Robert Wilson - The Divide

The butterfly-wing image of John’s brain was changing, subtly but distinctly. The bright colors began to fade; in particular, the hot band of the frontal lobes faded toward shadow. Watching, Maxim felt a cold hollowness at the pit of his stomach. “What’s happening?”

“His glucose economy is suddenly down. Behaviorally, you mean? Jesus, I don’t know—I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Maxim said, “He’s changing.”

“That’s obvious!”

“I mean, he’s not John anymore. I think he’s becoming Benjamin.”

“The secondary personality you mentioned?”

“I believe so.”

“This is radical,” Collingwood said. “I’ve never seen this kind of bottoming-out. Is this voluntary?”

Maxim began to shake his head, then reconsidered. It was a tremendous coincidence, that Benjamin should manifest just as John was in the PET scanner. It was as if John wanted to show us this, Maxim thought. John’s way of cooperating with the test.

Or Benjamin’s.

“Not exactly voluntary,” he told Collingwood, “not on the conscious level. But John is a unique individual. Not voluntary, but perhaps not an accident.”

“The patient is febrile and convulsive,” the nurse reported, “but he seems to be coming around… Doctor?”

“Pull him out,” Collingwood said.

He switched off the intercom and looked at Maxim. Video images were still cycling through on the monitor behind him. Cool blue butterfly wings. Icy Rorschach blots. “Jesus Christ, Max,” Collingwood said tonelessly. “What did we do to this man? Just what kind of thing is he?”

Benjamin was back. But Benjamin had changed.

Amelie was deeply pleased, at first, to be with him again. She realized how much she had cherished the time before Benjamin went away—before Roch moved in and took his place. Having even a fraction of that life restored was like an answered prayer. She worried that there might be some conflict with Susan or Dr. Kyriakides, but there was not; aside from the time Benjamin spent in therapy sessions with Kyriakides and a few medical tests, Amelie was allowed to have him to herself. Susan maintained a polite, somber distance; and after a few days she left the city on some mission for Dr. Kyriakides.

In the beginning, Amelie was shy with him. Things had changed, after all. She knew so much more than she used to … maybe too much. She knew what Dr. Kyriakides had told her: that Benjamin was an invention of John’s, a puppet creation that had somehow, like Pinocchio in the old Disney movie, come to life. She accepted that this was true; but she couldn’t bring herself to believe it … not really believe it … certainly not when she was with Benjamin, who was, after all, a person, a living human being; more alive, she thought privately, than John Shaw had ever been.

But this new knowledge saddened her and made her timid; it meant that things were different now.

Mostly, she waited for Benjamin to come to her.

He did, one cold Wednesday after a therapy session with Kyriakides. Benjamin came to her room. He touched her shoulder. “Let’s take a walk,” he said.

The snow had drifted into blue mounds and dunes across the lawn. Benjamin took her by the hand and led her down the front path to a lane that wound in from the main road, along a column of snowy birches. “It’s pretty here,” he said.

Amelie smiled. He was always saying things like that. Simple things. She nodded.

He walked a few more paces. “You know all about me now.”

“Not all about,” she amended. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“About John and me.”

“A little, I guess.”

“About what I am.”

She nodded.

He said, “I never lied to you, you know. But it was hard to explain.”

“John wasn’t around much in those days,” Amelie said.

“A few nights at the doughnut shop. I remember some of that now.” He looked at her somberly. “More of John’s memories are spilling over. Getting mixed up with mine. Dr. Kyriakides thinks that’s a good thing.”

Amelie didn’t respond.

“Back then,” Benjamin said, “I thought he might just fade away. Otherwise—if I’d known what was going to happen—I would have told you more. I guess I thought one day he’d just be gone. There would just be me.”

“It’s hard to understand,” Amelie ventured. “How that must feel.”

“I remember a lot of John’s childhood. I think those memories were always there … but they’re closer now. I remember his time with the Woodwards. They were good people. Ordinary people. John was never what they expected—but how could he be? In a way, they were always my parents. Never his.”

“Is it true what Kyriakides said, that John invented you?”

“That I’m a figment of his imagination?” Benjamin smiled, not altogether happily. “It doesn’t feel that way.”

“How does it feel?”

“It feels like I live inside him. It feels like I’ve always lived inside him. You know what ‘Benjamin’ means? It’s an old Hebrew name. It means ‘son of the left hand.’ In a way, that’s how it feels.”

“You are left-handed,” Amelie observed.

“And John’s right-handed. I suppose it’s true, he ‘invented’ me. But I think I’m more than that. Dr. Kyriakides agrees. It’s like invoking a spirit. John believes he made me up, but maybe he just found me … maybe I’d been there all along, and he just opened the door and said, ‘All right—come out’ ”

Amelie looked at Benjamin with dismay—not because of what he said, which seemed true and obvious, but because of the way he said it.

Benjamin had never talked about himself this way. It wasn’t like him.

He’s different, Amelie thought.

He’s changing.

She went to his bed that night, cuddled with him under the blankets. The furnace was roaring away in the basement, but this old house was hard to heat. She liked his warmth; she liked being held.

They made love. But when he was inside her, and she was looking up at him, at his big eyes strangely radiant in the dim light, Amelie felt suddenly afraid. She could not explain it, even to herself. It was not just the fear that he might be John, or partly John. It was the depth of his eyes. She was afraid of what she might see there. Something unfamiliar. Something she would not recognize. Something no one would ever recognize.

Afterward, she slept with her back to him. He curled around her with his arm across her belly, and her apprehension vanished into sleep.

Really, she had been living with two men all along, John and Benjamin. The thing was that she had never admitted it to herself.

She would wake up some mornings with a stranger beside her. She always knew at once when John was manifesting. He looked different; he had a different face. But he manifested seldom, and she had learned to anticipate his appearances. Even so, inevitably, there were times when she would wake up and find John in bed with her; and then she would feel frightened and confused. It was nothing she could ever explain to anyone. It was not a topic that came up on Donahue—“What to do when your lover is actually two people!” There was no one she had even tried to explain it to—except Susan, who was a special case. But Susan, when you came right down to it, was a pampered California preppie who could not help condescending even when she tried to be Amelie’s friend. Amelie forgave this … it was predictable … but she despaired of any real contact. Besides, Susan was obviously messed up over John.

So I’m alone.