The Birth of a new moon

things considered, their friendship shouldn't have worked, but it did, quite smoothly.

She sat in Maria's comfortable chair in the quiet, fragrant, plant-filled room and told her about her dream of Glen the jealous God. Maria chuckled, as Anne had known she would, but she then went on, to Anne's dismay, to ask about the dream's meaning. Anne shook her head ruefully.

'What is it?' Maria asked.

'Oh, the mind is such an amazing thing. I tell you about a funny dream in order to make you laugh, but I manage to overlook the fact that you're going to make me dig beneath the surface and see things I don't want to see.'

'Would you not have told me if you'd stopped to think about the consequences?'

'Oh, I probably would have. But it wouldn't have been funny.'

'Perhaps that's why your mind chose selective blindness: in order to allow me the humor before the content.'

The two women smiled at each other with affection, and the smile was still in Maria's eyes when she asked gently, 'You are concerned about this upcoming investigation, aren't you?'

'I am.'

'Tell me how you feel about Glen.'

'He frightens me,' Anne said immediately. 'He's so utterly fixed on what he's doing, everyone else is just a tool. You have to shout just to make him aware of you as a person. He's inhuman, and he's not even aware of it.'

'So why submit yourself to that treatment again?'

Anne tried to laugh, but it was a poor, twisted thing. 'He may not be much of a god, but he's mine. No, of course I don't mean that I worship him or anything, but I suppose you could say that he created me in his image. I was thinking the other day about that time fifteen years ago. You know, I still think I would have killed myself in another day or two if Glen hadn't barged in and just swept it all away because he needed me to help him and he didn't have time for my problems. And with him there, I never stopped to think, never had the time or the energy to stand back and look at what it was I wanted to do, until—oh, maybe the last year or so. And now again he's just blindsided me and swept me along.'

'Would you have agreed to help Glen this time if you had been forewarned that he was going to ask?'

'I wonder. Yes, I think so.'

'Why?'

'Because it's what I do, who I am. I was dead for three years after Aaron and Abby were killed. I would have committed suicide at the time except I felt it would be the ultimate betrayal of their deaths. So instead I went dead. For three years after I came here, the only person I talked to was Antony. And I began to take stupid risks. I started walking around campus at night during that time we had the rapist attacks. One winter I kept forgetting to replace the tires on my car even though they were almost bald, and I couldn't stand to have the seat belt around me. Stupid, suicidal things.'

'Guilt is an insidious force.'

'I'd sometimes wake up in the morning and need an hour before I could bear to get on my feet, it was like I was under half a dozen of those lead blankets they lay over you when you have an X ray. Everything was just so much work.'

'And then Glen came.' The story was familiar to both of them, like reciting a litany.

'And then I collapsed under the weight of Abby's picture, and then Glen came and offered me a way out. And it was so… easy. I knew it was dangerous. Glen tried to convince himself and me that it wasn't, but I knew otherwise, and I was glad. Because if it killed me, at least the weight would be off me. And as soon as I left, as soon as I walked off the plane in North Dakota, I wasn't even frightened any more.'

'Surely you must have been, to some degree.'

'Oh I was, scared shitless about the whole setup and my inexperience and not knowing how I'd react, but at the same time I could push that person away and be just stupid, wide-eyed Anita Walls bumbling her way into an armed camp. It was intensely liberating. The three months flew by, and I never made a mistake, never showed any fear. It was like jittery old Anne Waverly was locked up inside a glass ball, looking over my shoulder.'

'And then you came back.'

'Christ, yes. I came out and was taken away for debriefing, and it left me so depressed, I couldn't eat. But I'm sure you remember that.'

'I remember.'

'It must have been fun to have one of Antony's flaky grad students move in on you and spend a couple of weeks staring at the walls.'

'It was not that long, and you didn't stare at the walls. You were charming, in a quiet way.'

'I'll bet. But the whole business in North Dakota helped. And once the postpartum depression lifted, the weight I woke up to every morning didn't seem quite so heavy.'

'Let's talk about guilt.'

' 'Survivor's guilt,' ' Anne said wryly. 'It wasn't quite that simple, was it?'

'No.' Anne took a deep breath and let it out. 'No, it wasn't. Still isn't. I did have something to do with Abby and Aaron's deaths. With all the Farm deaths.'

'So you have told me.'

'My leaving the Farm set Ezekiel off. Look, even then I had enough training, enough experience to know how dangerous it would be to cross a man in his mental state, but I went ahead. I should have known. I did know—but I took off anyway.'

They had stepped off the familiar path of the litany, and Maria watched her carefully.

'Why?'

'Why? Because I was selfish. I was stupid and greedy—I was bored with life on the Farm. I wanted to get back to grad school, where people valued what I did instead of telling me how bad I was at milking cows and how unfocused and disruptive I was getting.'

'You are saying that your desire for self-fulfillment led to their deaths.'

'My impatience, my self-importance, my… My… inability to get along with the father of my child.'

'You and Aaron were having arguments,' Maria said quietly.

'We had a huge fight about going back to Berkeley and I got in the car and drove away. He didn't want me to take Abby, and I didn't want her with me. And that was the end.'

'But not for you.'

'Yes, for me. Annie died too, and Anne was built up on the wreckage, poor old battered Anne with her limp and her dogs. And every so often Anne goes away and Anita or Ana or whoever comes to life instead.'

'So why are you concerned about this investigation, Anne? Why have you come to me?'

'I'm worried that I can't do it this time. That Ana won't, you know, take over.'

'Is this different, the feeling this time?'

'Yes. No. I don't know. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm afraid that I'm not frightened enough.'

'You need to be frightened?'

'You know I do,' Anne said, growing angry with the slow repetition of the therapist.

'Tell me again,' Maria said, meaning, Remind yourself how it works.

'Fear is the force that drives Anne into her corner. Fear's like pain—it can be overwhelming at first, but if you live with it long enough, it can be shaped and molded, and it can be walled away to give you just a little space of your own where it isn't. And that's where Ana and the others live and breathe.'

'And you wish to undertake yet another enterprise that will require you to break open your half-healed wounds and encourages you to split into a dual personality.'

'You're exaggerating, Maria.'

'Am I? Listen to your own words.'

'That's just a way of talking about a mental process. A shorthand.'

'I don't know that it is.'

'Maria, I can't afford this,' Anne snapped, and began to gather herself to go. 'I can't risk anything getting in the way. You don't know what you're asking.'

'Anne, sit down.' Maria waited for her client to subside warily into the chair. 'Anne, I cannot encourage