'Tell it to the judge.'
'I know.'
'How'd he…?'
'Get like that? Take a highly intelligent, sensitive child, subject him to intense, inescapable trauma …and he learns to dissociate. Escape inside his head. Splitting, it starts as. Some kids, it gets real. Child abuse, especially sexual abuse, that's the key predisposing factor.'
'It's not genetic?'
'Not a chance. Two multiples could mate, and you wouldn't get another one from the union. Unless…'
I looked across at him, waiting. 'Unless they did the same things to him.'
'You think…?'
'I don't know what I think. This much you can take to the bank: you don't get a multiple personality without some severe, chronic trauma. Intense deprivation, torture…you know the game, how they play it. It'll take a while to sort it out. Lots of sessions. He's a good hypnotic subject…but he's got to feel safe before we can do anything.'
'Is there a program?'
'The way you treat multiples is with individual psychotherapy. Outpatient, generally. They save the closed facilities for the dangerous ones. When one of the personalities is homicidal. Or an arsonist, a rapist, whatever.'
'You know a place?' I asked him.
'None that would take a kid.'
70
I knew places that would take Luke. The same places that took me when I was a kid. They got different names for them, but they're all the same.
When I got my growth, I found other places. Places where Luke had already paid the price of admission. Places where they'd never look for him.
71
'You can never leave him alone,' I told Immaculata. 'Never, you understand?'
Luke was in the armchair across from us, the baby Flower balanced carefully on one small knee, a picture book opened flat on the other. Talking quietly to the baby, his spindly arm around her back, pointing at the pictures. He felt our eyes.
'I'm teaching her to read,' he said. Luke's voice.
'That's very sweet, Luke,' Immaculata said. 'Could you read when you were so little?'
'Oh yes.'
'And who taught you?'
'They did. They taught me…' Rapid eye blinks, bead of sweat on the bridge of his nose.
'You love the baby, Luke?' I asked, moving close to him like I wanted to talk, hands ready. 'She's a beautiful baby, isn't she, Luke?' Saying his name, anchoring the peg in the slot.
'Everyone loves Flower,' he said, himself.
'It's time for her nap,' Immaculata said.
'I'll put her to bed.'
Max stepped into the room. Bowed to Luke, then to me, then to Mac. He reached down, took the baby from Luke, his scarred hands armor plate around the delicate skin. Flower gurgled happily, safe.
'Go with Max, see if he needs help,' Immaculata told Luke. 'Make sure he's careful.'
'I'll watch him,' Luke said.
I lit a smoke. 'You have it worked out?' I asked her.
'Yes. Teresa, the psychiatrist…do you know her?'
I shook my head no.
'Well, she says Luke has to have a routine, something he can trust. So she's going to see him every day, six days a week, one day off. Some days we'll take him to her office, some days she'll come to him. Mornings, I'll drop him off at Mama's— if somebody comes in there, there's a dozen places he can hide.'
'After dark?'
'Luke will sleep here. With us. Flower's crib is in our room, between the window and the bed.'
'He may try anyway…Max understands?'
Her sculptured face turned up to mine. 'Better than I do,' she said.
72
I went back to earning my living. Pulled the Plymouth into a spot on Central Park West, got out, sniffed the air. A large, frizzy-haired woman in an orange muumuu was trying to wedge her old Toyota into a spot between a white Honda Prelude and a beige Mercedes sedan using the park-by-Braille technique. She left them both worse for wear, stepped out, patted her hands together in satisfaction. I snapped the lead on Pansy. The woman noted the lack of a pooper-scooper in my hand, made a face like she smelled something bad. I stepped into the park.
