Set This House in Order (31 page)

Julie laughed that crazy laugh again. “
Yes,
Andrew,” she said. “It matters.”

“But…but it was
me
you were going to, to make love to, right? And you knew the body isn't a perfect reflection of my soul, so—”

“Andrew…”

“—so it's really only a question of degree, right? It's still
me,
Julie…”

“I'm not a lesbian, Andrew.”

This was such a non sequitur that for a moment I was completely lost. “What?”

“I'm not a lesbian. I—”

“But…
I'm not a lesbian, either.
” I felt a brief, irrational surge of hope, that died when I saw Julie's expression hadn't changed. She didn't care whether I was a lesbian; she cared that Andy Gage's body was female. Case closed.

And still I struggled, trying to come up with a new line of argument, some way of convincing her that it really didn't matter. At a loss for words, I started to reach for her again, but Julie evaded my touch, getting up off the futon with such incredible speed that she seemed to have evaporated.

“I'm sorry, Andrew,” Julie said. She was standing over by the dresser, facing away from me, and I tried to figure out how she'd gotten all her clothes back on so quickly. “I'm sorry…I know it shouldn't make a difference, and I wish I could be more open to…to…but it matters. It
does
matter. It matters, and I, I just can't…And besides,” she added, looking over her shoulder at me, “it's still true what I said, the two of us getting together would be a bad idea, I mean even if…it would be a mistake. So maybe this is a sign, huh? One more sign that we're meant to be just friends,
good
friends, forever…”

“Friends.” The word was a dry croak in my throat. I raised my glass and took a big swallow of scotch, felt it warming me, numbing me. “Friends,” I repeated, bitterly. “I
love
you, Julie…I love you, and you know I'd treat you well, but you still pick
him
…him, and all the ones before, who, who treat you like shit…”

“I didn't pick him, Andrew,” Julie said, shaking her head. “I
slept
with him, OK, but now we're broken up, and he's out of my life—”

“Sure, until next time.”

“Would you really rather be in Reggie's shoes, Andrew? Sleep with me, but then
not
be friends?”

“I want
both!
” I shouted. I felt my eyes start to get wet. “You're always flattering me, telling me how wonderful I am, how
together
I am…if all that's true, if you mean it, why can't you love me? Why?”

She didn't answer, and I raised the bottle to my lips, took a long pull. The scotch backed up in my throat and I choked. When my vision cleared, Julie was no longer standing by the dresser; she was sitting on the floor by the window. Her eyes were red, just like they had been this morning.

“Why, Julie?” I repeated hoarsely. “Why can't you love me?”

She wouldn't look at me. “Andrew,” she sighed, sounding on the verge of total exhaustion, “I don't…I don't know what more you want from me. I mean I've tried—”

“I want to know
why.
I want you to tell me—”

“Andrew,
please
…I'm
sorry,
OK? I'm sorry I've hurt you so badly, I'm sorry if…if you think this is intentional cruelty. It's not, at least I don't think it is, but…I don't know anymore. But I'm
tired,
Andrew…I'm tired, and I feel like I've explained myself a million times already, but you
still won't accept it, and I just don't have the energy to make it a million and one times…so can't we just stop? Please?”

“A million times?” I said. “You haven't explained
anything,
Julie…”

Julie covered her face with her hands.

I took another drink from the bottle.

“Julie…” I began again, and then paused, distracted by the glow of a street lamp shining through the window above Julie's head. When I finally shook my attention free and looked down again, Julie was gone.

“Julie?” I looked over at the dresser, but she hadn't moved back there; she wasn't in the room anymore. Where had she disappeared to? “Julie?”

I got up. Actually, I got up twice; my first attempt to stand failed when the floor pitched up suddenly, thwacking me in the side of the head with Julie's futon mattress. The second time I moved more slowly, concentrating on balance, and managed to gain my feet.

I searched the entire apartment, calling Julie's name repeatedly. She was nowhere to be found. Finally I noticed that the apartment's outer door was ajar.

“Julie?” I stumbled onto the landing at the top of the rickety staircase, imagining I heard footsteps descending just ahead of me. But there was no one on the stairs, and the street-level door, visible only as a faint outline far below, was closed. I started down, too fast, and after only a few steps my balance went out again; I tripped and fell, the walls of the staircase seeming to fall away too, so that I landed outside, face down on an asphalt surface.

“Ju-ulie,” I gasped, sprawling. My shirt, untucked, caught beneath my hip; I heard a tiny
click-click-click
as a button popped off and bounced away. Something wet splashed my wrist.

I rolled onto my side. My hand was still holding the scotch bottle, I saw. The bottle had survived the fall intact, but the violence of the motion had caused some of the contents to slosh out of the neck; that was the wetness I'd felt. The scotch tingled on my wrist, making it seem more awake than the rest of me. I brought my wrist to my face, rubbed some of the wetness on my cheeks and forehead. I took another drink.

“Julie?” Somehow I got to my feet again. I was standing in the middle of a street, the street in front of Julie's apartment or maybe a different one, I couldn't tell. It was full dark now, and my vision had become grainy, so it was hard to resolve shapes, even those that were lit by street lamps. On the sidewalk to my left, I thought I saw a person—a woman? Julie?—but when I moved towards her she dissolved, like an eidolon morphing into a flock of doves.

“Julie…” Where was I? I needed to find a street sign, something I could focus on. Reasoning that a street corner would be a good place to look, I picked a direction and started walking.

Or lurching, is more like it. My soul swung loose in the body, as if it were attached to Andy Gage by a web of elastic tethers. Moving was like trying to operate a marionette from the inside—I swayed and pitched from side to side, using a line of parked cars as a combination handrail and crash barrier. Then I was at the corner, hugging a metal post and looking up at two narrow green bands set at right angles, one reading IRVINE
^ST
, the other OSWEGO
^CT
.

Irvine and Oswego, Irvine and Oswego, where was that? Above Bridge Street, or below it? I tried to place the intersection on a mental map of the town, then got sidetracked by another consideration: if I did figure out where I was, where did I want to go? Home to Mrs. Winslow's, or back to Julie's place? “Julie…” I sighed. My arm, the only part of me still capable of coordinated movement, started to come up; I caught it just in time, just as the bottle was about to touch my lips.

I decided on what, at the time, seemed like a practical strategy: I would just keep walking. Autumn Creek was small, after all; if I kept moving, kept trying new streets, and was careful not to cross any bridges, sooner or later I was bound to happen across Julie's building, or Mrs. Winslow's, or some other landmark that would allow me to orient myself. And Julie herself was still out on the streets somewhere, probably; with a little luck I might bump into her. That thought, more than any other, propelled me into motion again.

A step; a step; another step; and another. I don't know how long or how far I walked. I was losing time, of course: minutes and blocks were passing between each footfall that I was aware of. A step; a step; another step; and then suddenly I drew up short, feeling as though I was about to fall again. I pivoted, wheeled away from an unseen precipice; stumbled up over a curb; crossed an expanse of sidewalk; and staggered to a halt on a patch of mowed grass.

A voice called my name, and I came up into a state of relative sobriety. I was standing on the front lawn of Mrs. Winslow's Victorian. Mrs. Winslow was on the porch; it was she who had called to me. “Mrs. Winslow!” I cried, and my elation at finding myself home was eclipsed almost immediately by shame. I must look terrible…was I still carrying the scotch bottle? Yes, I was still carrying the scotch bottle. I thought seriously about walking away, ducking back out of sight before Mrs. Winslow could get a good look at me,
but then she said “Andrew” again with such concern that it was obvious it was too late.

Mrs. Winslow wasn't alone on the porch. There was a man up there with her, a policeman I thought at first, and my shame intensified—she'd gotten so worried she'd reported me missing. But the policeman wasn't wearing a uniform. No suit, either, so he wasn't FBI…

It was Dr. Eddington, I realized. What was
he
doing in Autumn Creek?

On my own I never would have guessed it; I was still too drunk. But some other soul looked out from the pulpit then, and put it together. The thought came, not mine but clear just the same:
Something has happened to Dr. Grey. That's what brought him here the last time.

I didn't want to hear it. It's my job to deal with the outside world, no matter how bad things get, but I didn't want to hear it. It was one blow too many. I'd killed Warren Lodge; I'd killed my friendship with Julie too, probably; if it turned out I'd killed Dr. Grey as well, tempting her back to work she no longer had the strength for, I didn't want to know. I refused to know.

“Andrew…” Dr. Eddington began, but I didn't stay to listen. I shook loose from the body, snapped the tethers. There was a sound of glass shattering, of house-timbers cracking; a chorus of souls crying out in anguish and alarm; and all of that swallowed up by the hissing roil of the mist as I fell back into the lake. I plunged down deep, down to the bottom where the water is black, and there is no bad news.

I fell into the lake; but somebody has to run the body. And somebody did: ran it, and ran with it: somebody who had been waiting a long time for just this chance. Even as the waters closed over me, Andy Gage's body was on the move again, running back into the street, back into the night; running far, far away.

Mouse's first meeting with Dr. Eddington is scheduled for 7:30
P.M.
, which is pretty late in the day, but the only time he had available. When Mouse called to make the appointment, she was surprised that Dr. Eddington answered the phone himself; he explained that his regular secretary was getting married in two days, and her temporary replacement hadn't shown up, “so I'm running things by myself for the time being…What did you say your name was?” Mouse told him, and he replied cheerfully: “Oh, Penny! Danielle—Dr. Grey—told me you might be calling. And this is about treatment for multiple personality disorder, right?”

Mouse was taken aback by the matter-of-factness of the question; from his tone, he might have been asking whether she needed a cavity filled, or the tires checked on her car. “Y-yes,” she said.

“OK, great,” he said; there was a sound of shuffling papers in the background. “So for our first session, how does a week from Wednesday sound?”

“A
week
…” exclaimed Mouse.

“Sorry it can't be sooner,” Dr. Eddington apologized. “I'm booked solid tomorrow, Wednesday is my secretary's wedding, and on Thursday I fly to San Francisco for a seminar that lasts through the weekend. So I really can't do anything until next week. Unless…”

“Unless?”

“Well, I'm just thinking…my last regular appointment tomorrow ends at five o'clock, and then I've got a karate class at 5:45. I
could
grab a quick dinner and come back to the office after that, say around half past seven. Would that work for you?…Penny?…Are you still there?”

“Yes,” Mouse made herself say. Her disappointment at being told that she would have to wait had been replaced in the blink of an eye by a power
ful reluctance, a last wish that she could forget about treatment and just go back to the way things used to be—a miserable life, sure, but one she'd grown accustomed to. But that wasn't an option now. “Yes, OK…half past seven tomorrow, I'll be there.”

“OK,” said Dr. Eddington. “Let me give you directions.”

Dr. Eddington's office is in Fremont, the hippie/Bohemian enclave on the north bank of the Lake Washington Shipping Canal. Though not technically a slum, Fremont is still the sort of neighborhood Mouse's mother would have turned her nose up at; it is also a neighborhood where, twice in the past year, Mouse has awakened in strangers' beds after a lost night. She will have to take care, coming and going from Dr. Eddington's, not to catch the eye of anyone who “knows” her.

Mouse doesn't mind meeting with the doctor in the evening; the only bad part about it is having to kill time between the end of her workday and the start of the appointment. Ever since the hypnosis session at Dr. Grey's, the Society have gotten bolder. They aren't content to just send written memoranda anymore, or leave messages on her answering machine; Mouse has begun to hear voices. Sometimes the voices are just whispers, like daydream thoughts that aren't her own. Other times they are loud and clear, as though someone were talking over her shoulder. The voices can come at any time, but they are most apt to speak up in moments of idleness, when Mouse is alone with herself. For this reason, she had hoped to spend the hours before her appointment with Andrew, or with Andrew's father. But Andrew is off somewhere with Julie, and if he is unavailable, so is Aaron, by definition.

It's amazing what a difference a week makes. When Andrew first offered to introduce her to his “father,” Mouse only agreed out of desperation; now she actually wants to talk to him. It would still be going too far to say she
enjoys
talking to him—Aaron Gage is not what you would call a pleasant conversationalist—but she is grateful to have met him. In part it is simply a relief to learn that once you get past the initial strangeness of somebody else occupying Andy Gage's body, it's not
that
strange; and if having multiple personalities doesn't make Andrew a complete freak, then maybe there's hope for Mouse as well.

It's also true, what Andrew said: his father does understand what Mouse is going through. “Of course you're scared to death at first. You've always secretly believed that you're crazy, and now it's like the evidence is snowballing, so you're not going to be able to hide it anymore. People are going to find out. And along with the fear, there's guilt, because you've also got
this idea that it's your fault, that you've brought this on yourself somehow, even if you can't remember what you did…so not only is the whole world going to know that you're nuts, they're going to know you're evil, too…”

“
Yes
…so what do you do?”

“If you're like me, you waste a lot of time being scared. Years, maybe. Then one day you decide you're sick of that, you don't want to be afraid or guilty anymore, and you try to get help. And if you're lucky, and you get the
right
help, and you don't get
betrayed
…eventually you work past it. When it stops being scary and starts being a pain in the ass, that's when you know you've made real progress.”

Mouse looks forward to the day when hearing voices is only “a pain in the ass.” For now it's still scary. But she tries to follow Aaron's advice: “Dr. Grey probably told you to think of your Society as allies. It's true, they are. But you can also think of them as rude houseguests. When they act up, instead of panicking or feeling ashamed, try being annoyed, the same way you would if a visitor left you with a sink full of dirty dishes. It's not a perfect solution, but it'll help keep you from jumping out a window until you can get some real therapy—which you should do, soon.”

All right, she's doing it. But she still has a couple of hours to kill. Mouse doesn't go home after work; she goes to Seattle's University District and pokes around the shops on University Avenue. She loses some time while she's doing this—seven o'clock comes sooner than it should, and when she checks her wallet, she's short at least fifteen dollars—but she only hears voices once. That happens just before seven, at an all-but-deserted pizzeria where Mouse has stopped to get a bite before heading to Fremont. She only wants a cheese slice and a soda, but the counterman, deeply engrossed in a phone conversation, won't serve her, or even acknowledge her presence. Losing patience, Mouse finds herself thinking what a fat fucking slob the guy is…then realizes with a start that that's not her thought at all, it's Ugly, Maledicta, lurking in the cave mouth. “You cut that out!” Mouse says, which, to her acute embarrassment, finally gets the counterman's attention. “Hey, you
chill
out,” he tells her, and the next thing she knows she's driving down Fremont Avenue with the remains of a McDonald's Extra-Value Meal scattered over the Buick's dashboard.
So much for getting annoyed,
she thinks.

Dr. Eddington's directions lead her to a three-story wood-frame building. There's a small garden out front, enclosed by a chain-link fence; as Mouse comes up on it—she parked her Centurion a block away and is on foot now—she sees a man hunched down in the dirt, patiently weeding a
flower patch. He's dressed in khaki pants and a light cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up; his bare forearms are tanned and muscular, and his hair—short, dark, and finger-combed—looks freshly washed.

“Dr. Eddington?” Mouse addresses him.

He looks up, and for the second time in two weeks Mouse is confronted by the ghost of her father. But this time the impression is much stronger than when she saw Andrew laughing in front of the diner. Dr. Eddington actually
looks
like Morgan Driver, physically resembles him: he has the same eyes, the same nose, the same jawline. He is older than Morgan Driver ever got to be—Mouse guesses Dr. Eddington is in his mid-forties—but if you smoothed away the early crow's-feet and put a drooping cigarette in the corner of his mouth, what you'd have would be a reasonable facsimile of the face in her father's morning-after-prom-night photo.

“Hello, Penny,” Dr. Eddington says, and Mouse has to hook her fingers through the fence to keep from falling down. She doesn't know what her father's voice sounded like, but the way Dr. Eddington's voice sounds—that's the way it
should
have sounded. “It is Penny, right?”

Mouse manages a nod. Dr. Eddington stands up, starts to brush his hands on his pants, thinks better of it, and brushes them against each other instead. Then he reaches out and shakes Mouse's hand, and his grip, warm and friendly and firm, makes her feel two years old.

“So,” he says, releasing her hand, “come on inside.”

His office is on the second floor, in a converted two-bedroom apartment. He leads her down a hallway past a room whose desk and filing cabinets are piled with what look to be several hundred bridal magazines. At the end of the hall is another, larger room, with bookshelves on three walls and a desk off to one side. Like Dr. Grey, Dr. Eddington offers his patients a choice of seats: there is a fancy leather-upholstered executive swivel chair, and a decidedly less fancy chaise, covered in soft fabric overprinted with panels from the Dennis the Menace cartoon strip. “Garage sale,” Dr. Eddington explains, grabbing a second swivel chair from behind the desk for himself. “Please, sit where you like.” Mouse picks the executive chair, not because she doesn't like cartoons but because it is closer to Dr. Eddington.

“So,” Dr. Eddington says, “tell me about yourself.”

Mouse blinks, not sure what he's asking. “Didn't…didn't Dr. Grey already tell you…”

“She told me that you might be seeking treatment, and why,” Dr.
Eddington says. “And that you're a friend of Andrew's. But I meant, tell me about yourself personally. What are you like?”

What is she like? “I'm…” Mouse begins, meaning to say “I'm no one special,” but losing the last word: “I'm no one.”

Dr. Eddington gives her a pained smile, like he can't believe that's true. “Where are you from?”

“Ohio.”

“You still have family there?”

Mouse shakes her head. “They're all dead.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” says Dr. Eddington. “Recently?”

“Recently…?”

“When did they die?”

“Oh. My father died when I was very young, and my grandmother—my father's mother—died when I was nine. I never knew any of my other grandparents.”

“Uh-huh,” says Dr. Eddington. “And what about your mother?”

“She…died more recently,” Mouse says. “Seven years ago.” She looks away, worried that he's going to ask for specifics, but the next thing he says is: “So it's just you now.”

“Yes,” says Mouse. Then, remembering why she is here: “Well…”

“Right.” Dr. Eddington smiles. “What about friends? You still have friends back in Ohio?”

“No. I never did, really…”

“What about here in Seattle?”

Mouse starts to answer no again, then reconsiders. “There's Andrew, I guess.” She looks to the doctor for confirmation. “Dr. Grey did say that he was my friend, right?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Right, so Andrew, and I guess…I guess maybe Julie Sivik, too. Although she's also my boss.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“It's a virtual reality company.”

“Cool!” says the doctor. “So you're a computer programmer?”

“I guess so,” says Mouse. “I mean yes, that's my job, I'm a programmer, only…I'm not really sure what I
do
at work. What happens, I go in in the morning, I come home at night, and in between, I go to lunch, I have conversations with the other people at the Factory, but I can never remember actually
working.
And it's always been that way, with every job I've ever had:
the work gets done, it gets done
well,
even, but I, I'm not aware of doing it. Which is OK, I guess, since most of the jobs I've had I'm not really qualified for—if I had to think about the work, consciously, I probably
couldn't
do it.” She stops, amazed to be confessing this so openly.

Dr. Eddington accepts it all routinely. “You know,” he says, “there are people who would really envy you…but I realize it's not so much fun from your perspective.”

“It's not
not
fun,” Mouse tells him. “It's just what happens.”

“So you lose time at work,” says Dr. Eddington. “And other times too, I take it?” Mouse nods. “And when this happens, do you just blank out, or do you sometimes find yourself watching, like you're a spectator to your own actions?”

“Well, it didn't used to be like that,” says Mouse. “It used to be I'd just…go away. But since Dr. Grey hypnotized me—” She stops, catching the change in his expression. “What?”

“Dr. Grey hypnotized you?”

“Yes,” says Mouse. “Why?”

“What happened when she hypnotized you?”

Mouse tells him: how the room stretched out, how she found herself in the cave mouth with the Ugly twins, and how, trying to escape the sound of her own voice, she went deeper down into the cavern. She mentions the sleepers, too, but omits the appearance of the little girl with the sack, saying only: “I didn't like it in there. I came back out, into the, into my, body, and told Dr. Grey I didn't want to go inside again. And she said I didn't have to, not until I was ready, but then, on the way home…” She describes Maledicta's brief takeover on the way to the ferry landing.

Dr. Eddington is frowning now. “Have there been other incidents since then?”

“Some,” says Mouse. In fact she's only found herself back in the cave mouth a couple other times—most of her blackouts are still just that, blackouts—but she figures the voices also count as “incidents.” “What is it?” she asks. “Did Dr. Grey make a mistake? Should she not have hypnotized me?”