by Nancy Kress
I would still know what Strickland learned: The Hole always closes.
One version of the past has shaped all my of choices. III decide it never happened, what remains? Will I exist? I, Susan Peters, who runs the best combat nursing unit in the entire Army? I, Susan Peters, who have earned both the Commendation Medal and the Distinguished Service Cross? “I, Susan Peters, who can operate on a patient myself if the doctors are occupied with other screaming and suffering men? And have?
I, Susan Peters.
Who was sexually abused by her father, ran away from home, joined the Army, became a nurse, served honorably in the Special Medical Unit assigned to the Battle of Long Island, and have never lied to a patient except once.
And maybe it wasn’t a lie.
Maybe there will be ladies where they are taking Captain John Percy Healy of His Majesty King George Ill’s Twenty-Third Foot. Maybe Healy will stand with some young woman, somewhere, in the moonlight and touch her face with gentle fingers. It’s possible. I certainly don’t know differently. And if there are, then it wasn’t even a lie.
MARTIN ON A WEDNESDAY
The author’s brilliant novella “Beggars in Spain” (April 1991), won the Hugo, the Nebula, and our own annual Readers’ Award. Another novella by Ms. Kress, “And Wild for to Hold” (July 1991), was also a finalist for last year’s Hugo Award.
Martin woke in a wide white bed beside a sleeping brunette in a lacy white nightgown. Behind pale curtains, traffic hummed. He had never seen the room or the woman before.
He sat up slowly, waiting for the pain. When it didn’t come, he put a trembling hand on the woman’s shoulder. She stirred but didn’t waken, and at the slight movement he pulled his hand back and stared at it. His fingers were pink and strong. His wedding ring was gone.
The bedroom was entirely white: walls, woodwork, curtains, bedclothes. Subtle lacy designs wove through the bedspread. Her room, then. But through the open closet door he could see a full wardrobe of male clothes, workshirts and two suits and his good-luck battered trenchcoat.
Elizabeth had said she was going to give the trenchcoat to the Salvation Army. Standing in his hospital room, rare tears streaming over her chiseled cheekbones, “You’ll never wear it again I can’t stand it Martin I can’t . . .”
“God, look at the time!” said the brunette. “I’m late, let me in the shower first, will you, John?” She had a wheedling voice and a dazzling smile. She kissed him on the ear, stripped the nightgown over her head, and whirled naked into the bathroom, closing the door jauntily. She had the sweetest ass he’d ever seen.
Carefully Martin climbed out of bed. There was no pain. His wallet lay on the dresser—his, given to him by his mother two years ago for Christmas, the tan calfskin scuffed from rubbing against his keyring in his pocket. Inside was a driver’s license with his picture and the name JOHN L. JENKINS, 164 Stacey Drive Apartment C. Jenkins had a MasterCard and sixty-five dollars. Folded with the bills was a note: Remember milk! I love you. Connie.
Martin gripped the edge of the dresser and hung on till the dizziness passed.
The suit, stiff blue polyester, fit him. He dressed frantically, like a man dying. But, then, he was. He, Martin Oliver, whose last remission had ended months ago, and whose wife Elizabeth had finally broken after a year of brisk and painful bravery, sobbing into his trenchcoat in a room where nothing, by design, was white.
The brunette was singing in the shower, indistinct words in a strong contralto. Martin bolted from the bedroom, through a boxy, alien living room to the front door. But afterlie’d yanked it open, he stumbled back to the tiny kitchenette and opened the refrigerator. Between a pitcher of orange juice and the remains of a pot roast sat an unopened half-gallon of milk.
There were car keys in the pocket of his trenchcoat. In the shabby parking lot beside 164 Stacey Drive his old Mercedes was parked under a bare maple, between a Ford Escort and a Toyota Tercel. Martin scraped the windshield free of frost. “Hey, John!” called a teenage boy jogging past. Martin made his arm lift in a wave. The boy’s bare legs under lycra shorts scissored the cold air.
He drove slowly, afraid to risk anything. Stacey Drive ended at Dewey, a major thoroughfare he recognized. Most of the traffic headed toward the city. Martin drove the other way; at the long light just before the expressway ramp he pulled the registration from the glove compartment. It read, ’81 MERC 4-DR BLUE JOHN L. JENKINS.
In Allenham the houses sat on acre lots, surrounded by trees. School-buses clogged the winding streets, stopping and starting, flashing red lights. Martin watched Camilla’s best friend, Emily Mastro, drag her plaid bookbag aboard Bus 62. He craned his neck peering into the bus windows but all he could see was indeterminate motion, as if the children were underwater. Camilla’s lunchbag sat incongruously in the middle of his driveway. He picked it up on his way to the front door, feeling slippery waxed brown paper under his fingers, smelling peanut butter and jelly. He gazed for a long minute at the house, composed of massive, flat-roofed rectangles in rough-textured wood and brick.
Elizabeth answered the door in a red bathrobe he’d never seen before, her short blonde hair tousled. Her eyes widened. “Martin! Oh, God, Martin, it’s not Wednesday. . .” Then she saw Camilla’s lunchbag and her face crumpled. “Did she see you?”
He shook his head numbly. Elizabeth said uncertainly, “You are Martin, right? Not . . . Cody?”
“Cody?” He could barely get the words out. “Who the hell is Cody?”
“It’s not Wednesday,” Elizabeth said. “Call Dr. Hasselbach, the number’s in your wallet. God, I’m sorry, but you have to understand I can’t . . . I can’t risk . . .”
“Wait! Elizabeth!” Martin yelled. But she had already closed the door. On the other side, a deadbolt slid into place.
For the first time, he saw that the tall, recessed windows on his house were barred.
Dr. Hasselbach himself met Martin in the lobby of the Clinton Medical Group, a glossy atrium full of ficus benjamina. The atrium was framed by narrow columns and patterned metal screens. The moment Martin laid eyes on Hasselbach he recognized him. It was an odd sensation, a part of his mind turning inside out like a sock. Hasselbach was small and balding. He laid a hand on Martin’s arm, an intimate gesture that unnerved Martin with its lack of context.
“Cody?”
“No. Martin.”
The hand remained on Martin’s arm. Martin realized—or remembered, or guessed—that Hasselbach was a psychiatrist. He followed Hasselbach into his office.
“You’re understandably confused, Martin,” Hasselbach said. The words were so inadequate that Martin fought an insane desire to laugh.
“I’m dying. Of cancer. Was dying. Was almost dead . . .” Hasselbach listened intently, a small man behind a large desk. Something about that intensity angered Martin. “What the hell is going on here, Doctor? I want some answers!”
“Easy, Martin. Easy. If you get too angry, Cody will come out.”
“Cody? Doctor—”
“Take a deep breath. Just give yourself a minute.” Hasselbach ran his fingers through his hair, which barely existed. Martin looked away, around the room. Pilasters without emblature, symmetrical arched windows in glossy white: Neo-Formalist. Something moved inside, like the smooth drop of a deadbolt into its appointed place. I am an architect.
Am? Was?
“Easy, Martin. You can’t allow yourself to get angry. Anger triggers Cody. He’s the personality we had to implant in order to induce the multiple-personality syndrome.” Hasselbach again ran his fingers through his non-existent hair. Sweat flecked the grainy skin around his nose. “How to start? But you already know all this, when you’re . . . when you’re not . . . MP usually only develops in severely abused children, as a defense against parents who actually torture them. Usually the kids repress all their rage, but it inevitably concentrates itself in one violent personality, out of many others. Can’t you remember any of this, Martin?”
“No!
” Martin said. Something inside was slipping, but not like a deadbolt. The floor tilted and there was screaming and the sharp smell of gasoline. Something flew through the air, something small and deadly. Martin was on his feet, his fists clenched at his side. In the left one was a four-inch blade. Hasselbach shrank even smaller behind his desk as the door burst open and two security guards barreled through. Martin turned to them, dazed. The knife fell from his open palm to the floor.
“Wait!” Hasselbach hollered, a remarkably strong yell for such a little man. Martin suddenly flashed on him cheering for the Packers. The guards stopped, confused.
“Martin?” Hasselbach said.
“Yes,” Martin gasped. His chest pounded. He could still smell gasoline. It had soaked through his jeans, his sneakers, and the thing flying through the air had been a match . . . How did he know that Hasselbach was a Green Bay fan?
“Thank you, this is under control,” Hasselbach told the guards, who left without liking it. Hasselbach stayed behind his desk.
Martin stared at the doctor. Over Hasselbach’s shoulder, through the arched window, winter sunlight spilled over a terraced piazza with broad, shallow steps. People hurried up the steps, late for work—real people, who knew where they were going. The gasoline smell faded. In its place Martin saw the note in his wallet: Remember milk! I love you. Connie.
“I install carpets,” he said suddenly. “I mean . . . John Jenkins does.”
Hasselbach leaned forward. “Yes. The way you did when you were working your way through college. What else do you know about Jenkins?”
“Nothing,” Martin said flatly. “You deliberately implanted a violent personality in me? How? Why?”
“Through deep hypnosis under radically experimental drugs. In order to induce your mind to form the primary alternate personality. John Jenkins.” Hasselbach no longer seemed afraid. Apparently Martin, as himself, was not very scary. Except to himself.
Hasselbach said beseechingly, “Try to understand the research design. For at least twenty years, clinical practice documented the weird differences that can exist between different personalities in a multiple. Physical differences. One might be allergic to citrus juice, and another can drink six gallons of the stuff without a reaction. One might be left-handed, one right—”
The knife had dropped from his left hand. Martin fumbled his pocket for his cigarettes with his right. They weren’t there.
“—one might smoke and one not,” finished Hasselbach.
Suddenly Martin saw it. “And one have cancer and one not.”
Hasselbach gazed at him with compassion. “Yes. At first researchers couldn’t believe it, but it’s been documented for well over a decade. If a personality without a carcinoma dominates, the tumor shrinks. It can even disappear, provided the healthy personality stays both dominant and unaware of the sick one.”
“John Jenkins.”
“Yes.”
“And I have . . .” He meant to say, And as Jenkins I have another job and another apartment and another wife or lover or whatever the hell she is and also a murderous implanted personality that made Elizabeth bar her windows because I did something I can’t even remember . . . but the words wouldn’t come. For a moment the pounding in his head started again and something flickered at the edge of his vision, something small flying through the air . . . Martin breathed deeply and put his head between his knees. He felt, rather than saw, Hasselbach reach under the desk for the security button. But Cody retreated.
“There’s another important thing you must remember, Martin,” Hasselbach said gently. “You chose this. You and Elizabeth.”
“I chose it? Then why the fuck can’t I remember it?”
Hasselbach looked down, at the shining surface of his desk, as glossy and bright as the ficus leaves in the Neo-Formalist atrium. For the first time, Martin realized that the ficus trees had been artificial.
“You will, Martin. During your regular emergences. This emergence of the Martin personality is unscheduled, and I admit it’s worrisome. I suspect it’s an incomplete emergence. We don’t know for sure, this is all experimental—But you will remember that you chose this way, when you’re fully Martin again, which has to be limited in duration to prevent the regrowth of the tumor. But you are still yourself. The hypnotic implant assures that you will remember your core life.”
He looked at Martin. “For six hours every Wednesday.”
He drove carefully, trying not to see the dashboard of a Ford truck that sometimes blurred the dashboard of the Mercedes, trying to see nothing that wasn’t solidly in front of him. At The Bookshelf he walked steadily to the arts section. There weren’t many books on architecture: Classic Country Houses, by Lawrence Grow. House, by Tracy Kidder. Why Buildings Stand Up, by Mario Salvadori. Designing The Future: A Laymans Guide To Twentieth-Century Architecture, by Martin Oliver. He opened it to the first page:
For Elizabeth—as what is not?
His picture was on the inside back flap, the face already too thin, already lengthened by pain. Martin Oliver, architect with the respected firm of Olson & Vendretti, explores and explains the movements that have made our cities look the way they do. In clear, sparkling prose anyone can understand, he—
He bought the book, took it to the closest restaurant, and tried to read. Every sentence meant something important—controversies and innovations, debates and departures—but none of it meant anything important to him. Finally, when whatever it was he’d ordered was stone cold, the waitress began giving him pointed looks. Martin paid the bill with John Jenkins’ money and left.
At Connie’s apartment he stood in the white lace bedroom before a full-length mirror and took off all his clothes. He felt tired, bone-aching exhausted. His head hurt. But even through the weariness and headache, he looked healthy and fit. A forty-year-old man who watched his weight, kept in shape. A body firm and flushed with life.
He pressed both hands over his abdomen, where the tumor had been. Pancreatic cancer. Inoperable. Were so sorry, Mr. Oliver . . .
“Oh!” Connie said.
Martin saw her in the mirror, standing in the doorway, her arms full of books. A word appeared in his mind, stark and angular as an International façade: schoolteacher. She taught the fourth grade. She got home at three-thirty.
Connie smiled. “What a nice surprise. Did you guys finish up early today? Stan pushing hard again? Ummmm . . .” She tossed the books on the bed and slid her arms around him from behind.
Martin saw himself in the mirror. Four hands, two large ones dangling at his side and two smaller ones fondling his penis. It stiffened and rose. The small hands wore no rings.
“Ummm . . .” Connie purred again, and turned him around. Her head just reached his chin. Her dark hair was glossy, untouched by gray, and when she raised her face to kiss him he saw that the skin around her eyes glowed with freshness.
“I like it when you come home early, John.” She unbuttoned her blouse. Her breasts were full and round, with erect nipples so pink they might have been little tongues, completely different from Elizabeth’s dimpled chocolate aureoles. Martin felt his mouth fill with water and desperately he tried to picture Elizabeth, Elizabeth his wife . . .
“Come here, John,” Connie said. “Or better yet, I’ll go there.” She knelt, and Martin knew there was no image anywhere in his multiple mind that was going to keep him from John Jenkins’ lover. His own lover. Whoever.
But later, afterward, when they lay curled together in the white-lace bed, Martin turned his face away from her. It had been a long time since he had felt shame. “Connie,” he said, and his voice came out in a croak.
She didn’t seem to notice. She felt around among the bedclothes under her ass. “What’s this? A book? Did you just get it today?”
He made himself look at her eyes. They were a clear light gray, lit with a soft glow. He couldn’t answer.
“I didn’t know you were interested in architecture,” she said. “Isn’t it funny the things yo
u can still learn about a person even after six whole months of living together?”
“I live for these Wednesdays,” Elizabeth said. She leaned toward him across the kitchen table. Her streaked blonde bangs fell over her eyes, and the sleeve of her cotton blouse brushed across the butter. Gently Martin moved the butter dish. “The rest of the week I go through the motions, but there’s always a part of me counting off the hours until Wednesday. Even when I hate myself for doing it.”
“I know,” Martin said.
“You don’t know, Martin. How can you know? For six days and eighteen hours of every week, you don’t even remember I exist.”
Martin ran his hands over his face, pulling at the skin of his cheeks.
He felt tired, and slightly nauseous, and very horny, a disturbing combination. Something tugged at his mind, something white—It was gone.
Elizabeth poured them both fresh coffee. This was the Wednesday ritual—talk first, then bed, then a few precious hours with Camilla after she came home from school. Most of the talking part of the ritual centered on Elizabeth’s feelings. Martin didn’t mind. She was entitled. For thirteen years he had arrived at his own feelings through discussing Elizabeth’s. This particular vocabulary he took from her. And unlike many women, Elizabeth was fair. If he listened sincerely to an hour of emotion, she was satisfied and turned loving. She had never, even in less bizarre circumstances, taken more than was her due.
Martin couldn’t imagine how to define what was her due in these circumstances.
“It’s not as if I don’t love you still,” Elizabeth said. “I do. That’s the problem. I can’t seem to let you go.”
“I don’t want you to let go,” Martin said. The idea made his chest roil. Life without Elizabeth? Coming to himself—that was the way he thought of it each Wednesday, “coming to himself’—without seeing Elizabeth, touching Elizabeth, talking to Elizabeth . . . He breathed deeply. There could never be anybody for him but Elizabeth. There never had been, not since the first day he’d seen her striding across campus with her confident walk that made him think she could take on the whole world.