Jonathan Nasaw - When She Was Bad

“Okay, let me hear you say it.”

“Whatever happens, I can handle it; I can handle whatever happens.”

“Again.”

“Whatever happens, I can handle it; I can handle whatever happens.”

As always, extracting Lyssy from his trance state took longer than getting him into it. Corder had to explain the exit strategy-when I snap my fingers twice, you will awaken refreshed and calm-as well as reinforce the trigger phrase for the next session. But when they were done, and Lyssy was sitting on the edge of the couch, his little feet, one real, one prosthetic, swinging just short of the carpet, Corder was well pleased with his afternoon’s work.

And when he asked Lyssy at the end of the session, casually, almost as an afterthought, how he was feeling now, the boy-no, the man! Corder had to remind himself; with Lyssy it was easy to forget-flashed him a wink and a thousand-watt grin. “I dunno, Dr. Al, but somehow I feel like, whatever happens, I can handle it; I can handle whatever happens.”

“That’s my boy,” said Corder.

Just after Irene had finished showering and drying her hair with a pistol-grip blower supplied by the hotel-she’d spent the afternoon browsing at Portland’s famed Powell’s bookstore-she heard a rap on the door between the adjoining rooms, then the verbal equivalent:

“Knock knock,” called Pender.

“Who’s there?” Irene said suspiciously.

“Love me.”

Even more suspiciously: “Love me who?”

“Love me Pender, love me true, never let me go,” he sang-the tune, of course, was Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender.”

Irene groaned as she opened the door. His outfit was sedate, for him: brown slacks, short-sleeved white pongee sport shirt, green socks, tan Hush Puppies; he had two glasses in one hand, an ice bucket in the other, and a bottle of Jim Beam under his arm. “Did you have a good day?”

“Not bad. How’d the interview go?”

“Not bad either, thanks to a trick I learned in the media workshop the publishers sent me to before my book tour.”

“What’s that?”

“If you don’t want to answer the question the interviewers actually ask, just answer the question they should have asked.” He handed Irene a glass of mostly ice, with a splash of Kentucky’s finest. “Did you ever get hold of Lily?”

“Her room didn’t answer all day.” Irene took a sip, grimaced, smacked her lips gamely. “I left a couple messages for her with the switchboard.”

“They’re probably keeping her pretty busy,” Pender suggested. “I’m sure if anything was really wrong, she’d have called you.”

“I don’t know-I just don’t know.” Irene sat down heavily on the edge of her bed-or as heavily as her hundred-and-twenty-pound frame could manage. “I can’t help thinking it’s a terrible mistake, leaving her there.”

“It wasn’t your decision,” Pender reminded her. He was standing by the window, looking out over the city; the sky was steely gray, but it didn’t look like rain. “Besides, I distinctly remember you telling me last night at dinner how you were so knocked out over all the progress Corder had made with Maxwell.”

“I suppose I was. But the more I think about it, the less comfortable I am with it.”

“With what?”

“It’s a little hard to explain.”

“Try me.”

Another sip, another grimace. “Okay, you know how in DID the psyche splits up into various identities in response to childhood abuse?” Pender nodded. “What you have to bear in mind is that instead of being a complex bundle of personality traits, like the rest of us, these alter identities generally embody one-sided aspects of the original personality. Lily’s Lilah represents sex, for instance, Maxwell’s Kinch is pure rage, and so on. Concentrate of Character, we used to joke: just add water.

“That’s why the traditional goal of DID treatment has been integrative. To make a whole, healthy human being, you need to integrate the aspects of personality embodied in the various alters with the original personality. But judging by what little he told me yesterday, Al Corder appears to be taking the exact opposite approach, banishing or discouraging or somehow destroying the alter personalities instead of integrating them.”

“But isn’t it a fair trade-off?” asked Pender. “You can’t tell me Maxwell isn’t better off without monsters like Max or Kinch crawling around in his subconscious.”

“From society’s point of view, yes, of course, although personally I’m not altogether convinced the Lyssy I met yesterday would survive five minutes in prison without Max or Kinch. But that’s a rather extreme example. In Lily’s case, I keep asking myself questions like, will Lily be able to lead the sort of life we’d all want for her without Lilah’s sexuality? Or take this newest alter, Lilith. Until Lilith’s appearance, Lily’s system of alters was unusual among the multiples I’ve treated, in that it never manifested any sort of protective identity-even the alters that appeared when she was being actively abused as a child ranged in personality from passive to very passive to downright autistic.

“So in some ways, the appearance of a protector alter at this stage in her development represents a positive step for Lily. If I were still her doctor, I’d like to see Lilith’s confidence and sense of self integrated into Lily’s personality, not eliminated from it.”

“Have you talked to her uncle about any of this?”

“Not yet. But I fully intend to when we get back. First, though, I’d really like to talk to Lily again, see how she’s feeling. If she’s settling in, the last thing I’d want to do is uproot her all over again.” She held out her glass, which now contained only melting ice cubes. “Here, hit me again.”

“You sure about that?” Pender asked her-the night before he’d had to help her back to bed (alone) after two shots.

“Right now I’m not sure of anything,” said Irene.

“Welcome to the club,” said Pender.

“Good night, Lyssy.”

“Good night.” The door to the blue room slid closed behind the squat, homely night nurse. No stalling, for a change-Lyssy still didn’t care for the dark, but since his session with Dr. Al this afternoon he’d recovered some of his old optimism. Whatever happens, he thought, I can handle it.

He was even looking forward to the darkness, for the privacy it afforded him. With his optimism restored, he’d managed to convince himself that last night’s runaway masturbatory fantasy had come about because he’d dozed off while jacking off-and as Dr. Al had often told him, none of us was responsible for our dreams. We all had depths and dark sides, Lyssy remembered him saying-you didn’t have to be a multiple for that.

On with tonight’s fantasy, then. Starring Lily, of course: after saving her by shooting a rabid dog that had come wandering up the dusty street of the town where they lived (an image conflated from Old Yeller and To Kill a Mockingbird ), he had to help her back to her house. As soon as they were alone, she covered him with grateful kisses. Her jacket fell open-her breasts were naked beneath it. She pulled his face tightly against the round, warm, sweet-smelling softness….

Lyssy. Time for you to go now, Lyssy. A dry, whispery, unbearably intimate voice, like acid eating through glass.

Startled from his fantasy, Lyssy opens his eyes and is shaken to see that the room has gone entirely black, blacker than it’s ever been before. “Who’s there?”

An old friend.

“You’re not my friend. Now turn the night-light back on, you’re scaring me, I don’t like the dark.”