Set This House in Order (15 page)

“In other words, not very,” said Dr. Grey. “So how did you manage your feelings? Did you and Julie talk it out some more, or—”

“No. No, Julie was pretty sick of talking about my feelings by that point. I can't blame her, really…I mean, I know love isn't rational, and there doesn't have to be a logical explanation for why two people can't be together, even if it
seems
like they might be right for each other…but I kept on wanting a logical explanation anyway. And Julie did the best she could, trying to make sense of it for me, but eventually she got fed up with me asking the same questions over and over…”

“So you couldn't talk to her anymore. How did you resolve it, then?”

“I…I overheard something.”

“Overheard what?”

I stared at my hands.

“Overheard what?” Dr. Grey repeated, patiently.

“It's kind of embarrassing.”

Dr. Grey regarded me soberly. “I promise not to make fun,” she said.

I sighed, and forced myself to tell it: “It happened about a week after I visited you. Julie started dating this other guy, a mechanic she met at Triple A, and I went a little crazy over it. One of the things she'd told me when she was trying to explain why we couldn't go out was that she wasn't interested in seeing
anyone
just then—but then she turned right around and started seeing someone after all. So that weekend, even though I knew she was tired of talking, I went by her apartment to try and get her to explain it to me one more time.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I was outside the door to Julie's apartment, working up the nerve to knock, and that was when I heard them. Julie and the mechanic.”

“Heard them…?”

“Together. You know…”

“Ah,” said Dr. Grey.

“Julie's bedroom is the farthest room from the outside door, but it's a small apartment, and, well, they were being pretty noisy.”

“So you heard them together in the bedroom. Then what?”

“Well, I should have turned away and left.”

“Yes, you should have,” Dr. Grey agreed. “But what
did
you do? Stay to listen?”

My cheeks were burning, and for a moment I was so ashamed I couldn't look at her. I nodded. “I couldn't help myself,” I said, and then, remembering that my father might be listening, I quickly amended: “I mean, I
could
help myself, of course I could, but I chose not to.”

“And how did it feel, eavesdropping on that?”

“Awful. Awful, and wrong, but also…you know what a cathartic experience is, right?”

“Yes, I do,” said Dr. Grey, “but I think you mean a
vicarious
experience.”

“No, cathartic. I mean yes, there was a vicarious part to it too, at first…Julie sounded like she was
really
enjoying herself, and of course I wished it could have been me who was, who was making her happy that way. Maybe I even imagined that it was me, for a little bit. But then, as it went on, I started to feel…
wrenched.
It was like that feeling you have when you're crying so hard that your whole body shakes—only I wasn't crying, or shaking. And when it was over, when they finally finished and I snuck away, I felt washed out: fuzzy, and tired, and a little feverish—but also
better,
somehow.

“I remember thinking to myself: ‘Maybe
that's
the reason we couldn't be together.' Maybe, as much as I wanted to make Julie…happy…that way, maybe I just didn't have it in me, and maybe Julie knew that, and that's why she picked the mechanic instead of me. So I went home, thinking about that, and I went to bed early that night, and slept deep, and when I got up the next day I'd accepted it: accepted that Julie and I could never be a couple. All the obsessive feeling, the need for an explanation, that was all gone.”

“Purged,” Dr. Grey said.

“Yes.”

“Or repressed,” she added. “Or split off.”

“Split—…no!” I objected; this was a serious accusation. “I've never split off
anything!
I've never lost time, not even a second!”

“You did say you slept deep that night…”

“That was
sleep,
not a blackout! Besides, if I had lost time, somebody else in the house would have noticed!”

“All right then, that's good,” Dr. Grey said. “No blackout. But I still think your feelings about Julie might not be quite as settled as you'd like to believe. And that's worth keeping in mind, if only so that you can keep those feelings separate from your feelings about Penny. Because dealing with a disordered multiple is difficult enough even when your motivations are crystal-clear.”

“So what about Penny?” I asked, anxious to change the subject. “What do I do?”

“The first thing you've got to do is talk to her,” Dr. Grey said. “To the facilitator, what's her name—”

“Thread.”

“Thread, right. Set ground rules. You'll probably have to deal with the protector first, so make it clear, up front, that you won't tolerate abuse. No more threats, no more late-night phone calls, none of that. And this is very important, Andrew.” She raised a finger in warning. “If the threats
do
continue, if she escalates the violence in any way, you need to be willing to call the police.”

I frowned.

“This is
serious,
Andrew.”

“I know it's serious,” I said. “But I…I don't want to make trouble for her. I don't want to get her committed, for goodness' sake.”

“I don't want to get her committed either,” said Dr. Grey, “but I also don't want to see you get your head handed to you by a berserk alter. So promise me—”

“All right, I promise. Cross my heart.”

“Good…good. Now the next step, after you make contact and lay down the law, is to see if they'd be willing to come out here, to meet with me.”

“Oh no!” I said. “Dr. Grey, I can't ask you to—”

“I'm not offering to treat them,” Dr. Grey assured me. “I can't, I just don't have the energy. But before I make a referral, I do want to meet this woman for myself. Confirm the diagnosis.”

“All right. I guess I can bring Penny here. I can try.”

“At some point,” Dr. Grey added, “I'd also like to discuss a referral for you.”

“For me? What for? I'm not—”

“I just think it might be helpful for you to have someone to talk to, a professional I mean. Someone to counsel you on whatever issues come up in your life. It wouldn't have to be weekly sessions—just once a month, or whenever you needed a sympathetic ear. I'd offer to do it myself, but I couldn't guarantee that I'd always be…well, as I say, I just don't have the energy.” Even as she said this, she seemed to sag a little in the wheelchair, the alertness that had animated her for the past hour draining away.

“Dr. Grey,” I said, suddenly afraid, “you are all right, aren't you?”

“That's…an essay question, Andrew.” She laughed, but it was forced.

“Should I not have come today? My father thought it might be a bad idea, that you were too—”

“No, no, Andrew, please,” Dr. Grey said, struggling to rouse herself. “I…you know it's odd, having treated your father and the others, I see you as someone familiar. But the truth is…the truth is we barely know each other. You've never seen me…at my best.” She sighed. “It's been a difficult adjustment.” Her strong hand thumped the armrest of her wheelchair. “I
miss
seeing patients. Miss…miss working as hard as I used to. So don't be sorry you came to me with a problem—I'm
glad
to help, glad to have a chance to help. I just wish I could have helped more when you…when you were starting out.”

“There's nothing to be sorry about there,” I said. “You did enough, just helping my father build the house. It's worked out fine, really.”

“Well, good,” said Dr. Grey, and then closed her eyes for a moment. “Could you get Meredith in here? I think I need to go back upstairs for a bit, now, and rest.”

“Oh sure,” I said, getting up. “Should I—”

“I'd like you to stay for lunch, if you can.” Dr. Grey opened her eyes again. “I just need a little nap first. You can skim through Minor's book while you're waiting. Let me know what you think of it.”

“I've already read one paragraph,” I told her, “and I think it's terrible.”

“Excellent! Read more paragraphs, then. Over lunch, you can tell me why it's terrible, in detail.” She smiled tiredly. “Make my day.”

I would have been happy to make Dr. Grey's day. But she never came back down from her nap, and eventually Meredith suggested that we eat lunch without her. We had sandwiches out on the porch, and in between nibbles (I still wasn't very hungry) I asked about Dr. Grey's condition. “Danny has good days and bad days,” Meredith said vaguely. “Today is about average—although I know she was glad to see you.”

After we finished eating I waited around a little longer, hoping to at least say good-bye, but Dr. Grey went on sleeping. So I wrote her a note, thanking her for seeing me and telling her I would call once I'd made contact with Thread. Then I headed for the bus stop to begin the long trip back to Autumn Creek.

On the way home, I thought about Julie.

I guess it's not all that surprising that I would be confused about sex. Unlike many of the other souls in the house, I was never raped or molested; but my practical knowledge of the world had to come from somewhere, and a multiple household's collective understanding of human sexuality is inevitably somewhat warped.

It wasn't the mechanics of the act that confounded me—I figured I had that part pretty much straight, although the thought of actually doing it scared the hell out of me. What puzzled me was the
approach
to sex. How, exactly, did two people decide they wanted to get together, and how did they communicate that fact to each other? I knew about flirting, but wasn't sure how to distinguish it from ordinary friendliness. Suppose you thought somebody wanted you to kiss them: was there a way to find out for certain that they did, without making a fool of yourself? Was it OK to just ask, or did having to ask mean that the answer was probably no? What if you
were
kissing somebody: how did you know when they wanted to go further? What were the signs?

My father's answer to all of the above was a frustrating “You'll learn.” I couldn't really blame him for not being more helpful: not counting involuntary acts, my father was (and is) a virgin. As far as I know, he never even dated anyone, nor did he ever express any desire to.

There were other souls in the house who had had sexual or romantic relationships, or pieces of relationships, but as a rule they guarded those memories closely. I knew, for instance, that Aunt Sam had had a “sweetheart” sometime during Andy Gage's adolescence; knew too (from Adam, telling tales out of school) that she and the sweetheart had done a lot of intimate things together. But Aunt Sam would never talk about that; she wouldn't even confirm the sweetheart's existence. “A lady never tells,” was
all she had to say about the matter. Even if she hadn't been so ladylike, she might not have had anything useful to share with me: after all, just because she had a lot of experience
being in
a relationship didn't mean she knew anything about
starting
one.

So I was more or less on my own when, towards the end of 1995, I began to wonder whether Julie might be attracted to me. Oh, the other souls still kibitzed, of course—they always did that—but it was, to borrow a phrase from Mrs. Winslow, like having elephants give advice about ice-skating.

Or almost like that. In retrospect, I'm forced to admit that Adam (another virgin) had a pretty good read on the situation. But his observations were so crude—and so contrary to what I wanted to hear—that I refused to take them seriously.

“Julie's not interested in fucking you,” he told me bluntly.

“And you know this how?” I asked him. “Something you read in
Playboy
?”

I'd meant to insult him, but Adam found this hilarious. “Yeah,” he said, cackling. “In the Women With Car Trouble issue…Seriously, Julie's a lot of things, but she's not shy. When she really wants something, she lets you know. She might pick the most inconvenient way imaginable to do it, but she lets you know.”

“Well maybe this is different,” I suggested. “Maybe she's still making up her mind.”

“Nah,” said Adam. “She just doesn't want to fuck you.”

“Adam—”

“I'm not saying she never thought about it. Maybe she has. Maybe she daydreams about it sometimes, when she's bored—maybe that's what you picked up on. But it's not serious. If she
really
wanted to fuck you, she would have by now.”

I didn't want to believe him, although my “evidence” that Julie might be interested in me was pretty insubstantial. True, she was very physically affectionate towards me, but as Adam never tired of pointing out, she was like that with almost everyone—even Dennis, on the rare occasions when they weren't fighting. On the other hand, Julie and I had started spending an awful lot of time alone together outside of work, and that was something she didn't do with anybody else. Our private talks were often extremely personal, touching on subjects you wouldn't discuss with just anyone. We shared secrets; Julie called me her “confidant.”

And there
were
incidents, things that happened that suggested we were more than just close friends, or could become more. Things that gave me hope.

Like the night before Thanksgiving, when the two of us went out to celebrate the holiday at the same Bridge Street bar we'd gone to the day we first met. Julie ordered a kamikaze; I had a strawberry margarita with no alcohol in it. The waiter who brought our drinks made a comment about how he dreaded going home to see his family tomorrow, and that got Julie talking about her family, in particular about her father. Without going into details that aren't mine to share, let's just say that Julie's relationship with her dad, while nowhere near as bad as Andy Gage's relationship with his stepfather, was still pretty terrible—it's not for nothing that she left home at sixteen.

Julie talked about her father for almost two hours. I did my best to commiserate, although, as I reminded her at one point, I had no personal experience with abusive parents. But Julie didn't seem to care about that; so I listened, and she poured out her heart. She was still talking as I walked her home, holding her hand the whole way.

Then we were on Olympic Avenue, outside Julie's apartment, and she seemed to run out of words. She stood there silently for a moment and then leaned in to me, put her arms around my neck, and asked me if I'd come upstairs and tuck her in. We went up, Julie leaning on me heavily now. In the apartment, she didn't turn any lights on, just guided me back into her bedroom. She scrabbled around in the dark for a box of matches, and lit a candle on the steamer trunk beside her futon. And then, as I stood dumbly by, Julie got undressed right in front of me.
Completely
undressed. Naked, she rummaged through her clothes closet for what seemed like forever; finally she drew out a gauzy white nightgown and slipped it over her shoulders. She came back over to me, put her arms around my neck again, and kissed me full on the mouth.

“Yeah, she kissed you,” Adam said later. “But she didn't kiss you and ask you to stay; she kissed you and told you to be careful walking home. Notice the difference?”

Yes, I noticed. But after that night I started noticing other things, too, things that Julie did or said that seemed to have hidden meanings. Like the week after Thanksgiving, when she had a huge fight with her landlord, and came and told me she was thinking about breaking her lease, and then said, kind of offhand, “You know,
we
ought to get a place together”—and when I hedged, saying that it sounded like a nice idea, but that I wasn't sure if I was ready to move out of Mrs. Winslow's, Julie replied, “Oh, I think you'd have a
lot
more fun living with me than with Mrs. Winslow…” Or the week after that, the morning Julie's car wouldn't start, and she had to walk to the
Factory through freezing sleet, and she came into my tent stripped down to her underwear, trying to dry herself with a hand towel, and said to me, “Andrew, will you run away with me to Hawaii?” and I said “Um…” and she sat in my lap and laid her head on my shoulder, so that her damp hair pressed into the hollow of my neck, and said,
“Please,
Andrew?
Please
take me away from here?” Or a few days later, when Dennis was teasing me about an idea I'd had for a demo, saying, “One thing you're always good for is a ridiculous suggestion,” and Julie remarked in passing, “I bet that's not the
only
thing Andrew's good for…”

I know, I know—probably I was reading way too much into all this. But at the time…at the time I was sure Julie was sending me signals, Adam's skepticism be damned.

Then it was Christmastime, my first Christmas ever, and Julie insisted on going in with me on a tree. Mrs. Winslow already had a tree for the Victorian, an eight-foot plastic perennial that she'd owned since before she got married, but Julie argued that that wasn't a
real
Christmas tree. “You've got to go out and cut down a live one,” she said. “It's tradition.”

“You do that every year?” I asked her.

“Well no, actually, I've never done that. But it's still tradition. It could be
our
tradition…” Naturally, the thought of establishing a tradition with Julie sold me on the idea immediately.

She got her uncle to drive us to a tree farm in Snoqualmie. He picked us up in his truck one evening after work. Julie, who'd been in a bubbly mood all day, introduced me as her “soul mate.” Her uncle, a grizzled older man with one of the raspiest voices I'd ever heard, stuck out a hand and said, “Thrilled.” It was the last thing he said for a while; Julie talked pretty much nonstop on the ride out. During the course of her monologue, which concerned the latest goings-on at the Reality Factory, I noticed that she was saying a
lot
of complimentary things about me—how creative I was, how hardworking I was, what a good person I was—which should have been flattering, but mostly just unsettled me. Many of the compliments seemed exaggerated, and a couple were flat-out lies (I'm
not
“musically gifted”; the only soul in the house with any musical talent to speak of is Aunt Sam, and even she's not that good). Once again I found myself wondering whether there was a hidden message here: was Julie telling her uncle something, or was she trying to tell
me
something?

The Snoqualmie tree farm offered precut pine trees in all sizes, but Julie, set on following “tradition,” insisted that we borrow a saw and go into the fields. Having selected a tree as far from the farm's parking lot as possible,
Julie assumed a purely supervisory role during the actual felling. While her uncle and I took turns with the saw, she alternated between cheering us on, teasing us for our slow progress, and throwing snowballs. The snowballs were all aimed at me.

When we got back to Autumn Creek, Julie thanked her uncle profusely—“You're the best, Arnie, just the best”—and invited him up to her apartment for a drink; but he declined, saying that he had another errand to run. Climbing into the back of the truck, he uncovered a mound of cardboard cases that had been concealed beneath a pile of furniture pads. He opened one of the cases and pulled out a bottle of scotch for each of us. “Happy holidays,” he rasped, and Adam up in the pulpit crowed cheerfully: “Look ma, no tax stamps!”

Julie in turn gave her uncle a tightly rolled-up brown-paper bag. I don't know what was in it, but it made him very happy. “All right, then!” he said, zipping his gift into an inside pocket of his coat. He chucked Julie under the chin and clapped me on the shoulder. “You two stay out of trouble!” With a last wink at Julie, he climbed into the truck cab and drove away.

After the truck was out of sight, I offered Julie my bottle of scotch. “Merry Christmas,” I said. “I've got another present for you too, but—”

“Yeah, I've got one for you, too,” Julie said. “But let's get this tree inside first.”

We hauled the tree up the stairs and into Julie's bedroom. Then she took the scotch and went into the kitchen to make eggnog, leaving me to set up the tree in a stand she'd bought. This was trickier than I expected, but I had it pretty well balanced by the time Julie came back, carrying a mug in each hand. “Cheers,” she said, handing one to me.

“Cheers.” I took an experimental sip…and frowned, tasting liquor in with the eggs and cream. “Uh, Julie…I think you forgot, I don't—”

“Shh,” Julie said, pressing a finger to my lips. “I won't tell if you won't.”

It wasn't a question of telling or not telling, of course; hiding a drink from my father would be like hiding a manicure from my fingernails. But I took another small sip, just to be polite, and then discreetly set the mug aside. “So, do we exchange gifts now?”

Julie shook her head. “Not yet—we've got to finish decorating the tree first.” She hauled a big box of Christmas ornaments out of her closet and took out two gnarled strands of Christmas-tree lights, handing one to me. “Start by untangling this.”

We set to work, chatting idly as we picked at the knots in the cords. I asked Julie where she'd bought the eggnog mix.

“Mix!” Julie scoffed. “That's homemade, thank you very much.”

“Really?” I glanced over at my mug. “I thought the basic eggnog stuff—you know, except for the scotch—I thought that just came in a carton.”

“Actually, it comes from eggs,” Julie teased, “which come out of a chicken. Also from cream, which comes out of a cow.”

“You milked your own cow?”

“No, Andrew…” Julie started to look annoyed, then realized I was teasing, too. “All right, all right,” she admitted, “so the cream
does
come out of a carton—but I mixed it and the other ingredients together myself.” She beamed proudly. “One of the many useful skills I picked up at Lulu's Mexican Kitchen in Phoenix, Arizona.”

“You served eggnog at a Mexican restaurant?”

“Around Christmastime we did. The guy I worked the grill with taught me his secret recipe.”

The guy I worked the grill with…
Something about the way Julie said that made me ask: “Was he your boyfriend?”

Julie's brow furrowed; she seemed to concentrate a little more intently on the strand of lights she was holding. “Yes,” she said, and Adam up in the pulpit warned: “Don't do it.”

But I did, asking haltingly: “Did you…do you ever think of
me
that way? As a boyfriend, I mean.”

The furrow in Julie's brow deepened, but she went on untangling the lights as if she hadn't heard me. She didn't reply for so long that I began to wonder if I'd forgotten to ask the question aloud. But finally she looked over at me and said: “You remember me telling you about that physical therapist I used to live with?”