Web of Angels (8 page)

“Sharon is one of them. You could say she’s the default.”

“The real one?” he asked. As expected.

And who was Callisto? Not real. Not good. Deserving of no life. Did her name appear on a birth certificate, a driver’s license, a credit card? Nowhere but the sky. On earth nameless. Bearing what must be borne. The fountain bubbled, the dehumidifier sucked in air. Nothing crashed or broke apart as Callisto breathed. This was her job today. The therapist had said that when this question came, they were simply to breathe. It would take time for Dan to understand.

“They’re all real. Your sense of self is just that, a sense, a feeling that you express as ‘I.’ There is no little man in your head pulling strings. Even scientists can’t explain consciousness. People who are multiple have a different feeling, neither more nor less real than yours. Their feeling is ‘we,’ a family of selves.”

“I see,” Dan said, crossing his legs again, the foot going up and down, keeping time to the beat of his private thoughts. His pants leg lifted slightly, showing an argyle sock, green and black. “So how do I get Sharon back? What. What did I say?”

He couldn’t possibly hear the uproar that these words
had caused inside. Callisto was sitting as before, back straight, hands in her lap. But multitudes were in her eyes, glaring through them at Dan, then turning away from him, retreating, moving further inside.
Away away away
. Unwanted. Despised.

If Sharon was who he wished, then Sharon he would have. “No. Wait,” Brigitte had said, watching them. But Callisto was done. She went inside and with the others pushed Sharon out. It was the work of a moment, eyes lowered to hide the change. And then Sharon cleared her throat, hands waving as she spoke, blinking nervously, but it signified nothing to Callisto, deep inside.

And here she was again. Callisto had come to look at the stars, she’d come because it was her job to take over when the others were overwrought. Whether she liked it or not was irrelevant. Yet people made pictures out of stars and this man was now looking at her anxiously. He wore jeans and a plaid shirt; it was always jeans at home and a suit for work. In his closet everything had a place.

“Everything go all right tonight?” He checked his wife’s face—not Sharon’s, he knew that. But he wasn’t sure if he should guess which one she was. If he guessed wrong, would she hate him? More than sex, he wanted his wife, all of her, not to hate him. “You were gone longer than I expected.”

“Eleanor had a party for the people bringing food.” The head hurt but it would do no good to take pills for a switching headache. “And then the food had to be brought over to Debra’s house.”

“On your way to bed?” He was taking scissors out of his desk organizer. Beside it was a photo of his family in a digital frame and a rock with a fossil embedded in it. His desk had been the door to the dining room, a solid slab of wood so heavy it had torn out the hinges. The paint had been stripped, the pine sanded and varnished, and now resting on two filing cabinets it made a fine working surface to the side of his computer station. There was a map of the ancient world above his desk, another filing cabinet against one wall, a bookcase filled with books organized by subject: history, economics, evolution, rocks. The window faced west, blinds halfway up, streetlights shining through bare trees and icicles that hung from the eaves. “I’ll be at this a while.” He was collecting news stories that could be used for fundraising campaigns. He often said that nothing opened a donor’s wallet like fear.

“I’m not tired. Perhaps I could help.”

“You sure?” He looked pleased when she nodded. There was an empty plate on his desk and the room still smelled of roast chicken. “I want to cut out and file the articles I need so I can toss the rest.”

“I could do that.”

“All right. I’ve starred the ones I want. Here’s your pile.”

She picked up a newspaper, scanning the headlines.
VIOLENCE SURGES IN KANDAHAR; “GRANDPA” FROM THE MUNSTERS DIES; BILL GATES PLEDGES
600
MILLION DOLLARS TO STAMP OUT TUBERCULOSIS; STAMPEDE IN THE PHILIPPINES; PLANETS DISCOVERED OUTSIDE THE SOLAR SYSTEM
. She wished to read it all, wrapping herself in the fabric of the universe so that no one
could say that she was not real without denying reality itself. “Only one of the articles is marked,” she said.

“Good. Less to file. From now on I’m getting everything online. It’s easier just to download.” She was left-handed, he was right-handed, and as he passed the scissors to her, their hands met, shyly, provisionally. “I made a pot of decaf,” he said. “I could get you a cup. Freshly ground beans. How would you like it?”

She didn’t know, but she said, “Sweet.” If he was taking the trouble to ask, then she wouldn’t have it the way Sharon did. “Milk and sugar.”

When he returned, they sat side by side, the space between them narrow and warm, conscious space, first date space. She tried the coffee. Bitter and sweet, a stronger flavour than tea.

“How are Rick and Debra doing?” he asked.

“In what respect?”

He looked at her sharply, having assumed that she would say that they were doing okay, as well as could be expected, holding up. A reply that wouldn’t make him think.

“Physically? Mentally?” he clarified.

“They won’t die.” She picked up another newspaper and, locating the mark, began to cut out an article. Then as he waited for more, she added, “They won’t go insane.”

“No, not Rick or Debra. They define sane and rational. If anyone can get through this it would be them. I don’t know what I’d do,” he said. “Maybe get drunk and stay drunk.”

“No,” she said. “I would not allow it.”

“I believe that.” He swivelled his chair toward her, his eyes on her profile, the thin freckled nose, pointy chin, and
she turned, too, a flash of storm in her eyes, the green of a sky while winds picked up, slower below, faster above, cloud twisting.

“It was cold,” she said.

“What was?”

“The house.”

“Maybe Heather was too warm. You were.” Then he hesitated, considering that it wasn’t this wife who had been pregnant. “I think it was with Josh,” he rushed on. “Weren’t you?”

Ignoring the question, she pushed ahead doggedly. “This evening Cathy wore summer clothes. They allowed it in a cold house in winter. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“Well that’s my mother’s influence. She’s always scolding you to put another sweater on the kids.” He smiled at her. With his perfect teeth, made perfect by diligence, he smiled, and with his dark eyes, made perfect by God, he tried to coax the storm out of her gaze as if he didn’t realize that she never spoke without a purpose. As if she should be persuaded by his charm. As if she knew nothing of value when she needed to understand and she could not afford to be distracted from it by warm eyes on hers, by fingers covering hers.

“I should check e-mail,” she said.

“Okay. I’ll finish up here.” His smile disappeared. He got the code. He had said something wrong though he didn’t know what. She would be up late; she would talk online to other people whose conversation she preferred; he would go to bed alone.

Downstairs she took the laptop from the dining room into the kitchen, setting it up on the blue table. She plugged
headphones into the computer, and selected a classical music station. Outside the glass doors, the wind chimes pinged. The birch tree shone white and spare as she clicked on mIRC and signed in.

Welcome to multiples-chat, a supportive chat room for people who have DID or DDNOS. Visit our homepage at www.multiplesweb.com.

*S&ALL has joined multiples-chat

S&All› Hello everyone

Panther› hi s&all

Janet› callisto! ltns i’m so glad to see you

S&All› How did you know it was me?

Janet› you’re the only one of you who says hello with a capital H

Janet› how’re things?

Janet lived on the Atlantic coast, where she raised goats, painted, and fostered children. Panther was a nurse in the southwest, mother of four, married to a math teacher. None of them had met in person, but here while the house quietly breathed, there was no need to hide who they were. If Callisto had a word for the warmth in her chest, it would have been friendship. If she ever smiled, she would have then, for in the virtual reality of bursting electrons, she existed, she was known, she had been missed.

T
he memorial service for Heather was held on the Saturday after she was cremated. Neighbours who had worn black to flirt with darkness when they were young now dressed darkly to honour death, converging from the direction of Christie Pits and from Amy’s Animal Clinic, some coming up from the library or down from the railroad tracks. The service was being held in the gym of the Freedom Boys and Girls Club at Colborne Street and Ontario, a block from the public school, two blocks from the therapist’s house and her thickly carpeted, dehumidified basement. In the east the moon was coming out from behind a cloud, a hair short of full, waxing 99 percent gibbous and in the west the sun was falling below snow-covered railroad tracks.

The boys and girls club had been built around 1960, at the same time as the arena, another square brick building that faced it across the street. There was a mulberry bush in front of the arena, and in summer families stopped to pick its berries while walking to the library or Christie Pits. Last year the rink had been refurbished, courtesy of a corporate
sponsorship deal arranged by Heather’s father. He’d been working on a similar deal for the boys and girls club. Inside the gym, people were settling into the rows of folding chairs, holding black-bordered programs, draping their coats over laps or on the backs of chairs. At the front of the gym there was a podium with a microphone and on the floor nearby an enormous vase overflowed with tropical flowers. Set on window ledges, smaller vases of flowers released their perfume, mingling with the smell of wet boots.

At the back of the gym, trying to be unobtrusive, Ingrid sat between Amy and Eleanor, whose husband, Bram, was next to her. Judy was in the daycare, helping to keep the younger kids busy with some of the staff who had volunteered their time during the service. Dan and his wife, hands folded in her lap, face sombre, were sitting in the middle of the gym. In the same row were their next-door neighbours, Tony Agostino and his son, so broad in the chest, his jacket strained across it. Tony murmured hello, Dan nodded. Josh had found himself a seat right behind his girlfriend, who sat in the front row with her sad parents and the officiating minister, who was of some indeterminate denomination vaguely related to Buddhism, but without the accoutrements. No saffron robe for him, he was wearing a dark suit. Even the owner of the candy-coloured house, slump-shouldered and middle-aged, was indistinguishable from any man at a funeral. This was the essence of Seaton Grove: the authors of fringe festivals had made babies and suited up, too busy to meditate anymore. And yet all through the gym people were invoking light in their own way, with prayer or a reaching
stillness, asking peace to surround the bent heads of their sorrowing neighbours in the front row.

Dan checked his watch. The service was supposed to start at seven. It was 7:04. “It’s late,” he said.

“Do you have something else you have to do?” his wife asked. She held the program in her left hand. She was wearing a black dress, not particularly eye-catching. But there was that left-hand thing. Sharon was right-handed. And so Dan tried to look without looking like he was checking things off a list: the wife he knew best, soft-toned; the wife with moss green eyes who put chocolate chips in cereal; the one who didn’t waste words and liked to fix things; and this one—husky voiced, left-handed. The list of his wives, God help him.

“I’d like to get through this and get home.” He tapped the program against the palm of his hand. “I don’t like funerals.”

“Memorial service,” she corrected.

“I don’t like those either. But I should be here, so I am.”

At one time she would have asked him why, but she had learned that there were customs and habits that people relied upon in the same way that animals reduced strife by grooming each other. Take Dan’s lists. After he beat Josh at Stratego and gloated unmercifully, he’d retreat to his office to revise his to-do lists, colour-coded and indexed. Then he would emerge, cleansed of his competitiveness, until the next game of Stratego. And yet he would try again, making his lists, domesticating himself. Her father, who took pride in beating his children, would consider anything less a show of weakness. But she had seen the tension in Dan’s neck and
shoulders as he sat at his desk, making a list. A man’s goodness was not dependent on the quality of his heart. Every heart was a writhing pit of need and want. His goodness revealed itself in his choice of action.

“At least they could start on time,” he said, looking at his watch again. She never wore one. Watches went wild on her wrist, running past the time or stopping altogether. It didn’t matter anymore. She had a cellphone.

She yawned as a squeal from the microphone sent someone to check the sound system.

“You tired?”

Callisto nodded. Too much had been going on inside. “I haven’t been sleeping.”

“I’ll put the girls to bed,” he offered. “You can have some downtime.”

All around them people were talking quietly.
How’s the baby? Doing well. I heard she can come home next week. Debra visits her every day. You have to touch babies or they die. What about the baby’s father? Who is he? Nobody knows. They think some street kid. He might try to get some money out of them. Don’t worry, they’ll take care of it. The baby is better off with them. That’s obvious
. The neighbours’ murmurs surged and died away as Rick Edwards took the podium.

He wore a suit, white shirt, dark tie, his golden beard covering the faint acne scars on his cheeks. He was impeccable, shoes polished, hair neatly trimmed, a father who had failed his child, doing his best to hold his grief in check. Patting his pocket, he quietly said, “Uh oh, my glasses,” the microphone picking up his voice. Debra opened her purse,
fished out his reading glasses and reached out to hand them to him. Though the purse appeared to be alligator, it had to be imitation. Around here people did not wear animals, except for cows.