Changelings
by
Tom Marshall


TOM MARSHALL

Changelings

a double fugue

MS

An MS Paperback from McClelland & Stewart Inc.  The Canadian
Publishers

An MS Paperback from McClelland & Stewart Inc.

First printing March 1992 Published by arrangement with Macmillan
Canada

Copyright 1991 by Tom Marshall All rights reserved.  The use of any
part of this publication reproduced,

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval
system,

without the prior written consent of the publisher or, in case of
photocopying or other repro graphic copying, a licence from Canadian

Reprography Collective is an infringement of the copyright law.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Marshall, Tom, 1938Changelings "An MS paperback."

ISBN 0-7710-5661-3

PS8576.A758C48 1992 C813'.54 C91-095231-0

PR9199.3.M3695C48 1992

Cover design by Kong Njo Cover illustration by Wes Lowe

Printed and bound in Canada

McClelland & Stewart Inc.

The Canadian Publishers

481 University Avenue

Toronto, Ontario

M5G 2E9

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

W. B. Yeats, "The Stolen Child"

Double fugue: a common term for a fugue on two subjects in which the
two start together.

OED

A modern usage of fugue is "a flight from one's own identity."

A Supplement to the OED

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

An abridged version of Chapter Two has appeared as "El House" in The
Canadian Forum (November 1986) and I Best Canadian Stories (Oberon
Press).

Once again I owe a debt of gratitude to my editor Philippa Campsie and
to my agent Bella Pomer.  I'< like to acknowledge the assistance of my
intrepid typist 1^ Cutway and of my early private readers David Helwig,
S Heighten, and Michael and Bjorn Ramberg.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This story may seem implausible from beginning to Allow me to mention
just two authoritative books on who will usually termed "multiple
personality": Unity and Multif by John O. Beahrs and Multiple Man by
Adam Crab Mediumship (when not altogether fake) seems to me to closely
related phenomenon.  Those who studied it in its day were often
inclined to believe that the phenomenon vi des supporting evidence for
some form of telepathy, I for a "spirit-world."  See Beyond the Reach
of Sense by Ros Heywood.

I am generally indebted as well to Roger Caron's vi1 informative
chronicle of life in prison, circa 1960, Go Boy own is, however, wholly
fictional.

ONE

I don't know why I'm here.  Really, I don't.  I mean, I know what they
charged me with and convicted me of.  But I didn't do it.  Every
jailbird says that, I know.

No.  Actually, some of them boast about what they've done, (Though you
never ask--that's prison etiquette.) The bank robbers, the flying
bandits, and other such newspaper favorites.  They fancy themselves and
think that they have a certain glamor, like movie stars.  It's the
domestic murderers and the sex criminals, usually, who claim that
they're innocent.  That they're victims of a miscarriage of justice Not
criminals at all.  Maybe they even believe it.

All my life I've tried to be good.  I've looked after my wife and
daughter.  How are they going to get along now?  And what would my
mother have thought?

The evidence was completely circumstantial.  It was also extremely
distasteful.  Semen stains, pubic hairs on the girl that were said to
match my own.  How can they determine such things with any confidence?
How can they convict on such flimsy evidence?  The woman--a woman I
never saw before said the guy looked like me.  I mean, she said I
looked like the guy.  I look just like a million other guys.  There's
nothing at all special about me.  She admitted that in court.  But she
wanted

somebody put away.  Some male body.

I was depressed about my life even before all this happened.  I was
tired a lot, I don't think I've been very well for some time, though I
don't know exactly what's wrong with me.  A lack of energy, of
enterprise.  Mononucleosis maybe.  I slept a lot, missed whole days of
work.  Here they hustle me out to the exercise yard each day, even when
I don't want to get up off my metal bunk.  I go, mechanically, then
forget afterwards what I did out there.

When they do let me be, I sometimes lie here for hours just staring at
the ceiling.  I think about Pearl and Cecily.  About my mother.  At
least she's gone.  But how will Pearl cope with this new decade, the
1960s, on her own?

I'm allergic to something here.  I don't know what.  But it gives me a
rash.  The doctor says there's nothing wrong with me.  He recommends
vitamin pills.  He says I'm a whiner.  I think they just don't give a
damn about us here.

Nobody gives a damn about us here.

Laird is such a weakling.

I watch him shuffling down the goddamn corridor like an old man and I
hate his guts.  I hate the way he sucks up to the screws.  He's always
crying to the fucking idiot doctor.  He's a snivelling Sunday-school
twerp, that's what's wrong with him.  He's too weak to live.  Sometime
when I get the chance, I'll help the poor bastard out of his misery.

Boy, am I getting tired of those two creeps.  But now .. .

While Laird and Al are asleep, I can lie here and enjoy myself figuring
out how I'm going to get up that college kid's ass.

All I need is for them to be out of the way when the time is ripe.  Old
Laird would be shocked out of his skull, of course, and Al is so
ridiculously macho that he goes without.  Well, almost--he'll accept a
quick blow-job if a mouth is thrust

upon him.  Pretends he doesn't really notice what's happening down
there.  The drag queens are quite willing to service him.  Of course,
outside, I'd prefer a woman too.  But in here, what 'rya gonna do?
Masturbation gets pretty boring.  A moist young asshole begins to look
like paradise.  In the showers.  The carwash, we call it.

And a virgin would be a bit of a treat.  Why shouldn't I be the one to
break him in?  I won't hurt him.  I have the feeling he's the type who
will enjoy it, once he's been properly done a few times.  Later on,
I'll rent him out.  There could even be some profit in this.

I know the kid likes me.  He's scared of Al, but he's friendly to me.
And why not?  I'm the best-looking guy in here, and I can always make
him laugh with my jokes.  Not like dreary old Laird, or that gloomy-gus
Al.  Al really ought to get some ass, or sooner or later he's going to
go berserk and try to bust up the joint.  Then it'll be solitary.  The
cooler--that other hole.  They call it DISSOCIATION.  I couldn't stand
that.

I suppose I should feel sorry for the kid.  He's just a good looking,
unusually adventurous kid who was unlucky enough to fall into the arms
of the fuzz over a piffling drug offense.  His misfortune is my good
luck.  He can already see that I'm his protection.  He learns fast,
he's a college kid.  He bud died up to me and I'm his old man.
Everybody else concedes him to me for now.  I'd be crazy to lose the
opportunity.

LAIRD:

Back in high school I made a wooden dummy in shop class.  I don't know
why, the idea just came to me.  We had to do a woodworking project.

The girls did home ec; we did shop.  Woodwork and metalwork.  I wasn't
so good at metalwork.  But I could always whittle.  That was always one
of the things I did, even as a little kid.

At first I wasn't sure what I was making.  Then it started to look like
a face.  A face emerging.  A whole head.  So I just kept going.  I had
found this big block of wood at home.

Last night I looked through the bathroom keyhole while Ellie was taking
a bath.  She's growing remarkable knockers.  The other day she went by
my open door in just her shift.  She knows she's developing an
impressive profile.  And she knows damn well I saw her.  Wiggling her
ass as she minced by.

She's just like all the rest of them under her airs.  I don't know why
she pretends otherwise with me.  I know all about her.

LANCE:

Who's the real blockhead here, I ask you?

[Laughter.]

Hey, you're cute.  Yeah, you in the pink dress.  Or is that sunburn?
It's kind of a tight fit.  Like me.  Me in my dummy case, I mean.  My
mummy-case.  My coffin.  It's tough being shoved into a box like that
all of the time.

Wanna dance, angel-face?  I know I'm a bit short, but what I lack m
size I make up for in quality.  Where it counts.  Just try me.  We'll
trip the light fantastic.

In fact, we'll trip all the lights and make out together in the dark.
It'll be fantastic.

[Laughter.]

I want you, babe.  Don't laugh.  You'll get used to me.  Just don't get
me too heated up.  I make good kindling, I'm told.  Why, just last
week, a beautiful gal told me that I gave her the slivers.  Right up
and down her spine ... Once, last summer, I heard her sneaking out of
the house. So I followed.  The creeps were asleep and snoring in their
bed.

She was only dressed in her nightshift, but she went up the hill, the
one opposite the hill with the woods.  There was a full moon.  I guess
it had wakened her up.  Me too.  When she

Tom Marshall

reached the top, she just stood there staring at the moon.

I was dressed in pajama bottoms.  I followed her quietly up the hill.
The grass was wet on my bare feet.  I wasn't quite awake.

Then I stopped dead, about halfway up.  She had suddenly lifted the
white nightdress over her head and flung it off.  She stood there
naked, her back to me.  I could see her outline above.  Her hips and
ass.  A dark shape of woman.  I had a hard on already, even before
that.

Was she sleepwalking?

Slowly she raised her arms to the moon.  She stood like that for
several minutes before she slowly lowered them.

My cock wilted.  What in hell was she doing?  I felt cold all of a
sudden.  I forgot that I wanted to fuck her.

She turned then and started walking downhill toward me.  Naked.  But
she paid me no attention at all.  As she reached me, I could see her
eyes had a glazed look.  She didn't even see me.  She was sleepwalking.
I stood still as she passed.  I wanted to grab her arm, to speak
roughly to her, to shake her out of this trance.  But for some reason I
couldn't.  Couldn't move even.

I hated her then.  I hated her and I wanted to fuck her.  But not
there.

I went up the hill to get her shift.  I brought it back to the house
with me.  Inside, everything seemed normal.  I could hear my father
snoring.

Upstairs, Ellie's door was slightly open.  I could hear no sound from
inside.  I went on to my own room with the nightdress.  I took off my
pajama bottoms.  Then I lay down on the bed with the nightdress and
pulled myself off with it.  I thought I could smell her on it.

Afterwards I took the soiled thing into her room and dumped it on the
end of her bed.  I could hear her breathing softly.  Asleep.  I stood
there naked.

"There.  Take that, you whore," I said to her under my breath.

around him.  Mother says you have to avoid even the appearance of sin,
or else you'll lose your reputation.  That's right, I think.  People
are so unfair in their judgments.  You can't be too careful.  Again.
Really.  I wish he wouldn't look at me like that.

LENORE:

Yesterday I found a way to get his attention.

Elaine always eats her lunch outside by herself.  She sits up against
the old tree.  She avoids the other girls because she's ashamed of her
ordinary lettuce and tomato sandwich.

She's always a little hungry when she's finished eating, but she can't
afford to go to the cafeteria where the other girls are.  She often
dozes off in the sun so she won't have to think about it.

The sun makes me feel good.  I feel like taking off my clothes and
letting it touch me everywhere.  When she's asleep, I lean back and
pull my skirt up over my bent knees.  The sun touches my inner thighs
if I let my legs spread a little.  I feel the sun warm my underpants.

Across the field, some boys were playing with a soccer ball.
Occasionally someone kicked it over my way.  I watched them lazily,
squinting.  Elaine was asleep.  I was just pleasantly drowsy.

The ball bounced near me and Bob came to retrieve it.  I pretended to
be asleep, but I watched him through my lashes.  He looked at me for
what seemed a long moment.  Then he kicked the ball away and ran after
it.  He was wearing his gym shorts; he has strong, powerful legs as
well as arms.

He must--from that close--have been able to see a bit of my panties.

I should have thought of this before.  I can hardly wait for the next
lunch hour.

Some guys were talking about Elaine the other day when I came into the
locker room before gym class.  They stopped dead when they saw me.  But
I heard her name.

They talk about all the girls.  Endlessly.  Even Elaine, it now seems,
who never so much as looks at a boy.  / wonder what it'd be like to get
into that.  They're so crude.  At least they had the decency not to
continue in front of me.

Not that I'm a prude.  I'd like to have a serious relationship with a
girl.  When I'm ready for it.  But it requires a certain maturity, I
think.  No wonder the girls get so impatient with the boys.  Girls
mature faster--at least, that's what Mother said, and it seems to be
true.

I caught Mary Lou Baker looking at me today.  As if she thought I was
maybe a little strange.  Poor kid.  I think she's had a hard time
lately.  I don't think I've ever exchanged more than a couple of words
with her.

Maybe she likes me--because I'm not like the rest of them.

I don't believe the things they say about her.  She's such a quiet
thing.  She doesn't throw herself around like some of them do.  Bob
dropped her because she wouldn't do it, I bet.  Then he said she did.
Poor kid.  She was in love with him.  Maybe now she'd appreciate a more
responsible kind of a guy.  Not a hero--just a decent guy.

Maybe I should ask her out.  Ask her to go with me to the next party.

It's time, surely, that I had my first date.

AL:

Hot dog.  I never thought Laird would do anything for me.

Now he's got a girl.  And I get laid regular.  He tells her at length
how sincere he is.  How much he respects her.  Then I fuck her.

It's nice.  But she's kind of boring--I think even he feels that.  I
can do better.

Besides, charity should begin at home, I figure.  At least, that's what
the old lady always says.  Bible-spouting witch.

Underneath all her phony airs, Ellie wants it.  I watch her sometimes
when she thinks nobody is noticing.  When the old man and the old lady
and Laird are all listening intently to the

goddamn radio.  A certain look comes over her.  I know what she's
thinking.  She's thinking what I'm thinking.

LENORE:

We talked finally.  After days and days, weeks it seemed, of lunch
hours.

He managed to kick the ball my way quite often, then he'd come over.
The other boys would laugh.  I didn't care.  I wanted him to look at
me.  So one day I opened my eyes as wide apart as my legs, and looked
surprised to see him there.  I closed my legs demurely, not too
hastily, and smoothed my skirt down over my knees.  Then I smiled at
him.  He was really flustered; it was quite comical.  He beat a hasty
retreat.

I don't suppose Elaine has ever smiled at anybody in her whole life.

When Elaine came out of the school that afternoon he was waiting for
her by the road.  Laird had left already, thank God.  She was very
surprised.

"Hi," he said.  He looked very handsome, I thought.  He grinned.

"Hi," said Elaine coldly.  She was rather frightened of him.  "Can I
walk a ways with you?"

"I guess so."

She was cool to him, but I had given him enough encouragement to
continue.  So he began to ask her questions about how she liked this
subject or that teacher.  She answered him curtly.  I've got to do
something, I thought.  Or he'll just go away and he'll never speak to
me again.

Finally, after all the small-talk, he asked her if she'd like to go
with him to a party.  My heart stood still.

"My mother doesn't let me go out on dates," said Elaine primly.  "She
says I'm too young for that."

I had to do something.  I'd never done it before.  But I was
desperate.

I spoke to her directly.  I said: You know you want to go.  You know
you want him.  You know you want to let him FUCK you.

She fainted dead away.

When I opened my eyes, he had his arm around me.  He looked very
concerned.  I liked him better than ever, I thought.  We were sitting,
propped up against an uncomfortable snake fence beside the road. Nobody
was around.  I put my arms around him and buried my face in his chest
for a moment.  I could hear his heart beating loudly.  He held me
tightly.

After a moment I said, "I'm sorry.  I haven't been feeling well today.
It made me a bit irritable.  It's not your fault."  I looked at him
meaningfully, as if to suggest that an experienced man would understand
these female problems.

"Oh," he said.

"It's all right.  I'm better now.  It passes in a couple of days."

"I know," he said wisely.

We stood up.

The sky was bright blue above us.  It was a lovely fall day in the
country, though the light would not last much longer.

"Perhaps," I said then, "we could .. . walk out together."

"Walk .. . ?"

"I mean," I interrupted, "like people used to do.  My mother's very
old-fashioned.  She's very strict about dating.  But I could come out
after supper and meet you.  As long as we stay near my place."  I
meant, of course, to sneak out after the old folks and Allen and Elaine
were all asleep.

So we agreed upon just when and where we would meet.  I asked him not
to walk me home.  This dismissal was wise, since it was not long before
Elaine woke up to find herself halfway home, walking.  She was a little
frightened and dazed, and wondered what had happened to her.  She
wondered if she was sick.

Bob had said to me: "You know, I've never known a girl quite like you.
You're really not like the other girls at all."  Then he kissed me on
the mouth very hard and thoroughly as we stood on that lonely dirt road
out under the open sky.

LANCE:

Don't you think I have feelings too?

How do you think it feels to see you all cuddling and snuggling and
carrying on out there?  When all I've got is this blockhead.  I mean
him, not my head.  I mean, I don't think he even knows the difference
between girls and boys.  I mean, don't you think he's a bit strange?
Why didn't he make himself a female partner?

Please.  Won't some nice gal take this blockhead off my hands?  And
introduce me to something that's got legs and curves?  A chair maybe?

Don't laugh.  Ever humped a chair?  Ever watched your dog?  No dear,
he's just being friendly.

Don't knock it until you've tried it.

You can get lucky knocking up wood.

After a party where Lance had been particularly bad, I tried to talk
some sense into him.  He was getting a swelled head and getting bitter
at the same time.  I had seen Mary Lou home.  But I still had a small
flask of whiskey and, while I talked with Lance I went on swigging
it.

"Why do you always insult me now," I asked him.

"Because you bore me," he said.  "You're such a cheerless jerk.  You
ought to get yourself laid."

"Don't talk like that.  I have respect for girls."

We were sitting by a small, crackling bonfire in the abandoned field a
mile or so behind Gary's house.  Everybody else had gone in or gone
home, but I kept feeding the fire.  I couldn't take the booze home, I
told myself.  I needed an excuse to go on getting drunker and
drunker.

"You're a dullard," said Lance.  "You're the real blockhead."

"You've said that before.  Several times."

"I'm a little drunk.  I repeat myself.  You drive me to drink."  He
hiccuped comically.

"You talk dirty all the time now."

"You're afraid I'm ruining your lily-white reputation.  Is that it?"

"Yes.  Darn it."

"Well, frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

"You should.  I made you."

"Poor Laird.  Poor Dr.  Frankenstein.  Don't you know why you made
me?"

"No.  It just happened."

"Ha!"

"All right.  Why did I?"

" "Cause you can't get a hard-on.  "Cause you've never been fucked.
"Cause your cock doesn't function.  So you made yourself another one.
Out of wood."

"That's sick," I said.

"You want to shove my wooden head up Mary Lou's cunt," said Lance
drunkenly.

I smashed him in his filthy mouth then.  He started to whimper like a
child.  My hand hurt.  Badly.  I took a big swig of whiskey, and he
stopped crying.

"You've got a filthy, filthy mouth," I said.  "And a filthy mind."  I
took another huge swig.  The fire crackled and smoked a little with the
damp brush.  Outside its light, huge shadows of nothingness came and
went.  Lance's face looked demonic in the flickering firelight.  I was
very drunk.  There were no stars in the sky.

"Face it," said Lance.  "You're probably queer too."

"Shut up."

"Do you want to know why?"

"Shut up."

"I'll tell you.  Your father is a drunken sadistic perverted old
bastard, and your mother is totally insane.  Don't look at me like
that.  You know it's true.  That woman is loonier all on her own than a
whole fucking congregation of holy rollers.  No wonder your sister is
turning into a whore."

"SHUT UP!"  And I threw him into the fire.

He was caught there between a couple of branches.  He couldn't escape
his fate now.  He was whimpering softly.  He

seemed stunned.  His coat and trousers were already on fire.  I thought
that soon he would begin to scream.  It was interesting.

"You asked for it," I said.

"Help," he said faintly.  "Help me.  Please."

"You deserve it," I said.  "You're a devil.  An idol--like in the
Bible.  Anyway, you brought it on yourself.  Let this be a lesson to
you."  And that was the last thing I remember before I passed

We went up into the woods.  I knew exactly where to go.  I had brought
a blanket.

It was too cold to get completely undressed.  We had worn clothes that
we could open to each other.

It was glorious.  It was just what I had wanted for so long.  There was
a bright moon that night, it was shattered into bits of white moonlight
in the thick branches above and around us.  Under the cold moon we knew
each other.  As they say in Ma's wretched Bible.

It was the first of many enjoyable times.  During the coldest spell of
winter we had to stop.  I think maybe he had other girls then but I
didn't care.  I knew he'd come back to me.  I was magic to him.  In
mild spells we used the barn and listened to the noises of the animals.
It was an unusually mild winter.

Bob Mason was waiting for me after school that day.  On the road.

"I've found another place," he said.  "We can go there right now."

"I don't know what you mean," I said.

He was a strange boy.  I wasn't always sure he was quite right in the
head.  He would sometimes say the strangest things to

me when he passed me in the hall.  I usually just pretended I didn't
hear him.

"C'mon," he said impatiently.  And grabbed onto my hand very tightly.
That felt very strange.  I hardly knew him.

I went.  I don't know why.  I don't suppose I'll ever know why.  It was
as if someone inside me had said that it was all right.  That I ought
to.  There didn't seem any harm in it.  It was spring, and maybe I felt
unusually adventurous.  I thought he must want to show me something
special.  Like my brother used to when we were small.  Like a pale blue
robin's egg or a white trillium.  I even thought he must be a little in
love with me.

He held onto my hand tightly.  We walked, almost ran, across a field.
This was Pocock's derelict farm.  Everything was for sale, but nobody
seemed to want it and nobody had lived here for quite a while.

We went round to the back of the farmhouse.  Some of the windows had
been shot out.  By hunters, I guess.

He looked at me triumphantly.  Then he turned the handle of the back
door.  It wasn't locked.  The lock had been broken open.

When I came to myself again I was lying on an old sofa.  My dress was
up over my waist and my pants had been pulled down.  I felt a strange
sensation between my legs.

I realized right away what must have happened.  Though I couldn't
remember it at all.  I must have fainted at some point-- I was troubled
with fainting spells.  I started to cry.

I heard a door close, the stairs creak.  Then Bob came back down and
came close and put his arms around me.  He was kneeling beside the
sofa.

"What's the matter, sweetheart?"  he asked lightly.  He didn't seem
very worried at my tears.  He seemed pleased with himself.

I stopped crying abruptly.  So this is how it happens, I thought.  My
mother was right.  As usual.  A man sweet-talks you and the next thing
you know he's made you his woman.

While you didn't even notice.  Then you're stuck with him for the rest
of your life.  He plants babies in you that hurt you and torment you.
He does just what he wants with you.  He owns you.

Yes, I thought, it happens to everyone.  Just like that.

I sat up.  I pushed him away and he fell back.  He lay back on the old
dirty rug on his elbows and grinned up at me.

"Isn't this a great place?"  he said.  "All the comforts of home. 
Well, almost.  I admit a bed would be a little more comfortable. 
Especially for you."

I said, "You know we'll have to be married now."

He laughed and laughed at that.

When he stopped he said, "There'll be lots of time ahead, sweetheart,
lots of time, to think about getting married.  Right this minute,
though, I'm getting really horny again."

I saw her go into the barn with Bob Mason.  It was after midnight.  I
was flabbergasted.  I didn't realize she had a guy.  I don't know how
long it's been going on, but I'm sure it wasn't the first time.

That bastard.  He's cutting into my territory.  / should have been
first.  She's my bloody sister.

I waited for them.  After an hour or so he came out by himself, and
went on his way.

I went over to the barn.  I slipped in the big door.

I could sense her there in the dark.  I knew where she must be.  Lying
on the hay.  I climbed up the steep ladder.

"Bob?"  she said from the dark.

"No.  He's had his," I said.  "It's my turn now."

LENORE:

Elaine is pregnant.  She doesn't realize it yet, but she soon will.
What in hell is she going to do?

She'll try to make him marry her.  That's the way her little mind
works.

I don't know.  I like Bob all right still, but he's not the only guy in
the world.  He's even a bit boring half the time.  When you get to know
him.  Crude, too.  Elaine's right that he doesn't have much between the
ears.

I wonder whether I shouldn't try to see somebody.  I could try to talk
to Jocelyn Bridges.  She was supposed to be knocked up a couple of
years ago but nothing happened.  Maybe she knows where to go in the
city.

But we don't have any money.  Where would I get it?  Well, you know the
answer to that one, don't you, Lenore?  And you'd have to go to the
city to find any men with money.

They'd send the police after me.  No, that's not the way.  I've got to
use my head.

Getting married could just be the only way to get the hell out of here.
Away from them.  We could go to the city.  They couldn't stop me
then.

I'd get away from him.  From what Elaine doesn't even know about.  And
couldn't ever handle.

Not to mention Allen.  Who's really got the hots for me now, after he
found out about Bob.  I had to kick him hard where it really hurts or
I'd have been shagged by my own brother.

ELLIE:

I'm going to run away and hide.  I'm going to run away where they'll
never, ever find me again.  No matter how hard they look.

LENORE:

Well, it's all arranged.  Bob has agreed.  He came around after the
first shock.  He says he wants to quit school and get a job in the city
anyway.  He says he really does love me.  That we probably would have
gotten married in a couple of years anyhow.  Touching.

And Reverend Thorne has agreed to marry us.  Them, rather.  I don't
think I'll consider myself married.  I just want to get out of here.

Reverend Thorne had a talk with the parents.  They had to agree too.
But there was hell to pay.  Ma had hysterics.  Old Pa dragged Elaine
into the barn, stripped her naked, and tanned her hide.  Good.  She
went into a sulk and locked herself into her room for two days
afterwards.  I felt a bit sorry for her, but I also felt she had it
coming.  She's always been so holier-than thou Serves her right.

Allen called her a little slut.

She hates them all now.  Once she's in the city, she'll never contact
them again.  That's all right with me.

It isn't the best solution.  I don't want a kid.  I'm not even twenty,
for Christ's sake.

But at least it's a new beginning.  An adventure.  And about

LANCE fin a dream]:

You shouldn't have tried to kill me.  You'll suffer for it.  I'll get
you.  I'll get to you.  You can't be rid of me that easily.  I'll be
back.  Somehow.  You'll see.

TWO

Elaine wasn't sure she really liked the new house all that much.  But
with Bob away in the war she had to make these decisions herself.  They
could just afford the rent so long as he continued to send most of his
pay faithfully.  So long as he didn't die.

The children were excited, for the first few days.  On the first day,
they ran up and down the curious, hidden little flight of noisy wooden
stairs that rose so unexpectedly--so disconcertingly, Elaine
thought--from the back of the main bedroom's small closet up into a
large, bare, windowless attic.  They did this over and over again,
clattering loudly up and down, giggling and calling out to each other
in their high, shrill voices, until she thought that the racket was
going to drive her crazy.  They paid no attention at all to her
repeated requests that they come down from there and stay down.  So
finally she slapped each of them once, hard, and ordered them into
their own small room until she had finished her unpacking and
arranging.  They bawled for a while but obeyed.  She felt guilty about
this afterwards.  She could have slapped just one of them, she thought,
the older one, and that would have effectively deterred them both.  On
the other hand, it was surely fairer to punish them equally.

After a while she gave Jimmy, who was the older one, a little money to
buy candy at the corner store two blocks away.  But then Bobby was
upset and whiny because he had to wait at

home for this small treat.  He was sure, too, that Jimmy would cheat
and eat most of the candy before he got home.

It was October.  The house was on Victoria Street, a modest brick
bungalow with dingy white trim.  It had a front porch, facing west,
where they could sit in the evenings in summer.  The living room and a
dining room were separated only by a wide archway and there was a
fireplace in the living room.  To the right, as you entered, was a
small bedroom for the boys; the larger one was at the back.  The small
kitchen was at the left, behind the connected living room-dining room.
Behind the small front bedroom was the bathroom, and between the
bathroom and the back bedroom there was a small study.  Bob could have
this when he came home.  Meanwhile, Elaine used it to store things that
wouldn't go anywhere else.  She kept her sewing machine there when she
was not using it.  A hallway ran between the rooms of the right and the
rooms of the left, bisecting the house.  Then there was also the
unexpected and surprisingly large V-roofed attic with nothing in it but
a few discarded cardboard boxes.  But something about this hidden space
unnerved her.

There was as well a dank, dark full basement.  It made her think of
slimy, crawling things.  Of lice on the body.  It could not be cleaned,
it was beyond redemption or recall.

She was a little happier contemplating the long, narrow back yard. Here
was a space for the boys to play.  Perhaps it would keep them from
wandering away when she wasn't noticing.  Cutting the grass when spring
came again would be a nuisance: she didn't even possess a lawnmower.
Perhaps she could invite friends here in late spring for afternoon tea
outdoors.  If she should make any friends on the street, that is; she
had never really been very good at that.

The secret stairway at the back of her bedroom closet had unnerved her.
It was the boys who found it the first thing they did on arrival was to
poke into every nook and cranny of every room.  It annoyed her that the
landlord hadn't told her ibout this hidden staircase.  It was as if he
had wanted to keep it secret from her, as if it had once been used for
some clandestine

or illegal activity.  But such thoughts were absurd, of course.  How
could she have failed to discover that her own closet gave way to a
staircase, an ascent to another space?

Then there were the voices.  The creaking noises of a strange new
house.  She heard them the first night as she began to fall asleep. She
started awake, but there was nothing.  Nothing but the creaking of the
house in the wind.

Sometimes during the day--in those first few weeks--she felt as if
someone was behind her, observing.  Watching her.  Or else not even
observing her, but just there.  Some presence or presences, some
parallel existence somehow occupying the same space that she occupied.
Moving past the same walls.  Living in the same house.

And there were the letters.  Letters that arrived for people that
neither she nor the landlord had ever heard of.  Dead letters, she
thought idly.  Send them to the Dead Letter Office.  Was there really
such a place, such a name?  she wondered.  A paper graveyard?

She forbade the boys to go up into the attic.  She never went there
herself.  And she kept the door to the cellar locked.  The walls of the
house were dark, the old wallpaper was dingy, though it could not
really be very old.  This house was surely less than ten years old.  It
was not like the great brick or limestone mansions that had been built
a hundred years ago, down by the lake where the rich people of the city
lived.

As October deepened and the days shortened, her nerves, never strong in
autumn, worsened.  She snapped at the boys, or hit them for no good
reason.  At times she wanted to punish them severely.  She sometimes
even hoped one of them might burn his hand or his arm on the stove in
the kitchen, to teach him a lesson.  They were so thoughtless, so
careless.  Didn't they know there was a war on?  That she was hard put
to make ends meet?  She could not recall ever being so frivolous--no,
not ever--as a child.  At other times, she was ashamed of her feelings.
Ashamed and guilty.

When a stray dog wandered into the back yard, she refused to allow it
in the house, refused to allow the boys to feed it.

"It's filthy," she said.  "Its hair is all filthy and matted.  I'm sure
it's diseased."  The dog, a mongrel of slinking when, hung about for
several days, and then vanished forever.  While it was there, she had
unbidden thoughts about poisoning it.

She gradually became aware of the weeping.  Weeping that she heard at
night.  It was a child, she was sure, but not one of her children. They
slept as soundly as logs, two inanimate lumps of clay side by side
under the bedclothes.  At times she could not even be sure they were
breathing.  She imagined them lying dead there.  They were so
insensitive to the vibrations of the house.

No, the weeping child was someone else.  At first, startled awake, she
thought perhaps it was a cat that she had heard.  Cats yowling in the
dead of night could sound disconcertingly like children in distress.
But this was surely not a cat.  It was a high-pitched sobbing in the
darkness.  It didn't happen every night, only certain nights.

I suppose I'll get used to this place, she thought.  I suppose I'm
imagining things because it's still a strange house, because it's fall,
and all the leaves are rotting away there on the lawn.  I'll rake them
tomorrow: they're beginning to remind me of' corpses.

There's more room here, she thought, it's better surely.  But inside it
was so dark, in spite of the large front window in the living room and
the smaller windows in the other rooms.  All you could see from the
side windows were the brick walls of the neighboring houses.

Things kept disappearing in the house.  At first she accused Jimmy,
angrily.  But after a while she believed his denials.  What would he
want with her large wooden mixing spoon?  Or her good sewing scissors?
How could she have mislaid these things?  Or, who could be taking
them?

The voices told her nothing about this.  The voices spoke of people she
had never met or heard of, places she had never been.  The strange
images flooded her mind.  Invaded her.

The boys liked to play with some children from down the street.  Elaine
disliked these children, she thought that they

were too rough.  She didn't want them coming around any more, but
hadn't steeled herself yet to tell them.  They were very
scruffy-looking, even the girl.  The girl played just as roughly, just
as aggressively, as the boys.  Elaine had never played with boys when
she was a child.  Or had she?  Much of her childhood eluded her now
that she was a busy mother with an absent husband, trying to make ends
meet.

The woman from down the street, the mother of those three
children--imagine, three children not yet in school, two of them twins,
of course--had one day given them all large peanut-butter cookies.
Jimmy and Bobby had come home immensely pleased about this, which made
Elaine very cross.  She told them they were not to go begging food from
the neighbors.  The other mothers would only think that they were poor,
that she didn't look after her children properly.  She did not want to
make cookies for all the neighborhood brats, and especially not for the
three little ruffians who were always running about, shrieking at each
other at the top of their lungs.  They were all getting dirtier and
dirtier by the minute.  They had a foreign look about them, too, she
thought, sharp cheekbones, slightly slanted eyes.  A sneaky Asian or
perhaps Tartar look, she thought.  She had read about the Tartars years
ago in school, and remembered a sinister-looking sketch of a Mongol
chieftain in the textbook.  It had stayed in her mind for some
reason.

The brats from down the street had infected her sons with their
excitement about Halloween.  It was an unseemly, demonic glee.  They
were all intensely concerned about what costumes they were going to
wear, what disguises, what lies they would assume.  What nasty roles
would they play: goblins, demons, witches, ghosts, monsters, or devils?
I suppose, she thought, that's just what children are--till they grow
up.  They never want to be angels, only demons.  Little savages.

Well, at least she could make them striking costumes.  She had always
been good at making clothes.  She still made most of her own dresses.
Here was one thing she could do for them that the normally ungrateful
boys might actually appreciate.

Not only did she sew, but she knitted all their socks and sweaters too.
These were her chief activities now, soothing, mindless.  Making
clothes, making costumes.  An endless servitude.  That serves me right,
she thought--witless country mouse--for getting pregnant, getting
married, before I was even twenty.

She sat down once again at her sewing machine.

There was a meadow.  She thought that it was somewhere in Ireland.  It
was a meadow in a little valley, behind which was a wood on a hill, and
she was coming down the other hill now, down the rough dirt path.  She
was barefoot.  She wore only an old, ragged brown dress.  There was a
man there, across the small meadow, in coarse peasant clothes; he was
waiting for her.  He was her lover.  She could not see his face yet,
but he was tall and strong.  He had a staff in his hand.  He wore a
cloth cap on his head.  His face was a shadow.  Perhaps he was going to
betray her, as in some old song.  They would go, she knew, into the
woods together.  Perhaps she was pregnant, perhaps he was intending to
kill her there.  He was a rough man, he had killed another man once
with his bare hands.  Now he would enjoy her body once, just once
again, then he would strangle her.  It was summer, it was just dusk.
She thought that it was sometime around the middle of the seventeenth
century.  She shuddered helplessly, her whole body was trembling .. .

When she "came to herself" (what self?  she wondered) it was time to
make supper.  She had been dreaming again, daydreaming--moon- spinning,
her mother always said--idling, when there was work to be done.  There
was always work to be done.  Where were those wretched boys?  She could
not hear them outside.

Her undergarment was stained, sticky.  Shameful.  She had no clean one
to put on.

Sometimes horrible images flooded her mind.  They were like tides of
blood.  Shameful.

It's my nerves, she told herself.  It's the war.  My husband is away at
the war.  I'm alone with my difficult, unruly children.  I don't belong
here in this city.  It all makes me nervous, anxious.  Strange.  It's
just a bad time that I'll have to get myself through.  Doctors are no
use.  All they do is say, "There, there ..."  It's the fall.  It's this
weird, dark house.  But at least we've got a house.  At last.  So I'll
just have to pull myself together, and make the best of it.  See it
through.

She could hear her mother's voice speaking these words in her mind.
This startled her because she hadn't thought about her mother in a
long, long time.

From the large radio in the living room the Andrews Sisters were
singing a childish but very catchy song.  She did not remember turning
the machine on.  Indeed, she rarely listened to it, but the boys (where
were they?) had become addicted to certain programs--Jack Benny was one
that always irritated her, it was so silly.

The large black and white tomcat that lived next door annoyed her.  It
spent a lot of time on her front porch.  It was there now.  In fact, it
was perched up on the broad concrete outer windowsill and was looking
boldly in at her.  It had insolent eyes.  She felt them as she switched
off the radio.  A malevolent lump, a presence at the very edge of her
sight.  Those fierce eyes.  She clapped her hands loudly to frighten it
away.  Her heart was beating.  Fast, too fast.  Where were those
children?  It would be dark soon.  She was standing by the front window
now looking out into the empty, steadily darkening street.

She really must find someone to help her with her voices, with these
"others" who were crowding at the edges of her life.  But where would
she find such a person in this strange city?  Mrs.  Ramsay.  She had
overheard two women on the bus one day talking about Mrs.  Ramsay. That
was the name.  She knew about such otherworldly matters.

Then she heard them again.  The noises in the attic.  The voices.  And
the faint scuffling.  Up there.

As Halloween approached she worked away steadily on the costumes. Jimmy
was going to be a goblin, Bobby a ghost.  It was easy to make a
ghost--she had saved an old ripped sheet.  On it she painted a black
skeleton.  The goblin required more work.  She made a patchwork garment
of old multicolored rags.  Then she set about to construct a mask out
of cardboard.  This she would paint in vivid colors.  She would try to
suggest an animal's head.

At school, the teacher had always complimented her on her drawings. She
knew that they were better than those of the other children.  But this
only made her feel self-conscious.  She thought that the other children
must resent her for it.  She preferred to be invisible.

A mask may be truer than the face that wears it.  Someone had said that
once.  Was it her mother?  A mask reveals as much as it conceals.
Perhaps that was a rhyme from one of her early schoolbooks.  Many
sayings came to her, these days, whose source she could not remember.

She was going to accompany the boys on the night of witches and ghosts.
That way she could leave the house dark and avoid the disturbing
invasion of those ghouls and demons.  She would not have to buy candy,
or endure the repeated intrusion of little savages overrunning and
overwhelming her porch and banging away loudly at her door.  The demons
would see that the house was dark, vacant, and they would pass it by.

But always there were those others, in some other space that was also
the same space that she and her children occupied, I Increasingly, she
felt their presences.  They moved through all the rooms, they spoke,
casually and naturally, to one another.  She could never quite make out
what they were saying.  They seemed unaware of her.  Were they
occupying some part of the brief past of the house, or some stretch of
its unknown future?

Often, as she prepared supper, she heard them closing doors,: opening
drawers, ascending the steep steps to the attic.  At the sewing machine
she heard them too.  They were gathered around a fire in the living
room.  They were laughing excitedly.

There were children and adults both.  It seemed a large family, too
large for the house.

In her dreams she saw them, or saw some group of people, more clearly.
There was a man, a woman.  Their faces changed from time to time. There
were numerous children of both sexes and various ages.  The oldest
might be fifteen or so.  They did not look like anyone that she had
ever seen.  Or, at any rate, remembered seeing.  The variety of
clamoring children was bewildering.  It was as if there were
alternates, alternative sons and daughters in that dream family.

And there was room for them all.  There were endless rooms, surprising
corridors, windows, shifting spaces, and unexpected vistas in the
dream-house.  Behind it were huge fields, occasionally an enormous
tree, and, on the horizon, majestic green hills.  Like Africa.

Elaine forgot these dreams during the day.  At least until the voices
began again.  Then bits of the dreams came back to her.

Some nights, dreamless nights it seemed, she was awakened again by the
weeping.  Then a desolation came over her, and she was a long time
getting back to sleep.

In the dream she was climbing a ladder that seemed to extend upward
into total darkness forever.  It was back on the farm.  Someone was
just behind her, forcing a certain pace.  She could not see but she
sensed this importunate presence.  She was tired, indeed she was
exhausted, but she dared not pause.  Her legs ached badly, but she
dared not pause.  There was no end to this ascent.  No destination up
there at all, only black starless sky, and no point of departure that
she could possibly remember.

It was an unusually gloomy month.  Gray day followed upon gray day.
There was no Indian summer to speak of.  Only passing shafts of
sunlight.  Everyone was saying that there would be an early winter.

Elaine had married young, at seventeen.  She had wanted to get away
from her family, so she married Bob and came with him to the city.  It
helped that she was pregnant before she married him, that way her
parents could not really object, or try to forbid it.  The minister of
the church, Reverend Thorne, advised that it would be better for
everyone, especially the baby, if they got married right away.  In the
city Bob hoped to find work.  But he got only temporary, odd jobs.  He
hadn't finished high school, and had no real vocational training
either.  Still, she had got away.  Getting pregnant had been a smart
thing to do.  Even if ... But she did not want to think about that. The
second time wasn't so smart.  He was drunk and couldn't be bothered
either to sheathe himself or to withdraw in time.  So she produced two
boys in two years.  Ridiculous, when they were so poor, when they had
to live in a two-room apartment with hardly any furniture and share a
bathroom down the hall.  They were just another slum family now.

Till the war came, and rescued them.

He went, and after that money came regularly for the first time in her
life.  She saved as much as she could, and then bought a sewing
machine, and later a radio--luxuries she could never have dreamed of
before.  With the sewing machine she was even able to earn a little
extra money herself while the babies were sleeping.

One day she thought: maybe I could even rent a house, a small house.
She was a bit frightened now by her own audacity.  But she started
looking each afternoon, while her neighbor, old Mrs.  Bond, watched
over the boys.

Thank God, she thought when she had at length found a house that seemed
at least possible, for the distant good luck of the war.

Some days it rained, loosening the last, most stubborn leaves from the
trees.  The street had many trees, some of them fir trees that would
make it pleas anter during the long winter months.

More like the country north of the city--all snow and fir trees.  And
wolves that howled in the night.

October the thirty-first at last arrived.  By now Elaine felt that she
would be glad to put Halloween behind them.  When winter came, when the
snow came, she could make the boys stay indoors most or even all of the
time (if she could stand that), she would separate them from all those
undesirable neighborhood children.  She would not allow them to go into
other people's houses, strange houses she herself knew nothing of.

Thinking this, she was actually pleased to venture forth at dusk with
her small, disguised companions.  It was her plan to wait for them in
the relative obscurity of the street, averting her face, as they
climbed onto brightly lit porches, knocked on doors, and received not
only apples, the less wholesome candies of various kinds, and perhaps
even money, but also, she hoped, murmurs of interest and approbation.
She would listen for any comments on the costumes.

But the costumes were not at all remarkable or outstanding, she
realized with some chagrin, when she began to see the other children,
in motley groups and gangs, noisily making their way from house to
house.  Thank God I came out, she thought, I could never have fed this
multitude.

Why did she feel just then that the chattering, brightly costumed
clumps of children were dangerous?  Were somehow threatening to her?

They reminded her of blood flowing.  Why?  It was her period, of
course.  Was it something that obvious?  She was tired, irritable.  She
began to wish she could go home.  But the boys were all for pressing
on.  It was a long street that went all the way down to the lake.  A
street that drowned itself in the lake.  She would never let things go
that far, she thought.  But she couldn't go home either till there were
no more children on the street.

The faint weeping had begun again.  She was awake now.  She

knew it was not one of her children.  They were asleep for certain;
they had been tired out by all that excitement.  They had not wanted to
come home at all.  "You've got enough," she said firmly, "your sacks
are full."  In the house they hadn't wanted to go to bed.  They wanted
to inspect the loot at their leisure.  But once in bed, they had gone
to sleep almost immediately.  They always slept well.

It was she who did not.

The weeping had ceased.  And yet she felt the intense presence of a
distressed child.  You'll have to go, she thought, addressing herself.
This time, at last, you'll have to go.  You'll have to go and see to
it.

So she rose, reluctantly, from her warm bed, and wrapped a housecoat
around herself.  Behind the window-blinds was the sense of moonlight.
She did not open them, however.  She did not want a light.  She felt
her way to the closet door, then opened it.  She ascended the stairs
slowly, carefully.

At the top she paused.  It was dark, dark.  Too dark to explore unless
her eyes grew accustomed to this blackness.  It was a long, roomy
attic.  She could easily stumble over a cardboard box.  And what if
there were bats, even rats?  That's a Halloween rhyme, said someone in
her head.  Bats.  Rats.  Brats.

There were no rats or bats.  No scurryings, no little beating wings
about her long, disheveled brown hair.  She stood silent, listening.

There was a faint rustling at the other end, the front end.  I Wind in
the eaves, the roof?  A memory of wind?

There was a faint glow, she saw now.  Her eyes were becoming
acclimatized.  Acclimatized.  That was a word she had I learned in
school, and then forgotten.  Now just what, she j wondered, did it
mean?  And why did it come back to her now?!

Eyes, acclimatized.

The little girl wore a white nightgown.  She might be ten or eleven.
There was a bloodstain on her shift.  She was sitting!  cross-legged on
the attic floor, she was silent.  She was finished with her weeping.
She was looking steadily down at the woo<^ floor.  She had dirty, long
blonde hair.

"Look at me," said Elaine.  She was shocked to hear the anger in her
voice.  "Look at me," she repeated.

The child stirred vaguely.  Then slowly, slowly, she raised her head.
Until she looked full at Elaine.  She had bright, enormous eyes.  She
spoke.  She spoke in a low, toneless voice.

"Why have you been so long?"  she said.

Elaine stirred.  Her shoulder was aching painfully.  She was lying on a
cold hardwood floor in the darkness.  Why?

Then she remembered.

She must have fallen.  She had hurt her right shoulder.  How badly? She
couldn't afford doctors' bills.

She leaned on her good arm, then sat up carefully.  Pushed herself up
with her left arm.

She eased herself to the staircase, feeling her way, then swung her
legs onto it.  Hanging onto the place where the stairwell met the attic
floor, she stood up carefully on the steps.  Her legs were fine, though
she felt a bit weak all over.

She went down the stairs into her bedroom.

A cup of tea, she thought.  It will calm my nerves.

She made her way into the kitchen.  There she sat down in the old
wooden chair.  I don't believe in ghosts, she told herself.  Even at
Halloween.

She found she did not, after all, want a cup of tea.  So she sat very
still in the chair in the darkness of her kitchen.

It's this house, she thought.  There's something not right about it.

"There's something that needs to be killed."

The words, spoken aloud, seemed to hang there in the darkness.  Who had
spoken them?

She sat there looking steadily into the dark.  It was time, it seemed.
Time to right things.  The bread knife  The bread knife was her only
weapon here, her only defense against intruders.  Those invaders.  She
would set things right, find the balance that had been lost.  She got
up, blind, but sure of everything, knowing where everything was here,
in this room.  This was

her room.  Domain.  The woman's place, she thought.  She drew the knife
out of its wooden slot.  Hung too high for the restless, poking boys to
reach.  Safe.  Safe from their grubby, restless fingers.

Yes, there was something here that had to be killed.  She gripped the
large bread knife harder.  Then, still holding it stiffly but carefully
by the wood handle, the long blade pointing downward like a dowsing rod
at its climactic moment of discovery, she went quickly along the hall,
past the dining-living room, and then, her heart racing with glad
excitement now, stood in front of the children's pitch-dark,
always-open doorway.

THREE

Sometimes Herb thought they were just animals--but animals too crazed
and warped by brutal and brutalizing childhoods, violent lives, and
maddening confinement ever to be trusted with freedom.  It was a tragic
fact of life that some men were conditioned almost from birth to
violence.  They were self defeating excitement-addicts.  They needed
that adrenalin flow.  In an ugly word (and world): recidivist.

Certainly prison life made them worse.  But what was the alternative?
You didn't want such men on the street.  At least when they blew up
they were inside, and the guards could throw them into the
cooler--after a kind of kangaroo court with the higher-ups.  There the
craziness was magnified by the bare walls, the emptiness, the silence,
the eternal light bulb glaring overhead night and day.  It was as if
the prison's pettier authorities--the often brutal screws who were
themselves frequently badly educated, deprived, and frustrated "little"
men or losers--were psychiatrists like himself, or cruel laboratory
psychologists, conducting experiments aimed at driving men mad.

This institutionalized sadism--for it went far beyond straightforward
revenge and had nothing whatever to do with rehabilitation--could not
be a solution to anything.  Herb thought privately that the "cooler"
and the brutal corporal punishment administered with the "paddle" were
barbarous in the extreme.  But what could he do?  Or suggest?  What was
the

alternative for men whose murderous tempers seemed ungovernable except
through terror?  It often seemed to him--that late, warm spring of
1960--as he left his comfortable office in town, left his usual
assortment of middle-class, mildly neurotic patients for his weekly
sessions in the cold bowels of the "pen," that he was engaged in a
basically futile activity-except for the fact that he was learning
about the prison system and what it did to people.  He thought that
someday, when he was ready, he might write a book.  Perhaps it would
create a stir, perhaps even do some good.

He was approaching the place once again now.  Just past the city's most
expensive and exclusive streets and properties, smugly ensconced by the
lake.  This close juxtaposition of the heights and depths of his
society's dwelling-places always struck him as ironic in the extreme.

The old nineteenth-century prison towering up from the banks of the
lake resembled a medieval fortress.  Inside the outer stone walls, with
their corner turrets and armed sentinels, there was a central building
with tiers of cells piled up four stories high.  Four layers of
seething frustration and hatred.  A simmering hate-cake.  Eight
cellblocks branched off from a central dome like spokes of a wheel.
Herb had toured the place when he first came inside.  Now he would go
directly to the small office set aside for him where he would talk for
: half an hour at a time with each prisoner assigned to this therapy.
He would later visit the psychiatric ward in the east cellblock, as he
did every week.

He would never grow indifferent, he thought, to the harsh sound of
metal doors clanging shut behind him--not in a hundred years of
visiting.  You must enter through the North Gate, which has walls four
feet thick.  It is always dark, tomblike.  Then along a road to the
east cellblock.  Inside there is a series of gray corridors and a
series of metal doors and gray-faced guardians to negotiate.  Then,
finally, there is the bare windowless office with two chairs, a desk,
no pictures on: the walls.  The center of the labyrinth, at least for
me, he had

thought more than once.  Two large guards kept watch outside the door
while he worked.

I don't know how / keep sane in here, thought Herb, who was a sensitive
man, and judged himself a decent and humane, if not (he was inclined to
underrate himself) particularly brilliant, practicing therapist.  Come
to think of it, he told himself now, I'm not always convinced I am
entirely sane.  Or why on earth would I choose to come in here?  Nobody
forced me.  The money helps with the mortgage, of course, but it's not
that much.  He tended to discount the altruism instilled by his late
parents, who had been socialists and social workers.  He had wanted to
go a step further, to do good and make money too.

His parents had lived in a lost world, a world recovering after the
Great War, a world in which many longed for fundamental change.  They
had joined the new C.C.F. Party.  They had told him solemnly that the
Great Depression was part of the birth-pangs of a new and saner order.
A more just order.  Well, prosperity had returned but only with another
brutal and disorienting if, for some, exhilarating war.  By 1960,
society did not seem to Herb to be saner--it had grown complacent
again, though hints of incipient madness or at least disturbance showed
through small cracks in the bland surface.  But if these manifestations
should emerge through the cracks into public view, then they were to be
quickly shoved into prison, or committed to mental institutions where
they could be confined and contained, or else "cured" by lobotomy, or
shock treatments--procedures devised by the supposedly sane.

But there was less and less time now, he felt, for these naive
reflections on the very meanings of society, sanity, "normalcy" or
reality itself that had engaged and even entertained him as a medical
student.  There was never a moment, never a dull moment, now, for such
thoughts and speculations.

He studied the day's list of appointments warily.  It had been drawn up
by Joe Crack--a tough but rather stupid psychiatric nurse, the Cerberus
or prison guard-dog who decided, for his own good reasons, which
prisoners claiming to have problems

or those railroaded into the east block by the prison staff because of
misbehavior, suicide attempts, or fits of violence might this day merit
his attention.  Joe stood at his elbow.

"Allen Laird Carter," said Herb.  "He's new to us."

"He's been in the cooler," said Crack in his curiously toneless voice.
"But he's been refusing to eat.  Ordinarily, I'd say that's just a ploy
to get himself out of there.  But his behavior has been very peculiar
all along.  Ever since he checked into the joint, according to the
guards."

Joe Crack had acquired the habit, still a little jarring to Herb, of
referring to the prison as "the joint."  He put no special emphasis on
the word.  He was the kind of nurse who attempted at all times to
exclude any discernible trace of emotion from his voice.

"Peculiar?  The place makes everyone peculiar, I should think."
Including present company, Herb added mentally.

"That's true.  But this man is more disturbed than most, I'd say.  Can
I get you a coffee?  There's a report on him there that I've done for
you.  A lot of it is hearsay to us, of course--I mean, it's what the
goons here say about him."

The word "goon" for "guard" irritated him anew.  Why was Crack so keen
on picking up all the prison population's lingo that Herb found so
distasteful?  Did the man harbor secret "outlaw" fantasies?  Did he
himself?

"I'd like a coffee, thanks," he said (though it was dreadful stuff),
"before I start seeing them.  Meanwhile I'll have a quick look at your
report."

Carter was indeed more than a bit strange, he found.  He was given to
extremely erratic shifts of mood and behavior.  He I could be quiet and
cooperative, even meekly cooperative, for a considerable stretch of
time.  He was actually deferential most of the time to the staff.
Though sometimes, as well, he seemed deeply depressed, and had spoken
once or twice of suicide--if his case wasn't reopened.  And then,
sooner or later, a murderous rage would surface--usually for no obvious
reason.  Once he had been threatened by another prisoner, who quickly
regretted it.  But he had also once torn the toilet fixture off the
wall with his bare hands, and flung it across his cell.  When he

became ungovernable, Carter was thrown into the hole.  At other times
he might grow, overnight, unnaturally jolly, becoming a glib
fast-talker and con-man full of deals, sexual jokes, and
innuendo--something that would have caused no special comment whatever
if he had been, like so many of the other cons, that way all the time.
It was the inconsistency of his behavior that baffled everyone,
including his friends.

He had a wife and a child in Toronto.  His wife visited him faithfully.
She believed against quite damning evidence that he had been wrongly
convicted, and was agitating, so far unsuccessfully, for a retrial.

Herb was fairly well accustomed by now to cases of chronic depression
or suicidal fantasies or violent murderous rages or even full-blown
paranoid or megalomaniac delusions.  But he had never known these to
succeed one another, sometimes rapidly, in one individual.  He wondered
now--assuming, as he must, that the world beyond the distortions of
human society was ultimately, basically sane--if Carter might not be a
manic-depressive made even more erratic by prison life.  Or perhaps he
was sometimes under the influence of smuggled-in drugs, most probably
amphetamines.  Maybe Carter had gotten himself moved from a fair
stretch in the cooler--six months--as much to get to drug supplies as
to get out of the mind-destroying hole.  He might, Herb concluded, be a
very dangerous man--a junkie and a psychopath.

And there was, of course, another thing to consider.  The man's crime.
Rape is a strange crime for an apparently happily married man.

Herb Delaney was thirty-five.  He had wanted to be a doctor for as long
as he could remember.  Later, at medical school, he had become
fascinated by psychiatry.  But now he was beginning to wonder whether
he really had any special gift or aptitude for it.  Beyond listening
carefully, that is, to unhappy people and thus affording them a certain
temporary relief.  He had believed once in the importance of a definite
methodology

in the treatment of neurotic and psychotic disorders, but now it all
seemed increasingly to be a matter of trial and error, of playing it by
ear.  If something worked, some lucky accident perhaps, he remembered
it.  But each new patient was different.

His wife Alice said that Herb was simply exercising common sense, that
was all.  As a high-school dropout, she distrusted any kind of theory.
But he was saddened, for he would have liked to believe, with Freud and
his successors, that there was a definite science of the workings of
the mind.  Of the "soul" even, if like Jung, you were willing to employ
such an overloaded word.  He sometimes felt a bit of a failure, an
imposter, an amateur.

He also wondered now whether his marriage had not been, well, not
mistaken necessarily, but perhaps too easily, too complacently entered
upon.  Not that he had ever really regretted it.  But was it not a bit
too much like any other of life's agreeable routines--like, say, the
cold beer with lunch on Saturday?  It had begun well enough.  Alice was
pretty, vivacious, quick: her lack of formal education had never seemed
important.  She was so obviously practical, cheerful, able,
affectionate, not "hung up" sexually or emotionally.  Not like some of
his oh-so-clever patients, those faculty wives and would-be
sculptresses.

Herb had met Alice one day in his bank, where she worked, and he had
asked her out immediately.  She had smiled at him invitingly.  She was
such a friendly breath of fresh air after Cora, the hard-nosed nurse he
had dated for the previous five years, only to be dumped abruptly for
an unemployed musician who fell into her clutches after he became ill.
After their marriage Alice had gone on working while he finished his
long years of schooling.  She had never complained, had always been
supportive.  She came from a relatively poor but close-knit
working-class family.  His own earnestly progressive parents had died
suddenly, shockingly, in a car crash the year before he met her.  A
drunken driver, who survived, was responsible.  Herb had no siblings.

But Alice did not seem happy now.  What had gone wrong?

75m Marshall 43

He admitted that he did not understand it.  It was not that she had
turned against him.  She was still affectionate, helpful.  But he knew
she was not altogether happy.

He supposed that she wanted a child.  But they had agreed to wait.  She
was younger than he was, only twenty-seven.  There was time.

She was more withdrawn now.  The cheerful, supportive girl he had
married was still there, of course.  But her affectionate ways had come
to seem automatic.  This was the smiling woman who kissed him as he
came into the house, then held him for a long moment: it was a daily
performance.  She fed him, made him comfortable, made perfectly willing
love to him at the agreed-upon times.  Never had she demurred on
grounds of headache or any other ache.  And yet--somehow there was
someone else, too, a woman who withdrew, who wanted to be alone.  There
were--was this the word?--whole "areas" of her that he felt he did not
know, that were withheld from him.  There was, he now knew, a woman
there that he had not married.  That he had scarcely met.

He supposed that this happened to everyone.  The illusion of oneness
could not be sustained.  People change, grow apart, as time passes. God
knows, his patients went on endlessly about how little their spouses
"knew" them.

The situation of courtship, the framework, the duties of marriage, the
myth of romantic love and subsequent unbroken marital bliss--all this
got in the way of reality, of a real, spontaneous relationship, he
theorized.  Perhaps they should travel, go away together.  Rediscover
each other in a new setting.  Perhaps she would open up to him then,
tell him what was in her mind.  They would promise never to "avoid" one
another again.

And yet.  Might not such naked intimacy and confrontation be even more
debilitating than this play-acting they seemed to be trapped in now?
People had to respect one another's privacy.  Perhaps there could be no
prescription, no explanation for why a thing sometimes went, and felt,
right, or (sadly, more often) went wrong.

Who was Alice?  His wife of several years.  Alice was kind.  Alice was
also brisk, efficient.  She was a businesswoman, perhaps, in the body
of a cheerleader.  Maybe she wanted to work again.  Housework was
boring her.

Maybe she wanted love, passionate, abandoned sexual love.  He had never
offered that.  He had married her for her common sense as much as for
her generosity.  Their sex was comfortable and comforting.  Wasn't that
best in the long run?

Maybe she did want a child.

Maybe she wanted all these things.  Maybe, he sighed, shuffling his
papers, all Alice wanted was everything.

"Carter is waiting outside now," said Joe Crack.

"Send him in."  It was two o'clock in the afternoon.  Herb was tired
after six (or was it seven?) interviews.

The man standing before him did not look in the least dangerous.  He
was a man of medium height and build.  He seemed prematurely aged.  His
shoulders slumped.  He didn't look tough, or at all ugly, but
nondescript.  One wouldn't remember his face.  He would vanish in a
police lineup.

"Well," said Herb in a tone meant to be neutral but not unkind, "please
sit down.  You seem to have had some problems getting used to this
place."

"I don't think I ever will get used to it," said Carter in a
dispirited, whiny voice.  "I'm innocent, for a start.  And I'm not used
to the kind of people I have to associate with here."

"Do you feel that people have gone out of their way to make things
difficult for you?"

"Well, they keep punishing me for things I didn't do."

"Such as?"

"They claim I destroyed my cell toilet.  But I don't have that kind of
strength.  Look at me."

He sounded, to Herb's trained and practiced ear, perfectly sincere.
Genuinely aggrieved, perhaps paranoid, but sincere.

"Someone destroyed your toilet," he observed reasonably.  "How could
they gain access to your cell?"

"I don't know."

"You are also said to have attacked a fellow prisoner quite
viciously."

"I didn't."

"Do you ever have memory lapses?  Times you can't account for?"

Carter was silent.  The question appeared to upset him a little.

"Well?"  said Herb.  "Are you or are you not aware of losing certain
periods of time?"  He spoke gently but firmly, as he had been trained
to do.

"Not here," said Carter after a moment or two of hesitation.  "In the
past, outside, there were some times I don't remember.  But that was
only after I'd been drinking."

"Did you drink a lot?"

"No.  Especially not after it became obvious that I couldn't handle it.
My wife doesn't like me to drink."

"Did you ever take drugs?"

"No.  I have a fear of drugs.  I don't like to be out of control."

"How old are you?"

"Forty.  I was born in 1920.  Look, I do blank out occasionally after
I've had a particularly bad migraine.  Just for a while."

"Migraine?"

"Yes.  I've always suffered from migraines," said Carter, "for as long
as I can remember."

"If there are things you don't remember," said Herb slowly and
carefully, "then perhaps we should work together to recover them."

Carter was silent.

"You appear to be depressed," said Herb.  "I can help you.  I can't get
you out of here--that's a matter for your lawyer and whatever new
evidence he may be able to gather, and for the courts--but I can help
you to cope with things better.  Will you cooperate with me?"

"Anything," said Carter in a tone of resignation, "is better than the
hole."

He doesn't really trust me, or anyone, thought Herb.

"Good.  Now I want you to relax.  There is nothing at all to be afraid
of.  I am your friend here and you can trust me.  Is there anything you
haven't told me?"

"Well ..."  And he hesitated.

"You can tell me.  I only want to help you."

"There is one thing.  But it embarrasses me to tell."

"You can tell me."

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"Well, sometimes I hear a voice."

"A voice."  "Yes.  From nowhere."

"What does it say?"

Carter was becoming a bit more upset.  "It says I'm no good.  I'm
worthless.  It says that I might as well die."

"I see.  Is it a man or a woman?"

"A man."

"Do you recognize him?"

"No.  It's nobody I've ever met."

"Do you see him?"

"No.  I just hear his voice.  A ghost maybe.  A thug of some kind."

"What else do you know about him?"

"Nothing."

"I see.  Is there anything else you want to tell me?"

"No."

Herb, who was tired, thought of ending this preliminary session.  He
felt he had established that Carter was suffering from a degree of
dissociation, and was probably schizoid.  But another line of
questioning had occurred to him.

"Laird, if I may call you Laird, tell me about your wife."

"She's wonderful.  I know I'm not especially bright or capable.  I'm
just a very ordinary guy.  But she gave me love.  She gave me a
wonderful daughter."

"Would you like a son?"

"No, I don't think so.  It's marvelous having a daughter."

"Do you like women in general?"

"Yes, of course.  I respect women.  Women are usually much better
people than men."

"Like mothers."

"Yes.  My mother was a wonderful woman.  So I've always respected women
a lot."

"Where did you grow up?"

"On a farm."

"Near here?"

"North of the city."

"Is your mother living?"

"No."

"And your father?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?  Isn't that a little strange?"

"I don't know."

"Don't you like your father?"

Silence.

"Do you associate the voice at all with your father?"  Perhaps this is
too direct a question too soon, thought Herb.

"He isn't my father," said Carter.

"What do you remember about your father?"

"He worked hard.  He always had to.  He was strict but fair.  He was
just a farmer.  He was a lot older than my mother.  I didn't really
know him very well.  We weren't close."

"That seems strange on a farm.  I should think he needed your help a
lot.  Did you dislike him?"

"No.  But I loved my mother."

"Was there anyone else?"

"My sister."

"And where is she?"

"I don't know.  She got married very young.  She never came back."

"Why not?"

"I don't know.  Life can be hard on a farm."  Again, Laird Carter
seemed uneasy.

"What is your sister's name?"

"Ellie."

"Is there anyone else?"

Silence.  Quite suddenly, it seemed, an agitation had invaded Carter's
hitherto stolid features.  A conflict seemed to be going on within
him.

"Is there anyone else?"  repeated Herb as firmly as he could.  There
was some barrier here, he saw, that had only partly been breached.

Carter's face was changing now in the most extraordinary way.  His lips
had assumed a kind of sneer.  They actually seemed to expand, to become
thicker, more expressive.  His formerly bland, watery blue eyes were
blazing, were opening wider and wider.  It was uncanny.  Herb wondered,
too late, if his line of questioning might not be dangerous.  The man's
face had assumed, in a few moments, a much more definite and memorable
character.  And his body was suddenly tenser, coiled, more alert.  Herb
wondered if he should call the guards.

"Fuck it," Carter said suddenly with some force.  "Do you really
believe all that bullshit?  I wouldn't take anything that twerp said
seriously."

Herb was astonished.  This was a completely different voice, deeper and
more passionate.

"Why shouldn't I?"  he asked as evenly as he could.

"Because the bastard wouldn't know his ass from a hole in the
ground."

"Who?"

"Laird.  The crybaby."

Herb could scarcely believe his ears.  "Then who are you?"

"That's for me to know and you to find out."  Followed by a harsh,
guttural laugh.

What is going on?  thought Herb.  "But you're not Laird?"

"You're goddamn right I'm not!"  The suggestion was apparently
infuriating.

"So who are you?"  persisted Herb.

"You can call me Al."

"Okay.  Well, Al, you don't seem to like Laird very much."

Al's first response was another guttural, chilling laugh.  "I hate the
bastard," he said shortly.

"Why?"

"He's a pill.  He's a weakling.  He makes me want to puke all the
time."

"How long have you felt that way?"

"All my life."

"Do you know his family?  His mother?"

"I hated that bitch.  I'm glad she's dead.  She burned my hand on the
stove once."

"And his sister?  Ellie?"

"I wanted to fuck her.  But she left when she got knocked up.  She's a
whore.  They all are."

The man before him was not Laird Carter.  He really was someone else.
Someone capable of violence.  He was "Al," or Mr.  Hyde, Herb thought.
He had to find out more about Al, though he was now very tired, and
uncertain how to proceed.

"Al.  You're very angry.  I can help you if you'll let me."

Al shrugged this off as obviously ridiculous.  He had, unlike Laird, a
very expressive body.  It even seemed to be more powerful.

Herb became intrigued.  "Why," he asked, "doesn't Laird know about you?
He doesn't, does he?"

"You're fucking right he doesn't.  I hid.  And you'd better keep it
that way.  I've gotten that sucker into a lot of trouble.  He's too
dumb to live."

"He didn't commit a crime?"  Herb was reluctant to confront Laird with
the reality of rape.  But he needn't have worried about Al.

"/ fucked that slut.  She was asking for it.  She loved it too.  They
all do at the time.  She came out of the bar into the parking lot,
didn't she?  She came with me.  She wanted it, all right.  It's only
afterwards the bitches get upset.  When she started screaming I wanted
to kill her, but she got away.  I'll kill the next one."

"Were there others?"

"Lots."

"You killed them?"

"No.  But I will when I get the chance again.  I worked it out.

It's no fun for me any more if they don't get scared and put up some
resistance.  It works best if they know I'm going to kill them
afterwards.  Then they can't talk.  I've had to wait a long time but
now I'm going to enjoy myself.  And let him suffer for it."

Herb was chilled.  He means it, he thought.  "Then what happens to
you?"

"I watch him sweating it out, and I laugh.  I laugh and laugh at the
poor dumb bastard."

"Al" seemed to have a one-track mind.  He didn't sound very bright: a
subnormal I.Q. Maybe this was about enough of him for now.  He
obviously had a very short fuse, too.  "Al," Herb said.  "Can you bring
back Laird for me?  Can you control him that much?"

"Sure I can.  I suppose," he said sullenly.

"We can talk some more next time," said Herb.  "And get to know each
other.  I think you need someone to talk to."

"I don't mind," said Al.  "I talk with the other guys here sometimes.
But when there's trouble I let him take the punishment.  Serves the
gutless bugger right."

"Would you bring Laird back now, please?"  But what if he could not?
What could Herb do about it?

"All right.  But I'll tell you one thing first.  I'm going to wear him
down till I'm in charge.  I'm going to persuade him to die."

Now the tensed body slumped, relaxed.  Carter leaned back on his
straight wooden chair so that it tipped back over dangerously.  He
slouched, barely balancing in the chair.  His face was altering once
again.  Suddenly he smiled, knowingly, slyly, as if to acknowledge that
everything that had just gone on was a joke.  Up to now he had not
smiled at all, though Al had a harsh, mirthless laugh.

"Hi," he said jauntily.  "You're the con's own shrink, aren't you?" His
voice was softer than Al's rasp, brighter than Laird's monotone.

"Laird?"

"Not on your life.  I'm Lyle.  Another one of the animals.  I figure if
Al can mouth off the way he's been doing, then I deserve an interview
too.  I'm a lot more with it than those

jerks.  Laird's an old man already."  Then he chuckled.  His bod} was
loose, insolent somehow.  He seemed much younger that Laird.  Come to
think of it, Al had seemed either infantile o; adolescent or both.

"How old are you?"  Herb asked.

"Twenty-two," said Lyle.  "I've always been twenty-two I'm Peter Pan
with an active cock."

"And Al.  You seem to know Al."  Lyle nodded.  "How old ii Al?"

"He isn't any definite age," said Lyle.  "Except young.  He's; bit of a
dead-end kid.  A permanent teenager."

"Why?"

"He got stuck, I guess.  He bores me sometimes, he's sc simpleminded. A
crude type."

"He's a rapist," observed Herb.

Lyle shrugged.  "That's how he gets his kicks.  It's whatever works for
you.  I'm a more fun-loving guy, myself."

"What do you like?"

"A little nookie now and then.  A few drinks, a few laughs.  Gambling,
the horses.  But violence is boring.  I avoid it.  It's so unnecessary.
I mean, I like the soft life.  I'm not wild about being in here."

Of the three, Lyle was the talker, Herb saw.  He rattled on now about
how much he liked staying in good hotels with the kind of women who
enjoy a good time.  He liked sex a lot.

"How long have you been around?"  interrupted Herb.

"Since Laird was twenty-two," said Lyle.  "I used to come out and do
the things he was too chicken to do.  I took out the girls he was
scared of."

"Was Laird in the army?"  asked Herb.  "He'd have been about the right
age."

"Naw.  He couldn't pass the physical.  His allergies were too severe at
that time.  They're not so bad now, though he still has troubles--just
a cat in the same room can wipe him right out.  I like cats myself. And
he's allergic to a pile of other things, so we missed the war.  But I
had a good time with a few of the wives left behind, I'll tell' ya

"What about Laird?"

"He just plugged away at his job.  Then finally, in his thirties, he
actually got himself a girl.  A plain Jane, nice but boring-and none
too bright.  He was a virgin till then, for God's sake.  It was after
Laird got married that Al started sneaking out.  He'd been asleep for
years before."

"Does Al know about you?"

"No.  Just about Laird.  And Laird doesn't know about either of us.
Though Al talks to him sometimes."

"Are there any more?"

This gave Lyle pause.  "Can I have a cigarette?"  he asked.  "Laird
doesn't smoke but I do, sometimes."

Herb didn't smoke either, but he always brought cigarettes to help
relax his patients.  He gave one now to Lyle, and lit it for him.

"Thanks, man," Lyle said.  "What you ask is a bit difficult," he
continued after a couple of long drags on the cigarette.  "I mean,
there are others, but they're usually asleep.  They wouldn't cope too
well in here.  I mean, I can sort of get by anywhere.  I can make
deals, and I'm pretty popular, and Al can fight, so that nobody really
wants to mess with us.  Laird is just numb all the time and it's just
as well to let him do the boring stretches and the time in the
cooler--even though it's Al who puts him there.  But the others aren't
as well developed if you know what I mean."

"What can you tell me about Laird's childhood?  His parents?  His
sister?"

"It was before my time, man.  But Al thinks about it a lot.  More than
Laird.  He was Allie then and his sister was Ellie.  She was his twin
sister."

"Twins," said Herb in tones of disbelief.  "This is complicated enough
already."

"It sure is," chuckled Lyle, who was obviously enjoying the
conversation.  He leaned back even further in the tilted chair,
savoring the cigarette.

"Can we bring back Laird now?"

"Okay.  Anything you want, captain.  I've enjoyed our talk.  You know,
I think maybe you and me can be friends."

"We'll talk again," said Herb.

Carter sat up straight, then slumped, listless, in the chair.  He
blinked a little nervously, and his features slackened.  He looked
dispirited again.  It was Laird who had returned, there could be no
doubt.  Almost immediately his eyes began to water--probably from the
cigarette smoke.

"Now, where were we?"  Herb asked cautiously.

"You asked about my sister," said Laird in his tired, monotonous way.

"That's the last thing you remember?"

"Yes."

Herb questioned him a bit further, but nothing indicated that Laird had
any knowledge of the conversations with Al and Lyle.

"Did your sister leave home early to get married because she was
pregnant?"

"Yes.  How did you know that?  You must have talked with her.  Nobody
outside the family knows that."

"Were you turned down for military service because of severe
allergies?"

"Yes.  You have been talking to somebody, I guess.  Have you talked to
my wife?"

"I've done some research," said Herb.  "I think this is enough for
today, but we'll talk again next week."

"So," said Laird Carter, showing just a little more animation than
usual, "do you think there's really something psychological wrong with
me?"

"Perhaps," said Herb guardedly, not wanting to alarm him.  "We'll see.
We'll talk again."

It's either that, he thought, in a state of mounting astonishment as
the guards took the remarkable Mr.  Carter away, or you're the most
accomplished actor that I've ever seen.

FOUR

Everyone in town was fascinated by the little house on Victoria Street.
Knowledgeable taxi drivers could tell you all about it--and all about
"Madam" Eleanor.  (Once she had tried to style herself "Madame"
Eleanora, but nobody could remember to call her that, so she had
simplified it.)

There was still Mrs.  Ramsay, of course, but she was considered old hat
now.  Her reputation was fading.  It was sad but inevitable, said Myra
Stonebottle, who was Alice's best friend from the old days at the bank.
Mrs.  Ramsay's most faithful clients were the older generation.  They
preferred the comfort of the familiar and did not want any surprises.

It was even said that a former prime minister, dead some ten years now,
had abandoned his patronage of Mrs.  Ramsay in his excitement over the
newcomer, Madam Eleanor, and at a time when the latter was still very
young.  This caused a certain amount of talk.  But enthusiasm from such
a source served to secure the younger woman's preeminence (at least
among those who were "in the know" about such matters) in the city. 
Old Mrs.  Ramsay still soldiered on, though.  She claimed now that she
had "discovered" young Eleanor's very modest charms in the first place,
but had then found her to be untrustworthy, a two-faced deceiver and a
back-stabber who had abused her calling out of greed.  The two women
had not spoken in years.

Madam Eleanor was a war widow.  It was said her two sons

had gone away to school.  They were said to be ungrateful, embarrassed
by their mother's unconventional profession.

Myra and Alice walked up Earl Street, then turned right at Victoria.
From there it was several blocks past Johnson Street, Brock Street, and
the less-busy Mack Street to Madam Eleanor's modest bungalow.  It was a
pleasant-looking brick structure with white trim.  Two tall juniper
trees flanked the steps of the front porch.  In front of most of the
porch was a large mock orange bush, now in full and fragrant white
flower, for it was mid-June.  A sleepy old black-and-white cat was
planted, immovable, on the front porch.

Madam Eleanor's business was usually conducted upstairs, in a converted
attic.  A large skylight had been added to this formerly closed space.
"I've opened this small room up to the living heavens": that was what
Madam Eleanor told each new customer.  It was light and airy there.

The two women arrived at the front door.  There was no bell or knocker.
One had to rap loudly on the old wooden door.  Inside, a double room
with archway and white walls, furnished in bright, cheerful colors,
could be seen.

A woman of about forty, whose brown hair was lightly streaked with
gray, opened the door.

"Miss Stonebottle," she said in welcome.  "And you must be Mrs.
Delaney.  Please come in."  Her voice was firm, neutral.

Madam Eleanor was wearing an old-fashioned dress of rich brown.  In it
were hints and glints of red, a dark sherry color.  She wore no
make-up. She was slim.  Her skin was very white; obviously, she avoided
the sun.  Her dark brown hair tumbled almost to her shoulders.

The three ladies arranged themselves on two elegant antique sofas.
Madam Eleanor offered a cup of tea, but Alice and Myra declined.

"You understand," said Madam Eleanor to Alice, "that I can't promise
anything.  I'm in the hands of more liberated spirits.  They must
decide.  I am a conduit merely--I become a blank for the flow of the
larger world to come through me.  It thrusts through me."

"I understand," said Alice.

"Very well," said Madam Eleanor.  "Perhaps you are suitable, and ready
for it.  Miss Stonebottle has already proven herself a good receptacle.
I take it you are prepared for anything.  Now, I'll show you the room.
Would you like to come upstairs with me?"

Alice could not, of course, tell Herb about this bizarre and slightly
risky enterprise.  He would never approve.  He thought such activities
were unhealthy primitive survivals.  Horoscopes.  Tea-reading.  Cards.
He was a kind and tolerant man.  He wouldn't want to burn Madam Eleanor
at the stake.  He would just want everyone to ignore her or else laugh
at her.  Till there were no more like her.

Herb disliked what he called "emotionalism."  He was always so calm and
collected.  He was, Alice thought from time to time, rather set in his
ways for thirty-five, still a young man really.  She had always--since
their first date--striven to accommodate his "ways," but at times it
could be trying.  She suspected his parents had been strict types, that
they had trained him to restrain and withhold his emotions.  He could
be so annoyingly cool about things.  About the idea of children, for
instance.

Still, when you married above your class, she reminded herself, you
made certain sacrifices.  For the greater degree of comfort, the social
position.  It was just that she was not always sure where she belonged
any more.

When Myra and Beryl from the bank had accused her, upon a chance
meeting downtown, of "not knowing us any more," of not having any time
left for her old friends, she had accused herself.  She was not a snob,
not full of herself and her new status, like some people she could
name.  She had simply been very busy.  There was always so much to do
around the house.  And Herb didn't like to be bothered with household
chores.

So she had taken to having lunch with Myra as frequently as she could.
It was Myra who had alerted her to the potential of a

visit to Madam Eleanor.  Beryl, she decided, was someone she never
really had liked all that much.  Beryl was always rather mean and
envious, she recalled, a born troublemaker.  Alice was not about to let
Beryl effect an estrangement between herself and Myra.  She needed a
woman friend, after all, and had never wholly warmed to the wives of
Herb's colleagues and golf partners.  She felt that they looked down on
her because she hadn't attended university.  She did not paint
landscapes in watercolors or act in the local theater group.  She was
not "cultured" enough for them.  She believed that they all admired
Herb and felt he had married beneath himself.

"First," said Madam Eleanor, "we must be quite comfortable.  Then I
will go away, and Arlen will come.  He will probe your potential for
this kind of experience.  He will try to contact and bring forward the
person you want."

"Yes," said Alice.

"You needn't tell me anything.  Tell him."

Money had changed hands already.

The attic room was long and light.  The north light let in a cool
diffused radiance that seemed to envelop the three ladies, seated as
they were between the white inward-leaning walls that reflected odd
hints of sky.  Alice felt as if she were floating on her sky-blue
chair.  She seemed to be flying somewhere among transparent white
clouds and sky.  It's Greek, thought Alice for no reason.  Yes.  It's
like those blue and white posters of Greece that you see in travel
agencies.  Like a temple perhaps.

Madam Eleanor's dress gave off a deep brownish-red glow in this light.
She was a handsome woman, handsome rather than pretty.  In this room
she looked like a priestess or a Greek sibyl.  "We must be silent for a
few seconds," she said, "while I empty myself of myself."

Oh Brian, thought Alice, are you really there somewhere?  I feel you in
the night sometimes.  I feel guilty with Herb asleep

beside me, but I can't help it.  I never could resist you.  I know
you're there.  Sometimes I get a sense of Korea, of pitiless, vast Asia
that swallowed you up.  Where so many die all the time in the mud and
rain.  You never came back.  They said maybe you were a prisoner of
war.  But you never came back.

I loved you.  I wanted you inside me again.  Only seventeen and I
discovered love and lost it in one mad year.  Lost it to a crazy,
distant war.  For years I was beside myself, insane with grief.  I
wanted you, you, inside me.  It's everything, God help me, that I've
ever wanted.

I still want it.

Myra was waiting for Arlen.  He had such a powerful personality.  Madam
Eleanor's head had just begun to droop.  Soon she would disappear into
her trance.  Myra had seen this occur a number of times now.  It was
always thrilling.

For a moment or two Madam Eleanor looked as if she had fallen asleep.
Then her eyes opened.  Wide.

"Good afternoon," said a deep, obviously masculine voice.

Alice gasped.  Myra only smiled broadly.  She was a little in love with
Arlen.

"Let me introduce myself," the voice continued.  "I am Arlen."

"Good afternoon, Arlen," said Myra.

"Miss Stonebottle," replied Arlen suavely.  "And who is your charming
companion?"

Eleanor sat rigid in her upright chair.  The voice spoke through her
mouth, looked right through her extraordinarily blue eyes.  Those eyes
were blazing now.

"This is Alice," said Myra.  "There is someone she wants to reach."

"I see," said Arlen.  "We must become better acquainted then.  I'm very
pleased to meet you, Alice."

His voice was deep, sincere.  It was the kind of voice that inspired
confidence.

"Yes," said Alice.  She was beginning to recover from her initial
shock.

"You must not be alarmed by me," said Arlen.

"I'm sorry," said Alice.  "It's just so new to me.  Who are you?  I
mean, what are you?"

"I am an electrical pattern," said Arlen.  "But then, everyone, every
thing is.  It is the frequencies that create all things."

"Are you really part of Madam Eleanor?"  This, she knew, was what Herb
would say.

"No, though we were close in another life.  I speak through her.  I
come through corridors of mind that she has emptied for me.  That is
her special gift.  But I am not her, or any part of her--except
temporarily.  Except as we all, ultimately, partake of one another. But
we are separate and distinct entities too."

This was the sort of talk that always fascinated Myra.  "Are you
someone who's died?"  she asked.  She had asked this question before.
Several times.

"I have lived in your plane a number of times," said Arlen.  He sounded
just a bit impatient with Myra.  He had attempted to explain himself to
her before.

"What do you mean by our plane?"  asked Alice.

"A tiny cube.  A cell within a vast framework of multidimensional
energy.  You live in a tiny cell of pulsations.  You live in convenient
constructions of matter and ideas that enable you to function here. But
in reality there is no house around us.  There is no room here, and no
walls.  No barriers between us.  No prison of ordinary matter.  Only
energy arranged into patterns by your mind.  Similarly, there is no
time in which moment follows moment.  That is also your invention, a
useful one in this existence.  But it blinds you to the larger
reality."

"What is time then?"  asked Alice.  She felt powerless in the grip of
this booming voice.  Yet oddly soothed too.

"Not what you think," said Arlen.  "There is only the present, one
energy that endlessly reinvents and rearranges itself.  All that it has
ever made in your plane exists still, and similarly that which it will
make exists already, even before you

have experienced it.  It is a matter of distance and position.  There
is no 'cause' and no 'effect', only spontaneous rearrangement."

Alice felt that she was getting lost in this hypnotic labyrinth of
words.

"I don't understand you," she said.

"No," he sighed.  "But one day perhaps you will.  I sense in you an
openness to the real.  A discontent with agreed-upon conventions.  You
exist, I suspect, outside of organized religious institutions with all
their petty, imprisoning dogmas and rituals.  The beginning of wisdom
is to know that all things create their own forms--in this and other
planes.  We are made of fields, pulsations.  Each atom, each molecule,
each cell has created itself from within.  Energy is consciousness.
Each atom, each molecule, each cell that flows from the universal
source has its own individual consciousness.  At every level there is
cooperative consciousness.  Each cell has consciousness.  But the human
ego, with its specialized task, forgets that it is only part of
consciousness.  It assumes too much authority.  It forgets the whole,
its true origin.  That each cell of the physical body is part of the
collective consciousness.  To understand this is the beginning of
self-knowledge."

Alice's head was spinning now.

"Isn't he wonderful?"  said Myra.

"I'm rattling on too fast, as usual," said Arlen then.  "I'm saying
more than you can take in at once."  He sounded irritated again, this
time with himself.

"It's all very interesting," responded Alice politely.  "But I'm not a
thinker.  My husband is the one for theories."

"If words sufficed," said Arlen, "to convey reality completely, then
there would be no theories.  Only self-evident statements.  But
descriptions of reality are only that.  Descriptions.  You must know
with more than words."

"I see," said Alice.  She was afraid he would begin another complicated
and incomprehensible train of thought.  It all seemed like mumbo-jumbo
to her.  She was perfectly calm now.  His voice, the sound of his
voice, steadied her--quite apart

from the peculiar content of his words.  It is contentment without
content, she thought, surprised at her own wit.  She was determined now
to persist.

"I came here," she said, "for a purpose."

"Oh yes, I know," said Arlen, in tones of resignation.  "You all do."

Brian had been the boy next door.  One day in 1950, when she was
seventeen and his parents were out of the house, she went up to his
bedroom with him and allowed him to take off her sweater and her
brassiere.

They had met that day, more or less by accident, in the narrow space
between their fathers' garages.  It was private there.  He began to
touch and stroke her breasts.

Brian was eighteen.  He was the school's great basketball star. Already
he planned to go into the army.

He had black wavy hair and dark, expressive eyes.  Alice had always
loved him, as long as she could remember.  Even in her early childhood
she had thought of him as hers.  Their love was fated.

They lay side by side on his bed.  His right arm was under and around
her shoulders, while his left hand reached over to fondle her breasts,
then moved lower down and under her skirt.  He was lying half on his
side, turned toward her.  She was stroking his lean, hairless chest,
his flat stomach, in return.  He wore only cheap cotton pants.

She had wanted to put her hand between his legs but didn't yet dare.
Till he took her hand in his, placed it there, and silently urged her
to unzip his bulging pants.  She did this.

The bulge sprang free through the open place in his white cotton
shorts.  It came out into the palm of her hand like a friendly animal.
It stood up warm and hard in her hand.  She marveled at the size when
extended, the smoothness, the warmth of it.  She felt that this moment
had been inevitable all their lives.

But then they heard his mother's car in the driveway just below the
bedroom window.  They dressed hurriedly.

After that they found ways, times, and places to be alone together.  On
the second occasion he relieved her of her virginity.  She would have
wanted to wait but could not deny him.  He wanted it so urgently, he
was a virgin too.  She felt she had given him the right.  It was over
quite quickly.  He lay on his back in a daze while she wondered if she
was going to get pregnant, and if she did, whether he would marry her.
They were mostly dressed, they were lying in a field of grass.  It was
a warm spring evening.

After that they discussed the dangers.  He secretly visited a drugstore
in another part of town.  This set her mind a little more at rest.

Then she began to enjoy it, crave it.  She gave herself up now to this
always-expected but still wonderfully new flowering of her sexuality.
They studied ways to give each other pleasure.  Studied each other's
bodies out of school.  At eighteen, perhaps stimulated by her boldness,
Brian was already a more imaginative lover than Herb would be in his
thirties.

Both of Alice's parents worked.  And her younger brothers went off to
camp that June.  So for a time the young lovers used her bed, coming
together in mid-afternoon.  Brian would sneak in her back door,
assuming no one could see him.

This was the most intense experience of her young life.  Nothing else
could ever equal it.  Now that they could be naked together, Alice and
Brian explored each other's bodies with total abandon.  Every sexual
experience of later life was to be anticlimax.

In a way, now, she wanted a child.  A child of this wonderful joined
body, even though she realized the difficulty it would cause.  She
never objected, when, in his haste to enter her-after she had roused
him with her warm, surrounding mouth--he forgot to put on his condom.
It was always he, now, who worried afterwards.

Then, for the first time, she missed her period.  Now I've done it, she
thought.  But secretly she was acquiescent.  Her fear, her panic even,
was superficial.

Brian, however, was truly horrified.  All his future plans

depended upon him being free.  Then the blood flowed after all, a week
and a half late.  He was immensely relieved.  For him it had been a
close call.

Late that summer he joined the army and volunteered for training for
service with the United Nations forces in Korea.  He left without
telling Alice.  They had made love just the previous day.

"Very well, then," said Arlen, just a bit wearily.

"I want," said Alice, "to reach someone who died in Korea.  In the
war."

"Yes," said Arlen.  His face, which was a kind of rearrangement of
Eleanor's face, assumed a more concentrated look.

"Yes," he repeated.

He was silent for a moment.  Then he said: "Is there anyone present who
wishes to speak with Alice?"

"His name is Brian," said Alice.

"Brian," repeated Arlen.

At first nothing happened.  Arlen repeated his question patiently.
Several times.  Sometimes he invoked the name of Brian.  Sometimes he
spoke as if there might be others--ahead of him, so to speak, in line.
Alice began to think that his efforts must fail.  He was going to fail
her.  Her heart was sinking.

"There is an entity," he said at last, "who is approaching.  Whether he
is your friend, or some mischievous entity who is attracted to your
present field of force, is something that we will have to determine. He
is dark.  Dark.  He is, at present, manifesting himself as male.  He is
young.  He is vibrant and impetuous."

"Oh yes," said Alice.

"In a few moments he may speak.  He is troubled, I think, perhaps a
little confused."

Arlen's voice had assumed greater urgency now.  Alice felt herself
carried along with it.  She was floating, flying with that dark
voice.

"Would you like to speak to Alice?"  repeated Arlen patiently.

Then his face began to change.  It became more tense, anxious.  Alice
did not know now whether she was more afraid that this was not Brian,
or that, unbelievably, it was.

"Yes," said a new voice.  A young voice.  A teenaged husky tenor.

Alice started violently.  "It's him," she said involuntarily.

"Ohhh," squealed Myra in some excitement.

"Alice," said the voice.

"Oh, Brian," said Alice, who was crying now, "is it really you?"

"Yes," he said.

"Speak to me," she begged.

"I'm sorry to upset you," he said.  "I wanted to be with you again.  If
only for a few moments.  I wanted to tell you.  I never realized, till
I was lying there dying, how much I loved you.  You were all I could
think of then.  I wanted to tell you this.  I wish we'd had a child.
Then there'd be something of us continuing."

He sounded earnest, stricken, terribly young.  It made her want to cry
and cry.  She had no defenses, no strategies to deal with an emotion so
overwhelming.  The voice possessed her.  She was seventeen again.  The
intervening years had evaporated, had never been.

"Brian," she said, her voice thick with tears, "I love you.  I've
always loved you.  You're all that's ever mattered to me."

He began to cry too.  At least, tears came out of Eleanor's eyes, which
now appeared to be a darker, less blue color, and her lips were
trembling.

The husky adolescent voice resumed.  "I'm not settled here," it said.
"I can't be--I was cut off too soon.  For the longest time--if there
was time--I didn't know I was dead.  I can't be at peace without
you."

"I love you," she said again.

"I can't stay longer.  I'm weakening," he said.  "He wants me to go
now."

"No," she cried.

"There is more to tell you," he half mumbled.  His voice was fading
now.

"I'll come back," she promised.

"Goodbye," he whispered huskily.

Alice continued to cry loudly.

Eleanor's face had resumed a less agitated expression.

"That was about enough," said Arlen smoothly in his unmistakable deep
voice.  "It's tiring work, you know.  And very tiring, indeed, for
Eleanor to play host to other entities."

"He needs me," insisted Alice.

"Yes," said Arlen patiently.  "But what he needs is for you to set him
free.  Set his mind at ease, so he can proceed to the further
dimensions of experience that are his destiny.  He is impeded by his
uncompleted love for you.  He is what one of your writers might call a
'perturbed spirit'."

Alice protested.  "How can love impede anything?"

"This is not the time," said Arlen, "for a lecture on philosophy.
You're too upset.  You must calm yourself, my dear.  You're too pretty
to carry on so.  You've had a shock.  But you'll be all right.  You are
a healthy person, physically and mentally."

The words soothed her.

"Soon I must go," said Arlen.

"I was him--I mean, it was him," said Alice more calmly.  "It was
really him."

"Yes."

"I must speak with him again."

"Yes," said Arlen, "but not today.  Madam Eleanor is too tired to
undertake anything more today."

"Can I talk with her?"

"For a moment," he said.

Then the face changed again.  And gradually Madam Eleanor came back.

"Our liaison is over," she said quietly.  It was almost a question.

"%s," said Myra.  "It was thrilling.  Absolutely thrilling."

How stupid Myra is, thought Alice.  "I must come again," she said.

"I'll consult my book," said Madam Eleanor calmly.  "It's been a busy
month.  June always is, for some reason."

She sounded like any other professional woman now.  A beautician
perhaps, even a doctor.

They went downstairs.  Alice was in a daze.  Outside the front window
was the flowering bush; it was still an ordinary late spring day.  She
could barely speak now.  But the book was duly consulted and an
afternoon the following week was agreed upon.

Once home, Alice's distress only increased.  It took the form of an
extraordinary sexual longing.

Once free of Myra's excited prattle--really, she must get an
appointment by herself--she felt him again.  Immediate, pressing down
on her electrical, prickling skin.  The voice had been more than a
voice.  It had entered her, it had brought back the very feel and male
smell of him.  It was fierce, inescapable.

She lay down on the marital bed, sick with desire.  He haunts me, she
said.  Perhaps aloud.  Repossesses me.  She lifted herself a little,
pulled up her skirt.  She felt him arching over her, ready.  She slid
her panties down over her legs, she closed her eyes.  She smelled his
sweat coming closer, stroked his coarse, dark hair as he lowered
himself onto her.  She began feverishly to make love to herself or
him.

She was beside herself.  Though she functioned mechanically, began to
make dinner, considered what Herb might like today, she was elsewhere,
in a blue and white heaven with Brian.

What has come over me?  she thought.  I know all this is utterly
ridiculous.  I must be calm.  I must not be a sexual hysteric.  That's
what Herb would call it.

I won't go again.  It's madness.  It's hypnotism or something.  I have
a good husband.  I must stay sane for him.  For the future.

But these were only words.  Behind, beneath them, her body had escaped
her, had joined itself forever to the very real presence of Brian.

When Herb at last came home she was seated in the kitchen.  She had
done something unheard-of and made herself a strong drink in the
afternoon. He came immediately, eagerly, into the room.

I forgot, she thought, to go and hug him.

But Herb did not, strangely enough, comment on this breach of daily
custom, or on the equally strange sight of his perfect wife sitting
drinking by herself in the kitchen.  Instead he said: "You'll never
guess what happened at the prison today."

And all the time he was speaking, she knew that the little house full
of voices on Victoria Street awaited her return.

FIVE

Laird thinks Delaney will make him feel better.  But nothin can help
that slob.  I'll see to that.

There are some real weirdos in this place all right.  The f bughouse.
Laird is scared to death of them.  The gormle; bastard.  / can take
care of myself.  I could punch any three them out.  Including the
orderlies, who are tough cons selves.  They know I'm tough.  Christ,
they even think I tough, that his mousy ways are just my cover.  My
sneaky They keep a respectful distance even from him.  Dumb has

What a zoo--yesterday Benson hung himself from h bars.  I told Laird
that if he had any guts that's what he v bloody well do.  But the
fucker is too scared, or not depress., enough.

And Franklin broke a guard's leg.  They were trying to wrestle him
down, and force pills into him.  It took three guys to do it.

When we came in here old Brad, the inmate orderly, who is not too bad
of a guy, gave us the standard greeting: "Welcome to the snake-pit,
Carter."

This place is a farce.  Does Dr.  Delaney have any idea?  He only looks
in once a week.

Some of the most violent men in the prison are here.  They're

crazy, all right.  I can't believe there's anything seriously wrong
with me when I look at some of them.

Yesterday a man hanged himself.  He died too.  Nobody cares.  And back
in my regular cellblock, guys regularly throw themselves over the
fourth-tier railing.  I'm scared to go back there now.

This place is a disgrace.  No wonder some men try to end it all.  After
they've been forced to have shock treatments--everybody in here is
considered a "volunteer"--just as an experiment.  I got Delaney to
promise they wouldn't do that to me.  He ordered that I should be
exempted.  He knows I'm not like the rest of these guys.  That helps.
That somebody in here knows.

The male nurses and medical people get out of here as soon as they've
done their bit of torture for the day.  The two prisoner-orderlies
really control the place.  So anything goes.  Our cells are unlocked
from 7 a.m. till 1 p.m. We can sleep, read, watch television, play
cards, or sit around in some guy's cell chewing the fat.  This is all
right if nobody's breaking the furniture or screaming from behind the
shock-torture chamber door.  Or else--for a consideration--we can have
"parties" in the orderlies' cells, which are never locked.

Everything's on offer there.  Home brew.  Pills that they steal and
sell.  And other activities I'd rather not even think about, they're so
disgusting.

I don't know if I can stand it here for very long.

But "the hole"--DISSOCIATION--is even worse.  Delaney has got to help
me.  Till Pearl gets me out of here.

I can't even think of Pearl and Cecily any more.  Not here.  It just
makes me want to cry.

A drag queen named Sandra has arrived.  A new diversion for the
bughouse.  It seems a huge rat crept out of her toilet--not an unusual
event--and it frightened her into hysterics.

So old Brad, the tougher of the two inmate orderlies, gave me a wink
and suggested that I could come to his cell later on

for a reasonably priced blow-job.  Maybe a little brew too.  I guess
Brad aims to do well out of Sandra while she's here.  Laird was, of
course, totally disgusted by the proposition.

LYLE:

I really do need Al to defend me in here.  If he only knew.  If anybody
can defend himself, he can.  God, it's dangerous.  Some of these guys
would slit your throat on a whim.

On the other hand, partying is easier, so I guess Delaney's done me a
favor.  I'll have to keep on the good side of him.  I can let Al and
Laird do the dangerous and boring stuff here while I enjoy the
advantages.

Mind you, drag queens don't do anything for me.  I enjoy the gambling
and the brew.  A few pills now and then.  But I need to keep my wits
about me here.

I've sent a message to Ken that he should get himself sent here.  Then
we can have a good time.  I've told him he can do some deals here.

He owes me money now.  Before I came into the bughouse I got him into a
game and cleaned him out good.  He respected me for that, he's an
entrepreneurial type himself.  Now he owes me.  Here, I can collect the
debt--payment in kind, if you know what I mean--more easily.

He needs my protection.  He knows it.  That time we were just talking
and kidding around outdoors at recreation and this big gorilla came
over and picked a fight with me, pretending that he was just horsing
around, to impress Ken--it was all for Ken's benefit, a fucking mating
dance.  I let Al out and he cleaned the poor bugger's clock.  They let
me alone after that, I can tell you.  Al has his uses, after all.  And
they know now--all the gorillas--that that kid is mine.

Ken impresses Laird because he's been to college.  Laird tells him to
keep out of trouble and to get himself out of here for good--sensible
advice, I must admit.  Al despises him for a brown-nose but is also
secretly flattered that the kid is scared of him and wants to be his
friend.  Ken, for his part, seems to

find Laird pretty dull, and he is scared of Al.  But he laughs along
with me.  A bit nervously.  Once he's here, we'll really have it
made.

AL ANA

Bonjour.  What a party that was.  I can tell you.  I really haven't had
such a good time in years.  It makes a girl think.

Bradley's cell is special, of course.  Never locked, just curtained
off.  And the curtains are really very nice, too, a rich purple, made
from canvas mail-sacks, I think, quite tasteful for a bozo like that.
Of course, his taste in pictures doesn't go far beyond overdeveloped
pin-up girls and horses.  But for this place, he has a certain class.
Cushions too.  It's very comfortable.  Very tasteful.  Almost chic.

The customers were impressive too.  Quite a vigorous group of men. They
had a choice between Sandra and myself.  No choice at all, really,
since "she" isn't the real thing.  How lucky those guys were that /
could put in an appearance.  Surprised, too.  Bradley nearly fell over
when he realized what he had to work with.  It was delicious.

Who wants a drag queen, after all, when they can have me?  I'm afraid
the creature was very put out by my popularity.  It was obvious to all
that she was outclassed.  So I ignored her.

After all.  I'm the first attractive woman some of these guys have
seen, let alone touched in years.

Then, of course, I'm French.  My style, my accent even, is a turn-on
for the Anglo guys.  And for the big, handsome peasoupers too.  One guy
told me that just the sound of my sexy voice gives him the big
erection.  "Babee, I can deal with that," I said.

Everybody gives me the queerest looks these days.  I try to ignore
them.  I keep to myself.  I don't know why they look at me like they
do.  They're all crazy here.

AL:

My ass sure is sore.  Must be the food in this zoo.

LOU:

I had to let Alana loose for a while, or Lyle would have gotten too
frustrated.  At least, that side of him, I mean--Alana is the twin
sister he doesn't even know he has.

AL ANA

I don't get out much these days.  I'm alone now with my memories.  What
a laugh.  My brother likes to keep me to himself.

I used to sneak out, though, dressed in my tightest skirt and sweater.
There was a bar called the Indian Room where the men would come from
the men's-only side just to pass through and get a look at me.  I wore
my reinforced bra to-how you say?--enhance my natural assets.  I know
how to make up my pretty blue eyes, too.

I don't really think it's my body so much as my personality, though,
that all the guys like.  I know how to make a man feel like he's
important.  That is a woman's main talent, I think.

When I was a little girl, my father loved me.  How he loved me.  I was
his darling, his greatest love.  My brother was jealous but he loved me
too.  He couldn't help it.  I know.

Sometimes I can't remember my childhood so good.  It was on a farm, I
think.  I used to dream I was a big movie star.  Like Lana Turner.
That's how I got my name.

They should let me go out more.  It's not fair.  I'm cooped up so much,
it's so boring.  And yet, sometimes in my long, long sleep I dream that
I'm living in my very own house.  It's all mine, even if I'm asleep
there like Sleeping Beauty waiting for the Prince.  There is a special
sitting room that I love--all blue and white, my favorite colors.
Everything in it is blue and

white.  So that when I'm at peace there I feel like I'm flying.  Flying
in the sky.

Jesus X. Christ!  That meathead Brad actually made a pass at me.  He
grabbed my fucking ass!  I had to punch the bastard out.  Then all hell
broke loose.  Marty, the other fucking con orderly that runs this dump,
called in the fucking guards.  I punched one of them out too.  Then
four of them held me down while Crack injected me with something.  That
fag bastard.  I passed right out.

It's wearing off now.  Though I still feel woozy.

I'll get that bastard, I swear.

Bloody Al.  He's always getting us in trouble.  It pisses me off.  I'll
have to watch him.

They wanted to throw him in the cooler again.  I persuaded Crack to
phone Delaney.  He almost couldn't reach him.  But he did, in the nick
of time.  The doc said I was to be kept here, under close observation.
I think he also said I was a special experiment.  Boy, that's all I
need.

Everybody avoids me now.  That's just as well.  I can't talk to any of
these people.  They're all animals anyway.  Killers and perverts.  I'd
rather be isolated from them.

I'm going to tell Dr.  Delaney what goes on here.  He ought to know.
He's supposed to be in charge of things.  In just the last few days
there's been a suicide, several vicious fights, and some really
degenerate parties--with the prison perverts prostituting themselves
for money or drugs.  The orderlies are thugs and pimps.  They're
completely depraved--especially

 75m Marshall 77

that Brad.  He really scares me.  He's as crazy as any of the so called
patients here.

LYLE:

Oh joy unbounded!  Kennie has finally arrived.  We practically fell
into each other's arms.  He missed me out there in the main joint.  All
the wolves were on his tail.

I'll have to get Brad to let me use his cell.  It's the only
comfortable place.  The first time is special.  Right now Brad's pissed
off at me because of bloody Al.  I'll tell him I'm sorry I lost my
temper.  Say I just can't stand people touching my ass.  He should
understand that.

AL ANA

My brother, who always likes girls so much, has a boyfriend!  A
good-looking boy (though too young, too skinny for my taste).  Well,
that beats everything!  I'd never have thought it of him.

Still, some of the most macho guys I met in the Indian Room were
switch-hitters too.  It's more common than most girls realize.
Especially in cons.  I've gone with lots of guys on parole, and some of
them turned out to have boyfriends too, on the inside.  What a world we
live in.

LYLE:

Finally.  The gloriously dirty deed is done.  Brad came right around
after I made him an offer too good to refuse.  I told him that I'd
forget the money he owes me from the last game.  I also suggested,
hinted really, that I might cut him in when the kid is broken in enough
to go professional.

With my eyes closed, I can almost believe Kennie is a girl.  He's only
about twenty.  His hair is just long enough, silky enough, to remind me
of Donna, the first (but not the last) teenaged cherry I ever had. He's
nicely shaped, like a slim

teenaged girl.  He has baby-smooth hairless cheeks (of both kinds), red
lips, and a nice wide smile.

I slipped it in gently.  I didn't want to hurt him, or put him off it.
He didn't fight it.  He knows it's either me or else one or more of
them.

I'll keep him to myself for now.  It's much too good to have to share.
I don't want to rent him out too soon.

Ken has somehow landed in this place.  He isn't crazy, just scared.  I
guess he had some kind of breakdown in the main part of the prison.
Somebody threatened him, I suppose.  Or maybe it was just the
loneliness.  I don't like to ask.  He's so young.  I doubt if he's ever
been near animals like these before.  He doesn't deserve this kind of
place.  He's the only one here I can talk to--though he's also very
immature, of course.  Kids today have no real discipline.  They take
the easy way with everything.  Or else he wouldn't have got himself in
trouble.

I'll have to try to help him.  Not just think about myself all the
time.  They're going to give him electric shock.  I don't think he
knows that yet.

Still.  He'll be getting out of here, on parole, I expect, within a
year or two.  I may be looking at years and years with these animals.

Kennie the college kid is here.  He's always hanging around me for
protection.  He sits in my cell for bloody hours.  I guess he is pretty
smart.  He sure isn't very tough.  It bugs me to have some snotty kid
trailing around after me all the time.  He practically follows me into
the can.

At least he's smart enough to know who's really boss here.  Not old
Brad.  That's for sure.  Not as long as I'm here.  Thanks to that wimpy
shrink.

Wait till they zap his ears.  He'll yell like a stuck pig.  A new
thrill from college.  Ha, ha.

LYLE:

They gave Kennie shock treatment early this morning.  I really didn't
think about that before.

Well, everybody else (except yours truly) has to have it.  It's just
the price he pays for being here.  For the fun and games.  Half of the
guys here are just pretending to be nuts.  They put up with the shocks
for the parties.

LAIRD:

Poor Ken.  They did it to him this morning.  I don't know what it feels
like.  I hope I'll never know.  But I've seen the men being carried out
of there.  Their faces are gray and lifeless.  They're not screaming
any more, but some of them are moaning.  Sometimes they pass out for
hours afterwards.

Ken is passed out on his bunk now.  I'm just sitting here watching over
him.  Poor kid.  But there's nothing I can do.

Nobody here gives a damn.

AL ANA

If I could, I'd go to him.  But they won't let me out, the callous
bastards.

LOU:

Sometimes I can influence Lyle, if I try hard.  He isn't wholly without
grace.

To love pleasure has its own potential.

At least it's a beginning.

LYLE:

I'm holding the kid in my arms, I'm stroking his naked back.  We're
lying on his bunk.  I don't know why I'm doing this.  I have no desire
at all just now to slip it to him.  I don't know

what I want.  Only that I'm holding him to keep him from trembling
uncontrollably.  He's only partly awake, he clings to me as if he
thinks he's drowning.  My lips are pressed against his sweating
forehead.  His mouth is fluttering against my neck.

Joe Crack said the most extraordinary thing to me this morning.

He thinks Ken and I are lovers.  I was shocked.  He thinks we've formed
one of those "male marriages" that happen in prison.  I tried to tell
him he was being silly.

But he said the doctor would have to know about it.  He wants me to
talk to him perfectly freely about it.  He said he was a scientist who
would approach the matter objectively, without prejudice.  It is
something, he said, that needs to be studied more.  So I should
cooperate, and they'll make life easier for us here.  Obviously, Crack
has some morbid personal interest in this subject.

I assured him that though I had, of course, come to know about such
relationships in the prison, he was simply mistaken about Ken and
myself.  We are friends here, out of necessity, though somewhat
ill-matched.  It's basically just that I feel sorry for the boy.  But
Crack only smiled that nasty smile of his the whole time I was
speaking.  He obviously doesn't believe me.

But surely Delaney will.  I think he's more discerning.  Though I don't
know that it matters any more what anybody thinks.

So Crack wants to study "male marriage."  Silly bugger.  He's probably
a closet queen.

I don't particularly like outsiders to know I've got a sweet kid.  I'll
get kidded.  A famous lady's man like me.

On the other hand, what the hell.  Obviously they do know.  And if it's
only the shrink and that closet fag Crack, where's the harm?  There's
such a thing as professional confidentiality, isn't there?

Maybe I can make a deal.  He gets the kid out of shock treatment and
I'll talk about "male marriage" till the cows come home.  After all,
the kid's not much good to me if he's scared shitless all the time, is
he?

AL ANA

Ain't love wonderful?

My brother is such a meathead.  I could tell him a few things about
himself.

LYLE:

We make it together every day now.  In Kennie's cell or mine. 
Everybody leaves us alone.  They may be envious but they understand. 
It's paradise.

I don't want to rent him out now.  He's mine.  All mine.

AL ANA

While my brother was sleeping, with Ken (Kenneth, that's nice, yes, I
think I'll call him Kenneth, I like it better) lying there partly
underneath him this morning, I crept out and began to caress the boy
out of his daze.  He's a little too young for me but he's so tender. It
brings out the mother in me, I guess.  I persuaded him to make love to
me.  I showed him what to do.  He was surprised--he'd gotten used to it
the other way around--but then he rose to it like a man.  He came
inside me, he cried out in intense pleasure.  He loved it.  It made him
happier.  He's basically straight, after all.  He needs me.  To be a
man.

Sometimes I have to tell that kid to get lost.  To fuck off.  He dogs
my ass so much, you'd think he was in love.

He gets that hangdog look.  Almost like bloody Laird.  But when I tell
him, he goes.  He knows I'd rearrange his pretty face if he didn't.

Ken tries to tell me about history and political science.  That's what
he was studying.  Also the history of philosophy.  I don't want to
offend him or let him know that I don't have much use for anything
that's not practical.  It's all Greek to me, I say.  For some reason
that makes him laugh.

God, I miss Pearl.  Something about the way Ken laughs makes me think
of her.  I suppose it's because he's all I've got here.  Pearl.  I had
to wait so long to find her.  Into mid life.  Have I lost her again
forever?  There was my mother, then Pearl.  Perhaps while my mother
lived I didn't need Pearl.

The doctor says an unexamined life isn't worth living.  But I've never
examined my life, not really.  Why not?

When I told Ken what the doctor said, he said that the doctor got it
from a famous philosopher.

I miss Pearl sexually too.  I never thought that was so important to
me.  The animal side.  But sex is part of love.  It was always nice
when we both felt like it.  When we turned to each other, more or less
at the same time, there in bed.  I would never have dreamed of
bothering her when she wasn't in the mood.

On the farm, the animal side is uppermost.  It's all around you.  But
my mother taught me to care more about higher things.  She said that we
could keep the animal side in its place with a little self-discipline.
I never found that to be too difficult.

They say people's sex drives differ enormously.  Mine is not overly
strong.  So I guess I should be more charitable to the men who turn
into animals here.  They probably can't help it, can't resist it.  It's
just that what they do is so gross.

That sneering Crack.  To think that he thinks that Ken and I .  That
delicate boy .. . The thought is appalling.

Dr.  Delaney says to pay no attention to him.  He saw at once that I
was telling the truth.  To think that anyone thinks that I could .. .

Don't always be hanging around the barn, my mother once said.  Now when
was that?  That day.  The day she kept me in the house with her.  For
most of the day.  I was terribly restless.  Then she relented and let
me go out.  But don't always be hanging around the barn, she said. 
Your father doesn't like it.

Of course, I went right down there.  I don't remember why.  Or what
happened.  Probably I was punished, as I deserved to be.

Where was Ellie that day?  I'm sure she wasn't made to stay in.  I'd
have remembered.  I can remember how unfair I thought it was.  My poor
mother had to put up with a lot from me in those days.  I could be
wilful and difficult.  Naturally, I did go to the barn .. .

AL:

That bitch.  Don't always be hanging around the fucking barn.  She
knew, all right.

What I remember is that my hand hurt like hell.  Where she burned it.
Where the bitch deliberately burned it.

LAIRD:

I was crying.  Why was I crying?  Was it me crying?  It's so hard,
after so long, to remember anything in detail.  Just bits and pieces.
Or was it somebody else I heard?

AL LIE

Don't always be hanging around the barn, she yells at me then.  Your
father doesn't like it.  I'm crying and crying and can hardly hear her.
My burned hand hurts horribly.

She slams the door shut.

I run into the yard.  The dark, unpainted barns look like

giants all around me.  I am crying out loud.  It is a gray day. 
Earlier it has been raining.  My bare feet sink into puddles, into soft
mud. It is July, it is awfully humid.

I stumble around in circles.  Everything--the puddles under my feet,
the mud, the horse by the fence, the rusted machinery, the sky, the
crows, the barns, the dog slinking out under the big barn door--is
pain.

The dog approaches me cautiously.  He is black and white and fat.

Without wanting to, without thinking, without willing anything, I go in
where the dog came from.  Opening the big door.  He follows me.  To
where the animals are.

Do you understand?

For him, everything is pain.

SIX

I might have been a murderess.  I might have killed my own children,
like Medea.

Instead, I stood there in the dark, the knife gripped in my hands, and
I was suddenly appalled.  I had been chuckling to myself maniacally a
moment before.

What happened?

Something, someone stopped me.  Checked me.

My sons slept on, of course, oblivious to it all.  They had not been
cursed with any special sensitivity.  I determined then and there to
seek help.

Elaine went not to a psychiatrist but to Mrs.  Ramsay.  She had
overheard two elderly women talking one day on the bus about Mrs.
Ramsay.  She found her by telephoning several Ramsays in the book.
After two strained conversations, she stumbled upon the woman she
wanted.

The old women on the bus intimated that Mrs.  Ramsay had relieved the
distress and anxieties of many.  She was a genuine healer.  There had
been an old woman in the country like that, Elaine recalled, when she
had been just a girl, \ears and years ago.

Mrs.  Ramsay received her cordially.  She lived on a shabby avenue
north of Princess Street in an old brick house that looked in need of
repairs.  She had a slight English accent.

"You know, my dear," said the older woman, when she had listened to an
account of Elaine's troubled state, "you may just be a 'sensitive'."

Mrs.  Ramsay was obese.  It was a considerable effort for her to move
from her large, comfortable old chesterfield.  During the interview she
consumed numerous little cakes from a plate on the small table beside
her.  Elaine, perched apprehensively on a stiff antique chair, declined
to partake of these but accepted a cup of soothing herb tea.

"A sensitive," she repeated.

Mrs.  Ramsay's parlor had a dingy feeling, though it was difficult to
say why.  It was dark, certainly, and the wallpaper, in a blue floral
pattern of some kind, had faded.  The two old brown sofas were
comfortable enough, she judged, but appeared to sag underneath, like
Mrs.  Ramsay herself.  On the other, larger, table many china figurines
and a few slightly sinister-looking rag dolls were crowded in a
formless jumble.  Underneath most of this furniture there was a worn,
rather dirty Persian rug with red-brownish colors that must once have
been vibrant.  Well, it was after all wartime, Elaine said silently to
herself.  But the dark room was having a strange effect on her.  It
seemed to fade and then form again before her eyes in the gloom of this
waning November day.

"Yes.  More aware than other people.  A vehicle for messages."

Just as Mrs.  Ramsay spoke these reassuring but also mildly alarming
words Elaine felt herself begin to slip away.  It was as if the words
thus uttered were a signal of some kind, and she (or something, someone
in her) had been waiting all her life for this signal.

"Yes," she heard Mrs.  Ramsay saying as she felt herself receding,
falling out of the world.  "Yes, I can see it happening now."

Half an hour later she came to herself again.  She remembered
nothing.

Mrs.  Ramsay told her that she had gone spontaneously into a state of
trance, and that someone quite different had spoken

through her.  This was an experience that Mrs.  Ramsay herself had had
many times.  She told Elaine that she must not be alarmed by it.  She
must use it to her own and the world's advantage and profit.

Then she made Elaine a brisk business proposition.  The truth was that
Mrs.  Ramsay's "business" had not been entirely healthy of late.  It
was said that there was a certain very important gentleman in Ottawa
who still occasionally consulted her, but he rarely came to see her
here any more.  He was so busy now with the problems of the war.  In
the old days, he had come very quietly in his private railway car.

A younger colleague might be just the thing to revive the flagging
interest of the ladies and some of the more venturesome gentlemen of
the city.  So thought Mrs.  Ramsay as she set about getting acquainted
with the obviously gifted young woman whom fate had guided to her
door.

When Elaine went out of the house that afternoon it was snowing.  Large
flakes of wet snow.  The world was changing again, it seemed, perhaps
for the better.  She had agreed to return the next day.

Elaine had many instructive and enlightening sessions with Mrs. Ramsay.
After a few weeks they entered into a partnership.  It was just at the
beginning of the new year.  Elaine agreed to come three afternoons a
week to see if she could prove satisfactory to Mrs. Ramsay's clientele.
Mrs.  Ramsay advanced her the money to hire a babysitter for those
days.  She now had full confidence in her abilities.

This was not misplaced.  Elaine soon proved popular with many of Mrs.
Ramsay's clients.  These people told their friends.  Elaine passed into
a trance quickly and with ease.  Voices, often voices that clients
wished to hear, spoke eloquently through her.

Many of these--though Elaine did not at first realize this-were more
articulate, more knowledgeable and wiser (or at least more experienced)
in the ways of the human heart than

Elaine was.  They sometimes discoursed on the qualities and insights of
great composers, writers, and artists.  Some were able to speak,
passably albeit briefly, in various European languages.  When told of
this, Elaine found it inexplicable.  Her education had been very
sketchy.  How could she know more than she knew?  What, or who, spoke
through her?

Mrs.  Ramsay had told her of the "control," a presiding spirit or
gatekeeper to the world from which all these voices came.  Elaine's
first control seemed to be a twin or variant of "Edward," Mrs. Ramsay's
own control.  Elaine had witnessed him in action numerous times during
her weeks of apprenticeship, when she had attended sessions or
"seances" at which Edward had held forth.

But Edward, a rather colorless master of ceremonies, was soon ousted
from Elaine's sessions by someone more powerful and sophisticated.  He
called himself "Arlen."

Arlen had a personality that proved very attractive to the ladies.  He
was smooth, courtly, flirtatious even.  He had about him an aura of
kindly authority like a trusted doctor or a favorite teacher.  He had a
tendency, more marked as the years passed, to philosophize about the
nature of reality in a vague but mellifluous manner.  Most ladies found
this charming, so long as he then proceeded to call forth those spirits
they desired.  A few of these were highly disturbed spirits.  But Arlen
could always restore order.

Elaine remembered nothing of the sessions.  But they brought her great
relief.  She no longer heard the voices in her house.  She grew less
tense and irritable, more relaxed.  Her dreams were calmer.  She now
saw and recaptured many disturbing scenes from her childhood events she
had previously refused to remember.  She saw them now with compassion
and some degree of detachment.  Though she grieved at times for her
abused child-self, she was no longer chronically anxious, no longer
fearful.  Whatever it might do for others, she realized, there was no
doubt that her mediumship, a natural attribute, it seemed, was good for
her.

She was more tolerant and indulgent of her rambunctious

young sons.  Relieved too, though, that Jimmy and then Bobby went to
school every day.

I wasn't meant to be a wife and mother, she thought.  But I'll do my
best by them.  After what was done to me, I must make things different
for them.

She thought sometimes about her lost brother, her lost twin.  Where was
he now?  They had shared so much, of both good and evil.

The clients were an interesting and mixed lot.  Elaine certainly
learned new things about human beings in this peculiar profession she
had stumbled upon.

There were the many aging ladies who had lost loved ones.  And, of
course, the growing army of war widows.  These were only to be
expected.  More remarkable were the less numerous men.

There was the professor of experimental psychology who wanted to
discover if his laboratory rats possessed souls.  He was a fussy
bachelor of fifty.  He had found himself, lately, identifying with
these intelligent and engaging creatures more and more.  He had even
brought Homer, his favorite, with him in his coat pocket.

There was the relatively young man, too delicate of nerve for military
service, who believed that his recently deceased wife was communicating
with him on a daily basis via the shape, size, and texture of his
faeces.  It seemed that in life she had taken a great interest in this
matter.  Now she spoke through Arlen solemnly and at length.  She had
an elaborate theory of the interpretation of turds.

There was the aging, unprepossessing couple who believed that they were
reincarnations of Nefertiti and Akhenaton.  This was fully confirmed by
Arlen, who described the details of their daily life together both now
and in ancient Egypt in exact and convincing detail.  It seemed he had
known them well at that time.

And then there was Norbert.  He was a published poet of

moderate reputation who had come originally out of curiosity, perhaps
looking for material, but who now claimed that his muse spoke more
clearly through Elaine than through his own receiving apparatus.  The
muse spoke indeed, giving him, she said, not poems but metaphors for
poems.

As a consequence Norbert, who was gaunt, nervous, and potentially
tubercular, became infatuated with Elaine.  He began to pester her with
poems and letters to her home on Victoria Street.  He said she inspired
his poems.  She assured him repeatedly that it was not she, simple
mousy Elaine, whom he loved.  I'm a mouse, not a muse, she thought but
did not say, for she knew that this witticism would only have egged him
on.  Eventually, his attentions ceased when, without advance warning,
he left his wife and four children to run off to Montreal with a female
trapeze artist whose circus had recently visited the city.  Elaine was
relieved; regular customers were all very well, but Norbert's
persistent attentions had been trying, if also just a bit flattering.

Then there was--strangest of all--the prissy elderly gentleman who for
many years had been Prime Minister of Canada.

That was after the war was over.

"Oh dear," said Mrs.  Ramsay.  "I was afraid of this."

"Yes," said Elaine absently.

The two women were drinking tea as they waited for the afternoon's
first client.  Mrs.  Ramsay had just received a longdistance telephone
call.

"He wants me to go to Ottawa.  For his birthday.  But I can't travel
now.  I don't feel well enough to leave this house very much any more.
It's my legs, you see."

Mrs.  Ramsay's short legs were indeed ill-equipped to sustain her great
weight on a journey of any length.  She did not move about much even
within the house.  Elaine frequently helped her do things during the
day, and she had her groceries delivered.  It was a considerable effort
for her, several times a day, just to puff up and down the stairs--both
her bedroom and the

bathroom were upstairs.  (The bedroom Elaine had never seen; the door
was always closed.  The bathroom was small and dark, with only one
small high window, and mildew stains on the upper parts of the walls.
Downstairs, beside the parlor, was a narrow hallway to a sunken,
cramped kitchen with a treacherous, backward-sloping linoleum floor,
behind which was an even more sunken dining room that had once been an
enclosed porch.  The house, Elaine had often observed while making tea
or performing other chores in the kitchen for her employer, seemed to
be sinking gradually but certainly back into the earth.)

"Poor man.  He needs me.  He lost Mrs.  Wriedt, you know, a wonderful
woman--if just a trifle dim, poor old dear--during the war.  She was in
Detroit.  Now there's only me.  Well, there are some ladies in England,
but I believe them to be overrated.  Oh dear.  He so likes to have a
session on his birthday.  There are many people, some of them very
important people, who come to greet him and congratulate him."

"I could go," said Elaine.  The idea of a brief journey appealed to
her.  It was early December, she was tired of the routine here, tired
of this decaying house.  She had not yet realized who the client in
Ottawa was.

Mrs.  Ramsay looked doubtful.

"I don't know, my dear.  You've done very well, of course.  You've
definitely a large share of the gift.  But this is a man who depends
very much on his old friends.  He's quite particular about things.  I'm
used to him, from the days before the war.  During the war he had to go
without.  Poor man."

"You mean ..."  Elaine began, then halted.  She had all but forgotten
the stories about the Prime Minister coming to the city.  Not to Mrs.
Ramsay's ramshackle house, to be sure, but to the house of a wealthy
local client who raised money for his political campaigns.  There Mrs.
Ramsay had performed her soothing miracles.  It was something known to
all of her clients, but also something that had receded a little into
legend.

"Yes, my dear.  Mr.  King."

They were silent for a moment.

"I could go," said Elaine then.  "You've said yourself that Arlen never
seems to be at a loss."

"Arlen is remarkable," agreed Mrs.  Ramsay.  "But you're still new to
this business, my dear.  It takes many years to surrender yourself
completely to the task.  To the art, one might say.  Your nerves, your
self-consciousness about the presence of a great man could all too
easily spoil things.  It could set up interference that even Arlen
might not be able to dispel."

"I know that," said Elaine shortly.  "But I could try.  Of course, if
you want him all to yourself, you had better go yourself."

Mrs.  Ramsay looked wounded.  "I don't know how you can say a thing
like that.  After all I've done for you."

Elaine persisted.  "Will you go?"

"I told him I'd have to think about it.  The gentleman--one of his
secretaries--said he would phone again.  The poor chap sounded quite
harassed.  Mr.  King does always insist on having his way with
everyone."

Elaine had a further thought.

"If I were you, I would go, if I could possibly manage it,
uncomfortable though it might be.  After all, it's almost a civic duty.
And if you can't go, then you should send your junior associate. And,"
she continued, with what was meant to be the coup de grace, "if he
should like me and like whatever happens, then he will surely come to
this city to repeat the experience.  He will come here to this house,
very discreetly of course, but people will find out, and then we will
attract more interest and more clients than ever before.  You told me
yourself that that was what happened before the war."

"Indeed," said Mrs.  Ramsay irritably.  She saw the force of the
argument.  And Elaine was so much younger, so much more attractive than
herself.  She had grown so stout of late.  The Prime Minister liked
pretty women who gave him respect and sympathy, who listened
attentively to his remarks.  Elaine was good at that when she wanted to
be.  Mrs.  Ramsay had to admit as much.  Still she said nothing.

"You must tell the secretary," Elaine said then, speaking

forcefully in Mrs.  Ramsay's own manner, "that you will endeavor to
come, but that your health is unpredictable.  If, on the day, you
should be unable to travel, you will send your young assistant, who is
really very gifted for her age.  Gifted and personable too.  Madame
Eleanora."

"Eleanora?"  This was really too much.

"Yes.  It just came to me.  I don't know from where."

And so it came to pass.  Mrs.  Ramsay could not bear to decline the
invitation altogether, nor could she, as the day approached, face the
journey.

"Remember," she admonished Elaine, "you must not speak of money.  You
must behave as if the thought has never crossed your mind.  After you
have finished, the secretary will give you something--probably not
much.  It may net even cover the fare.  But say nothing and look
pleasantly surprised.  Expense alarms Mr.  King.  He's really quite
tight.  I consider I'm giving him a special discount."

"It's the publicity, really, that's important," said Elaine bluntly.
"Once I get him here."

"Don't be crude, my dear."

As might have been predicted, the making of Madam Eleanor proved,
eventually, to be her mentor's undoing.  For Mrs.  Ramsay's ample nose
was thoroughly put out of joint by Elaine's success in Ottawa.  Indeed,
Mr.  King's letter, despatched after a birthday visitation by such
spirits as his adored mother, his grandfather William Lyon Mackenzie,
and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, upset her very much.  The little
minx had apparently bewitched the distinguished old fool.  "... most
extraordinary session I have ever participated in I felt with a renewed
and intense conviction the close and loving presence of friends and
family and even my ever-fond and faithful little Pat ... " (Mr.  King
was in no doubt that animals had souls.)

She was particularly afraid that after his own passing, which could not
be too far off, Mr.  King might well choose to speak to friends,
admirers, and survivors on this side of the veil not through his
ever-faithful and trustworthy Mrs.  Ramsay but instead through the
"extraordinary Madam Eleanor."  That upstart.  That usurper.

The Prime Minister was, of course, eager for another session.  There
was little doubt that he would eventually be obliged to travel to the
city for this purpose, for Elaine had said she would not go to Ottawa
again. She was playing hard to get, the hussy.  If she, Priscilla
Ramsay, was to benefit from this, she would have to swallow her growing
annoyance and keep the little chit on.  She could not afford to offend
Elaine. This was deeply galling.

Who was Elaine?  Mrs.  Ramsay did not feel she really knew her at all.
She had seemed, on the surface, a simple enough girl.  Someone quite
manageable.  But she was a schemer too, one could see that now, a very
clever schemer.  An opportunist of the first water, not one to miss the
main chance when it presented itself.

Was Elaine really a farm girl who had married too young and come into
the strange city with her husband?  Had there ever been a husband at
all?  Was she not perhaps just an adventuress who used this story to
gain people's sympathy?  And to cover up a shadier, perhaps immoral
history?  Was she perhaps not possessed of the gift at all?  Was she a
fraud?  Or (even worse) a dark medium used by demons?

Mrs.  Ramsay had conveniently forgotten how impressed she had been by
Elaine's apparently natural gifts on their first meeting.  She thought
now that the girl had set out deliberately to trick her.  What kind of
viper, she wondered, had she been < nursing?

Elaine was reserved, cagey.  You never knew quite where you \ were with
her.  She was a loner, she seemed to trust nobody, to j have no real
friends.  Her children seemed to be more a burden than a joy to her.

Mrs.  Ramsay's own grown children were attentive and affectionate. 
They wrote frequently from the places that they had been careful to
remove themselves to.  And her late husband sent loving messages in
dreams.  As well as, more laboriously, in her late-night ouija-board
sessions alone in her bedroom.  She loved them all dearly.

But who, if anyone, had Elaine ever loved?  She did not resemble in any
particular the other war widows, grief stricken, ravaged, that
Priscilla had known.  No, she was always unnaturally calm and
self-possessed.  One day, during the war, she had simply announced,
without tears or fanfare, that her husband had been killed in the
Italian campaign.  She had never suggested that they try to contact
him.  It was as if he had been gone a long time, and was mostly
forgotten now.  There was something terribly cold-blooded about this.

Mrs.  Ramsay began to find fault with Elaine.  She was too late in
arriving each morning now, just after the time when Priscilla could use
some assistance with domestic chores.  She was no longer as helpful to
the older woman as she had once been, and even seemed rather impatient
with her requests for assistance.

She thinks she could do better on her own, thought Priscilla.  After
all I've done for her.  She resents my seniority, my experience. 
She'll see--the impertinent thing.

When the Prime Minister did at last come to the city he spent most of
his time conferring with the local member of parliament and with others
prominent in the Liberal party.  But he also arrived at Mrs.  Ramsay's
home very quietly one evening.  They had a most productive session. 
She was jubilant when he had finally gone.  How fortunate too that he
came when Elaine would not be there.  He was accompanied only by the
wife of one of his local associates.  Priscilla Ramsay was delighted
with this turn of events.

Imagine her distress, her chagrin, then, when she learned, several days
later, that Mr.  King had gone to Elaine's house on Victoria Street
early the next morning.  She discovered this

through the wife of the Liberal official, a lady who had long been one
of her most faithful clients.  This worthy reported that the Prime
Minister had insisted upon it.

Priscilla was enraged.  When Elaine next came to work she accused her
directly of attempting to supplant her.  Elaine responded that Mr.
King's visit had taken her by surprise.

"Don't try to play the innocent with me," cried Priscilla, who had by
now worked herself into a state.  Her vast bulk was heaving and shaking
like jelly, and she seemed about to capsize her chair.  A plate of
large pastries on the small table next to her looked about to topple.

"I can see through your performance now," she continued hotly.  "The
scales have fallen from my eyes, I can tell you.  I see now just what
sort of woman you are, and always have been.  I see through all your
false humility.  Why--you're no better than a common slut!  There, I've
said it at last.  I'll thank you to leave my hduse this instant."

Speechless, genuinely astonished at this outburst, and also hurt by it,
Elaine did leave.  At once.  She felt afterwards as if her body had
simply walked her into the street and away from there--without her
making any decision in the matter.

Mrs.  Ramsay had, of course, expected her to stay and to beg for
forgiveness.

At first Elaine thought, as did Mrs.  Ramsay, that she would have
either to do just that or find some other kind of employment.  Though
heaven knew what.  She was greatly distressed.  She even had a sort of
breakdown that lasted for several days.  She could not afterwards
account for her movements during that period.  The children were very
strange with her for some time thereafter.  What had she done?  How had
they managed?  In the bureau drawer in her bedroom she found money that
she had not known she possessed.  She thought, for the first time in
years, perhaps I am finally going mad.

But then she began to receive notes from some of Mrs.  Ramsay's younger
clients.  Word had gotten round.  They had

heard about the Prime Minister's visit, perhaps, and about Mrs.
Ramsay's angry reaction.  Or else they missed their sessions with
Arlen.

There was no reason, she thought then, why she should not set up for
herself.  If anybody wanted her, needed her (or rather Arlen).  It
would serve Mrs.  R. right for trying, in effect, to make her into a
domestic servant.

Then came her triumph.

Some months later, when the Prime Minister came again to the city--for
the last time, as it proved--he avoided Mrs.  Ramsay altogether and
instead spent several deeply satisfying hours with Madam Eleanor.  This
was soon well known about the town.

It was at this last session that Franklin Roosevelt advised the Prime
Minister that it was time for him to retire.  Previously he had been
against it.

Mrs.  Ramsay resolved never again to speak to her former protegee.  Of
Madam Eleanor and her probable morals she intimated only the vilest of
possibilities.  Eventually Elaine heard of this.  She was deeply
offended.  The two women were enemies now.

And so the rival mediums continued, long after the death of their
common benefactor and patron in July 1950 at his country estate of
Kingsmere.

Elaine flourished.  She was able to buy the house.  With her sons away
at school much of the year, she began to redecorate it.  She had the
walls painted white to make the place more cheerful and reassuring both
for her clients and for herself.  Her best idea came to her in the
middle of the night.  She woke with a start.  Yes, she thought.  She
would open up the dark attic to make it the scene, the theater, of her
"seances."  A new staircase would be constructed that descended not
into her bedroom closet but into the dining-living room.

Arlen directed her in this.  She felt a stronger communication with
him.  She was more aware than before of his presence in

her.  She felt that he spoke clearly in her mind sometimes.  He told
her to open up the attic to the sky and to paint the walls white.  Some
simple chairs, rich rugs, and a few wall-hangings could complete or
vary the effect, as desired.

It was a stroke of genius.  To ascend to wisdom and communion with
those who had passed "beyond" seemed to appeal to all of her clients,
to add to their enchantment with Arlen when he presided in his magic
room close to the sky.

Elaine's clientele grew.  In a few years she had surpassed Mrs.  Ramsay
in popularity.  As the world grew more affluent in the years after Mr.
King's death, she became moderately prosperous herself.

She was still a relatively young woman, and some of her male clients
found her most attractive--indeed, some were as amorously inclined as
Norbert the poet (by now dead, she learned, of consumption)--but she
gave no thought whatever to remarriage.  She had never warmed to sex
with her husband and now supposed, without being concerned about it,
that she was frigid.  Perhaps Arlen was the only lover that she could
have now.

She became a kind of soothing psychiatrist, ministering to the needs of
her people, dispensing ghosts to calm and comfort all these aging
children.  She opened up her magic attic to them.  She loved being
there now.  It enlarged her.

But the dark cellar was still taboo, for some reason.  Though a furnace
had been installed, though men came periodically to inspect, adjust, or
fix it, she never went down there.

Sometimes Mr.  King spoke through Arlen--when his old associates came.
He was kind, avuncular.  (Mrs.  Ramsay claimed, of course, that the
great man spoke through her imposing physical apparatus too.  Each lady
was now inclined to cast doubt on the veracity of the other.) But
gradually these old companions in arms faded away.  And then so did he.
In the new era of cold peace and prosperity he was forgotten.  Elaine
wondered at this.  He had believed so ardently in the spirit

world.  Surely he would want to make himself, and it, felt more
often.

But then she was never sure herself just what to believe about her
powers, her voices.

Alice Delaney was due any minute now.  A strangely intense woman,
Elaine thought.  Outside, as if echoing this verdict, a thunderstorm
was brewing.  Approaching from the distance with more and more ominous
rumblings.  A storm always seemed to lend Arlen extra histrionic and
melodramatic power.  Not that he ever needed much aid from the
elements.  But he liked electricity.  He said it was his element.  His
force.

She heard Arlen all the time.  In fact, she was now conscious of what
went on throughout his sessions--though often she pretended afterwards
that she was not, in order to avoid embarrassment to the client.  She
was absent from her body, yet still aware of all that passed through
it, through Arlen.  It was quite an education.

Mrs.  Delaney had arrived at the front porch.  She was closing her
large umbrella.

Elaine thought she was an attractive young woman who probably needed a
child.  Though she was not conscious of being very maternal herself,
Elaine recognized the impulse in other women, sometimes before they did
themselves.

She opened the door.  "Come in," she said.  "Are you soaked?"

"Not really," said Alice a bit nervously.  "It's just starting to
rain."

"There's a storm coming," said Elaine.

"Yes."

They went upstairs without preliminaries.  Alice always declined a cup
of tea.

"Arlen enjoys storms," said Elaine casually.  "They excite him for some
reason."

Alice did not reply.  She was always impatient to begin at this
point.

There was a strong, unacknowledged but powerful attraction between the
two women.  It was not personal.  But under Alice's professional-bank
teller friendliness and Elaine's casual if slightly remote warmth there
was a little tension, mutually felt.

Elaine sat upright, composing herself so that a state of trance might
come about.  It had become a simple thing to induce a trance.  It was
second nature now.  But she needed to put the slight tension generated
by herself in conjunction with Alice at a distance first.  This took a
few minutes.

Without putting it into words Alice knew this.  The two women were
extraordinarily sensitive, attuned to one another.  It was as if
Elaine, and also Arlen, were Alice's older siblings.

Presently Arlen spoke.  They could hear the rain on the roof now.  All
three of them.

"Alice," he greeted her cheerfully.  "You're looking lovely today."

But the storm, breaking over their heads in earnest now, spoke of
things other than polite compliments.  A howling wind had risen, as if
from nowhere.  The room had darkened.  Then there was a brilliant
flash, followed by a loud thunder crack Rain beat hard on the roof.  On
the skylight, blurring the clear glass.  They were underwater, swimming
in a murky cavern.  Rain streamed against glass.  The room lit up
intermittently with violent white light.

"Yes.  Lovely," said Arlen.  His voice was a low, seductive growl
cutting through the fire flash and rain beat  Alice thought for a
moment that she might faint.  Arlen's face, lit up for an instant with
white light, was demonic.

Thundercrash.

Brian.  Where are you?

She heard her own voice speak.  As if from someone else.  "Will he come
to me today?"

"Yes, he will come," said Arlen.  "He is turbulent," he continued.
"More turbulent than ever.  It is all I can do to contain him.  You
must release him.  There is only one alternative.  You ' know it."

"No," cried out Alice.

"He approaches," said Arlen.

And Brian was inside her again.  Instantaneous, like lightning.  In her
brain and bowels.  In her body, her very being.

"Oh Brian."

"My darling," he said hoarsely.  "You must come to me.  It is the only
way."

"I know.  I'm just not ready.  Yet."

"It is easy," he said, "to come.  There is the lake."  He was
pleading.

Alice was crying.  He sounded desperate.  He spoke to her simply, out
of the heart of the storm.  She felt him inside her.  She felt as if
she was him.  While he remained she could not resist him.

"Soon," she said.  "Soon.  I will come to you."

I can't allow that, surely, thought Elaine afterwards.  In all her
years of work nothing like this melodramatic and absurd situation had
arisen before.  She was not prepared for it.  The spirits of the
departed were, with manageable exceptions, usually more detached and
philosophical.  Brian's desperation was a new experience.  One she
rather enjoyed in a strange way.  His dark passion was exhilarating.

But he presented a moral dilemma.  Not to mention a practical one: to
what degree could she (or even Arlen) control the spirits that spoke
through her?  She would have to seek help from Arlen.

Should she perhaps also contact the husband?  Mr.  Delaney?  That could
be embarrassing.  What would he think of her and her activities here?

Arlen was unusually silent, absent just now.  The brief storm was over,
and the sun was shining again.  He could not be reached for comment. As
if perhaps he too might be thinking about the dangerous passion of
Alice Delaney.

SEVEN

"But why?"  asked Herb Delaney, knowing this to be an unscientific
question.

"Well," said Lyle.  "There's safety in numbers."

Alice found that in the dark of night she could summon Brian to her
mind and senses while Herb was making love to her.  This aroused her
enormously.

Herb found her new ardor disquieting at first, he was used to quiet
affection and comfort.  Now, after they had made love once, Alice took
an active part in stimulating him to come to her again.  He was
surprised to find himself responding with more vigor than he had
thought he possessed.  And afterwards he felt, in some gratitude, that
he was receiving lessons in the faculty of touch from his newly
passionate wife.

As for Alice, she started going to see Madam Eleanor once, then twice
each week.  She now kept these visits a secret from Myra, telling her
only that her curiosity about Brian had been satisfied.  After each
session her desire was uncontrollable.  She was afraid that she might
take to walking the streets and propositioning young men.

On those nights after the sessions at Victoria Street she gave herself
over and over to her husband.  To her ghostly lover Brian.

"Don't you think," Herb asked Lyle, "that it's time Laird met you?  And
Al?  That you all got acquainted?  More familiar with one another?"

"I don't know, captain," said Lyle doubtfully.  "Each of us has his own
life.  It's a workable arrangement.  Isn't it best to leave things as
they are?"

"You don't want to open up Pandora's box," suggested Herb.

"Pandora's what?  That's one babe whose squeeze-box I haven't been in.
Who in hell is she?"

Herb told him.

"Oh yeah," he said.  "I think I've heard the expression.  You mean,
like a can of worms."

"Yes.  But does it have to be like that?"

"Well, I'm not afraid for myself.  But Al will never let Laird know."

"It's more likely," said Herb, "that it's Laird who doesn't want to
know.  About Al.  Or you."

Lyle was uncharacteristically silent.  He appeared to be thinking about
this.

"Then it's him," he said, "that you'll have to work on."

"Yes.  But you're the most aware."

"That's right," said Lyle, pleased with himself once again.

"Don't you see," said Herb, while wondering if this was the right way
to proceed, "that you're all parts of one potentially very
extraordinary person?  A person who hasn't been allowed to develop,
really.  You could be brought together.  And have everything all
together."

"I never thought of that," said Lyle, apparently sincerely.

"You're all one person," said Herb.  "But you--Lyle--were born at the
age of twenty-two.  You've stayed there.  That's a miracle.  Which one
of you is closest to the beginning?"

"Well .. . " said Lyle.  He seemed to be flattered by the word
"miracle."  He was susceptible to flattery.  It was one way to deal
with him.  "I suppose Allie.  He's a little kid."

"Allie?"

"He's part of Al.  It's difficult to explain."

"Not Laird?"  said Herb.  "He isn't the original?"

"Not really.  Hell, I don't know.  I don't think I can deal with this,
doc.  It's not my can of worms."

"Sure it is."

But he had gone too far, it seemed.  He was losing Lyle again.  Lyle
was in retreat.  He was changing.

Into Laird.

He wondered as he watched Laird's dazed expression come into focus
whether he should try to pursue the childhood origins of this strange
"split" condition, or to reason with each of Carter's part-selves so
that they could come to know one another.  Or could he do both things,
shifting as Carter shifted, following the leads that he might let slip.
Obviously Al, the rapist and potential murderer, could never be
released.  Could he be swallowed up, tamed, by the others?  Could Laird
and Lyle combine to maximize their strengths, minimize their
weaknesses?  Al and Lyle had the energy, and Lyle the flexibility (in
fact, he seemed to be too flexible, especially sexually) that the more
ethical but emotionally feeble Laird lacked.

Therapist.  The rapist.  Why did such puns and wordplays sometimes
come, unbidden, to his attention?  Freud had taken a great interest in
puns, he remembered.

Who was raping whom here?  asked a wicked voice in his mind.  Voices
rose now from his unconscious, as they sometimes do when the body is
sinking slowly into sleep.

He knew, of course, that the voice spoke sense.  What right had he,
therapist or rapist, to rearrange Carter's mind, or minds?

He had no techniques, no methodology, no morality even, to deal with
this "case."  But it all fascinated him.  (He no longer even
entertained the thought that Carter was merely-- "merely"?--a very
gifted actor.) Herb was, he knew in his bewilderment, venturing into
the unknown--like Freud, like Jung in their day.  But without their
genius, and also (he knew all too well) without their extraordinary
courage.

He was so tired these days.  Alice.  Alice was .. .

"You look tired, Doctor Delaney," said Laird.

Sometimes Herb thought that they could read his mind.  Like devils.
Like ancient warlocks.  Like Merlin.

"What you tell me about the psychiatric wing here is disturbing," he
replied.  It was, of course, but this was not really his main concern
any more.  The remark was merely an opening for Laird.

"Well," said Laird, "it has certainly opened my eyes about prisons.  I
-would never have believed what is allowed to go on here.  I know," he
added quickly, "that it's not your fault.  You're overworked, and you
do your best.  It's the prison system.  It turns us all into
animals."

A new thought came to Herb.

"Do you like animals?"  he asked casually.

Laird looked more distressed than usual.  This was often a sign that a
nerve had been touched.

Herb persisted, "You must have been used to animals, perhaps even fond
of some of them, on the farm."

"They're too much work for that," said Laird at last.  "It's easy to
get tired of the very sight of them."

This response expressed the way Herb thought he himself would feel so
well that he wondered once again if Carter could read his mind.  (His
own mother had sometimes used to say, in mild and momentary
exasperation, "Why don't you go outside?  I'm tired of the very sight
of you.") Was there an active transference here now?  Had Laird come to
identify with him?  He was, after all, the weakest of Carter's
personalities, was he not?

"Don't you like animals?"  he tried again.  And then added, to his own
surprise, "Do you think that they have no souls?"

Carter answered swiftly now.  "My mother taught me to keep the animal
side in its place."

"In its pen," suggested Herb involuntarily.  Another damned pun, he
thought then.  "How did she teach you?"  he asked.

But Laird was changing now.  These days the changes came more rapidly.
Herb simply followed them.  This was his only method.

It was Al who emerged.  "The bitch teased me," he said.  "She was just
a cock-tease underneath all her phoniness."

"How?"  He had learned to exhibit no surprise at these sudden shifts.

"She kept me in the house all afternoon.  She made me watch her take a
bath.  She made me rub soap on her back and then on her tits.  She was
playing with me.  I was too young to do anything about it."

Herb took a chance.  "Allie," he said firmly, gently.

Then the unthinkable happened.  Al began to cry.  Loudly.

"Allie," repeated Herb.  "Tell me about it.  I won't hurt you.  Nobody
will hurt you."

"You'll punish me."  It was, incredibly, a high-pitched child's
voice.

"No.  I won't."

"She did.  She made me do things with her.  Then she said I was bad,
and had to be punished.  She burned my hand on the stove."

Was this a true piece of Carter's history?  Or the fantasy of a madman?
Herb was not sure that he would ever be able to decide.  Many of his
more disturbed patients claimed that their parents had abused them.
Freud had discounted almost all such claims.

"Your mother punished you unfairly," he said evenly.

"Yes," piped up Allie.  "She does it all the time.  It isn't fair."  He
sounded like every child who has uttered these uniquely resonant
words--but more stricken, more heart-broken than most.  It was, after
all, mankind's most universal and most ancient cry, once expelled from
the womb.  Indeed, it struck a distinct and distant chord in Herb--some
forgotten but still troubling childhood moment of his own.  But he
tried resolutely to ignore it.  His parents had not been sadists, only
sensible disciplinarians.

"And your father?  Does he punish you?"

Allie began to bawl again, loudly.  He looked absolutely terrified now.
Cry, thought Herb, cry away.  Perhaps we'll get

somewhere this way.  When Allie had subsided he asked: "Where was your
father when your mother did these things to you?"

"He's in the barn."

"In the barn.  Working?"

Allie looked petulant now.

"I don't know," he said.

"You mean you don't want to tell me."  Most children are not very good
liars.

"I don't know," said Allie stubbornly.  He began to look very
frightened again.

"You can tell me," said Herb coaxingly.

"No.  You'll burn me.  You'll whip me."

"Does he whip you a lot?"

"A lot."

"What about Laird?"

"He watches."

"Who is Laird?"

This caught Allie unawares.  It was, it seemed, a totally unexpected
question.

"Where did he come from?"

"I don't know," Allie said, apparently sincerely.  "We used to play
together.  He runs away."

"Where?"

"I don't know."

"Do you want to go now?"

"Yes.  I want to go home."

"All right.  We'll talk again.  Nobody will hurt you here.  I can be
your friend and help you."

Al returned immediately.

"She was a whore," he said harshly, as if nothing had intervened.  "I
hate her guts.  I wish I'd killed her."

"But Laird loves her," observed Herb.

"He's been a brown-nose from birth," said Al.  "I'm going to kill him.
It won't be long now."

Herb's research had not yielded a great deal.  But there were cases,
stories really, that he discovered.

All of them were women.  This made Carter the more remarkable.

Mary Reynolds, daughter of a Baptist minister in backwoods
Pennsylvania, began to experience "fits" in 1811 when she was eighteen.
One day, after a deep sleep of eighteen hours--why these repeated
"eighteens," Herb wondered a little suspiciously--she awoke as someone
else.  She did not recognize her parents, relatives, or friends.  She
had to learn everything from scratch.  This amnesia lasted for five
weeks.  Then she returned to her original self, but only for a few
weeks.  Then, after a deep sleep, the second self reemerged, taking up
her life precisely where she had left it.  She remembered only what had
happened during the earlier five weeks of her existence.

In "Mary Reynolds: A Case of Double Consciousness," published in
Harper's New Monthly Magazine in 1860 (a good many years after the
original events, whatever they were, noted Herb), Reverend William S.
Plumer wrote that the original Mary was "quiet and sedate, sober and
pensive, almost too melancholy, with an intellect sound though rather
slow .. . and apparently singularly destitute of the imaginative
faculty" while the second Mary was "gay and cheerful, extravagantly
fond of society, of fun and practical jokes, with a lively fancy and a
strong propensity for versification and rhyming ..."

A bit like Laird and Lyle, thought Herb, if Lyle were a poet.  A case
of repression because of a strict religious home?  Was the second Mary
a spontaneous eruption of her truer self?  Neither personality had any
direct knowledge of the other.  After sixteen years of alternating,
Mary Two, the healthier and more likable self, took over altogether.  A
remarkable defeat for Victorian stuffiness, thought Herb.

A similar case, lasting thirty years from 1858, was reported by Dr.
Etienne Azam--maybe it should have been "Shazam!"  Herb thought--in
Bordeaux.  A morose hysterical personality was gradually supplanted by
an energetic and cheerful one.  In

this case, however, while the morose woman was not aware of the
vivacious one, the latter had complete awareness of all that happened.
She clearly had the advantage.  (But then why did it take thirty years
for her to triumph?)

In a third, similar case, described in 1919, two similarly disparate
alternating personalities were mutually aware of each other's actions
though not of each other's thoughts.  They would even converse, the one
who was "out" at the time speaking aloud, the other heard within her
mind.  They were actually friends.

All these are strange, but positive in their progress, thought Herb.
There is nothing really very much like Al or Allie to contend with
here.  And they're all women.  Women enlarging themselves.

There was, however, a more chilling case described in the book The
Dissociation of a Personality (1905) by Dr.  Morton Prince.  The
patient, a young woman named Christine Beau champ, had four different
selves: BI, given to hysterical headaches, insomnia, and bodily pains;
BII, Miss Beauchamp's hypnotized self; BIV, irritable and
quick-tempered; and Sally.  Sally claimed to have total lifelong recall
and said that she never slept (a claim sometimes made, by one self
only, in the other cases as well).  She also claimed to be a spirit,
and not really part of Miss Beauchamp, whom she detested.  She had
great vitality; she loved to play practical jokes on her disliked
"host."

Though Sally was by far the most interesting of the selves, Dr.  Prince
decided that she must be persuaded to die, though he had qualms about
this.  And though she energetically resisted the doctor's wish at
first, he apparently succeeded at length in expunging her, at least
according to his own account.  Herb found this rather sinister.

Then there was Helene Preiswerk, Carl Jung's fifteen-year old cousin,
who claimed she was a medium.  A variety of spirits spoke through her,
including her deeply serious grandfather and a flirtatious, frivolous
figure called Ulrich von Gerbenstein.  Jung interpreted these as
"disaggregated phenomena" or disaggregations of "psychic complexes" or
"automatisms" that existed unconsciously and could take the form of
"unconscious personalities."  It was, he said, another form of the
unconscious growth of repressed materials that Freud had discovered.

Jung commented further: "The grandfather produces nothing but
sanctimonious twaddle and edifying moral precepts.  Ulrich von
Gerbenstein is simply a silly schoolgirl, with nothing masculine about
him except his name."  These were Helene's other selves.  Jung felt
that he himself was at least two different persons.

Herb noted all this with great interest.  But was much of it really
very helpful?  Helene Preiswerk's "selves" seemed rudimentary when
compared with the different versions of Carter.  Of course, she was,
and psychotherapy itself was, very young when Jung another pun there
described her.  (Was it James Joyce who quipped: "Americans are Jung
and easily Freudened"?) Herb shook off this irreverent and, he thought,
irrelevant remark impatiently.  What happened to Helene later?
Presumably, she grew out of her "split."  Or did she?

These were the cases, the record that existed.  If any or all of it is
true, he thought, then we are indeed considerably more flexible than we
think.  It seems that we can make ourselves up from the inside out.
Like novelists.  But "who" is doing it?

Then there was The Three Faces of Eve, published only three years
before.  He had been reluctant to approach this popular book.  It
seemed like something strictly for the movies.  A soap-opera fantasy.
Something Alice might read.  And indeed he found its plot too
straightforward to be very helpful.  "Eve" conformed to some extent to
the pattern of the earlier cases.  But like Carter she went beyond mere
duality.  As before, a drab woman alternated with a more vivacious, but
here these familiar two were joined by a more mature third, and then
these three were merged into a fourth.  All very neat.  This was at
least closer to Carter's versatility.  But, again, not really very
helpful when it came to dealing with Al and Allie.

He thought of writing to the authors of Eve.  But he was

strangely reluctant.  Carter was his.  I have to make my own way, he
told himself.  Only Carter can help me.

We're all in the dark here.  Carter and I. All of us together in the
dark.

"Do you ever think maybe you're too fun-loving, Lyle?  Don't you ever
want to be more serious?"

"I'll leave that to Laird."

"But he doesn't do anything worthwhile, either," said Herb.  "He hasn't
got your energy."

"He sure doesn't."  "Don't you feel underdeveloped?"

"Look, I try to be a likable guy.  I give people lots of laughs.  What
more can they expect?"

"Don't you give Ken more than 'laughs'?"

"I thought we'd dealt with that.  I'll say it again.  If I wasn't stuck
in here--thanks to Al--there'd be a chick.  Kennie is what's
available."

"I believe you.  That wasn't my point."

"What was?"

"You're his friend.  Not just his .. . old man."

"Sure.  But friends come and go.  You take the laughs while they're
happening."

"I think there's more to you than that," said Herb.  While part of him
was thinking, not for the first time: this is insane, telling a
fragment there's more to him, and not meaning Al, Laird, Allie, etc.

"No doubt," said Lyle, ironically.  He was leaning back in the chair,
smiling faintly, occasionally dragging on a cigarette.  Pleased with
himself, as usual.  He had the best developed self esteem in the
"family."  This was probably why Herb turned to him so often.  But it
wasn't getting them anywhere.

"You say Al put you in here.  Why did you let him?"

The smile vanished.  "Hold on a minute.  I can't control that
gorilla."

"Wouldn't you like to?"

"I live and let live," said Lyle.

"But look what he's gotten you into.  If it wasn't for him you'd be out
in the real world having a good time."

Herb waited a moment to let this sink in.

"Well ..."  began Lyle.

"Yes?"

But Lyle was silent.  Herb was afraid he might lose him again.

"Look.  If Carter--that is, you, Al, Laird, whoever--could be put
together, then it's not altogether impossible that a court of law might
just accept that the whole person is not criminally responsible for
Al's acts.  That is, not guilty by reason of temporary insanity."

"Put together," said Lyle.  "Like Humpty Dumpty."

"Did you hear what I said?"

"Yeah, I heard.  But Al isn't really crazy."

"What is he then?"

"Angry.  Me, I'm never angry."

"Shouldn't you be?  Sometimes.  When it's necessary?  Appropriate?
Shouldn't you sometimes be depressed--like Laird?"

Lyle looked at him seriously for a long moment.

"You mean," he said, "you think each one--in the family-should be
everything."

"Yes."

Lyle said nothing.

"You're the most intelligent.  Though you waste it on games.  That's
why I talk to you this way.  The others need you."

"You'd be wasting your breath talking to Al."

"I will talk to him about it.  But I need your help."

"How?"

"You can make yourself known to him.  Gradually.  Loosen him up a
bit."

"I'd rather avoid him.  It's less trouble.  He's always trouble."

"Not if it might get you out of here."

Herb knew he had no right to tempt him with such an

unlikely long shot.  But it slipped out.  And it seemed the only way to
proceed.  He took another tack.

"Don't you feel sorry for Laird?  What has he done to deserve all
this?"

"I'm not his mother," said Lyle.

A strange remark.

But he was changing now.  He had reached his limit.  He could not take
any more of this conversation.

And now who was this?  Carter was sitting up straight in the chair.
Then he did something he had never before done in Herb's presence.  He
crossed his legs, folding one very tightly and neatly over the other.
He took a long, luxurious drag on the cigarette, held the smoke in,
then breathed it out with a long sigh of satisfaction.  Then he placed
his free hand on his hip.  This was his right hand, for he had
transferred the cigarette to his left before inhaling.  He was holding
it more precisely than before.  His smile was provocative.  He had
lifted his chin so that his head was tilted back a little.

"Say, Doc," said a new voice, "it's really good to meetcha'."  The
voice sounded like Mae West with a French accent.  "How are you,
anyways?"

"I'm fine," said Herb, astonished once again.  "How are you?"

Was this a trick?  Was Carter, after all, an actor?  Was this his
female impersonation?

"I'm just dandy.  I am Alana."

"Alana.  It's good to meet you.  Were you listening to my conversation
with Lyle?"

She nodded.  "He's my brother," she said.

"I see."  This perhaps explained, then, certain rumors, reported by
Crack, about Carter's bizarre behavior before Ken had joined him in the
psychiatric ward.

"What do you think?"  Alana took another long drag.

"I wanted to tell you," she said then, "that you are right about my
brother.  He doesn't know himself like he thinks he does.  I think he
is in love with that boy.  Hell, I'm a little in love

with him myself.  But it's more maternal.  He's too young for me."

"Lyle won't admit that he cares?"

"He never cared before.  Except for me.  But now he's forgotten me."

"How can that be?"

"Who knows?  I think I outgrew him.  C'est la vie.  But perhaps he
really is queer.  He was--how you say--latent before.  It took the
prison, I guess, to bring it out."

"Now it's you who's 'out'," Herb said sardonically.  He was growing, in
his tiredness, just a little impatient, testy.  Were "they" playing
games with him?  He was finding this creature, the most distasteful of
Carter's creations, a trial of his professional neutrality.

"Yes," said Alana.  "Finally."

"Why did it take so long?"

She was silent.

"Won't they let you out very much?  Is that it?"

She nodded.

"Who won't?"  His impatience made him direct.

"They," she said.

"Who?  Who's in charge?"

Silence.

"There's someone.  Isn't there?  Someone is in charge," he persisted.

This was a discovery.  There was actually someone in charge, someone
who had not yet come forth.  Alana looked stricken.  She could not deny
it.

"Tell me about yourself," he said, recovering his composure.

"There's not so much to tell.  I'm Lyle's sister--his twin sister.  But
I'm older now.  I've been watching you try to help Lyle know himself
better."

"And Laird.  And Al.  And .. . Allie?"

"Oh yes.  I've watched.  And I thought, what a good man you are.  So
strong and capable.  So sensitive too.  Such a combination.  It's rare.
You know, a girl like me doesn't have much

chance to meet many really nice men.  I've known a lot of pretty rough
guys, I can tell you.  C'est la guerre.  Doctor, you make me feel a
little weak.  It's the thick hair on your wrists, I think.  And where
your shirt opens.  And your eyes.  So brown and deep."

Herb was embarrassed, in spite of himself.  He hadn't bargained for
this.  But he would have to see what she--unless she was only a
diversionary tactic--could tell him.

"What do you know about Laird?"

"Not much.  He's so dull."  She pouted.

"And Al?"

"Oh, that one.  He's too rough, too rough even for me."

"Could you make love with him?"

"Make love?  With Al?  Of course not.  Now you, doctor, that's another
thing.  Another thing altogether."

"Why couldn't you?"

"Why .. . ?"

"Why couldn't you make love with Al?"

"I don't like him."

"But if you did."

"I still couldn't."

"Why not?"  He was relentless.

"I don't know."  And she had begun to cry.

"It's because," he said in cold anger, "you inhabit the same body.  The
same male body.  You and Al and Laird and Lyle.  And who else?"

But she was gone.  The cigarette had been dropped.  The legs uncrossed.
The hands were folded quietly over Carter's stomach.  Across the desk
from Herb Delaney, prison psychiatrist, sat an alert-looking man in
early middle age.  His expression was calm and intelligent.  His eyes
wide and clear.

"It's you," said Herb.

"Yes."  The voice too was clear, un evasive  It was not Laird's, Al's,
or Lyle's voice.

"Who are you?"

"You can call me Lou.  Though I really have no name."

"Why not?"

"I don't need one."

Outside, though Herb was only distantly aware of it, a thunderstorm was
raging.  There was rain streaming at a crazy angle and wind howling. It
whipped the lake-waves into white furies that hurled and destroyed
themselves on the shoreline.  In the attic of the little house on
Victoria Street Alice sat stiffly, hearing the wind, being filled with
it, gazing at Madam Eleanor, whose face in this strange daytime
twilight had assumed the triumphant and sardonic mask of Arlen.

"Will he come to me today?"

"Yes," said Arlen, his loud voice clear through the harsh rain beat the
recurrent booming thunderclaps.  "Yes, he will come."

They sat in near-darkness, lit up at times by intense flashes of
lightning

"He is turbulent," said Arlen.  "More turbulent than ever.  It is all I
can do to contain him.  You must release him.  There is only one
alternative.  You know it."

"No!"

"He approaches," said Arlen.

"When did you begin?"

"I didn't."

"Where have you come from?"

"Beyond."  Lou's voice was patient, reasonable.

"Tell me about yourself."

"I am not the kind of self you mean."

"What kind are you?"

"Your vocabulary is inadequate," observed Lou.  "And you therapy is
haphazard, if sometimes effective."  "I know," said Herb, once more
dumbfounded.

"You are upsetting the family," said Lou.

"I sincerely hope so," said Herb.  "The family has problems,

I'd say.  Wouldn't you?  So why don't you help me?  Why don't you help
them?  What have you been doing?"

"Watching."

"Will you help?"

Lou thought about this for a moment.

"%s," he said.  "I've recently decided that it's time for me to
intervene.  I didn't think I should before."

"You must.  Or why do you exist?"

"To know," said Lou.

"To know."

"Yes.  To see and to know everything."

"Because someone has to?"

"Exactly."

"Who is Alana?  I've just met her for the first time."

"She is part of Lyle.  She is one manifestation of what Dr.  Jung would
call his 'anima'."

"I see."  How on earth, thought Herb, could Lou know about Jung? Carter
had been quite poorly educated.  "How do you know about Jung?"

"I read a great deal," said Lou.  "At the Public Library in Toronto.
I've spent many hours there.  I've studied various subjects.
Psychology.  Cultural anthropology."

"I see."

"Here, of course," said Lou, "I've been occupied studying the place
itself.  It really is an extraordinarily primitive social organization.
An isolated all-male society.  Quite barbarous, in fact."

"Tell me," said Herb.  His curiosity was genuinely piqued.  Most
prisoners--because of their code of silence--would say very little
about what went on inside the pen and how they experienced it.  Herb
might--at one and the same time--learn more about the institution and
about Carter's most remarkable manifestation thus far if he simply
listened to him for a while.

"Everyone is vague here, abstracted.  Except when they're fighting.
They don't want to see the place.  They retreat inward.  They go about
in a daze.  They're not themselves."

"That much I know," said Herb, "from my work."

"They sleep a lot to escape.  Then they're insomniac."  This also Herb
knew.  "Or they have nightmares.  They talk in their sleep.  Or scream.
Almost any night you'll hear horrible screams."

"Don't you sleep?"  asked Herb.

"No.  I don't sleep.

"Everyone is always hungry too.  This is no doubt partly psychological.
Cons drink a lot of water, compulsively.  Then there's the bell.  It's
torture to them.  It has a nerve-wracking, grating sound.  It
punctuates every step of the day's routine.  Did you know that they
ring it one hundred and twenty-seven times a day?  Then there are the
rats ..."

"Rats?"

"Rats.  The sewers down below are full of rats.  Some are as big as
groundhogs.  If you don't put a lid on the toilet they can creep up on
you at night.  This is what some of the night screams are about.  Often
the guards come and drag the man away.  The rats can make even tough
cons hysterical.  There are also cats in the sewers.  Wild cats.  You
can hear them yowling, fighting for scraps.  They are the descendants
of the farm cats of the time when the cattle barn was inside the walls
..."

"A barn.  I didn't know that."

"Yes.  A barn.  By coincidence, a barn played a large part in Laird's
and Al's development.  I'll tell you about that one later.  The cats
battle for territory with the rats.  The older cons here say that there
are tunnels underneath the sewers, tunnels that no human has dared to
enter for a hundred years.  It's an uncharted maze deep underneath the
maze of human misery that goes on every day up above."

"A poetic turn of phrase," observed Herb.  He was astonished, even
quietly excited, by this man, this new voice.  "How about the
homosexuality?"  he asked.  "Lyle seems to have made that
adjustment."

"It was inevitable, wasn't it?"  said Lou calmly.  "Lyle is so highly
sexed it was bound to happen.  And he's been surprised,

even a little alarmed at the strength of the attachment that he's
formed.  But that is by no means unusual in here.

"Most cons go without.  But there are the confirmedly homosexual.  Cons
call them 'drag queens'.  They're looking for it all the time, and they
make themselves available to almost anyone who wants them.  This
sometimes causes fights, even knifings.

"Lyle is not, of course, a drag queen.  (Neither is Alana, oddly
enough, since she regards herself as completely female.) Lyle is what's
known as a 'wolf, that is, a heterosexual man who finds relief from his
sexual frustration with an inmate young enough to be a female
substitute.  Since there are very few of these here they are sought
after by numbers of wolves.  (Ken, for example, is only here
temporarily, though Lyle hasn't grasped this.  He'll soon be
transferred elsewhere.) Such a boy is called a 'sweet kid'.  He is
probably not predominantly homosexual either.  But he needs somebody's
protection and patronage.  That's how prison society works.  And after
all, we both know that some women on the outside would probably argue
that they have been similarly coerced into marriage and dependence on a
stronger man.

"The relationship of a wolf and sweet kid can involve a tremendous
mutual loyalty--as Lyle has been discovering.  This can be touching,
under the circumstances."

He spoke matter-of-factly, with what seemed a studied neutrality.  As
if he was the therapist.

"What is your attitude to this?"  asked Herb.

"Sex is a human appetite," said Lou, sounding like one of Herb's old
professors, "and affection is a human need.  What else could one expect
to happen in a place like this?"

"So you don't care what Lyle does.  What Alana does."

"Why should I?"

"%u're close to them.  It's not human to be so detached about it."

"Perhaps I am not human in any sense that you can understand."  This
was said without obvious arrogance.

"And Al?  How do you feel about what he has done?"

"That's why I'm speaking with you," said Lou more gravely.  "Al has
gotten out of hand.  For a long time he was relatively contained, but
now he's become homicidal.  I had thought that the problem would be
solved with his incarceration but that was hasty of me."

"Aren't you incarcerated too?"

"I am not limited to Carter."

"Well, I'm not sure I can cope with that one," said Herb honestly.

"You don't have to believe me," said Lou.  "And--to answer your
question--I cannot condone sexual or any other kind of violence that
serves no evolutionary purpose.  But this place does endless violence
to the inmates.  I can tell you a lot more about that as time, I mean,
your time, goes on.  Meanwhile, I agree that we should proceed with the
task at hand.

"I will help you," promised Lou then.  "I will help you put our poor,
imprisoned, imprisoned and yet badly dispersed, Humpty Dumpty together
again."

EIGHT

In the summer they liked to climb the hill into the woods.  There they
played their secret games.  They peopled a magic forest with their
shared imaginary playmates.

Allie and Ellie.  The twins.

"Allie has been very bad.  He needs to be punished.  He needs to be
whipped."  She was being her mother when she said this.  They would act
it out.

Sometimes, though, they went their separate ways.  Their overlapping
worlds disconnected.

Ellie saw a little girl by the river.  This girl was not afraid of
anything.  She was a bold hussy.  A vixen.  She dared Ellie to follow
her when she climbed over the fence and approached the dangerous spring
floods.  A child had drowned there the previous year.

"The mirror crack'd from side to side": this was a phrase Ellie had
heard somewhere.  Sometimes when she looked into her cracked bedroom
mirror she saw the bold little girl staring back at her.  She had
flaming red hair and intensely blue eyes.  She looked very angry. Ellie
blew out the candle to banish her.  Then huddled in her bed, shivering,
till she fell asleep.

Allen, for his part, thought about ways in which he might succeed in
pleasing his mother.  He was so bad so much of the time, there must be
a devil in him, she said.  This frightened

him badly.  The devil had to be whipped out of him.  That's what she
said.

Allen was probably the only male that Ellie had ever really loved.
Unless she had loved her father.  Before .. . but that was too hard to
remember.  She probably never would remember very much about her
earliest childhood except Allen.  They were part of one another.  From
before birth.

As small children, they even slept together.  But their mother made
them dress in their warm pajamas separately.  And she wouldn't let them
take baths together.  They were not supposed to know about each other's
bodies.

In the summer woods they undressed and inspected each other.-Then, this
natural curiosity satisfied for the time being, they resumed their
usual games.  They continued to think of themselves as more or less
identical and interchangeable.

Their mother was a strange, bitter woman.  There were so many things
she did not like them to do.  She did not want Ellie to have anything
to do with the animals.  She supposed Allen would have to learn about
them.  But Ellie secretly did everything that Allen did.  She escaped
from the house whenever their mother lay down for a nap.

The woman seemed to need to rest frequently on some days.  On others
she would clean the already spotless house with manic energy.  She
would sing hymns with a wild fervor, her hair coming loose from its
customary bun, and force Ellie to sing these hymns too at the top of
her voice as they scraped and scrubbed away at all signs of corruption.
Allen would usually escape outdoors then.  But she would find some
fault with him as soon as he returned.  On certain days she would
punish both of the children severely for trivial or even imagined
offenses.

She rarely went out of the house at all--except to go to church on
Sundays.  And then she insisted on returning immediately after the
service was done.  She did not linger to

gossip with the other women.  She thought them frivolous.  She had no
friends.

And the man?  He was severe too.  But he never spoke in terms of
religion as she did.  He was much older, he was weatherbeaten.  He had
been wounded, though not very seriously, in the Great War.  He belonged
to the outdoors.  He had a long gray-streaked black beard like an Old
Testament patriarch.  He lived in and for an endless round of work.
Like his wife, who was also his cousin, he was Scotch-Irish with,
generations back, an admixture of French and Indian.

He didn't like Allen much.  He rode him hard and found fault with him
constantly.  When his wife had worked herself up into one of her angry
states, he was perfectly willing to whip Allen for his real or
imaginary sins.  Spare the rod and spoil the child was a motto hung on
the kitchen wall.

But he never punished Ellie.  He left that to his wife.  In his own
rough way he may have loved his daughter.  Sometimes he even encouraged
her in a silent, covert way to accompany him on his never-ending round
of chores--when she could escape her mother's erratic supervision for a
time.  She enjoyed feeding the pigs, and wanted to laugh out loud at
their noises and their clamoring appetite, but was afraid that her
father would not like it.  She knew that her mother would be
horrified.

Did Jacob Carter love his strange wife?  He spent as little time with
her as he could manage.  Outside of bed, that is.  On some Friday
nights he went to the village to play cards and to get drunk with his
cronies.  He would stay out all night.  She allowed no liquor, and for
that matter no cards, in her house.

But in all other matters he was boss.  She would never dare to
criticize him to his face.  He had a violent temper at times; they
believed--though just how they came to know this Elaine could not
remember--that early in the marriage he had sometimes even struck her.
As for his drinking, their mother contented herself with telling them
that his behavior on Fridays was sinful.  She pointed out that he
suffered for it

on Saturday.  On Sunday he went meekly to church, presumably to
repent.

There was no pleasing her except on increasingly rare occasions when,
for a day or two, she seemed a different person, more benign and
easy-going.  But these ceased altogether when a late coming third child
was stillborn.  A strange thing about her was that she would tell them
something most emphatically one day, and yet on the next could
apparently remember nothing at all about it.  They learned to be
attentive to her rapidly shifting rules and moods.  And to his
potentially dangerous silences.

Like all children who have little or no basis for comparison, they
assumed that their parents and their family life were the norm.  Their
parents were difficult and dangerous large strangers.  Their only real
loyalty was to each other.

In the woods they became other people.  They amused one another
endlessly with a repertoire of real and imaginary characters.  They
could each mimic both of their parents quite well; they enjoyed
especially switching genders.  Ellie could do her father with his
Saturday hangover; this was when he was at his most dangerous,
alternately morose and quarrelsome.  Allen could be his mother in her
manic phase wild-eyed, screeching out "Amazing Grace".  The twins would
often work themselves into hysterics this way.  It took a while to calm
themselves down afterwards.

They could do their schoolmates too when they were old enough to go to
the one-room school in the village.  Stuck-up Susan.  Fat, stupid
Jerry.  Paul, the priggish and weak-eyed ("four-eyed") son of the
Anglican minister.  Oh-so-pretty, overdressed Belinda.  Big, strapping
Bob, who was so good at baseball, who liked himself so much because of
it.  Didn't he think he was somebody though?

And of course their teacher, Miss Crabtree, who had a prominent dark
mustache, which made them decide that she was really a man in disguise.
She also had a goiter that looked like an Adam's apple.

There were the characters that apparently came from

nowhere.  They would make them up just for the fun of it.  Some were
like the trolls and monsters they had read about in Grimm's fairy
tales.  Or variations of Hansel and Gretel escaping the treacherous
gingerbread house and the witch.

In the woods they made up their own versions of reality.  In the woods
they sometimes danced naked.  Among the trees they were shape changers
midsummer elves.  In childhood they went there as often as they could
get away from their parents.

But, inevitably, the time came when they were required more and for
longer periods for each day's work, when they were strictly forbidden
to go into the magic forest, alone or together, ever again.



NINE

LENORE:

I had to retire for most of the time Elaine was havin children.  One
after the other, just like that.  It was borinj was busy being pregnant
and then looking after the misi critters.  Ugh.  And it wasn't as if
she enjoyed it, like women.  No, she saw it as her "duty".  Like sex.
One of I painful duties.

Still, we were off the farm.  Some nights I came out to Bob and myself
a good time in bed, though I was already with him too.  Good looks
don't wear awfully well if the I a slob.

He couldn't get steady work.  He started to drink more, "the guys".  It
occurred to me then that I could do better.  only Elaine wasn't stuck
at home all the time--"home" b squalid, tiny apartment--with her
bawling brats.

She refused to name the first one after Bob.  Shi wouldn't.  She didn't
quite know why, though I did.  She n the second one Bob.

After big Bob went away to war I got very restless, though he was, he
was something to go to bed with.  I was relieved by his departure and
also grateful for the woman that came in.  She rented a small house to
have more space, felt increasingly trapped.

Some nights I would sneak out and go to one of the hotel bars where I
could meet men.  These were usually older men, but some of them knew
how to have a good time.  Travelling salesmen, you know.  I went to
their rooms.  I never gave them my address.

I always crept home before dawn though.  Elaine would have had a
serious fit of the vapors if she had even woken up beside a strange old
man.  (Once she did--but later was persuaded that it was another of her
weird dreams.  I took over that fast.) I was usually finished with the
man after one night.  There wasn't one that I wanted to meet again, and
I didn't usually ask them for money.  It was an equal exchange.  A
"brief encounter".

But we had some close calls.  One of the men spotted Elaine downtown on
the street one day and spoke to her in a jocular way.  "Lenore," he
said, "I've been looking all over hell's half acre for you since I hit
town again.  Where the hell have you been?"  Or something like that.
Elaine just stared at him with her usual hostile expression (I think
she was amazed at his obvious mistake of identity and thought he was
probably drunk) and then walked right on.  He stopped dead in his
tracks.

And some months later, somebody from our street must have seen me
coming out of a bar with a man one night, because Elaine began to get
peculiar looks from her neighbors; several of the women stopped
speaking to her on the street.  She thought that they looked down on
her because she was from the country and poor.  I just thought it was
funny that she, of all people, should be regarded as a scarlet woman.

But then something much more sinister began to happen.  After we had
lived in that house for a while, I became aware of somebody else
influencing Elaine.  I could hear her, or at first I thought maybe it
was "them", in bits and pieces.  She called herself Lilith.  She
was--is--literally, a murderous bitch.  I was appalled by her.  I
thought Elaine must be about to crack up.  I may be lazy and
irresponsible, and could never be a parent, but I never wanted to kill
those children.  No, that was Lilith's suggestion.  She had a one-track
mind about it.  She hated those boys.  Not to mention most everybody
else.

Hell, I just wanted to have a good time.

ELLIE:

Why have you been so long?

LILITH: There's something that needs to be killed.

ARLEN:

It was necessary to rearrange things.  To restore some degree of order.
Especially after Elaine became my instrument.  So I began to reason
with them all.  Lilith would have to learn to direct her aggression
into the business.  (Eventually she was appeased by the death of Bob.
That pleased her greatly--she hated him so.) Ellie would have to begin
to grow up, to transform her pain into insight and compassion.  Both of
them could be very useful to Madam Eleanor.  I pointed this out to
them--they were part of a team.  They could serve her well.

And Lenore?  Oddly, she was the most difficult to persuade, though she
has remarkable life-energy.  Elaine is so very repressed in the sexual
area that the two find it almost impossible to communicate.  Elaine
still blames Lenore for many of her early troubles; Lenore feels that
Elaine ruined her life.

I've dealt with Lenore largely by channeling her to my own use.  I
don't allow her "out" into the world now, but some of her speaks
through me.

LENORE:

It's a strange existence I lead now, after my earlier "flings".

I remember especially the time Elaine broke down in a panic when that
fat old bitch Mrs.  Ramsay fired her.  I took over completely for
days.

I spent those days picking up men and taking them back to

the house.  I told the kids to eat peanut butter sandwiches and stay
out of my way.  I made enough money to pay the rent for a couple of
months.  The children, of course, wondered what the hell I was doing
with these strange men behind my locked bedroom door, but they were too
young to have any real idea.  I'm sure they forgot all about it after a
while.  But they were very strange with Elaine when she returned.
Served her right for being so helpless.

There was one further time that I got out.  That was when Elaine went
to Toronto for the day to get new furnishings for the attic.  She had
seen everything that interested her, made her purchases, and arranged
for the things to be sent, all by mid afternoon.  She was a little
tired and her guard was down.  She went to a movie, which bored her and
she dozed off.

I headed immediately for the nearest bar I could find on Yonge Street.
We had never been to Toronto before, and I thought I'd like to see what
kind of time people had there.  It was getting toward the cocktail
hour.  It had been a long time since I'd been able to enjoy a drink
properly.

There was a guy on a stool at the bar who started eyeing me right away.
He was cute and, a snappy dresser.  I looked right back at him.  After
a while he came over to my table.

"Mind if I join you?  Ladies shouldn't drink all alone.  Especially
pretty ladies."

"If a gentleman is a gentleman and behaves himself," I said, "I don't
mind a bit of company."

"Oh, I'm a gent all right," he said.  He had a twinkle in his eye that
I liked right away.  In fact, after we had talked a bit, I thought I
liked him as well as any man I'd ever met.  I felt I'd always known
him.  I began to wonder if I couldn't somehow manage to stay in Toronto
for a while.  I was a bit giddy with daring, after my long
confinement.

I told him I was on vacation and wanted to see the big English city.  I
said I was from Quebec.  I said I was half-French.

"I was there once," he said.  Then he said he was a travelling salesman
for a big American firm.  I didn't believe a word of it.

I thought it was delicious that we were each telling the other made-up
stories.

I was attracted to him.  I love good-humored men, even if they are
con-artists, which is exactly what I thought he was.  And I half-sensed
there was something else about him.

"Well," he said eventually, "why don't you have dinner with me?  We're
both alone and at loose ends.  Why stand on ceremony?  Why don't we
stroll over to my place for a drink first?  I'll show you my etchings.
Just kidding.  Hey, I might even cook dinner for you myself.  I'm an
excellent chef, you know.  Really I am."

"I'm sure," I drawled lazily.  I was sure he had issued this invitation
many times.  And probably with fair success.

"A fellow gets lonely, you know," he said coaxingly.  "In the big, cold
city."

Something like a distant memory was flickering now, just under the
surface of my amused response to all these corny words.  I think it was
the word "lonely" in particular that triggered a faint echo.  There was
some sadness there that I wanted immediately to put away from me.  A
nagging hint of something not right.  But I didn't want to know about
it just then.

"All right," I said.  "I don't mind."

It was a short walk.  It was very enjoyable, after a couple of drinks,
to walk the streets on a gentleman's arm, and to look at the crowds of
people hurrying home from work or hurrying to their favorite bars or
maybe to meet their lovers.  I liked the big city, I decided.  I could
live here.  It got kind of glamorous as the blue twilight came on.

He had a small apartment on Isabella Street.  It was poky but clean.  I
was surprised that he kept it so neat.  I told him so.

"Yeah?  Oh well, that's just ..."  And he hesitated.

"A lady?"  I said, arching my eyebrows.

"No, no.  A friend.  I've just moved in, you see.  He's left all his
stuff till he comes back to town.  He kept the place very neat."

"Oh," I said, smiling so he would know that I didn't believe

him.  I was sure he had a woman who must be away.  But I didn't care.

He made us drinks, gin and tonic, and we sipped them as we sat on the
old chesterfield.

"You know?  You look familiar," I said.  I'm not sure why.  I thought
maybe he looked a little like some movie star.  Alan Ladd maybe.

"I can get very familiar," he said, smiling his twinkly smile.  And
then he put his arm around me.  We were already sitting close together,
so it was reasonable for him to assume that this was the next step.

We kissed.  Then we kissed again.  Very hard.  His tongue working away
inside me.

When we had disentangled a little he said, "You know, I'm really
attracted to you.  You're special, a very special lady.  Everything
about you seems right for me."

I felt just the same about him.  It was physical, all right, but it was
more than that.  After we had necked a little more, I excused myself to
go to his bathroom.  Those several drinks were getting to me; Elaine
had skipped lunch.

When I had relieved myself I checked out my appearance in the mirror. I
looked good, I thought.  I had rearranged my hair earlier in the
ladies' room at the movie theater so as not to look like Elaine.

I took off my (really Elaine's) dress then and hung it on the back of
the door.  I looked at myself in my white slip.  I was stimulated by
the sight of myself that way.  I wanted him to be wild for me.  I
wanted to excite him as much as possible.  It gave me a sense of my own
power.

I went back along the hall to the doorway into the living room.  I
leaned against the doorframe like a whore.  He was sprawled on the
sofa.  The very picture of an indolent rake.  I loved it.

And then I saw him.  I mean I really saw him for the first time.  I
recognized him.

I was frightened, frightened half to death.  Didn't he know

me?  I turned and retreated hastily to the bathroom and quickly,
clumsily put the dress back on.

No, he doesn't know.  He'd kill me if he did.  How am I going to get
out of here?  I thought.

I couldn't tell if he had seen me because his eyes were nearly closed.
He was smiling lazily, sure of what was going to come.

He had changed.  Such self-confidence--no wonder he had seemed both
strange and familiar.  I was glad in a way--for him.  But I knew him
now all right.  Enough to be frightened of him.  Of the past.

I crept down the hall as quietly as I could, then past the open doorway
without looking in.  I raced to the door of his apartment, opened it.
Then into the main hall, and finally out of the building.  I walked
away as fast as I could manage in high heels.  Around the first corner,
hoping he had not followed, had not seen me.  I didn't dare turn back
to look.

I wanted Elaine to deal with the rest of the day.

LYLE:

Do you want to know a secret?

I have scored with, well, at a conservative estimate, hundreds of
women.  And yet, the one who most powerfully turned me on, who moved me
sexually more than any other woman I have ever met before or since, was
one of the few who got away.

Isn't that a bitch?  Not that I'm complaining.  I've certainly had my
share, and more, of getting laid in this life.  But, this woman was so
.. . special.  I can't explain it.  She wasn't beautiful.  I've had far
better looking chicks.  She was .. . enticing.  Not just that either--I
felt we really had something extraordinary together, something that was
just for each other.  I suppose that's the thing that makes people get
married.  Christ, I might even have married her.  If you can imagine.

It was only a couple of hours.  You can laugh, if you like, but I still
believe it was real.  It was the most real thing I've ever known.

I met her in a bar.  She said her name was Lenore; that she was French.
I took her to my place, she was more than agreeable.  She had this
incredibly inviting smile.  It made me think she must know everything
there is to know about making love.  Women like that are rare birds,
believe me.

In the apartment she commented on how neat everything was.  "Oh, that's
just Laird," I started to say (I felt that close to her), but I caught
myself in time.  So then she thought that I must have a girlfriend. But
she shrugged it off.  I had lots of girlfriends, of course, but she
knew, and I knew, that that didn't matter at all to what we could
have.

We made out for a while on the sofa.  She had too much class to be in a
hurry.  We savored each kiss.

When she went to the bathroom, I lay back on the sofa.  I half-closed
my eyes.  I felt really good.  I thought she must be preparing herself
for me.  I was going to make love to her like nobody ever had or would
again.  Repeatedly.  She was going to love it, and beg for more and
more.

I glimpsed her through my half-closed eyes in the doorway.  She stood
there in her slip, her silk stockings and heels.  She had marvelous
long legs.  It was incredibly sexy.  Ah, I thought, this is too
perfect.

Then she left again.  I thought that she had forgotten something.  Some
little detail that was important to her, to a woman.  Perfume perhaps.
I loved her for this French vanity.

I closed my eyes and saw her again leaning there in the doorway in her
tight white slip.  Her brown hair down to her shoulders, her breasts
and hips prominently outlined.  She was more than merely beautiful.

But something had gone wrong.  I waited.  And waited.  I felt then,
suddenly, that I was alone.  I got up and went into the hall.  The
bathroom door was open, the room was empty.  Then I turned and saw that
the apartment door was open too.  I raced out into the street.

Nobody.  No body there,

I ran all the way to the bar where we had met.  People on the street
swore at me.  Of course she wasn't there either.  But I

couldn't think where else to look.  I didn't even know her last name.
And she had said she lived in Quebec City.

Was she just a tease?  A bit crazy?  Or did she chicken out at the last
minute?  I'll probably never know, but I don't believe it was any of
those things.  No.  It was something else.  I'll never know what it
was.

But because of it, I missed what would--I'm sure of this-have been the
most complete sexual experience of my life.  I've never been the same
since.  I've never been quite as carefree as I once was.  And I won't
be either.  At least, not till I find her again.

AL ANA

Sometimes, in those early days, I went to bars.  There was one in
particular--on Yonge Street--that drew me for some reason.  I had a
persistent fantasy that it was there that I was destined to meet this
travelling salesman who would become the important man in my life.  He
would be very English, or maybe Irish, to balance my Frenchness.  He
would be like my brother Lyle, only smoother and more sophisticated.
Lyle is a bit of a rough diamond.

Well, I met men all right.  Lots of men.  But never my dream lover.
Never my golden one.  Only impostors made of clay.

Sometimes I think I've loved my twin brother too much.  It's kept me
from really loving any other man.

LAIRD:

After high school I got a job in Toronto.  I didn't like to leave
Mother and Father alone there on the farm--they were both getting
on--but the place wasn't a workable proposition anymore.  I thought I
could help them more if I got a decent job.

I worked for a few years in a shoe factory as a shipping clerk.  That
way I could send them money every month.  And I went to visit as often
as I could manage.  On Thanksgiving weekend and at Christmas always.
But they were getting old, and it was

all rather sad there.  Elaine never communicated with them at all.  She
was completely estranged.  They said they didn't want to see her again.
I considered trying to find her, but whenever I tried to think of what
I could say to her, I couldn't face it.  She was a wife and mother now
and had her own life.  She had made her bed.  She was weak.

And my mother had not forgiven her.  She had unalterable standards.  My
mother had suffered a great deal in her life.  She was getting terribly
worn, even though she was younger than my father.  He was still as
tough and unyielding as ever.  I knew that she would die first, as she
eventually did.  Years later.

I wish now that I had met Pearl before that happened.  I think she
would have been a comfort to my mother.  Her life was so sad.

I sprang forth, full-grown, one spring day in 1942.  Laird was having a
terrible time with severe asthma attacks.  He had been hospitalized
twice.  Before that he had been refused for military service.  He felt
very guilty about this--the sap.  He suffered through sleepless
asthmatic nights sometimes and then missed whole days of work.  He
would sleep most of the day.  On one such day in April of 1942 I was
born.  I felt fine.  I've always enjoyed exceptionally good health
(give or take a mild dose or two).  I was twenty-two years old, as he
was.  I was aware of him from the beginning but knew nothing at first
about his background.  I picked up bits and pieces of it from him
later, but I always tried to sleep right through his appallingly boring
and dreary visits to his old parents.

I realized at once that I had to seize my chance at life, that I had to
seize every opportunity that he inadvertently allowed me.  I couldn't
let him know I was there, that would alarm him too much, it would spoil
everything.  I knew these things instinctively.  I was born knowing
them.

I got out of bed and got dressed.  (I'm going to have to buy some
better duds than these, I thought.) I went out--that first,

or those first days--to explore the city.  I liked what I saw.
Everything hummed and buzzed during the war years.  There were a lot of
extra women, loose women, around.  I saw that I could have a really
good time.

Laird, of course, did without till he got married.  He was a virgin.
His mother had impressed upon him that sex before marriage (and almost
certainly after it too) was one of life's great evils.  That woman was
beyond belief.

Yeah, I started having a good time right away.  While Laird worked hard
to keep us, and went without.  It was years and years before he got
married.

Whenever Laird was down with his ailments I'd go out to bars and
lounges.  I brought ladies back to our place.  Sometimes pretty shady
ladies.  They taught me a lot.  They didn't charge me either.  There
weren't a lot of young guys around.

At first I was a bit careless.  I'd forget to clear away little
evidences of this or that female in the apartment.  Cigarette butts
with lipstick on them.  Traces of perfume on the pillow.

And once Laird was shocked to find a used safe in the bathroom; I'd
meant to flush it down the toilet.  All these things confused him, but
fortunately for me he couldn't face up to the implications.  He would
throw the offending article in the garbage and then within a day he
would have managed to forget about it.  He didn't want to know about
it.  And I grew more careful about covering my tracks.

One day I almost ran smack into Laird's boss on Yonge Street.  Laird
was supposed to be home, sick in bed, of course.  The boss may have
been taking a little time off for not entirely respectable reasons of
his own, for all I know.  At any rate he didn't see me there in the
crowd. And dressed in my clothes (which I hid from Laird in the back of
our closet), I looked quite different from him.  Nobody who knew Laird
could imagine him behaving the way I did.  People who don't remember
how he looks remember me.

Sometimes a girl would phone, though I told them not to.  "Don't phone
me, I'll be phoning you."  I wasn't in the book, of course, but some of
these forward broads had the wit to

copy the number off the phone.  Laird would tell them they must have
given the operator the wrong number when they phoned.  If a girl came
round to the door--which happened only once or twice, since this was
something even the most rough-edged girl just didn't do in those
days--he thought she was a whore looking for business, so he would tell
her, in his polite and distant way, to get lost.  Each time, the chick
was so offended by this cool treatment that she never came back.

After Laird left the farm I lost track of things for a long time.  I
guess I slept.  I had thought that it was great that we were getting
away from the creeps, I was all for it.

But the city didn't suit me somehow.  I found all that activity scary.
I felt my energy running away day by day, like water from a drying
summer stream.  It only really came back in strength when we were
visiting the old folks on the goddamned farm.  What a joke.  I hated it
when Laird fawned and fussed over the ungrateful old bastards.  What
did they ever give us except pain?

I slept a lot.  It seems as if I slept for years.  Until that morning
when I woke up and found myself in bed with a strange broad.  A
horse-faced woman with no tits snoring there beside me.

That was how I found out Laird had got married.  Right away, I wanted
to kill her.

It was her gentleness that I noticed, that I remembered.  Her paleness
and her gentleness.  She was perfectly named: Pearl.

She was the quintessence of sympathy.  She saw at once how sad I was.
My mother had recently died.  My father had gone a bit strange
afterwards--I mean strange even for him--and refused to see
anyone--even me.  He was a complete hermit from then on.

I found a new job and Pearl was my new boss's sister.  He had

invited me to dinner with his family.  I could see right away that she
was the kind of girl who was too refined for the superficial people
around her to appreciate.  She wasn't fashionable.  She didn't try to
look like an advertisement.

She told me I had sad eyes.  She was sad herself, I saw, but I knew
that she was not completely defeated.  She was resigned to being
treated as an unmarriageable spinster.  She reminded me of some of my
schoolfellows' unmarried aunts who spent their lives in menial tasks on
farms.  As servants, really.

She has the palest, most delicate skin I have ever seen.

AL:

Instead I went out, leaving her there asleep.  I wanted to find a whore
and fuck her silly.  Fuck her until it hurt her to even try to get up
again and walk.

Later, of course, I found that he had married the frump just to get in
good with his boss.

LAIRD:

I asked her to go to the museum with me on Saturday but we hardly
looked at the exhibits, we talked so much.  We had both been there
often before.

We told each other all about our lives.  We agreed we'd had our share
of difficulties but that life could still be meaningful and fulfilling.
She was a very serious girl.  I think I realized on our first date that
before long I would ask her to marry me.

I had never before known such a generous sympathy.  My mother was good,
was perhaps even a saint.  She had taught me the difference between
right and wrong.  I loved her and revered her.  But her life had been
so hard that she found it difficult to demonstrate her love for her
children.  She gave us an invaluable iron discipline instead.  She was
a martyr-saint.

But Pearl was affectionate, loving.  All she had needed, all this time,
was someone who could appreciate it.  Only her poverty and her orphaned
state during the Depression years

had prevented her from becoming a nurse.  She'd been unlucky, like so
many.  Her brother was the one who managed to get some education.  He
had supported her, though now he had a wife and children as well.

We grew steadily closer.  It was Fate, if such a thing indeed exists.
The day of our marriage was one of the two happiest days of my life.

The other came two years later.  When I first saw our daughter, Cecily,
I thought that I was going to faint from joy.  And I was even more
overjoyed for Pearl than for myself.  She had thought that she was
probably too old to carry a child successfully.

Live and let live, I always say.  Now, I won't pretend that I was
especially pleased when Laird got himself married, and then, to top it
off, fathered a kid.  But what the hell.  I mean, the poor bastard
ought to get something out of life.  It was what he wanted.  And he
loved it.

I'll admit it severely cramped my style for a time.  But I'm
resourceful, I know how to look after number one.  I found reasons for
him to take business trips for the firm.  That is, I would propose them
to the boss when I could, and then he would come back after thinking
about it and instruct Laird to undertake them.  (He liked Laird, and
favored him--mainly because Laird had taken his dog of a sister off his
hands.) This sometimes confused Laird, since he didn't remember
discussing the matter before, but he was never given to self
examination or to the questioning of life's little mysteries.  He
doesn't like to admit that there are strange gaps in his memory.  There
is a lot in life that he simply does not want to know.

No.  I wasn't all that unhappy about the turn of events in his life.  I
can always manage.

It was Al who was upset.  Upset---furious is more like it.  Like an
erupting volcano.  A murderous rage.

Unfortunately, he began to replace me during some of those trips to
Montreal and other cities.  He'd get into fights and maul

women in bars.  Once he got going I couldn't stop him till he'd had his
"satisfaction"--usually with a whore--and then collapsed again.  I
found myself apologizing to more than one very frightened girl for
being so rough.  I was proud, though, of the fact that I could
sometimes persuade them right back into the sack again.  And make them
happy too.

After all, Dr.  Jekyll is finally a better lover than Mr.  Hyde, or the
Wolfman.  Not to mention Jack the Ripper.

AL ANA

Al frightens my brother, though he doesn't like to admit it.  When he's
frightened, sometimes I come out.

It can be awkward for a girl to be wearing men's clothes.

But sometimes when I've got a day or more to myself-when she's visiting
her favorite cousin in Kingston--I try on Pearl's dresses and sweaters.
They look good on me.  I fill them out better than she can, poor
thing.

I dress carefully.  Then I go out to dimly lit bars looking for my
dream-man, my elusive lover.

AL:

I asked her if she wanted to go someplace else.  We can't talk here, I
said.  It's too damn noisy.

All right, she said.

We went out into the parking lot.  The cool September air felt good on
my face.  It was hot inside.

The stars were all out.

Mm, she said.  That's better.

My car's over there, I said.

And we walked toward the darkest corner of the parking lot.  It was the
one farthest from the street and the streetlight.  I didn't have a car
there.  There was nobody else around.  It was perfect.  I was feeling
pretty good.

She took my arm.  "I like to hold on to a gentleman," she said.  This
reminded me of something, though I wasn't sure

I mind most for Pearl.  And Cecily.  She shouldn't have to be without a
father.  She's still quite young.  It's bound to damage her.

Pearl didn't ask for this.  She deserves, she has always deserved, so
much better.  There's no justice.  Look at what goes on here.  It's all
a mockery.  All chance.  Completely blind chance.

I'm glad now my mother's dead.  She can't hear me say that there's no
justice and no God.

Nobody is truly innocent, of course.  We are all guilty of being human.
Animal.  All damned, except for grace--that was how my mother put it.

But I, Allen Laird Carter, am not guilty of the offence for which I was
placed here.

My mother would, I know, say that apparent injustice is sent to try us,
to test us.  To test our faith and our fortitude.  Our manhood even. To
prepare us.  That after the trials of Job, God blessed him.

But if I am being tested and prepared for some great future service to
God and man, I truly cannot discern it.

Why should you?  my mother would ask scornfully.  Why should we be told
ahead of time what He purposes?

I'm sorry.  I cannot believe it.  I fail the test.  It is all blind
chance.  The world runs along on force and greed.

/ don't matter much.  I never did.  I could never have changed the
world.  But Pearl.  She is good.  She deserves better.

I've tried not to think of her, but I can't help it.  Lately I think of
nothing else.

At least she has Cecily to occupy her.  To love.  And Cecily has her.
That's something.

When she comes to see me, when we talk, I want to cry.  I guess I've
ruined her life.

She believes in me.  She is the only one who knows that I am innocent.
Delaney doesn't, really, though he's good to me.  She is doing all she
can (though I know she will fail).

She knows what love knows.  Love knows what mere "evidence" cannot
describe.  Love is infallible sight.  I still believe in love.

Pearl, if I died, would you understand?  I think you would because you
understand me with the eyes of love.  And just because of that, because
of you, I can't die.  Not yet.

TEN

Herb's downtown office was pleasant.  It had bookcases, comfortable
chairs, no desk (since he thought that this might recall intimidating
authority-figures from the past), quiet but colorful landscape prints
on the off-white walls, and a large window that afforded a view of the
lake in all weathers.  Often the lake was dotted with sailboats.  His
patients found this room soothing.

The nervous woman who sat near him now was not a patient, however.  It
was obvious that she was finding the interview distressing.  She had
trouble articulating her thoughts at first.  Herb spoke to her as
reassuringly as he could.

"You realize, though," he was saying, "that my opinion as to his legal
guilt or innocence is completely separate from my desire to help him
overcome his chronic depression."

"Yes, yes.  I appreciate that," said Pearl Carter, her hands clasped
together as if to keep them from trembling.  "But he is innocent,
Doctor.  Believe me.  I know it."

"I respect your feelings about that very much," said Herb.  "But if I
am to understand his character, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you
some difficult, perhaps even offensive questions."

She was a thin woman of about forty years of age.  She was physically
plain but there was something attractive about her evident sincerity.
Laird's belief in her simple goodness and integrity seemed fully
justified.  It made Herb sad to contemplate her dignified suffering. 
She wore a well-tailored gray skirt and jacket with a pale pink blouse.
 Her hair had gone gray in places.

"I understand that," she said slowly.  "I suppose you want to know
about our .. . marital relations."

"Yes.  I think you see why that's necessary.  But I have in mind also
any occasional strangeness, peculiarity, moodiness, or any odd
departures from his usual behavior."

"Oh, that's not difficult to answer," she said at once--a little too
quickly, Herb thought.  "He's as steady and even and reliable as the
rock of Gibraltar.  Sad, sometimes, I'll admit, but always steady.
Naturally he's rather depressed now, but who wouldn't be, under the
circumstances?"

Herb could not believe that she had never, even once, noticed anything
strange about Carter's behavior.  But he would have to probe this
matter carefully, watching for words, for stories, that might give
something away.

"You had normal and frequent marital relations?"  he asked.

"Oh yes.  Completely normal, I'm sure.  I'm not"--here she blushed a
little--"an experienced woman, and he was certainly never what you
would call a lady's man.  We were just an ordinary couple, a bit slow I
suppose, who loved each other and wanted a child before it was too
late."

"I understand that, from what he's told me.  Do you regard sex, then,
as being mainly for the procreation of children?  Or can it be pleasant
and rewarding in itself?  I'm sorry, but I have to ask this, fairly
bluntly."

"It's all right," said Pearl.  "I'll answer, even though I think these
matters should normally remain private, between husband and wife.  But
the situation isn't normal, is it?  I believe that sex is a natural and
good expression of affection between man and wife.  That's what it was
for us.  It certainly didn't cease after we had a child."

"You've anticipated my next question there."  She was not
unintelligent, he thought.

"Did he ever make demands on you that you thought excessive or
unreasonable?"

"Never," she said shortly.

"Did he drink at all?"

"No.  Well.  Once in a while in the first year or two.  But then he
gave it up.  Completely."

"Are you a teetotaler?"

"I used to take a little wine sometimes with dinner before I was
married.  On special occasions.  But I've never missed it."

"I see.  Do you know if Laird drank at all when he was away from
home?"

"I doubt it.  Or if he did, probably not very much.  He went on
business trips, but he had work to do.  I suppose he must have had the
occasional drink with a buyer, but not in the kind of place that ..."
She stopped.  Perhaps she felt she had said too much.

"You mean the place where the crime is supposed to have taken place?"

"Yes.  That's simply not the kind of place where Laird would ever
go."

"I see.  Did he ever have trouble recalling his actions?  The police
said that he was vague about where he had been that night."

She looked distressed again.

"I'm sorry.  I don't want to upset you."

"He may have been in the same neighborhood," she said.

"Could he sometimes not account for times when he was out?"  Herb
persisted.

"He was absent-minded sometimes."

"He never came home a little tipsy and looking for a good time?"

She blushed in earnest now.

"Well," she said, "I'm glad you warned me about the kind of questions
you were going to ask."

"Did he?"

She straightened her back.  "There were," she said coolly, "one or two
such incidents early in our marriage.  When he wasn't quite
himself--when he made jokes and .. . suggestions.  But I discouraged
them gently.  I wouldn't sleep with

him when he was like that.  With liquor on his breath, I mean.  So he
gave it up.  There, I've said it--it's the worst I can say.  But this
was so long ago.  It wasn't a problem that persisted after our earliest
days.  I think the drinking and the lewd suggestions about .. . things
I might do with him were all just a nervous reaction to being married
so late.  It was a great adjustment-for both of us.  But we were mostly
happy."

Was it Lyle, Herb wondered, drunk enough to fancy a tumble with Laird's
homely wife?  He would have to ask him.

"So you don't think it's possible that he went looking for that kind of
experience elsewhere?  I mean, when he wasn't quite himself?"  It was a
brutal question, he knew.

"No.  I couldn't believe that."

Couldn't, And what about Al?  Had she never met Al?

"And he was never physically threatening--even on those few occasions
when he was a little drunk?"

"No.  Never.  That's completely inconceivable.  He is a gentle man."

Her tone was almost too definite.  Was she protesting too much?  This
was, of course, what she had to say.  And if Al had in fact ever
appeared to her, she would have had, perhaps, to block that memory
out.

"I've upset you enough for one day, I think," he said kindly.  "Thank
you for being patient and brave, and answering such nasty but, I'm
afraid, necessary questions."

"Can I go now?"

"Of course."

"I hope that you will see that he is innocent," she said at the door.
She was clutching her handbag nervously, as if she hoped it could
protect her from disaster.  But she looked determined.

"I do," he said, "believe that Laird is innocent."  Al is the one, he
added mentally, who committed the rape.

"Thank you," she said.

When she was gone, Herb was a little depressed.  How could he ever tell
her of the "other" Carters?  And even if he could explain, what good
would it do this woman and her young

daughter?  Even if he could, miraculously, put Humpty Dumpty together,
what would that psychiatric feat do for Pearl?  An integrated
Carter--whether freed from prison or not--almost certainly would not be
the husband of this woman.

No.  Pearl Carter, one of life's unfortunates, was the victim of a
situation she could never have imagined or foreseen.  Though he might
make medical history, she would still be one of the losers.

Early in the interview he had asked her about Carter's parents.

"I never met them.  They were dead."

They.  That was what he had told her.  But mightn't the father still be
alive?

"He's here now," said Joe Crack.  "The young one.  The boy friend."

"Show him in."

The windowless bare room seemed itself to be empty of identity or
character.  Its very neutrality and drabness had perhaps facilitated
Carter's metamorphoses.  In the heart of the prison, this emptiness was
a mirror.

The boy had a kind of insolent swagger.  An air of bravado.  Herb was
fairly sure that this had developed since he had been ; here.

He was slim, not particularly tall.  Perhaps a little taller than
Carter.  He was nice enough looking but would not stand out much among
his peers at university.  Only here was he the belle of the ball.  He
lounged in the chair.  His attitude was not unlike Lyle's.

"Do you mind if I smoke?"  he said.

"Not at all," said Herb.

"You don't," he said then, "really think I'm crazy, do you, j Doc?"

"No," said Herb.  "But you're a close friend of Carter's.  I want to
know about him."

As Herb expected, the boy looked sullen and defensive then.

"He's a bit strange, I'll admit," he said at last.  "But he's my only
friend here."

"I appreciate that.  I'm trying to help him.  But how is he strange?"

"He's moody.  He runs to such extremes.  Either he's depressed, or he's
joking and horsing around, or he's punching somebody out.  It's only
sensible to keep on the good side of him.  You never know exactly how
he's going to be from day to day.  I don't suppose he's really crazy,
though--just moody."

"You know he's in for rape."

"He says he's innocent.  Some easy lay had it in for him afterwards. He
also loves his wife, he says.  But at other times he talks about all
the chicks he's had.  He says when we get out we'll pick up women
together."

"Do you think maybe he's sexually confused?"

The boy looked upset.  Then angry.  "Have you ever been in jail?"  he
asked bitterly.  "It doesn't make you a model of emotional balance,
believe me.  In here, I think everybody is sexually confused."

"You say he's moody.  Would you say that there are several Carters?"

"That's one way of putting it, I suppose."

Maybe I'm crazy, thought Herb, if nobody else can see it.

"What do you call him?"

"Carter.  Everybody calls him Carter.  I don't even remember his other
name.  If I ever knew it."

"You call him Carter even when .. . you're alone together?"

The boy actually blushed.  "Yeah," he said belligerently, as if daring
the doctor to call him a liar.

"How does he think he's going to get out of here?"

"He thinks his wife will get his case reopened.  It's not too
realistic, I guess."

"How do you feel about that?  How do you feel about him?"

"I don't know," said Ken simply.  This seemed to Herb to be perfectly
sincere.  The boy was serious now, his bravado had evaporated.

"You won't be together much longer."

"No.  Sometimes I think when I'm gone I'll wonder if I really knew any
such person.  Especially after I'm out and back to ... normal.  It's a
different world here, believe me.  Once is enough.  I'm sure I'll never
see him again.  But, you know, there've been .. . moments, you know,
that I think maybe I'll always remember.  Isn't that weird?"

"But you'd like to move on from it, from them."

"Yeah."

"Good," said Herb.  "I think that's exactly the way you should feel."
He was pleased at this.  Ken would not suffer like Pearl.  He still had
a life ahead of him.

"It's odd," said Ken then.  "I've studied history and philosophy, you
know.  Believe it or not.  But I never realized that there would be
moments, crazy moments, I guess, that would have absolutely nothing to
do with the rest of my life.  I don't even know how I know that's so,
but I do.  I mean, I know I've been living some parallel or tangential
life here.  A detour.  A detour from my real .. . destiny."

Then he stopped, embarrassed.  Probably he thought Herb might find this
expression sophomoric.

"There are always other lives," said Herb, to show that he understood,
"that we might have lived.  Other lives and other selves."

"Exactly," said Ken the college kid.

"Lou, am I crazy?"

"No," said Lou.  And he chuckled a little, like a tolerant professor.

"When I read my notes from the last session," said Herb, "I think maybe
I must be.  Listen.

"Alana has agreed that she ought to be fused with Lyle, that she is
part of him.  But she has a nagging suspicion that there's

more to it than that.  Lyle, for his part, has acknowledged her
existence.  That's a big step forward for him.  But he refuses to
acknowledge any responsibility for Al and Laird.  He says they are
opposite sides of the same coin, which is true, I think.  But he is
stubbornly someone else.  He refuses responsibility for them."

"Exactly," said Lou.  "That's why he exists.  He doesn't share their
childhood."

"So I should explain to him just why he exists.  To ... transcend their
limitations.  Their background.  Do what they can't do."

"Exactly."

"Can't you tell him?"

"Not as effectively as you.  But I will help.  I will influence
Lyle."

"Alliejust cries a lot.  But Al is becoming more aware of him.  This is
the link to Laird, of course--the common ancestor.  Because Allie must
be the original--who split very early on into Laird, momma's good boy,
and Al, who was delegated to take all the pain the parents dished out.
Laird didn't want to know about that--he wanted to go on loving his
mother.  But Al wants revenge endlessly because he thinks Laird did
that to him."

"That's essentially correct," said Lou.

"Allie is the original.  But then--who in hell are you'?"

"What a way," said Lou, "of putting it."

Whoever or whatever he was, Lou was an excellent therapist.  He
understood all the others as if he was some sort of all-wise observer.
A regulator perhaps or an umpire--who had been dormant for a very long
time.  Together he and Herb were now making some progress in the task
of acquainting the various parts of Carter with one another.  It was a
unique encounter group.

"In certain circumstances," Herb surmised aloud, "even further
personalities could develop."

"Yes," said Lou.  "To meet new circumstances.  The process could go on
forever."

"Where is the farm?"  asked Herb.  "It's in the mind.  Now ..."  "But
where is it in the world?"

Now Alice had gone off sex.  Abruptly.  And totally.  After those few
weeks when she had seemed insatiable.  This was the drought that
followed the rainy season, thought Herb.  She seemed depressed all the
time now.  He did not understand her.  When I have time, he thought,
I'll talk to her.  When I've got the Carter thing more in hand.

When he thought the time was ripe, Herb invited a few colleagues whom
he respected to observe Carter under hypnosis.

By now it had become easy to summon any of Carter's disparate selves.
These, if handled adroitly, were all too eager to discuss themselves
and the good and bad features of their individual lives.  They were now
also willing to discuss their growing awareness of one another.

Herb's friends were astonished.  They had to agree that if Carter was a
fake, an actor, he was an impressive one.  And still an extraordinary
psychological phenomenon.  Like Herb, they wanted immediately to
consult such literature as there was on past cases of dual or multiple
personality.

At the second of these sessions Laird, Al, Lyle, Allie, and Alana
responded, each in his own individual style, to every question that the
assembled psychiatrists could think to put to them.  Again, they were
impressed.  They began to propound various theories.  But they
recognized that the case was Herb's.

Then Herb brought Carter back into the room and called on Lou.  He had
deliberately been withholding him thus far.  Lou spoke so brilliantly
of the dynamics that had created his fellow-Carters that he caused a
new consternation in his listeners.

The most skeptical was Tom Briars, an eminent Freudian from Montreal.
He raised two disparate objections in a private meeting with Herb.

"Haven't you thought," he said to him, "that you yourself may be
inducing these .. . states of mind:"

"I have thought of that," said Herb.

"Transference can take strange forms," cautioned Briars.  "A disturbed
or even a relatively normal individual is quite capable, in my
experience, of producing what, instinctively and unconsciously, he
knows the doctor wants to hear.  Of course, the doctor's expectations
may be unconscious too.  Is there any objective basis or evidence for
the stories you've been told?"

"I mean to investigate that," said Herb.

"I should hope so.  You may--forgive me for suggesting it, but you are
trained to know this--be projecting some otherwise deeply repressed
bogeymen of your own on this poor fellow."

"Yes, I know.  But I really believe that with Lou, at any rate, there
is no transference.  He instructs me.  He tells me where I am--because
of my own preconceptions--wrong about Carter."

"That's difficult for me to credit," said Briars.  "That's heresy.  And
who is this Lou?  The other functions or emotions-personified as Al,
Lyle, etc.--are fairly easy to identify.  Is he some sort of
superego?"

"I suppose," said Herb slowly, "though not in the Freudian sense.  I
think ..."  And he stopped for a moment.  "I think he may be Carter's
capacity, his potential even, for self-repair."

"And what if Carter is only a very very clever faker?"  asked Tom
Briars.  "Lou's high intelligence is manifest."

"Only?"  asked Herb.

"What if we have here a brilliant but disturbed actor who has hit upon
a complex and highly inventive scheme to get himself released on the
grounds that, when split into fragments, he was legally insane--a
notoriously vague concept, as we know--and thus not responsible for his
actions?"

"Wouldn't such a person," Herb asked, "necessarily be psychotic?"

"Isn't the actor," returned Briars, "who succeeds for a while in losing
his usual self in a 'role' already functioning as a 'multiple
personality'?"

Most of Herb's colleagues agreed that Carter's further progress toward
self-integration would be an extremely important and revealing process.
They wanted further opportunities to observe it.  They agreed that when
the time came they would support Herb in urging the warden to remove
Carter to a place more conducive to the kind of therapy that would
hasten the last stages of the process.

"Removal.  That may be just what he's aiming at," snorted Briars.

"It's in the mind," said Lou.  "Now."

"But where is it in the world?"  asked Herb.

"Not far from here.  Never very far."

Herb produced a map of Ontario.  Together he and Lou examined it on his
desk.  Lou pointed out roads, towns, villages, small lakes.

He indicated just where the farm had been.

It was a beautiful sunny fall day when Herb set forth in his aging car.
In the city the leaves had only begun to change color, but in the
country they were more advanced.  He thought to himself that even if he
found nothing, or nothing helpful, this day was made for an excursion
into the hinterland.  It had been a long time since he had had a day
away from his usual routine of prison or downtown patients.  He
sometimes worked seven days a week.

The air was clear and the sky very blue.  Summer's haze had gone.  It
was the time of year that he loved most.  A time when light separated
and marked each distinct thing, carefully.  Trees,

clouds, even blades of grass stood out.  Clarity had returned to the
earth.  Waves lifted, ripe, in the crackling air over lakes.  And of
course, shadows darkened, deepened too.  He wished then that he had
asked Alice to come with him.  It wasn't a long journey.

They were growing apart again.  Living in separate worlds.  He would
have to try to break through to her.  When there was time.  It was a
trouble always there at the back of his mind.

The country road passed in and out of bits of sun-dappled woods, up and
around and over small hills; beside small, round lakes.  Nothing was
straight or obvious here.  One could get lost in these curving back
roads that intersected one another in unexpected and random ways.  The
elms and poplars were yellow now, the maples bright red.  A colorful
labyrinth.

But he knew he had come the right way when the woods cleared again and
the road led him to a small village.  A crossroads really.  He stopped
and had a bacon and tomato sandwich and a coffee in a tiny restaurant
beside a gas station.  He wanted to ask after the Carter family, but
the girl who was all alone in the place looked too young to be
helpful.

"Can you direct me," he asked as he was paying her, "to the old Carter
place?"

"Carter," she repeated.

"It might be called something else now.  A farm once worked by a family
called Carter.  There's just the old father left but he may be gone
now."

"There's a farm up and off that road," she said, pointing to one of the
four roads that converged here.  "About five miles.  On the left.  They
say an old man still lives there all by himself.  He gets groceries
delivered and pays by cheque.  They say he's a hermit.  He even had the
mailbox on the road taken away."

"Thank you," said Herb.  On the way he passed a deserted schoolhouse.
That was consistent with what Lou had said.  The day was clouding over
now.  The brilliant clarity of the morning was fading.

"You know," Briars had said, "maybe he's a case for lobotomy.  Then his
gentle side would be uppermost all the time."

An old dirt road went in from the highway.  It wound and meandered a
little before it arrived at a small valley between two hills, one
thickly wooded.

There was a house, unpainted and in bad repair, several old barns and a
few obviously abandoned fields.  The house looked abandoned too.  It
was difficult to believe that anyone still lived here.

Herb parked a little way from the buildings and walked down toward
them.

Maybe the old man had died, and nobody had noticed, Herb thought.  But
surely someone in the general neighborhood-whoever delivered the
groceries, say--would know that something was wrong when the old man
stopped phoning in orders.  Nobody was allowed just to disappear in the
country.  There were still party-lines here, he thought.

It was overcast now.  He went up onto the porch, and the rotting old
boards creaked under his feet.  He was nervous now--this derelict place
had produced Carter, had produced the violently disturbed Al.

He summoned up his courage and knocked loudly.

Silence.  Total silence from within.  Outside he saw and heard crows,
swallows, but no farm animals of any kind.  He knocked again.

Silence.

He tried the door.  It was not locked.

Perhaps the old man was deaf.  But even as he thought this he felt sure
the house was empty.

The parlor was filthy.  It was dusty, full of spiders and spiderwebs.
The furniture was obviously never used.  The window was broken. Buzzing
flies roamed the glass.  The dining room was not in any better state.

Only the kitchen seemed at all inhabited.  The oilcloth on the table
was dirty, but there was evidence of recent meals here and at the
stove.  In one corner there were several old whiskey bottles.

He went upstairs.

There were three bedrooms, two of which seemed to be long abandoned.
The beds were stripped to their frames, even the mattresses were
gone.

The other, larger bedroom was where the old man slept, or sometimes
slept.  The bed was dishevelled, obviously in use.  Herb had the sudden
feeling, for no obvious reason, that, really, he holed-up or hibernated
here in the winter months but probably lived elsewhere, perhaps
outside, in warmer weather.

Where was he?

Herb went out again.  He felt no guilt about trespassing in someone
else's house--it seemed necessary, somehow.

There were the several barns.  Which one was the one that Al and Allie
had spoken of?

He went along the dirt road to the one that was furthest from the
house.  It had what would have seemed to a child a very tall swinging
barn door.  He went in cautiously.

At first, he could not see.  Then, gradually, he perceived that one
side consisted of empty stalls, while on the other was a high loft with
a ladder.

A cough.  It came from the loft.  Then something whizzed by his ear and
shattered on the bench just behind him.  A bottle from the loft
above.

"Mr.  Carter?"  he called, shaken.

"Who in hell's half-acre are you?"  demanded a loud, raspy voice.

Herb was trembling violently.  "Mr.  Carter?"  he said again, his voice
sounding high and nervous.  "I've been looking for you."

"Damned if you have," said the old man from above.  "Nobody looks for
Jacob Carter.  What in hell do you want?"

"It's about your son."

He could see the old man now, standing precariously at the edge of the
high loft.  Tall, a large dark shape.

"I've got no son," he said shortly.  "Be off."  And then he took a swig
from the bottle in his hand.  "Damn good stuff,"

he observed, more mildly, "or I'd chuck this one at you too.  But it's
damn good stuff."

He's drunk, thought Herb, slightly relieved at this.  "Can I come
up?"

"Have you got a bottle?  If you want to come and see me, you'd best
bring a bottle."

"I want to talk with you."

But the old man had retreated from the edge of the loft.  He could no
longer be seen.

There was nothing for it but to climb the ladder.

"I'm coming," said Herb.  "I don't mean any harm.  I just need to speak
with you."  He heard only a faint grunt in reply.

The old wooden ladder was steep and seemed extraordinarily tall.  It
was not fastened in any way.  Herb had to balance his weight on it
carefully.  Someday the old man would probably fall and break his
neck.

He came here to drink.  And remember?  When he had slept it off, when
he was sober again, and perhaps hungry, he climbed carefully back down.
Or so Herb speculated.

He came upon a half-broken rung and shuddered.  He heard no sound from
above.  He felt his way with hands and feet.

He continued climbing carefully.  Into darkness.

When he could see a little over the edge at the top he paused.  He did
not want to alarm the old sot, who might be wandering in his mind.  He
might have forgotten his unexpected visitor already, or taken him for a
hallucination.

It was even darker up here.  But gradually Herb's eyes grew accustomed
to the murky place.  He could just see old Carter now, a few feet away,
sprawled on a mattress, propped up on one elbow observing him, with the
bottle clutched in his other hand.  "You're a persistent bugger," he
muttered thickly.

This remark was a relief to Herb as he clambered up over the edge.  If
old Carter was merely drunk, he thought he could handle him.

The old man had a long white beard like Father Christmas.  He wore
thick boots, a plaid workshirt, and a pair of ancient

"I need," Herb repeated, "to talk with you about your son."  He sat
down awkwardly on the hard wood floor, then crossed his legs for
stability. He felt very foolish.

"I got no son," rumbled his unwilling host.  He looked as if he might
fall asleep at any moment.

"Didn't you have a son once?  And a daughter?  Weren't they twins?"

"Oh, that slut, is it?  She was just a whore."

"And your son?"

But Carter was not interested in his son.

"She went bad early.  Only a female demon could do the things she done.
Right here, in this very place.  Only a demon child could behave like
that."  He took another large drink.  "She'll rot in hell," he
concluded.

"And Allen," Herb persisted.  "Allen Laird Carter."

"Oh.  Him."  The old man shrugged.  Like shrugging off an insect.  "He
was no good either.  No damn good for anything.  Wouldn't work worth a
damn.  A mother's boy.  Is he in trouble?"

"He's in jail."

"Ha!"  The old man snorted.  "I'm not surprised.  He was a sneaky
little bugger.  Never said what he was really thinking.  I always
thought he was a born liar."

"Did you beat him a lot?"  asked Herb in as neutral a voice as he could
muster.  "To try to beat some sense into him?"

"Are you one of them do-gooders?"  asked Carter scornfully.  "One of
them meddlers thinks a man has no right to put the fear of God into his
own offspring?  If you are, then be damned.  I don't owe you any
reasons."

He subsided then, as if making this long a speech had tired him out.
Then, unexpectedly, he spoke again.  "Some seed is just bad.  They
broke their mother's heart.  Both of them.  They'll pay for it all
right.  She was a saint."

"That's what he says," said Herb quietly.

"He's a liar.  A damned liar and a hypocrite."  Then, to Herb's
astonishment, the old man began, suddenly, to cry.  Loud, rasping
sobs.

"God forgive me, I am a wretched sinner," he said loudly between
sobs.

"God will forgive you," said Herb carefully, "if you'll talk about it."
The sobbing ceased as abruptly as it had begun.  Herb saw he had made a
mistake, taken the wrong tack.

"Not so fast," growled Carter.  "Who are you, anyway?  You've no
business here.  Get the hell out.  Get off my property."

"I'm a doctor," said Herb, as soothingly as he could.  "I'm trying to
help Allen."

"Like hell," said Carter.  "You're trying to trap me.  You're trying to
make me say things so they can take me away."

Herb stared at him.  The old man's anger seemed to fade out just as
quickly as it had flared up.

"You'd really better go away from here," said Carter then, more
quietly.  "This place belongs to the devil.  Oh yes.  I made a pact,
years and years ago, in the trenches in Flanders.  I made a pact with
the devil that if I survived, he could have my children.  I had a
vision in the trenches.  In a flash of fire, I declared to Satan that
if I lived and if I could have the woman I had left behind, then he
could father children on her.  I lusted after her from the first time I
saw her.  She was my cousin.  She was proud and virtuous.

"After they sent me back from the war, she agreed to marry me.  Then
the devil came again.  He said it was time to keep my part of the
bargain.  So I let him cuckold me; I stood over his arched red back and
watched his dirty work.  He stank of shit and sulfur.  He enjoyed my
virtuous girl, who had no choice but to submit.  It was her duty to me.
After he had planted his fire in her, and vanished in a loud clap of
thunder, she swelled up that same night like a hellish fiery pumpkin,
and whelped her unholy offspring in four months instead of nine.  Old
Nick ' was proud, I can tell you."

He's quite mad, thought Herb.  He's not just an old drunk.  5 He's
quite mad.

"So don't ever say those are my children.  They're the work j of the
devil, I tell you.  They cleared out, off to do his work in j

*

the world, but he'll be back.  Himself.  He'll be back for me.  And if
ever I throw a bottle at his head, he'll laugh me to scorn."

He groaned hoarsely, loudly, at the thought.  His face, his eyes were
sunken.  Then, he fell back onto his filthy mattress and closed his
eyes, the bottle still firmly clutched in one gnarled hand.  In a few
moments he was snoring.

The interview was over.  Herb was shaken, in spite of himself.

He could hear rain on the roof.  He even heard a distant thunderclap.
As if old Carter had the power to call forth the elements to support of
his performance as some kind of rustic Lear.

This weird old man was certainly his Carter's father.

He climbed carefully down the ladder.  It was even more nerve-wracking
than going up.

With relief he passed out into the cooling rain and the air.

For a moment he was blinded by a vivid lightning-flash.

ELEVEN

Eleanor felt responsible for Alice Delaney.  Even worse, she wondered
for the first time in years about what she was doing.  Was it so
harmless after all?  Just what did it mean?

It had saved her, hadn't it?  From madness, even murder.  She had
always thought that was justification enough.  And others derived
emotional benefit from it too.  Didn't they?

But what had her life really been about?  Who was Elaine Carter Mason?
Who was Eleanor?

And who in the world was Arlen?

She had suffered a deprived, abused childhood on an isolated, failing
farm.  But was that a sufficient excuse for everything that had
happened afterwards?  It was worlds away now.

She was forty years old, she realized in mild shock.  She had never
celebrated her birthday in any way, or even noticed its arrival--most
years.  But now she was officially middle-aged.

She went out of the house to think.  She went into the bac1 yard.  She
wanted to get away from Arlen, to be where she thought she could think
about things without him.

The leaves had recently changed color.  They were mostly pale yellow
now--with hints of red here and there.  Because of yesterday's rain the
grass was very green.  It glittered at her.  Though the wind was chill,
the sun felt warm on her face.  It j was a good world after all.

She could still sense Arlen in the house, so she walked along her
unused asphalt driveway toward the front of the house and Victoria
Street.  She wanted to leave him behind.

Without thought she turned left and walked down Victoria Street.  She
wore a man's jacket that partly covered her long blue dress.  She
realized that with her flat running shoes, her long loose hair, and her
old-fashioned gown she must look rather strange.  But no one else was
walking on the street just then, though a few cars did pass by her.
Perhaps no one saw her.  She felt invisible.

(In fact, a twelve-year-old girl, who had quarreled that afternoon with
her mother over whether she could go to a school dance that evening,
happened to see the fine lady with the long shining hair passing by
just outside her bedroom window, and decided on the spot that she
wanted to look exactly like that when she was just a little older.  She
even stopped sulking to think about it.  The year was 1960.)

Elaine walked past Brock Street and then past Johnson Street too.  Why
don't I walk all the way to the lake?  she thought.  I've never done
that.  I take too little exercise.

It was a briskly pleasant day to be out.  The brick or stone houses on
Victoria Street were modest but also very well kept and attractive.  It
was a good street to live on.  A few houses were larger and more
substantial.  The trees and bushes and well-groomed lawns added to the
general impression of a well-ordered and comfortable existence.

She passed Earl Street and then Union Street.  Here Victoria Street
became Beverly Street.  It sloped downhill for some blocks to King
Street and the lake.  Youngsters liked to ride their bicycles very fast
down this hill.

Most of the people who live on this street, she surmised, had had happy
childhoods.  They are probably not--most of them-haunted by early pain.
They live contented and fulfilled lives.  Even the general misery of
the Depression and the war is well past for them now.  She had no
clients from this long street.

Perhaps, she thought, it's time I too put it all behind me and simply
started anew.  The idea was exhilarating.

Perhaps she could simply tell the spirits to depart.  Didn't sorcerers
sometimes take early retirement?  When their magic acts had
accomplished their purpose--both for the sorcerer and the enchanted.

She had, to be sure, some devoted and faithful clients.  But except for
Alice Delaney, they were more or less all right.  Some were clearly
indulging themselves, more bored and in search of entertainment than
seriously in need of her services.

She had saved some money.  Her sons were working in other cities now.
She could afford to take some time off, even travel a ' it.

But what would Arlen say?  Could he be dismissed?

She had reached King Street.  She crossed it to get closer to the
water.

There were a few couples along the shoreline.  Otherwise she was still
alone.  She had encountered no one on her walk.  One or two late
sailors skimmed the lake's face.  The white sails looked like
elliptical triangles.

I'm a big girl now, she said to herself.  I'm free--as I never was in
youth.  Surely I can function on my own.  Even grow and explore new
possibilities for myself.  Find out what I've been missing.  Missing.
The very word seemed loaded with meaning.

I settled for the situation that saved me.  But I don't want to
stagnate in it; life is dynamic, flowing.  You sound like the Reader's
Digest, she told herself then.  But at the same time she felt the crisp
autumn air was a tonic--full of changes, electric, stimulating.  Full
of undiscovered possibilities.

Who am I?  she asked herself, aware of the banality of the question.
She knew that she had always been too careful, too controlled, too
serious.  That was why she had once been close to total breakdown--she
could not relax, play, be happy.  Her parents had done that to her.

She had married too young to escape from a repressive family.  But she
had only trapped herself anew.  She hadn't loved Bob.  She had never
experienced sexuality in a positive way.  Could she?  Could she have
what other women apparently had?  She thought perhaps it was not too
late to try, to

learn--if she broke out of her largely solitary regime and gave herself
a chance.

The spirits had surely taught her the value of flexibility.  Perhaps it
was time to test it.  She had confidence in her own insights and
abilities now.  If she was strange, her strangeness had had its
advantages.  Prime ministers and professors had sought her out.

But she was lopsided, incomplete.  She saw now what she had been too
frightened to see before.  She felt that there were parts of her, whole
areas of experience, that still needed to be developed.  She knew this
realization was in itself a kind of victory.

She was sitting on a bench by the lakeshore.  She did not remember
sitting down there.  On the lake there were now four sails.  It was
growing a little chilly.

She got up.  After a last look at the lake, the sails, the islands at a
little distance, the overarching sky--so blue, so serenely lovely, so
impervious to human distress--she turned and walked back toward the
City Park.  There she turned left and walked up Barrie.  She passed the
open field and then the quaint, domed, and pillared county courthouse
with its baroque and slightly ridiculous fountain in front, crowned
with a silvery statue of some sort of fertility goddess: a Greekish (or
perhaps Roman) lady who poured water endlessly from a silver pitcher
into the upper fountain-bowl.  The building behind this fine lady had
once, Eleanor knew, included a jail.

She wondered then, for no obvious reason, where her brother was now.
That was unfinished business too.  Yet she had scarcely thought of him
in years.

She walked as far as Brock Street, then turned left.  She was circling
home again.  At Alfred Street she reached the corner of another park.
Victoria Park.  There were children playing and shouting on the swings.
For some reason this moved her; she crossed diagonally through the park
toward Mack Street, which then led to Victoria.

Once inside the house, she paused.  She had been reluctant to

return.  She felt oddly lonely now.  It had something to do with the
children.  And the lake.  Something had changed.

Eleanor went upstairs.  She would simply have to confront it.  It was
as usual light and airy there.  Like the lake endlessly mirroring the
sky. As above, so below, she thought--one of Arlen's favorite sayings. 
She sat in her sibyl's, her oracle's, upright chair.  She spoke.

"Arlen," she said.  "What if I stopped?"

Alice was shocked at the news.  Madam Eleanor had phoned to say that
she was planning to go away, perhaps for some time, but that she wanted
to talk with her first.

Certainly, this brought things to a head.  She would now have to
decide.

"Arlen has agreed that I should stop," said Eleanor.  "At least
temporarily."

"Oh," said Alice.  She was disappointed in Arlen and wanted to tell him
so.  How could he run out on her like this?  "Did he say anything about
me?"

"Just the advice he always gives.  You should release Brian to his
larger existence--not hold him back.  That is the proper order of
things.  His transition has been painful but you can ease it."

"How?"

"By returning to your life here and now.  By living in the present.  By
forgetting him--so that you may later remember him as just one
important aspect of your life."

"That's all very sensible, I'm sure," said Alice.  "But what if he is
the only important part of my life?"

"That can't be true--at your age.  There is so much more to
experience."

"Can I see him again?  Once?"

"No.  Arlen will not allow it."

Alice was angry now.  "It seems to me," she said, "that Arlen

has been toying with me.  What makes him think he has any right?  After
what he's done to me.  To forbid me?"

Eleanor looked pained.  Not hurt, just pained.  It was a moment before
she spoke.  "You came," she said slowly and evenly, "looking for Brian.
You found him--with Arlen's help.  I think Arlen must be the best judge
of whether this is healthy, or has become morbid, even dangerous."

"Then I'm not," said Alice bitterly, "to be with him again-at least
this way."  Her eyes were wild, like an animal's.

She was quite mad with love.  Eleanor saw this.  She even envied her.
She loved her too, she realized; Arlen loved her-precisely because of
this almost insane emotional readiness.

Suddenly, alarmingly, Alice was no longer seated across the room but
was kneeling directly before her.  She was seizing Eleanor's hand and
was caressing it with both of hers.

"Please," she said.  "Take me upstairs.  Oh please, you can't know how
much it means to me.  I live for it.  Oh please.  Just once more."

Eleanor's face stayed calm, but her heart was beating loudly now.
Surely Alice must hear it.  "It's an addiction," she heard her voice
telling Alice, her own calm voice come from somewhere far off.  "It's
harming you.  You must not succumb to it."

Alice began to cry loudly then.  She laid her head in Eleanor's lap.
Eleanor began to stroke her hair soothingly.  She said, "There, there."
A faint memory of her mother's gentle voice.  A face pressed up against
her empty womb.

"Arlen helped.  But you created Brian.  All these years.  He grew in
you.  You conjured him up yourself.  Arlen was just a mirror.  Brian is
yours, not his.  Brian will be with you, in you, for always."

Alice lifted her head.  She looked directly into Eleanor's grave eyes.
Greenblue eyes intermingling: they had very similar eyes.  Alice's
cheeks were stained.  "Yes," she said.  "As Arlen is in you."

They smiled at one another then, a bit ruefully.  Women who had
swallowed and contained their men.  They had similar strange eyes.
Cat's eyes.

"You're a little afraid of me, aren't you?"  said Alice.  "I've always
felt that."

"Yes," Eleanor admitted.

Alice was calmer now.  She felt her power here.  Very calm as she
reached her hand up behind Eleanor's lovely head and drew it closer to
her own.  They kissed.  Then drew apart and looked at one another. Then
they kissed again.

With her stronger arms Alice drew Eleanor down off the chair onto the
floor.

Afterwards Alice said, as she dressed hastily, "Neither of us could
have expected this.  I never thought I had it in me.  But I think maybe
it was meant to be.  I don't pretend to understand it.  It was just
there from the beginning.  Between us.  Because it was you--you and
Arlen--who gave me Brian again.

"It was also goodbye, I think.  Goodbye.  And .. . thank you."

Eleanor was too dazed to reply.  She was still lying, naked, on the
sofa.  They hadn't even bothered to find the bed.  They had been blind
to everything.  Like kittens.  Mouths exploring.  Their hands
undressing one another.  Then mouths, hands.  Speaking in tongues. 
Eleanor was in a state of shock.  Shock.  That she had wanted it, done
it, participated as fully, as avidly, as Alice.  Mad Alice.  For surely
she was mad with indiscriminate lust.  And Eleanor.  She had not just
comforted her like a mother.  She had loved her, loved her completely. 
Completely and physically till .. . Both of them .. . She could still
feel her, smell her.  She was deeply astonished at herself.

The front door opened and closed.  Wait, she thought.  She was suddenly
terrified of being left alone.  Terrified at the price she seemed to be
paying in assisting at the liberation of Alice Delaney.  She shivered.
Then she passed involuntarily into a deep trance.

Alice strode purposefully down Victoria Street.  She felt exultant,
released; like a goddess, larger than life.  She thought that she had
never been so happy, so alive, in her whole existence.

Love is endless, love is everywhere, said a voice in her head.  Like
flowing water.  She wanted to sing aloud.  A woman leaning on a broom
on her front porch was staring at her.  Alice drew her light coat
tightly around her and hurried on.  Ahead, down the long, long curving
hill the blue lake beckoned.  It's down the rabbit-hole, she thought.
Down and down--into ecstasy.

Brian.  I'm coming.

She felt as if she was flying.

The water was extremely cold.  It was the coldest water she had ever
felt.  She had taken off her shoes and her coat.

She waded in further.  She had always been a cowardly swimmer.  She had
always inched her way into the water even in the most intense heat of
summer.  Inched and inched until it came up to her waist.  Then with a
great burst of courage she would fall the rest of the way.

Now she waded in boldly, lifting her skirt.  The water was over her
knees, it was nibbling coldly at her thighs, then her .  Oh.  Oh.  It
was cold.  Cold.  It was washing away the warm touch of Eleanor's
tongue.  A tinge of regret accompanied this sensation.  But she must
not falter.  Brian was waiting.

The water was up to her waist.  It was embracing her like a lover.
Behind her she could hear someone shouting from the shore.  "Hey!" What
a silly thing to say, she thought.

Then, unexpectedly, she was doubled up in pain.  Her stomach had
revolted.  She stopped still as she leaned over to vomit on the face of
the waters.  Bits of her lunch floated before her.  She wanted
suddenly, through her pain, to laugh.  This was too much.  This was
really too much.

I was sick this morning too, she thought as the retching subsided.

Her resolution had fled.  It was too absurd.  She couldn't drown
herself after throwing up her lunch.  It lacked all nobility.

She turned and faced the shore.  There was a man there.  Only

one, thank God.  A stranger.  She would make up some story, get away
from him, get home.  Before Herb .. . Yes, I'll tell him I came out
here to throw up.  I'll say I had a completely uncontrollable need to
do it neatly.  She wanted to laugh again.  Laugh and laugh.

I must not allow them to put me in a psychiatric ward.  It's all too
ridiculous.

She actually began to laugh a little, hoarsely.  A rasp.  Then stopped
dead.  I'd better move before I'm paralysed, she thought.

But as she waded back toward shore and the unknown man, who was still
standing there and talking at her (though she did not try to listen to
his words), she could hardly contain her growing, irresistible inner
laughter.

TWELVE

"Oh, Dr.  Delaney," said the white-clad receptionist.  "We've been
expecting you.  Mrs.  Delaney is in Room 15.  But Dr.  Crane would like
to see you before you visit with her.  He's in his office."

Herb proceeded to Ed Crane's office.  He knew him fairly well, and
liked him.

"Come in," said a deep, slow voice when he had knocked.

Ed Crane was short, bald, and stout.  He was about fifty-five and was
always avuncular in manner.  He liked to smooth away problems.  "Herb,"
said Ed.  "I just wanted to reassure you that it seems to me that
there's nothing very much the matter with Alice.  She's coming around
nicely, and I don't think she needs more than a bit of rest.  She's
been in shock, that's all."

"Why?"  said Herb bluntly.

"Why has she been in shock?"  Herb nodded.  "I was rather hoping I
might find that out from you."

"She hasn't been herself lately," said Herb.  At least not the self I
know, he thought.  Then he wondered idly how many Alice Delaneys there
were.

"Well," said Ed kindly, but also with a hint of self satisfaction,
"there's one thing you should know, if you don't already.  Your wife is
pregnant.  About two months pregnant, I'd say."

"I didn't know," said Herb, feeling foolish.

"Neither did she, it seems.  At least consciously.  But I'm not

in any doubt about it.  I'm sure the test will confirm it.  When I told
her my suspicion she became very calm.  She had been nervous, and
embarrassed about being caught wading into the cold lake.  Afterwards
she didn't seem to care any more about it.  Or what anybody thought.

"Hysteria is mysterious, as you know.  It may be that she began to feel
out of control, without knowing why, and it frightened her.  She had
just begun to suspect the truth.  In any case, now that she knows she's
going to be a mother, she's accepted it completely."

"We had agreed," said Herb, "not to have children.  At least, not yet.
But I don't believe she'd worry too much about my reaction."

"Don't you want children?"  Ed himself had five.

"Yes, some time.  Why not now?  I can accept it."

"Then I'd suggest you tell her that.  She claims," Ed continued, "that
she waded into the lake to throw up.  That seems rather an
extraordinary thing to do, but the man, a medical student actually, who
saw her insisted on phoning an ambulance from the men's residence
nearby because she was laughing hysterically when she came out again.
Couldn't stop, it seems.  And she was shivering uncontrollably too. She
was in no state to walk anywhere.  He was quite alarmed by her."

"I don't know how to account for that behavior," said Herb.  "She's
always been steady and cheerful, in the past.  Until the last few
months--she's been rather moody and erratic this year.  I've probably
neglected her.  I mean, not paid very close attention to her.  I've had
a special case that's absorbed me."

"So I've heard," said Crane, who was a medical man, not a
psychiatrist.

"Yes.  I guess rumors have gotten around.  But I can't discuss that
now."

"Yes.  Well, you are the psychiatrist.  I think you ought to observe
your wife as objectively as is possible.  But my guess would be that
her .. . uh, female problem and its cure are already in Mother Nature's
capable hands."

"That may well be," said Herb.

Alice was sitting up in bed.  He sat down on the edge, then leaned over
and kissed her.

"Darling," he said.  "Ed's told me the news.  I'm glad."

"Are you?"  she said evenly.

"Yes," he said.  "Why not now?  Why wait any longer?"

"You're sure you're not angry?"

"Of course not."

"I'm glad you feel that way," she said, again in a strangely even and
reasonable tone of voice.

He waited then.

"I suppose," she said, "I owe you some sort of explanation for my
strange behavior."

"Not if you don't want to explain," he said.  "Or if you don't have
any."

She looked straight at him then.  As if wondering.  "No," she said.  "I
really don't have any."

"Ed says maybe you were thrown off balance by the changes in your
body."

She smiled.  An odd, small smile, he thought.

"You're the psychiatrist," she said.

"I think you've not been yourself in recent times," he said.  "But
maybe the self I expected was largely my creation anyhow."

"Yes, maybe," she said.  Did he actually have some understanding of her
feelings after all?  He was supposed to be a trained observer.  He
wanted to know her as she really was, did he?  Well, perhaps he was
good.  Perhaps she could trust him.  But she could never tell him the
whole truth.  About Eleanor.  Arlen.  Brian.  She wanted to believe
that she was carrying Brian's child.  That she had fulfilled her
destiny at last.  It was all she could really focus on.

"We have to learn," he was saying from what seemed to her to be some
distance, "to know each other better--now that we're going to be
parents.  Each of us is probably several different people--or
roles--though we don't always know it.  We need to explore--or maybe
just respect--each other's different worlds."

"Yes," she said, perfectly evenly.

Her calm persisted.  She came home to her own house, her husband.  She
needed this man now to help her.  She would try once again to be a good
wife to him.  She could let Brian go now that she had his child.  Their
time together was over and had served its purpose at last.

Herb was newly attentive to his wife's needs, more thoughtful than ever
before.  She saw once again what she had always known, that basically
he was a good man.

He told her more now about what had preoccupied and distracted him for
the past few months.  She was immediately fascinated by the strange
case of Allen Laird Carter, seeing the various Carters in terms of a
kind of birth-process.

"I mean," she said to Herb one evening, "it's just like giving birth
mentally to ever-new versions of yourself."

"Perhaps we all do it," he acknowledged, "without really noticing how
variable we are.  But never so extremely as this unfortunate,
subdivided person, I think."

Alice got The Three Faces of Eve out of the public library.  She found
it absorbing.  She felt that she could identify with a woman who had
more than one self, a woman within whom there were various selves
agitating for fulfillment.  She was moved by the apparent resolution of
Eve's contradictions.

She began to see Herb's ongoing effort to put Carter together as
quietly heroic.  She asked him each day or so how it was going.  And he
found, to his surprise, that this recurrent questioning was not
annoying, indeed, was actually very useful in assisting him to clarify
his thoughts.  To articulate and sort them out.  So Alice gradually
became his sounding board.

She thought about Eleanor at odd moments, though she didn't like to
think about that last, frantic meeting.  I can't tell him about
Eleanor.  But isn't Arlen in some sense her creation?  Hasn't he been
born inside her to help her achieve some kind of balance?  Do we all
contain everything?  she wondered then.  And everyone?  Everyone it's
possible to be?  Perhaps I tried to

be what I thought Herb wanted, and my other selves rebelled.  Then she
thought about the life that she felt moving inside her.  That new
being, those coded and purposive cells dividing.  Its time would come
soon enough.  And this would also be the birth of yet another Alice
Delaney.

Life was good and could continue to be good, Herb felt.  He was going
to be a father and he was going to make medical history--as "father
confessor" to all the Carters.

Carter's progress was slow, but it was real.  Each persona grew in
awareness from week to week.  Lou offered good advice at each stage of
the process.

Lyle suffered acutely from the departure of Ken.  He needed therapy for
that alone.  He had never suffered much before, but after a time his
new loneliness actually made him more susceptible to the possibility of
fusion.  He felt incomplete--he accepted suffering now as part of life,
love.  He still, however, resisted the idea of making himself known to
Al.

Al seemed less hostile to Laird.  He remembered more and more of Allie
and of the pain that had driven Laird to run away the way he did.  He
hated his parents, though, with undiminished and sometimes terrifying
energy.

"Don't you realize," Herb had asked one day, "that if Laird did what
you wanted and committed suicide, that that would be the end of you
too?  You share the same body.  When it's dead, you're dead."

Amazingly, Al had never realized this.  But it sank in now.  It
modified his attitude.  Still his habitual anger persisted.

Laird, for his part, was brought to understand more and more about Al.
His creation.  Next he must encounter Lyle: the further one.

Alana had agreed tearfully to be fused with Lyle.

Allie was calmed, soothed.  Gradually he subsided, faded to a memory
shared by Laird and Al.

All it needs is time, thought Herb.  And perhaps a more peaceful
environment, away from everything that goes on in here.

To that end he arranged more demonstrations for selected colleagues and
also for the warden.  The group of psychiatrists then conferred and
agreed that the case could best be studied and treated away from the
worst of the prison environment.

Herb was careful to exclude Tom Briars from these demonstrations and
deliberations.  As a scientist, he felt a little guilty about this, but
as a politician he knew that he could never persuade Briars to any
liberal interpretation of Carter's mental state and behavior.  And he
did not want Briars influencing the warden's decision.

A kind of halfway house with light, unobtrusive security very strong
but friendly male nurses rather than prison guards whose familiar faces
were threatening to Carter that was what he had in mind.  Carter would
be locked in his room only while sleeping at night; a more relaxed
domestic atmosphere could prevail each day and a trained psychiatric
nurse of mild and motherly when could act as daytime housekeeper.

Al was the major risk.  A terrible risk if he reverted one day to the
blind anger of the woman-hater.

The warden was highly skeptical, but he listened to the group of
learned psychiatrists who came to see him.  Gradually he became
fascinated by the case.

"It certainly beats anything I've ever seen," he told Herb.  "And in
twenty-three years, I've seen all kinds of criminals."

Finally he authorized the transfer on a trial basis, for six weeks only
to begin with.  After that, the whole matter had to be reviewed.

Herb recruited the necessary personnel.  A motherly nurse and two
strong but not threatening young men whose job would be to ensure
security, and provide friendly companionship when Carter wanted it. All
were instructed to make Carter comfortable, to relax him.  They
discussed how to deal with Laird, Al, and Lyle and agreed to be on the
lookout for anybody else new circumstances might call forth.

There was to be no phone.  Lyle was not to be allowed to contact or
summon old cronies of either sex in this or other

cities.  Laird, sadly, could not be allowed visits from Pearl--she only
aroused Al's anger, and Herb wanted Al to relax.

Herb searched the ads till he found a house that would be vacant at the
turn of the year.  It was not a whole house but the second floor of a
house on Mack Street overlooking Victoria Park.  Properly supervised by
his guardians, Carter could even spend some time, on sunny days, in the
park.

Herb liked this set-up.  The flat had its own kitchen and bathroom
facilities and two small bedrooms.  Three engineering students were
leaving the place at Christmas.  They pronounced it comfortable.
Student digs might be just the thing for Carter, he thought.  They
could be cleaned up enough to satisfy the fastidious Laird.

And so, one snowbound day, Carter, accompanied by Herb and an armed
escort, was conveyed in a nondescript vehicle to Mack Street where his
two guardian-angels-to-be awaited him.  Each was much bigger and
stronger than he was.  Herb stayed for a while to help Carter get
accustomed to his new companions.  Then he left, promising to return
the next day, and every day thereafter.

By then it was well past the new year.  It was, indeed, the very dead
of winter.

PART FOUR: PARK

"So the landscape returned to me; so I saw fields rolling in waves of
color beneath me, but now with this difference; I saw but was not seen
.. .

"But how describe the world seen without a self?  There are no
words."

Virginia Woolf, The Waves

THIRTEEN

It was a long winter.

In Victoria Park the snow fell.  This was a large spac size of two city
blocks--bounded by Alfred, Brock, Albe and Mack Streets.  Frontenac
Street, between Alfred and Albe and parallel to them, ran straight
through the middle, bisecting

1 11

the whole.

The central path in the park was bounded by rows Of tall maple trees.
Leafless, they resembled giant whisk-brooii inverted to sweep clean the
cold gray sky.  There were also ror of tall tree's alongside each
street.  But there were no trees to n the upper park's central green.

The baseball diamond was covered over with snow.  A -wire fence stood
behind home plate, and behind the fence were low bleachers.  These
looked abandoned, desolate in winter; only the most hardy and intense
teenaged sweethearts ever sat there now.

Over by Brock and Albert was a skating rink, set ur ... January.  Here
young boys played hockey each day.  The thwack of the puck resounded
from the boards, punctuating their distant cries mixed with the
background whoosh of traffic f Brock, the only very busy street.

The children's swings and slides on the opposite side 01 me park were
still in use, despite the winter.  From across Mack Street, Carter's
window had a perfect view of them.

There were picnic tables and barbecues.  In fall and sp

students made good use of these.  There were benches along the walks.
The university was only a few blocks away, and students lived on all
these streets.

The streets had mostly two-story brick dwellings, but some had attics
with windows.  Most were semi-detached.  On Mack Street, between
Frontenac and Albert, though, there were three tall red-brick houses
with prominent attics in a row.  In the middle one of these joined
dwellings, on the second floor, lived Carter.

In winter the distant street opposite is somehow glamorous, inviting.
The eye like dark windows of the old brick row houses look back at you.
The effect of row-houses behind rows of trees, of red-brick mass and
thin dark-brown verticals over white ground, and then the
spider-branches spread out on gray air, is mesmerizing, soothing.  The
falling snow, endless, smooths it all to a kind of symmetry, a kind of
promise of something like eventual completeness, or, it may be,
something like eventual oblivion .. . Snow fell.  Blew and drifted. 
The park was like a deep sleep, a dream space

Elaine was far away, in Mexico, but sometimes she remembered the park
in winter.  Sometimes^ dozing in the Mexican blaze of sun, she dreamed
of snow--the soothing coolness of the blank white space.

She was living in a posada on Lake Chapala.  She passed much of her
time here in a daze: she felt no need to do, or be, anything in
particular.  She was waiting but with no sense of impatience or
frustration for she did not know what she was waiting for.

She had flown to Guadalajara via Dallas.  Between flights she sat in a
small upstairs airport bar.  A tiny but perky sparrow darted and hopped
about, perfectly at home.  It settled on empty tables; it sipped at a
middle-aged bar-girl's Bloody Mary.  Elaine was charmed.  A bird that
lived in a bar.

Then she was flying again into warmth and darkness, till she saw the
white-diamond lights of Guadalajara spread out side

ways as on a huge steep hill, with lightning flashing behind it
grandly, the plane descending inch by inch, turning and leaning

It was raining softly.  Unable to speak more than the few sentences of
Spanish that Arlen had somehow acquired, Elaine got into a taxi with a
dark young driver.  "Chapala," she said to him.  And "posada."  Then
they were rattling away from the city into deep darkness.  Up steep
hills and along unpaved, primitive roads.  She began to feel the
potential danger of her situation.  She didn't know a soul here.  This
man might do whatever he liked with her, and nobody would ever be the
wiser.  Where on earth were they going?  There were no lights on this
bumpy excuse for a road.  But she had chosen, willed this flight into
darkness, into anonymity, whatever the outcome might be.

Twenty-five miles later she was deposited at a comfortable tourist
hotel on the lake.  It had stopped raining.  Though tired, she went
into the bar and surprised herself by drinking several tequilas.  She
was not usually much of a drinker, indeed, she rarely even drank wine,
but this excess seemed correct now, necessary.  It sparked some
inchoate memory of recklessness.  She slept deeply that first night.

Morning.  A misty lake with mountains all around it, and deep purple
blooms everywhere.  Darting sparrows.  As the sun rises, the mist
clears.

There is a long-legged white bird--a snowy egret?-standing in the
branches of a tree growing out of the water, like a messenger between
earth and sky.  Standing perfectly still, snow-white on the rich,
tropical day.

The hotel grounds, splendid with trees and rock gardens, make a kind of
terraced paradise.  Elaine has never known anything like it.  There is
a swimming pool.  Several elderly Texans spend their days there. Guests
do not bathe in the lake.

Elaine walks to the nearest village, Ajijic.  She learns of the local
hot springs and their invigorating effect.  She decides to rejuvenate
herself in these healing mineral waters and leave the hotel pool to the
noisy Texans.  The water is buoyant with

minerals; she floats easily.  She has a conversation with a middle-aged
but attractive American man.  He proposes lunch at a nearby hotel and
then a visit to the bullring.

The ring is not, to Elaine's relief, a place where drugged bulls are
tortured to death by sadists in fancy dress.  It is instead a ring of
rickety wood where fifteen-year-old boys ride small bulls for as long
as they can.  Afterwards the adolescent boys like most of the Mexicans
near Lake Chapala they look more Indian than Spanish drink beer and
swagger.  In the stands, other Mexicans and tourists drink wine or else
a potent local brew.  It has the atmosphere of a picnic.

At dinner Elaine is complimented by the boldest of the waiters for her
long dark brown hair with its hints of red that the sun has enhanced.
He tells her she looks like a madonna, like a true woman.  Perhaps he
is only a professional flatterer, she thinks.

After dinner Ed, the Texas businessman she has allowed to share her
day, makes her laugh with his tales of an aging ballerina, long settled
here, and known locally as La Russe.  La Russe has recently starred in
an evening of ballet in Guadalajara.  She has performed the dying swan
but cannot pick herself up afterwards, so the lights must be dimmed as
stagehands come to her assistance.  Then she can take her bows.  She
has also written a florid romantic memoir about her earlier career and
published it at her own expense.  Elaine has never laughed so hard in
her life.  Recalling her own career as assistant to Mrs.  Ramsay, she
recognizes the vain old trouper.

Ed is, of course, married.  But he vacations alone.  He and his wife
have an understanding.

Everywhere along the shoreline are small brown children.  Elaine
watches them chattering, darting about like birds.  Mexicans, she
thinks, are not at all a slow, lazy people.  They are lively: quick
flashes of life under the leaves, and the gorgeous red and purple
flowers.  They are very poor, though, and poorly dressed.  Most live in
tiny sheet-iron shacks.  Still, good fruit is abundant, cheap.  The
climate is good all year round.

Perhaps it is bearable to be poor here, on this lake, amid so much
beauty.

In late afternoon the nearby mountains are a study in light and shade,
with their living, brown, animal folds.  As if they breathed.  An
animal god, she thinks, reigns benignly here.

Elaine surrenders with a sense of inevitability to the discreet affair
offered by the Texan.  It becomes a bittersweet sensual reawakening for
her.  A wonderment.  I have known all this before, she thinks, and more
than once, as Ed lies sleeping happily beside her in the early
mornings.  And she is visited by flashes of other times, other men.
Only "who knows where or when": an old song that haunts her.  Ed takes
her dancing in Guadalajara.

I should have come here years ago.  But I don't think, somehow, that I
would have been ready for it, until now.  It was mad Alice Delaney who
reminded me of the force of sexual love.  But I will not think of
that.

Light in the leaves over water.  To live always by mountains and
water.

I could live more cheaply here, she thinks.  Rent a very simple house.
It's all so beautiful here.  But first I'd have to go home--"home"--and
sell out.

And how long do you think your money would last?  sighs the dim and
distant ghost of her mother.  Just who do you think you are, anyway?
You can't just do nothing for the rest of your life.

Why not?

After Ed has left she falls into a kind of languor.  A cocoon.  She
does not miss him.  He has his own life, elsewhere.  She is grateful
for the experience.

The days, the weeks pass.  Elaine's supply of money begins to look
dangerously low.  She realizes she will have to return soon.  She will
have to rouse herself.

At last she got ready to go and once in the air she felt the Tightness
of her departure.  Mexico was good, it had restored her.  But cold
Canada was her home, her destiny.

She arrived home tanned and healthy-looking.  In the airports men
looked at her.  It was early spring.

In the city by the vast lake the snow was still on the ground.  It
covered Victoria Park; it covered the yard behind Elaine': small house.
But it was beginning to melt in the warm afternoon sunshine.

She wondered what Arlen would have to say.  She had scarcely thought of
him all the time she was away, but he belonged to this house.  He had
redesigned it.  He was bound to emerge again.

The next day he did.

She was sitting upstairs thinking about her earliest days 01 Victoria
Street.  They seemed very far away now.  Twenty some years.  She had
changed enormously since then, and now she felt that further changes
were under way.  Then she felt him watching her a little sadly.

Arlen, are you there?

Yes, he said.  But faintly.

What shall I do now?  I can't go backwards.

You will know.  When the challenge comes.

Won't you help me anymore?

You don't need me so much now.

I knew this day would come .. . I'm on my own.

Not exactly.

There's someone else?

Immediately she was aware of a new voice, a presence rather.  The voice
had not yet spoken.

Who are you?

Silence.  A pregnant silence.

Have you replaced Arlen?

Yes.

What is your name?

I don't need a name.  I am here to tell you of your different lives.

Yes, said Elaine.  She knew this was true.  She had lived different
lives, and forgotten them.  Like waves that broke and vanished, to be
replaced by more waves.  How had she forgotten them?

You are ready for me now, said the voice.  But what shall I call you,
Elaine persisted.  It doesn't really matter.  But if you need a word, a
name, then you can call me Isis.

She discovered Arlen had left a message of farewell.  He had opened a
book called The Family Mark Twain that her older son had once given her
for Christmas and that she had never read.  It lay open on the living
room chesterfield with the last pages of a story called "The Mysterious
Stranger" looking up at her.  In the story, a supernatural being called
Satan says to the narrator, a boy named Theodor:

. "Life itself is only a vision, a dream.

It was electrical.  By God: I had had that very thought a thousand
times in my musings!

"Nothing exists; all is a dream.  God--man--the world--the sun, the
moon, the wilderness of stars--a dream, all a dream; they have no
existence.  Nothing exists save empty space--and you!

"I."

Elaine skipped impatiently through the satire aimed at Christianity to
the story's conclusion.  The final message of "Satan."

"It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no
universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell.  It is
all a dream--a grotesque and foolish dream.  Nothing exists but you.
And you are but a thought--a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a
homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"

Was this meant altogether seriously?  She almost thought she could hear
Arlen chuckling in his deep, grave voice.  She placed the book, still
open, on the table upstairs.

FOURTEEN

The tape recorder is a marvelous invention.  Otherwise i< never have
believed it all.

The doctor had explained a number of things to me.  But I could never
accept them--not till I heard Al at length.  And Lyle.

Al.  My God.  The man is crazy.  He's a monster.  And he did do it.
More than once.  Those poor women.  It's all horrible.  And he is me.
That's the worst thing.  I am guilty after all.

I deserve whatever's done to me now.

This is preferable, I guess.  The park is beautiful of a winter
evening.  Across from the window are swings and slides.  In the
afternoon the kids come to slide down the slides into deep snow,
imprinting their little bottoms in it.  They're all bundled up.  Having
a wonderful time though.  Makes me wish I'd been a kid.

But then I guess I was once, if the doctor is right.  I'm another face
of Allen.  Of little Allie.  What would it be like to be Allen?  Allen
complete.

This is the first time in my life that I've been lonely.  I think I
even appreciate Laird now.  I realize how much he really does miss
Pearl.

Torn}

And Al.  Maybe I even understand that gorilla.  He's scared-that's what
makes him tick.  He's been scared to death all the time.

It's better here even though it's dull.  Peter and Colin are not
exactly fun guys.  Still, as keepers go, they're a huge improvement on
the bozos inside.  But they can't play poker worth a damn.  It's too
easy to take them to the cleaners.  They don't drink, and I know they'd
give me a hard time ill suggested we try to get some strong stuff and
smoke up a little.  I'm not sure they've ever heard of anything besides
cigarettes--though they're good at providing those.  If only I could
get to a phone.

But it's no good.  The damned witch-doctor with the tape recorder has
done for me.  I know now that I'm lonely for more than just fun and
games.  I'm beginning, for Christ's sake, to feel fucking
middle-aged.

I don't know any more if I'm lonely for Ken, or for the woman of my
dreams that I could never find again, if she exists, or if it's really
for the rest--all the missing parts of my life.

LAIRD:

Mrs.  Harris is a nice woman, though, as Lyle has pointed out, not the
most exciting of cooks.  Still, it beats prison rations.  He has to
agree to that.

He's a strange one.  Who'd ever have thought I had such a side to me?
Delaney says that everyone does.  He says Freud called it the
pleasure-principle.  He says it's part of health.

I wonder what I look like when I'm Lyle.  He sounds a bit hyper.  (I
don't want to know what Al looks like.) Delaney says he'll show me
photographs.  They're being developed now.  Developed--that's the word
for those guys.  "Developed" in me.

The boys, Colin and Peter, are watching television just now in the
living room.  They know I want to be alone here with a cup of tea in
the kitchen.  They're very considerate.  Not like guards at all.  I do
think Delaney wants my good.

The other day I told him the story of Lance, the dummy I made in high
school.  It hadn't crossed my mind before.  He got quite excited.  It
cast a new light on my history, it seems.

He's begun to tell me a lot of things about my past.  He says I can
deal with it.  He says that I'm much more intelligent than I've ever
given myself credit for, and creative too.

The snow blows and blows, and drifts and drifts.  It's almost hypnotic.
We all sleep like a log every night.

I have to admit I feel healthier, better, without the dope and the
home-brew I could get in the snake-pit.  I've never been so goddamn
healthy.  I don't, however, feel better for not having sex.

The doctor says it may do me good to know what it's like to go without.
But I've never gone without for this long.

Sometimes, when he stays late, Delaney's wife comes to pick him up. She
looks not bad from the second-story window.  He's not doing without,
I'll wager.

I've been working out.  Really.  I've joined Al in his exercises.  Lack
of facilities cramps his style just enough that I can get in on the act
and enjoy it.  It does dampen the old urge for groin action somewhat.

I can see Kennie in perspective now: that was prison.  It's a woman I
think of now.  Yet I did love him; I can admit it now.

But there's always a woman in my head.  She has long brown hair.  I see
her in a bathing suit sometimes.  It's summer.  There's water.  There
are a lot of flowers around.  Sometimes I see her face in the blowing
lamplit snow.  At night in the street.  Who is she?

I think she's the woman from Quebec that I met that time.  Years and
years ago.  But she'd be much older now.

The doctor played a tape today.  He was talking to me--I remembered the
conversation well--but then he asked somebody called Alana to come
forward.  And this weird imitation of a female voice came on.  I
couldn't believe it was me.  Delaney said I'd created a female version
of myself.  I was flabbergasted. She wasn't a woman.  She was my
imitation of a woman.  A queen, for Christ's sake.  Though she has
vigorously denied that, according to Delaney.  She insists she really
is a woman.  At least she did in the past.  Delaney says that he
persuaded her to subside into me.  I should know about her, he says. 
She still exists, but she has agreed that she is part of me, not the
whole.

What will become of us?  It's such a slow process, this sorting-out of
the "family," and I'm so impatient by nature.  I guess I'll have to
learn patience from Laird.  He is resigned to everything, and just
tries to do what the doctor wants now.

Al.  Al is pretty quiet these days.  He tells Delaney, when he's
summoned, that he feels calmer, more relaxed, less fearful.  He sleeps
most of the time now.

LOU:

I'm actually beginning to feel embodied.

LAIRD:

Lyle has this crooked grin.  The face is mine, but the posture and the
expression are strange to me.

Al's face has that kind of studied, uncommunicative blankness you see
on the faces of some adolescent boys.  Cold staring eyes.  A faint
sneer to the mouth.  He says (on the tape) that he doesn't hate me any
more.  He feels sorry for me.

He is a permanent child with a child's understanding of things.  He is
only dangerous because he has an adult's body filled with a child's
impotent, psychotic rage.  Or so Delaney says.

What was done to him?  We know now in general, and in bits and
pieces.

Our parents had a cruel side.  Both of them.  I have to admit this now.
I created him, Delaney says, to take the pain.  But what exactly is it
that enrages him so much?  And why does he hate Ellie?  I managed to
pretty much forget her.

Delaney says he visited our father.  He says he's a half-craz.  old
drunk now, holed up in the barn.  Poor man.  He was alwa} strange.

Delaney says he tried to find my sister.  But no Elaine Mason (or
Carter) exists in the telephone directory.  She must have left this
city long ago.  Years ago.  The only Robert Mason he four had no
connection whatever to the Carters.  He was original from Calgary, and
sixty years old.

There must be stories she could tell, if we could find her.  She got
out early, which was no doubt wise, or else just lucky.  She had a
child, I guess.  Or we supposed she did--we never re all knew.  She
could have had an abortion in the city.  Or a miscarriage.  She could
have left Bob.  Anything.  We never tried t> find out.  How strange.

Was she a slut?  Or just too inexperienced and ignorant to know what
she was doing?  Maybe she was even forced.  H; was a lot bigger than
she was.  Some men and boys think it's macho to ride right over a
girl's resistance.  They think she'll love it in the long run.  I
should have had more sympathy at the time.  God knows, Ellie got none
at all from our parents.  But I was my mother's son.  No sympathy and
no support.  Whatever happened to her?

I begin to feel a little angry at the old folks myself now, but it was
all so long ago.  Almost twenty-five years.  The anger is more like
sadness--the general sadness of the world.

Perhaps the saddest thing is that it's just about as distant from me as
it ever was.

Mrs.  Harris is a game old girl.  I flirt with her for the fun of it.
She joshes me in return.  She's a good sort.  Even if she can't cook.

Colin and Peter think her stories about hospital life over the decades
are funny.  She practically has them rolling in the aisles each
suppertime.  Even Laird appreciates her.  Of course, he likes motherly
types.

After she's gone I like to play cards with the guys.  They're all right
guys--though none too bright.  I have to give them a head start to make
it interesting.

Delaney's wife actually came upstairs yesterday.  I saw her for a
moment in the doorway.  He hadn't heard her honk the horn, he was
conversing so earnestly about personality-types with Laird.  She's a
good-looking woman.  Running just a little to fat.  Of course I don't
have much basis for comparison cooped up here.

I talk with Laird sometimes now, when we've gone to bed or when we look
out the window at the snowy park.  He never knew before that he could
talk with me.  I never wanted to communicate with him.  He only heard
Al threatening him sometimes.  But since he doesn't really hate him
anymore, Al doesn't talk to him either.  He still despises him, I
think.

Laird says he wants to know me.  He wants to stay awake when I kid with
Harris or the boys.  He wants me to at least tell him what happens when
he's gone.

Well, that gives me something to do.  It helps pass the time.  So each
evening I tell him what I've been doing all day.  Occasionally he seems
actually to remember bits of it.  So I'm not so alone anymore.  Even a
morose brother is a brother.

We look out at the snow together.  I've never known it to snow so
endlessly.  We agree that it's beautiful, though.  And we're glad we're
not out there driving the way we used to be before prison.  We compare
driving stories.  (We both know how.  Al never learned.) I tell him
stories about the ladies I met in those days.  He is a little shocked
but he agrees that it is educational.  I actually tell him more, more
juicy details, than I've ever told the good doctor.

I ask him if he sees the lady in the snow.  The lady of Victoria Park.
The flowing brown hair between the lines of blowing snow.  He says no,
it sounds like poetry or hallucination.  He has never in his life
hallucinated.  I describe her.  Her long brown hair, her trim fine
body.  Her dark mysterious green blue eyes.  He says it sounds like
Ellie in high school.

I feel a slight tremor.  I feel Al turning in his sleep.

Tell me about Ellie, I say.

Mrs.  Harris says she doesn't know why they called the park Victoria
Park.  Victoria Street is two streets away, beyond Albert and then
beyond Nelson, good British names, all of them, she says.

"I guess it was to honor the old Queen," she concludes, "all the
more."

Vague memories of high school history lessons come back to me.  Before
the Loyalists, before the British, there were the French; Count
Frontenac is remembered by Frontenac Street.  Before them, of course,
were the Indians of this area.  According to Ken, the Indians called
the Thousand Islands the "garden of the spirit."  I like that.  Layers
and ayers of character, my history teacher, Mr.  Montgomery, always
said.  Layers and layers.  I understand that idea better now.  Like all
those layers of Indians and French and Scotch and Irish in the
Carters.

Mrs.  Harris is plump and graying.  She likes to sit at the kitchen
table and have a smoke after breakfast.  If the cigarette smoke begins
to bother me too much, Lyle takes over.  He is much more bold and
jocular with her than I would ever dare to be.  But I admire him for
it.  She blossoms under his flippant words.  She does not take his
claims that if he were free he would take her to California or Las
Vegas or even Mexico seriously, but she enjoys the fantasy.  I can
tell.

"You shouldn't tease an old lady," she always says.

"Old?  You're not so old.  You've got lots of living left.  You just
need a man who can show you a good time."

She laughs heartily.  Her laugh tends to be a shriek.  "My man," she
says, "thinks that a night at the bowling alley once a month is a
really good time."

"That's why you should run off with me," says Lyle, taking her hand.

She snatches it away, but she is pleased.  I can tell.

There is none of that quality of flirtatiousness, of "kidding,"

in my Pearl.  I can see how it makes life a little pleas anter from
moment to moment.  Mrs.  Harris likes being acknowledged as a woman,
it's fun.

Colin and Peter find this very amusing.  It is strange to see two such
big, grown boys giggling like children.  For the first time I wonder if
these two strapping male nurses might not be homosexual.

At first I am shocked at the thought.  Then I remember about Lyle and
Ken.  And Alana.  I don't like to think that I could ever turn into
Alana.  But I've heard the voice on the tape.  I've seen the bizarre
photo of a man, me, pretending that he is a woman.

LYLE:

Laird asks me if Colin and Peter are queer.  I say I don't know.
Despite all my experience, I hadn't really thought about it.  They seem
asexual to me.

They're certainly a team.  They share a bedroom here.  It's got two
small beds, both used.  They're both the gentle type.  Do gooders. They
each want to clean up after the sick.  Kiss lepers.  But they're strong
too.  They've both played football in high school.  They're fucking
muscular Christians.

"They're too much alike," I tell Laird, "to be lovers of each other.
Though who knows?  I think, maybe, they might be queer if they weren't
determined to be humble servants of mankind, if you know what I mean.
They don't seem interested in girls, that's for sure.  But some young
guys are just very slow.  Especially these religious types.  They're
probably afraid of hell

Maybe I shouldn't have said that.  I hope he wasn't offended.  I didn't
think at the time what I was saying.

Each Sunday either Colin or Peter goes to church.  They alternate.  I
think they're Lutherans.  There's a thought.  Too bad I promised old
Herb that I'd be good.  Every Sunday morning there is only one guard on
duty--one big but not mean and not too bright boy.  It might be easy.
Enlist Al?  If only I knew

where in hell I might go in this bloody continual blizzard we call
winter here.

Delaney let slip today that Peter and Colin are brothers.  Of course, I
should have guessed.  I should have seen it.  Of course they're not
lovers.  They're close in age--twenty-one or two-but not twins. Equally
big.  One is dark, one red-headed.  I didn't see a facial resemblance
before but now I do.

They're not especially clever young men, but they want to help others.
That's commendable.

Today we actually went for a walk in the park.  Just along the plowed
sidewalks, since the snow is so deep.  But it was clear today for a
change, brightly sunny and very cold.  Only a very few other people
came by.  I could tell from the way our companions behaved that Delaney
had told the boys to keep a close watch on us.  Though they tried to
appear relaxed and casual, they're not very skilled actors.  Laird
enjoyed the walk too.

I saw a large body of water.  A lake, I guess, surrounded by
mountains.

What I imagine, I have created.  It exists somewhere.

There is a woman there.  I sense her.  Is it she, though, who is
dreaming me?

Delaney says there is yet another "voice," known only as "Lou," that he
will play for us.  But he's holding off for now.  He wants to see how
much Lyle and I can accomplish together.

We have conversations when he's here for his benefit.  (But we speak
more candidly to one another at night.) He says he thinks Lou might
confuse us at first.  He's not sure we're ready for him.

Why tell us this much then?  It's a come-on, Lyle says.  I suppose he's
right.  It's an incentive for us to work steadily on the problem rather
than just drift along day by day, like the white, white, empty snow.

LYLE:

Lou?  Who the hell is Lou?  Come to think of it, who is Delaney?  He's
the one who keeps producing new people.  Like God.  God with a scratchy
tape recorder.  Who in hell does he think he is?

Is it really Delaney after all who's made us all up?  As a fucking
psychological experiment?  Or for his own amusement?  A sick joke?  Is
that why Al is still angry?  And so ominously silent?

LAIRD:

A late February thaw.  About time.  It's a relief to see the sun
shining merrily and the snow melting.  I can't wait till it's time to
go out for our afternoon walk.  I feel like a dog cooped up here.  The
water is running down Mack Street where the sewers are still blocked
up.

Lyle is even more impatient than I am to get outside.  Hold your
horses, I tell him.  It's rather comical how he can't wait for
anything.  He's like a child who can't sleep the night before
Christmas.  I had to learn patience, I tell him.

LYLE:

I'm swinging on the biggest swing of all.  I'm pushing it with my ass
pressed down on the seat and my legs stuck out straight ahead and so
high that I can lean my head backwards on the

upswing and see the trees, the street full of snow and water, the
red-brick row house with its three doors and three sets of windows
behind me, all upside-down and moving.  The world is moving once again.
At last.  Turning.

Laird is with me.  I can feel him.  I don't know where Al is.

Higher.  And higher.  Till at last I let go just at the top of the
upswing, and fly free, till the earth rises up with a snowy blanket to
receive me.  I sink into soft snow up to my knees.  I sit back down
hard but painlessly in the kind, soft snow.  It surrounds my ass.

Colin and Peter are standing there laughing at me.

I am grinning crazily back at them.

Sliding down the big slide I felt ridiculous.  But I realized
afterwards that if I had Cecily with me this is just what I would do.
(Though Cecily and Pearl, my loved ones, seem a long way away now, much
farther than Toronto.) Holding her safe in my arms.  We would slide and
slide and plop together into the

Mrs.  Harris says I'm just a big kid.  She says she's raised four boys
already.

"No girls?  Nobody out there as pretty as you?  Who am I going to marry
then?"

"I thought you promised to marry me.  You men are all alike.  Fickle.
Not to be trusted."

I guess we should have had a mother like her.  Though Laird was shocked
at that suggestion.  He's still loyal to the memory of his own mother.
"She had troubles that made her hard," he says.  He still makes excuses
for her.  But given the facts he's told me, it is obvious she was a
pretty sick woman.

The father is more of a mystery to me.

LAIRD:

Delaney says the warden has granted me an extension here.  After his
visit and the performance, with all the voices, that we put on for him
last week.  Delaney says my progress is excellent.  Thank God.  I don't
know if I could bear now to go back to that cageful of animals.  I'd
collapse completely.

The other day it occurred to me that I hadn't had any allergic symptoms
of any kind--no skin rashes, no respiratory problems--for weeks.  I
don't even mind Mrs.  Harris's smoke anymore.  And the astonishing
thing is that I hadn't even noticed this till the other day.

Delaney says we may be just about ready to meet Lou.  That will be the
most important stage of the work.  The last act, I guess.  Followed by
the world's applause?  It seems I'm quite a phenomenon.

LOU:

Often now I feel it's me.  It's me on the high swing.  Me who looks out
over the park at night.  I'm not just the watcher, the reader, anymore.
I never expected this.

LAIRD:

There is a woman who walks in the park each morning now the snow has
gone.  Her walks look aimless.  Here and there.  But she is a regular.
She comes each morning at about ten.  Sometimes she lingers by the
swings.  If there are children, she watches them for a while; sometimes
she sits on a bench near Frontenac Street.

She has long hair.  She wears a man's jacket and a longish skirt.  It's
difficult to decide how old she is.  She's not old, but by the way she
moves she's also not so young.  Not young enough to be carefree.

LYLE:

Maybe we could go out twice a day now, when it isn't raining.  The
weather is so pleasant some days.  I've put this to the good

doctor.  He seemed sympathetic, but I guess he has to check with the
warden first.  The warden is very concerned about any relaxation of
security.  Maybe he's beginning to worry as spring comes on.

Laird is intrigued by the lady who comes to the park every morning. She
lingers by the children's swings and slides.  She's not my type, I tell
him.  A bit staid-looking.  Though I also wonder if she isn't a bit
nuts.  Possibly a woman who has lost a child.  But it would be
interesting to have a closer look at her.

Who is she?  This morning I really saw her for the first time.  She's
not young.  She's certainly over thirty.  But she's handsome in a
rather austere way.  She's tanned.  She's been somewhere in the sun
recently.  Lyle allows that she's rather nice-looking for her age--but
over the hill, by his lights.  He can be so superficial.

This is what conics of not seeing Pearl for so long.  I believe I'm
actually a bit infatuated with this strange woman.  Almost on first
sight.  There is something about her, though I can't put my finger on
it.  Well, at least it proves I'm basically normal.  Whatever Lyle may
have done.

She has such grave-looking eyes.  I'd like to see them closer.

She sits on the bench near Frontenac Street looking toward the swings.
Her hands are folded primly together.  She hardly moves at all.  She's
like a statue.  I wonder where she lives.  Is she married?  It's gotten
me quite agitated.

What a hoot!  Laird is falling for the mystery lady.  And he's so
straight.  And so married.

Well, she's the only female around except for Harris and some glimpses
of the rather tantalizing Mrs.  Delaney and the

girl students riding their bicycles through the park.  Those brief
glimpses of leg and thigh as they flash by.

I'd like to get a closer look at Miss Mystery.  But "the boys" are like
bloody chaperones.  They herd us on to other parts of the park.  Colin
has even suggested that we might play ball in the ballpark.  I nixed
that one.  I'm only an athlete in bed.

Still, we know a little bit about her now.  This morning Delaney was
early.  We were outdoors across the street when his wife dropped him
off.  She got out of the right side of the car.  He had been driving.
Miss Mystery, as it happens, was seated in her usual place.  Mr.  and
Mrs.  Delaney stood there for a moment on the street embracing.  They
disengaged.  Then he said something, and she looked across at us.

I glanced over at Miss Mystery on her bench.  She was staring at the
Delaneys.  She looked a bit startled.  Then she stood up and waved at
them.  Mrs.  D."  also looking a bit startled, waved back.

"Who is that?"  asked Delaney audibly.  Rather tactless for a
psychiatrist, I thought.  I had thought that Miss Mystery was some kind
of mental patient or former mental patient and that probably she knew
him.

"It's .. . Eleanor," said Mrs.  D. "Just a woman I met.  I think she
lives over on Victoria Street."  And she kissed him and got back in the
car and drove away.

"Congratulations, captain," I said when he had come across the street
to join us.

He looked quizzical.

"I can see your wife is expecting."

"Oh yes.  Of course.  She is.  Thanks."

"Do we have to go back inside now?  Can't we talk out here?"  It was a
gloriously mild, sunny day.  In spite of this, Peter and Colin looked
disapproving.

"Why not?"  said Delaney.

When I looked again at the bench where the mystery woman, Eleanor, had
been, she was gone.  Just like that.  There was no sign of her anywhere
in the park.

It's you.  Isn't it?

It's her, I think.  The lady in the blowing snows--come to life.  The
lady of Victoria Park.  I didn't see it before.

She's not my type at all.  She's my dream.  Maybe I even made her up.
She disappeared that day like a witch in a puff of smoke.

The next day she came back though.  Colin and Peter were tossing a
football around on the upper green.  They were overjoyed, those big
jocks, to be getting some exercise again.  I was just watching them.
They were wholly absorbed.

Then I felt her behind me.  So I turned around and looked past the
baseball seats to the corner of Mack and Albert.  There she was just
entering the park.

My chaperones were off their guard.  I strolled, casually, over to the
sidewalk she was coming along.  I waited for her there.  Oh yes, said
Laird in my head.  He was very nervous.

"Excuse me," I said.

"Yes?"  She looked straight at me.  She was not at all afraid.

It was, at close quarters, indeed the face I had dreamed in the snow.
It was a triangular face with good regular features-forgettable,
though, except for the extraordinary bluegreen eyes that seemed to look
right through me.

"It's you," I said.  "Isn't it?"  Then Colin and Peter were beside me.
Not threatening, just there.

The lady looked at me.  A long look.  "Yes," she said.  A low, grave
voice.

Then she simply moved on.  Not hurriedly.  She simply went on walking
as I looked after her.  She walked all the way to Brock and Alfred and
then right out of the park.  She did not look back.

"You promised not to speak to people in the park," said Peter
reproachfully.  "We'll have to tell Delaney."

"I'm sorry.  I couldn't help it.  It's such a nice day.  I just

wanted," I said, "to say hello to someone.  All I said was, "It's a
nice day."  She said, "Yes.""

I don't know if they believed me.  I didn't look at them.  I just kept
watching her move away.  As she became smaller and smaller, receding,
between the twin rows of high trees.

LAIRD:

I'm in love with that woman.  Eleanor.  I've always been in love with
her.

After dinner, when Colin and Peter were not immediately about, I asked
Mrs.  Harris before she left: Which way is Victoria Street?

LYLE:

Delaney may become alarmed.  He may forbid these daily excursions into
the park for a while.

Tomorrow is Sunday and I know he isn't coming.  This could be the last
chance for a while.  After Colin has toddled off to church like a good
boy.

AL:

Those guys make me laugh.  When they don't make me sick.  (They're
asleep now, deep up each other's assholes.) Don't they know that
bitch?

Love.  What a pair of simps.

I hate that bitch like hell.  I've hated her all my life.  As far back
as I can remember.

It's incredible luck to find her here.  After all this time.  It shook
me right awake.  It justifies my whole fucking existence.

She ruined my life.  She and the creeps together.  They fucked me over
totally.  And she aided and abetted them.  She is them.  If I can do
her I'll be satisfied.  Then I can die.  They can kill me.  Then it
won't matter anymore.

FIFTEEN

That day she was even stranger than usual.  We were ten o eleven, I
can't remember now exactly when it was.  I hawr>' thought of it for
years.

It began early, shortly after breakfast.  She was in the mood for one
of her frantic housecleanings.  We could see that: enough.  She was
wearing an old, faded brown print dress had served as a working uniform
many times before.  He outside, of course, already, as he nearly always
was.

"This house is a pigsty," she announced, as she did on I occasions.
"It's a disgrace to a Christian nation.  You are the dirtiest, most
slovenly, dirt-making pair I've ever laid eyes on.  I don't know where
I got such a pair of pigs from.  Even heathens in the darkness of
Africa have more self-respect than to behave the way you do.  All you
ever do is eat and wa and make an unholy mess everywhere."  This
pronouncement was a familiar one.

She was seated bolt upright at the kitchen table with a of strong black
coffee before her.  This was the one peric calm before the storm, the
one pause that she allowed hers a morning when the cleaning fit had
once again come I her.

"Today," she said, unnecessarily, to Ellie, "we are goir give this
house a good thorough cleaning."

Ellie assented glumly.  She had no choice.  She knew wha was in for.

But this was women's work, so I slipped away immediately after
breakfast and went off to feed the ducks and chickens.  I liked doing
this.  I liked the squawking and excitement that my arrival caused.  It
gave me a sense of power.  It was my special morning chore--something
she had used to do.  But she almost never went out of the house
anymore.

I stayed out--her speech after breakfast had been warning enough.  But
I went, stealthily, near to the open kitchen window so as to hear the
singing and snicker a little to myself.

Invariably, she sang about being washed in the blood of Jesus.  The
blood of the Lamb.  That always struck me as crazy.  How could blood
wash you clean?  She didn't use blood to scrub the wood floors.  She
used soap and water.  Ellie was kept busy fetching more hot water when
she wasn't cleaning or polishing something herself.

She never saw the big pigs being stuck.  There's blood for you.  Lots
of blood to wash in.  Ellie watched sometimes.  Though she wasn't
supposed to.

I went for a long walk that day over the fields.  I just felt like
rambling.  It was fixing to rain but it was very warm.  It was July, I
think.  Yes, it must have been.  I took off my shoes and went
barefoot.

When I came back she was standing on the front porch by the steps.
"Where is that girl?"  she demanded.  "The moment I turn my back she
runs away."

Usually, after a bout of cleaning, she took a long nap.  This might
last for hours.  But that day she had got up again.  She was wearing an
old housecoat.  Her long hair, with its white streaks, was uncombed.
"You come along in here," she said.

My heart sank.  It was bad luck that she had come out, that she had
seen me, barefoot and disheveled.  I wanted to stay out.  But I could
not disobey her.  She'd get him to whip me within an inch of my life.
He enjoyed that.

"Yes ma'am," I said.  And followed her reluctantly into the house.

"You can make yourself helpful," she said as I followed her up the
stairs.  Her voice had a peculiar purring sound.  Not like her usual
voice at all.  In the hallway she said, "You wait here.  I'll call you
when I want you."

I stood there in the dim hall wondering what was going on.  Outside it
had begun to rain softly.  She had gone into the bathroom.

I heard her running water into the bathtub.  It was a deep white
porcelain beast raised up on brass legs.  Animal's legs of some kind.
Then I heard the sound of water as she lowered herself into the bath.

"You can come in now," she called.

I stood frozen.

"Allie," she said sharply.  "I know you're there.  Come here."

I wanted to go in and I didn't want to go in.  The body was shameful,
corrupt, she had said.  Often.  The flesh is weak.  That's why it had
to be regularly cleansed.

I went into the bathroom.  I could not disobey her.  It was as if I was
hypnotized.

"Come here," she said.  It was her kind voice, the one that appeared
once in a while, on certain days.

"Come over here."  She was naked in the tub.  In the water.  "Sit on
the edge," she commanded.

I did.  She smiled at me.  I could see her breasts.  I had never seen
breasts before.

"Now," said my mother, still smiling her strange smile, "you can rub
soap on my back."  She handed me the bar of soap.  It was scented.  It
was not the coarse kind we normally used.  It was special, it had been
kept for years unopened and untouched in the bathroom cupboard.

She leaned forward toward the water.  Her white neck and back made a
kind of swan.  I began to rub the soap on her swan's neck and back.

"Reach farther down," she said.  I reached down with both hands to the
small of her back.  I was perched a little precariously there on the
edge of the porcelain.  I could see and feel her fragile spine
underneath my hands.

"You can keep on rubbing up and down," she said.

I did.  I was beginning, a little, to enjoy it.  To relax.  But I still
didn't trust her.  This went on for a while.

"That's enough," she said at length.  Then sat up again.  Her fine hair
was wet because her face had leaned close to the water.

"Now my front," she said quietly.  Almost murmuring.  Imploring.  And
she closed her eyes.

I hesitated.  But she took my hands in hers and then plac them on her
left breast.

"Soap me there," she said.  "And there.  And then rub it in.

I began to soap and massage her breasts, each one in turn.  Her eyes
were closed, and she was sighing softly.  I seemed to have a talent for
this.  Her hands had gone under the water where they seemed to be busy
with the lower regions of her body.  She was beautiful, I thought. When
my fingers stroked a nipple I felt that it had gone hard.  This
fascinated me.  I was getting a little excited, a little dizzy with
power.  I wondered what was happening to me.  I seemed to be becoming
someone else--someone powerful, masterful.

"Ohhh," she said.  "Oh!"  Quite sharply.  My hands moved over her
breasts, one on each now, more insistently, the rhy quickening till she
sank beneath my caresses into the water.  Only her face was clearly
visible now above the surface of the soapy lukewarm water.  It was
cooling rapidly.

Her eyes opened.  She frowned a little, as if surprised to se me there.
She pushed away my hands.

"You can go downstairs now," she said.  "But don't go out.  I want you
near me.  It's raining."

It was very quiet downstairs.  The tall grandfather clock in the front
hall was ticking.  Placed on top of it was a tall porcelain black cat
that had always fascinated me.  It was elongated, sinuous, and
sinister--not at all like the common barn cats we had.

I wanted Ellie.  Where was she?  She hadn't come in.  She'd get wet.
Unless she was in one of the barns.

My mother came down the front stairs and then on into the kitchen.  I
was sitting at the table, restless.  She was wearing an ordinary cotton
summer dress.  I could see the faint outline of her breasts.  Who would
have imagined that what was inside that dress was so white, so round?

"Can I go out?"  I said.

"No."

Her voice was sharp again.  She didn't look at me.  Not directly.  She
put some water on the stove to make tea.

"Why not?"  I asked.

She ignored me.

"Why not?"  I persisted, though I knew this was risky.  "It's warm
rain.  It's nice out there.  There's nothing for me to do here."

She turned on me.

"I'll tell you why not," she said loudly.  Her eyes had changed--they
were wide open and a little wild now.  "Because I say you can't.  Will
you never learn to obey?"

I knew better than to say anything more.  I had hoped before that maybe
she was still in a "soft" humor.

"I think sometimes you must have a devil in you.  %u are that wilful. I
think you leap up to do the devil's work.  You're like all men.  An
animal--lewd and depraved."

I did not know what these words meant.

"If I could, I'd beat the devil out of you.  Your father ..."  But she
stopped then, as if the thought that was emerging could not be borne.

"Do you know what hell is?  Hell?  It's everlasting burning!"  he was
shouting now.

"Of course you don't," she said bitterly, her voice quieter.  "I'll
have to show you."  Her face was contorted, twisted, in my wide-open
eyes. "Give me your hand," she commanded.

I stretched it out automatically.  I did not dare disobey her.  My left
hand.

She took it and yanked me abruptly from the chair.  "I'll show you
hell," she cried.  And pressed my hand down hard on the stove.

CO

:

I think I fainted for a moment.  Standing on my feet.  Then there was
horrible pain.  Throbbing, unstoppable.  I could hear myself
screaming.

"Shut up," she yelled.

I could not.  Though I tried to choke myself.  I wanted to obey her.

I was crying and crying.

"Get out then," she shouted.  "Get out in the muck where you belong.
It's what you wanted, isn't it?"  She was dragging me.  Then she was
pushing me out the front door onto the porch.  It was hurting,
hurting.

"And stay away from the barn," she yelled, "You know your father
doesn't like it."

I'm crying and crying and can hardly take this in.  My hand hurts
horribly.

She slams the door shut.

I stumble blindly into the yard.  The dark, unpainted barns shove up
like giants at insane angles over me.  I see them distorted, refracted,
through my tears.  I am crying aloud to the heavens.  It is a dull,
overcast day after the rain.  My bare feet sink into puddles, into soft
mud.  It is terribly humid.  The sky pressing down on my eyes is a
bruised color, like the throbbing burnt skin of my hand.

I stumble, directionless.  Everything--the small pools under my feet,
the mud, the incurious horse by the fence, the insect like rusted
machinery, the sky, the wheeling crows, the birds, the dog slinking out
under the big barn door--is pain.

The dog approaches me cautiously.  He is black and white and fat.
Without wanting to, without thinking, without willing anything, I go in
where the dog came from.  Opening the big door.  He follows me.  To
where the animals are.

It was dark.  I had stopped crying.  The pain was constant, but I was
whimpering only inwardly now.  I was listening.  To the

snuffling of the cows in their stalls.  To the faint grunting of pigs.
But there were no pigs in this barn.

It was a sound from the loft at the top of the ladder.  Was it Ellie
playing a joke on me?  She could mimic just about any animal sound.  I
needed Ellie badly.  I wanted her to comfort me.

I went over to the ladder.  And listened.  The grunting sound, more
audible now, had a rhythm like the throbbing pain of my left hand.
Without thought, I began to climb the ladder.  I held onto each rung
with my right hand.  My left hand would not obey me.

It was a long climb, that way.  Once or twice I felt dizzy, and had to
stop.  I hung there.  Clung until the fainting spell passed.  I thought
of retreating.  But could not bear the notion of going down.  No.  I
would surely fall.  I would surely die.

The grunting was becoming quicker, more urgent, as at last I reached
the top.

He was spread over her.  His work pants down.  His thick hairy legs
were spread wide.  But her white, bare, shorter legs were spread wide
too, under his.  His pasty-white, partitioned rump jerking, jerking. 
Up and down.  Her arms were spread out straight, limp, at either side,
palms upward.  As if she had been tied and stretched with invisible
ropes. Like comic-book heroines captured in Africa.

He gasped sharply, then cried out loudly: "God Almighty."  He groaned,
and collapsed abruptly over her.  His massive head lolled off to one
side.

He shifted then onto his side.  His eyes were closed.  And I could
smell him: an acrid, sour smell of armpits.  Her head, her face was
revealed now.  Her small white face.  Her eyes were closed too, tight,
her lips were clenched together.  She was paler than I had ever seen
her.

And then the rushing darkness was upon me.  My fingers were loosening.
And loosening.  Till I fell.  Into that sudden, up rushing solid, and
all-swallowing dark.

SIXTEEN

HERB:

It was the phone call I had dreaded.  It came early Sunday afternoon.

"He's gone," said Colin breathlessly.  "I just came back from church.
He had Peter gagged and tied up."  I will remember, all my life, the
sinking sensation that came with these words.

"I'll be right over," I said.  I felt sick as I began to look for the
number for the police.  When I had alerted them to the presence of a
possibly dangerous man on the streets near the park I drove over to
Mack Street.  Alice was still upstairs lying down.  I didn't tell her I
was going out.

I had the weird feeling as I drove that I might spot Carter on the
street somewhere.  Surely I could persuade him to return; if not we
were in deep trouble.

But the streets were empty.  Sunday is usually a sluggish day in this
city and people stay in.

Colin and Peter were in states of excitement and consternation.  This
helped me to pretend calm.  "He can't get far," I assured the two boys.
"I'm more concerned about losing the progress he's made over the
winter.  I think we were really getting somewhere."

"Al took over," suggested Colin.

"It looks like it.  We'll see.  When he's brought back."

I

"I'm sorry," I said.  I could see that the big boy, gagged and tied to
the chair with bedsheets, was regaining consciousness.  "I didn't want
to hurt you.  I like you.  But I have to go now."

It was a beautiful early spring day.  It was the kind of Sunday on
which one begins to believe, contemplating the raw, leafless sticks of
trees and the brownish, released grass, the lawns with their old
decaying leaves and their green shoots, in the whole world's imminent
rebirth.

My spirits rose.  I felt the exhilaration and excitement of
release--and even a certain brash naughtiness--as I turned the corner
onto Victoria Street.  Victoria Street.  Her street.  I believed,
irrationally I knew, that once around this corner we could never be
recaptured.  I had rolled away the stone that entombed us.

But where were we going?  I looked curiously at each house on the
street, but the brick or stone, wood or stucco walls, the dark
reflecting windows and the closed, dark-wooden doors told me nothing.

I had come to a small brick bungalow on my right, brick with attractive
white trim.  It had a front porch with white pillars.  Two tall juniper
trees flanked the steps.  A large, naked bush with many thin, whip-like
branches also grew in front of the porch railing.

I might have gone on.  But then I saw the familiar shape of a woman
standing behind the large front window, partly obscured by a juniper
tree.  Some dark energy began to rise within me.

On the porch, at the top of the steps and insolently staring, sat a
very old, very large black and white cat.  It drew me somehow.  I
mounted the steps.  The plump old cat did not deign to move even its
head.  I suppressed a violent urge to crunch the soft, white head under
my boot heel.

I knocked on the door.  Softly.

I saw the shape of a woman approaching.

ELEANOR:

We are seated in the upper room, the white room made airy by the north
skylight.  The walls give off odd hints of blue sky.

We do not, at first, speak to one another.  We only look.  I have led
him here immediately, as if he is just another client, one belatedly
keeping a longstanding appointment.  I have indicated a chair, and he
now sits there obediently.

As I look at him, I'm not sure anymore what I knew and didn't know at
any given time.  But I think somewhere, I knew it all.  Always.

I hated it, and part of me blocked it out.

ALLEN:

I remember that day (I think) perfectly now.  The warm responsive flesh
under my hands in the bathtub.  The sweet smell of soap.  The horribly
burned hand.  My hand.  The rain.  The dark barn, the ladder.  I see ..
.

ELEANOR:

How still you are.  My brother.  My twin.  A dark, lost, other self.
Staring.  Are you insane at last?

I knew you would come.  Once I had seen you in the park with your young
keepers.

ALLEN:

How I hated you.  Wanted you.  How I hate you still.

ELEANOR:

My whole life to date has been a waiting.  Perhaps I should have stayed
to help you.  But I had to go out into the world.  I was all in pieces.
Pregnant too.  Perhaps (though now I think not) by my own father.  You
called me a whore and a slut.

Once we danced naked in the wood.  We were alone.  We made up all the
population of the known world.

You were my second love and greatest enemy.  You tempted me daily.  You
make my Pearl pale into insignificance.  You were my mother all over
again, and yet not my mother.  A demon for the devil in me.

Now you sit on your throne, Queen of Hell.  You are still beautiful in
your own peculiar way.  But what do you think?  Your look paralyzes,
immobilizes me.  You have the evil eye.  Wasn't that something our
father once said?

ELEANOR:

You are stronger-looking than when you were a boy.  You are a man in
his prime--not large but with a hint of power about you.  When you come
into full possession of yourself you may have great personal power--for
good or evil.  I can see this.

As children we went into the woods together.  Perhaps we've never
really come out.  Perhaps we ought to go even deeper in.  Perhaps we
ought to die there together.

ELEANOR:

I'm waiting.  I'm waiting for you to move, to act.  It is yours to
decide.  I'm in your power now.

I remember now that time in Toronto.  You came to my apartment on
Isabella Street.  You were ready for anything then.  You were in your
most wanton mood.  But you skipped out on me.

Damn cock tease  You must have recognized me at some point, I guess.

"You stood in the doorway in your slip.  I was lying back on the sofa
with my eyes half-closed.  You were leaning there in your tight slip,
silk stockings, and heels.  It was incredibly sexy.  Your brown hair
tumbled down to your shoulders.  Your breasts and hips .. .

You are actually slimmer now.  There are gray streaks in your hair. But
there is a hint yet of the woman I touched that afternoon.  She clings
to you still like an old perfume.

ELEANOR:

The way you look at me now.  I have seen that look before.  Such
intensity.  Is it love or hatred that you feel?  Are they perhaps the
same thing for you?

ALLEN:

I want you.  / want to kill you.

I should have killed you that night when you were naked in the
moonlight.  That would have been perfect.  There on the white green
hill.  I could have strangled you with your own shift.

While I was inside you.

ALICE:

When he came back that day I could see he was upset.  Even though he
tried to appear calm.  "Where have you been?"  I asked.

"He's escaped," he said flatly.

"Oh no," I said.  He had told me a lot by now about this "special
case."  I knew how important this wretched man had become to him.

"I'll have to resign from that job," he said.  "Unless they pick him up
today or tomorrow.  But I'm losing confidence.  I have a bad feeling
about it.  And what if he runs amok first?"

In the past he had almost never confided his fears and doubts to me.
But I didn't grasp the importance of this new openness right away.

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said.

"No.  I'm sorry.  I don't mean to upset you too."

"Don't be silly.  I want to know what's on your mind."

And I went and put my arms around him.  My swollen stomach pressed to
his.

After supper he sat brooding in his study.  I wasn't sure what to do.
The police phoned once, but they hadn't found the man.  They only
wanted to check again the details of what he was wearing, and so forth.
They'd picked up a perfectly innocent tramp who was hitch-hiking to
Montreal.

At nine I took Herb a strong drink.  I'd had a thought.

"Look," I said.  "It wasn't your fault.  You did all you could for the
man.  You took a necessary risk.  You can't blame yourself."

"I do," he said.

"Well, don't.  Didn't you tell me this case would enlarge our
understanding of the mind?  Well, don't lose it.  Use it."

He looked shocked at my bluntness.

"Our lives are changing now," I said.  "You discovered that man and you
explored his condition.  So you should get the credit."

He got my drift.

"You're telling me," he said then, rather gravely, "that, whatever
happens, I should write a book."

Her bedroom had wallpaper that was a pattern of white daisies on a
mauve background on the lower walls, and, above a thin horizontal strip
of wood painted white, a reversed pattern of mauve flowers on a white
background.  A reversed negative effect.  Like a permanent, artificial,
dusty-blue springtime.  A back window yielded a view of the long back
yard with its border of bushes and fir-trees.  In the multiple embrace
of the

taller fir-tree, numbers of small birds were chirping vigorously.
Invisibly.  Beyond the yard's partly broken-down back picket-fence were
further back yards, garages, and the high walls (some with balconies)
of several substantial houses over on Nelson Street.

Then Elaine went and closed the thick gold curtains over this prospect
so that the light inside the flowered room was softened, diffused.

I stood there, watched her.  Poised.  My large hands longing to
surround her throat.  But first .. .

HERB:

I spent a couple of days reading through all my notes and transcripts
of tapes.  Yes, I could see the outlines of a book emerging.  I would
try to make sense of Carter and his life, as much anyhow as I had come
to know about it.  I would describe Carter, all the Carters, while the
experience was still fresh in memory.  I would call the work The Search
for Allen Carter.  It would almost certainly make my reputation-perhaps
a somewhat controversial reputation.  It could even have the popular
appeal of a mystery novel.

And all the time I thought about this I felt I was being irresponsible.
Sitting here, planning my book.  And what if Carter was out there
attacking or planning to attack a woman at this very moment?

ELEANOR:

see him there, a dark shape.  Standing.  Who is he?  All at once is a
stranger.  Silent.  His large hands extended a little out rar ds from
his hanging arms.  He seems larger now in the shadows of my darkened
room.  Not quite human.  An ape, or a dangerous robot.  (When you lean
into a mirror in a dark room you shiver, involuntarily, confronting the
other.)

I can't see his eyes.  I only remember their intensity.  Behind me some
birds are chirping from the depths of the fir-tree.  I can't hear my
own breathing, or his.

He doesn't move.  Why doesn't he move?  Or speak.  My hands clutch
through the thick curtain at the windowsill behind.  The small birds. I
feel all at once as if I may faint, fall down.  What have I done? What
have I invited?  My self possession is evaporating like morning mists
in Mexico.  Mexico.  Was I ever really there?

And still he does not move.  Speak.

"Can you see?"  I hear a woman saying.

He moves a little toward me.  Stops.

"I see you," he says.  I don't know this voice.  This man.  Harsh,
elemental, almost mechanical ... I can smell him now.  I smell an
almost lethal intensity.  As if he can kill with his presence alone.

"I can always see in the dark."  The voice is cold.  Utterly.  Like a
sudden, cold wind in the room.

"Take off your clothes," he says.

My hands begin, mechanically, to obey.  They begin to unzip my dress
down behind .. .

"I want you naked.  I want you on your knees."

A disembodied voice, hypnotic.  But I can smell his body.  Commanding.
I comply.

"Afterwards," he says distantly, "I'm going to kill you.  I'm going to
strangle you slowly.  I'm going to make it last.  So it feels real.  So
you know you've been completely done.  Completely finished."

I hear him unzipping his pants.

"Then it won't matter anymore.  Then I can die, or live, or whatever
happens ..."

The cold, dreamy voice trails off quietly .. .

Shock.  A hand has grasped the back of my head, my hair.  It is
twisting in my hair.  Pulling, jerking my head almost off my neck.

"It's all yours, sweetheart," he says.  "It's ready.  Open wide."

age.  I am blind with rage.  I am awake.  At last.

I grasp his legs behind the knees with both hands and pull.  He is
surprised, he topples backwards, still holding my hair, I am pulled
along with him.  Pain.  All through my body a shock wave of pain.

"Bitch," he says breathlessly.  And lets go of my hair.  His first
mistake.  I think he has fallen on that arm, that shoulder.

I spring to my feet, but he seizes my naked ankle with his other, his
left hand.  It hurts badly, and I can't move.  He lies there, breathing
heavily, holding on while I stand shaking.  I try to kick him with my
free foot but it is awkward.  A stalemate.

Till my wits return.  I bend my knees to make them weapons, to land
heavily, sharply on his stomach or his groin.  To cause him as much
pain as I can.

He cries out as I connect with a crunch but doesn't let go his hold on
my ankle.  It hurts more now, perhaps it's broken.

Pause.

Then suddenly he roars, grabs at my arms, pushes me over onto my back
on the hardwood floor.  Straddles my bare stomach while holding my arms
down with his.  But he is still in some pain.  He pins me there,
breathing heavily .. .

Then he gets up, lifts me roughly, with his hands round my weak wrists.
Moves me backwards, I stumble.  Stands me against the wall by the
gold-curtained window .. .

"We'll start again, shall we?  Only, this time up against the wall."

He has let go of my wrists!  Which hurt.  I reach out automatically
beside me to my small dressing table.  Grasp the long, sharp scissors
that are always lying there.

With my other hand behind me I pull the cord that opens the gold
curtains a little.  And light spills in like dusty blood.  The sound of
the small birds in the fir-tree returns.

Silently, I show him my sharp scissors.  My weapon.  I am pointing them
at him with both hands.  He has stepped back a little, involuntarily.

I think I am going to kill him.

ELEANOR:

He pales in the light.  I think the fight has gone out of him a little.
Do I dare to speak?

"I can save you," I say clearly, with all my gathered authority of
years and years.  "I can save you from her."  He gasps at the sound of
my voice.  He bends a little at the knees, as if about to faint.  Then
falls to his knees.

"Help me," he says.  Desperate.  Stricken, a child.

It could be a trick.  But I move toward him slowly, still holding my
scissors, but lowered.

His arms reach round to grasp me, his face is buried in my naked belly.
He holds me and begins to rock and sob.

I hear the scissors fall to the floor behind him with a loud clatter.

All at once my violent urges collapsed.  Or someone's did.

It was the birds that made me weep.  The bird-cries.

I was seeing the trees, the mossy ground, sunlight flickering in the
high leaves.  Birdsong.  She was holding me in her arms.  We were
children again playing in the forest on the high hill .

Once my father, a veteran social worker, told me: "There are always
people who will betray your trust, your repeated kindnesses.  There are
people who seem beyond redemption or regeneration.  But you must never
give up hope.  You must never give up your faith in human beings."  His
own father, my grandfather, was a Methodist minister.

Why do my parents now seem so naive to me?  They were my heroes when I
was growing up.  But later I could see that their need to make their
only child into a white knight cast in their own mold served also to
make me a little stiff.  Not a humorless prig or a plaster saint, but
also not exactly a bundle of laughs

(as Lyle might say of Laird).  But so what?  Isn't that, still, better
than being selfish and irresponsible?  Better than turning your eyes
away from what you've conveniently decided you can't change anyway?

They gave me a sense of vocation, for better and worse.  And also,
unwittingly, my worst moments of shock and pain-never to be equaled or
even approached again until these last days.  When the police phoned
that time years ago to ask me to come and identify the bodies, I went,
as I had to, knowing already there was no hope that it might turn out
to be some other aging couple.

She actually looked serene.  As if it had happened so fast that there
was no shock.  His head, his face had been smashed in by the windshield
and the steering-wheel.  After I had made the identification I went
into the washroom and vomited up my supper.

Some minutes after that I realized that I didn't even want to phone
Cora, my lover of several years.  I think now that was the beginning of
the end of us too.  Some months later she finally left me for someone
else, a musician, a good-time type as it happened.  I thought then that
I was the injured party.

A drunk driver.  One arguably useless individual--though my parents
would have argued that nobody is useless--who snuffed out in a moment
the lives of two people genuinely if naively dedicated to helping
others.  Two do-gooders down.  While he suffered scarcely a scratch.
One of the shiftless and careless ones apparently blessed and protected
by heaven.  Almost certainly at large now after serving a moderate
sentence.  I never wanted to know what became of him.  I don't think he
lives in this town.

And the following spring I went into the bank one day and there was a
new, very friendly, pretty teller.  I gravitated to her line without a
second's thought.  And that's how I met Alice.

ALLEN, ELEANOR:

"I wanted to kill you."  "I know."

"But then I was suddenly back there in the woods.  Where we escaped
from them.  We were in it together."

"Yes."

"All we had as children was each other."

"Yes.  That's all."

"And I could cry and cry, if I let myself.  But I'm still dangerous
too.  I could turn violent again.  I can feel that moving somewhere in
me."

I wept for our child-selves--there in the woods.  For an innocence
already beginning to fragment.  A multitude of birds hidden in a
fir-tree.  But singing.

I might have become anything.  What I am: a weakling, a good-time
Charlie, a rapist, and near-murderer.  A crying child.

I see the faces of those I have hurt.  Just because I was hurt.  Pearl,
Cecily.  And then the anonymous ones.  Those women.  An army of women,
faceless, whom I wanted to punish.

That's the horror of it.  I still feel the impulse at odd moments.  But
I grieve for them too.  I stand over their future graves weeping.  The
monster weeps for his victims.

Was that how Jack the Ripper felt?

Sick fantasies.  But they still come to me unbidden.

Sad women, waiting to be abused.  In bars, in cafes, in parking lots.
Waiting for the man, the stranger, who will come.  The man who opens
the passenger door of his car, and beckons.  The man who needs to take
them to some room, some cheap hotel room perhaps, and beat them black
and blue.  To ease his own pain.  Time and time again.

ELEANOR:

"What will you do?"  I asked days later.  After we had talked our lives
through.

"I can't go back now.  They'd never let me out.  They'd never trust me
again."

"The doctor would, if you went back, wouldn't he?  I could reveal
myself and promise to cooperate.  Didn't you say he talked about
parole?"

"The warden might agree to continued treatment.  Or experiment: I'm
kind of a guinea-pig for them, you see.  But it would have to be
inside.  And that place is complete hell."

"I'm sure," I shuddered.  Then I said: "They must have put out a
description of you by now.  A photograph."

"Yes.  For sure."

"You can stay here for as long as you want.  You don't need to go out.
And nobody comes here anymore.  If we're lucky, maybe nobody took any
special notice of you coming to my door--though I have one neighbor who
watches everyone, but I'm sure she was at church.  Nobody comes now.  I
got rid of my phone before I went to Mexico.  I had only a certain
limited number of clients in recent years and I dismissed them all last
fall when I went away.  And also--Elaine Carter Mason would be
difficult to trace very quickly.  Some years ago I changed the surname
I used from Mason to King.  After the prime minister died, I became
Eleanor King.  For the business.  I was told at one point that this had
aroused a rumor that I had been secretly married to Mr.  King."

"Your sons?"

"Gone.  Toronto, Vancouver.  They wanted to escape me, I think."

"That seems unfair," Allen said.  "After all you went through.  What
you've told me."

"It's natural.  I wasn't able, really, to be much of a mother to them.
But they're actually all right, I think.  They always were.  Not like
..."

He smiled a little grimly as I broke off.

"I know.  Not like us.  Or our parents.  They .. . Well, enough of
them.  I just hope my Cecily's all right too--not cursed with this
family plague.  I can't do much for my daughter, God knows.  But Pearl
is strong and good in her way."

"She helped you."

"Yes, up to a point.  But I can't go back there either, I see that

now.  Even if I was free in the eyes of the law, she wouldn't know me.
As I really am."

"Do you think .. . ?"

"Yes?"

"Well ..."

"You wonder," he said a bit drily, "if I will be ... coherent. Wherever
I go."

"Yes.  You seem fine just now.  These last days."

"I feel well with you at hand.  I find sleeping upstairs--in that
strange and magical room there--so peaceful.  Calming.  But no, I don't
know if this .. . calm will last.  Suppose, in crisis, in flight, in
fright ..."

"But you remember .. . ?"

"Yes.  That's it.  I remember more and more.  Some of it very terrible.
But good things too.  More and more.  All this last winter.  And even
in these last few days.  All the talking we've done, hours and hours,
opens it up.  It's amazing."

I said then: "I really think something, someone in me, has always known
all of it.  All my different lives.  Kept track."

"Yes.  Yes.  Maybe it's just what's recorded in the brain.  Delaney
told me about a Dr.  Penfield in Montreal who can stimulate past
experience, make people actually relive it, by applying electricity to
the brain."

"Electricity?"  I thought for a second of Arlen and his weird little
speeches about electrical patterns.  Then I thought again.  "You mean
shock-treatment?"  I asked.  "He wanted to do that to you?"

"No, no.  He wouldn't let them in the pen.  No, apparently the thing is
to stimulate different areas of the brain mildly with electrodes--to
see what those areas do."

"Oh."  I could not really think about the brain.  I remembered those
times when, observing Arlen, I had felt that I was right outside of my
body while he was in it.  That seemed to have nothing to do with the
brain, if the brain was only physical.  I sighed.  "I don't suppose
we'll ever fully understand it.  But that's all right.  As long as we
have learned, are learning, to

control it, use it--to our advantage.  We're finally getting used to
it."

"I think some day people will understand it," said Allen.

"I guess," he continued after a moment, "there really is no 'self in
the ordinary sense.  I mean, the way a person usually thinks of
himself, herself, is just illusion.  Or just one possibility among
many.  One configuration."

"But .. . "Just then my protestation was interrupted by a sharp
rapping, oddly like Mrs.  Ramsay's long-ago table rapping.

ALICE:

I wanted to see her one more time.  To say goodbye.  To thank her.  To
tell her about my life now.

So I left Herb poring over his notes.  I said I was going for a walk to
get some fresh spring air.

It's not a long walk to Victoria Street.  I tried to think what to say
to her.  All I could think to say was that I was pregnant-something
grossly obvious to the most casual glance by now-and that I was happy
about it.  That I was more resigned to my life and to my marriage. That
I could let Brian go.  But it seemed as if there was more to say,
though I could not find words for it.

I came to the house.  At first I thought the place was empty.  After I
knocked.  But peering beyond myself through the upper window of the
front door I thought I saw two people sitting side by side on a sofa. A
woman and a man.  A man?  It was as if Arlen had materialized in
separate form.

I knocked again.

Then the growing shape of Eleanor approaching the door.  She opened it.
"Oh.  It's you," she said.  She was surprised, perhaps even a little
alarmed.

"I've wanted to speak with you," I said.

"I see."

"Can I come in?"

"I suppose so.  But I'm not really feeling terribly well today."

I could have said I'd come back another time but for some reason did
not.  I persisted.  "I won't stay long.  It's not what you may
think."

She made way for me, and I went in.  There was nobody else in the
double room.  Perhaps I had only imagined a man for her.  My wishful
thinking.  We sat down on separate sofas.

Eleanor looked much as she had that day in the nearby park.  A little
worn perhaps.  But still very handsome.  She was one of the women who
age well.

"I wanted," I began, "to tell you that I'm very happy to be pregnant.
And to thank you."

"To thank me?"  she said, looking puzzled.

"Yes.  Oh I realize now, now that I've calmed down, that what I thought
at first is a biological impossibility.  It can't be Brian's child. And
yet, somehow, with some other part of my mind, I feel it is.  But I'm
not crazy.  I just know that, somehow, in some sense, the child was
conceived here, in this house.  Because of all that happened here.  Am
I making any sense?"

"Yes," said Eleanor.

"So I wanted to thank you," I said, the words coming more easily than I
had anticipated, "for seeing me through this crisis in my life.  It had
been waiting to happen ever since I lost Brian.  But I survived, with
your help.  I recovered.  I simply want to get on with my life now."

"And your husband?"

"I'm determined now to make the marriage work.  For our son (I'm sure
it's a son).  Herb will be a good father.  He's troubled just now about
something that happened in his work, but he'll be fine when the baby is
born.  Which will be soon."

Eleanor looked very thoughtful then, as if she wanted to say something
to me in return but didn't know how.  She looked quite vulnerable
really.  Her mystical authority was all gone.  She was only a woman
now, a basically kind woman, I thought.  I wondered for the first time
about her personal history, about which I knew only bits and
pieces--that she was a widow, that her sons had grown up.  Where had
she come from?

ELEANOR:

After Alice had gone I made some tea for Allen and myself.  I searched
in the bathroom for the supply of sleeping pills I had not needed in
recent times.  I put three of them into his cup.  I loaded it with
sugar, so that he complained.  "Though actually, in one of my lives, I
did have a very sweet tooth," he admitted.  And drank it.

It seemed to be some time before it began to take effect.

"I don't know why I'm so drowsy," he said at last.

"Stretch out," I said in as calm and neutral a tone as I could muster.
"I'll wake you up for supper.  You must be extra tired from all the
excitement of these last days."

I think I said just a little too much, for his eyes rested on me
strangely then, as if he had begun to wonder.  But then his face
relaxed again.  Perhaps he was resigning himself to my will.

When he seemed to be asleep I prepared to go out.  But what if he was
only faking?  I went and looked at him quietly.

Are women always this treacherous?  I still ask myself.  I think
perhaps we're more ruthless than men in the basic issues of life.  When
we know what we want.  And I wanted my brother to resume his treatment.
I saw clearly then, if I had not before, that he could never get away
without being caught.  Then it would be the worse for him.  Whereas, if
he appeared to turn himself in (with my help, and the guarantee of my
future assistance), it might still be possible to help him.  Even,
eventually, to free him.

But don't you believe in freedom, I mean in his free choice, what you
yourself have had?  I asked myself as I walked quickly toward the
street where the Delaneys lived.  I ought to, I answered, but I can't
help this, this is different from my life and luck.  I have to try to
save him.

ALLEN:

I didn't see the woman who came.  I heard her voice, though not
everything she said.  Ellie said she was just a former client who felt
that she owed her present peace of mind to Eleanor.

234 CHANGEHNGS

She had gotten pregnant, and was now happy as a cow, it seemed.

I suppose it was only to be expected that somebody would turn up on the
doorstep.  But Ellie seemed troubled afterwards, though she tried to
hide it.  She made some tea, I thought at first to calm her nerves. The
unexpected visit had unnerved her a little.  And me too, I'll admit.

The tea was too sweet, though Lyle sometimes likes it that way.  I
drank it anyway.  It was pleasant, I had to admit.  But after a while I
began to feel strange.

"I don't know why I'm so drowsy," I said.

She said I must be tired, that I should stretch out on her bed.  I
began to be suspicious then.  I looked at her.  Would she really do
this to me?  I had trusted her completely.  Ever since she had held me
in her arms and I had wept and been disarmed with a sudden, piercing
vision of our happiest moments of early childhood.  I was transported.
But now?  Who was she, really?  I made an instant plan.

I allowed myself to drowse off a little but was determined not to
succumb to sleep.  I listened to find out what she would do.  I heard
her close the front door behind her.  Then I had to fight the sedative,
whatever it was she had slipped me, exert my utmost will.  Till I woke
up completely, with an adrenalin rush of energy.  I was instantly
seized with rage.

I picked up an antique chair and hurled it at the flowered wall.  It
broke into pieces.  Good.  I smashed a picture on the pine wood floor.
I was laughing insanely now.

I stomped into the living room and overturned the glass and
wrought-iron coffee table.  Various small items, including our emptied
teacups, which she hadn't removed yet, struck the Persian carpet.  I
took each of the glass-cased photos and sketches from the walls and
smashed them face-down on the uncovered parts of the floor.  One was a
photo of her children, their oddly familiar faces flashing before me.

Then I stopped, and stood and looked about to see what more damage I
could do.  Till a sudden, irresistible weakness came over me.  I
collapsed on the nearest sofa, weeping.

The mickey, the sedative, was slowly but surely reasserting itself,
once I stopped moving, breaking.  But I wept now not so much out of
growing physical helplessness but because I could see with perfect
clarity the pointlessness of my fury.

I wept because I saw she was right.  Because I knew at last that I
would have to give in ...

ALICE:

It was Eleanor at the door.  How odd.  First I had paid her an unwanted
visit; now, on the very same day, she was returning the favor.

"I'm sorry for this intrusion," she said, as calm as you please.  "But
I have to speak with your husband--with Dr.  Delaney.  It's urgent."

"No," I cried out, involuntarily.

"Not about you," she returned swiftly, and just a trifle irritably.
"That remains confidential."

"About what then?"  Was the woman mad?  I should never have gone
there.

She paused.  Then spoke decisively.  "About Allen Carter."

HERB:

When we got there, the place was a shambles.  He had smashed all the
pictures and overturned a tableful of precious objects.  Obviously Al
had been loose.  And yet he was passed out like a baby on a sofa.  The
very picture of innocence.  We took in the wreckage.

"This doesn't matter," said the strange and strangely decisive woman
who had brought me here.  Alice had insisted on tagging along too,
though I told her not to.  Peter and Colin were on their way.  I had,
perhaps foolishly, promised this woman not to involve the police unless
it became absolutely necessary.  But there was something quietly
compelling about her--I think Alice felt this too--that made me trust
her, against my more rational judgment.

"What matters," she said, "is that his treatment resume.  I'll help
with it.  I'm his sister, his twin sister.  It's because he s me in the
park that he left.  Don't you see?  We have to make warden understand
that."

They woke me a little.  I said, "I'll do anything you want Doc," and
dropped off again.  But they kept on shaking me.  sat up.  In a very
dopey state I walked with them, supported li' a drunk by the two boys.
Back to the apartment, voluntarily.  Then I stretched out on my own bed
and slept.  All I wanted to do was sleep.

CODA

I did write my book, eventually, and I did call it The Search Allen
Carter.  I began with a description of my panicky fe eli upon his
escape, and then proceeded backwards to investi what had made him what
we now are accustomed to c "multiple" personality.

The book did make my reputation.  And, to my comp surprise (for I had
not expected quite this degree of inte from the general public), it
even became rather a popular s cess in paperback.

There were, of course, those who believed that I might h; made up a
good deal of the material--just as Freud's ca histories are thought by
some to be essentially parables instructive fictions.  I believe Tom
Briars is skeptical to this c1 But most of my colleagues have long
since accepted my fri ings.

I must add that my book was something of a collaborati since it was
greatly assisted by Eleanor Carter King.  I pro ised her complete
anonymity, and she told me a great d about her and her brother's early
lives.

"What about the farm?"  I asked her.

She shuddered.  "I haven't been near that place for aim twenty-five
years," she said.  ,

"The police went there," I told her.  "I went with them."

found the old man half-starved and raving.  He's in a nursing home
now--peacefully senile since he's been there."

"I'm sorry, I suppose.  But I never wanted to see them again.  Is she
dead?  That's what Allen said."

"Yes."

"She was a lost soul."

Her apparent self-possession unnerved me at first.  She had come
through.  She had survived it all, it seemed, yes, and even triumphed
over it.  And all on her own.  Unless she had had a guardian angel.
How?  I do not know.  Sometimes things just seem to work themselves
out.  In the face of this what do I, what does psychiatry know?  Bits
and pieces.

My first son was born that spring of 1961.  I called him Brian.  As he
grew older, of course, he came to look very much like Herb.  And Herb
was, is a good father--a tender, loving helper.  It brought out a whole
new side to him.

ELEANOR:

I don't know why I'm here.  On the earth, I mean.

I could tell about my successful second marriage--to a science
professor--but that's only personal.

Now, on June evenings, I like to walk east along King Street from my
present house to a little strip of shoreline and park.  It is still
light, and there are still sails on the water.  Along the shore the
swallows make beautiful looping and swooping patterns in the air.
Ascending, descending some invisible spiral staircase.  So that I begin
to feel myself part of a movement, a rhythm beyond myself.

I feel as if this moving moment has always been, it has always been
happening.  Something beckons to me in the distant movement of leaves
and clouds, a white sail, this morning a moth fluttering against a
window, a field or a wood remembered.  Something in these images, these
glancings and

glimpses, tantalizes me.  I can feel it, this larger thing that holds
me, I can even momentarily embody it, but I can't ever quite pin it
down.

ALLEN:

This all began a long time ago.

Now, under a slightly altered name, I am a city councillor in a western
city.  Before that I was an amateur actor in the local theater here,
while I also worked as a mailman; but then I got interested in civic
affairs.  Everyone in the union said what a good speaker I was.  I was
on the executive committee.  I used my charm (that is Lyle's charm) to
good effect.  I was, we were, elected to city council in a
working-class district.

We work as a team now.  Laird's conscience, Al's aggressiveness
(toned-down, though I still have my dangerous moments, as my children
can attest), Lyle's charm and love of pleasure, and Lou's (or, really
my) overall judgment and detachment.  You might say, speaking vulgarly,
that I've learned when and where to push what buttons.

My life has changed so much that sometimes, at odd moments in the rush
of events, it seems completely unreal to me.  I am married again, with
two children.  Most of the time even faithful.  My wife is ten years
younger than I am, a teacher; I met her at the little theater group.

In the early days of my parole, which came several years after my
"escape," I was, of course, strictly supervised.  Aside from my parole
officer, I saw a lot of my sister and of Herb Delaney.  They helped me
greatly to adjust.  I got a job at the local post office with Delaney's
help.

But when my supervised parole was complete, I decided to start anew in
a different place.  So I went.  Headed west, not without some
trepidation.  But first I had some farewells to negotiate.

I can't talk about my last conversation with Ellie.  It was
emotional.

More difficult though, more painful really, was my last visit

 with Pearl and Cecily.  They had moved from Toronto to this prison
city while I was still getting therapy, and parole was becoming
possible.  I wanted to do something for them when I got out but I found
it difficult to do more than give them half of my poor salary.  I lived
in a cheap room in those days.

I would visit Cecily every week or so, or take her on outings.  We
spent a lot of time, as it happened, at the playground in Victoria
Park. Afterwards I would talk with Pearl, hoping she might
understand.

But I don't think she ever has.  She couldn't see why I didn't just
come back to her.  Even if I had been guilty of rape, a horrible crime,
I was cured of the sickness that made it happen now, wasn't I?  She
seemed to think it had something to do with drinking--something that
simple.  She thought that with that sickness neatly excised, cut away
surgically or something by the good doctor, I should just come on home
and be her good Laird again.  It was sad.  But it also annoyed me.

I went to see my wife and daughter for the last time in their small
apartment.

"I'll send you money when I've got a job," I said.  "I'm pretty sure
the post office will give me one wherever I land.  I have good
references from here."

She shrugged all this aside.  She was as close to being angry as I've
ever seen her.  My gentle Pearl.

"All right," she said bluntly.  "I know you don't love me anymore. I've
accepted that.  Too much has changed for you, it seems.  But how can
you abandon your own daughter?"

"I'll keep in touch.  When I'm settled, Cecily can come for visits.
She'll be old enough for that soon."

"I don't think I want her visiting with some strange woman," said Pearl
bitterly.  "Suppose you take up with someone."

"That could happen.  I won't lie to you.  But if I do, it will be
serious--not just anybody that's handy."

"I hear you've been seen downtown with various women," she continued.

"Nothing serious," I muttered, thinking with surprise what

a bitch she could be.  But it made me sad mostly, dispirited, to
witness her continuing unhappiness.

"I'll write you," I said.  "I'll try to explain why it's all worked out
badly for us.  It was never your fault.  But I never exactly who you
thought I was either."  And so on."  I'm not sure she's ever
understood.

I simply had to leave even that latest life, life in that pr city,
behind me.

Little by little now the past recedes.  In a new place, distance it
takes on a certain unreal order, becomes a model of itself.  In my
mind's eye, I see a farm, barns, a I hills and woods, a city with its
houses, Ellie's house, an att: park, a prison rising high beside a
lake: all these structu huddled close together.  So unlike the endless
sky-touc prairies.  It's a distant toy-landscape that I seem once to
inhabited in a dream but that I can scarcely, any longer, tot or ever
quite believe in.