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The Other Mrs (ARC)

Page 35

by Mary Kubica


  ered as much from her line of questioning, though that doesn’t

  mean I believe her. That doesn’t mean she isn’t making it all up.

  “But the last time I was here, I wasn’t speaking to you, Doc-

  tor. I was speaking to a woman named Camille,” she says and

  then she goes on to describe for me a pushy, garrulous young

  woman named Camille who is living inside of me, along with

  a withdrawn child.

  I’ve never heard anything as ridiculous in my whole life.

  She tells me that the child doesn’t say much but that she likes

  to draw. She says that the two of them, this woman and the child,

  drew pictures together today, which she shows me, plucking a

  sheet of paper from her briefcase and handing it to me.

  And there it is, sketched with pencil on a sheet of notebook

  paper this time: the dismembered body, the woman, the knife,

  the blood. Otto’s artwork, the same picture I’ve been finding

  around the house.

  I tell her, “I didn’t draw that. My son drew that.”

  But she says, “No.”

  She has a different theory about who drew this picture. She

  claims that the child alter inside of me drew it. I laugh out loud

  at the absurdity of that, because if some child alter living inside of me drew it, then what she’s saying is that I drew this picture.

  That I drew the pictures in the attic, in the hallway, and left

  them around the house for myself to find.

  I did not draw this picture. I did not draw any of the pictures.

  I’d remember if I did.

  I tell her, “I didn’t draw this picture.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” she said, and for a split second I think

  she believes me. Until she says, “Not you specifically. Not Sadie Foust. What happens with DID is that your personality gets fragmented. It gets split. Those fragments form distinct identities,

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  with their very own name, appearance, gender, age, handwrit-

  ing, speech patterns, more.”

  “What’s her name then?” I challenge. “If you spoke to her. If

  you drew pictures with her. Then what’s her name?”

  “I don’t know. She’s shy, Sadie. These things take time,” she

  says.

  “How old is she?” I ask.

  “She’s six years old.”

  She tells me that this child likes to color and draw. She likes

  to play with dolls. She has a game she likes to play, which this

  woman played with her in an effort to get her to open up. Play

  therapy, this woman tells me. In this very room, they held hands

  and spun in circles. When they were both as dizzy as could be,

  they stopped. They froze in place like statues.

  “The statue game, she called it,” this woman tells me, because

  they held still like statues until one of them finally toppled over.

  I try to imagine what she’s telling me. I picture this child

  spinning in circles with this woman, except the child alter—if

  I’m to believe her—is not a child. It’s me.

  It makes me blush to think of it. Me, a thirty-nine-year-old

  woman, holding hands and spinning around this room with an-

  other grown woman, freezing in place like statues.

  The idea is absurd. I can’t stand to entertain it.

  Not until Tate’s words come rushing back to me: Statue game,

  statue game! and it strikes a nerve.

  Mommy is a liar! You do know what it is, you liar.

  “On average, those with DID have around ten alters living

  within them,” she tells me. “Sometimes more, sometimes less.

  Sometimes as many as one hundred.”

  “How many do I supposedly have?” I ask. Because I don’t be-

  lieve her. Because this is just some elaborate scam to besmirch

  my name, my character, making it easier for me to take the fall

  for Morgan’s murder.

  “So far I’ve met two,” she says.

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  “So far?”

  “There may be more.” She goes on to say, “Dissociative iden-

  tity disorder often begins with a history of abuse at a young age.

  The alternate personalities form as a coping mechanism. They

  serve different purposes, like protecting the host. Standing up,

  speaking up for the host. Harboring the painful memories.”

  As she says it, I think of myself, harboring parasites. I think

  of the oxpecker bird who eats bugs off the backs of hippos. A

  symbiotic relationship, once thought, until scientist realized the

  oxpeckers were actually vampire birds, digging holes to drink

  the blood of the hippopotamuses.

  Not so symbiotic after all.

  She says, “Tell me about your childhood, Dr. Foust.”

  I tell her I can’t remember much of my childhood, nearly

  nothing, in fact, until I was around eleven years old.

  She just looks at me, saying nothing, waiting for me to put

  it together.

  Are you prone to periods of blackouts, Dr. Foust?

  But blackouts are temporary losses of time, caused by things

  like alcohol consumption, epileptic seizures, low blood sugar.

  I didn’t black out for the extent of my young childhood. I

  just don’t remember.

  “That’s typical in cases of DID,” she tells me after awhile.

  “The dissociation is a way to disconnect from a traumatic ex-

  perience. A coping mechanism,” she says again, as if she didn’t

  just say that moments ago.

  “Tell me about this woman,” I say. I’m trying to catch her in

  a lie. Certainly sooner or later she’ll contradict herself. “This

  Camille woman.”

  She tells me there are different types of alters. Persecutor al-

  ters, protector alters, more. She has yet to ascertain which this

  young woman is. Because sometimes she stands up for me, but

  more often her portrayals of me are hate-filled. She’s huffy,

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  ticked off. Angry and aggressive. It’s a love-hate relationship.

  She hates me. She also wants to be me.

  The little girl doesn’t know I exist.

  “Officer Berg took the liberty of doing some research,” she

  says. “Your mother died in childbirth, no?” she asks, and I say

  that yes, she did. Preeclampsia. My father never spoke of it, but

  by the way his eyes got glossy whenever her name came up, I

  knew it had been horrific for him. Losing her, raising me alone.

  “When you were six, your father remarried,” she says, but I

  object to this.

  “No he didn’t,” I say. “It was just my father and me.”

  “You said you don’t remember your childhood, Doctor,” she

  reminds me, but I tell her what I do remember: being eleven

  years old, my father and me living in the city, him taking the

  train to work, coming home fifteen, sixteen hours later, drunk.

  “I remember,” I say, though I don’t remember what came be-

  fore this, but I’d like to believe it was always the same.

  Sh
e pulls paperwork from her briefcase, telling me that the

  year I was six years old, my father married a woman by the name

  of Charlotte Schneider. We lived in Hobart, Indiana, and my

  father worked as a sales rep for a small company. Three years

  later, when I was nine, my father and Charlotte divorced. Ir-

  reconcilable differences.

  “What can you tell me about your stepmother?” she asks, and

  I tell her, “Nothing. You’re mistaken. Officer Berg is mistaken.

  There was no stepmother. It was only my father and me.”

  She shows me a photograph. My father, me and some strange

  but beautiful woman standing before a home I don’t know. The

  house is small, just one-and-a-half stories tall. It’s nearly engulfed in trees. In the drive is a car. I don’t recognize it.

  My father looks younger than I remember him, more hand-

  some, more alive. He stares sideways at the woman, his eyes not

  meeting the camera lens. His smile is authentic, which strikes

  me as odd. My father was a man who didn’t often smile. In the

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  image, he has a full head of dark hair and is without all the saw-

  tooth lines that later took over his eyes and cheeks.

  My father had a nickname for me when I was a girl. Mouse,

  he called me. Because I was one of those twitchy, tic-prone kids,

  always wrinkling my nose up, like a mouse.

  “I showed this picture earlier today. It didn’t sit well with the

  child alter, Sadie. It made her run to the corner of the room,

  begin scribbling furiously on paper. She drew this,” she says,

  holding the drawing up, showing it to me again. The dismem-

  bered body, the blob of blood.

  “Around the time you were ten years old, your father filed

  for an order of protection against your stepmother. He sold your

  home in Indiana, moved with you to Chicago. He started a new

  career, at a department store. Do you remember this?” she asks,

  but I don’t. Not all of it, anyway.

  “I need to get back to my family,” I tell her instead. “They

  must be worried about me. They must wonder where I am,”

  but she says that my family knows where I am.

  I picture Will, Otto and Tate in our home without me. I won-

  der if the snow relented, if ferry traffic resumed, if Will made

  it home in time to pick Tate up from school.

  I think of Otto at home when the police arrived to collect

  the washcloth, the knife.

  “Is my son here? Is my son Otto here?” I ask, wondering

  if I’m even at the public safety building anymore or if they’ve

  taken me elsewhere.

  I look around. I see a window-less room, a wall, two chairs,

  the floor.

  There’s no way to know where I am.

  I ask the woman, “Where am I? When can I go home?”

  “I just have a few more questions,” she says. “If you’ll bear

  with me, we’ll get you out of here soon. When you arrived at

  the station, you told Officer Berg there was a bloody washcloth

  in your home, along with a knife.”

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  “Yes,” I tell her, “that’s right.”

  “Officer Berg sent someone to your home. The property was

  thoroughly searched. Neither item was there.”

  “They’re mistaken,” I say, voice elevating, my blood pressure

  spiking as a headache forms between my eyes, a dull, achy pain,

  and I press on it, watching as the room around me begins to

  drift in and out of focus. “I saw them both. I know for certain

  they’re there. The police didn’t look hard enough,” I insist be-

  cause I know I’m right about this. The washcloth and the knife

  were there. I didn’t imagine them.

  “There’s more, Dr. Foust,” she tells me. “Your husband gave

  the police permission to search your home. They found Mrs.

  Baines’s missing cell phone there. Can you tell us how it came

  to be in your home, or why you didn’t turn it in to the police?”

  “I didn’t know it was there,” I say defensively. I shrug my

  shoulders, tell her I can’t explain. “Where did they find it?” I

  ask, feeling hopeful that the answers to Morgan’s murder are

  there on her phone.

  “They found it, oddly enough, charging on your fireplace

  mantel.”

  “What?” I ask, aghast. Then I remember the dead phone. The

  one I assumed was Alice’s.

  “We asked your husband. He said he didn’t put it there. Did

  you put the cell phone on the mantel, Dr. Foust?” she asks.

  I tell her I did.

  “What were you doing with Mrs. Baines’s cell phone?” she

  asks, and this I can explain, though it sounds so unbelievable as

  I say it, telling her how I found Morgan’s cell phone in my bed.

  “You found Mrs. Baines’s phone in your bed? Your husband

  told the police you’re the jealous type. That you’re mistrustful.

  That you’re intolerant of him speaking to other women.”

  “That’s not true,” I snap, angry that Will would say these

  things of me. Every time I accused him of cheating, it was with

  good reason.

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  “Were you jealous of your husband’s relationship with Mrs.

  Baines?”

  “No,” I say, but that’s of course a lie. I was somewhat jealous.

  I was insecure. After Will’s history, I had every right to be. I try to explain this to her. I tell her about Will’s past, about his affairs.

  “Did you think your husband and Mrs. Baines were having an

  affair?” she asks, and I did, truth be told, think that. For a time I did. But I never would have acted on it. And now I know that

  it wasn’t an affair they were having, but something that went

  deeper than that. Will and Morgan had a bond, a connection,

  to his former fiancée. The one he claimed he didn’t love any

  more than me. But somehow, I think he did.

  I reach across the table, take a hold of her hands, and say,

  “You have to believe me. I didn’t do anything to hurt Morgan

  Baines.” She pulls her hands away.

  I feel disembodied then. I watch on as another me sits slumped

  in a chair, speaking to a woman. “I do believe you, Dr. Foust.

  I do. I don’t think Sadie did this,” the woman says, though her

  voice comes to me muffled as if I’m slipping away, drowning in

  water, before the room drops entirely from sight.

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  Will

  They let me into the room. Sadie is there. She sits on a chair

  with her back to me. Her shoulders slump forward, her head is in

  her hands. From the back side, she looks to be about twelve years

  old. Her hair is matted down to her head, her pajamas are on.

  I tread lightly. “Sadie?” I gently ask because maybe it is and

  maybe it isn’t. Until I get a good look at her, I never know who

  she is. The physi
cal characteristics don’t change. There’s always

  the brown hair and eyes, the same trim figure, the same com-

  plexion and nose. The change is in her demeanor, in her bear-

  ing. It’s in her posture: in the way she stands and walks. It’s in

  the way she talks, her word choice and pitch. It’s in her actions.

  If she’s aggressive or demure, a killjoy or crass, easy or high-

  strung. If she comes on to me or if she cowers in a corner, cry-

  ing out like a little girl for her daddy every time I touch her.

  My wife is a chameleon.

  She looks at me. She’s wrecked. She’s got tears in her eyes,

  which is how I know she’s either the kid or she’s Sadie. Because

  Camille would never cry.

  “They think I killed her, Will.”

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  Sadie.

  Sadie’s voice is panicked when she speaks. She’s being hyper-

  sensitive as always. She rises from the chair, comes to me, attaches herself to me. Arms around my neck, getting all clingy, which

  ordinarily Sadie doesn’t do. But she’s desperate now, thinking

  I’ll do her bidding for her as I always do. But not this time.

  “Oh, Sadie,” I say, stroking her hair, being amenable as al-

  ways. “You’re shaking,” I say, pulling away, keeping her at an

  arm’s length.

  I’ve got empathy down to a science. Eye contact, active lis-

  tening. Ask questions, avoid judgment. I could do it in my sleep.

  It never helps to cry a little too.

  “My God,” I say. I let go of her hands long enough to reach

  for the tissue I put in my pocket before, the ones with enough

  menthol to make myself cry. I dab it at my eyes, put it back in my

  pocket, let the waterworks begin. “Berg will rue the day he did

  this to you. I’ve never seen you so upset,” I tell her, cupping her face in my hands, taking her in. “What did they do to you?” I ask.

  Her voice is screechy when it comes. She panicking. I see it

  in her eyes. “They think I killed Morgan. That I did it because

  I was jealous of you and her. I’m not a killer, Will,” she says.

  “You know that. You have to tell them.”

  “Of course, Sadie. Of course I will,” I lie, always her Johnny-

  on-the-spot. Always. It gets old. “I’ll tell them,” I say, though

  I won’t. I’m not convinced of the need to commit obstruction

  of justice for her, though Sadie, herself, could never kill. That’s where Camille comes in handy.

 

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