“Other children passed through Hank Grand’s house, brought there by a parent or by parents, mother and father, seeming natural, this is what we do, tell no one, it’s okay little girl, darling boy. And what are the children to do, broken as they are to the plow? Except, when the adults dismiss them, play?
“For about a year, when Carolyn was seven, Mira, also seven, came to the house at least once a week, not afraid, not even resigned, brought by her father, one of Hank Grand’s best buddies and a partner in the film business. First things first, the girls made flesh the perverted fantasies of the adults around them, afterward retreating to Carolyn’s bedroom upstairs, to watch TV sometimes but mostly to play a game of pretend. Each of them had a doll, Mira’s nearly new, Carolyn’s battered, the difference not occurring to the girls as they imagined a world they’d never known. The dolls had parties, went to school, rode three-wheelers up and down the block, played hopscotch on the sidewalk, tested hairstyles, modeled the dresses brought by Mira. They lived happy lives, joyous lives, normal lives, children’s lives.
“Other children, when they appeared, were drafted into the game, becoming teachers and doctors and policemen, becoming grocers and druggists, becoming boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands and wives, having children of their own, cherished beloved children.
“Carolyn dreamed, too, and she didn’t stop until she was taken away from her father, when her dreams should have come true, when she might have found someone to love her, to cherish her, but got the Acevedas instead. Only then did hope die, replaced by … by me, Eleni, Martha, Victoria, Kirk and many, many more. We’re her consolation prize.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I thought you wanted to know.”
“Know what exactly? What was your purpose?”
Without warning, I feel myself surrounded, as though wrapped in protective arms, the arms of a lover or a parent. I think, first, it must be Eleni or Kirk, but it’s not, and it’s not Martha, not Victoria. Older now, older than time itself, Tina holds me.
I listen to us breathe, my breath and hers, feel her warmth, our warmth, the heat of our body. My need swells as though summoned by a snake charmer’s flute. It flows into little Tina and I sense obligation, raw as winter rain, when her arms tighten around me.
“You have only to endure,” she tells me. “Only to endure.”
Il Dottore clears his throat. “You didn’t answer my question. The story you told me, about the other children, what did you hope to accomplish?”
“I wanted to inform.”
“Please.” Il Dottore’s laugh is a snort, the grunt of animal, a pig smelling the odor of a truffle beneath the muck at the bottom of its pen. “Inform me of what?”
“That Carolyn never gave up, that her courage, insignificant as it may have been, must count for something, no matter the world schemed against her, no respite, neither water for the thirsty nor food for the starving. Carolyn never caught a break, bad luck her only luck, and still she fought.”
“If you only knew how tiresome …” He fetches his enameled fountain pen, removes the top, replaces it. “We go round and round. Not just you, Serena, but all of you, Kirk, Victoria, Martha, Eleni, Tina. All of you, without exception. Do any of you have the slightest interest in reintegrating? Into again becoming Carolyn Grand? I don’t think so. You want only to be free, of the review board, of your therapy and your therapist.”
Does he realize that integration equals annihilation, that we know ourselves as living independent beings, our right to life as valid as that of the first microbe to wriggle its way through a primeval swamp? Just now my bladder is so full it’s all I can do not to squirm on the seat. And a little wave of acid inches along my esophagus—the antacid in my bag, so close, relief at hand if only I dared—and there’s a dried booger clinging to the inside of my right nostril and my ragged toenails are tearing into my forest-green leggings.
I am real. I exist.
I hear Victoria’s voice at that moment, repeat her words, syllable for syllable—careful, careful—there must be no mistakes. “Jesus instructs us to love our enemies, failure to do so a stone rolled across the entrance to His Father’s kingdom. But the instruction is no more than a tease because Jesus fails to tell us how to love our enemies, as if we could simply decide and our hearts would overfill. You also tease when you, a man able to sustain the illusion of a single self, state our goal simply: reunify. You cannot, of course, understand why the merits of the goal you set are dubious, but that’s of no matter. The merits, even if indisputable, are of no value merely stated. You haven’t told us how we are to achieve unification any more than Jesus told us how to love those we hate. Wishing, Doctor, let me assure you, will not make it so.”
Il Dottore stares at me for a moment, then laughs again. “Let me give you a hint. The path to unification necessarily begins with a commitment to unify. Neither you nor the others have made that commitment.” He exudes a theatrical groan and I find myself wondering if he believes what he says. Victoria and Martha would like nothing more than to see me go, accompanied in the shortest of orders by Eleni and Kirk. Martha’s said so many times.
“Maybe it’s my fault,” he continues. “Maybe there’s a magic wand out there and I simply haven’t found it. It hardly matters because, bottom line, I can’t perpetuate a fraud by continuing to treat you when months have gone by and you’ve made no progress. I really must reconsider our relationship.”