by Rysa Walker
I used to feel a bit guilty about using information left behind by Emily and the others, but Dr. Kelsey pointed out that it’s really no different than someone who is blessed with an extraordinarily good memory or any other special ability. I finally decided to simply accept the silver lining, because I don’t think I could fully separate all of the bits of trivia that I know from the bits that they knew, even if I tried. Using the info to help Deo rather than making him read the book is probably crossing some sort of academic integrity line, but, hey—it’s not like I’m sneaking him the answers in class. He still has to learn it.
I wrap up and then add, “You might also want to check the textbook. Emily graduated in 1955, so . . .”
Deo rolls his eyes. “It’s history, Anna, not science. History books don’t change.”
I open my mouth to disagree, but we’re talking about ninth-grade US history, so I suspect he’s mostly right. He asks a few more questions, then I finally open my English lit text, looking for something that I’ve read before or that I might have squirreled away in my psychic version of SparkNotes. I finally settle on Langston Hughes—I like his poetry, and it will be interesting to talk to Deo about him. Gay, black, and communist had to have been a killer combo for someone living and working in the 1930s.
Deo still has the computer tied up, so I unplug my phone from the charger on his desk and turn it on to check for messages that came in while my phone was kidnapped. There’s one message from Joe, but Deo’s already told me what that’s about, so I click delete. Dr. Kelsey’s number is next, and I wonder whether she was calling me about Porter poking around in my business, but it’s only her virtual receptionist app with a reminder of my appointment tomorrow.
The third number isn’t familiar. There’s a short pause, then a guy comes on. His voice is low-pitched, and it’s kind of hard to hear him through the heavy traffic in the background.
“The van’s a warning, Anna. Stay away from Porter if you want to keep safe.”
I play it back again to make sure I understood him correctly, and then I just stare at the phone for a minute. A van that barely missed us was a warning? Porter was a bit of a jerk, but I really hadn’t pegged him as homicidal.
“Um, Deo?” I say, tossing him the phone as he turns toward me. “I think I found the downside to keeping our mouths shut.”
He listens to the message, then replays it before dialing the number. We wait but no one answers.
“Even if it’s a landline, who doesn’t have voice mail these days?” Deo asks.
“Pay phone?”
“Do those still exist?” He picks up the phone again and stares at the display. “Anna—your shift was supposed to start at six fifteen, right? And you got to the deli at, what, six thirty?”
“I wasn’t that late. Six twenty-five, at the latest.”
“So the incident with the van was, say, six forty?”
I nod. “Why?”
“Check the time stamp,” Deo says, sliding the phone across the carpet. “The call came in at three twenty-three. How weird is that?”
CHAPTER THREE
Dr. Louise Kelsey’s office is blessed with an extra-large window, and cursed with having that window located directly above the parking lot and an industrial-size dumpster, which is usually full to overflowing thanks to the Asian take-out place and the convenience store that are the other tenants of the small building. Kelsey makes the best of the situation by hanging vertical blinds across the bottom half of the window. The wheat-colored slats hide the ugly but let the sunshine in. You can see a bit of sky and the top branches of the large maple tree behind the building. It’s pretty, especially in the autumn.
I did the math a few months back, and I’ve spent nearly a thousand hours in this room. With the exception of a horrible seven months when the system put me with a different therapist, I’ve been in this room for two hours pretty much every week since I was five.
This office is the one place in my life that is a constant. I’m sure the shabby-chic look is due to the vow of semipoverty that therapists take when they agree to work with wards of the state, but I like knowing this room will always be the same. The furniture is worn, comfortable, and probably older than I am—she hasn’t changed the décor since my first visit, aside from a few new pillows on the couch. The same oversized mirror still covers most of the wall next to the door, making the office look larger than it really is. Aside from the occasional computer upgrade, the only major change has been her family photos—the frames are the same, but the photographs of her three grandchildren have morphed from gap-toothed grins through acne and braces and finally to caps and gowns. And she added a white-noise machine a few years back to help mask the noises of the city with the soothing sounds of a waterfall.
Kelsey is also a constant. There are a few more lines around her gray eyes, and there might be an extra pound or two around the middle of her petite frame, but her hair is still closely cropped, white with a few streaks of graphite. The same rimless eyeglasses rest atop her head, ready to be pulled down if she needs to read from a file. The same large yellow coffee mug emblazoned with a Peanuts cartoon reading The Doctor is IN holds pencils and pens beside her computer. The same red mug holds her coffee, and it’s always within easy reach of her hands.
She makes excellent coffee. I requested a cup, without cream or sugar, the first time I sat across from her desk. Kelsey didn’t tell me that a five-year-old shouldn’t be drinking coffee or insist on diluting it until it was mostly milk, like my previous foster mother had. She simply poured it into one of the disposable cups, noting only that I should be careful, since it was hot. The next Christmas, she gave me my very own mug, dark blue to match my eyes, with my name printed on the front in white script.
I open the cabinet just above the coffeemaker, pull my mug from its usual spot on the shelf, and fill it before sitting on the couch. Usually, I’d take the chair, but today it is already occupied.
Porter has his own coffee, in one of the disposable cups, and has already finished most of it. I’m late, and they both look at me reproachfully.
“Sorry,” I say. “Fridays are always busy, and the girl who was supposed to relieve me at the deli arrived late, so I missed the first bus.” It’s true, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I rushed getting here. It’s taken nearly a week for Molly to convince me that this appointment is something that even approaches a good idea. There are many places I would rather be than in the same room with a man who, despite his repeated denials, I still suspect of paying someone to aim that van at me and Deo.
Dr. Kelsey also had reservations about the meeting, and she doesn’t look any more pleased with the situation now that she’s been alone with him for ten minutes. I couldn’t care less about inconveniencing Porter, but I feel bad for keeping Kelsey waiting and give her an apologetic half smile.
Kelsey rolls her eyes slightly but smiles back, and I feel more at ease. “Okay,” she says. “I’m glad you’re finally here, Anna. As I’ve told Mr. Porter, I’m not comfortable talking about your case unless you are present.”
Porter nods at her and then looks at me, his eyes wary. “And, as I’ve told both of you, I’m not convinced that your doctor will be entirely honest and open with you sittin’ here.”
Kelsey and I discussed this, at length, at my previous appointment, and we’ve already come to an arrangement. I debate whether to toy with Porter for a few minutes, to show him that I don’t have to put up with his demands, but I hate to waste more of Kelsey’s time.
“Fine. I’ll wait in there,” I say, nodding toward the door to the reception area.
I grab my backpack and coffee and go into the hallway, closing the door behind me. But instead of going into the reception area, I open a door on the left and slip quickly into a small observation room. It’s dark inside, but I leave the light off so that I can see through the two-way mirror into the office.
Using the observation room was Kelsey’s idea. Let’s just say I have cont
rol issues. It’s my life. I have a right to know what they’re saying.
And it’s not a lie. Neither of us actually said that I was going into the reception area.
Is too a lie. You know that’s what he thinks.
So now I’m responsible for his assumptions?
I twist the small knob on the speaker in front of me to hear what they’re saying. Then I move the chair back and tilt it against the wall, so that I can prop my feet up.
Porter is talking. “. . . already know the basics, Dr. Kelsey. She’s been in psychiatric hospitals, what, four different times?”
“I believe it’s five, actually,” Kelsey answers. “The last hospitalization was in 2012, however. Nearly seven years ago. Anna is stable now. She attends school, works fifteen to twenty hours a week, and manages most of her affairs on her own.”
“Do her normal affairs include harassing people?” he asks. “I did her a favor by not reporting this harassment to the authorities. She seems to be under the delusion not only that she’s in contact with my dead granddaughter but also that I hired a hit man or something . . .”
“Well, to be fair, Mr. Porter, she has some support concerning the van. I’m not saying you had anything to do with it, but she wasn’t alone—”
“Yeah, but the other person she says was there is the same kid who was taggin’ along behind her last week when she was stalking me.”
“And,” Kelsey continues, ignoring the interruption, “someone did call her and warn her to stay away from you. I’m sure she played you the message?”
Porter huffs and rearranges himself in the chair. “Yeah, I heard it. She doesn’t file a report after this so-called hit-and-run attempt, and then she gets a friend of hers to leave a message on her phone. I’m supposed to buy that as some sort of evidence?”
“She also received this,” Kelsey says, pushing a folded sheet of paper toward him. “Someone left it in the mailbox at Bartholomew House on Friday evening.”
He unfolds the paper and reads the two short sentences—Mind your own business. Do not contact Porter again—and shakes his head. “Again, isn’t the most likely scenario that Anna or a friend wrote this? The only reason I’m taking time out of my day to be here, Dr. Kelsey, is because I’d like to see the girl get some help. At best, she’s desperate for attention and, at worst, she’s involved in some sort of scam.”
Kelsey takes a deep breath and leans back in her desk chair, her hands crossed in front of her. Her two pointer fingers make a little tent that she rests against her lower lip. She always does this when she’s thinking about what to say next.
“I don’t agree, Mr. Porter,” she says after several seconds have passed. “Anna debated whether or not to contact you for the past few months. She finally decided that it was the right thing to do.”
“Okay, let’s say for the sake of argument that this wasn’t an attempt to con me. My point still stands. If she’s sincere, then she’s lost her grip on reality. Either way, somethin’s gotta be done before she hurts herself or someone else.”
Dr. Kelsey takes a deep breath and walks over to the counter to refill her cup. “You want more?” she asks.
He shakes his head, looking impatient as Kelsey takes her time adding the milk and sugar.
“Mr. Porter,” she begins, once back at her desk, “I’ve worked with Anna since she was five years old. She was in the child welfare system for about two years prior to that. Someone dropped her off in a shopping mall food court just before her third birthday. Pinned to her dress was a note with the name Anna, a date of birth, and the words, This child is possessed.”
My chest tightens and my pulse speeds up a bit. None of this is new. I don’t really remember being abandoned, but Kelsey and I have spent hours unearthing my early childhood and staking every psychological demon we could dredge up. I’ve dealt with all of this before. I just don’t like Porter hearing it.
“The state never located her parents, I take it?”
Kelsey shakes her head. “Only a first name on the note—someone assigned her a middle and last name later on. Either she was born outside the state of Maryland under a different first name or she was born on a different day, because there’s no record of anyone giving birth to a baby named Anna on December 3, 2001. Once the search came up empty, they put her into the foster program. She was a prime candidate for adoption—an adorable toddler, blonde hair, blue eyes, sharp as a whip. But a few weeks later, they get strange reports from the first foster parents. Talking in her sleep. Not toddler talk, either. Fully formed adult sentences, and the tone of voice was different from her usual speech. And then it starts happening when she’s awake. So Anna was placed in a children’s psychiatric ward where they observed similar behavior. She gets an official diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder.”
“I’ve heard of it,” Porter says. “Usually called multiple personality, isn’t it?”
She nods. “At any rate, Anna was hospitalized for a few months. And then it disappeared completely. No symptoms, no unusual behavior. A new set of foster parents was rounded up and things were going really well. They knew about her previous problems, but everything seemed fine, so they chalked it up to the trauma of desertion. They even started the initial paperwork for adoption.”
This part I do remember. The memories are even clearer because of the hypnotherapy I’ve done with Dr. Kelsey over the years. It was the best house I’ve lived in. A small fenced yard, a sandbox in the back. A yellow pail and orange shovel with a handle in the shape of a crab. Sesame Street every morning. I can’t remember the foster parents’ names, but they had a little black Yorkie named Dorothy, who licked my hands when she sat in my lap and shared my Goldfish crackers when I left the bowl on the floor.
“I’m guessing Anna had another relapse?” Porter asks.
Kelsey shrugs noncommittally. “If you want to call it that. They took her up to Pennsylvania to meet her prospective grandparents. She was sitting on their porch swing when, according to their report, she started speaking in a different tone and calling the foster father’s dad by his first name, asking him about people he went to high school with. Asking about them by name.”
“How’s that possible?”
“The house had been in the family for several generations. The older guy’s sister died when she was in her teens, back in the late sixties, while he was serving in Vietnam. She never got to tell her brother good-bye. Anna . . . picked her up . . . when she touched the swing.”
“Picked who up?” Porter asks.
“The sister’s ghost. Her psychic echo, I don’t know. In Jewish mysticism, they call it an ibbur—when a spirit takes over a host to finish some task, something incomplete that keeps them from moving on. There are similar concepts in other faiths as well. Anna thinks that, in most cases, the spirit . . . the consciousness of someone who can’t move on to whatever comes next, eventually returns to the last place or the last thing that made them feel happy. Or safe. For the sister, it must have been that porch swing. And she couldn’t let go until she told her brother good-bye.”
The brother is vivid in my memory. A chin that needed shaving, the strong smell of cigarettes and motor oil on his shirt. His sister’s name was Lydia and the old guy was Paul. Lydia wasn’t pushy. She just said, I never got to say good-bye. Please, would you let me say good-bye? I could feel how important it was to her, that it was everything in the entire world to her, so I let her take control. I was too young to think about consequences, about whether I could fight her if she decided she didn’t want to leave. I was still hugging him when she went away. Everyone was crying and a bit freaked out. But Paul smiled behind the tears. And Lydia was happy. She went away happy.
Porter just snorts. “And you believed this story?”
“I didn’t,” Kelsey admits, with a quick apologetic glance toward the mirror. She thinks I don’t know this, but I do. Even five-year-olds can tell when someone doesn’t believe them. When they think you’re making it up or crazy or what
ever. She was always nice about it, though, and most people weren’t, so I didn’t really mind.
“I didn’t start working with Anna,” she says, “until the second hospitalization in 2007. That was a few months after the incident in Pennsylvania. The couple was still considering adoption, you see. It was just that one time—and once the sister said her good-bye, Anna was perfectly normal. But then, a double whammy. The couple finally conceived, after seven years of trying. Even still, they were planning to go ahead with the adoption, but then Anna was on the subway with the foster mother and she picked up another . . . echo, ghost, whatever. Not a very friendly one this time.”
Myron. I would remember Myron even if I’d never spent a single minute in hypnotherapy. He was very strong when he was angry, and Myron was almost always angry. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to forget Myron and keep his voice and his face out of my dreams. Trying to forget the nightmares that followed after Myron was finally gone. Trying to seal his file shut and wall it off in the most remote corner of my mind.
All of the others I’ve hosted fit the label of ibbur. They’ve been needy, but not malevolent. They asked for my help. And in cases where I couldn’t help, they eventually went away. Myron, on the other hand, was a dybbuk. He didn’t ask. He simply took.
I don’t want her to talk about Myron.
And she doesn’t.
“Let’s just say her foster parents decided that it was better not to risk the welfare of an infant with a child who was so volatile. Who might be dangerous. So Anna lands back in the hospital. I started working with her when she left the hospital and was assigned to a group home. I accepted the diagnosis of the previous doctors. Officially, I still accept that diagnosis.”
