Black Lies (32 page)

Brant’s hand tightens around the pen in his fist, the flex of his forearm distracting. I place a hand on his arm, squeeze the muscle there. “So what solution
is
worth exploring?” he asks quietly.

“Therapy. It’s not sexy, and it takes time, but it has the highest probability of success. I’ll set you up with a local doctor and you’ll have to come in a few times a week. Go through a lot of hypnosis. The doctor will speak to you and Lee. Counsel you both through the process. Eventually, Lee will either fade away, or parts of his personality will merge with yours.”

I see signs no one would ever recognize. The slight pull of the skin around his eyes. The whiten of the back of his hand as his fist tightens. “It just doesn’t feel like someone else is inside of me. Could she be wrong?” He doesn’t look at me. We sit next to each other, our legs touching on the couch of this temporary office, yet are a hundred miles apart.
Could she be wrong?
A question that really means ‘Is she lying?’

The man smiles a smile that dips itself in sadness and comes out with understanding. “You may not know Lee yet, but you will before this process is over. Assuming you participate in my suggested therapy program.”

“I’ll participate. I want to do whatever I can to get it out.” The bite in his voice puts me on edge. As does the word ‘it’ in regards to Lee.

“It’ll take both of you. I’ll need Layana’s help to speak to Lee. Convince him to leave.”

I look up. “Convince him to leave?” I have never convinced Lee, in two years, to do anything. Every interaction was a struggle, my only success the manipulation of him in regards to the Molly breakup.

“Yes. We can’t force him out of Brant’s life. It will only be successful if Lee is willing.”

I nod though it contradicts my inner thoughts. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.” The words are expected, so I say them. Inside, I try to figure out how I feel about Lee leaving me forever.

Brant speaks, “And I don’t want you to refer me to a specialist. I want you, here. For the next few months at least.”

I smile politely, the false paint of a face I thought I had abandoned. Smile and search through the dark recesses of my soul in an attempt to unravel the thoughts that are clouding my brain. Try to understand how I feel about this.

Stop
. I force the action, force the turn of my mental gears to skid to a halt. It doesn’t matter what I want. Who I love. My happiness is sacrificial in order to save Brant. I watch the doctor’s mouth. Try to decipher its movement and catch up to the current place in the conversation.

“You’re breaking up with me?” Lee stares at me, his hands tight on the chair before him, his face hollowing as he bites the inside of his cheek, a nervous gesture I suddenly miss. I will miss that tic. Miss the way he sometimes drops his eyes when he asks a question, as if he is afraid of the answer. Miss the way his smile pours through his eyes, like the sex that comes off his body. Miss the way that he is the sexiest, most confident man I have ever met, yet insecure in a way that hurts. He has been terrified of rejection since the day I met him. And now, in a room he doesn’t recognize, the psychiatrist’s new office cold and impersonal, his fears are becoming a reality.

“Lee, try and relax,” Dr. Terra says, speaking from behind us.

I close my eyes at the sound of the doctor’s voice. He needs to shut up. He shouldn’t be here. I told him that. Told him that this is a private moment. That it will go over better if there isn’t a party to Lee’s rejection. Especially not a party who feels the need to interject. But they—the doctor and Brant—worried about my safety. Thought the doctor and his sedative should be present, in case it needs to be used. In case Lee gets violent. He won’t. I know he won’t, not to me. But they wouldn’t listen. So now it is Lee and I… and the doctor. A doctor Lee just turned his full attention to.

“I’m sorry, who the
fuck
are you?” In three steps Lee has his throat in his hand, the doctor on his feet and backed against the wall. His face close to the doctor’s, his entire body trembles as he glances over at me, unmindful of the delicate throat grasped by his hand. “Are you fucking serious, Lana? You’re breaking up with me? For that rich dick?”

I stare into Lee’s eyes the whole time. During the fumbling moment when the doc reaches into his pocket. The instance when his hand withdraws and the syringe stabs through the thin cotton of Lee’s shirt. I hold the stare when Lee’s eyes flinch. When betrayal seeps through them and he glares at me like he hates me and loves me and misses me, all at the same time. I stare at him and watch as his eyes close and he slumps to the floor.

Brant

Ever since finding out my condition, I have read everything I can find on Dissociative Identity Disorder, my research hampered by the fact that there is little available on the subject. But what I have read is troubling, made more so by the apparent omission that my mind will not reveal.

DID is typically caused by emotional trauma of some sort. Abuse, or a significant event, one the brain tries to hide, initially creating the first sub-personality as sort of a protective defense against the knowledge it doesn’t want the brain to have. The rare DID exceptions are brain damage, physical impairments that cause a shorting out of the cranial lobe from which idiosyncrasies result.

I haven’t had any physical damage, no hard blows to the head, no horrific accidents that would have caused multiple Brants to emerge. I also, with the exception of October 12
th
, haven’t had any traumatic events. And October 12
th
happened after – was a result of – my development of DID.

The obvious answer is that I must have had a traumatic experience and have psychologically hidden it. I’ve asked my parents and believe them when they claim ignorance of any triggering events. My curiosity isn’t worth contacting Jillian, my anger building into a grudge that won’t soon fade.

Dr. Terra has tried, in a roundabout way, to unearth this possibility. He forgets the man he is dealing with. I am an intelligent enough individual to attack a problem head on. I don’t need subtle pecks at the corners of my brain. I need to split my psyche open and dig at the root of my problem.

I can feel the incident. It nags at a part of me, like that errand you walked into a room to do and then forgot. It lies, just out of reach but at the corner of my mind, occasionally tapping at my brain matter when it wants to drive me bat-shit crazy. I need to unearth it. Need to open my past and find the key.

Now, for the 32
nd
evening in a row, I try. The chair beneath me creaks as I sit on the back veranda, my feet propped against the railing, the skies dark as a storm approaches. I can feel the air thicken, thunder clapping as lightening streaks the sky. I contemplate going inside, avoiding the rain, but the overhang will keep me dry. As the skies open up, rain tapping a staccato beat on the roof above me, I close my eyes and try to remember the past. Try to remember a summer twenty-seven years ago.

And then, listening to the familiar sound of rain against a roof, it comes to me.

Sheila Anderson had been beautiful. Half Cuban, she had tan skin, dark hair and eyes that gleamed when she laughed. I had never spoken to her. Only sat three seats behind and one seat over, and stared. I was nervous; I was awkward. She was untouchable.

When she left school, I followed. Always had. I had an excuse. She lived a street over; our paths home followed a logical route. So I followed, and I watched her hair bounce, and I stared some more. She was always with friends, she giggled, she whispered, she hummed, and I listened. Until the day that she cried, and my world broke in two.

A Wednesday. It rained. A big sloppy downpour, where one foot outside meant a plaster of clothing to skin, no ‘quick dash’ possible to keep yourself dry. I saw her standing, out front of the school, her steps tentative as she contemplated the initial step into the torrent. I stood beside her, offered a small smile to her friendly beam. We waited, together, till the moment that she ducked her head and ran, squealing, her hands covering her head.

So I followed. And it was just the two of us running across the parking lot. Through the church. Down the road with the fence. Past the house with the dog. We ran, and it poured unrelenting rain. Then she slowed, and I slowed and it came time for me to turn. I stopped. She continued on. Smiled. Waved through falling rain. I watched her until I could barely see her pink shirt. Then I glanced left, the sight of my mailbox barely visible through the rain, ducked my head against wet needles, and ran after her.

The man’s arm is one I have seen in a hundred nightmares and never understood its place. Thick and dark, not from the color of his birth, but from the tattoos. A sleeve of evil, skulls and snakes, the muscles of his arm jumping with the action of his ink. I was one house back when his arm shot out, grabbing the back of her as easily as one would pluck up a cat, the rain obscuring my view as I saw a blur of arms and legs, the heavy patter of rain muffling the cries. I slowed, unsure of what was happening as he pulled her against his chest and stepped away from the sidewalk, into the heavy shade of trees, ducking into the yard he had come from. I wiped at my face and moved closer, my chest heaving from exertion and something else – the tight feeling that something was wrong. The yard showed no sign of them, but I heard her. Screams muffled by something other than rain. I looked right and left, tried to see, find, something other than rain. An adult. I needed an adult.

Then I moved. Closer to the house. Picked my way over its stepping stones, one slick enough to put me in the grass, my hands skittering over the ground and coming up dirty as I pushed myself to my feet. I couldn’t hear her anymore and that scared me more than the screams. I hitched my backpack higher and wiped my hands on the front of my jeans. Looked at the front step of the house’s porch. Took a step up and left the rain behind.

It was strange to be covered. Quieter. Quiet enough that I heard something. I took the next two steps carefully and moved to the front door. Stared at it. The doorbell. It. The doorbell.

There was a noise from inside, and I bolted to the corner of the porch. Ducked into a ball behind a swing that creaked, bumped, gave away my position with the reaction of its body. I moved away from it, against the house, and was brave enough, for a brief moment, to kneel and peer into the window. Saw through the bare slit between two blue curtains. Saw a television. A rug. A beer can, on its side, a few feet from the trash. Then my eyes lifted, to the room beyond the can, and I saw Sheila Anderson.

I won’t share the horrors of what I saw, on my knees, on that porch. I know I closed my eyes too late. I know my hands fisted on either side of my head as I tried to drown out the soft sounds of her screams. I now know why I hate the sound of rain. I now know why, that afternoon in August, my mind broke into smaller pieces and locked that afternoon into a place where I was never to find it.

My foot falls off the railing as I push away, struggling to my feet, the image of that day imprinted on my mind. I stumble to the door wanting, at minimum, to escape the sound of rain. Opening the slider, I see Lana stand from her place on the couch, her eyes on me. “Did you remember?” she asks.

I nod, unable to say more, and open my arms to her as she steps forward and wraps me in a hug.

Round 2: It’s the second time I’m attempting to break up with Lee, and this time the doctor has agreed to stay quiet. To stay behind the one-way glass in the adjoining room. Brant hates it; he cursed us both until he lost control and left the room, but we all eventually agreed, and now I am alone, repeating the lines I have been coached through, the lines that will bring Lee out of Brant’s hypnosis.

My initial breakup attempt had been done without clueing Lee in to his condition. With the massive failure of that experiment, we regrouped. Decided to share the condition and hope for better results.

Two weeks ago, Dr. Terra told Lee about the DID. Lee refused to believe it, wanted to talk to Brant, then trashed the room when that option was refused. Dr. Terra stayed calm, citing facts that laid the truth out in big, fat letters that a child would understand and believe. Lee resisted, vocalizing his hatred for Brant in every four-letter word known to man. It was disastrous. I fled the room halfway through the outburst, unable to watch the systematic breakdown of a man who a part of me dearly loves.

Since then, Dr. Terra has spoken with him four more times, Lee getting less aggressive and more unresponsive with each session. The last meeting he spoke but didn’t stand, didn’t even open his eyes. Just laid on the couch and cherry-picked the questions he felt like answering. Today, I just hope he is open. I hope he listens. I hope he doesn’t break my heart any further.

“Lucky.” His eyes open and he sits up. Looks around. I wait for his body to tighten, for him to spring to his feet with clenched fists, but he doesn’t. Only rubs his neck and shoots me a sad grin. “Still stuck in crazy town, huh?”