The Girls He Adored

by Jonathan Nasaw

  “But it is a current event,” he moaned. “Everything's a current event. Mose never forgets anything.” He grabbed his head between his hands, pressing his strange smooth palms tightly against his temples.

  “It's not about forgetting, it's about forgiving,” said Irene. “Understanding and forgiving yourself. You're carrying a crushing burden of guilt around with you.”

  It was Max who looked up, his head in his hands. “Sister, you don't know the half of it,” he said sardonically.

  “Tell me.”

  “The first one's name was Mary Malloy.”

  63

  MISS MILLER COULD HAVE had the place renovated by professionals—her father had left her a considerable nest egg—but she didn't like having anyone else around to look at her, so Maxwell (to use the collective term) worked alone whenever possible.

  Or as alone as a multiple can ever be. Mose scanned two handyman's encyclopedias and dozens upon dozens of do-it-yourself books into his prodigious memory, and the various alters turned themselves into carpenters, plumbers, electricians, painters, as necessary, according to their talents and interests. When he did have to hire outside help, Maxwell would work alongside them—he never had to watch anybody do a job twice.

  And he was extremely motivated. All the energy he used to put into martial arts, wrestling, fighting at Juvie, sex with Miss Miller, he threw into the renovation, working from dawn to dusk seven days a week. By the time that first winter rolled around, the house was habitable—he'd never been prouder of anything in his life.

  It was mid-March when Maxwell, as Christopher, stopped into the Old Umpqua Feed Barn to get some advice about chickens— he was thinking about starting a flock. Mary Malloy was behind the counter. A more objective observer might have noted that she was a younger Miss Miller—same strawberry blond hair, delicate cheekbones, milkmaid skin, slender frame. All Christopher knew was that he was a goner the minute he laid eyes on her.

  They started talking. She said she loved chickens, used to raise them when she was a little girl, down on the farm. The more they talked, the more they found they had in common. Mary was an orphan, too. After her parents died, the Jehovah's Witnesses took her in. A bunch of them lived in one of the big old turn-ofthecentury houses at the edge of town, down by the river.

  Thereafter, it was always Christopher who visited the feed barn. On his third trip he got up the courage to ask her for a date. He was eighteen, but shy and backward with girls his own age—he'd never even dated one. Mary agreed, but said they had to keep it quiet. If the other Witnesses had found out she was seeing somebody outside the faith, they'd have shunned her. Kicked her out of her apartment, turned their backs to her on the street. She'd have been a complete outcast. For her it would have been like losing her home, her family, and her friends simultaneously.

  So even after they started dating regularly, they kept a low profile. If they went to see a movie, for instance, she'd sneak out and meet him at the theater.

  At this point, their relationship was still innocent. Bearing a burden of guilt both for the abuse he'd suffered as a child (abused children always feel guilty, as if they have somehow deserved the horrors visited on them), and for the death of his parents, Maxwell was extraordinarily conflicted about sex. Alicea was terrified of it, but couldn't help behaving seductively around men. Max, as Irene had suspected, had internalized Carnivean's predilections, along with a great deal of rage. Christopher held himself responsible for the seduction of Miss Miller. And it was sexual jealousy on the part of all of them that led to Kinch's appearance, Kronk's death, and the fire.

  As for Mary, even French kissing was a big deal for her. So they took it slow. Christopher started timing his trips into town to coincide with her day off. They'd meet at a prearranged spot and she'd return to the Ridge with him. They'd feed the chickens, swim in the creek, maybe make out a little—nothing heavy.

  The first few times Christopher brought Mary back to the Ridge, Miss Miller never left the bedroom. But he told Mary all about her. Well, not about the sex. If you left out the sex, then the agreed-upon fiction, Maxwell's heroism in saving his foster mother from a rapist and being burned himself in the process, cast him in rather a romantic light.

  So he and Mary talked it over, and decided that Miss Miller was only being shy on account of her disfigurement. Mary certainly had no reason to suspect that Chrissy's foster mother might be bitterly, insanely jealous. Neither did Christopher. After all, Miss M had ended their sexual relationship even before the fire; the idea she might want to rekindle it in her condition was utterly, literally inconceivable to him.

  Of all the alters, only the preternaturally mature Max suspected what Miss Miller was going through, and how it might end. But Max wasn't that fond of Mary in the first place, having discovered that when Christopher was in love, his personality was strong enough to threaten Max's hegemony over the system. He kept his mouth shut.

  And eventually Miss Miller seemed to warm up to Mary. Who wouldn't?—Mary was that sweet. She never even flinched the first time she saw Miss M, which suggested that she either had iron discipline or that she saw the world through the eyes of an angel.

  It was the happiest time Christopher had ever known—even better than when Miss Miller had rescued him and taken him to her bed. And as his relationship with Mary deepened, he began to experience the spontaneous remission of his dissociative disorder. Such remissions were, Irene knew, not uncommon as child multiples entered adulthood. Sometimes the remissions were permanent; more often the symptoms reappeared again as the multiple entered his or her thirties. But Christopher didn't know anything about that—all he knew was that whole days could go by without another alter seizing control of the body.

  By this time he and Mary had reached the stage of heavy petting. But further than that she would not go. So Christopher did what normal, healthy, foolish young men have done throughout the ages: he proposed marriage.

  And she accepted. That meant she'd soon be leaving her faith, her friends, what passed for her family. But now she had Chrissy— that gave her the courage to leave.

  The two young lovers told Miss Miller that very evening. Christopher hadn't bought Mary a ring—he didn't have any money of his own—so Miss Miller took the engagement ring Kronk had given her off her own finger and slipped it on Mary's. Christopher was flabbergasted. He'd never allowed himself to believe that so much happiness could ever be his.

  Mary and Chrissy slept together for the first time that night. He hadn't been with a woman since Miss Miller first locked her door. They made love by moonlight. It was good. He was gentle. Though she was a virgin, there was no pain and very little blood. After the first time they cried, literally cried for joy in each other's arms, then started all over again. She climbed on top and rode him as though she'd been born to it, her back arched, her small white, strawberrytipped breasts thrown forward and her head thrown back, her hair pale and shimmering in the moonlight.

  If lives have an arc, this is the zenith of Maxwell's. An instant later, in darkness and confusion, the downward plunge begins. A breeze from the open door. Footsteps, a rustle of silk. A sound like a dull punch. A puzzled cry. Mary's weight collapses on top of him. He works his way out from under her.

  “And how do you like it, young man?” says Miss Miller. She's standing at the foot of the bed. Christopher is dimly aware of Mary kneeling beside him, supporting her weight with one hand and flailing clumsily behind her with the other, as if she were trying to brush away a bee crawling up her spine.

  For a moment he understands nothing. Then he flicks on the bedside lamp and sees the hilt of the ice pick protruding from the small of Mary's back, and suddenly he understands everything.

  64

  “GOOD MORNING?” ALVIN RALPHS wasn't quite sure what to make of the big bald fella with the bandaged head who had just shambled into Alvin's Big Hat Big Man Western Wear shop in Dallas wearing a rumpled plaid sport coat over a shoulder holster, wrinkled Sansabelt slacks, an
d shapeless Hush Puppies. It was enough to make a haberdasher weep.

  “Good morning.” Pender wasn't quite sure what to make of Alvin Ralphs either. Alvin stood five-seven, if you counted the two-inch heels on his boots and the five-inch crown on his Stetson, his western-cut suit was powder blue, with embroidered yokes fore and aft, and with his bright eyes and fallen jowls, he looked (thought Pender) like the love child of Little Jimmy Dickens (“Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?”) and Droopy Dog, from the old Warner Brothers cartoons.

  “What can I do for you?” His diction was precise, his tone lilting—no Texas twang to speak of.

  “I need a hat.”

  “I can see that.”

  “And I figured as long as I was in Dallas . . .”

  “Say no more.” Ralphs held up his right thumb, sighted in on Pender's head like a painter checking perspective. “Eight and a quarter?”

  “Bingo.”

  The bright little eyes narrowed. Ralphs sighted in with his thumb again, then rubbed his jowls. When the pronouncement came, it was with the finality of a papal bull: “J. B. Stetson El Patron, Silver Belly White.”

  He disappeared into the back of the store, returned with a box, positioned Pender before a triple mirror, climbed up onto a step-stool, and with a ceremonious air carefully lowered the El Patron onto Pender's head, making sure it cleared the bandages.

  “I ask you, sir: Does Alvin Ralphs know his hats?”

  “He does, indeed,” said Pender, admiring his reflection—or at least the hat's reflection. “I kinda look like shit from the brim down, though, huh?”

  “Let's just say from the neck down, sir.”

  “I was once told I was the worst-dressed agent in the history of the FBI.”

  “One can only hope,” replied Alvin Ralphs.

  65

  “DO YOU WANT TO FINISH her off, or shall we let her suffer?” asks Miss Miller, as the girl Christopher loves crumples face forward on the bed, still pawing feebly behind her, trying to remove the ice pick protruding from her lower back. Deflected by her lumbar spine, the point has slipped sideways at an angle and penetrated her right kidney. She is bleeding to death internally. “I assure you, it's all the same to me.”

  No answer. Christopher, backed against the headboard, hugs his drawn-up knees.

  “I know what's going through your treacherous little mind,” Miss Miller adds, lifting the hem of her dress primly as she sits down on the corner of the bed. “You're thinking there's still time to save her. Snatch her up in your arms, drive her to the hospital. Be a hero.”

  Mary has begun keening his name now— Chrisseee, Chrisseee. Miss Miller raises her own weak voice as best she can over the shrieking. “But before you do that, Ulysses, think about what will happen if she doesn't make it—if she dies on the way. What are you going to tell them? That I did it? And if I tell them you did— that you raped her and stabbed her?”

  “Chrisseee. Chrisseee. Help meeee.”

  “Just who—excuse me, whom —do you think they're going to believe, Ulysses?”

  Mary, weakening: “Chrissy it hurts Chrissy oh god what's happening . . .”

  “You or me, Ulysses? The poor, feeble, disfigured schoolteacher, or the boy who's left his seed inside the victim, a boy who's already killed a man with an ice pick?”

  Christopher covers his ears with his hands, trying to block out not just the women's voices but his own internal cacophony—the crowd noise.

  “ . . . it hurts Chrissy it hurts so bad help me Chrissy . . .” “Finish her, Ulysses. It's the only way.”

  “. . . please Chrissy oh God Chrissy I hurt I hurt so bad . . .” Ulysses . . . Chrissy . . . Ulysses . . . Chrissy . . .

  “SHUT UP! EVERYBODY JUST SHUT UP!”

  Silence. Silence in the bedroom, silence in the forest. With the sun almost directly overhead, the chiaroscuro effect of the dappled sunlight was more intense than ever, luminous white columns where the sun penetrated the forest canopy, dense black shadow where it did not.

  Irene Cogan closed her notebook and leaned forward. “Do you need a break?” she whispered. Maxwell was facing away from her; her lips were inches from his ear.

  His head moved slowly to the left, then to the right. No.

  “Are you sure?”

  A nod.

  “Go on, then. What happens next?”

  Slowly he turned to face her. His eyes were dull, his face expressionless. “Kinch,” he replied. “Kinch happens next.”

  Miss Miller watches from the doorway—she's backed away in order to avoid being splattered. When Kinch is done, she approaches the bed, leans over, taking care to keep the skirt of her dress out of the gore, picks up Mary's left hand, slips off the ring she gave her at dinner, wipes it clean on the corner of the sheet, slips it back onto her own finger. Only then does she address Ulysses.

  “Clean this mess up,” she tells him. Then an afterthought, as she absentmindedly fingers her current wig, a cheap polyester affair she was given before she left the hospital: “Oh, and save me the hair. I think I'm going to take up wig making.”

  66

  BEING A MULTIPLE WAS a lot like being a sports team with a deep bench. With Christopher in hiding and Max exhausted after the traumatic morning session, it was Useless—Ulysses, the erstwhile host alter—who picked up the plum assignment: driving into town for supplies.

  Before he left, he brought a lunch tray up to Irene's room, and apologetically locked the door behind him on his way out, assuring her that “Ih-ih-it's for your oh-oh-own safety.” Not Jimmy Stewart—Useless had a vowel stammer of his own. “I-I-I'm locking her ih-ih-in too.”

  Irene, who was still trying to digest the idea that there were at least two homicidal psychopaths on the ridge—Kinch and Miss Miller—didn't touch the food. Instead she sat down at the writing table, looking over the green meadow, and began making out her will.

  I, Irene Cogan, being of sound mind and body, declare this my last will and testament. All my worldly goods, I leave to be divided equally between my father, Edward McMullen of Sebastopol, and my brothers, Thomas McMullen of San Jose and Edward McMullen Jr. of Campbell, except for my jewelry, which I leave to my dear friend Barbara Klopfman, of Pacific Grove.

  What else? Not much to show for a life. Not that it mattered— the document was not likely to be found. Maybe years hence, if she hid it well. Or never, if she hid it either too well or not well enough. She tore the sheet out of her notebook and slipped it under the fold-up top of the writing table, then crossed over to the bed, stripped off the sheets, and knotted the ends together. No more fooling herself about being rescued, or about achieving through therapy some miraculous fusion that would help Maxwell see the error of his ways. She'd known it was time to escape—or at least begin actively seeking out a means of escape—since midway through this morning's session, when Maxwell had uttered those chilling words: The first one's name was Mary Malloy.

  The first one? Dear Jesus, the first one? She'd realized then that he'd never let her go voluntarily—all that would be left of her would be her panties and jogging bra in the top drawer of the bureau, her tank top in the middle drawer, her running shorts in the bottom drawer, her Reeboks on the floor of the closet. And of course her hair on Miss Miller's head, after it had grown out to its original color.

  A drop of fifteen feet from the window ledge to the roof of the porch below. Two sheets and two blankets knotted together at the corners and anchored to a leg of the heavy bureau gave Irene more than enough length. She hadn't climbed a rope since high school gym class, but she could still hear Miss Hatton shouting at the girls to use those legs, ladies, use those legs, the good lord made 'em stronger than your arms.

  Irene, in a pair of Guess? jeans and a long-sleeved green jersey, climbed out feet first, belly to the sill, hunching her shoulders together and angling them diagonally to squeeze through the narrow opening. Hanging from the sill with both hands, she hooked her left leg twice around the upper
most sheet until it was draped across her instep. Right foot on left, squeezing the rope between sole and instep, she let go of the sill and inchwormed her way down.

  Thank you, Miss Hatton, she thought to herself as her feet touched the shingles—then she realized that she still had a tenfoot drop to the ground. Irene tiptoed to the corner of the sloping porch roof, dropped to her belly, and slipped over the side, lowering herself from the aluminum rain gutter, wrapping her legs around the downspout strapped to the corner post supporting the roof, then shinnying the rest of the way. When her feet hit the ground, she backed away from the porch and looked up, up, up to her bedroom window.

  Suddenly it occurred to her, much too late to do anything about it, that if she didn't find a way off the property before Maxwell returned, she might not have the strength to climb back up.

  Time to hustle those buns, ladies, hustle those buns, thought Irene—it was another of Miss Hatton's sayings.

  Moving at a steady trot, it took Irene half an hour to understand that her first assumption had been correct—there was no easy way off Scorned Ridge. The electrified chain-link fence enclosed the entire property, and the juice was on, as evidenced by the freshly charred corpse of a rabbit just outside the fence at the northwest edge of the meadow. The gate at the southwest corner of the property that led down to the river bore a diamond-shaped yellow High Voltage sign, and the gates of the sally port at the southeast corner of the property were padlocked, and topped with triple strands of electrified barbed wire mounted on ceramic spools.