Yours, Mine, and Ours (2 page)

“Don’t take this away from me,” he begged. “I have so little in my life.
Caged
?”

“George.”

“Bare Behind Bars
?”

“Are you
trying
to make me throw up, or is it just a side effect from talking to you?” Zow! I must be grumpier than I thought. I could usually be a little more civil. “Sorry.”

(I was a compulsive apologizer. I saw a doctor for it and everything. I was a get-along girl; if everyone wasn’t content I apologized. My sisters hated it.
Hated.
)

“
So Young, So Bad
?
Women In Cellblock 9
?
Cell Block Sisters
?”

“
I’m sorry to have to point this out.” Really. I was! “And maybe you’ll remember I’ve told you this before, but there’s something deeply wrong with you.”

He cursed me. “Goddammit.
Reform School Girls
, at least
?”

I shook my head. “The terrible things I find out about you when I’m stuck in a holding cell.”

“Coffee?”

“No thanks. I’m a cocoa girl.”

“I mean
you
should buy
me
coffee, you useless harpy.” He yawned and ran his fingers—pianist’s hands, surgeon’s hands, psycho killer’s hands—through his thick black hair. “Goddamned Michaela called me at the crack of dawn, and I had to haul my firm and wonderful ass down here to get you out. On my day off, I had to get up early and rescue your sorry ass!”

“It’s two o’clock in the afternoon.”

“Shut up. I had stuff to do first.” He rubbed his eyes, which were a fine, pure green. “Hey, I said “crack” and “ass” in the same sentence. Let’s go.”

I turned to the three women I’d been spending time with. Two of them were in the far-left corner. The other one was crouched beside the lower bunk. They were all staring. My, what big eyes you have, cell mates. “It was nice talking to you.”

“Please don’t hurt us anymore.”

“No, no,” I soothed. “Of course not. And, um, I’m very sorry.” For whatever it was I did.

If I had to guess (and I didn’t have to guess; I knew), I’d say my sister, Shiro, had paid them a visit. That was bad, but if my youngest sister, Adrienne, had come, things would have been much, much worse.

Natch, I couldn’t remember a thing. This was behavior I was used to, but never cared for. I remember reading
Sybil,
by Flora Rheta Schreiber, years and years ago and thinking
Thank goodness somebody gets it somebody really gets it this woman is writing about me!

Sometimes I hated the sorry fact that my sisters could hijack my body, make it do all sorts of odd and unacceptable things, and then return the body back to my control … usually after they’ve used it to commit various felony acts.

All that to say, I don’t know what nonsense my cell mates pulled, nor did I know what Shiro did for payback, but I was never one to hold a grudge.

“So. Um. It was nice meeting you all.”

The gal by the bunk was going to have a gorgeous shiner. As for the other two, the moment I got my body back I’d been able to stop their nosebleeds after a couple of minutes. I’m not one to badmouth, but I really think they blew this whole thing out of proportion.

chapter three

Cadence was right.
They blew this whole thing out of proportion.

chapter four

“—she do?”

George stepped aside as the duty officer unlocked the holding cell. Officer Crayon (the poor man! what a name), too, was careful to stand far back as I exited.

“Sorry, George? I didn’t catch that.” Most people would think
Huh, I must have drifted off
or
Golly, guess I wasn’t paying attention.
I never drifted off. Stupid fargin’ MPD. Shiro must have popped back in the driver’s seat, probably to show off by coming up with a silly obscure fact. Less frequently, it was to agree with me.

And again: I was trying to keep my internal whining under control. It could have been worse. There are much worse things than putting Shiro in the cockpit.

“I said—and try to stay in your body for half a minute if it’s not too much damned trouble—what’d you do to those poor bitches?”

“Don’t call them that!” I was so shocked, if they hadn’t closed the door I would have fallen back into the cell. “They are human beings, George Pinkman, and deserve respect.”

“They’re two whores and a dyke-beater.” He turned, walking backward, the better to talk to my former cell mates. “For the record, I’m into that. Hey, domestic abuse should apply to everyone, not just heteros. So keep up the good work, gals. Hip-hip-hooray for equal rights!”

“You shush your big mouth!” I was frantically waving my arms, trying to hush him up. “They can hear you!”

“You look like a duck trying to take flight when you do that. And of course they can hear me,” he said reasonably, with no idea why I was upset. “We’re only eight feet away. Now, after we walk through this big iron door and they clang it behind us,
then
they won’t be able to hear me.”

“You … you never get it, do you? And you never will. You look at them, you look at me, you don’t see people with feelings. You don’t see people at all. Just things to play with. Toys. At
best
.” I wouldn’t say it. I wouldn’t say it! “Sorry.”

Rats!

George yawned. This wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard from any one of his number of bosses, therapists, coworkers, family members, or random strangers. I didn’t know why I was wasting my breath. I didn’t know why his yucky crapola was getting to me more than usual.

Yes, I did know. I promised my psychiatrist I would make a real effort not to lie to myself so much. “We lie best when we lie to ourselves,” he said, which I thought was profound and accurate, though my sister Shiro thought

chapter five

I thought it
was obvious, and idiotic. Trust Cadence to be charmed by the yappings of a fortune-cookie therapist.

chapter six

it was idiotic.
But Shiro could be strangely close-minded sometimes.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, then rubbed my eyes. The month had barely started (at least, in my head) and I was already tired of it. And tired of George’s ickiness.

“—more pathetic than usual. Are you all right? For you, I mean?”

No. Though I appreciated George’s attempt to fake empathy. He, too, received regular instructions from a platoon of therapists. But at least in my case, there was hope. George would be out of luck for the rest of his life. There was no cure for sociopathy.

My sisters and I could theoretically be put back together, like a grumpy Humpty-Dumpty, but no one can grow a conscience past, say, the age of five. When George wasn’t being a big mean poopie, I felt sorry for him.

“Did one of those bitches get a shot in before Shiro took them out?” He instantly turned on his heel. “Hey! Nobody smacks, taunts, or bruises my partner except me! And maybe a random bad guy! Which one of you worthless cows—”

“Stop it, please. I’m getting a headache. They didn’t bother me. Just … stop being mean for five minutes. Please?”

“No.” His gaze was on me, green eyes narrowed. “If that’s true, if they didn’t hurt you, then what’s your problem?”

“Well…”

“Oh, God! You’re actually gonna tell me. Christ, I can’t believe I’m opening myself up to more whining … you don’t have to tell me. In fact, I’m officially withdrawing the question.”

What was wrong with me was the thing that was always wrong with me. I was tired and scared. I didn’t like waking up in holding cells. I didn’t like being sprung by sociopaths. Two-thirds of a murderous trio were in the wind. I was expecting my period any second.

Oh, and the bigger problems (yes, bigger than two-thirds of a murderous trio out in the world somewhere plotting against me)? My psychiatrist was trying to kill my sisters. My boyfriend wanted to date my sisters …
and
me. My best friend wanted her brother, also my boyfriend, to go away—which, since he was about to close on a house in the area, was problematic. (These weren’t two different men! I was a good girl, not some skeevy, sleep-around, icky, yuck-o slut puppy.)

“A day without a lecture on morality from Cadence Jones is a day that is really, really great,” George was saying. His yakking was giving me a headache. So was his tie: decapitated goats against a lime-green background. George was not a subtle man. Any stranger could tell after a glance that he was good-looking, smart, deranged, and had odd taste in men’s neckwear. “Really really really really really really great.”

“Stop that, please. My head is killing me.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t go around
shaving poodles
!” His voice actually cracked on “poodles.” He could get pretty shriekey when he wanted. And my head, my head, it was just
pounding
; I could have used about a thousand Advil right then. A million. A billion. This must have been what Zeus felt like right before his daughter Athena popped out of his brain.

I take it back; it couldn’t have hurt more than this. My head really

chapter seven

hurt!

Yesyes and the only cure

is the hurt cure the only cure

is to hurt back and George stupid George with his

stupid tie his stupid stupid and who who’s holding their head now George who has a headache NOW?

Ha! His head hurts

like a bus

The wheels on the bus

The wheels

And who needs Advil, anyway? Not me and not the geese! The geese are Advil free and so am I I I

I I I                   the wheels on the geese

go ’round and ’round

and they didn’t

you didn’t

they didn’t hurt me NOBODY HURTS ME I do all the hurting I I I

Ha! Screaming.

Oh, yay.

chapter eight

The only thing
worse than waking up in a holding cell is waking up handcuffed to a hospital gurney. (It’s dreadful that I know that. It’s worse that I’ve known that since I was fourteen.)

My clothes were torn. My hair, when I reached up with my uncuffed hand and cautiously fluffed it, was sticky. Two of my right knuckles were starting to puff. And there was a terrible racket just on the other side of the curtain.

“Godammit! She attacked
me
, you dumb shits! I’m the one who got tossed through a fucking window like fucking Eddie Murphy in
Beverly Hills Cop
! I’m Axel Foley and you assholes are Victor Maitland and his henchmen!”

George paused, but only to take a breath. “Get these fucking cuffs off me and give me back my shoelaces and get me some coffee and get the hell out of my way and then kindly die screaming! And call my boss so she can fire my numb-fuck partner!
Is anybody listening to me?
”

It really wasn’t funny. It was sort of horrible. I mean … poor George. Poor, poor George. First Shiro showed up to torment my cell mates, then Adrienne came out to … well, I don’t know what she did, but not only was it spectacular, it seems as though she’d managed to get George restrained, too.

Which was not funny.

Was
not.

I cracked up anyway. I guess I’m just weak that way.

chapter nine

Since George was
still being forcibly restrained, and would be for a while judging by his enraged shrieks, I used the chance to clean myself up and then trot downstairs to donate platelets. I won’t deny I was seriously hoping Dr. Welch, the gentleman who ran the Red Cross sharing space with the hospital, hadn’t yet hired his replacement.

Dr. Welch understood things that many other people wouldn’t. If the new guy was there and running the show, I’d have to deceive him or her all over again.