During the first week Miss Updyke was curious to know how things really were, and when Sybil told her that she was able to sit through classes without the inner disturbances that in the past had made it necessary for her to leave, Miss Updyke seemed very pleased. "She could see," Sybil wrote in her diary of January 7, 1947, "I'm well more nearly." On January 8, 1947, Sybil, referring to the nameless thing, recorded in the diary: "Am so proud --most thankful I could talk with Miss Updyke as I did yesterday and stay on a level. No inclinations ever. The one thing I desired for so long. God has heard my pleas surely."
The nameless thing, the "inclinations" that kept her from staying on a level, however, had not been put to rest. Her diary, virtually infallible as a clue to the presence or absence of the "inclinations" because when Sybil was in command of the situation, she never failed to make an entry, shows clearly that there were unrecorded days even in this period, when she thought herself "well more nearly." In fact, for January 9, the day after the splurge of optimism, there was no entry. Good days were often followed by bad days.
There were enough good days for Sybil to complete almost three years of college and to move triumphantly into the second semester of her senior year. But then in 1948, shortly before the end of her last semester, Sybil received a telephone call from her father summoning her to Kansas City, where her parents were then living.
Her mother was dying of cancer of the spleen, and she insisted upon having no other nurse than Sybil. "If this is what your mother wants," Willard Dorsett told his daughter, "this is what she will have."
Sybil did not know what to expect when she arrived in Kansas City. Old fears reasserted themselves. But Hattie Dorsett had never been as calm and as rational as she was in Kansas City. Paradoxically, in this period of crisis mother and daughter got along better than they ever had before.
The very calm became an ironic background for the events of what started out as an ordinary evening. Hattie Dorsett, relatively free from pain, was sitting in the big red easy chair in the living room of the Dorsett's home. She was reading Ladies Home Journal by the light of a small table lamp. Sybil came in with her supper tray. Then, seemingly apropos of nothing, Hattie Dorsett remarked, "I never made it."
"Made what?" Sybil asked softly, thinking that her mother was voicing some retrospective regret, some unfinished business that haunted her.
"I never made that call," Hattie Dorsett said.
"What call, Mother?"
"That call to Dr. Wilbur," her mother explained.
"You did," Sybil insisted. "Don't you remember? I heard your conversation. Every word of it."
Hattie Dorsett was composed as she replied, "Well, I held my finger on the button. I never made it. I never made that phone call."
Never had this possibility occurred to Sybil. It was inconceivable that her mother would have so determinedly blocked the route to her good health, inconceivable that her mother would have condemned her to the uncertainty and doubt about the doctor with which she had lived since October, 1945--almost three years ago.
A little insight here, a slight revelation there, picked up during the all-too-brief treatment, had been enough to maintain the inner balance that made it possible for Sybil to go back to college. That nameless thing that Dr. Wilbur had glimpsed the day her patient headed for the window had continued in Omaha, at college, and in Kansas City. And it had been her mother, nursing her bizarre secret, who, by preventing the continuation of treatment, had deliberately shaped her daughter's destiny.
The horror, the pain, the sadness of it! Yet there were no recriminations. Nobody ever criticized Hattie Dorsett. There was no flare-up of anger against her. Anger was evil.
Hattie ate her supper. Sybil took the tray back to the kitchen. Neither mother nor daughter ever again mentioned to each other that phone call or Dr. Wilbur.
The revelation about the phone call, however, completely changed Sybil's attitude toward the doctor. It seemed obvious that, not knowing that Sybil had been ill, the doctor had simply thought that she had fled from treatment without even having the grace to say she was not coming back. No wonder the doctor had left Omaha without calling her. It was not Sybil Dorsett but Dr. Cornelia Wilbur who had a right to be deeply disappointed.
Before hearing about the unmade phone call Sybil had deliberately ejected Dr. Wilbur from her thoughts. Now, however, the doctor loomed large again, and Sybil felt a sudden surge of hope. Returned to her was the glorious dream of getting wholly well, of picking up where she had left off with Dr. Wilbur. But this time the serpent must not be allowed to intervene. The dream would have to be delayed until Sybil, wholly on her own, could afford to pay for her own treatment.
Dr. Wilbur, Sybil learned from a directory of psychiatrists, was now a psychoanalyst in New York. And it was to New York that Sybil was determined to go.
Never, through the six years--from 1948 to 1954 --that intervened between the decision and its execution, did Sybil breathe this dream to anyone.
Her intention was one thing more she had to keep to herself. In July, 1948, Hattie Dorsett died and was buried in a Kansas City cemetery. For the next two months Sybil kept house for her father, and in September she returned to college. She was graduated with a bachelor's degree in June, 1949, and it took the intercession of one of her professors to convince her father, who was with Pastor Weber in Denver, Colorado, to attend the commencement exercises. At one o'clock on commencement day Sybil left with her father for Denver.
For the next few years she lived with her father, taught school, and worked as an occupational therapist. Willard Dorsett's building schedule kept him constantly moving, and she went with him. However, by the summer of 1954 she had saved enough money to go to New York to get a master's degree at Columbia University and to resume treatment with Dr. Wilbur. Her father, told only that his daughter was going to New York to study, drove her there.
Sybil arrived in New York on Labor Day, 1954, but she waited until October before calling Dr. Wilbur, fearful both that the doctor would reject her and that she would accept her.
Rejection was plausible because of the seemingly cavalier way in which Sybil had closed the door on treatment, but it was more likely--and this hurt even more--that the doctor wouldn't remember her. The envisioned rejection was compounded by the fact that Sybil, who felt guilty for unjustly blaming Dr. Wilbur for failing to call Sybil before leaving Omaha, neatly converted that feeling of guilt into additional feelings of rejection.
Acceptance held a different kind of terror. If she were accepted, Sybil knew that she would have to tell the doctor about the end-of-the-rope feeling she had experienced toward the end of her three years in Detroit, her last residence before coming to New York. While she was teaching, she had seemed to be all right, although there were times in the classroom that she couldn't remember. The moment she left the classroom, however--it was too horrible to recall--strange, incomprehensible things had happened to her. These things were not new, had in fact occurred since she was three and a half and had filtered into awareness at fourteen. But in Detroit they had become not only more frequent but also more menacing. She was no longer able to endure the terrible burden of the secret she didn't dare tell, of the answers she had to improvise to implement the pretense of normality.
People she had never seen before would insist that they knew her. She would go to a picnic and have a vague sense of having been there before. A dress that she had not bought would be hanging in her closet. She would begin a painting and return to the studio to find that it had been completed by someone else--in a style not hers. Sleep was a nightmare. She just couldn't be sure about sleep. Often it seemed as if she were sleeping by day as well as by night. Often, too, there was no dividing line between the time of going to bed at night and waking up in the morning. Many were the occasions of waking up without going to sleep, of going to sleep to wake up not the next morning, but at some unrecognizable time.
If Dr. Wilbur accepted her, these things and many others like them would come up.
This time, she promised herself, fearful or not, she would tell the doctor about them. Not telling was like informing a doctor that you had a head cold when you really had cancer.
Yet Sybil, not certain that she could bring herself to tell and knowing that if she didn't, the treatment would be devoid of reality, wondered whether resuming treatment was the right decision. She vacillated for six weeks before taking the plunge.
On the train the past faded. Suddenly it was the present that became compelling as Sybil faced the reason for her precipitous flight from Philadelphia. Each time one of these incidents occurred, and they had been occurring since she was three and a half, it was as if it were happening for the first time. Ever since she had, at fourteen, become aware of her situation, she had told herself each time that she would begin all over again and that it couldn't happen again. In Detroit the episodes had been overwhelmingly numerous, and yet, even then, she had braced herself to dismiss each one as the last.
This time, however, the illusion of the first time assumed even greater terror than it usually did because of the deep disappointment she felt this January, 1958--three and a half years since her analysis had begun--that an episode like that in Philadelphia should occur.
The train chugged into New York's Penn Station. Sybil clutched her zipper folder, left the train, hurried into a taxi, and finally felt relieved of the nagging apprehension, of the insistent remorse at what had happened in Philadelphia. By the time the taxi turned into Morningside Drive and approached the brownstone where in September, 1955, she had taken a second-floor apartment with Teddy Reeves, she felt secure and at ease-- tranquilized by her wish not to remember.
Teddy would still be with her family in Oklahoma. Sybil walked up the two flights of stairs, knowing but not caring that there would be no one to greet her.
As the apartment door swung open, the tranquility dissolved. Capri, thin and wide-eyed, croaked a pathetic, hoarse greeting. The cat's was the sound of accusation, the same accusation the pajamas had presented in the Broadwood Hotel room.
Sybil had abandoned Capri by leaving her without water or food. Capri was her only real companion, really all she had. Sybil would not consciously neglect any animal, least of all her precious Capri. But she had. She'd abandoned the animal she loved as she herself had been abandoned repeatedly in the past by people who had claimed to love her.
4
The Other Girl
Sybil lay restless and wakeful, knowing that in the morning she would have to tell the doctor what she had done. It was going to be even harder than she had thought. She found herself thinking instead of the first time she had seen the doctor in New York.
Expectant, eager, anxious, Sybil had been awake that October 18, 1954, in the sunless moments before dawn. Her eyes darted around the small Whittier Hall dormitory room at shapes indistinct in the semidarkness. On the back of her desk chair was her navy blue gabardine suit. On the dresser were her navy blue leather purse, her navy blue silk gloves, and her navy blue hat with a small navy blue veil. Standing at attention under the chair were her navy blue leather pumps with their medium heels. Her gray stockings were tucked into the shoes. The ensemble had been painstakingly assembled the night before.
As the shapes became visible in the gathering light, the sense of strangeness dissolved. She found herself thinking about what she would say to Dr. Wilbur. This time she would have to tell the doctor everything.
Sybil stretched for a moment, facing the window and the dawn. She dressed slowly, meticulously. As she hooked her tiny bra, she realized that her hands were trembling, and to steady herself she sat down on the bed. Up again within seconds she stepped gingerly into her suit. Putting on her hat with almost mechanical precision, she could feel that it looked right without even looking in a mirror. Navy blue was very much in vogue, and the little veil gave an added fillip to the matching costume.
Sybil went to the window. The trees in the Whittier Hall courtyard were leafless with autumn's pillage. She faced the sun. Blinded momentarily, she walked away from the window. It was only six-thirty, not yet time to go. Her appointment with the doctor wasn't until nine.
Time.
She could never be sure about time. The earlier she left the dorm, the better. She put on her gloves.
The world seemed not yet quite awake as she descended the front steps of Whittier Hall and headed across Amsterdam Avenue for Hartley's drugstore, on the southeast corner.
The drugstore was deserted except for a cashier and one counterman. Marking time until mankind would rouse itself, the cashier was treating her nails with an emery board; the counterman, in his white coat, was stacking dishes behind his marble slab.
Sitting at the counter, Sybil ordered a danish and a large glass of milk, removed her gloves, and played with them nervously. As she dawdled over her food, she realized that she was deliberately killing time. The phrase killing time made her wince.
Leaving Hartley's at 7:30, she waited briefly for an Amsterdam Avenue bus; then she decided against it. Buses confused her, and this morning she wanted her mind to be clear.
Passing Schermerhorn and the rotund St. Paul's Chapel, she scarcely recognized them. Not until she reached 116th Street did the area look like the Columbia University she had come to know. Through the heavy gates at 116th Street she could see in the distance Low Library, with its mixed architecture, its Ionic columns, and the proud yet somehow pathetic statue of Alma Mater on its front steps. She noted the striking resemblance between Low and the smaller Pantheon in Rome.
The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine at 113th Street intrigued her. She lingered in front of it for a full ten minutes, examining its Gothic architecture and reflecting that it seemed to be a perpetual work in progress. Well, she couldn't walk perpetually. She waited for a taxi, but none appeared until 8:15.
The cab driver, in his Brooklyn accent, offered Sybil the New York Times. She took it gratefully and found comfort in it as her nerves, frayed by the taxi's slow motion in rush hour traffic, warned her that, while her mind was racing too swiftly to her destination, she might be late for her appointment despite her early start. No banner headline this October 18, 1954. No front page mention of President Eisenhower or of Senator Joe McCarthy, who usually made goggle-eyed headlines. Captions, neat and subdued, proclaimed: MACMILLAN HEADS BRITAIN'S DEFENSE IN CABINET SHIFT; STRIKES ON DOCKS OF BRITAIN SPREAD; 40 COLLEGES JOIN U.S. TECHNICAL AID TO 26 COUNTRIES; DEMOCRATS AHEAD IN HOUSE BATTLES; TRUCKERS SUE FOR STRIKE LOSSES PUT AT $10,000,000. The unwritten caption, running like a refrain through all the others, was: WILL THE DOCTOR REMEMBER ME?
The taxi came to a sudden halt. "Have a good day," said the driver as Sybil paid him. A good day? She wondered. She walked thoughtfully through the front door of the buff-colored building on Park Avenue and 76th Street, where Dr. Wilbur lived and had her office. At 8:55 she stood in the private foyer leading to Apartment 4D.
The door stood open so that patients could enter without ringing. Sybil found herself in a small, dimly lighted waiting room with a tiny wall table, a small brass lamp, and photographs in pale wood frames. Should she sit down? Dr. Wilbur came into the room. "Come in, Miss Dorsett," she said.
They went into a sunny consulting room, each remembering the last time they had met, in Omaha almost ten years before.
She's changed, Sybil thought. Her hair is brighter than I remembered it. And she seems more feminine.
But her eyes, her smile, and the way she nods her head are the same.
At the same time Dr. Wilbur was thinking: she's as slender, as fragile, as ever. Looks no older. I'd know that face anywhere: the heart shape, the tilted nose, the small rosebud mouth. It's a face you don't see on the streets of New York. It's an English face, and despite the slight pitting of the skin, it has the fresh, unadorned look of an Englishwoman.
The doctor didn't ask Sybil to sit down, but her manner indicated it. Where? The green couch, with a small triangular pillow at the end, on which patients evidently rested t
heir troubled heads, wasn't inviting. It seemed even less so because of the upholstered chair that looked down on the triangular pillow and was the visible symbol of the psychiatrist's "third" ear.
Dismissing the couch, Sybil counted the rose rings in the broadloom rug as she walked across it with slow, strained movements to the desk and chair on the opposite side of the room. She stopped. Beckoning to her from the top bookshelf on a greenish-gray wall were a black pen with a gold band, set in a gold holder on an onyx base, a small green pencil holder, and a green vase with a motif of green leaves. In the vase were assorted green plants and pussy willows. She was glad the doctor didn't have artificial flowers.
Blocked, Sybil gingerly withdrew a small mahogany desk chair from the knee hole of the desk and perched stiffly on its edge. The account she gave of herself was brief, factual, devoid of emotion. It was as if she were giving a resume in an employment office, not talking to the doctor to whom she had returned as the result of strong intention and after great striving. Such items as her graduation from college, her teaching, her work in art therapy, the exhibits of her painting, her not having been analyzed, as Dr. Wilbur had suggested in Omaha, and even her mother's death, mentioned without feeling, filled the frozen hour.
The deep freeze continued as Sybil introduced the subject of Stanley Macationamara, an English teacher with whom she had taught in Detroit, just before coming to New York. Although their relationship had developed to the extent that Stan had asked Sybil to marry him, she talked of him coolly, as a social worker might. Skirting her actual relationship with him, avoiding any mention of intimacies or her own feelings, she reported only that he was part Irish, part Jewish, that his father had deserted his mother, and that his mother later had abandoned Stan. The "report" also included the observation that Stan had been raised in an orphanage, had worked his way through college, and had made his own way.
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