Set This House in Order

by Matt Ruff

  Or maybe I shouldn’t find out.

  What I didn’t know, I couldn’t take responsibility for: a flawed but attractive piece of reasoning. If Xavier had done something to the stepfather, it would have to have been several years ago, probably at least five. After that much time, it was unlikely the truth would come looking for me unless I went looking for it first. What if I decided to just let it be?

  It wouldn’t even have to be a permanent decision. I could just go back to Autumn Creek for the time being, and defer all questions about Michigan, and what might or might not have happened there, until after I got the house restabilized…however long that took. If the stepfather was dead he wasn’t going anywhere; I could always take responsibility later.

  Tempting. Tempting.

  But.

  Before getting into the shower, I’d unwrapped the gauze from around my arm. The wounds from the barbed wire had scabbed over, but they still stung beneath the hot spray. I studied them, then turned my hand over and looked at the old puncture-mark scar on Andy Gage’s palm. My father had done that, during his last fight with Gideon.

  It had happened at a diner—not the Harvest Moon, but another one, closer to Bit Warehouse. My father had just finished lunch and was settling the bill when Gideon tried to seize control. This was no ordinary takeover attempt: Gideon meant to put my father down permanently, and my father, recognizing the seriousness of Gideon’s intent, was forced to take drastic action. He lifted up his arm and—to the horror of the diner cashier—impaled his hand on the receipt spike beside the cash register. It won him the battle.

  Maybe you don’t understand that (although, by now, maybe you do). Dominance, in a multiple household, is all about being able to endure more trauma than anybody else. The more a particular soul can resist the impulse to switch, the more it gains power over those that can’t. By spiking his hand, my father demonstrated not only that he was able to withstand great pain, but that he had the courage to inflict it on himself if need be. Gideon, meanwhile, couldn’t even take the pain; and while it may seem like cheating that my father had chosen a source of pain that Gideon was especially sensitive to, this was not a contest where fairness mattered.

  So my father won the struggle for control, and, in winning, gained enough power over Gideon to confine him to Coventry. Then later, when he called me out of the lake and gave up running the body, my father’s power was weakened; that, plus my own show of weakness two nights ago, was probably what had given Gideon the latitude he needed to sneak off the island.

  Which was my dilemma: any further demonstration of weakness could be an invitation to a full-fledged takeover. If Gideon was willing to go on to Michigan, while I tried to turn back out of fear of the possible consequences…well, just because I started back towards Autumn Creek didn’t mean I’d get there.

  I didn’t want to lose the body to Gideon—that would be the ultimate failure. But I also really, really didn’t want to go to prison for murdering someone I’d never even met.

  I imagined Billy Milligan, wherever he was now, laughing at my predicament: Ha ha ha. That’ll teach you to judge other people!

  “Go to hell,” I said, and thrust my fists against the wall beneath the showerhead. “I will live up to my obligations. I will accept my responsibilities.” I grabbed my wounded forearm and squeezed hard enough to start it bleeding again; the pain made me grit my teeth, but it also made me feel better. Billy Milligan had nothing further to say.

  I got out of the shower and dried myself off. When I went to get dressed I realized I had no clean clothes to change into, just the same shirt and pants that I’d been wearing the past two days. There was no extra gauze, either, so I had to rewrap my arm in the same bandage.

  Feeling less refreshed than I’d hoped, I went back out to the car. “All right, Penny,” I said, getting in, “I think I know what I want to do. Or what I need to do, anyway.”

  “Yeah?” she said, and I noticed she was smoking a cigarette.

  “Maledicta.”

  “Fucking swift, as always.”

  “Maledicta,” I said, “I need to talk to Penny. I’ve decided to go on to Michigan, and—”

  “I want concessions,” Maledicta said.

  “What?”

  “I want fucking concessions. Mouse may have agreed to chauffeur you cross-country, but I fucking didn’t. You want to go to Michigan, I want some things in return.”

  “Like what?”

  She lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Sam and I have another game of pool coming.”

  “Sam…Aunt Sam? You and Aunt Sam played pool?”

  “Like I said, you’re fucking swift.”

  “What else do you want?”

  “Well you know I’m going to end up doing a lot of the fucking driving, right? I want Sam riding shotgun for part of that.”

  I shook my head. “If I do that, the others are going to want time out, too. I can’t afford to start a fight about that now.”

  “What fucking bullshit,” Maledicta said. “Look, you fucking told Mouse that you were going to have to go back inside again, right? And it’s pretty fucking obvious that somebody’s going to have to be outside keeping an eye on things while you’re gone. So why not give Sam the fucking duty?”

  I thought about it, and it actually made sense. Until order could be fully reestablished in the house, somebody probably would have to occupy the body when I was out of it, and Aunt Sam was a much better choice than Adam—although Seferis would be a better choice than either of them. But Seferis wasn’t much of a traveling companion. Still, it struck me funny that Aunt Sam would have hit it off with Maledicta.

  “All right,” I finally said. “Maybe we could do that. But then I want a concession too.”

  Maledicta shot me an impatient look. “What?”

  “Can Penny hear us right now?”

  “No. She’s asleep in the fucking cave.”

  “Did you put her to sleep?”

  “I wanted another fucking smoke. It’s not like she was fucking doing anything except sitting out here.”

  I nodded. “From now on, when you want a cigarette, or anything else that requires the body, I don’t want you to just take over. I want you to ask permission.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Maledicta, I’m serious.”

  “No fucking chance,” Maledicta said. “One, I don’t have to ask for fucking permission, and two, if I did, and Mouse said no, I couldn’t—”

  “Exactly. Another thing, I don’t want you knocking Penny unconscious against her will anymore. It’s one thing if she gets upset and goes to sleep on her own; but if you’re just coming out for a cigarette break, there’s no reason she can’t keep watching over your shoulder.”

  Maledicta looked away, muttering disgustedly under her breath. “What bullshit…”

  “It’s not bullshit,” I said. “You came to me for help managing your MPD. Discipline is a big part of it.”

  “Discipline!” Maledicta turned back with a sneer on her face. “Like you should fucking talk!”

  “I am having problems with that right now,” I admitted. “Which is another reason why I’m asking you for this. If you and I both start switching uncontrollably at the same time, God knows where we’ll end up. But if you focus really hard on keeping things orderly, and I do the same, then hopefully at least one of us will be stable at any given moment.”

  “Ehhh…” Maledicta drew her arm back, as if to sweep the suggestion away, but I could tell I’d scored a point with her.

  “So is it a deal?” I asked.

  “Ehhh, fuck.” She rolled down her window and pitched her cigarette butt onto the parking lot. “I’m not going to make any fucking promises,” she told me. “If Mouse doesn’t give me the time I want, or if she starts putting on fucking airs just because I say please—”

  “I’m sure Penny will be gracious about it.” I offered her my hand. “Deal?”

  Maledicta regarded my hand with disdain. “What are yo
u, Jimmy fucking Stewart? I’m not going to shake on this. I told you, no fucking promises. I’ll just…I’ll fucking try, all right?”

  “All right,” I said. “Good enough.”

  “Yeah, yeah, fuck, all right,” Maledicta said. “So can we get some fucking food now?”

  24

  After checking out of the motel and getting some lunch, they take stock of their resources. Mouse has about sixty dollars in cash left; Andrew is down to fifteen dollars. Neither of them has an ATM card. Andrew does have his credit card, which has a limit of a thousand dollars, but he’s going to have to call the 800 number to find out how much of that has been used up already (at least two hundred dollars’ worth; because they missed the official noon checkout time by ten minutes, the manager of the Badlands Motor Lodge charged them for an extra night).

  They have half a tank of gas in the Centurion, and at least one gas card. They have two partially smoked packs of cigarettes. They don’t have any spare clothes or any toiletries.

  They go back to Rapid City and find a Wal-Mart. Andrew and Mouse stick together in the store and keep up a running conversation, the better to resist unauthorized switches. They each pick out a couple of tops, underwear, socks, and blue jeans; they get gauze and disinfectant for Andrew, some aspirin for Mouse, and toothbrushes and toothpaste for both of them. At one point Maledicta, lurking in the cave mouth, spies a kerchief that she likes—a red, white, and black bandanna with a motif of flaming skulls—and asks if Mouse would “please” buy it for her. Mouse is surprised both by the request and by the unprecedented (if sarcastic-sounding) courteousness of its phrasing. Since the kerchief is only $4.99, she agrees to get it, although she will pay for it separately, in cash.

  At checkout there’s a moment’s suspense as the main purchase is rung up, but the charge on Andrew’s credit card is accepted. They change clothes at a gas station on the outskirts of the city, and are about to get back on the Interstate when Maledicta speaks up again from the cave mouth: “Could I please drive for a while?”

  “What?” says Andrew, noticing Mouse’s reaction. Mouse tells him what Maledicta has just asked her. “Oh,” he says. “She wants to hang out with Aunt Sam. I told her she could if she was polite—and if it was OK with you.”

  “You did?” says Mouse; she doesn’t like the position this puts her in.

  Andrew comes to her rescue: “Tell Maledicta I said not today. It’s too soon after what happened this morning. Maybe tomorrow, if I feel stronger.”

  “All right…” Mouse starts to repeat Andrew’s refusal, but Maledicta cuts her off: “I heard the fucker! Tell him he’s a lying cocksucker! He fucking promised!” Mouse does not relay this message.

  By evening they are in Sioux Falls. It’s still light out when they finish eating dinner, but Mouse is very tired. “Do you want to stop here for the night?” she asks Andrew.

  Andrew is conflicted. He would like to stop here, but as he tries to explain to Mouse, he is concerned that he not appear to be procrastinating. “Maybe we could go just a little farther?”

  “I don’t know,” says Mouse, consulting the road atlas. “I’m not sure that we can go just a little farther, on this highway…it looks like the next big town is all the way on the other side of Minnesota.”

  Andrew frowns, not wanting to pressure her, but not wanting to give up yet, either.

  “Maybe…” Mouse muses. “Would you like to drive?”

  He shakes his head. “I can’t.”

  “You know you don’t really need a license,” Mouse tells him. “I mean, as long as you’re careful, and don’t speed or crash the car.”

  “It’s not just the license; I don’t know how to drive.”

  “I can show you how. It’s not hard. There won’t be much traffic, either, so it’s mostly just keeping it between the lines.”

  Mouse isn’t trying to challenge Andrew—she’s just worried that if she keeps driving, she’ll fall asleep behind the wheel—but that’s how he seems to take it. He takes a deep breath, lets it out, and says: “OK. I can do this.”

  “You don’t have to,” Mouse tells him. “Maybe, if I just took a nap—”

  “No, I can do it.”

  They get in the Centurion, and Mouse explains the rudiments: gas, brakes, shifting, turn signals. When Andrew looks like he’s got it all down, Mouse has him switch seats with her again. “I’ll drive until we’re out of the city,” she says.

  She gets them out of Sioux Falls, to a rest stop near the state line. Then Andrew takes the wheel. He’s nervous at first—and Mouse is too, wondering if this is a mistake—but he gains confidence quickly. Too much confidence: soon Mouse has to remind him to watch his speed.

  “Sorry,” he says, easing off on the accelerator. “You were right, though. This isn’t hard.”

  “I’m surprised you never learned,” says Mouse. “It’s very convenient.”

  “Too convenient,” he says. “Like having a cash card. My father used to love driving, but having access to a car could also be a bad thing, when he lost time. Eventually he decided it wasn’t worth it. When I came along I suppose we could have taken it up again, but the truth is I never really felt like I needed a car. It’s not like I get out of Autumn Creek all that often.” He looks out at the roadside. “This is actually the farthest I’ve ever traveled.”

  “Do you know where we’re going?” says Mouse.

  He nods. “The town in Michigan where Andy Gage was born is called Seven Lakes. It’s on the west side of the mitten, near Muskegon and Grand Rapids.”

  “But you’ve never been there before?”

  “Not personally. But I have looked it up on a map a couple times, so I know about where it is, and my father can give us directions when we need them.”

  Mouse studies him. “Are you scared?”

  “Of going there? Yes,” Andrew says. “But I’m curious, too. I’d like to see the house where Andy Gage grew up, if it’s still standing. As for the stepfather—I guess in my gut I still don’t quite believe I could have killed him, unless…unless it was an accident.” He looks at her. “What do you think? Do you think that I, that one of me, could have—”

  “I tried to kill my mother once,” Mouse says.

  “You did?” says Andrew, sounding surprised but not shocked. “How?”

  “In the hospital. I put my hand over her mouth…” She tells him about it, summarizing at first but then adding more and more detail until she’s pretty much covered the whole story of her mother’s death—everything except what she did with her mother’s ashes.

  “It doesn’t sound to me like you were really trying to kill her,” Andrew says, when she’s finished. “It sounds like you were fantasizing about killing her. Which it seems like you’d have to be superhuman not to do, under the circumstances.”

  “It wasn’t just a fantasy. I had my hand over her mouth.”

  “But not pressing down hard enough to stop her breathing, you said. And you stopped right away when you realized what you were doing.”

  “I shouldn’t have been doing it at all. It was wicked.”

  “Well I’ll tell you what, Penny,” Andrew says. “If we get to Seven Lakes and I find out that the worst I ever did was pinch the stepfather’s nose shut one time when he was sleeping, I’ll be happy to live with the guilt for that.”

  “What did he do to you?” Mouse asks. “Do you know?”

  “My father didn’t tell you?”

  Mouse shakes her head. “We talked mostly about what happened after he left home—how he figured out he was multiple, and dealt with that. I got the feeling he didn’t want to talk about it before.”

  “It’s true, he doesn’t like to,” Andrew agrees. Then he tells her: “I know in general what the stepfather did. For one thing, it was a lot more sexual than what happened between you and your mom. I mean, there was violence, too—he had a bad temper—but mostly it was about using Andy Gage as his toy. As his, his fuck doll.” Andrew winces at his own choice of w
ords, and Mouse, remembering Loins’s tank top, feels her ears redden. “It started really early, too—just how early exactly I can’t say, but my father thinks it was early enough that, that it’s beyond the point where you could even call it obscenity. And then the whole time Andy Gage was growing up…” He pauses, his teeth gritting involuntarily, then continues on a different tack: “We, they, were pretty isolated too. Seven Lakes is about the size of Autumn Creek, but the Gage house was out beyond the edge of town. It’d be the equivalent of living on East Bridge Street, four or five miles past the Reality Factory.”

  “And it was just you and the stepfather?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about your mother? Did she die?”

  He starts to say yes, then hesitates. “I…yes, I assume so,” he says. Mouse tilts her head in an unspoken question. “I mean,” Andrew continues, “I don’t remember ever talking about that, but I do know my father loved her. He loved her a lot…and I can’t see him feeling that way if she’d just run off, and left him with the stepfather. So yes, she must have died…” But he frowns, unsatisfied with his own logic. “I’ll have to ask about that.”

  They talk a while longer. Then, about a half hour after sunset, Mouse lays her head back, and the next thing she knows they are pulled over by the side of the highway again.

  “What?” she says, sitting up straight. “Where are we?”

  “Coming up on the Wisconsin border,” Andrew tells her. “There’s a city up ahead, so I thought you should probably take the wheel again. I’m ready to stop for the night.”

  Wisconsin…Mouse checks the dashboard clock, which reads 10:29. She tries to remember whether she reset it to the correct time before leaving the motel this morning; even if she did, they’ve probably crossed another time zone by now. So it’s really after eleven, maybe after twelve.