The Moment She Was Gone

2

I am not surprised that Augusta is refusing to have my sister in her house. She has been doing that for as long as I’ve known her. In fact. Augusta abandoned this entire family the moment my brother slipped a gold band on her finger. Until then, she was Miss Mousy Tiptoes, hiding behind my brother’s considerable girth, the shrinking violet at any family gathering. Well, sure. She knew she was bringing to this union two illegitimate children, she knew she was five years older than Aaron, she knew she had nothing more than a high school education, she must have at least suspected, don’t you think, must have at least had a faint glimmer, hmmm, that some of us in the Gulliver family (like me, for example) could see past the 36-C tits and shy batting eyelashes to where there lurked a conniving little country bitch intent on hitching her wagon to a future corporate star.

She dropped the pose the moment they were man and wife. That first year of their marriage, Gussie — we were still calling her Gussie back then — found some excuse to refuse, on behalf of herself, my brother, and her two delightful little girls, my mother’s invitation to Grandma Rozalia’s traditional Passover seder. Mind you, my mother’s not religious. But Passover was important to Mom, as it was to all us kids when we were growing up, and still is, even now that Grandma Rozalia is dead. I wasn’t married to Maggie the first time Augusta became a seder no-show, but in later years, even though she’s not Jewish, Maggie attended each and every one of them, including the ones at my mother’s house after Grandma died. In fact, Maggie told me she actually enjoyed them.

Not so Augusta.

Nor did she feel it was important to spend Thanksgiving with the Gullivers, or Christmas, which my mother also celebrated. She did come to my wedding because by then she must have sensed that I could become a formidable enemy, especially when twinned with my sister, but that was an exception. For all practical purposes, the day my brother married Augusta, he could have moved to China. My fondest wish is that one day I’ll walk into a restaurant and see my brother sitting there with a gorgeous twenty-three-year-old natural blonde, not his wife.

I would cheer to the rafters.

I would buy him a cigar.

My mother and I meet in front of the Metropolitan Museum, at twelve noon that Friday, and then walk into Central Park. This is the day after Independence Day and the park is unusually crowded, tourists and residents alike enjoying the long weekend.

My mother is wearing one of the Chanel ripoffs a tailor on Fifty-seventh Street makes for her. This one is fashioned of some light-weight fabric in the classic Chanel somewhat-plaid design. It fits her beautifully. Her auburn hair is neatly coiffed, her fingernails are painted a bright crimson. She takes good care of herself, my mother.

We sit in the sun on a park bench near a stately old maple. I have brought along sandwiches and Cokes I bought in a deli on Madison. I offer my mother a choice of either tuna and tomato on a hard roll or chicken salad on white. She opts for the chicken salad. I pop the can of Coke for her, offer her a straw. We sit eating. Somewhere not too far away a man begins playing scales on a tuba. He makes his practicing sound like a symphony. It is a beautiful bright sunny day, and bloated fat notes float on the air. But we are here to discuss what we are going to do about a person who was declared schizophrenic not a week ago.

“Well, an Italian doctor,” my mother says.

“Still, Mom...”

“In Sicily, no less. I’ve been to Sicily, thanks. You can have it. I can just imagine what kind of doctors they have there.”

“That’s why I think we ought to have her checked here.”

“She’d never agree to seeing a psychiatrist. You know how she feels about the health care system, quote, unquote.”

We have never been able to figure out why Annie thinks she knows something incriminating about the health care system. Something which, if she reported it to the proper authorities, would threaten the very foundations of our complacent society. It is true that when she was fourteen years old, during her summer vacation, she worked as a candy striper at Lenox Hill Hospital. But aside from this one supposedly “inside” look at health care, she has not been near a doctor or a dentist since. Well, except for the time she contracted malaria, and we had to take her to the hospital before she burned up alive or shook herself to death. Or — well, yes — the time she had what was diagnosed as an overdose of “something or other” by our then family doctor. But aside from those two instances, she has assiduously avoided any contact with members of the medical profession, who — like the shrink in Sicily — might falsely diagnose her as being... well... not normal.

“This may all be academic, anyway,” my mother says. “She found a job.”

“Are you serious?”

“I know, I’m even afraid to say it out loud.”

“Where? What kind of job?”

“A jewelry store in Brooklyn. She’ll be working behind the counter. It’s only part-time, she’ll be a salesperson. But at least it’s something.”

“It certainly is.”

“She starts Saturday.”

“That’s really good news, Mom.”

“Oh, please, I’m so grateful. But what I’m saying, Andrew, perhaps there’s no need to do a follow-up here.”

“I just thought a doctor here could...”

“You know how she feels about doctors.”

“The point is, this’ll be in her record forever,” I tell my mother. “Unless a doctor here...”

“So? Who’s going to look at her record? Is she applying for a job with NASA? She’s content to make her own jewelry, open a little shop here or there, earn enough to get by on. That’s all your sister needs.”

“But she doesn’t earn enough to get by on.”

“Well.”

“How much is this part-time job going to pay?”

“Well, not a lot. But it’s something, Andrew. Don’t belittle her efforts.”

“I’m not. My point is, you keep giving her money, Mom.”

“Am I supposed to let her starve? Be sensible, Andrew. With a little bit of money, Annie has always stayed productive and happy. That’s all I wish for her. A wedding in June, forget it. She is what she is.”

“But a doctor says she’s...”

“A doctor in Italy! Do you put any store in what he said? Whatever his name is.”

“Bertuzzi. Frankly, I don’t know what to believe, Mom.”

“Well, you met the man, you sat face to face with him. Did he seem... authentic to you?”

“He seemed like a doctor, yes. I mean, he wasn’t rattling bones and throwing them in the dirt...”

My mother actually smiles.

“... he seemed like a genuine doctor in a respectable linen suit, yes.”

“Did you see any diplomas on the wall? Any certificates? Anything like that?”

“No, Mom, I didn’t. But he was a doctor, he was a psychiatrist, let’s agree on that, can we? The question is what do we do now? A qualified psychiatrist has told us that Annie...”

“Does she look crazy to you?”

“No. But I’m not a...”

“She doesn’t look crazy to me, either.”

“Well, neither of us...”

“I think Annie is well aware of the consequences of what happened in Italy. If I can help her with enough money to live in decent housing, enough money for food and whatever supplies she needs to make her jewelry, maybe help her to open another little shop...”

“Aaron thinks she’ll be running off again.”

“Aaron is a wonderful son, but I don’t think he’s a very good brother. Don’t you dare tell him I said that, Andrew,” she warns and pats my hand playfully. “Didn’t they give you any potato chips?” she asks.

“I think we ought to take her to a psychiatrist.”

“Sure. While we’re at it, let’s take Hitler to a seder.”

“If only to clear the record,” I say, and suddenly my mother turns to me, her green eyes suspicious.

“And what else?” she asks.

“Nothing else. Set the record straight, get her a clean bill of health.”

“And if not?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Suppose a psychiatrist here agrees with this Bertuzzi, whatever his name is. What then? Do we put her in a strait jacket again?”

“They don’t put people in strait jackets nowa...”

“They did in Italy!”

I sigh heavily. The man running scales on the tuba pauses and then begins again. I realize he is running chromatics. For an instant, it brings me back to the days when all we needed to be rock musicians was an electrical outlet and three chords.

“So what do you suggest instead, Mom? Give her another potful of money, send her on her...”

“I never give her that much money. Just enough to get by on. If I cut off her funds, then what? Do you want her to end up in a homeless shelter? Do you have any idea what that’s like? It’s a nightmare of theft, abuse, and drugs, is that what you want for your sister?”

“I want her to be happy and well,” I say softly.

My mother turns to look at me again. Her eyes are relentless. Far away, the tuba player is doing the G scale.

“You do think she’s crazy, don’t you?” she says.

“I would like to find out if she is, Mom.”

“She’ll never agree to see a psychiatrist, forget it.”

We are silent for several moments. The tuba player falls silent, too, resting. We sit in silence in golden sunshine in a park gone suddenly Seurat.

“I’ve already spoken to someone,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“A psychiatrist who was a friend of mine at NYU...”

“You talked to a psychiatrist without consulting...?”

“Just for advice, Mom, okay? He specializes in psychopharmacology. He told me a long-lasting drug was probably administered to Annie by injection when she first arrived at the hospital, which is why she’s still feeling so good. Plus the pills Bertuzzi prescribed. He said...”

“Yes, she is feeling good. In fact, I’ve never seen her...”

“He says there’s no way to convince someone who’s delusional...”

“Your sister is not delusional.”

“If she’s delusional, okay? There’d be no way to convince her she’s not experiencing reality. He told me about this case where...”

“Your sister doesn’t fit any of the...”

“Where this patient was convinced he was dead...”

“You’re talking about very sick people here.”

“... and his doctor tried to tell him otherwise, but the guy kept insisting he was dead, he was dead. So the doctor asked him if dead men bleed, and the patient said, ‘No, of course not.’ So the doctor pricked the man’s finger with a pin, and of course he started bleeding. So the doctor said, ‘There. Does that prove anything to you?’ And the patient looked at his finger, amazed, and said, ‘Yes. I was wrong. Dead men do bleed.’ ”

“I don’t see what that has to do with Annie.”

“My friend thinks the best thing to do would be to put her in a psychiatric hospital...”

“Absolutely out of the question!”

“... for a few weeks...”

“Not for a minute!”

“... where she could work with someone, and develop a relationship, get her on treatment and medication. She has to realize from someone she trusts that she was, in fact, medicated in Italy, and she actually feels better now. You see, Mom, paranoid people...”

“Your sister’s not paranoid.”

“If she’s paranoid, is what I’m saying. If she is, then she sees medication as just another plot to control her. He gave me the number of someone he thinks might be able to help her, a woman psychiatrist, he thinks she should see a woman...”

“She’d never agree.”

“I think we should try.”

“What you mean we, kemo sabe?” my mother says.

It is left for me to bell the cat.

My sister and I are drinking coffee in the Starbucks on Seventieth and Broadway. It is three in the afternoon on a bright day in July. Annie has walked over from my mother’s apartment. I have taken the subway uptown from my Chelsea apartment.

She is wearing a green sun dress that shows off to advantage the new tattoo on her left arm, a barbed-wire encirclement, or perhaps a ring of thorns, a tattoo I’ve seen on Puerto Rican gang members in the less than exemplary school at which I teach. Once, while I was serving on an after-school advisory committee two years ago, and trying to learn a little bit more about the kids we were supposed to be helping, I borrowed a book about juvenile delinquency from the library, and was surprised and delighted to learn that one of the chapters was titled “Twins: A Gang in Miniature.”

We truly were a gang once, my sister and I.

About her tattoo, though, she tells me she had it done in a little shop in Palermo, and I see no reason to disbelieve her. According to Bertuzzi, there are bigger things my sister has to lie about. Or at least not understand the truth about. Then again, according to Bertuzzi, my sister is nuts.

But this is now the eighth day of July. We have been home for ten days now, and Annie hasn’t tried to set fire to the apartment or shove anyone in front of a bus or jump off the roof. She is sipping a frappuccino. I am nursing a cappuccino without much foam. She seems perfectly all right. In fact, it is hard to believe Sicily ever happened. She seems to be the Annie I remember from our youth, a golden girl brimming with ideas, inventing word games, telling outrageous stories, doing hilarious and often cruel imitations of people we know.

On this sunny afternoon in July, she is telling me about a morning in Paris when she was having coffee at a little outdoor cafe in Montmartre, and seated at another table was this absolute stereotype of an Englishman, a Colonel Blimp if ever there was one — and here Annie puffs out her cheeks and raises her eyebrows and becomes this Englishman from Central Casting — this stout gentleman wearing a bowler, and carrying a cane, sitting there sipping his café filtre, his mustache bristling, sniffing the morning air and watching the French pass by on the sidewalk beyond. At long last, he turns to Annie, and says in round brown English tones, “Lovely morning, isn’t it?” and Annie says, “Yes, lovely.” He sips a bit more coffee, looks at the passing parade again, turns to Annie another time and says, “Lovely city, Paris.” My sister nods, agrees, “Yes, lovely.” He nods in return, studies the sidewalk again, turns to her yet another time, and says, “Lovely country, France.” She says, “Yes, lovely,” and he leans toward her and in a conspiratorial whisper says, “Pity it’s wasted on the French.”

I love my sister when she does accents.

We both burst out laughing, much to the annoyance of a stout woman sitting close to the air conditioner and trying to read Proust. Annie raises her eyebrows, and then does a quick impression of the scowling woman, which sets me off on another round of laughter, which causes me to choke on my cappuccino. The woman virtually snorts in disapproval. She snaps her book shut, gathers up her belongings, and storms out of the shop. Annie watches her go, imitating her waddle from the waist up. I keep laughing and choking and finally my sister says, “Are you all right, Andy?” and I tell her I’m fine, and begin laughing and choking all over again.

It is such a sweet warm July afternoon.

But I am waiting for the moment to tell her I think she should see a psychiatrist.

Annie falls silent, staring through the window at the sidewalk outside, nodding, smiling, presumably remembering that day in Paris and her conversation with the Englishman. But then, out of the blue, she says, “Go ahead, ask me.”

“Ask you what, hon?”

“The answer is no,” she says.

Has she read my mind?

“No, I’m not taking the medication that quack prescribed.”

“Oh.”

“Go ahead, yell at me.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Maybe because you agree with him.”

“Annie, more than anything else in the world, I want not to agree with him.”

“Then stop watching me all the time,” she says.

I was not aware that I’d been watching her. But perhaps I was. It occurs to me that ever since I spoke to Bertuzzi, I’ve been studying Annie for any indication that she may be listening to voices inside her head. We are silent for several moments. At last, I ask, “Well... how do you feel? When did you stop...?”

“I stopped taking them a week ago. And I feel fine.”

“Why’d you stop, Annie? You seemed to be...”

“There, you see? You’re going to yell at me.”

“Annie, please, I’m not going to yell at you. I’m just trying to find out...”

“Do you know what those pills were? A neuroleptic drug. Neuroleptic means ‘affecting neurotransmissions,’ I looked it up. Schizophrenia is a disease of the brain, you know, and several different neurotransmitter systems are believed to be involved in the dysfunction. Do I look as if I’m suffering from any goddamn neurotransmitter dysfunction?”

“You look fine to me, Annie.”

“Yes, I am fine, thank you, and please don’t bullshit me, Andy. You’ve been watching me like a hawk.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize...”

“I stopped taking the pills because a) they were making me sleepy, and b) my face was twitching, and c) my arms and legs were beginning to feel stiff, and d) I’m not crazy. Any other questions?”

“No other questions, Annie. It’s your life.”

She turns to me sharply.

“What’s that supposed to mean, Andy?”

“It’s your life, you can do with it what you choose.”

“That’s exactly what I intend doing. As soon as I get past the trauma of being beaten and raped, I want to move on again.”

“Okay.”

“Sure, okay.”

“I mean it, Annie. Whatever you want to do...”

“Sure, as long as I don’t end up in another nuthouse, right?”

“Well, it was you who told them you were going to kill...”

“Yes, to save my ass, bro!”

“And it worked. But it did land you in a mental hospital.”

“So?”

“So you ought to start thinking about that, is all I’m saying.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you’re almost thirty-six years old...”

“Please, not the white picket fence again.”

“I’m not suggesting you get married...”

“Good, because there doesn’t seem to be. anyone who wants to marry me just now.”

“But maybe you ought to think about settling down...”

“I was settled down in Maine for too damn...”

“Now that you have a job...”

“I quit the job. Didn’t Mama tell you?”

“No, she didn’t. Why’d you quit?”

“It wasn’t right for me. I make jewelry. Andy. That’s my job. I’m an artist, Andy. I make fine jewelry.”

“I know you do.”

“So why should I work in somebody else’s shop? I’ve had my own shops, Andy. It’s not my fault people don’t appreciate my work.”

“You do beautiful work, Annie.”

“Thank you. Even if you don’t mean it.”

“I do mean it.”

“Thanks.”

We fall silent again. I sip at the cappuccino. I hate cappuccino without foam.

“You know, if what happened is still bothering you...”

“Of course it’s bothering me! Wouldn’t it bother you? Getting beaten and raped?”

“That’s what I’m saying. You said you wanted to get past it...”

“Oh, boy, do I!”

“So maybe you ought to, you know, talk to someone about it.”

“Like who?” she says at once. “Another quack like Bertuzzi?”

“No, I was thinking...”

“No psychiatrists, Andy! Absolutely not!”

“Well, there are psychiatrists and there are psychiatrists,” I say. “I’m sure we could find someone who’s used to dealing with... you know... rape victims.”

“What good would that do?”

“Well... you could, you know, get it off your chest.”

“Is a psychiatrist going to correct the false accusations Bertuzzi made about me?”

“I’m sure if you told someone...”

“Otherwise what’s the use? The man was part of a determined conspiracy to cover up the indignities I suffered at the hands of an inept health care system. Instead of talking to another psychiatrist, I should be talking to someone in the State Department. Get them to make the proper inquiries in Italy, clear the record there.”

“Well, I don’t think that would be possible, Annie.”

“Of course not. Schizophrenic! I get furious every time I think about it.”

“You could discuss that, too. Your anger. You could set the matter straight in your own mind, come to terms with...”

“There’s nothing wrong with my mind, bro! I just don’t want the word ‘schizophrenic’ following me around America’s health care system. The health care system here is bad enough as it is, don’t get me started on the health care system here in America. It’s what I know about the health care system that probably caused all that trouble in Sicily, don’t get me started.”

“But you know,” I say, “there’s nothing to be afraid of, really. All you have to do...”

“Why would I be afraid of anything?”

“That’s just what I’m saying. If we find the right person... a woman maybe... someone who’s had experience with rape victims... then all you have to do is tell the truth. Set the record straight, you know?”

Annie looks at me.

“What harm can it do?” I ask.

She nods. A calculating look settles into her eyes.

Is she listening to her voices? I wonder. Are they advising her to run for the hills? Or are they working out a defense?

“Let’s get out of here,” she says. “It’s warm in here, don’t you think it’s warm in here?”

We are walking in Central Park, my sister and I.

My father used to take us to the park all the time when we were young. We are walking there without my father now, of course, and without Aaron either. It is just the two of us. The Twins. “Where are The Twins?” my mother used to say. Or “Go get The Twins.” Or “Tell The Twins it’s bedtime.” Always The Twins. An entity. Annie and I. The Twins.

We are strolling along in the sunshine, holding hands actually, the way we used to when we were a gang in miniature, when suddenly she says, as if affirming something she’s been thinking about all along, “I could tell her about the pony ride.”

I don’t know what she’s talking about.

Or is she talking to me?

Oh, Jesus, is she consulting with her goddamn voices?

“The pony ride,” she says, turning to me. We are still holding hands. “You weren’t there,” she says. “It was at Grandma Rozalia’s house.”

My grandmother used to have a house in New Rochelle. My mother took us there a lot after my father abandoned us. I guess maybe he did truly abandon us in that we never heard from him again. That is to say, he duly divorced my mother, and paid alimony and child support, but he never tried to see either Aaron, or me, or my sister. I often wonder how a person can do that. Never see his own children again. Sometimes, I’m happy Maggie and I never had kids.

Anyway, my grandmother Rozalia was Hungarian, like my grandfather Aaron, but she used to smoke these cigarettes she imported from France. She used to smoke them in a long cigarette holder. She had long black hair and cushiony breasts, and she would stand by the fireplace in the front room of her New Rochelle house and smoke her cigarettes like a countess or something. Annie used to play with her dolls and I used to build Lego houses by the fire while the grownups talked about important matters. When we got older, Annie used to tease my grandmother all the time. Whenever she wanted to really get her goat, she would ask, “Grandma, how do you make Hungarian chicken soup?” and my grandmother would say, “Get out of here, you,” and wave her away with a hand covered with diamonds, and Annie would say, “First you steal a chicken,” and Grandma would laugh each and every time. I don’t know why I wasn’t at Grandma’s house that day of the pony ride — if it ever happened. Maybe I was at a Yankee’s game with Aaron. It was only a short subway ride to the Bronx, and my mother let us go alone all the time. We never got molested or anything.

This man came around with his pony at around three in the afternoon. It was a brown and white Shetland with a big saddle on it so that two kids could take a ride at the same time, one behind the other. The man was wearing a ragged straw hat, sandals, baggy blue trousers, and a bright green, short-sleeved shirt with a little blue sweater vest open over it. He charged a dollar to take the kids once around the block on his pony. When my sister saw him outside through the lace curtains in Grandma’s front room, she started dancing up and down and begging Grandma to let her go on the pony, please. Grandma finished her cigarette and then took my sister outside and watched while the grizzled old man in the straw hat lifted first Annie onto the saddle, and then an eleven-year-old boy Annie had never seen before in her life.

“The old man copped a feel when he lifted me onto the saddle,” she tells me now.

“What do you mean? You were only seven. What was there to feel?”

“He slipped his hand under my dress. Onto my panties. He patted my ass.”

“Come on, Annie.”

“He did. Would I lie about something like that?”

“Well, no, but...”

But yes, according to Bertuzzi, Annie has lied — or at least distorted the truth — often enough to warrant a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Hallucinations, he called them. Delusions, he called them. So why not now? Why not lie — or at least distort the truth — about a man who gave her a goddamn pony ride when she was seven? She has stopped taking her medication. Why not sail off into Looneyland again? If ever she d been there at all. Why not listen to whatever voices are now concocting this cockamamie story about child abuse?

“Maybe that’s what gave that kid the idea,” she says.

“What kid? Who do you mean?”

“The kid behind me on the pony. He got a hard-on,” she tells me.

“That’s okay, I don’t want to hear it,” I say, and I drop her hand.

“That’s why I ended up in that hospital in Italy,” she says.

I say nothing.

“Because he put his hand under my dress and got a hard-on. I thought that ride would never end. The old man kept leering at me all the while this fat little bastard kept prodding me from behind with his silly little prick. I think he came on the back of my panties, yes. My panties were all sticky when I got oft that horse, that pony. I think he must have come on me. I’d like to tell someone about this, Andy. I really think it’s the source of all my problems.”

I think, Oh, Jesus, they’ve convinced her she can fool a psychiatrist!

“My inability to communicate with people of the opposite sex,” she says. “Except you, of course, I can tell you anything.”

Yes, anything. Except the fact that this isn’t you talking, this is whoever’s inside your head, inventing a story you can try on a psychiatrist, if ever we get to see one, which is unlikely since it’s not you making these decisions, Annie, it’s your goddamn voices!

“My inability to socialize,” she says. “To form commitments. I think it all goes back to when I was seven years old and took that pony ride, I really do. I’d like to tell someone about it, Andy. I’d like to get to the bottom of it.”

“Well... who do you mean, honey?”

“Can you find a holistic psychiatrist?” she asks.

I catch my breath.

“I won’t take any more medicines, Andy. If you can’t find someone who...”

“I think I can find someone,” I say.

“Good,” she says, and takes my hand in hers again.

The last day of July dawns clear and bright and breezy.

I take the subway uptown from Chelsea and arrive at my mother’s apartment at nine o’clock sharp. My sister is dressed casually, which I think might be a good sign. No starched blouse and pleated skirt, no ribbons in her hair. Instead, she is wearing faded jeans and a white T-shirt (no bra, I notice), the barbed-wire tattoo showing on the bicep of her left arm. She asks if we have time for a cup of coffee, and we sit together in the little windowed alcove in my mother’s apartment, the three of us sipping coffee and eating toasted bagels, and talking about how surprisingly cool it is for the end of July. My mother looks apprehensive. I sometimes think she is as frightened of psychiatrists as Annie is. But my sister seems cheerful and unafraid, and I begin thinking, Gee, maybe she is only neurotic, maybe some son of a bitch or bitches did actually molest her when she was seven years old, maybe the doctor in Sicily was wrong, maybe my poor dear beloved sister is in fact a victim.

We sit in glowing sunshine eating bagels and sipping coffee.

It is a hopeful morning.

Dr. Sarah Lang is a not unattractive woman in her early fifties, I guess, wearing her gone-to-white hair shoulder length, wearing as well black-rimmed eyeglasses that frame and highlight the effect of her vivid blue eyes.

“Miss Gulliver?” she asks.

“Yes?” Annie says.

“Did you want to come in, please?”

“I want my brother to come in with me, if that’s all right,” Annie says.

Dr. Lang looks at me.

“I can wait out here,” I say, “that’s okay.”

“I want you to hear this,” Annie says.

Dr. Lang looks from one to the other of us.

“Would that be all right?” Annie asks.

“It’s your nickel,” Dr. Lang says, and smiles.

Annie smiles back.

“So come in,” Dr. Lang says. “Both of you. Please.”

The windows in her office face north on Ninety-sixth Street. This is ten in the morning; the light is oblique. There is a desk with some papers on it. There are diplomas hanging on the walls, nothing else. Three or four diplomas from various universities and medical schools. No framed paintings. Just the diplomas and a license to practice psychiatry in the state of New York, and a commendation of some sort from a psychiatric society. There is a long leather couch to the right of the desk, but Dr. Lang motions to two matching leather chairs slightly to the left, and my sister and I sit facing her.

“So,” she says, “what’s this you want both of us to hear?”

“I was molested,” Annie says.

Dr. Lang nods.

“When I was eleven years old,” Annie says.

And now comes the second version of the story.

In this version, the super is upstairs fixing a leak in the plumbing under the kitchen sink. Annie is home with a cold. My brother and I are off at school. My mother has gone downstairs to Gristede’s, to pick up some soup for lunch. Annie is watching television. She remembers exactly what she was watching. She tells Dr. Lang and me that she was watching a re-run of Lassie. She also remembers what Mr. Alvarez was wearing on that fateful July morning.

Mr. Alvarez is wearing baggy blue trousers and a little blue sweater vest, a shabby straw hat he takes off and rests on the counter top before he crawls under the sink, and a green, short-sleeved shirt open at the throat to reveal a gold crucifix nestling in curly black hairs on his chest and creeping up to his Adam’s apple. He has a tattoo on the bicep of his left arm, Jesus Christ’s red heart encircled by a crown of blue thorns.

“Little girl?” he says.

She is not sure at first that anyone is actually calling to her. She is lying on the sofa in the living room, her eyes glued to the TV screen where the family has come out on the porch and is yelling for Lassie, when she hears this voice calling “Little girl?” or actually “Little gorl?” was probably more like it, since Mr. Alvarez’s accent was as thick as a Colombian rain forest. She thinks at first that it is a voice coming from the TV set, someone calling to her from somewhere in the episode she’s watching, or rather calling to someone actually in the episode, one of the actors, a member of the family that owns Lassie, but certainly not a voice calling to her from under the kitchen sink.

“Little gorl?” he says again, and this time she realizes the voice is actually in the apartment with her and not being beamed from somewhere out in Televisionland, actually coming from under the sink, actually coming from Mr. Alvarez under the sink in his baggy blue pants and short-sleeved green shirt and little blue sweater vest. Annie herself is wearing a short cotton nightgown with red check cotton panties and over that the bathrobe Grandma Rozalia gave her for her tenth birthday last year. She is also wearing bedroom slippers that have bunny faces on them, and little bunny ears sticking up. The slippers are purple, and she knows they don’t match the nightgown or the robe or for that matter the red check panties. This bothers her a little. That the slippers don’t match anything.

“Little gorl, come here a secon’,” Mr. Alvarez says.

She gets off the couch reluctantly — Lassie is just about to rescue someone from drowning, if she remembers correctly, or perhaps from a burning building — and she slouches into the kitchen where the straw hat with its uneven edges is resting on the counter top catching sunlight. She cannot see Mr. Alvarez’s face. He is under the sink. She sees only his arm with its heart and thorns tattoo, and his outstretched hand.

“The wrench,” he says. “In my box.”

She sees his open tool box on the floor, and inside it she sees a variety of screw drivers and hammers and wrenches and other tools, she doesn’t know what they are. She stands there puzzled, wondering which wrench she should hand him. She is about to ask him which wrench he means, when she feels his hand sliding up the inside of her leg.

She stands stock still.

“He shoved aside my panties and stuck his finger inside me,” my sister tells Dr. Lang. “I wet my pants. I peed on his hand.”

“That must have been awful for you,” Dr. Lang says.

“It was. Oh, you’d better believe it. It’s what caused all that trouble in Italy.”

I do not for a moment believe that Annie is going to reveal she was in a nuthouse in Italy. I know my sister better than that. She is here today to get to the bottom of things, to set the record straight. She is here today because kindly Mr. Alvarez molested her, and as a result she has behaved strangely for the past twenty-five years. She is not nuts, she is merely neurotic.

“What trouble in Italy?” Dr. Lang asks.

“I was hospitalized in Italy,” Annie says, and nods.

But this is not what she’d been rehearsing! Have the voices changed their mind? Her mind? Have the voices advised her to change her mind? Are the voices themselves beginning to lose it?

“Oh?” Dr. Lang says.

“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘hospitalized,’ actually,” Annie says at once. “I was taken to a hospital, yes, but I wouldn’t say I was ‘hospitalized’ as such.”

“Why were you taken to a hospital?”

“Because I was bruised and bleeding.”

Dr. Lang nods. Smiles. Waits.

“I was attacked.” Annie hesitates. “I was raped and beaten. That’s why they took me to a hospital.”

“Which hospital was this?” Dr. Lang asks.

“Ospedale Santa Chiara,” she says. “In Sicily. Do you know it?”

“I’m sorry, no.”

Annie hesitates, and then says, “It’s a pediatric hospital.”

“I see. They took you to a pediatric hospital.”

“Well, yes. It’s all they had. It isn’t New York, you know.”

“I can imagine. How long were you there?”

“In Sicily? Almost two months. I’d spent some time in...”

“The hospital, I mean.”

“Oh. A week.”

“They kept you there a week.”

“Yes. Well, I was waiting for Andy to get there.”

“Your brother.”

“Yes. Andy,” she says, and turns to look at me.

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand. Why was your brother coming there?”

“To get me.”

“Why did he have to come get you? Were you injured very badly?”

“Well, they had to release me.”

“Yes, I understand. But why did your brother...?”

“He had to sign some papers.”

“What sort of papers?”

“Release papers.”

“Couldn’t you sign them yourself?”

“That’s just what I said! They told me someone had to sign for me.”

“Why?”

Annie thinks for a moment. Her eyes actually narrow. The calculating look is there again. I wonder if there are truly voices inside her head. If so, are they now telling her what to say to the doctor?

Is there only one voice?

Watch it, Annie! She’s getting close, she knows you were in the psychiatric wing! Tell her you had a broken leg!

More than one voice?

She’s not handling this properly.

I know, she’s never very good with doctors.

In fact, she’s never very good with anyone.

In fact, she’s utterly worthless.

Auditory hallucinations. One of the Criterion-A symptoms. Either a single voice keeping up a running commentary on the person’s behavior, or two or more voices conversing with each other.

“What happened,” Annie says, “was these two boys tried to pick up my friend and me in this little bar in town.”

Dr. Lang is nodding. No longer smiling. Just nodding. She doesn’t yet know Annie was in a mental hospital, so far all Annie’s told her is that it was a pediatric hospital. Annie is still telling the story she told me on the phone from Italy, the story she again told the gathered family once she was safe again in New York, objecting strenuously whenever any of us asked for clearer details—

“Why are you second-guessing me?” she would shout. “I refuse to be second-guessed!”

In retrospect, I think she meant that we were cross-examining her. I think she meant to say, “I refuse to be cross-examined!” No one is cross-examining her now. Dr. Lang is merely listening.

“Well, we didn’t wish to be picked up, thank you,” Annie says, “and this led to a little argument, and I suppose it got out of hand.”

“How?”

“One of the boys got violent. He grabbed a bottle of wine from the table, grabbed it by the neck, and swung it at me. Spilled red wine all over the white cotton dress I was wearing. So naturally, I fought back. Then Lise and I, that’s this German girl I was traveling with, ran out of the place, and somehow we got separated, and I found myself on this mountain road being followed by banditos — look, it’s a long story, and there’s no point telling it all over again, you’ll only try second-guessing me, anyway, so what’s the use? The point is, I ended up in the hospital because I was raped and robbed and because the police wouldn’t do anything about it. And I’m sure this relates back to having been a victim when I was only eleven, they can sense that about a person, you know, the predators out there. They can smell a victim a hundred yards away. So I played a trick on them — which led them to the wrong conclusion later on, of course — but it worked, it got me in the hospital where at least I was safe till Andy came to get me out.”

She nods in satisfaction, folds her hands in her lap.

“What trick was that?” Dr. Lang asks.

“What?”

“This trick you played.”

Be careful, Annie, she’s closing in.

Annie shrugs.

“You said you played a trick on them...”

She’s about to blow it.

She’s never any good with doctors.

“Can you tell me what the trick was?”

“I told them I’d kill myself,” Annie says.

“Really?” Dr. Lang asks.

“Sure,” Annie says, pleased with herself, smiling now. “Well, they weren’t going to help me unless I took desperate measures.”

“So you said you’d kill yourself if they didn’t help you?”

“It was all I could think of.”

“Did you mean it?”

“Of course not! It was a desperation measure, I just told you.”

“But I can understand how it led them to the wrong conclusion later on, can’t you?”

“Oh, sure. They thought I was nuts.”

“I can see why they might have thought that.”

“But it was just a trick.”

“So how did they treat you? Once you got to the hospital?”

“Very nicely, actually. It was a pediatric hospital. There were women giving birth every...”

“I meant... what treatment did they give you? You said they thought you were nuts...”

“That’s no surprise. My whole family thinks I’m nuts.”

“Is that so?”

“Sure.”

“Why do you suppose that is?”

“I have no idea. Everyone else thinks I’m in amazing mental and physical shape.”

“How old are you, Annie?”

“I’ll be thirty-six in September. Everyone I spend time with thinks I’m extremely happy and intelligent. It’s just my family who keep watching me like a hawk. I burp and they think that’s a sign of mental illness. I was initiated into Tantric yoga quite some time ago, you know. I know my brother doesn’t believe in God...”

A sidelong glance at me.

“... but I do believe in God, and I’m in continual devotional practice which my family somehow interprets as suffering. I’m not suffering. I’m healthy and happy.”

“Then why are you here today?” Dr. Lang asks.

“Tantra is all about understanding yourself. I’m trying to completely digest all the implications and ramifications of what happened to me when I was eleven. I’m trying to free myself from that unpleasant trauma. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable expectation, do you? I mean, it seems absolutely clear to me that if I don’t try to help myself, no one else is going to help me.”

Another sidelong glance at me.

This time, Dr. Lang picks up on it.

“Do you mean your brother?”

“For all I know, he’s part of it.”

“Part of what?”

“Ask him.”

“Well, I’d rather know what you think.”

“He’s never there when I get in trouble. He always manages to be someplace else. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“I don’t understand. You didn’t expect him to be there in Italy, did you? When those boys...”

“Of course not.”

“Then when did you expect him to be there?”

“I don’t expect him to be there, forget it. I don’t expect him to be anywhere, forget it. In fact, I don’t even know why I’m here.”

“You said you wanted to free yourself from...”

“Yes, well, that was a big mistake, wasn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t like being second-guessed.”

“Second-guessed?”

“Second-guessed, second-guessed. Why do you want to know how I was treated in that hospital, that prison is what it was. They put me in a strait jacket, is how I was treated. They molested me while I was tied to the bed. They gave me a very mild dosage of a tranquilizer called Risperdal. After what happened to me, and the way I must have looked to them, all battered and bruised and bleeding — and remember, I told them I’d kill myself, don’t forget that — I’m not surprised they thought I needed a tranquilizer. Are you familiar with Risperdal?”

“Yes, I am. It’s used to manage psychotic disorders.”

“No, you’re confusing it with Haldol. I had no symptoms of any psychotic disorder in Italy. None at all. I can prove that to you. I was given Risperdal, not Haldol, you ought to check your pharmacology, Doctor. In any case, I was initiated into the practice of Kundalini yoga a long time ago, through the direct transmission of Shaktipat from the guru, and sometimes adepts will exhibit side effects and strange behavior. If my family thinks such behavior is a sign of a serious mental condition, then it’s because they’re misinformed or uneducated or both. I’m here to set the record straight. I refuse to be second-guessed, and I refuse to be the victim of my family’s obsessive attachment to labeling me an ill person. Is that clear?”

“I quite understand, yes,” Dr. Lang says, and looks at the small silver Tiffany clock on her desk. “Well,” she says, “I think our time is up. Let me give your brother a call, all right? Sometime next week, Mr. Gulliver, hmm?”

But next week is now.

And Annie is gone.