Zenia,
How many times have you warned me against unrestrained arrogance? How many times urged me to resist embracing my bottom-line narcissism? How many times have you pressed me to accept the occasional defeat? If not with good grace, at least with resignation.
What, you’ve run out of fingers and toes? You’re now working with grains of sand?
I can’t beat them. I admit that to you, put it in writing, cannot take it back. The collection of identities calling itself Carolyn Grand will not be manipulated by Dr. Laurence Halberstam. The only confession in the offing is my own. I’ve failed.
Between Carolyn’s many years in therapy and her sharp, neatly-concealed intelligence, her identities have become emotionally self-sufficient. One imagines them a family on the frontier, mountain people who keep to themselves, who reflexively fear the outsider.
Given the lives they’ve been forced to live, one can hardly blame them.
But I will never reach them. They parry each thrust with some tidbit, an anecdote, a memory, real, imagined, or entirely fictional. And the identity you wish to speak with is never there.
I didn’t exist. I didn’t exist. I didn’t exist.
Admit defeat, face your failures, cut your losses. That’s always been your advice—it’s why you settled the lawsuit—and I’m ready to take it. In any event, I’ll be telling no lie when I inform the review board that Carolyn Grand’s therapy has gone nowhere, that I hold no hope for the future and that I must, therefore, conclude our professional relationship.
What then?
That’s up to the board, of course. They may choose to leave Carolyn Grand at home until they locate another therapist. Or they may choose to confine her. Confining her is the safest course and the one they wish to take, but Carolyn’s attorney is unusually zealous, so …
You asked about Patricia, my little chubby, the idiot I told to lose a hundred pounds if she wished to free herself from the delusions that torment her existence. My apologies, Zenia, I’ve been so obsessed with my little multi that I’ve lost perspective. In any event, Patricia accepted the challenge. She’s dropped fifty pounds and taken to wearing tiny thongs that cause her buttocks to literally undulate. I need only snap my fingers and … and I believe I will.
I’m going to leave it there for the time being. I’m dining with Marilyn and Bill this evening and I need to prepare myself. My sister is beyond tedious and her husband is even worse. So sincere, so mediocre, so ultimately boring.
Zenia, I’ll be thinking of you as I shovel Marilyn’s breaded pork chops into my mouth, comparing your conversation with hers, all those forbidden rooms through which only the great may pass. Perhaps that will see me through. Let us hope so.
Always yours, Laurence
We gathered within seconds, all except Tina. Though we read the email over and over, the message never eluded us. Despite the bullshit, Halberstam wasn’t resigned to his failure. The scumbag was out for revenge.
What to do about it? How much risk were we prepared to accept? The cop was there, Ortega. Eleni’s madly in love with him, though she won’t admit it. Talk about risk. I like the cop. We all do. But trust him? Give me a fucking break. For all I know, the freak named Carolyn Grand might amount to no more than a notch on Ortega’s belt. Eleni is blind to the threat, and there’s not one of us who wants to bring her back to Earth. She’s positively glowing, as if she’s shed a decade. If anything, we’re jealous.
At his insistence, the cop’s driving me to Halberstam’s office. O’Neill’s still out there he claims, growing more desperate and more dangerous by the day. So, we definitely need protection. I like to think I can take care of myself, but after checking my face in the mirror, my resistance fades.
“You want me to go up with you?” he asks. We’re parked twenty yards from Halberstam’s door.
“To do what? Shoot him?”
He only smiles as he turns on the radio. “Good luck, Martha.”
I take my seat, Halberstam’s office now so familiar I might as well be standing on a subway platform. I’m holding a manila envelope in my lap and the doctor’s eyes go to it after a quick survey of our injuries. Injuries in which, apparently, he has no interest.
“Ah, the memos at last.”
“’Fraid not, Doctor.”
Halberstam’s chin jerks up. Whatever’s about to come, it won’t be good. My tone is too cold even to be confrontational. No more dancing around the ring. Toe-to-toe.
“I have something you need to see,” I explain. “But I’m going to tell you a story first. Just so you fully understand our position. Not my position, Doctor. Our position.”
“Is that so?” Halberstam’s eyes withdraw. If he’s angry, he’s not showing it. “I have news for you as well. But we’ll save that for later on. Proceed.”
“You age out of foster care on your eighteenth birthday. So long, goodbye, adios. You know nothing of the real world, even if you’re sane. But if your fragmented psyche grows more fragmented every day, you are well and truly fucked. Carolyn Grand was first sent to a shelter where she was raped on her second day. She then took to the streets, sleeping in the subway or on a park bench when it was warm enough. Chaos swirled around her. No, I should say that chaos swirled around them because there were so many little Carolyns that it was all-but-impossible to keep track.
“Carolyn’s memory became a series of discrete patches separated by empty black holes. Fall asleep in Manhattan, wake up in Brooklyn. And that guy you traded sex for shelter with because you couldn’t bear another cold night on the street? He’s a complete stranger to the Carolyn who wakes up the next morning. What’s more, he’s demanding sex and he’s not taking no for an answer. A deal is, after all, a deal.
“Survival at its most basic level demands knowledge that can pass from one self to another. Where to get a free meal. A talent for begging. Instinctive avoidance of dangerous people and places. Where you can find a clean bathroom to empty your bowels.
“You’re assaulted from time to time. There’s no avoiding it on the street, but you learn to minimize the damage. From time to time, one or another of the city’s social workers finds you shelter in a protected environment. But then you disappear for a month. Or forget the arrangement was ever made.”
I stop long enough to smile. “I keep saying ‘you’ as if there were only one of us, when in fact we were closer to a tribe. We remained that way throughout our stay at Creedmoor and afterward, until our involuntary commitment to Brooklyn Psychiatric, where we lived for almost a year.
“We were a source of conflict on the medical side at Brooklyn Psychiatric. Psychologists urged group and individual therapy. Psychiatrists preferred obliteration through chemicals. Neither treatment was of any value, but still we benefited. We benefited by eating three reasonably nutritious meals each day, by sleeping each night in the same bed, by having our medical needs met. Including an ulcer on our right leg that had been open for a month.
“By the time we encountered a hospital social worker named Evelyn Scaparelli, we were physically stable. We were also secure enough in our day-to-day survival to understand, despite the antipsychotic meds, the opportunity she presented. We were entitled by law, she explained, to benefits like disability, Medicaid, SNAP, and Section Eight. Put them all together, and it amounted to a stable life, a springboard if you will, a platform. But only if we became responsible enough to maintain it. Each of these benefits requires reauthorization, at which time documents have to be produced. Your latest bank statement, latest disability statement, SNAP benefit statement, a notarized application. For the average American, the process would be merely annoying. For Carolyn Grand and her merry band …
“Victoria and I were born while Carolyn was in Brooklyn Psychiatric. Victoria won’t admit it, but I believe that what was left of Carolyn Grand deliberately created us. That’s how much it meant to come home at night, to lock the door behind you and know you were safe. The other selves, they could enjoy their shelter, but they could never have maintained it. Me and Victoria, we did that. Against crazy odds at first but always stubbornly, obsessively. Always focused on a single goal. A locked door between us and the world, a door you could open and close, people you could let in or leave out. Keep in mind, Doctor, these were luxuries that Carolyn had never known.”
Halberstam finally intervenes. “Why,” he asks, “are you telling me this? Why now?”
“Because we want you to understand what the stakes are. For us, I mean. What it means to us when we read something like this.”
I slip the top sheet from the manila envelope, work my way out of the submissive seat, walk over to his desk and lay the email we intercepted last night in his hand. He glances down, a sneer on his face, then blanches, his complexion turning bone white.
“What do you think might happen,” I ask him, “if we stake out your office until Patricia shows up? What might happen if we give her this email?” I reach into the envelope and withdraw a second email, this the earliest, where he tells Zenia that Patricia has a rich daddy who molested her.
“What do you think would happen if I run down Patricia’s father and show him the email labeling him a pedophile? How long before he files a malpractice suit? Hours? Minutes? Seconds?” I hesitate, a practiced comedian about to deliver a punch line. “You’re licensed by New York’s Department of Health. Imagine standing before one of their review boards, explaining why you passed on confidential information about a patient to your fucking guru. Or how you intend to seduce Patricia now that she’s lost enough weight to be attractive. Your license, your accreditations … out the window, Doctor. And we both know it.”
Halberstam’s blues eyes close, but not before I register the panic. I watch him draw a long breath as he gathers what little courage he possesses. He’s going to bluff and I’m going to call. A long stay at a psychiatric hospital means the loss of our apartment. We’d have to start over and I haven’t the heart for the struggle.
“You stole these somehow,” he says, his tone unsteady. “You invaded my privacy. I could send you to prison.”
“You’re right about the stealing, Doctor, and about us invading your privacy. And you’re also right about that invasion being a crime. But on the last part you’re not even close. Carolyn Grand’s a certified lunatic and they don’t send lunatics to prison. They send them to the looney bin, which is exactly where you want to send her anyway. Talk about loselose. This is lose-lose-lose, the last loser being you.” I slap the top of the desk. Something’s happening to us, even beyond the many threats. We’ve been cringing all our lives and we’re sick of it. We no longer hope to survive. We mean to survive. “You spelled out what we want in your emails. We want to be rid of you, of you and of all supervision. Simple as that.”
I drop three more emails on his desk, then walk back to my chair and sit down. Last night, Bobby insisted that Halberstam’s life was entirely transactional. A series of deals from which he hoped to profit. If he found he couldn’t, he’d cut his losses and walk away. The cop was right, and I can read it in Halberstam’s eyes when he raises his head. He’s going to make the only move on the table.
“You’ll have to admit, my evaluation of Carolyn Grand and her identities was dead on. You’re more than a match. In fact, you remind me of Zenia.” Having delivered the ultimate compliment, he steeples his fingers. “So, how shall we proceed?”