Halberstam’s waiting room is as drab as Victoria’s description of his inner office, more beige on beige. That includes a middle-aged receptionist named Tanya who wears a beige jacket over a beige skirt. I take a seat and glance at a magazine, People, but don’t pick it up. I’m not expecting a long delay, being as I’m fifteen minutes late.
Tanya presses a button on the intercom, then leans forward and whispers something into the machine. Finally, she turns to me, her expression grave. “You may go in now,” she intones.
Victoria described Halberstam’s gaze as intense, but I find it evaluating. The kind of look a cheetah might bestow on a herd of gazelles before choosing a victim. But he’s not looking at me when I enter the room. He’s turned to one side, offering his angular profile while he scans a document.
I take a seat in the chair assigned to us and lean back, the sensation as unpleasant as it is submissive. Halberstam appears not to notice, but his disinterest seems to me theatrical. I don’t react because we’re accustomed to the scrutiny of therapists and know their techniques must be endured.
The only therapists who’ve done us any good have been female. Take it to the bank. And while I have no sex life of my own, I know that if I ever go down that road, it will be with a woman.
Halberstam finally straightens in his very upright chair. “You’re late,” he says.
There’s nothing to be gained by lying and I don’t try. “The body,” I explain, “was hijacked as I began to dress for the appointment. By the time I regained control . . .” I shrug, the message plain enough.
“And who did the hijacking?”
“Serena, our free spirit.”
“And when this hijacking occurred, you were helpless to prevent it? You couldn’t refuse?”
Halberstam’s just verbalized the essence of our problem. Which the jerk surely knew before he posed the question. I supply him with an answer prepared in advance. Tit for tat.
“If Carolyn Grand had a central authority who could order her identities, you would never have known she existed. That’s because she’d be sane.” I pause for a moment, then jump through the required hoop. “We’ve never done the choosing, Doctor, not from the day we were born.” “Fine, in fact undeniable.” Halberstam leans back and crosses his legs. “Tell me. How do you know that Serena hijacked the body? Why not Victoria?”
I hate the role I’m in, unavoidable or not. I don’t see why I should have to explain anything to this moron. I don’t see why I should have to endure the semi-sneer that passes for a smile. Submission has never been my strong point.
Something inside me, perhaps one of the others, demands that I lie. Tell him you know it was Serena because the clothes you’re wearing could only belong to her. The truth will not set you free.
I ignore the advice. “I know, Doctor, because I was there. Along for the ride.”
“Just the two of you?”
“This time.”
“And other times?”
“Any number, any combination. It’s always been that way.” I reflect for just a second. Then I repeat myself. “Always.” “So, you’ve never questioned this arrangement?”
I take a second to adjust my thoughts, then say, “Look, Doctor. Early on I questioned every arrangement. Especially the most basic, who and what I am. But what’s the point? I can’t will myself into or out of existence, so I take what I can get. Like the rest of us.”
Halberstam replies a bit too fast. “Well said. Lack of control is the essence of your problem, a point also made by Victoria.” He folds his hands and lays them on the desk as he fixes me with one of those penetrating stares. “May I ask who I’m speaking to?”
“You’re speaking to Martha.”
“And how would you describe your . . . your role, Martha?”
“Old-fashioned housewife. I cook, clean, shop, pay the bills. I keep our little household up and running.”
“Victoria plays no part?”
“She does face-to-face. When we have to be seen.” Like my sister, I have no problem switching from “we” to “I” and back again. “Apart from taking out the garbage and collecting the mail, I try to keep my head down.”
“Can you tell me why?”
“I have a short fuse. I don’t really like people.”
“Would you call yourself a misanthrope?”
“I might if I knew what it meant.” My tone is sharp enough to be confused with sarcasm, one of those errors I vowed not to make. I watch Halberstam nod. I’m about to be punished.
“Do you remember what happened to you when you were a child?”
“No, I have no direct memory of my childhood. Carolyn Grand was twenty-five when I first became aware.”
“But you do know what happened, even if you can’t remember?”
“Yes, Doctor, I do know. And I’m reminded every time I step out of the shower and count the scars on my body.” “The physical abuse.” His tone is eager and he’s leaning forward. “Victoria was very forthcoming about the physical abuse, but the other part, the sexual abuse . . . like you, she claimed to be totally unfamiliar with that phase of Carolyn Grand’s life.”
“Like I already said, Victoria and I were born on the same day, a week after Carolyn’s twenty-fifth birthday.”
Halberstam waves me off. His features are relaxed now, relaxed and confident. “Your father made movies, Martha, made them and sold them, movies that still circulate among pedophiles. You’ve seen these movies, so your childhood cannot be as remote as you make it out to be.”
*
Fifteen years ago, one of our therapists, Dequan Cho, decided that it was time that we confronted our past. We’d been running away for years, he explained, and look where we ended up. Our desperate attempt to escape a past that couldn’t be escaped had left us at the mercy of psychological forces we’d never vanquish. Not unless we confronted that past, unless we acknowledged the damage done to us. How? By reviewing some of the movies made by our father.
Cho had a combative personality. Fight, fight, fight. He’d grown up a privileged child in Riverdale and didn’t have a clue about the effect of that footage on poor Tina. Tina had been the star of those movies. Coerced into them by her father, Hank Grand, a malignant narcissist who loved to hurt the people closest to him. And nobody was closer than his daughter.
Unfortunately, Cho’s suggestion wasn’t a suggestion. We were guests of the state, restricted to a locked ward at Creed- moor Psychiatric Center after a now-banished identity took a nap on the Long Island Expressway. Life was crazy then. Identities came and went so fast it was like flipping through a deck of cards. Victoria and I weren’t around at that time, only Kirk, the oldest of us. He wanted out of Creedmoor— desperately, desperately, desperately, as Serena would say— and so he and the others agreed to watch.
Cho played the movies, maybe a dozen in all, for many hours over the next ten days. And I have to suppose our cooperation made a difference because Cho released us a few months later. Kirk and the rest were euphoric—free at last— and they might have remained euphoric if Tina hadn’t made her first attempt at suicide a week later. It took a day and a half to clean up the blood.