by A F Carter
The piece is quite short. In 2004, a group of former patients filed a class-action lawsuit accusing the center of malpractice. The lawsuit alleged cult-like practices and patients kept against their will. It also named three defendants: Zenia Burgos, Mathew Ostovsky and Laurence Halberstam.
“The center no longer exists,” Marshal tells me. “So, the
lawsuit at least had that effect. And it looks like Zenia moved three thousand miles away afterward, so there’s that, too.
But the case was settled before trial, with the settlement
naturally including a nondisclosure agreement. The details
never became public.”
I thank Marshal for the email and the research, but I’m
thinking so what? The review board that hired Halberstam
has faith in his professional abilities, which is all that matters. Still, it’s good to know what we’re up against. Even if it means confirming our worst fears.
“Anything else, Marshal?”
“Not really. Halberstam’s Facebook page is mostly about
his specialty, treating victims of childhood trauma. You cannot go forward until you confront your past. That seems to
be his mantra.
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
VICTORIA
For once, I’m not forced to watch Halberstam bent over
his notes while I cool my heels in the submissive chair
at the start of our session. That’s because he’s not in the
room. As you’d expect, I’m drawn to his desk and our files,
my object to know, finally, his plans for our future. Such is the nature of power, such is the fear power generates, and I take a tentative, compulsive step before I stop myself. If he should walk into the room . . .
No desk, that much is obvious, and I construct a night-
mare hypothetical, our freedom hanging in the balance,
my compulsive curiosity tipping the scales. Who’s got the
straitjacket?
Nevertheless, I do wander from niche to niche inspecting
his precious objects. Most of the small objects in the niches are new, drawn apparently from a larger collection. My little pigs with their top hats have been replaced with a porcelain flask, yellow with delicate blue flowers rising on winding
stems. The lavender dragon, my favorite, has been replaced
by a lacquered box. A golden carp swims across its black lid, the fish so perfectly executed it appears to be in motion.
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I hear the door open and turn to face Dr. Halberstam.
His eyes move across my body, but there’s nothing prurient
in his examination. Halberstam’s gotten fairly good at iden-
tifying us before we reveal our names. He’s obviously proud
of this accomplishment, but it’s happened with every thera-
pist who stuck with us for more than a month. I’m wearing
tan slacks and a thin white blouse, thinner than I like but a necessity given the heat radiating from the sidewalks. My
makeup is minimal, my hair swept along the side of my head
and fastened with a dark blue barrette.
“Serena,” he says at last.
“Sorry, try again.”
“Oh, yes, the dowdy outfit. I should have known. You’re
Victoria.”
“Correct.”
“Please.” Halberstam gestures toward the submissive
chair and I dutifully follow his command, surrendering to
gravity. I’m thinking about the email Marshal discovered, a
copy of which I found on our dining table. Our therapist’s a man who likes to play with other people’s pain, but there’s
nothing we can do about it. Hacking is a crime, a felony in
New York and—
“We’ve been working together for how long?” Halber-
stam’s voice jerks me to attention. “Six weeks now?”
“About that.”
“So, we’re talking about more than twenty-five visits.”
I know where this is going and it’s not to a place I want
to visit. I know also that I have no choice. Halberstam is a predator wise enough to foreclose all lines of retreat. We
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know him now, except for Tina who’s been gone so long I
half expect her to never return.
“I haven’t been counting, but that seems right,” I say.
“Do you see the problem?”
I’m tempted to say, “Yes master.” But I’m not Eleni and I
don’t. “You want to meet Eleni and Tina.”
“I can fully understand Tina’s reluctance, assuming she
is, as you say, the only one who remembers.”
“That’s changed now.”
“Changed?”
“Since my father stepped into our lives. We remem-
ber.” I somehow manage to maintain a reasonably flat tone,
though I’m shaking inside. The flashbacks rip into me with-
out warning. Maybe, at some point, I’ll be able to knit them into a whole, a coherent past. Not yet.
I watch Halberstam open the center drawer of his desk
and remove a fountain pen, his favorite prop. He stares at it for a moment, then says, “Well, that’s something we need to
talk about. Later, perhaps. For now, let’s discuss the report generated by Adult Protective Services. Some of your neighbors have complained about you, Victoria, and the landlord
claims that you’re uncooperative and often late with the
rent.”
On another day, I might be upset. Not today. Ms. Portman
has already called us. As far as APS is concerned, we’re functioning adequately, a conclusion they’ve reported not to our therapist but to the court. As for our dear landlord, Muhammad Nazari, he wants us out, so he can raise the rent on our 76
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rent-stabilized apartment by 20 percent. Thus, he harasses
Carolyn Grand, as he harasses all his tenants, as landlords all over this city harass their tenants. According to Ms. Portman, Doyle was the only other person to complain.
“No reaction, Victoria?”
“I can’t address nebulous complaints. As for paying the
rent, we’ve always, month after month, for all the years
we’ve resided in the building, paid our rent before the tenth.”
Halberstam stares at me for a few seconds, then swiv-
els in his chair as he searches for a more productive line of attack.
“Alright, let’s return to our original topic. I’ve seen Kirk three times, Serena twice, you eight times, and Martha four-teen times. But I’ve never seen Eleni or Tina. That’s very
convenient, Victoria. Convenient for you. As for myself, I’m beginning to doubt they exist.”
“I don’t blame you. Nevertheless—”
“No.” Halberstam points the fountain pen, an accus-
ing finger if I’ve ever seen one, at the center of my fore-
head. He’s become more domineering with every session.
“The incident that brought you to the attention of the
court? Blamed on a nonexistent identity, it need never be
explained. And your brutal past? If you invent an identity
in charge of remembering, you need never review it.” He
leans back in his chair, seemingly content. “Are you playing me, Victoria? Are you hustling me? Do you consider me an
inconvenience imposed by the court, an inconvenience you
can simply dismiss?”
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I remain calm, my legs crossed, my hands in my lap, my
expression (I hope) interested, but unimpressed.
Halberstam drops his hand to his desk. “Now, we’ve spo-
ken about Carolyn’s life with her father at some length in the past. Her loyalty to him, though utterly misguided, was only to be expected. But we haven’t touched on what happened
later, when she was put into foster care with . . .” He pauses to check the file on his desk. “With the Aceveda family. I
assume you remember now.”
I manage to scoot up on my chair until I’m more or less
perched on the edge. That way, as I give Halberstam his
cheap thrill, I can lean toward him, share a few confidences.
I steel myself against the unavoidable profanities, but when I finally speak, my bitter tone reveals as much as the words themselves.
“With the Acevedas? Carolyn was a whore, Doctor. That’s
how she thought of herself, how the other girls thought of
themselves. Whores, hookers, working gals, and sometimes
when they were really feeling ambitious, escorts. But what-
ever she called herself, at the end of the day, Carolyn did the fucking and her foster parents, that would be Angela and
Benny, kept the money. Whore? Pimp? No more than words
to Carolyn. The Acevedas took care of their little money-
makers. They fed Carolyn, clothed her, even sent her to
school.”
“To school? Why didn’t she say something? She did even-
tually let a school counselor know about her father.”
“And where did it get her? No.” I stop suddenly, as the
memories pour into my awareness. Everything I want to
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forget. “Two things, Doctor. The Acevedas were a step up
for Carolyn. And if they never showed the girls any affection, they never punished them, either. And the sex part? At age
ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen? Sex was all Carolyn Grand ever knew.” I take a moment to let the anger drain away. I have
a point to make and I don’t want Halberstam to confuse the
issue. “It’s funny how foster-care boys get all the attention, joining gangs, heading off to prison or dead in the street. You don’t hear much about the girls, but certain outcomes are
pretty obvious. The boys think violence is the only way up.
The baddest get the most. Now ask yourselves what the girls
have to offer when they hit puberty and start hanging out.
How do they survive? What tools can they deploy? Even if
they haven’t been molested already.”
“And what about Carolyn?” Halberstam’s expression
doesn’t change.
“Carolyn escaped.”
“How?”
“She went insane. Our father made sure of that.”
“Ah, your father.” Halberstam’s eyes are bright enough
to reveal his excitement. Perhaps that’s because he’s got one more surprise. “I’m glad you brought him up. His parole officer, Kevin Powell, phoned me earlier. Your father, it seems, wants to . . . reconcile is too grand for his aspirations. He wants to atone.”
Inside, I’m begging anyone to take control of the body:
Martha, Eleni, Kirk, Serena. The humiliations are too much
for me, my dignity too important, and if the others laugh
at my pretensions, they’re still my pretensions. Everything
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about me, from my hair to the generous cut of my slacks to
my polished shoes with their two-inch heels, every item is
meant to establish a dignity we’ve never believed ourselves
entitled to. Dr. Halberstam means to strip that away.
“You need to be more specific. What exactly does his
atonement require from us?”
“A supervised meeting at a neutral site. Where it goes
from there is strictly up to you.” He brings his hands
together, steeples his fingers. “According to Officer Powell, your father is no longer the man you knew. He’s spent most of the last twenty-seven years in isolation and the remain-der in therapy. Please understand, I’m not necessarily rec-
ommending that you accept the offer and we don’t have to
decide today. Think it over.”
His smile curls around his narrow face. Everything in
time. Again, I start to rise, and again he stops me with a
wave of his hand. “Now, you were six years old when your
mother left. Is that right?”
“She ran for her life.”
“Leaving you behind.” He pauses long enough to allow
his point to fix itself in my brain. “But that’s another issue we’ll save for a later date. For the present, I’d like to hear about your life before she left. Please, whenever you’re
ready.”
I don’t want to remember and Halberstam knows that,
his eager look giving his game away. And he’s right, on one
level. We’ve always hidden behind Tina. With that defense
gone . . .
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“I only remember the fighting, my mother bleeding,
calling for help I couldn’t provide. As for Carolyn Grand,
I can’t be sure because it all happened so long ago, but I
think my father mostly ignored his daughter until his wife
left him.”
“And afterward . . .”
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
TINA
What do you wanna hear first, Doctor? How it feels
to be torn in half? How it feels to be chained and
whipped in front of a paying audience? Wanna hear how it
feels to know that men all over the world download videos
of your degradation, that they jerk off to your pain, your
suffering, that they do not give a shit? I can tell you, Doctor, because I know every trick in the fucking book, because I
live in a hole in hell. So, what do you wanna know? Just tell me, you bastard, and I’ll make all your fantasies come true.
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MARTHA
It’s ten o’clock in the morning. I’m ironing clothes, one
of my favorite activities, while Valerie’s Home Cooking
plays on our TV. Valerie’s dedicated her Food Network show
to budget-stretching casseroles, an important part of our
nutritional strategy. I’m not paying all that much attention.
I’m thinking of Tina and I’m intensely proud. Tina vanished
before Halberstam could ask a single question, leaving
Victoria to handle the aftermath. But Tina spoke for all us.
Eloquent and fearless.
I know this because Victoria left a note on the table, along with a printout of Halberstam’s email. We’ve come together
since Marshal discovered that email, a matter of pure neces-
sity. A reunion with Hank Grand? We’re far more likely to
kill than kiss him.
Still, I’m feeling good this morning as I bend to the task
at hand. We have an extensive wardrobe. No surprise, given
the differences between us. As virtually every item was
bought at
a thrift store, our clothing needs frequent care,
and I’m as good with a needle as I am with an iron. Plus, I’ve got a pork shoulder cooking on the stove, the recipe pulled
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off a “cooking hints” website. I’ve long forgotten the name
of the site, but the basic concept is so simple and the results so terrific that I’ve used it dozens of times. Take a cast-iron stockpot, add a dollop of molasses, a tablespoon of sugar, a tablespoon of salt and a two-liter bottle of store-brand cola.
Heat the ingredients until they mix, then add your pork butt and simmer until a thick crust forms on the outside. The
sweet-and-sour flavor of that crust is as good as any bar-
beque sauce. As we’ll be eating it in one form or another for the next week, it better be.
I pause long enough to draw the odor of the pork through
my nose and into my lungs. Pure drudge pheromones. Then
I turn back to the ironing board. Unkempt does not fit my
self-image and I make sure we at least appear sane. Just now I’m working on one of Eleni’s peasant blouses. The blue one
with the scoop neckline that scoops way too low for my
taste. The blouse has ruffles at the neckline and waist, forcing me to open each fold and test the iron as I go along. The task is complicated by the delicate rayon fabric. Let the iron get too hot and it’s bye-bye blouse.
Forty minutes later I’m working on the last item, a pair of
slacks worn by Victoria. I’m looking forward to a cup of coffee, my reward for being a good drudge, when the phone
rings. We don’t get a lot of calls and I check the caller ID
before answering: Legal Aid Society. Already, I’m annoyed.
“Hello.”
“Good morning,” a woman says. “Am I speaking to Caro-
lyn Grand?”
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I’m tempted to bust her bureaucratic chops by declaring
that Carolyn Grand doesn’t exist. I want to tell her that she’s talking to a fragment of a theoretical woman. I want to tell her to go fuck herself. Instead, I simply say, “You are.”
“This is Malaya Castro. I’m representing you—”
“What happened to Mark Vernon?”
“He’s been moved to another division.” She waits for a
moment, but I have nothing to say. “So, how have you been?”
“Does it matter?”
“Pardon me.”
“I’m busy, Ms. Castro.”