The Perfume Page 10

  “Very, very, very,” said the mouth. “I never believe anybody who uses three very’s in a row. Very, very, very. Very, very, very. Very, very, very.”

  Is that me talking? thought Dove. Or Wing?

  The school psychologist said perhaps Dove’s timing was purposeful; had Dove known tomorrow was a very important day? Was Dove perhaps resentful of her parents’ work? Was this her method of—

  “No,” said Wing. “I have absolutely no interest in their work, or in them, for that matter. I split fifteen years ago.”

  The psychologist whistled under his breath, as though to give himself support. “I definitely feel the hospital …”

  But her parents had Dove by the arms and were hustling her out of the building. Dove could not feel the pressure on the arms but through Wing’s eyes she could see the speed at which they were leaving the school building.

  Immediately, there was a logistical problem. Each parent had driven. Which car to use? Neither parent wanted the burden of the daughter alone.

  The blossoming shrubs of late spring formed a bright hedge near the parking lot. Her parents brushed past the leaves and drooping flowers. A sweet old-fashioned smell, like an old lady’s dresser drawer lined with paper, filled the air. Wing held a hand over her face trying not to breathe.

  Dove came to her senses.

  No—they came to her. The senses were smells. The antidote! Whatever it was—this was it.

  Dove kicked and screamed and pounded on the prison of the brain. The heart doubled its beating, and Dove kicked harder, demanding oxygen, demanding air. Wing yanked open the nearest car door, trying to get into the artificial air, but she did not make it.

  Sweet romantic fragrance filled Dove’s nostrils, then her head, then dreamily swept her into the real world. “Antidote,” breathed Dove.

  “Only seasonally,” said Wing.

  Two separate voices were coming out of Dove now: her own and Wing’s. Dove didn’t mind; she knew Wing was receding.

  Her parents minded.

  In the car going home, Dove kept saying, “Don’t worry, Mother. It’s under control.”

  In her voice, Wing kept saying, “I will get control back. Don’t think that you have won.”

  “Shut up!” shouted Dove. And then, gently, “Don’t worry, Mother. Wing will stop talking in a bit. At first you’re both in the mouth, but then you fall backward. It’s a little scary because it’s such a long way down, but it doesn’t hurt. You just lie there in the back of the brain and wait your turn.” She smiled at her mother.

  Her mother smiled back.

  It was identical to the smiles of Timmy and Hesta.

  It was not a smile.

  It was a tremor of fear.

  Chapter 19

  “I DO NOT HAVE A multiple personality!” cried Dove. “I am just me! Nobody else.”

  “Then who is holding the other side of the conversation?” said the psychiatrist in a soothing, humor-the-maniac voice. Her parents had not retained the school psychologist. Everybody knew that the school psychologists were both incompetent and gossipy. The Daniels needed an expert who would tell nobody anything about their daughter.

  “My vanished twin,” said Dove. “Wing.”

  “Wing,” repeated the psychiatrist. “That’s a strange name.”

  “It her real name.”

  “Her real name,” repeated the psychiatrist.

  “My parents named her!” cried Dove. “Before I was born. Ask them. It is true. I am not making anything up.”

  “Before you were born,” repeated the psychiatrist.

  “My mother was due to have twins,” said Dove, trying to remain calm. The doctor’s examining room, ominously, was within the gates of a place called Cherry Valley Hospital: We treat the chemically dependent, the abused, and the confused. I’m not chemically dependent, thought Dove, the only person who’s ever abused me is Wing, and I’m not confused, the doctor is. “About halfway through her pregnancy,” explained Dove with desperate necessary care, “they found she was going to have only one baby after all. It’s called the vanishing twin syndrome. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”

  The psychiatrist nodded for some time. Slowly he said, “Did you see this on a daytime television talk show, perhaps? Did it excite you?”

  Dove closed her eyes. “It is not exciting,” she said. “It is scary, don’t you understand? There is somebody else living in my head.”

  “In your head,” he repeated.

  Closing her eyes had been an error. Her grip on the world was momentarily weakened. Wing leaped back into the mouth. “What did you learn in medical school?” demanded Wing. “How to imitate other people?”

  He smiled. “It’s a good technique, Dove. You’ve told me quite a lot, haven’t you?”

  “I’ve told you a lot, but you haven’t understood a lot. Like for example, I am not Dove. I am Wing. You should be able to tell the difference. I find it insulting that you still confuse us. Dove is the goody-goody.”

  The psychiatrist steepled his fingers and studied the way the pads of one hand rested against the pads of the other hand. “And what does that make you, Wing?” he said.

  Don’t tell him about trying to push Timmy out of the hot air balloon, said Dove silently. You don’t want him to lock us up, do you?

  What do you mean, lock us up? said Wing.

  Where do you think we are, you nincompoop? said Dove. We are in the examining room of a private psychiatric hospital. Mother and Father are in the waiting area. All they have to do is sign a paper and we are stuck here, you and I. We will have to live here!

  So? said Wing.

  So, I don’t want to live in a mental institution. Not even for a night. Let alone a lifetime. I want to go to school and be normal.

  Wing shook her head. Their head. Whichever head it was. Dove had lost track of who possessed the body. They seemed to be merging. Wing said, I don’t think you’ll ever be normal again, Dove. Not when I can come back at will.

  The psychiatrist said, “I think I’m going to ask Mom and Dad to come in with us for a minute.”

  “I don’t call them Mom and Dad,” said Dove.

  “I know. You call them the maternal body and the paternal body.”

  “I do not! I call them Mother and Father!”

  The psychiatrist nodded. He brought Dove’s parents into the room. He said, “I’d like to play you a tape of your daughter’s conversation with me.”

  “You taped me?” yelled Wing. “I haven’t just been sitting here for the last fifteen years, you know, waiting for Venom to come! I’ve been paying attention! You cannot tape a person’s conversation without that person’s permission! You cheated.”

  “Venom,” said the psychiatrist, “seems to be your daughter’s excuse for having developed a double personality. It’s a very frightening word for a little girl to choose. She seems to realize that in some way, because she identifies it as a perfume, even though it’s a snake poison.”

  Dove’s parents held each other’s hands, but not Dove’s.

  “You have a very sick girl,” said the psychiatrist. He played a tape for them. The Daniel family listened to the double voices, like a flute and a cello duet, Wing up high and Dove down low, arguing with each other. It was the conversation that Dove had thought they were having silently.

  First there was no privacy, thought Dove. Now there was no silence.

  “I have never,” said the psychiatrist, “actually come across a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality in real life.”

  “It made a wonderful story,” said Dove’s father. He was glad to discuss anything besides his child’s deterioration.

  “Did it really?” said Dove’s mother. “I never read it.”

  Father paused. “Now that you mention it, I suppose I never read it, either. I was just told in school that it made a wonderful story.”

  “Robert Louis Stevenson,” said the psychiatrist. “I have read it quite recently, as a matter of fact. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. H
yde as a story is boring. I cannot say the story has withstood the test of time.”

  “You withstood the test of time,” said Dove sadly to Wing.

  “Only fifteen years,” said Wing. “But that story was written a century ago. Neither you nor I will last so long.”

  “Of course you will,” said Dove. “You’re from the pyramids, you’re from the Nile, something about you is five thousand years old.”

  “You know,” said Wing seriously, “you have some very strange thoughts. Perhaps you should get some counseling.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Daniel burst into hysterical laughter and muffled it quickly, clinging to each other.

  “Sometimes,” said the psychiatrist, “when both parents work, and when the only child pretty much brings herself up, the imagination seems to gain more control than it should.”

  Dove’s parents flinched. “This isn’t our fault!” cried Mother. “We’ve been good parents! You can’t blame this on my job.”

  “That’s true,” said Dove. “They have been good parents. And I don’t blame this on the job, Mother. Listen to me! You’re not listening! Wing was there all along, biding her time. Now when the perfume arrived, it opened the path for her to emerge. There is an antidote, but it wasn’t very strong. I guess there wasn’t enough of it, or we got into the car too fast, or something, but she just didn’t fade the way she used to. What I need is—”

  “I don’t think I can handle this,” said Father.

  “There’s no reason why you should,” said the psychiatrist. “That’s why we’re here, you know. To handle things like this. Cherry Valley has a long and successful history of adolescent treatment. She’ll be happy here. You’ll be happy that she is here.”

  His voice was as soothing as syrup, and on the river of his voice, her parents flowed out the door and disappeared.

  They were replaced by a group of doctors. “This will be a fascinating case,” said one of the doctors. He actually rubbed his hands together.

  Another doctor held a hypodermic needle in his hand. Very slowly he moved toward her, putting each foot flat and heavy on the floor. “Now, Dove,” he said, and his voice matched his body: heavy and solid and forever. “We’re going to have a nice lie-down.”

  “A lie-down?” repeated Dove. She backed away from him.

  “We’re going to rest for a few days,” said the psychiatrist.

  “Rest?” repeated Dove.

  “Your mother and father cannot handle what is going on.”

  “They can’t?”

  “So you’re going to stay here for a while.”

  “Here?” Dove had backed all the way to the wall. There was no place else to go. The door was blocked. A big woman and a small man with fixed smiles and extended arms stood in the door. Dove whimpered.

  “It’s all right,” said the psychiatrist. “Nobody is going to hurt you, Dove. This is where you come to stop being afraid.”

  “Nobody out where you are is going to hurt me,” said Dove. “It’s inside my head I’m worried about.”

  “This is intriguing,” said a visiting doctor. “What a treat to be allowed to observe this case.”

  The needle came closer.

  I’m a case, thought Dove Daniel.

  A mental case.

  A suitcase.

  A bookcase.

  A briefcase.

  The needle went in.

  A basket case, she thought, and the world went dim.

  Chapter 20

  SHE DID NOT KNOW WHAT medication they had given her, but it had an interesting effect: She was soft.

  Her brain was mushy, and her muscles were gooey.

  She slept easily, but woke only halfway. The inside of the mind, already cluttered with Wing and Dove, was now also foggy. Dove and Wing stumbled around in there, each of them trying to think and to take charge. Their conversations were mumbled, and their thoughts tangled.

  The hospital was terrifying. Creepy people walked up and down the hallways. Dove was afraid of everybody there. She was afraid of the locks on the doors and the bars on the windows. She was afraid of the supper tray with the single plastic spoon. She was afraid of the attendants, who were jolly and friendly and had too many teeth, like people in toothpaste ads. She was afraid of the sky outside: If it was bright blue, it might be the Nile, and Egypt, and Wing’s source … if it was gray and dismal, she felt that her mind had turned inside out and was spread over the entire sky.

  There was group therapy and one-on-one therapy and occupational therapy and even music and art therapy.

  In group, Dove encountered patients with no inhibitions. People who would undress in front of visitors, or try to stab each other with plastic spoons, or lose interest in bathing, or talk about how they were really a king, or really the President, or even really God.

  “Is that so different from you, Dove?” asked the therapist.

  Dove was furious with him.

  “You claim you have a second personality, too, Dove,” said the therapist.

  “It’s a second person!” shouted Dove. “Not a second personality. There are two of us in here!”

  The therapist beamed. “Anger is good. Keep yelling, Dove. We’re going to work that anger out! Yes, we are!”

  After each therapy, Dove was sent back to her room.

  The room felt like forever. It had always been there, it always would be there, and it would always contain a prisoner.

  Or two.

  They did not understand.

  She would never get them to understand. They had classified her with insane people. To them she was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. A girl with two personalities. Dove and Wing. No matter what Dove said, no matter how carefully she lined up her explanations, the staff at the mental institute would not listen. They did not believe in vanished twins.

  Dove thought the best line of defense—the quickest way to be released—would be a full and careful explanation of how she had gotten into this dreadful position. Each session she took a different approach. “Once,” said Dove, “I assumed that because of our names, I am Dove the complete. The whole bird, so to speak. Whereas Wing was partial, and that was what made her so angry. She cannot take off without me.”

  “And now?” said the therapist, steadily taking notes. Dove could not imagine making her own pencil move so fast. Dove could not imagine doing anything fast again.

  “Now,” said Dove, “I think Wing is the muscle. She moves. Whereas I’m the sort of the ultimate couch potato.”

  “How do you mean?” asked the therapist.

  “I don’t even attempt to get hold of the body anymore. I just lie here, up in the brain, watching Wing.”

  “But you’re here now,” pointed out the therapist.

  “Only because Wing is still sleeping. This is very weird medication you’ve been giving us.”

  “Actually, Dove,” said the therapist very gently, “the medication has been given to you and you alone, Dove Daniel. Nobody else.”

  Wing, maddeningly, refused to attend any of the counseling sessions and would not participate in any of the therapies. Silently, Wing informed Dove that she was not enjoying herself. They insist that only you exist, said Wing irritably. Fine. Let them think that. I’m not coming out.

  How are they going to believe me if you stay in there? said Dove.

  I thought you wanted me to stay in here, said Wing, just to be mean. I’m doing exactly what you wanted a few weeks ago, Dove Bar. Lying low. What you have to do here is play their game, go along with their explanations, and thank them for their help.

  Dove wanted to kill her. How could Wing do this? Wing had invaded Dove’s mind—her body—her life—her friendships—her family—and now she was making Dove look crazy.

  Wing is evil, thought Dove. She told me that, of course, in the very beginning. But I didn’t believe her. It’s easy to believe that a person can be mean now and then, or nasty and calculating now and then … but evil?

  What is evil, anyway? wondered Dove on the th
ird afternoon, pretending to nap.

  Perhaps, thought Dove, evil is your own body. You can’t leave your own body. As long as you live, it’s you. You can’t set it on a shelf, or store it in a closet, or trade it in.

  “No,” said Wing out loud, “the body is perfectly ordinary. Especially yours. You have a dull body, Dove. It’s the soul, the personality, that is evil. Well, not yours. Your personality is quite dull also, it matches your body. I’m the one who’s evil.”

  Wing was evil.

  The day would come when Wing really would tip the gondola or jerk the steering wheel. Wing had come in order to hurt, and using Dove, she had the flesh and bones to do it.

  “No, Wing,” said Dove. “I accept that we have to live together. I accept that you’re here. But we don’t want to be a danger to others, Wing. We want to be nice to others, Wing.”

  Wing thought about this. Dove listened to Wing’s thoughts. How complex and confused they were. They looped and laced around like tangled invisible fishing wire.

  “No, I can’t say that I want to be nice to others.”

  Through the observation glass, people took notes and nodded to each other. It seemed to Dove the whole world was nodding, but none of them except Dove understood why.

  Dove asked, “Wing, what do you have in mind?”

  Wing drifted into silence. Her words spun inside Dove’s head like cotton candy. Come. Let’s lie down. You listen to me. I have so much to say.

  They lay down.

  There was a single cotton blanket. White. White for purity, although nothing in Dove’s world was pure now.

  Dove drew it up over her body, and then over her head, and in the privacy of the cotton-lidded world, she listened to Wing’s plans.

  I need the body, said Wing. You really don’t, Dove. You may rest now. You’ve earned it. It’s my turn.

  Dove looked through the blanket; close up it had a tiny, tiny pattern of crosshatches, eternally woven. If only her brain could be so geometric and predictable!

  You lie down at the back of the mind, so to speak, and rest, suggested Wing. Remember, you don’t have to feel guilty about what I do with the body. It won’t be you doing it! That’s the beauty of this. Dove won’t be responsible. I will be!