Sybil (11 page)

"What people? What places?"

"The people and the music." Peggy was breathless.

"The people and the music. The music goes round and round and round. You can see all the people. I don't like the people, the places, or anything. I want to get out. Oh, let me out! Please. Please!"

"Just turn the knob and open the door."

"No. I can't." Peggy's fury was suddenly directed at the doctor. "Why won't you understand?"

"Why don't you try? You haven't even tried. Why don't you turn around and open it?" the doctor insisted.

"It's got a door knob, and it won't turn. Can't you see that?"

"Try it."

"It's no use to try." There was momentary relaxation, but it was the relaxation of resignation, of doomed acceptance. "They won't let me do anything. They think I'm no good and that I'm funny and my hands are funny. Nobody likes me."

"I like you, Peggy."

"Oh, they won't let me do anything. It hurts. It hurts bad." Peggy was sobbing. "The people don't care."

"Dr. Wilbur cares. She asks you what's on your mind."

"Nobody cares," Peggy replied defiantly. "And the hands hurt."

"Your hands?"

"No, other hands. Hands comin' at you. Hands that hurt!"

"Whose hands?"

"I won't tell." Again there was that childlike chant. "I don't have to tell if I don't want to."

"What else hurts?"

"Music hurts." Peggy was speaking again in a low, breathy whisper. "The people and the music."

"What music? Why?"

"I won't tell."

Gently, Dr. Wilbur put her arm around Peggy and helped her back to the couch.

Moved, Peggy confided softly, "You see, nobody cares. And you can't talk to anybody. And you don't belong anywhere." There was a tranquil pause. Peggy then said: "I can see the trees, the house, the school. I can see the garage. I want to get into the garage. Then it would be all right. Then it wouldn't hurt so much. Then there wouldn't be so much pain."

"Why?"

"It hurts because you're not good enough."

"Why aren't you good enough? Tell Dr. Wilbur some more about how it hurts and what's the matter."

"Nobody loves me. And I want somebody to care a little bit. And you can't love somebody when they don't care."

"Go on. Tell Dr. Wilbur what the trouble is."

"I want somebody to love, and I want somebody to love me. And nobody ever will. And that's why it hurts. Because it makes a difference. And when nobody cares, it makes you all mad inside and it makes you want to say things, tear up things, break things, get through the glass."

Suddenly Peggy grew silent. Then Peggy disappeared. Seated where Peggy had been was Sybil.

"I had another fugue?" Sybil asked as she quickly drew away from the doctor. She was frightened, anxious.

The doctor nodded.

"Well, it wasn't as bad as the last time," Sybil reassured herself as she looked around the room and saw nothing out of place, nothing broken.

"You mentioned music to me once, Sybil," the doctor replied in an effort to discover what Sybil knew about what Peggy had said. "Why don't you tell me a little more about it?"

"Well," Sybil replied with composure, "I took piano lessons, and Mrs. Moore, my piano teacher, used to say, "You have all the native ability. You have a good ear, nice hands. Your fingering is good. But you must practice more. You can do all this without practicing. What would you do if you did practice?"' But I didn't practice. And I didn't tell her that I didn't because mother was overcritical. Whenever I made a mistake while practicing, mother would holler, "That's not right. That's not right." I couldn't stand it, so I didn't practice when mother was around. But the minute she left the house, I'd drop whatever I was doing and dash to the piano. I could always work things out at the piano. If I didn't have that, the tension would have gotten me long before it did. When I started teaching, the first thing I bought was a piano."

"Umm," Dr. Wilbur replied. "Tell me, do you have any special feelings about glass?"

"Glass," Sybil echoed thoughtfully. "Mother had some lovely crystal. So did my grandmother. Both grandmothers, in fact--Grandma Dorsett and Grandma Anderson. Oh, I remember something. When I was about six, we were visiting the Andersons in Elderville, Illinois.

We went there for three weeks every summer until Grandma Anderson died. Well, this time my cousin Lulu and I were drying the dishes. She hurled a lovely crystal pickle dish through the French doors. She was a real brat. And then she told my grandmother and my mother and everybody else that I did it, that I broke the crystal dish. It wasn't fair. But I didn't say anything, just took it. My mother let me have it, but good."

"I see," said Dr. Wilbur. "Now tell me whether hands disturb you."

"Hands? Well, not particularly. My own hands are small and thin. My mother didn't think they were very attractive. She often said so."

"Did hands ever come at you? Someone else's hands?"

"Hands coming? I don't know what you mean." It was apparent that Sybil's discomfort suddenly was greatly intensified.

"I see," said the doctor. "Another question: does the sight of blood disturb you?"

"Well, yes. But doesn't it bother everybody? Grandma Dorsett had cancer of the cervix and bled. I saw that. And when I started to menstruate, I wondered about the blood like most girls. There's nothing very unusual about that."

"But tell me, did you ever see other blood as a child? The blood of a playmate perhaps?"

Sybil sat back and thought. "Well, let's see. Tommy Ewald. His father had a barn and kept horses. Tommy was his mother's favorite child. He died in the hayloft. We were playing. It was an accident. A gun went off. That's all I remember. There could have been blood in the hayloft. I haven't thought about Tommy in many years."

By February, 1955, the doctor was ready to tell Sybil about Peggy, who remembered what she had forgotten. There was no point in procrastinating any longer. But while the words were forming on the doctor's lips, Sybil's face went white, the pupils of her eyes became dilated even more than usual, and in a strained, unnatural voice she asked, "How do you know these things?" Wanting to tell her about her other self, the doctor could sense that she had become that self.

"Hi," Peggy said.

"Hi, dear," said the doctor.

"I'm goin' out now," Peggy told the doctor. "Right through the door. A long time ago Dr. Wilbur said I could."

And Peggy walked through the door that only minutes ago had been impenetrable, the tangible symbol of her captivity.

Dr. Wilbur, feeling that the diagnosis of dual personality had been confirmed beyond a shadow of doubt, could not take her mind off this unusual case. Peggy and Sybil, although existing in the same body, had different memories, different moods, different attitudes, different experiences. The experiences that they shared were perceived differently. Their voices, their diction, and their vocabularies were different. They presented themselves in different ways. Even their ages were different. Sybil was thirty-one, but Peggy ... the doctor couldn't decide whether Peggy was a precocious child or an immature adult. Peggy was unself-conscious in a little-girl way, not easily embarrassed. Instead, she got mad. Instead of being like Sybil, circuitous, she gave vent to undisguised terror. And unmistakably Peggy carried some terrible burden that Sybil refused to face.

Dr. Wilbur's mind teemed with speculations, insistent but inconclusive. She had never treated a dual personality. She would have to treat the disturbance as she would any other case. First you get to the roots of the disturbance; then you proceed from there.

The immediate problem was to tell Sybil about the diagnosis, a task more difficult than the doctor had first realized. When a situation arose with which Sybil was unable to cope, she seemed to let Peggy take over. To tell Sybil about Peggy would be to invite a dissociation that would bring Peggy back.

The evasions were so effective that the problem remained unresolved until March, 1955. At that time, however, an event took place that, changing the diagnosis, made Dr. Wilbur glad that she had not yet told Sybil.

Victoria Antoinette Scharleau

March 16, 1955. Dr. Wilbur took a moment between appointments to replace her pussy willows with the new spring flowers, anemones and jonquils, that she had just bought. Then, wondering whether it was Sybil or Peggy who was waiting, she opened the door to the anteroom.

The patient, sitting quietly, was absorbed in the pages of The New Yorker. When she saw the doctor, she got up at once, smiled, walked toward her, and said warmly, "Good morning, Dr. Wilbur."

It isn't Peggy, the doctor thought. Peggy doesn't sit still. Peggy doesn't read. Peggy's voice doesn't have that cultivated tone. It has to be Sybil. But never before has Sybil spoken to me before I have addressed her. Never has she smiled in this spontaneous way.

"How are you today?" the doctor asked. "I'm fine," was the reply. "But Sybil isn't. She was so sick she couldn't come. So I came instead."

For an instant the doctor was stunned. But for an instant only. The strange juxtaposition of "she" and "I" only reaffirmed her already dawning suspicions. I'm surprised, Dr.

Wilbur reflected, but why should I be? There were more than two personalities in the Christine Beauchamp case, which Dr. Morton Prince treated and about which he wrote. But then, he too, had been surprised. In fact, he had been astonished when he had found more than one. I suppose this comes as a surprise to every doctor, Dr. Wilbur reflected.

All this was running through Dr. Wilbur's mind at top speed while this new "I" was saying: "I must apologize for Sybil. She wanted to come, but couldn't get dressed, though she tried and tried. I watched her last night as she took out the navy blue skirt and the twin blue sweaters that she planned to wear here this morning. Last night she had every intention of coming, but this morning it was different. She sometimes suffers from a complete absence of feeling and a total inability to do anything. This morning, I'm afraid, was one of those times. But how gauche of me to start a conversation without introducing myself. I'm Vicky."

"Won't you come in, Vicky?" the doctor asked.

Vicky did not merely walk into the consulting room; she made an entrance, with finesse and elegance. While Sybil's movements were always constrained, hers were free and graceful.

She was wearing a dress of many colors: rose, violet, and pale green. It had a double top and a slightly gathered skirt that fell just below the knees. Green shoes heightened the effect.

"This is a lovely room," she remarked casually. "A study in green. The tone must be soothing to your patients."

Then she walked to the couch and settled herself into a comfortable position. The doctor shut the door, joined her, lit a cigarette, and said: "Tell me, Vicky, how do you come to be here?"

"It's very simple," Vicky replied. "Sybil was sick. I put on her dress--not the blue outfit I was telling you about. It wouldn't have been appropriate because I have a lunch date.

As I was saying, I put on her dress, got on the bus, and came over."

"But how did you know where to come?" Vicky explained: "I know everything."

"Everything?" the doctor echoed.

"I know what everybody does."

There was a pause. The doctor tapped her cigarette against the side of an ashtray.

"You may think that is insufferable of me," Vicky went on. "I must admit it does sound presumptuous. But it won't seem so when you know the circumstances."

The circumstances? Perhaps this meant that Vicky had a clue to the total situation in this case. But Vicky only said: "I certainly don't claim omniscience. But I watch everything everybody does. That's what I mean when I say I know everything. In this special sense I am omniscient."

Did this mean, the doctor wondered, that Vicky could tell her everything about Sybil, Peggy, and herself? So far she had revealed very little.

"Vicky," said the doctor, "I'd like to know more about you."

"I'm a happy person," Vicky replied, "and happy people don't have big stories. But I'll be glad to tell you anything you want to know."

"What I'm really trying to say," the doctor replied, "is that I should like to know how you happen to be."

Vicky twinkled and said, "Oh, that's a philosophical question. One could write a tome on that." Then she became more serious and looked directly at the doctor. "But if you want to know where I come from, I'll be happy to tell you. I come from abroad. I come from a very large family. My mother and father, my brothers and sisters--there are lots of them--all live in Paris. Mon Dieu, I haven't seen them in years. My full name is Victoria Antoinette Scharleau. Vicky for short. One becomes Americanized, you know. One can't go around being called Victoria Antoinette. Vicky is easier."

After a pause, during which Dr. Wilbur suspended disbelief, she asked, "Don't your parents feel bad that you're not with them?"

"Not at all, Doctor," Vicky replied with assurance. "They know I'm here to help. After a while they will come for me and I'll go with them. Then we will all be together. They're not like some other parents. They do what they say they will do."