The Girls He Adored (37 page)

The next time Maxwell spoke, it was as Christopher. Irene was attuned enough by now to recognize the soft, melodic voice.

“I remember I was confused at first. Instead of heading back towards town, the lawyer drove east, into the mountains. He told me Miss Miller had bought Scorned Ridge for us to live in. I remember thinking it was a little peculiar, the way he dropped me off near these, these
ruins
—the place was an unholy mess, the buildings falling down, the meadow overgrown. He didn't even get out of the car. Just handed me my duffel, yelled, ‘Good luck, kid,’ and roared off back down the hill.”

Christopher closed his eyes. Irene understood that he was back there again, standing by the side of the blacktop.

“I pick up my duffel and head for the house. The screen door is swinging on one hinge.
Skreeeek, skreeeek.
Front door's boarded up. I hear her calling me from the back of the house. Her voice is so different, but still so . . .
her
. She's in the kitchen heating water for tea. Wearing an old-fashioned black dress. She turns around. Oh Jesus, oh god.”

Irene reached out, put her hand on his shoulder. Christopher opened his eyes, looked around wildly, then relaxed visibly when he saw it was Irene. He tried to make a joke out of it.

“Oh,
mama!
I don't think I can go back there twice.”

She told him what she'd have said to any patient. “But you must, Christopher. You have to confront the past in order to realize that it
is
the past. You have to relive it in order to get to the place where you can hold it as a memory, and not keep reexperiencing it subconsciously as a current event.”

“But it
is
a current event,” he moaned. “Everything's a current event. Mose never forgets anything.” He grabbed his head between his hands, pressing his strange smooth palms tightly against his temples.

“It's not about forgetting, it's about forgiving,” said Irene. “Understanding and forgiving yourself. You're carrying a crushing burden of guilt around with you.”

It was Max who looked up, his head in his hands. “Sister, you don't know the half of it,” he said sardonically.

“Tell me.”

“The first one's name was Mary Malloy.”

M
ISS
M
ILLER COULD HAVE
had the place renovated by professionals—her father had left her a considerable nest egg—but she didn't like having anyone else around to look at her, so Maxwell (to use the collective term) worked alone whenever possible.

Or as alone as a multiple can ever be. Mose scanned two handyman's encyclopedias and dozens upon dozens of do-it-yourself books into his prodigious memory, and the various alters turned themselves into carpenters, plumbers, electricians, painters, as necessary, according to their talents and interests. When he did have to hire outside help, Maxwell would work alongside them—he never had to watch anybody do a job twice.

And he was extremely motivated. All the energy he used to put into martial arts, wrestling, fighting at Juvie, sex with Miss Miller, he threw into the renovation, working from dawn to dusk seven days a week. By the time that first winter rolled around, the house was habitable—he'd never been prouder of anything in his life.

It was mid-March when Maxwell, as Christopher, stopped into the Old Umpqua Feed Barn to get some advice about chickens— he was thinking about starting a flock. Mary Malloy was behind the counter. A more objective observer might have noted that she was a younger Miss Miller—same strawberry blond hair, delicate cheekbones, milkmaid skin, slender frame. All Christopher knew was that he was a goner the minute he laid eyes on her.

They started talking. She said she loved chickens, used to raise them when she was a little girl, down on the farm. The more they talked, the more they found they had in common. Mary was an orphan, too. After her parents died, the Jehovah's Witnesses took
her in. A bunch of them lived in one of the big old turn-ofthecentury houses at the edge of town, down by the river.

Thereafter, it was always Christopher who visited the feed barn. On his third trip he got up the courage to ask her for a date. He was eighteen, but shy and backward with girls his own age—he'd never even dated one. Mary agreed, but said they had to keep it quiet. If the other Witnesses had found out she was seeing somebody outside the faith, they'd have shunned her. Kicked her out of her apartment, turned their backs to her on the street. She'd have been a complete outcast. For her it would have been like losing her home, her family, and her friends simultaneously.

So even after they started dating regularly, they kept a low profile. If they went to see a movie, for instance, she'd sneak out and meet him at the theater.

At this point, their relationship was still innocent. Bearing a burden of guilt both for the abuse he'd suffered as a child (abused children always feel guilty, as if they have somehow deserved the horrors visited on them), and for the death of his parents, Maxwell was extraordinarily conflicted about sex. Alicea was terrified of it, but couldn't help behaving seductively around men. Max, as Irene had suspected, had internalized Carnivean's predilections, along with a great deal of rage. Christopher held himself responsible for the seduction of Miss Miller. And it was sexual jealousy on the part of all of them that led to Kinch's appearance, Kronk's death, and the fire.

As for Mary, even French kissing was a big deal for her. So they took it slow. Christopher started timing his trips into town to coincide with her day off. They'd meet at a prearranged spot and she'd return to the Ridge with him. They'd feed the chickens, swim in the creek, maybe make out a little—nothing heavy.

The first few times Christopher brought Mary back to the Ridge, Miss Miller never left the bedroom. But he told Mary all about her. Well, not about the sex. If you left out the sex, then the agreed-upon fiction, Maxwell's heroism in saving his foster mother from a rapist and being burned himself in the process, cast him in rather a romantic light.

So he and Mary talked it over, and decided that Miss Miller was only being shy on account of her disfigurement. Mary certainly had no reason to suspect that Chrissy's foster mother might be bitterly, insanely jealous. Neither did Christopher. After all, Miss M had ended their sexual relationship even before the fire; the idea
she might want to rekindle it in her condition was utterly, literally inconceivable to him.

Of all the alters, only the preternaturally mature Max suspected what Miss Miller was going through, and how it might end. But Max wasn't that fond of Mary in the first place, having discovered that when Christopher was in love, his personality was strong enough to threaten Max's hegemony over the system. He kept his mouth shut.

And eventually Miss Miller seemed to warm up to Mary. Who wouldn't?—Mary was that sweet. She never even flinched the first time she saw Miss M, which suggested that she either had iron discipline or that she saw the world through the eyes of an angel.

It was the happiest time Christopher had ever known—even better than when Miss Miller had rescued him and taken him to her bed. And as his relationship with Mary deepened, he began to experience the spontaneous remission of his dissociative disorder. Such remissions were, Irene knew, not uncommon as child multiples entered adulthood. Sometimes the remissions were permanent; more often the symptoms reappeared again as the multiple entered his or her thirties. But Christopher didn't know anything about that—all he knew was that whole days could go by without another alter seizing control of the body.

By this time he and Mary had reached the stage of heavy petting. But further than that she would not go. So Christopher did what normal, healthy, foolish young men have done throughout the ages: he proposed marriage.

And she accepted. That meant she'd soon be leaving her faith, her friends, what passed for her family. But now she had Chrissy— that gave her the courage to leave.

The two young lovers told Miss Miller that very evening. Christopher hadn't bought Mary a ring—he didn't have any money of his own—so Miss Miller took the engagement ring Kronk had given her off her own finger and slipped it on Mary's. Christopher was flabbergasted. He'd never allowed himself to believe that so much happiness could ever be his.

Mary and Chrissy slept together for the first time that night. He hadn't been with a woman since Miss Miller first locked her door. They made love by moonlight. It was good. He was gentle. Though she was a virgin, there was no pain and very little blood. After the first time they cried, literally cried for joy in each other's arms, then started all over again. She climbed on top and rode him as though
she'd been born to it, her back arched, her small white, strawberrytipped breasts thrown forward and her head thrown back, her hair pale and shimmering in the moonlight.

If lives have an arc, this is the zenith of Maxwell's. An instant later, in darkness and confusion, the downward plunge begins. A breeze from the open door. Footsteps, a rustle of silk. A sound like a dull punch. A puzzled cry. Mary's weight collapses on top of him. He works his way out from under her.

“And how do
you
like it, young man?” says Miss Miller. She's standing at the foot of the bed. Christopher is dimly aware of Mary kneeling beside him, supporting her weight with one hand and flailing clumsily behind her with the other, as if she were trying to brush away a bee crawling up her spine.

For a moment he understands nothing. Then he flicks on the bedside lamp and sees the hilt of the ice pick protruding from the small of Mary's back, and suddenly he understands everything.

“G
OOD MORNING?”
A
LVIN
R
ALPHS
wasn't quite sure what to make of the big bald fella with the bandaged head who had just shambled into Alvin's Big Hat Big Man Western Wear shop in Dallas wearing a rumpled plaid sport coat over a shoulder holster, wrinkled Sansabelt slacks, and shapeless Hush Puppies. It was enough to make a haberdasher weep.

“Good morning.” Pender wasn't quite sure what to make of Alvin Ralphs either. Alvin stood five-seven, if you counted the two-inch heels on his boots and the five-inch crown on his Stetson, his western-cut suit was powder blue, with embroidered yokes fore and aft, and with his bright eyes and fallen jowls, he looked (thought Pender) like the love child of Little Jimmy Dickens (“Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?”) and Droopy Dog, from the old Warner Brothers cartoons.

“What can I do for you?” His diction was precise, his tone lilting—no Texas twang to speak of.

“I need a hat.”

“I can see that.”

“And I figured as long as I was in Dallas . . .”

“Say no more.” Ralphs held up his right thumb, sighted in on Pender's head like a painter checking perspective. “Eight and a quarter?”

“Bingo.”

The bright little eyes narrowed. Ralphs sighted in with his thumb again, then rubbed his jowls. When the pronouncement came, it was with the finality of a papal bull: “J. B. Stetson El Patron, Silver Belly White.”

He disappeared into the back of the store, returned with a box, positioned Pender before a triple mirror, climbed up onto a step-stool, and with a ceremonious air carefully lowered the El Patron onto Pender's head, making sure it cleared the bandages.

“I ask you, sir: Does Alvin Ralphs know his hats?”

“He does, indeed,” said Pender, admiring his reflection—or at least the hat's reflection. “I kinda look like shit from the brim down, though, huh?”

“Let's just say from the neck down, sir.”

“I was once told I was the worst-dressed agent in the history of the FBI.”

“One can only hope,” replied Alvin Ralphs.