Sybil (22 page)

"What do you mean by "our," you numbskull?" Hattie replied.

"Don't you know that organdy dress is yours?"

Hattie paid the cashier for the hair bow.

Vicky and Sybil, Mary and Sybil, Peggy Lou and Sybil--what was the connection? Dr. Wilbur decided to ask Vicky, who knew everything about everybody.

It was June 15, 1955, and the analysis had been proceeding for nine months. Doctor and patient were seated on the couch. "Vicky," the doctor said, "I should like to know something. Are you related to Sybil?"

Startled, Vicky replied, "You know I know Sybil because you ask me about her. I tell you about Sybil."

"Yes," the doctor agreed, "I know you know her. But how do you know what she thinks?"

An amused smile was Vicky's only answer.

"Vicky," the doctor persisted, "you've talked of our blue organdy dress. What else do you and the others share?"

"Share?" There was a tinge of irony in Vicky's tone. "We sometimes do things together."

"You have told me that some of the others have the same mother? Then would you say they share a mother?"

"Yes, I suppose you could say that."

"Do they also share the same body?"

"That's silly," Vicky replied authoritatively. "They're people. I can tell you about them."

"Yes, Vicky, I know they are people. But people have relationships to each other. How are Peggy Lou, Peggy Ann, Mary, Sybil, and the others related? Are they sisters?"

"Nobody ever said they were sisters," Vicky replied, looking squarely at the doctor.

"No," the doctor answered with precise emphasis, "nobody ever said that. But Vicky, when people have the same mother, they must either be the same person, sisters, or brothers."

Ignoring the implications of the doctor's logic, Vicky concurred, "I have lots of brothers and sisters, and we all have the same mother and father."

"All right, Vicky," the doctor continued, "you have just acknowledged the kinship bonds in your own family. But you haven't said anything about the family of which Sybil, the Peggys, Mary, and the others are a part. You haven't told me how these people are related."

Vicky shrugged and said, "Well, Doctor, you just said they must be sisters."

"No, Vicky," the doctor replied firmly, "I didn't say they must .be sisters. I asked you if they were sisters, and I said that logically, since they have the same mother, they must either be the same person, or they must be sisters or brothers."

Vicky said nothing.

When the doctor, remorselessly pursuing the logical course, demanded: "Now, Vicky, tell me, are they sisters or are they the same person?" Vicky, forced to reply, spoke with great deliberateness. "Doctor," she said, "when you put it that way, I have to admit that they must be sisters. They have to be sisters because they couldn't be the same person!" Vicky closed the subject by opening her purse, putting lipstick on, closing the purse, tucking it under her arm. "Mon Dieu," she said as she rose to go. "What an absurdity it is to think of those complete individuals as the same. Marian Ludlow and I are more alike than are any two or three persons you have mentioned."

"Now, Vicky," the doctor said firmly, "the hour is not over yet, and I would like you to listen to what I'm going to tell you."

"Our discussion," Vicky said in a tone of great finality, "has reached its logical conclusion. What else is there to say?"

"This, Vicky. Now sit down, won't you, please?"

Vicky seated herself, but she didn't really acquiesce.

"You say," the doctor remarked unrelentingly, "that Peggy Lou, Peggy Ann, Mary, and the others couldn't be the same person. But they can be. Vicky, don't you see that they could be different aspects of the same person?"

"No, Dr. Wilbur," Vicky said thoughtfully, shaking her head. "I don't see. You, you're just you. You're Dr. Wilbur and no one else."

"Yes?" the doctor asked.

"And I'm just Vicky. There's nobody else here. See." Vicky rose from the couch, paced the room, and asked, "Now do you believe me?"

Vicky sat down again, smiled at the doctor, and remarked, "That settles the question. There's no one else here. You're just Dr. Wilbur, and I'm just Vicky."

"Vicky," the doctor replied, "we haven't settled anything. Let's be honest with each other."

"But, Dr. Wilbur," Vicky insisted, "we most certainly have. We've settled the large, philosophical question of who am I? I am I. You are you. I think; therefore I am. There's a Latin phrase for it: cogito ergo sum. Yes, that's it."

"We've settled nothing," the doctor reminded Vicky. "We haven't established the relationship among Sybil, Peggy Lou, Peggy Ann, Mary and the others. What ...?"

"Questions, questions, questions," Vicky interrupted.

"I'd like to ask a question, too. Why do you have to ask all these questions?"

After rejecting the logical conclusion toward which Dr. Wilbur had been trying to lead her, Vicky contradicted the earlier contention that the doctor and she were alone, for she said, "Now, Dr. Wilbur, Mary would like to meet you. She wants to participate in our analysis, and I think we should let her."

"Our analysis?" Dr. Wilbur echoed. "How can it be "our" if you girls are not the same person?"

Vicky chuckled. "I suppose," she said with what seemed like deliberate ambiguity, "you might call it group therapy."

"You agreed you were sisters." Vicky was quick. "Family therapy, then, if you insist. Thanks for the correction."

Then, as surely as if she had physically left the room, Vicky was gone. A voice that definitely was not Vicky's remarked politely, "I'm glad to meet you, Dr. Wilbur."

"You're Mary?" the doctor asked. "Mary Lucinda Saunders Dorsett," the voice replied.

It was not the voice of a woman of the world like Vicky, nor of an angry child like Peggy Lou. The accent was unmistakably midwestern, soft, low, and somber. The doctor had not heard that voice before and knew of Mary only through Vicky's recapitulation of the sixth grade.

The doctor motioned Mary to the couch and waited. Mary was silent. New patient reserve? the doctor mused. New patient?

"What do you like to do, Mary?" the doctor asked.

"I keep our home going," Mary replied, "but it's hard to do so much."

"What do you have to do?" the doctor asked. "Follow Sybil."

"What do you do when you follow Sybil?"

"Go where she goes."

"What else do you do?"

"Help Sybil."

"How do you help her?"

"Practical ways. Subtle ways."

"Such as?"

"Well, Dr. Wilbur, right now, it's a practical matter. You probably know that Sybil and Teddy Reeves--a friend from Whittier Hall--have just taken an apartment together on Morningside Drive. You know what a new apartment involves. At 8:45 yesterday morning I had to come out to receive the workmen who are putting in new windows. I had to come out again at 7:15 P.m. because I didn't want Sybil to put up the new drapes. I feel it's up to me to keep the home going. And with all the deliveries we're getting these days, we can't sleep in the morning. So I had to put up a sign, "Do Not Disturb," near the downstairs bell. Sybil and Teddy are doing over the apartment. The doing falls to me."

"What else do you do?"

"It's hard to do anything with that Morningside barn called a brownstone. How I wish we had more space. I'd like to have a flower garden, room for some animals. We just have Capri."

"You don't like New York?"

"Not really. But then I don't get around much. Sometimes I go to a museum or a library. That's about it. I rarely leave the apartment."

"What do you do when you're there?"

"Housework. Read. Listen to music. Do a little painting. Write poetry. Poetry eases the pain."

"What pain, Mary?"

"Oh, I've prayed about how we feel."

"What pain, Mary?"

"Haven't they told you? Vicky? Sybil? Peggy Lou?"

"Not directly. They've talked of the fear of getting close to people, of music, of hands, of being trapped, and, by denying mother, Vicky and Peggy Lou indicate that they fear her. Do you fear her?"

"I never felt Sybil's mother was mine." Mary's tone was confidential.

"What pain, Mary?"

"You'll know in time. That's why I told Vicky that I wanted to come today. I want to help with our analysis. But I feel guilty about coming. Maybe it's a sin to go to a psychiatrist."

"Now, Mary," the doctor said very slowly, very plainly, "you know that Sybil, Vicky, and Peggy Lou have been coming here for some nine months. Do you think that anything they've said or done here is sinful?"

"I don't know," Mary answered thoughtfully. "I really don't know."

"Then why have you come?"

"That day last month among the dogwoods and the flowering crab," Mary answered thoughtfully, "you weren't a psychiatrist. You were a friend. We need friends."

"Sybil has friends. Aren't her friends also yours?"

"I suppose so," Mary replied, "but only in a way. Teddy Reeves knows me by name and can tell me apart from the others, but Laura Hotchkins thinks I'm Sybil. Most people do, you know. I'm sometimes very lonely."

"Then why don't you go out and make friends on your own, the way Vicky does?"

"Well, you know how it is," Mary explained. "For one thing I don't have the clothes for it. I just wear what I find in our closet, and what looks well on the others doesn't necessarily suit me." Mary paused, ducked her head, and added with a slight, tired smile, "But then I'm not as attractive as Vicky or as glamorous as Vanessa. I can't compete with them. I am what I am."

It was not until later that Dr. Wilbur discovered that Mary saw herself as a plump, maternal, little-old-lady type, not very stylish. Mary emerged as a homebody, a nest-maker, the eternal housewife interested in Kinder, Kuche, Kirche. And although the children didn't exist, although the cooking was difficult in, as Mary put it, "one of these city apartments with kitchens the size of a pencil box," it became increasingly clear to Dr. Wilbur that what really caused trouble for Mary was not the absence of Kinder, the difficulties of Kuche, but the problems revolving around Kirche. In time the doctor discovered that the initial "maybe it's a sin to go to a psychiatrist," etched in deep hues, reflected church-centered conflicts.

In dark hues, too, was Mary's account of grandmother Dorsett. "Grandma died," Mary told the doctor during the June 15, 1955, session. "There was no one to take her place. Sybil didn't mourn for Grandma. Sybil went away. Peggy Lou mourned quietly when she was by herself. All of us--except Vicky-- mourned for Grandma, but I was the one who mourned most. After Grandma died, I came out to mourn for her."

"Did you come out at the funeral?"

"No," Mary replied, "I wasn't there. Sybil was nine then. I came when we were ten and Peggy Lou was in charge of things."

"How did you get your name?"

"It's Grandma's name. I look like Grandma, and I took her name. Grandma Dorsett's son is my father, and I also look like him."

Mary began to cry softly. Here, the doctor reflected, were the tears Sybil didn't shed. "What's the trouble, Mary?" the doctor asked.

"Grandma," Mary replied.

"But, Mary, that was more than twenty years ago."

"It's now," Mary answered, shaking her head sadly. "There is no past. Past is present when you carry it with you." Later Dr. Wilbur learned that Mary always hankered for the only real home she ever knew--Mary Dorsett's home.

"Mary," the doctor asked as the visit drew to a close, "I hope you won't resent my asking, but where are you going when you leave here?"

"Home," said Mary. "Home, where I belong. When I get there I'm going to phone Daddy. Did Sybil tell you that he and his wife, Frieda, live in Detroit? I want to reassure him about many things. You see, Sybil doesn't show him that she can try harder. I'm the one who has to show him."

"But suppose something gets in the way of the trying?" the doctor asked pointedly. "Shouldn't you get that something out of the way before you try?"

"You try," Mary answered firmly, almost self-righteously. ""In the world's broad field of battle, you try.""

The doctor nodded.

"In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

Be a hero in the strife!"

The doctor tried to say something, but Mary, explaining that the poem was "A Psalm of Life," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, went right on quoting from it:

"Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us, Footprints in the sands of time!"

Again the doctor tried to speak. Mary went on reciting:

"Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate, Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait!"

Mary's voice broke as she added, "Oh, poor ... poor ..."