Imola (8 page)

“Yes.” He smiled. “I do.”

“Right. But is a first-person perspective necessary for a conscious experience?”

“Yes?”

April snickered. “No. A dream is a conscious experience, but pain, smell, and taste aren’t usually represented. One can argue that a dream isn’t a complete first-person experience, that we dream outside of the first person. And that’s not all. Schizophrenics frequently have auditory hallucinations—voices speaking to them. But as far as I can tell, the voices almost always speak in the second person: ‘You do this. You do that.’”

“How does that fit with Agnes?”

“I’m getting there. Be patient.” She leaned forward, and a breast escaped from the covers. She left it out. “There can’t be a multiplication of the first-person self. More than one first person is mutually exclusive and functionally incompatible. So any additional identity occurs in the second person. And what’s really interesting is that the host—that’s the first-person identity—is usually amnesiac to the other, or others.”

Jason lifted his eyes from April’s breast. “Is this reality or just theory?”

“Mostly the latter.”

“So if that’s true, Agnes doesn’t know what Lilin does, right? How about the other way around?”

April let the blanket slip from her other breast. “Good question. Since Lilin is a second-person, minor identity, she’s aware of Agnes’s world. She remains a distant observer as long as Agnes is around.”

“Why is Lilin so different from Agnes?”

“Alternate identities are always exaggerated in specific dimensions, like in drastic behavioral traits. The dimensions are invented to help adapt to the trigger experiences: the horrific abuse and murder of her sister, in Agnes’s case.”

“So Lilin deals with violence with exaggerated violence?”

“Exactly. When things get stressful to Agnes, she blanks out; she becomes No One. That allows the alternate personality to fill in, with her exaggerated behavioral traits. And whatever happens with Lilin, Agnes doesn’t remember. But Lilin doesn’t go blank. She’s aware of Agnes’s world. When Lilin takes over, she can react to things that are happening to Agnes, or that happened to Agnes in the past.”

Jason reached out and touched April’s breast.

She slapped the hand away. “We’re talking about Agnes here.”

He shook his hand like it hurt and came back on track. “I still don’t understand why Lilin didn’t come out earlier in Agnes’s life.”

April pulled up the blanket. “I have a theory. Her great-aunts, Gert and Ella, replaced her father but without the socially inconsistent experiences. As long as they kept tight control, there were no experiences to trigger Agnes’s mental lapses, letting Lilin in. When Gert died and Ella went into the home, Agnes probably searched for a substitute. That created a crack. When she found out her father was still alive, that dredged up specific anxieties and really opened the door for Lilin.”

Jason tried to pull the blanket off of April, but she held it in place. “Any support for the theory?” he said.

“Plenty. Lilin talks to Agnes.”

“I know.”

April frowned. “Did she tell you Lilin talks in secondperson—tells her to do things?”

“No,” Jason said. “We didn’t discuss grammatical framework.”

April slumped on her pillow and pulled the covers up to her neck. “What do you think of Agnes’s personality?”

“She’s shy, quiet. Very conservative.”

“How about emotional?” April said.

“That’s not a word I’d use to describe her.”

April smiled. “That’s my observation, too. In fact, I think she’s nearly devoid of emotion. Everything is logical to her. She cries, gets upset. But she doesn’t make any decisions based on emotion. Only on logic.”

Jason folded his arms over this chest. “Is that bad?”

“In her case, I think it’s devastating. We all balance emotion and logic when we make decisions, and for most of us emotion is at least as powerful as logic, more so in most cases. Whenever emotion starts to creep in, Agnes heads for No One.”

“And Lilin?”

April’s smile widened. “My guess is that Lilin operates on emotion only, logic be damned.”

Jason shook his head. “Sounds like my big brother. Tell me what you’re going to do with Agnes, and maybe I can use it on Donnie.”

“I have to try to get Agnes to act on emotional experiences. Set up some stressful situation where she fights back instead of backing out to No One. If she can learnto handle stress without bailing out, it’ll give her confidence. It’ll bring her back to a more central position. And—”

“And if she gains balance, there’s no room for Lilin in her mind.” He paused. “There’s just one problem. If Lilin is aware of Agnes’s world, won’t she react to your attempts to get Agnes to handle these situations?”

“If it’s a true dominant-secondary hierarchy, I don’t think so, but this is an untilled field. There isn’t much in the literature except speculation and anecdotal reports of therapy results. Nothing scientific.”

“What if your treatment backfires and Lilin gets stronger? Are there any cases where the dominant and secondary personalities reverse?”

“It’s been reported.”

Jason rubbed his temples. “Shit.”

Agnes watched the light fade through the high windows of the Day Room. Most of her colleagues were in their rooms now. Like circus animals, they followed a routine that no longer required reinforcement and didn’t need a clock. Each person probably had a unique set of cues—the diminishing light, the long shadows, the accumulating fatigue of boredom—that triggered the migratory response.

It was Agnes’s favorite time of day. The only time she was alone outside of her cramped, sterile sleeping cubicle. Her room was painted glossy light green, like everywhere else. Green had once been her favorite color.

She thought about why she spent the minimum amount of time in her room. It wasn’t decorated like some of the others. Marsha had pictures pasted on every available inch or two of the four walls. She was aboutto start a third. Most were of her family and friends, although their correspondence had tailed off in the last couple of weeks, so she had started cutting photos out of magazines. She said the pictures were of her new family.

Tammy and Patty had a few photos, tastefully placed, in exactly the same locations. When Patty received a new one, Tammy went into a funk until she got something to hang in the exact same spot in her room. Patty had told Agnes about an experiment she had conducted once, moving the pictures by no more than six inches each. Tammy had duplicated the alteration with baffling exactness. The mimicry didn’t frustrate Patty; she seemed flattered.

Agnes didn’t know what the men’s rooms looked like. They were on a different hall. One time, Patty had said that Stuart the Stud’s walls were the only ones in the place that weren’t green. Everyone had laughed. Except Agnes.

But why were the walls of her room so bare? A memory flashed but extinguished, and it startled her. Another flash, this time in slower motion. It was of a room, a scary room. The walls were decorated with a sparse assortment of framed photos, but that wasn’t what made it so scary.

The memory pressed down on her, like weighted mist, billowing from above. And she wasn’t alone. The mist clouded her eyes, reduced the framed photos to dark shadows on the light walls. She thought she hearda muffled scream. A scream for No One.

The dog. The only decoration in her room was a stuffed dog, given to her by Jason. She blinked back the memory, focused back to the Day Room and its golden tint of sunset. The dog. It was in her arms throughout the nights and assumed the place of honor—the middle of the bed—throughout the days. It was her connection to the past in Mendocino, her hope for the future. Her job in the animal shelter had been God-given. She understood animals, particularly dogs, and she felt like they understood her. They didn’t have pretensions or lofty expectations. They wanted love and companionship—and what they craved, they gave back in triplicate. Even the mean ones seemed to warm to her, like she was a sanctuary. She’d loved her job.

Her future was Jason. She was sure of it. He wasn’t just one of the good ones—he was
the
good one. And tomorrow was his visit day. His visits weren’t as regular as Dr. Leahy’s, but he usually gave a one-or two-day advance notice. On the mornings of his visit days, time crawled by like a roller coaster scaling the highest incline. It was slow, deliberate, but it didn’t bother her. She knew that every inch of elevation provided energy for the belly-tickling descents, twists, and turns that paid for the wait. It was pure inertia as soon as he turned the doorknob—emotional free-fall. But she was buckled in tight. And Jason was right beside her. Their laughter merged into asingle voice.

The fuzzy shadow of a wind-blown branch flickered on the wall, stealing her attention. She relaxed her smile. But she wasn’t upset at the interruption. The thin wisps of movement were pretty, mostly because they were fleeting, ethereal. They were real, but they couldn’t be touched.

She stood and walked to the wall. She could superimpose the shadows of her fingers on those of the branches. Mingle with them, play a game of tag. Part of her was with the branches—for the moment, the wall between them didn’t exist. She held out a pinch of hair and let the shadow fall with the branches. She swore it didn’t fall straight back, but caught some of the breeze that gave the branch shadows life.

An abrupt squeak startled her. She turned her head, but arms surrounded her just below the shoulders, pinning her arms to her sides. She felt a hand cup her left breast, kneading it like a lump of bread dough. She tried to twist her body, but she was forced into the wall, obliterating the branch shadows with an obscene blob.

“I told you I’d get you, bitch.”

She knew what to do. Relax. Let Stuart have his feel. He’d soften his grip so she could free her arms and cover up, and he’d be off to his room in his hurried, hunched shuffle. “I’m letting you do it. Now let me go.”

He didn’t let go or even let up. His right hand maintained the grip on her breast while his left moveddownward, across her belly. Its fingers turned inward, followed the contour of her groin. They moved against her, manipulating, probing, taking.

Don’t let him. Stop him
.

Agnes tried to spin from his grip. “Let me go, Stuart. I don’t want you to get into any more trouble.”

He pressed her hard against the wall so her head was wrenched to the side, her left cheek flat on the cold, green plaster. “Shut up, bitch.”

“Please. I won’t tell anyone.”

His left hand continued to probe, harder now, and his right moved off her breast to the middle of her chest. It pulled on her jumpsuit, trying to tear it open.

He won’t stop. Make him stop
.

Agnes raised her right knee, parting her legs. His movements halted, but only for an instant. His left hand pushed farther between her legs, and he let out a low moan. His right hand stopped pulling at her garment and returned to her breast. She felt him push his pelvis against her, bracing the contact with his left hand. His moaning and movements synchronized.

Hurt him. Hurt him
.

She raised her right leg a little higher and he responded, like a python tightening its grip with each exhalation of its prey.

Hurt him, damn it
.

She slammed her heel down on the top of his rightfoot with all the force she could muster.

A high-pitched scream rang in her ear. Stuart’s grip loosened enough for her to turn and push him away.

He fell to the floor, screeching, and pulled his right foot up to his hands. He rolled on his back, his screeches turning to loud cries, then to sobs.

And, at that moment, he changed. Something in the deep recesses of her mind switched him from a harmless but misdirected boy into a dark shell of an evil man. He no longer deserved her sympathy, her help. He’d dragged her back into that foggy room of her mind. The one with the framed photos. But this time, she fought back. She fought back to the Day Room and its warm evening shadows. Back to see Stuart the Molester moaning on the floor. He wasn’t misunderstood. He was pathetic.

Kill him. Kill him
.

Agnes stepped over his straight left leg and walked toward her room.

Noises echoed from the end of the women’s hallway. A door lock clunked. An excited voice grew in volume, along with the squeals of rubber-soled shoes on the linoleum. She heard the nurse’s voice, but she didn’t let the words register. She felt the breeze as the nurse brushed past her.

No. Don’t go. He’s down. Kill him. Kill. Him
.

Agnes kept walking, into her bare-walled room. To her dog. To Jason.

Jason paused at the Day Room door and slid his left hand behind his back. The stuffed dog was nearly identical to the one he’d given Agnes soon after she’d arrived at Imola, but in miniature. It had the large eyes and stubby limbs of a puppy. He hoped the colors matched.

He opened the door but froze. Something wasn’t right. The Day Room was nearly empty, except for Stuart Guerin, who sat in a chair under the television, his right leg propped on another chair, cushioned by a pillow. A plastic brace enclosed his foot and extended several inches above his ankle.

Jason stepped into the room and stopped again. “Where is everyone?”

Stuart twisted his head in Jason’s direction. His eyes were wide, dark as onyx. “Get the fuck out of here.”

Jason’s arms fell to his sides. The stuffed puppy dangled.

Stuart turned in his chair and let out a grunt. He reached for a pair of crutches that leaned against the back of the chair. “Gimme that dog. Give it to me.” He pulled his foot down from the other chair and cried out when it touched the floor. “Then get the fuck out of here.”

Jason sidestepped to his right and nearly bumped into Nurse Dorothy, who was in a half-jog. She shuffled between the two men and thrust her right hand out to Stuart. “Stay in the chair. Or I’ll put you back in your room.”

Stuart froze. “Get him out of here. He came to see her.” He pointed at his foot.

Nurse Dorothy kept her hand out toward Stuart. “Don’t get out of that chair.” She spun around to face Jason and hurried into the women’s hall. “Come on.”