Set This House In Order Part 18

Winslow!" Andrew calls to her. The woman waves, but her eyes are fixed on Mouse, and her expression is not altogether friendly. Mouse wonders if she and the woman have met before, and, if they have, what she might have done or said to make the woman look at her that way.

But then Andrew, bounding up the porch steps, says, "Mrs. Winslow, this is my friend Penny Driver," and the woman smiles warmly and says, "It's nice to meet you, Penny. Please come in and make yourself at home."

"-- put some coffee on," Mrs. Winslow says, walking away down a hallway.

"Thank you, Mrs. Winslow," Andrew says. He opens a door off the middle of the hall and gestures inside. "This way."

But Mouse, instead of going in, turns nervously in place.

"Penny?" Andrew says.

"Yes," says Mouse, with a tremor in her voice.

Andrew tilts his head. "Oh," he says, and points. "The front door is right there, if you decide you want to leave. It's not locked," he adds.

"OK," says Mouse, not bothering to question how he knew she needed to know this. "Thank you."

She follows him through the door he just opened, into what he refers to as a sitting room. The room does have chairs in it -- Mouse can see at least two, plus a short sofa -- but it will take some reorganizing before anyone does any sitting. The room is fantastically cluttered, with the sofa, the chairs, the shelves that line the walls, and much of the available floor s.p.a.ce piled with stuff: boxes, books, toys, clothes, diverse bric-a-brac, and junk. "Sorry," Andrew says, seeing the look on her face. "I have kind of a s.p.a.ce-allocation problem."

One corner of the sitting room is taken up by a miniature house -- not a dollhouse, but a professional-looking scale model, the kind an architect might build, complete with surrounding landscape.

It sits on its own little table, and manages to stand out among the clutter. Mouse guesses that this is what Andrew has brought her here to see -- he seems to be maneuvering towards it -- but then he turns right, towards the sofa, gesturing at a large oil canvas that hangs on the wall above it.

It's a group portrait. A crowd of maybe twenty people stand in the foreground. They look like relatives; most of them look like Andrew. There are a lot of men, a few women, one little boy, and one giant. They are in a large, two-story room whose walls are paneled in bright glossy wood and lined with incandescent light sconces. These lights cast a cheery glow over the lower part of the room; but up above, on the long gallery that makes up the room's second level, the sconces are s.p.a.ced farther apart and the bulbs burn less brightly. Along this shadowy overlook another group is gathered, larger than the first, its somber ranks composed almost entirely of sad-faced children. Their melancholy expressions unsettle Mouse; she is glad they are in the background, behind a railing.

The painting is signed "Samantha Gage."

Andrew points to a dark-haired figure in the foreground group. "This is my father," he says. The family resemblance is strong; Andrew and his father are practically twins.

Mouse indicates a fairer-haired figure at Andrew's father's side. "Is that you?"

"No." Andrew frowns. "That's Gideon." He speaks the name as if it were an evil charm. Then he points to another figure at the far left of the group, who stands a little apart from the others. "That one's me."

"Oh, I see," says Mouse, although the likeness isn't as good. The face is wrong.

"Forget about me," Andrew says, and puts his hand on the painting, covering the figure that is supposed to be him. "I'm a special case, anyway. But these others" -- he gestures with his free hand -- "these other people are my father's version of your Society. Things are much better with them now, because they can all see each other, communicate face-to-face, soul-to-soul. But before, when my father was like you are now, this room you see here was nothing but dark s.p.a.ce, and most of the souls in the dark were asleep. . ."

Mouse would like to be able to say at this point that she doesn't know what he is talking about, but on some level she does know, and her understanding is coming clearer all the time. Staring at the painting as Andrew speaks, she feels a growing pressure in her temples, as if a mob of little people were a.s.sembling there, pushing at the inside of her skull like kids pressing their faces up against a plate-gla.s.s window.

". . . so he had to create a place where they could all be awake together at the same time. A meeting place, inside his head."

"Inside. . ."

"Right," says Andrew. "Because that's where they live. You do know that, don't you, Penny?

Your Society -- that's how they can always get messages to you, no matter where you are, and how they can take control of your body during your blackouts. They always know where you are, can always get to you, because they're always with you."

In a moment he is going to raise his arm, press the tip of his forefinger to the center of her forehead, and say, "The Society lives in here." He isn't doing it yet, but he is about to, she can feel it coming, and she knows that when he does do it her head is going to burst, and the members of the Society are going to come flying out of her skull like insects boiling out from under a stone. And then she will be crazy, stark raving mad, beyond all hope or question.

He is raising his arm.

"No," says Mouse, stepping back -- -- and falling, face forward, into an icy stream.

She comes up screaming, staggering. The water isn't deep, but the current and the slippery rocks in the streambed keep her off balance. "Help!" she squeaks.

"Penelope!" a voice calls from behind her. "Stamata! Perimene!"

Mouse -- -- runs through the trees, no little town park but true forest this time. The legs of her jeans are heavy with mud and leaves, but she keeps moving, sprinting for what seems like miles. Even the certainty that something terrible is gaining on her cannot keep her going forever, though; finally she has to stop, if only for a moment. She stumbles to a halt in a small clearing; she bends forward, hands on knees, and closes her eyes, listening for the sound of her pursuer.

When she opens her eyes again, words have been scratched in the ground at her feet: STOP THIS BULLs.h.i.t. Mouse feels fresh dirt under her fingernails. There is a tingle on the back of her neck, the familiar sense of someone standing close behind her.

She doesn't turn around. She fakes like she is going to, then springs forward, leaping into a run, trying to accelerate fast enough to leave her body behind.

She slams full-speed into a tree.

"-- bleeding," Andy Gage says, crouching beside her.

Mouse lies on her back, blinking up at the sky. She can feel a lump rising on her forehead, blood trickling down the side of her scalp; her neck hurts. She's calm now -- in shock -- but her heart is sick, and she is disgusted with herself: bloodied, muddied, laid out in the dirt. Insane.

"Penny?" Andrew says.

"I am s.h.i.t," says Mouse, and then the tears start, dribbling out of the corners of her eyes, adding to the mess. "I'm a crazy, pathetic, worthless --"

"Penny. . ."

"-- piece of s.h.i.t."

"Penny, stop it," he commands, and she does. Stops saying it, that is. Inside her head, where the Society lives, she goes right on thinking it: Worthless piece of s.h.i.t.

Then Andrew says: "Do you remember the little girl in the diner?"

Mouse, still crying, closes her eyes. Go away, she thinks. Go away, I am a worthless piece of s.h.i.t, leave me alone.

"Last Monday," he persists. "The little girl whose father hit her, you remember? Penny?"

"Yes," Mouse says. Of course she remembers.

"Do you remember what he called her?"

"Yes."

" 'This f.u.c.king kid,' " Andrew says. " 'This f.u.c.king kid.' Do you think that was right, for him to say that?"

"No," says Mouse.

"No," Andrew agrees. "It was a terrible thing to say. An awful thing. Now what if he'd called her a worthless piece of s.h.i.t, instead? Would that have been right?"

"No. . ."

"No. It would have been bad. Wrong, and not true. Just like it was wrong and not true when your mother said it to you."

She rolls her head sideways, feeling a sharp twinge from the back of her neck, and looks at him.

"Who. . . who told you about my mother?"

"You told me," says Andrew.

"I never --"

"Not you personally. Your Society."

"They aren't mine," Mouse protests.

"Yes, they are. You called them out, to help you cope with something that was too terrible to handle all by yourself. And they're still there, still trying to help you, mostly, but they've got their own needs and wants now, and that complicates things."

"It's crazy."

"No," he says. "You could have gone crazy, with what your mother did to you. Or you could have turned mean, like the man at the diner. But you didn't. You did something creative. And that's great; only now you're going to have to be even more creative, if you want to get your life together."

Mouse sits up, slowly; Andrew helps her. She tries to turn her head to look around, but her neck and shoulders are really hurting now. "Where are we?" she asks, grimacing.

"In the woods behind the Reality Factory. About half a mile past the Reality Factory, actually; I almost lost you. I had to call out Seferis to keep up."

"Seferis?"

"It's complicated," Andrew says.

Mouse thinks: Everything's going to be complicated now.

"Tell me anyway," she says. "Tell me everything." Giving in: "Tell me what I have to do."

12.

Three days later Mouse is in another cluttered sitting room -- this one in Poulsbo, Washington, on the Kitsap Peninsula -- wondering whether the doctor in the wheelchair is more like her mother or her grandmother.

Both Grandma and Verna Driver suffered crippling strokes. Grandma died very quickly from hers -- one day she was fine, the next she was in intensive care, and the day after that she was gone.

Grandma Driver's death was the saddest event in Mouse's early childhood, the loss so traumatic that, shortly after the funeral, Mouse retreated into the dark and went to sleep for a whole year, her longest blackout ever.

Mouse's mother's death was more protracted, and traumatic in a different way. Where Grandma had gone into a coma following her stroke, Verna Driver remained alert. Bedridden, too weak to move and unable or unwilling to speak, she tracked Mouse relentlessly with her eyes, glaring. The nurses who attended her told Mouse not to make too much of this; until they could establish definite communication (several attempts to get her to answer questions by blinking had proved unsuccessful) they couldn't know for sure how much awareness she had of her surroundings. But Mouse didn't need any additional communication beyond that ceaseless stare: her mother was aware, all right. Aware, and angry, and wishing with every last fiber of her being that she could force Mouse to change places with her.

The doctor in the wheelchair is angry too. She keeps it under control for the most part, but it gets away from her a couple times: once when the woman who cares for her is a little too aggressive in offering a.s.sistance, and then again when Andrew is slow to take the hint that the doctor wants to talk to Mouse alone. ("Why don't you go see if Meredith needs help in the kitchen," the doctor suggests, to which Andrew replies, "Help with what?" "With whatever she may need" the doctor tells him. But Andrew just sits there, still not getting it, and finally the doctor snaps: "Take a walk, Andrew! Come back in an hour.") Andrew warned Mouse in advance that the doctor had a temper -- "she's a little p.r.i.c.kly sometimes," is how he put it. He a.s.sured her that it was nothing to be concerned about, but she's still nervous as he leaves the sitting room.

The doctor senses this, and immediately apologizes. "I'm sorry," she says. "That was very unprofessional of me. I'm supposed to set you at ease, not on edge. But I'm afraid I've always had an abrasive personality, and this" -- she pats the side of her wheelchair -- "hasn't helped. I hope you'll be patient with me."

This is a new experience for Mouse: someone asking her forbearance, and not even for getting mad at her, but for getting mad around her. "It's OK," she says.

"Good," says the doctor. "Now, getting down to business. . . I understand Andrew has told you about his own multiplicity. Is that correct?"

Mouse nods, wincing a little from her still-tender neck.

"And what was your reaction to what he told you?"

"My reaction?"

"What did you think?. . . It's OK, you can be honest. I won't repeat anything you say outside this room."

"It was. . . I thought it was very strange," Mouse says. Too strange, she doesn't say -- her initial curiosity, her hope that some light was at long last about to be shed on her own condition, being gradually worn away as it dawned on her that the person Andrew referred to as his "father" was not, as Mouse had a.s.sumed, a biological parent, but a psychological one, an earlier Andy Gage. And he, the Andrew she spoke to, was not his father's biological son, but a member of his father's Society -- a special member, maybe, but still essentially a figment of his, of the original Andy Gage's, imagination.

Too strange. Crazy. And Mouse would not be sitting here right now if not for the fact that her own Society had left her no choice in the matter. When her alarm clock went off this morning, she found identical to-do lists taped to every wall and door in her apartment. Her answering machine was blinking too, and though she erased the message without listening to it, she knows what she would have heard if she'd pressed Play: a voice, very like her own, warning her not to skip her appointment with Dr. Grey, and probably tossing in a few insults for good measure.

"'Strange,'" the doctor says, as if mulling over the possible implications of the word.

Mouse lowers her eyes. "I know I'm crazy. But at least I'm. . . I'm real."

"And you think Andrew isn't?"

Mouse hesitates, not wanting to say anything bad about Andrew, who has been nothing but nice to her. "He says his. . . his 'father'. . . made him up."

"Well," says the doctor, "all personalities are creations, after a fashion. People often speak of reinventing themselves, for instance; that doesn't mean those new selves are fakes."

"That's not the same thing."

"Maybe not exactly the same. But I'm confident Andrew is real. As for whether you're a multiple personality, that I don't know yet."

Mouse is suddenly hopeful. "You mean I might not be?"

The doctor shrugs. "Certainly it's possible. Although, from what Andrew has told me, you do seem to have many of the experiences that an untreated multiple personality would be expected to have.

The blackouts; the things done, evidently by you, that you can't remember doing. Tell me, what do you think is going on?"

"What do I think. . ."

"How do you explain it? To yourself, I mean. When you wake up in a strange place, or get an anonymous message making reference to things that only you should know about. What do you tell yourself has happened?"

"I don't." Mouse spreads her hands in a gesture of helplessness. "It's not. . . I don't explain it. It just happens."

"But you'd like an explanation."

"I'd like it to stop."

"All right," says the doctor, nodding. "Let's see what we can do. What I'd like to try, if you're willing, is to induce one of your blackouts. Only this time --"