I look up from the page, hearing Laurel’s voice in my head: We tried to impose order on a world that had been torn apart. No wonder I felt a kinship with Edith; her story had echoes in my own . . . well, except for the fancy boarding school. Still, the similarities make the next bit painful to read.
The first symptoms of concern occurred in college. She formed an attachment with her college roommate that went beyond ordinary friendship. They shared clothes and began to dress alike. XX’s roommate changed her major to XX’s major. To outward appearances, it seemed that XX’s roommate was the one who was emulating XX, but when the roommate requested a room change in their sophomore year, XX became violently disturbed. She accused her roommate of betraying her and began spreading rumors about her around campus, accusing her of being obsessed with XX and stalking her. Because XX had no history of mental illness, and because of her charm, intelligence, and persuasive nature, the campus counselors believed XX’s account of the situation. This may have been XX’s first dissociative episode. She transferred her own emotions onto the roommate and began to “mirror” her roommate’s repulsion about XX’s obsessive behavior. The identification with her roommate reached a crisis when she discovered—
I turn the page and read:
The worst crisis was precipitated by giving birth.
I turn back and forth twice trying to match the end of the page to the beginning of the next and then I check the page numbers. Page 3, page 5. There’s a missing page. I rifle though the pages looking for page 4 but it’s not in the folder.
“Goddamn you, Hancock!” I say out loud. He has deliberately removed a page. He’s playing tricks with me. I’ll complain to Sky.
In the meantime, I go on to read the rest of the file.
The worst crisis was precipitated by giving birth. Soon after an uneventful pregnancy and childbirth XX began to show signs of dissociation. She was not interested in caring for the child, claiming at one point that the baby was not hers.
I’m confused for a moment. This doesn’t sound like the story I heard of Edith having a baby in college. Could she have had another child later? Perhaps after she was let out of Crantham? She was cured by the fall from the tower but she ended back at Crantham later after she had her own child. It makes sense, sort of. Her first crisis—her dissociative episode—was brought on by the shock of giving birth without any preparation and her second was brought on by having another child.
She later denied that statement and said that she only meant that the baby felt like a stranger—
Once again I hear Laurel’s voice in my head: We’re supposed to fall in love with this total stranger. That’s who E. sounds like, I realize. Laurel.
XX was sent home with her baby but her husband reported continuing problems: lack of interest in taking care of the child, periods of forgetfulness, leaving the baby in inappropriate places, including a laundry basket, an empty bathtub, the backseat of the car. XX’s husband eventually urged XX to see a psychologist and to attend a mothers’ support group. She seemed to make some progress, but then she formed an attachment to one of the women in the group that mirrored her relationship to the college roommate. Once again, it appeared from the outside that this woman was the one trying to emulate XX. She began wearing similar clothes and had her hair dyed the same shade as XX’s.
I feel a prickle on the back of my neck as if someone is standing behind me, even though the door is in front of me. Edith’s story is beginning to sound familiar—too familiar. It sounds like Laurel and me. Has Dr. Hancock altered Edith’s file to mirror my own life? But to what purpose? And how would he even get those details?
I remember, though, Esta’s warning about reading myself into other women’s stories. Maybe that’s all I’m doing.
XX even complained to her husband that the woman from the group was becoming too clingy—
I cringe, but then tell myself that this is not about me and Laurel.
—but when her husband suggested she spend less time with the woman, XX objected, saying the woman was her only friend and the only one who understood her. When XX’s husband expressed concern over the intensity of the relationship, XX accused him of trying to isolate her. She then became paranoid that her husband was trying to have her declared incompetent so that he could gain control over her money, which was tied up in a trust.
I no longer think I am reading about Edith Sharp. This is Laurel’s story. It’s Hancock’s way of telling me that he knows I’m not Laurel. I’ve been found out.
In attempting to deal with her paranoia, XX’s husband offered to have legal papers drawn up excluding him from any benefits from the trust, but this only aggravated XX’s delusions further. When she attempted to voice her fears to her friend, her friend rejected her claims, and XX withdrew into a depressed state, refusing to get dressed, wash herself, or care for her baby. She began to say that she’d be better off if she had no money, like her friend. She began letting her hair grow out to its natural color and said she was going to take a job as a school librarian (which had been her friend’s profession). Her husband became most concerned when she said that her friend was a better mother, that at least her friend’s baby was not brain damaged as she had begun to believe about her own child, and that she wished that she was
