The Girls He Adored

62

There was no shortage of toiletries or hair care products in the guest bathroom adjoining Irene's bedroom. She had her choice of three toothbrushes. In her old life it would have been an agonizing decision-Irene had never used another person's toothbrush, not even Frank's. But by her third morning in captivity, her second on Scorned Ridge, she found herself scrubbing away with the first toothbrush that came to hand, not obsessing at all over the probability that it had been owned and used by a dead woman.

Her mind was clear and focused. Last night before falling asleep, she'd worked out what she needed to do. When the alters had finished up their collective history, she would need to work with Max alone. If any fusion of identities was going to take place, Max was the alter who would be in charge.

But before she would facilitate a fusion, she'd have to know a little more about him. Ulysses, the old host alter, thought Max was a demon. Was it possible, despite his denials, that Max also thought of himself as a devil? He didn't present as a paranoid schizophrenic, but he might well be a Cluster B sociopath with narcissistic tendencies.

In which case, it would be wrong, morally and professionally, as well as dangerous for Irene personally, to further empower Max. What her options might then be, she wasn't sure-maybe try to strengthen one of the other alters. Christopher seemed pretty well established. But she didn't need to decide any of that until she had a better understanding of Max's makeup.

After showering, Irene donned a rose-colored Versace T-shirt that had cost some woman thirty or forty bucks new, and a pair of white Bermuda shorts from the Gap. When she opened the bedroom door, the aroma of fresh coffee filled the staircase, drawing her down to the kitchen.

Miss Miller was at the stove, her back to the room, the picture of domesticity in slippers and a silk housecoat over one of her green dresses. The only jarring note was the strawberry blond hair: instead of being shoulder-length, straight, and sleek, as it had been the last time Irene saw her, it was thick and full and curly, cascading halfway down her back.

Act normal, Irene told herself. Normal, normal, what is normal? “Good morning, Julia.”

Miss Miller turned toward Irene. “Good morning, Dr. Cogan.”

The hand-sewn green silk surgical mask puffed out when she spoke. In the daylight Irene could see that the eyelids above it were skin grafts, clumsy reconstructions. “Did you sleep well?”

“I never sleep well.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. Perhaps I could prescribe something for you.”

“I don't like to sleep. I see myself in dreams, the way I used to be.”

“I understand.”

“I doubt that very much.”

The back door opened. Maxwell entered the kitchen wearing a Hawaiian shirt over baggy shorts, carrying a wicker basket.

Beneath the stiff bodice of the green dress, Miss Miller's bony chest began to rise and fall rapidly, Irene observed. Love or fear?

“Morning, Irene-feel these.” He brought the basket over to the table. It was lined with excelsior and filled with fresh eggs.

She touched one. “It's still warm.”

“Fuckin-A,” said Maxwell.

“Language!” warned Miss Miller, turning back to the stove.

“I didn't hear any complaints last night.” Maxwell slapped her playfully on the rump.

“Ulysses!” A pleased, simpering tone. Irene wondered if she were blushing under the mask-if she could blush.

Morning session. Max handed Irene the contract he'd drawn up. It was letter-perfect; after formally inquiring again whether any of the alters, known or unknown, had any objections to the contract, and receiving no demurs, she slipped the piece of paper into her notebook.

“Would you like to take up where we left off last session, or is there anything that's come up since then that you'd like to discuss?”

“I can't even remember where we left off,” said Max with a selfdeprecating grin.

“Coming from anyone else, I might be able to believe that.”

“Okay, then.” Max's eyes rolled up, the lids fluttered, and he began to speak in a monotone:

“Do you still feel the guilt. Only every fucking day of my life. And the woman I met this morning-the woman with those terrible scars. That was Miss Miller. What a world, what a world. Sounds like a good place to start our next session. You're the doctor.”

Irene started to ask this new alter his name, then remembered Max's warning. Quickly she thumbed back through her notebook until she found it. “Hello, Mose. I'm Dr. Cogan.”

“Irene Cogan, M.D. Derealization Disorders in Post-Adolescent Males, Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Speaking in Tongues: Dissociative Trance Disorder and Pentecostal Christianity, Psychology Today. Dissociative Identity Disorder, Real or Feigned? Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases.”

“How do you feel about what's going on?”

“What's Going On. Marvin Gaye. U.S. number one R amp;B top forty-five, week ending March twenty-seventh, nineteen seventyone through week ending April twenty-fourth, nineteen seventyone.”

Irene jotted down the words savant and autism? next to his name. “Thank you, Mose. May I speak with Max again?”

An effortless switch. “Real ball of fire, that Mose,” said Max.

“Rights and dignity of all alters,” Irene cautioned him.

“Sorry. Okay-the fire. I spent a couple months in the hospital, they performed three separate skin grafts, then-”

“Excuse me, Max. I understand burns are terribly painful. Is there an analgesic alter in the system?”

“Unhappily, no. Morphine helped. So did rapid switching. And when all else failed, Lyssy the Sissy.”

“May I speak with Lyssy?”

“I don't think he's available at the moment. He had rather a bad fright that night we were hiding out in the old jail-I haven't heard from him since.”

“Perhaps another time.”

“Perhapssss.” Irene's lisp. Max continued in his own voice. “Okay-fire, pain, operations. A few months in the hospital, then almost a year in the Umpqua County Juvenile Facility awaiting trial on charges of murder, arson, and attempted murder. No bail- there was nowhere for me to go anyway.

“The ranch wasn't bad-that's where I learned to raise chickens. After lights out, the boys would stage fights. Call-outs, they called them. No holds barred-anybody could call out anybody else. And if you didn't fight, everybody got a free crack at you.

“Then one summer morning my lawyer comes out to the ranch to tell me all the charges have been dropped. He said Miss Miller had changed her story, told the DA that Kronk had attacked her and I had come to her defense, that the fire was an accident. I wasn't sure how to take it-whether she was trying to protect me, to make it up to me somehow, or whether she was just afraid I'd turn her in about the sex. I'd never told anybody about that.

“Then the lawyer told me Miss Miller wanted me to come back to live with her again, and how did I feel about that? I grabbed my gear out of my footlocker and drove away with him and never looked back. The only person I even said good-bye to was my best friend Buckley. Black guy from Compton. He and I had been inseparable. I was already good at martial arts and wrestling-or anyway, Lee was-”

“May I…” Irene began.

Alter switch.

“… speak with Lee.”

He was already there. Poised body language, somehow tense and calm at the same time. He'd puffed out his chest, and he was unconsciously pumping his fists until the veins stood out on his forearms.

“I didn't know shit about street fighting.” Each word was weighed carefully before it emerged from between lips pressed so tightly together that the full, bowed shape of Maxwell's lips had become two thin, cruel lines. “Bucky whipped my ass good our first fight. After we buddied up, he taught me his secret. It saved my life more than once.”

Lee paused to take a sip of water from the glass on the threelegged table. The forest animals had grown used to the therapy sessions. A squirrel scampered across the dry needles; jays quarreled in the lower branches of the firs; somewhere high overhead in the forest canopy an invisible woodpecker was noisily at work. “That's all I got to say.”

The next time Maxwell spoke, it was as Christopher. Irene was attuned enough by now to recognize the soft, melodic voice.

“I remember I was confused at first. Instead of heading back towards town, the lawyer drove east, into the mountains. He told me Miss Miller had bought Scorned Ridge for us to live in. I remember thinking it was a little peculiar, the way he dropped me off near these, these ruins — the place was an unholy mess, the buildings falling down, the meadow overgrown. He didn't even get out of the car. Just handed me my duffel, yelled, ‘Good luck, kid,’ and roared off back down the hill.”

Christopher closed his eyes. Irene understood that he was back there again, standing by the side of the blacktop.

“I pick up my duffel and head for the house. The screen door is swinging on one hinge. Skreeeek, skreeeek. Front door's boarded up. I hear her calling me from the back of the house. Her voice is so different, but still so… her. She's in the kitchen heating water for tea. Wearing an old-fashioned black dress. She turns around. Oh Jesus, oh god.”

Irene reached out, put her hand on his shoulder. Christopher opened his eyes, looked around wildly, then relaxed visibly when he saw it was Irene. He tried to make a joke out of it.

“Oh, mama! I don't think I can go back there twice.”

She told him what she'd have said to any patient. “But you must, Christopher. You have to confront the past in order to realize that it is the past. You have to relive it in order to get to the place where you can hold it as a memory, and not keep reexperiencing it subconsciously as a current event.”

“But it is a current event,” he moaned. “Everything's a current event. Mose never forgets anything.” He grabbed his head between his hands, pressing his strange smooth palms tightly against his temples.

“It's not about forgetting, it's about forgiving,” said Irene. “Understanding and forgiving yourself. You're carrying a crushing burden of guilt around with you.”

It was Max who looked up, his head in his hands. “Sister, you don't know the half of it,” he said sardonically.

“Tell me.”

“The first one's name was Mary Malloy.”