The Flock

by Joan Frances Casey

  Renee had been promised priority for the two weeks she was home. All of the Flock were welcome at my house at any time, and I felt I had amply demonstrated my caring over almost four years of treatment. It was up to them. I treated Renee like the reasonable being she usually was. Steve also had a hard time dealing with Renee’s regressed behavior and was as baffled as I was about what she wanted. Predictably, Steve blamed me for not taking over.

  —

  I STOOD FOR A MINUTE in front of Lynn’s house, trying to decide what to do, where to go. I couldn’t face Lynn, couldn’t face Steve. I just wanted to get away from everything—from them and from the Flock. I started down the street.

  Gordon stopped his car next to me. He was pulling in the driveway when he saw me walking. Rather than go into the house for an update on the Flock’s latest crisis, he responded to what he saw. “Come on in the car,” Gordon said. “I’ll drive you wherever you’re heading.”

  “I don’t know where to go,” I said, and got into the car. I cried with frustration and confusion. “No one is listening to me, and everything is so crazy inside. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Come on back to the house,” Gordon suggested. “Lynn and I have a meeting to go to, so you’ll have the place to yourself for a couple of hours. You’ll have some time to think, sleep, or do whatever you need to do.”

  Gordon pulled into the driveway and I blissfully lost time. I didn’t want to face Lynn and my humiliation at walking out on her. I didn’t want to handle anything. Thank God I could lose time.

  Jo found herself sitting in Gordon’s car and smiled uncertainly. The quick change from Cambridge to Chicago caught her off guard, but she was glad to be home.

  “You just got into town today,” Gordon said, carrying her suitcase back to the house. Lynn explained that they were off to a meeting, but that Steve might be calling soon.

  A few minutes later, Steve did call. “Hi, Jo,” he said. “I’ll come up and get you now, OK?”

  Jo wasn’t sure how to respond. She rarely knew what was supposed to happen. When no other personality shoved her aside to confirm or deny Steve’s plan, she said, “I guess so.”

  Back at Steve’s house, Jo and Steve sipped wine in the sunroom. Jo loved this house with its warm wood trim and big windows. She was sad that sometime soon she would have to leave. It had become a safe nest.

  Steve gazed past Jo to the small forest of plants that dominated the room’s southern exposure. “I’m seeing a psychiatrist now,” he said. “I’m trying to learn how to live with a multiple.”

  Jo was puzzled. She was glad that Steve was in treatment if it was something he was doing for himself, but she didn’t understand how she could be the reason Steve was seeing a psychiatrist. “You make it sound as though living with a multiple is like owning an exotic plant,” Jo said bitterly. “It sounds as though you wish you could find a How to Live with a Multiple book at the local bookstore.”

  Steve failed to hear the anger in Jo’s voice. “That’s exactly right,” he said. “Since there’s no how-to book, I have to see this psychiatrist to learn how to deal with you.”

  “I am not a plant,” Jo said in a controlled voice. “I’m a person. I want you to treat me as a person. I want you to treat me with dignity and respect.” With that, she stormed inside herself.

  Kendra smiled at Steve impishly. “Well,” she said, “you’ve now struck out with two of them. You blew it with Renee by denying the seriousness of the Flock’s current problems. And you blew it with Jo by making her feel that you think she’s more bizarre than she thinks she is. That’s going some! But don’t worry, you won’t blow it with me. I’m just going to try to keep things moving along until Lynn is ready to help us put this mess back together.”

  Kendra smiled reassuringly at Steve to let him know that things really were going to work out. “How about taking me out to dinner?” Kendra asked. “This body hasn’t had a decent meal in weeks.”

  Steve enjoyed being with Kendra, who seemed currently content with herself and with him. They went to dinner and returned home late. Lynn didn’t call.

  The next day, Kendra, Karen, and some of the others cycled out for brief periods of time. I was too trapped by my anger and hurt to resurface, and no personality had the strength to remain in control for very long. In the past, the Flock had presented a fairly consistent picture to the outside world. Now the personality-switching was like lights flashing on a Christmas tree.

  Even Steve couldn’t deny the disorganization. Renee and Jo, the two personalities he liked best, weren’t around at all. It seemed that he couldn’t hold a conversation with anyone in the Flock without having two or three personalities burst in on the talk and then leave as abruptly as they had arrived.

  “Kendra,” Steve said that evening, “tell me what’s going on with the Flock.”

  “Sorry,” Kendra answered politely. “I just don’t know what to say about that.”

  Kendra wanted to do what she thought was best for the Flock, but the other personalities were too scattered for her to get a sense of what any of them might want. The Renee/Isis/Kendra Alliance had dissolved, like everything else, in early January. She thought it was better to say nothing.

  Missy pushed Kendra aside. She was happy to share information about the disorganization with Steve. Missy had learned to be an especially good girl around Steve, so that he would love everyone in the Flock. If she helped Steve, she was sure that he’d love her too.

  Missy explained her puzzle analogy to Steve and told him that the real problem was “that Joan Frances.” She answered all of the questions Steve asked. Then she showed him that she could write identically with both hands, and she drew him a picture.

  Steve responded to Missy, chuckled at her jokes, but seemed uneasy. “I wondered what happened to Lynn,” he said. “Do you want to talk to your friend Lynn?” “Oh, yes, please,” Missy said happily.

  But Gordon and Lynn weren’t home when Steve called. Steve left a message on their answering machine, and then it was time for bed. They lay side by side in the queen-sized bed, Steve flipping through a newspaper and Missy cuddling her stuffed bear. Missy held on to the consciousness as long as she could, waiting. But by the time Lynn called, hours later, Steve was too sound asleep to hear the phone, and the Flock was too frozen by disorganization to reach for it.

  The next morning, Kendra complained to Steve that this was a hell of a time for Lynn to take her “If the Flock wants me badly enough, they can find me” stand. “Jo, Renee, and Joan Frances are all out of commission,” Kendra said. “No one else in the Flock is strong enough to keep functioning for long. Why doesn’t Lynn realize how bad things are?”

  When Steve called Lynn, Kendra refused to speak to her, but Missy wanted to talk to her friend. During the hard last couple of days back in Cambridge, Lynn had reassured Missy that, once the Flock got home, she would make things better. Two days had already gone by and, as far as Missy could tell, Lynn wasn’t doing anything at all.

  “You’re not fixing it!” Missy accused Lynn tearfully. Lynn was calm and distant. “I’m getting ready for work now,” she said, “and I don’t have time to talk.” Kendra took over. “You know where to find me,” Lynn said again. “The Flock is welcome at my house at any time, and you know that. I’m going to work now, but I will be home this evening if you want to see me.”

  That evening, Kendra asked Steve to drive her to Lynn’s. “I don’t want a car to be there for us,” she said. “I don’t want it to be easy for anyone to run away.”

  —

  “I’M NOT GOING TO apologize for not reaching out to the Flock,” Lynn said firmly to Kendra once they were settled. The time was long past, Lynn said, for that to be necessary. “After almost four years,” she said, “the Flock should know that I’m here and willing to help.”

  “If we were capable of really understanding that,” Kendra countered, “we probably wouldn’t be in the shape that we’re in.”

  Lynn paus
ed, and Kendra said, “Do you know what we’re hearing from Steve? He says that you’ve lost your professional judgment, that you’re too caught up in the emotion of all of this to be of help to the Flock.”

  “And that man Steve said maybe you were mad because you aren’t getting any money,” Missy chimed in, and smiled, knowing she had the solution, “but I can fix that. Do you want this money?” Missy pulled a twenty-dollar bill from her jeans pocket. Steve had told her to put it there in case someone in the Flock ran away. He wanted Missy to have money to get back home. “You can have this money,” she said to Lynn, “and then you can make things better.”

  “No, Missy, I don’t want the money.” Lynn sighed and opened her arms. “Come on over here.” Missy scrambled to cuddle with her friend.

  After a few minutes, Kendra pulled away from Lynn, who, deep in thought, had been patting Missy’s arm. Lynn smiled at Kendra. “Part of the problem,” Lynn said, “is that you all are hiding what’s going on. I hear about Joan Frances’s hallucinations, I hear about how disorganized the Flock is, but no one is letting me near enough to deal with the problem. When the Flock got home, Renee spent the whole afternoon both crying ‘Help me’ and resisting my efforts to do just that.”

  “Yeah, things are really a mess, aren’t they?” Kendra said, and smiled with relief. Now that Lynn understood, Kendra didn’t have to worry.

  The next day, Lynn called the Flock at Steve’s house at midday, just to see how things were going. That evening, the Flock returned to Lynn’s. After a few minutes with Kendra and Missy, Lynn found herself face to face with Joan Frances.

  For a moment, Joan Frances sat silently, entranced by her hallucinations. The light bulbs in Lynn’s lamps glowed like miniature suns; the colors on the walls and curtains dripped as in a Dalí painting. She watched it all with vague interest, not caring to consider what any of it meant.

  Then Joan Frances felt a pull, a desperate yearning to pull herself back into reality. She sat up and looked clearly at Lynn. Joan Frances needed, she needed…something, and then it would be all right.

  “I have to leave now,” Joan Frances said.

  “No,” Lynn answered. “I can’t let you go like this.”

  “I have to leave now,” Joan Frances said again. “I have to go to the store.”

  Lynn was puzzled. “What do you need from the store?”

  Joan Frances wrinkled her brow, searching for the answer that was there but still eluded her. “I don’t know,” she said, “but I’ll know it when I see it.”

  Lynn shook her head. “No, Joan Frances,” she said again, “I don’t want you to go. I don’t want you out alone.”

  Joan Frances, the personality who had always refused anything Lynn offered, made her first request. “Take me.”

  Lynn was still uncertain. “What if the hallucinations start when we’re in the car?” she asked. “I can’t run the risk of Josie’s coming out when I’m driving.”

  “Take her,” Missy and Kendra urged. “We’ll help.”

  Lynn acquiesced and drove the Flock to a local shopping mall. Once inside, Joan Frances held back in fear. The bright lights, the sharp sounds, all of the people milling around melted into surrealistic hallucinations. She felt overwhelmed.

  Lynn looped her arm through Joan Frances’s and the personality who had never before let Lynn touch her now leaned in to her for support. Joan Frances silently led Lynn from store to store, searching toy departments and stationery shops. Suddenly Lynn caught on. Joan Frances was looking for a puzzle.

  Together they found it. An egg, a translucent plastic egg, constructed of many intricate pieces, all fitting snugly together.

  As they left the store, Missy popped out to say, “That girl needs something else.” Joan Frances needed glue, which they found in an office-supply shop. Purchases in hand, Joan Frances relaxed her grip on Lynn’s arm and looked around the mall. It was all reality now. No hallucinations. She felt calm and satisfied. Joan Frances had done what she needed to do, and that personality ebbed inside.

  I came out for the first time since I had left Lynn’s house in fear and anger earlier in the week. “I feel as though I’m waking from a dream,” I said and, in saying so, wondered just who I was.

  “Renee?” Lynn asked.

  “Yes,” I said, “but there’s more.” This was a group answer. I was speaking for Renee, but for everyone else too. I felt the entity stir within me.

  “I’m not ready to leave yet,” I said to Lynn. “Can we just go someplace for a while so that I have a chance to sort this out?”

  “Sure,” Lynn said. She led me to a restaurant, ordered coffee for both of us, and waited. Lynn looked at me closely. “It is Renee, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said, “it’s me.” Then, frowning at my inability to explain the inner surges I felt, I said again, “It’s me, but somehow it’s more.”

  I cast a curious glance at the packages I was clutching. I had no memory of them, but I felt very possessive. “They’re mine, aren’t they?” Lynn nodded, and I opened one of the bags to find my egg. I knew it immediately, understood its significance. This was my center, my whole being coming together in a new, coherent way. The Flock still had its separate parts, but those parts were—and this was most important—all parts of a single cohesive being.

  I cupped the egg tightly for a moment and then noticed the small tube of glue. The glue was to ensure that we’d never scatter again. We were all parts of a single entity—this time for good.

  I ran glue through the cracks of the puzzle egg, sealing it. “Joan Frances had to find the egg,” I mused aloud, “and now I have to apply the glue.”

  36.

  DIARY    January 21, 1985

  At last I understood. Renee was right when she first came home, insisting that the issue was reassurances of my love. Poised between truly giving up on her impossible desire to be the daughter who had not betrayed her mother, and fully accepting me, who knew her and loved her with her past acknowledged, the Flock was in limbo, with nothing secure to hold on to. Joan Frances, filled with a burning anger toward Nancy that had, until now, been inwardly directed, was providing the ultimate insult and disappointment to Mother by becoming psychotic. Nancy, of course, had no idea of what was going on, but Joan Frances succeeded in terrifying Renee.

  Renee was so afraid that I’d react as Nancy had when Joan Frances had appealed to her for support that she pushed in every way possible to make me reject her. This was the final test of trust.

  “Will you love me if I’m helpless, as my mother couldn’t?” This was something that had to be asked by Joan Frances, who had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Tonight, no personality would pretend functionality to hide Joan Frances’s need. Even Unity had to let go to allow a greater unity to form.

  —

  AFTER JOAN FRANCES’S SHOPPING TRIP with Lynn, I felt strength and inner support that were brand-new and heady. I was Renee, my separate self. A quick roll call affirmed that the others were their own selves as well. But they seemed closer, more responsive. I felt everyone’s energy. Somehow, I had tapped into our single power source. I could do anything. Now I was determined to apply my new strength in trying to resolve my relationship with Steve.

  Once I returned home, Steve informed me that he didn’t want Missy around anymore. He couldn’t cope with a five-year-old girl’s being in the body of the woman he loved. He had similar complaints about the personalities who had kept things going when I was too confused to manage at all.

  I told him I didn’t think he’d ever see them again. I felt that our days of uncontrolled switching were over. And the entire Flock had a new feeling of self-protection. We’d never let Steve see anything that would allow him to say such hurtful things.

  As I distanced myself from Steve, I sensed his confusion about his own needs and desires. I began to suspect that the fundamental problem in our relationship was something other than the Flock.

  Our discussions about our relations
hip turned into an endless loop. He didn’t want to marry me because I was multiple, he said. My being a multiple was less of a problem than he thought, I said, and he wasn’t being honest with either of us.

  We both knew we needed to talk about this in a new way, and I insisted it had to be done before I went back to school. On the eve of my return to Harvard, Steve and I went to Lynn’s house. She had agreed to help with the discussion.

  “Steve’s not willing to marry me because I am a multiple,” I said. “He says that he’s not sure what I’m going to be like in a year or in five years. I think that’s crap. I keep growing and changing through treatment and through other experiences, but I’m essentially the same person he met and fell in love with years ago.”

  “It’s not the same,” Steve said. “Now you’ve finally convinced me that you are really a lot of separate people.”

  “But even that’s changing,” I said.

  He agreed that my perception of the various personalities had recently changed, but that was part of the problem. “Just when I learn to accept one thing about the disorder,” Steve complained, “it all changes, and I don’t know what to think.”

  “Steve, we all change,” said Lynn. “It’s true that Renee can’t tell you now what the Flock will be like in five years, but she doesn’t know what you’re going to be like in five years either.”

  “Look,” Steve said to me, “the night of the egg, you were able to say that you, the whole you, were ‘in part Missy and in part Rusty’ and so on. That’s not finished.

  “If you could say, ‘I am Josie, hitting my head on the wall,’ and then stop that behavior because that’s not how Renee wants to act, that would be indicative of a new, even more radical integration.”

  I weighed carefully what Steve was saying. I took a deep breath, not knowing how I would respond. If I met Steve’s challenge, then whatever I said would admit even greater change for the Flock than I had already perceived. If I backed away from his challenge, I would deny the unity I felt growing inside me. I knew my Flock as I never had. I trusted them, I trusted me. I knew that my internal others would let me speak only the truth.