Silent Partner

“Her?”

She nodded.

I said, “Who cast her?”

“I know what it looks like, but Paul thought it might be curative.”

“Radical therapy. Working it through.”

“You’d have to see it in context, Alex. He’d worked with her for years without much success. He had to try something.”

I looked away, took in my surroundings. Hooked rug on the blue carpet. The samplers spouting truisms. No goddam place like home.

Spaceship homey. As if extraterrestrials had swooped down on a specimen-hunt, plundered Middle America of its cliches.

When I turned back, she was smiling. A shiny smile. Too shiny. Like glaze before crackling.

“Alex, I understand how strange all this must sound to you. It’s hard to sum up so many years in just a few minutes.”

I smiled back, let my confusion show. “It’s overwhelming- the dynamics- how it all fits together.”

“I’ll do my best to clear it up for you.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“Where would you like me to start?”

“Right at the beginning seems as good a place as any.”

She put her head on my shoulder. “That’s the problem. There really is no beginning,” she said, in the same disembodied voice she’d used years ago, to talk about the death of her “parents.” “My primal years are a blur. I’ve been told about them, but it’s like hearing a story about someone else. That’s what therapy was about, that summer. Paul was trying to unblock me.”

“Age regression?”

“Age regression, free association, Gestalt exercises- all the standard techniques. Things I’ve used myself with patients. But nothing worked. I couldn’t remember a thing. I mean, intellectually I understood the defensive process, knew I was repressing, but that didn’t help me in here.” She placed my hand on her belly.

“How far back could you recall?” I asked.

“Happy times. Shirlee and Jasper. And Helen. Uncle Billy told me you met her yesterday. Isn’t she an exceptional person?”

“Yes, she is.” Yesterday. It seemed like centuries. “Does she know you’re alive?”

She winced as if bitten. Hard tug on the lobe. “Uncle Billy said he’d take care of it.”

“I’m sure he will. What were you and he talking about at the party?”

“Her. She was forcing herself on me again- dropping in at all hours, waking me up, screaming and cursing, or crawling into bed with me and mauling me, trying to suck my breasts. Once I caught her with scissors, trying to snip off my hair. Other times, she’d arrive stoned or drunk on her daiquiris, get sick all over the place, lose bladder control on the carpet. I kept changing the locks; she always found a way to get in. She ate pills like candy.”

Old scars between the toes. “Was she shooting dope?”

“She used to, years ago. I don’t know, maybe she started again- cocaine, speedballs. Over the years, she must have overdosed at least a dozen times. I had one of Uncle Billy’s doctors on call twenty-four hours a day, just for pumping her stomach. By the day of the party she’d really deteriorated and was trying to take me down with her. Kept saying we were going to be eternal roomies. I was scared, just couldn’t handle it anymore. So I asked Uncle Billy to handle it. Even after all she’d put me through, it was rough, knowing she’d be put away. So seeing you there at the party really lifted my spirits. A week before, I’d been at Paul’s house and Suzanne was doing the calligraphy for the invitations. I saw your name on the list, felt such a surge of feeling for you.”

She took my hand and ran it down toward her mons. I felt heat, heaviness, the soft mesh of pubic hair through silk.

“I hoped you’d attend,” she said. “Checked a couple of times to see if you’d RSVP’d, but you hadn’t. So when our eyes met I couldn’t believe it. Destiny. I knew I had to try to make contact.” She kissed my cheek. “And now you’re here. Hello, stranger.”

“Hello.” I sat there and allowed her to kiss me some more, run her fingers through my hair, touch me. Endured it and kissed back and knew how hookers feel. Sweat broke out on my forehead. I wiped it on my sleeve.

She said, “Would you like water?” Got up and poured me some from Shirlee’s pitcher.

I used the time to clear my head. When she came back I said, “Was Paul treating you for anything other than unblocking the past?”

“Actually it didn’t start out as real therapy- just clinical supervision, the usual stuff about how my feelings and communications style affected my work. But as we got into it, he could see that I had… identity problems, a poor sense of self, low self-esteem. I felt incomplete. And guilty.”

“Guilty about what?”

“Everything. Leaving Shirlee and Jasper- they’re darling. I really cared for them, but I never felt I belonged to them. And Helen. Even though she’d basically raised me, she wasn’t my mother- there was always a wall between us. It was confusing.”

I nodded.

“That first year of grad school,” she said, “there was a lot of pressure, being expected to actually help other people. It terrified me- that’s why I broke down in practicum. I guess, down deep, I agreed with what the others were saying, felt like an impostor.”

“Everyone feels that way at first.”

She smiled. “Always the therapist. That’s what you were that night. My rock. When I saw your name on the party list I guess I thought history might repeat itself.”

I said, “Before you met Sherry- before you knew about her- did you ever fantasize about having a twin?”

“Yes, all the time, when I was a child. But I never gave much credence to that. I was the type of kid who fantasized about everything.”

“Was there one twin image that kept recurring?”

Nod. “A girl my age who looked exactly like me, but was confident, popular, assertive. I named her Big Sharon, even though she was exactly my size, because her personality loomed. Paul said I saw myself as puny. Insignificant. Big Sharon stayed behind the scenes but she could always be counted on to help when things got rough. Years later, when I took my first psych course, I learned that kind of thing was normal- kids do it all the time. But I was doing it even into adolescence, even in college. I was embarrassed about it, afraid I’d talk in my sleep and my roommates would think I was weird. So I made a conscious effort to get rid of Big Sharon and finally grow up. Eventually, I managed to suppress her out of existence. But she came out under hypnosis, when Paul was probing. I began talking about her. Then to her. Paul said she was my partner. My silent partner, hanging around in the background. He said everyone has one- that’s really what Freud was getting at with ego, id, superego. That it was okay to have her- she was nothing more than another part of me. That was a very affirmative message.”

“And in autumn he decided to introduce you to your real silent partners.”

She tightened. The glazed smile took hold of her face again.

“Yes. By then the time was right.”

“How did he arrange it?”

“He called me into his office, said he had something to tell me. That I’d better sit down- it might be traumatic. But it would definitely be significant, a growth experience. Then he hypnotized me, gave me suggestions for deep muscle relaxation, transcendent serenity. When I was really mellow, he told me I was one of