Web of Angels (7 page)

He paced and he asked himself these things. It was all he could do because the Housekeeper had blocked his way. He was confined and his nostrils narrowed at the stink of it. This was his: a floor of cold earth and walls of stone, which were wet from the sewage that seeped in. And the darkness, it was his, too. From here he sent out his punishers; he made sure that crying children stayed below. He had his means and ways, his keys and his locks. Order had to be maintained. The rules were simple:

Of course children would be tested. How else could anyone discover their strength? The harder the test, the
greater the honour to be won. He understood that, unlike those inside children with their whining and crying over every little thing. He pictured them coming forward—running madly, switching uncontrollably, endlessly weeping loud and open-mouthed. What would happen then? But it wouldn’t, for he was in charge. The Overseer. Maintaining control. Ensuring that everyone behaved.

He couldn’t get past the kitchen, where Sharon rested, unaware of her surroundings. But at the door, he could call her name, “Sharon,” the snivelling outsider who spoke to strangers, telling tales out of turn. What right did she have to do that?

“Sharon, Sharon,” he said softly, for she could close her eyes but not her ears. “What kind of mother are you? Always too tired. What kind of wife? All the burden is on your husband. He works while you are a waste of space. Filling cupboards with rags and scraps, spending his money. Wasting time and money in therapy, imagining things. You’re lucky he hasn’t left you. How long do you think that’s going to last? Then you’ll have nowhere to go and nobody will want you.”

E
very nation has made a pattern of the stars, learning their positions to guide a person travelling, telling tales about the constellations to help memory along. The same group of stars outlined an emperor’s chariot in old China, a plough in Britain, a bear among the North American tribes.

In ancient Rome, the story was told like this. There was a huntress, a woman named Callisto. An attendant of the goddess of the hunt, Callisto was a virgin, a necessary condition to be among the goddess’s favourites. Unfortunately the king of the gods, Jupiter, desired Callisto, even if she didn’t desire him. To gain her trust, he disguised himself as the goddess. When he opened his arms and pulled her into a hug, Callisto was pleased to be noticed until she couldn’t extract herself. Only then did she discover who had hold of her, as he reverted to his true shape and raped her.

Some months afterward, seeing Callisto bathe in a creek—pregnant and ruined—the goddess had no sympathy. As punishment, she turned Callisto into a bear, who soon gave birth to a son, Arcas. When the boy was old enough to
hunt, he came across a bear in the woods. Not knowing it was his mother, he raised his arm to throw a spear at it. But the king of the gods, believing himself more merciful than the goddess, intervened. He turned Arcas into a bear cub and then put mother and son in the sky as constellations so they might be together always, calling them Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.

At the tip of little bear’s tail, the North Star shone over Crookshank’s Lane. A couple of cats howled and hissed, fighting in a yard. On the sidewalk, a redhead in jeans and a sweater was pulling a wagon home from Eleanor’s house, while inside that head—imperceptible to any passerby—a conversation took place.
What’s going on in that house? Forget it, none of our business. If it’s not our business, what is? The mummy cut Cathy’s sister. Bad mummy. No, hon, you don’t understand. The sister was gone and her mom was saving the baby. We should’ve done something before, then maybe there wouldn’t be a funeral. Don’t go off like that. You’re thinking of our crap, getting triggered. I am not
.

As they argued, one of them came forward. She slipped out as she always did when the situation required it, pausing only a moment to get her bearings, gripping the handle of the wagon, her feet on the ground, the cool air on her face. Her head tilted back, she could spot the Big Dipper even in this pallid night sky polluted by circling beams of light from the great towers by the lake. She wished to know how stars were made, where they began, where they would end. She liked looking at the stars, at their distance and indifferent shining. She had no given name. But she called herself Callisto, after the girl who became the bear in the sky. And so
she walked back to the house on Ontario Street, doing what she had always done, waiting out the darkness.

At last the day was ending. She glanced in at Josh, who was in his room, texting his friends or playing a game on his phone. He was back in his PJ bottoms and the T-shirt he’d decorated at last Mayfest when Cathy had been helping at the tie-dye stall. After he’d tripped over the bucket of blue dye, it had taken him months to work up the nerve to ask her if she’d like to come over to study. Down the hall his sisters were sleeping, both of them in the lower bunk, arms wrapped around each other, stuffed animals guarding the head and foot of the bed. They’d hung a blanket from the upper bunk to shield them. Above their room, in his third floor office, Dan was sitting between stacks of newspapers on his desk.

He looked up as she stood in the doorway, his dark eyes searching her face. More than anything right now, he wanted sex. Let’s forget everything and just hump sex. Afterward holding her close sex. But it had been a while since they’d had any sort of sex, even if that was really her standing in the doorway now—and he thought it was not.

They’d come out to him as multiple a year ago. On a mild winter day, the streets dry, Dan had taken the morning off work to come with Sharon to her therapist’s office in the basement of a house on Hope Street. There was a separate entrance to the basement, which did its best not to look or smell like one. The walls were painted a robin’s egg blue, decorated with cheerful posters. The carpet was thick, and
full-spectrum bulbs in floor lamps with glass shades imitated daylight. The dehumidifier hummed in the background and water trickled over stones in a table fountain. The therapist sat in a leather recliner, wearing furry slippers, the only sign that this was the basement of her home. Sometimes Brigitte leaned the recliner back, her pudgy slippered feet propped on the footrest. But not that session. She sat forward, attentive, a hand on each arm of the chair.

Dan sat at one end of the couch and his wife at the other, heart beating so fast they—Sharon and all—thought they’d pass out until Callisto came forward. The therapist knew they’d switched. She glanced over as her client sat up straighter, hands stilled.

“So what’s the big secret?” Dan asked. He wore a suit as he’d be going from the session to the office.

“No secret,” Brigitte replied. “I felt that a joint session would be helpful at this stage. I can explain the situation and answer any questions you might have.”

“And the situation is?” Dan had a leg crossed over the other, one foot moving up and down. His foot moved like that when he was nervous or angry. It was the possibility that he was angry that had sent the heart knocking against the ribs.

“I’d like to ask you first about your perception. How would you describe things at home?”

“Honestly? I don’t know if therapy is helping or making things worse. We hit a bad patch after Emmie was born and four years later it hasn’t improved. If anything Sharon seems more withdrawn now than when she started.”

“That must be difficult for you.”

“She’s online talking to her chat friends all the time. If I say anything to her, I feel like I’m interrupting her real life. I just want my wife back.” He looked toward the other end of the couch. “Or maybe you’re leaving. Is that why I’m here?”

“Leaving where?” Callisto asked.

“Me.” His voice choked.

“Certainly not,” Callisto said firmly. “What gave you that idea?”

He addressed his answer to the therapist. “When I get into bed she moves over like she can’t stand me near her. I thought—I thought she hated me. I was going to fight for joint custody. I was already thinking of all that.”

Brigitte spoke gently. “This will be not nearly so bad.”

But inside Sharon was thinking,
it will, it will
, and the heart started knocking again, trying to leap from the body rather than witness her husband’s revulsion when he discovered the truth.

“One step at a time,” Brigitte said, as if she could hear those thoughts. “Dan, have you ever noticed your wife being different?” Brigitte picked up her pen and clipboard to make notes.

“Different how?”

“A sudden change in mood that seemed to come from nowhere. Or doing something that struck you as out of character?”

“Isn’t that a woman’s prerogative?”

Brigitte didn’t laugh. She just waited, letting the silence do its work.

“Sometimes,” Dan said, “especially before we had kids, she’d get scared at night. Like a little kid, you know, making those noises. I didn’t mind. I’d pat her back until she went to sleep. Was that wrong?”

Brigitte smiled at him. “That was right. Patting her back is such a small thing and yet so significant because you showed her a gentleness she had never known.” She had a warm smile, like an apple doll or a kitchen witch. Callisto watched the smile, wondering how the muscles of the face would feel around such an expression.

“Okay then.” Dan leaned back, relieved.

His relief was somewhat premature in Callisto’s estimation. People often reacted quickly to the word or gesture of a moment, without considering that something else might follow that could cast a rather different light on it.

“You know that she was abused.”

“Yes,” he said. “Her father molested her and her mother was critical.” Sharon had told him the same thing she’d told Eleanor, just that much—a piece of the truth. It explained the nightmares and the flinching when she and Dan first made love. It was enough to stop them from visiting her family; enough to keep their children safe.

“When a child experiences excessive trauma,” Brigitte continued, “the mind can split into pieces and each part becomes a separate person. Imagine it as if these people were locked in different rooms. On the outside at least Sharon could grow up and learn normal functioning. But those others are still there, suffering, reliving the trauma over and over because they don’t know any different life exists. They don’t even realize it’s
possible. What used to be called multiple personalities is now referred to as dissociative identity disorder, also sometimes as DDNOS, dissociative disorder not otherwise specified. We don’t need to bother about the technical differences.”

“But she has post-partum depression. She had it after Josh was born, too.” He turned to his wife. “Hon, maybe you should see your doctor for a prescription.”

Callisto looked away, her hands clasped in her lap. It was as she’d thought—he’d never understand.

“People like your wife are often misdiagnosed,” Brigitte explained patiently. “You see a depressed new mom, and you assume PPD. But in your wife’s case, hormones weren’t the cause. She has DID, though I don’t like the term ‘disorder.’ It would be more accurate to say that it’s an adaptation to early childhood trauma.”

They could hear the therapist’s cat howling like a beagle upstairs. Brigitte had said that when he made this sound he was lonely. Dan looked around, willing to be distracted by a cat leaping into his lap, but it was locked out and there was nothing for his hands to do but intertwine over a knee. He glanced over at his wife’s expressionless face. “What kind of trauma?” he asked.

It was up to Callisto to reveal now the extent and nature of what they’d hidden from him—she was the only one who could say the words. As she spoke, her voice slightly hoarse as it always was, the others inside waited for Dan to see that they were tainted, disgusting, repellent and loathsome.

“That happened to you?” He looked from his wife to the therapist, who was nodding.

“Unfortunately it isn’t as rare as people think. I’ve had a number of DID clients over the years. Many of them experienced this.”

“Good God.” His foot jiggled more, hands clenched over his knee, jawline hardening.

“You sound angry,” Brigitte said.

“Of course I’m angry!”

Callisto held back the lils from bursting out.
Don’t be mad. I’ll be good. Promise. Promise. Promise
. These tears on her face did not belong to her. She was keeping the mind clear. But she could not stop herself from shrinking away when Dan moved closer, trying to take her hand, to stroke her hair.

“This is what I mean,” he appealed to the therapist. “It’s like I’m the enemy.”

“But you are not angry with your wife,” Brigitte said.

“No, of course not.”

“However, your anger is frightening because terrible things used to happen to her when people were angry. This is what we call a trigger.”

“But I’d never hurt Sharon,” Dan said, forgetting that it was not Sharon who wept in terror.

“I believe that. The purpose of this session is simply to provide you with information.” Brigitte’s voice was calm, soothing. Water trickled over the stones in the serenity fountain. She turned to Callisto. “How are you doing?”

With an effort Callisto blinked away the tears, regained her voice. “I’m all right,” she said. The price for staying forward would be paid later. In exhaustion. Pain in the body. Shaking. But only in private.

“I want to help,” Dan said, looking at Callisto as if he would wish to know her. And for a moment, for a foolish moment, his wife believed him—they, the ones close to the front who were listening, thought it might be all right.

“All of them together are a team, a system. That is who your wife is,” Brigitte said.

“Sharon.” He uncrossed his legs, leaning on one elbow.