Robert Wilson - The Divide

The thought evoked a vivid memory of Max as he must have looked to a five-year-old: stubbled, huge, wise, and aloof. Glints of light off his wire-rimmed glasses, which he would sometimes allow John to wear. The lenses turning Kyriakides into a looming, distorted monster. Angles of light through crystal: the laws of diffraction.

But the daylight was failing now. The streetlights winked on. Almost home, John told himself, if you could call it that, the two dingy rooms Benjamin shared with Amelie. It was Benjamin who made the serious decisions now, such as where to live and with whom. He was Benjamin most of the time, and it was like a dream, these long days of absence, not an utter loss of consciousness but a cloudy capitulation: floating underwater down some dark, twisting conduit. Occasionally he would blink at the world through Benjamin’s eyes, wake up and think, I, I, I. And then sink back into the darkness, one more lost thing.

He did feel some sympathy for Amelie, even though she regarded him as an illness of Benjamin’s—and that was strange, too, to be considered a disease. He remembered frightening away the man who had attacked her the night before. Her shame and her anger. But maybe she was right; maybe he had made things worse.

But he couldn’t worry about that now. He hurried up the steps and through the door, down the gray stucco hallway into the apartment, closing himself in. Amelie was off at work. John locked the door and turned on the TV. The babble of voices rose up like a physical presence and he gazed without comprehension at the screen: rioting on the West Bank, the arc and explosion of tear-gas canisters.

Thinking: Hold on.

But it was like falling asleep. You couldn’t resist forever. Couldn’t stay awake forever.

Faltering, he thought about Susan.

He had liked talking to her. She knew what he was, and that stripped away the burden of pretense. There was the inevitable chasm between them, the biochemical and physiological gap—what Max had once called an evolutionary gulf. But that was inevitable, and she was at least aware of it … and acknowledging the gulf seemed somehow to narrow it.

The talk had been good. But the talk had also evoked old, unpleasant memories; memories that were difficult to suppress at the best of times. And these were not the best of times.

He knew what to do about Susan Christopher. Tell her firmly that he wasn’t interested. Hope that Max wouldn’t press the matter.

Fade, if fading was inevitable.

That was what John Shaw meant to do.

But it occurred to him, closing his eyes, that Benjamin might have other plans.

He groped after the thought and lost it. Too late now. The space behind his eyelids seemed to fill with a bright and unforgiving light. His head throbbed and ached. The change was coming, too fast and fiercely to resist. Memories surfaced like phosphorescent sea-creatures: Susan’s face, their conversation, Kyriakides and the Woodwards, the shimmering veneer on the face of a handmade guitar … all these pieces of himself, fragile as a china cup for one weightless moment … and then gone, shattered, dispersed.

He slept. And someone else awoke.

“He’s refusing treatment?”

Dr. Kyriakides sounded angry, his voice growling through the phone lines from Illinois.

Susan said, “At the moment—yes.”

“He’s not aware of the problem?”

“He’s very aware of it.” She repeated the list of symptoms John had recited, the recurrence of “Benjamin.”

“That’s not what I would have predicted,” Dr. Kyriakides said. “But it might be a positive sign.”

“You think so? How could it be?”

“He’s capable of tremendous things, Susan—both his conscious and his unconscious mind. He’s resurrected Benjamin for a reason, even if he’s not aware of it. It’s a response to the disease, I suspect … as if one suit of clothes has begun to wear out, and he’s preparing to put on a second.”

“But it’s not the same,” Susan said. “It’s not him.”

“But in some sense it must be him. Benjamin is his creation. It’s not something new—it can’t be. Only an aspect of himself.”

“But it isn’t John Shaw. The John Shaw part of him is dying.”

There was a pause. “Possibly,” Dr. Kyriakides admitted. “In one way or another.”

“Then we have to help him.”

“I agree! But if he’s refusing treatment—”

“He could change his mind. He said he might call back. I want to stay—at least another week. I need to talk to him again.”

There was another crackling silence through the long exchange from Chicago. “I don’t remember you being this enthusiastic.”

“I suppose … it never seemed real before.”

“Then you must have felt it, too.”

“I’m sorry?”

“His specialness. There’s something unique about John. I mean, beyond the obvious. There always has been.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know what you mean.”

“Take whatever time you need.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you want a suggestion?”

“Anything.”

“Talk to the other one. Talk to Benjamin.”

“I’ll try,” Susan said.

But she had thought of that already.

The problem was how to begin.

She wasn’t much good with people. Susan had figured that out a long time ago. She was a book-reader and she had always been good with words, but that facility did not extend to her tongue. For most of her adolescence she had been a stutterer. She loved words but could not gracefully pronounce them; people often laughed when she tried. She had retreated into muteness and spoke only when it was unavoidable. Her mother took her for sessions with a “teen counselor,” who linked Susan’s stuttering with her parents’ divorce: a traumatic event for a twelve-year-old, yes, she guessed so. Privately, she connected the stutter with her father’s grim refusal to discuss anything connected with the event, though he picked her up every weekend in his car and drove her places: the beach, park picnics, Disneyland, his apartment. Day trips, rituals of silence. How are things at school, Susie? Fuh-fuh-fine. Then his cancer erupted, a fierce Round One: in this corner, Laryngeal Nodes; in that corner, the Surgeon’s Knife. He recovered, or seemed to, except for his voice. His conversation dimmed to a whisper. The doctors said there were devices he could use, but he refused. To Susan he seemed to have achieved a whole new identity, more gaunt and wholly withdrawn. After the surgery, she was afraid to talk to him. Afraid that her own voice might strike him as a rebuke or a taunt: See, I still have my tuh-tongue.

She felt infected by his silence and determined to overcome her own. She performed speech exercises. She joined the yearbook staff at high school and studied back issues of Seventeen for clues to the social graces. It was a scientific project—as solemn as that. She was not John Shaw, inventing a new self; but the inspiration was similar … a willful disguise. And it was effective; it worked; but she remained painfully conscious of the creaking machinery behind the proscenium. People would look at her oddly and she would think Oh! I made a mistake.

Approaching John Shaw had been hard enough, even under the cloak of impartiality. Approaching Benjamin would be even harder. Because she wasn’t just a messenger from Dr. Kyriakides anymore. This had become, in a way, her own project now. And she needed her own words.

She began by renting a car. She chose a late-model Volvo and spent a day with her city map, learning the downtown. Then back to the hotel to shower, followed by cheap Chinese food on Spadina Avenue and another evening with Travis McGee. No one called; no one left a message.